A Thousand Times Unsaid

It wasn't supposed to have been that way. It wasn't supposed to have been at all, but it was, just as he and my sister weren't supposed to be lying in the ground, leaving their young children in my care. We tended the graves often when they were growing up, bringing flowers on their birthdays or holidays. Now I alone come to rake away the leaves and leave the flowers on the weathered stones just as I alone always came on the special day. The day. Their wedding day. It was the last time he and I ever spoke. When the two of them died six years later it was a shock to some in the family that I was named guardian of their children. Despite my continued relationship with my sister, they all thought her husband had hated me, but that was not the case. It was quite the opposite in fact.

It all began one snowy night. It was Christmas at the Burrow. The old house was packed full of presents and good smells and family. It seemed to expand on its own on these occasions, its ramshackle walls stretching to bursting to accommodate the wives and children of my siblings. Harry and Hermione were there, of course, adding their voices to the general merriment. The tree trimming and boisterous laughter, however, had all ground to a halt when Ginny arrived. With him.

His grey eyes had swept the shabby, yet cozy, room disdainfully, and you could have heard a wand swish as everyone waited for him to say something, but instead he turned to Ginny and said, "Let me take your coat."

The room as a whole breathed again, and it wasn't until much later in the evening when, after vast quantities of a rum spiked posset, I discovered he was to share my room.

"Not a chance, mum." My voice was slurred around the edges as I stood in the kitchen clutching a high backed chair for support.

Her eyes narrowed, and I knew I didn't have a choice. "It's the only place, Ronald! I will not allow him to share your sister's room and that's final."

I rolled my eyes, knowing Ginny's proclivities much better than our mother did, but not wanting to burst her illusion that her only daughter would get married still a virgin. I said nothing, merely going up to my room and burrowing under the covers, hoping against hope that Malfoy would shove off and go sleep in a snow drift somewhere.

My hopes were shattered when, after midnight, the door opened a crack and I heard Ginny's voice. "He's already asleep. Just kip on the cot next to him; morning will come soon."

His voice was low and seductive, its intonation pouting without sounding whiny. "I'd much rather stay with you; your mother will never know. Besides I've had nightmares about this very thing."

I barely managed to stay silent under my shroud of sheets. The slimy git! Ginny's voice however, was amused. "Should I be worried, Draco? Been wanting to tell me something have you?"

"Not at all, pet," he replied. "Now run off to bed before I change my mind about being a gentleman."

The door shut, and I was suddenly, painfully, aware that I was alone in a room with Draco Bloody Malfoy. I didn't care to acknowledge the fact that my sister actually liked him. Why she did, I wasn't really sure. He wasn't particularly kind, and of course there was the whole bit about his father being a Death Eater. But far be it for Ginny to find anything wrong with her Prince Charming. I snorted into my pillow as a sudden image of the amazing bouncing ferret surfaced in my mind.

"So you're awake," he said in a quiet undertone.

"It would appear so," I replied. "Dreaming about me, were you? You know," I said, trying to embarrass him, "It's even bigger in real life."

I heard a sharp intake of breath from him and froze, staring blankly at the shadowy wall in front of me and hoping he didn't see my reaction. I tried to make my voice casual and callous, to allay any suspicions he might have. "Bugger, Malfoy! You bloody poofter! And you, dating my sister ..."

"It's not what it sounds like." His voice was strangely desperate. "It was just a stupid dream. If you tell her ..."

"Your secret's safe with me," I sneered. "No way in hell I'm telling Ginny that one. My ears are still sore from the last Bat Bogey Hex she sent my way." I turned around to face him. I could see his pale face in the moonlight staring at me, his eyes oddly frightened yet curious at the same time. "Night, nancy boy," I hissed. I closed my eyes and ignored the little voice inside me that whispered maliciously in an eerie little singsong 'Takes one to know one.'

