When Blaise and Draco reentered the Great Hall, Gin was sitting there waiting for them. She did not look happy. She could only assume where they had disappeared to and one look at their faces when they saw hers told her she was right. They may be her best friends, but she didn't like even them interfering with her life.
She got up and walked out. They didn't try to stop her.
She stood on the cliffs overlooking the lake and wrapped her arms around herself. She really had missed this place, but she was beginning to wonder herself whether what they were attempting was possible. She was beginning to wonder whether her past would get in the way after all.
She heard footsteps slowly approaching. Was it possible? The stride wasn't long enough for Draco and Blaise never walked that hesitantly. She turned around slowly before throwing her arms around the startled man and burying her face in his chest.
Slowly, he wrapped his arms around her as well and held her like he was afraid she would disappear. "Ginny..." he began.
She shook her head against him. "You don't have to. It doesn't matter anymore. You're here; you came here. That's all that matters to me now." She was barely whispering and held him even closer.
He buried his face in her hair. "I need to, Ginny. I need to tell you I'm sorry, that I was a fool. My actions caused you so much pain for so long, pain you never should have born. I'm sorry." Tears made his voice rougher than usual.
She nodded. "The others?" she asked quietly.
He smiled. "They've just been waiting for me to get up the courage to come out here. They would have mobbed you the first day if I hadn't believed the first apology was my responsibility." His voice turned his explanation into another apology.
She tilted her head to look up at him. "I love you Ron. I always have. I have always loved and missed you all."
He hugged her so tight she had trouble breathing before releasing her. "So," he said in a more conversational tone, "Your friends paid me a visit today."
She rolled her eyes and looked out over the cliff again. "I know."
He could hear the anger in her voice. "It was a good thing, Ginny. They helped me find the courage to come out here. I don't know how long it would have taken if Zabini hadn't yelled at me like that."
Her gaze lowered. She didn't like being mad at her friends, but her life was her life and there were certain things that she just didn't like meddled with. She sighed. "Then I guess I'm glad he did. Just..." she turned around and looked Ron with questioning eyes, "tell me, did Draco..."
Ron scratched the back of his head. He had figured she wouldn't like that part of what had happened and now he was sure. "He sort of..."
She growled, "That's enough. You don't have to explain. He went off on Harry, didn't he?"
Ron nodded.
"It isn't like he has a right to," she turned back around angrily. "It isn't like he has a right to criticize the way anyone else treats me."
Ron stepped up beside her. "That's what I don't understand. The two of you seem as much at odds as always, even during the war. Even we heard that the two of you had a reputation for the most volatile relationship, anything setting you off. I don't understand why he always meant, means, so much to you."
She closed her eyes and lifted her face into the wind. "Because I know him, and I know his heart. I wouldn't have made it through the war without him. I love him, and part of me cannot deny that he loves me, that he needed me as much as I needed him. That is why the yelling starts, why we cannot get along." She lowered her head and looked over at her brother. "When you and the others took off during your seventh year, I was left alone in Gryffindor Tower. Luna was kept at home; Neville was kept at home; everyone I knew seemed to have been kept at home. Dray was even more alone than I was. He was practically the only seventh year Slytherin to return. His mother had found him a way out of becoming a death eater, or rather, out of directly challenging his father on his seventeenth birthday by insisting that he finish his schooling.
"Without anyone to talk to and without the three of you to torment, he targeted me. It got to the point of stalking with him. He would follow me everywhere doing his best to make my life as miserable as his was. It wasn't hard, considering that I was alone anyway. Before too long, I decided that I would just accept it and give back as good as I got. It would either drive him away or even the score. We became rather proficient at communicating through insults and actually got to know each other. Sometimes we would admit to things in anger or frustration we never would have said under self-control, and sometimes we shared things we never would have told anyone else because somehow we knew the other would understand even if they didn't care.
"By Christmas it had become an odd sort of friendship. No one would have called us civil to each other, but we were the only ones allowed to insult or attack the other. He defended me; I defended him. It was strange, but it worked. Then, during a game of Quidditch early in the new year, one of the beaters on his team hit my broom instead of the bludger. It sent the handle up into my face before I fell off entirely. Dray sped down from where he was searching for the snitch and caught me just before I hit the ground. I hadn't been flying that high, I would have survived, but he saved me a great deal of pain. Anyway, after he looked at the cut above my eye left by the broom handle, we just kind of stood there, looking at each other.
"I guess it was at that moment that we realized we cared. We weren't just tolerating each other anymore, we actually cared. After that the fighting stopped. We no longer insulted each other but talked the way friends talk. We became close. He got to know me as no one else ever has and I got to know him in return. Unfortunately, that isn't really something he could handle.
"He didn't mind that I knew him, but it bothered him how much he liked that I did. He couldn't stand the thought of losing me and missing me, of actually feeling pain because of how much he cared for someone else. He became stiff and we started arguing again." She turned back over the cliff so her eyes could focus on the horizon. "I think he could have dealt with that, though, if it hadn't been for his insecurity."
"You see, the more he came to need me the less he wanted me and the more he wanted me the more determined he was not to need me. Everyone, even Blaise, seems to think that his arrogance and his need to be better than everyone else is born out of a belief that he is. Everyone is wrong. He cannot allow anyone to know something he does not because then he would have needed someone to tell him. He cannot endure anyone being able to do something better than him because that would mean wisdom requires he seek their help. He has to be able to survive, succeed, excel, and exist entirely on his own.
"It's easy enough to live with him, allowing him to believe that he does not need you but rather chooses to have you around, that he does not need your assistance even though it might make his life easier. Blaise has been doing that most of their lives, but I could not. I cannot let him live like that. He is the strongest, deepest, best man I know. I just wish he could see that being better than everyone is not a requisite of independence and independence is not a requisite of life." She stopped, still staring off into space. She had never outlined it like that, not even to herself.
"Have you ever," Ron asked his sister gently, "told him all of this as calmly as you have told me?"
She smiled ruefully. "That, Ron, would have ended everything. Even as they are things are not over, they never really began. To confront him with something he does not wish to see...that would have pushed him away entirely." She sighed and tore her eyes away from the distance, forcing them to refocus. "If you push Harry, confront him with a view of himself that he does not like and challenge him to change, whether in soft understanding tones or yelling at the top of your lungs, you're safe. He'll either listen to you and change, or he'll shut you out and forget you ever said anything ten minutes after you leave. If you push Dray, try to help him see where he can change, yelling is actually safer. He can convince himself that you were angry and reaching for anything, saying anything to hurt him, or he can convince himself that whatever you said was his own revelation and act on it. Speak calmly to him, show him a picture of himself he does not like or is afraid of when both of you are rational and he ceases to be so. He will lock you out and walk away. You will always be someone who knows his weakness, someone to be avoided, someone to be proven wrong at all costs. You will become his enemy. No, there is only one time when you can speak to him, and that is when he asks a direct question seeking a confirmation of what he has finally realized."
Ron saw the sadness and the pain in his sister's eyes and it broke his heart. In a moment of insight not nearly as rare as it once would have been, he said, "I wouldn't be surprised if the memory seventeen years lived without you will permit him to remain blind any longer."
She smiled a pained smile and lowered her head a moment before turning toward the castle. "I should get back inside."
He nodded and followed her.