Cover credit: -stqrxlxght-

When Ron died, Ginny didn't believe it. Not for an instant, not for the time it took to frame the thought, "Ron's dead." She dove straight into looking after Harry and Hermione, and tried not to dwell on the impossibility of what had just happened. Hermione was easier - she got pale and quiet and Ginny would spend hours convincing her to eat. Harry got caught up in such a whirl of emotion that Ginny barely even knew what to do - it seemed to hurt him to look at her.

When he decided to go off and travel the world, Ginny supported him. She wasn't sure what else to do - she wasn't even sure if she was allowed to kiss him on the cheek when he left, and everything was so confusing for them both, that in the end she let him go.

She didn't hear from him for nearly six years. Oh, he wrote to Hermione, knowing full well Ginny would read the letters, but there was never one for Ginny. In the end, she learned to toss her head and say she didn't care, and she tried to forget that there'd been a boy called Harry who she'd loved.

After all, she was very busy. She was training to be a Professional Quidditch player, and moving house, and trying to cheer Hermione, and helping Neville plan his wedding; she had no time to mope. That was, until the summer before her twenty-third birthday.

Ginny was supposed to go away for a few weeks alone, to rest and recuperate. Instead she spent them busy having a nervous breakdown. It was a good thing she'd had her wand on her, to conjure food and water, as she could barely manage to get off her floor.

When her door opened, eight days in, for a moment she honestly believed it was Ron, come to help her sort her life out. Of course, it wasn't; it was Harry. He had to hang on to her when she cried for her brother; her stupid brother who had no right to leave. How could he do that to them? How could he do that to her? Why did he have to do everything first? Couldn't he, just once, have waited, not left her behind again?

It felt as though she cried for months, and at the end Harry's shirt collar was soaked. But he put up with it, and the next morning they made love - for only the second time ever. After that things became easier - with Harry back, Ginny didn't have to be the strong one all the time any more, and, weirdly, she spent the first months of their relationship thinking about Ron, and all the ways she missed him, and all the ways she loved him.

They got married, eventually, and Ginny was over thirty before Harry would consent to have children.

Hermione married as well, to a cool, efficient man who Ginny hated on sight. Harry said she was jealous for Ron, but it wasn't that. Hermione's husband was so calm and sincere and intellectual and...all wrong for Hermione. They never fought, as far as Ginny could tell, and he never made Hermione laugh.

It wasn't long before her friend became cool and efficient too, and if Ginny mentioned Ron, or children, or House-Elves, or anything that had once mattered to her friend, Hermione would smile sweetly, blankly, and change the subject.

But Ginny hung on - she could not accept that it wasn't her job to protect the girl Ron had loved.