We avoided each other the rest of the holiday. I pretended to be asleep when he came in at night, and he tried to be out of the house with Ginny during the day. As the year passed, we saw each other frequently, Ginny somehow deciding the two of us should be friends. She was forever inviting me to dinner or dragging Draco to one of my matches, where afterwards I would drink myself into a stupor to ignore the comments he made about my keeping abilities, while all the while his eyes were stormy seas that I avoided looking at as if somehow, superstitiously, I was afraid I would drown.

One night I was at their flat. My mother had given up hope for the white wedding, but still inelegantly dropped hints at every given opportunity. The last, a catalog of gaudy wedding invitations, had been a topic of conversation over dinner. We were unwinding before the fire, Draco reading a book while Ginny and I talked, when suddenly she was called into work. She Disapparated with a pop, and the two of us were left alone. The ensuing silence was an awkward cloak that draped around us like fetid air. We stared at each other then looked away and reached for the Fire Whiskey decanter at the same time. Our hands brushed together. The contact made our eyes lock, and in that instant we both let go, neither of us moving as the crystal shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor.

I don't know what happened next, or rather, I don't know how; I remember only too well what. Suddenly we were kissing. His lips were hard under mine, vicious, demanding, and tasted of alcohol. We clung to each other in the lamplight, flint and steel, two lifeless substances suddenly creating fire with a single touch. Before I knew what was happening, he was on his knees in front of me, my hand wrapped in his long blonde hair as he took me in his mouth. I forced him to me, growling at him, hurling insults the entire time, but he took it. Took it and more, and finally, when he swallowed, I knew it was what he had wanted.

It began thus, and it ran on for a year, then two. It was infrequent at first, and then happened more and more, like an addiction, until I couldn't live without it. Until the nights I spent alone in my bed, thinking of him with my sister, were enough to drive me mad.

I moved into a flat near theirs, and we would spend time together on weekends while Ginny went shopping or to museums with her girl friends.

"See," she would say, "I told you the two of you would be friends."

I would feel guilty then. I was a cheat and a liar, fucking my little sister's boyfriend, sharing him with her although she never knew. The guilt would eat me up, and then my eyes would meet his. I would drown inside their depths and forget everything as he slammed inside me, his long aristocratic fingers digging into my hips, his breath hot against my neck.

Then, one day, he came home with a ring, and I knew he had chosen. I congratulated them both, kissed my sister on the cheek, and left. I continued to see my sister, helped her with the wedding plans even, but with Draco I was cold, as if the past three years had been nothing but a distasteful interlude in my life.

Finally, at the wedding, before the ceremony began, he cornered me. His voice was low and hushed, and he kept looking over his shoulder nervously. "Ron, please, I miss you. I want things back the way they were."

I shook my head. "It was always about what you wanted, Draco, your desires, your needs. You had to choose, I understand that. I love my sister, and I hope that she is happy with you."

"But I want you," he said. His voice was strange, low, pleading, and suddenly I was reminded of a little boy on a train many years ago. "I love you," he whispered.

I couldn't tell him; I'd given in to the temptation long enough. Ginny loved him, and he had chosen her, chosen what society expected instead of what he wanted. "How unfortunate for you," I said. "Rather like my sister, actually, who loves a man who doesn't love her back."

"Ron ..." I turned away, into the crowd of guests and waited for the wedding to start. Ginny was radiant, and Draco was everything a groom should be. Only I knew the truth. When they died in the accident, it felt like a part of me died too. I missed my sister, I hated the fact her children would never really know her, but I also missed him. I did what I had to. He did what he had to. We all live with our choices, but I am the only one who still has to bear their burden.

The children are grown now, and I am alone. There are pictures of the three of us and of the two of them scattered around the house. My hair is graying now, and from time to time I take a lover, but there has never been another, not like him. There is one picture of the two of us, and I am young in it, young and vibrant in my uniform, and he is smiling at me.

I go every year to their graves but on that day I only visit his. I say the words I wanted to say but never did, that I always regretted never having told him. The flowers I lay down are not important, but written on the stems and petals, in the impressions of my thumbprints, in the core of my being are a thousand unsaid I Love Yous. And they are all that matters.