Pretty

The turquoise Anglia pulls into the drive and I step out, shaken. Numb. My hand shuts the door behind me; my feet trudge up the stairs to my room, where I sit on my bed.

I can´t believe that he would leave me here. Alone.

He was always here with me, beside me - my best friend, my protector. He was there to hear my first word (his name, of course) and to curl up next to me when I couldn´t sleep alone for fear of the dark, or to wipe away my tears when I drowned in darkness.

We were a team. We helped each other through Fred and George´s pranks, and getting out of Mum´s chores and lectures, and scheming to steal Percy´s things. Percy´s the only one who doesn´t get stuff second-hand, besides me sometimes. I never get hand-me-downs, anyway. Ron says he wishes sometimes he were a girl. Hand-me-downs drive him nutters (as he would say).

What did I do to deserve this? I know he loved me. I loved him, too. I understood him, as no one else could - I could never be angry with him. Even now, since he´s left me here alone.

I wish more than anything I were eleven, or he was ten, like me. My favourite part of the year is in January - the 27^th - my birthday. Because then - just until March, but in the dead of winter it seems so blessedly far - I´m the same age as him. It gives us one more thing in common. It brings us closer together. He´s my favourite person in the world, and all I've ever wanted was to be close to him.

Now he´s so far away.

He says, "I´ll write you all the time, Ginny." He says, "I´m really not that far away, Ginny." He says, "I´ll be back for holidays, Ginny."

He promises all these things without realizing that he´ll go off to Hogwarts and forget all about me. I understand him the best. I know.

I try to tell him, but he doesn´t listen.

"I could never forget you, Ginny," he says.

But he will. I know he will.

I look into my mirror, and I see that hot tears have made their way down my cheeks without my noticing. My sigh comes out as a strangled sob.

Mum knocks on my door. "Ginny," she calls. "Come down for lunch, dear."

"No thanks, Mum," I say. "I´m not hungry."

She sighs. "Alright, but I´ll save something in case you are later."

"Okay."

She waits by the door for a moment as if expecting me to say something more. When I say nothing, she sighs again and goes back downstairs.

I wipe the tears from my cheeks and continue staring into the mirror. Now, all I see is red. Red anger because he´s gone. Red eyes from crying. Red hair...

Long, brilliant, curling, soft red hair....

I scramble around my room for my scissors, and once I have them, I look in the mirror again, just to be certain.

I still see red, and I hold the blades to the long, brilliant, curling hair.

I cut away every strand until all the red puddles like spilt blood on the floor. Remembering...remembering all too well, like I remember everything that has to do with Ron....

We were sitting at the riverbank, our toes dangling in the water, our skin glistening with sweat as the heat bore down on the fields. I felt happy - under the shade of our favourite oak tree, cooled by the clear blue water, and sitting in companionable silence with Ron, I couldn´t have asked for a better summer day.

We saw a girl at the other side of the riverbank, dashing towards the water. She stopped when she saw us watching, and looked at us. She smiled at Ron. Ron blushed, and waved shyly. She ran away, down the shore of the riverbank, until she was out of sight.

"Why did you wave?" I asked Ron.

"She was pretty," he replied, blushing slightly again.

"Am I pretty?"

Ron looked at me, deciding. "Yeah."

"I don´t look like her," I said.

"It doesn´t matter," Ron replied. "You´re a different pretty."

"Why?"

Ron smiled. "You have nice hair."

I rolled my eyes. "My hair is the same as yours, silly," I told him.

"So?" he countered. "Yours is long, and soft, and it curls. Plus, I can see it all the time - not just in the mirror."

I smile, and we sit in silence again, for a while.

"Ron?"

"Yeah?"

"How come you don´t wave at me, if I´m pretty?"

Ron shrugged. "´Cause you´re my sister."

"So?"

"I do different stuff with you, than with other girls."

"What´s different?" I asked. "I want all the stuff, not just sister stuff. I like all the stuff."

"You don´t do all stuff with your sister, silly," Ron told me. "Like boys-only stuff, you do with boys. Like you would do girl stuff with girls, not with me."

"I don´t care," I said. "I´d do girl stuff with you."

"You´re silly, Ginny," Ron said with a smile. "But you´re pretty."

I smiled, too.

Mum doesn´t understand why I cut off all my hair. I tell her because Ron liked it, and now he´s left me all alone, and she looks at me like I´m a silly child. She sighs when I say I don´t care that she´s punishing me. She doesn´t understand; it doesn´t matter, either. Ron would know. He would remember.

He writes all the time, at first about being in Gryffindor, about the castle, about all of his classes. Then about Harry Potter, his new best friend, the boy at the train station - the boy who saved the world. I can´t hate Harry.

But he´s taken my place.

Ron forgets about me. I knew he would. Letters come less and less, and he has a new friend too: Hermione Granger. He and Harry saved her from a troll. Ron knocked it out. I´m proud, so proud of my big brother who can do magic, who can knock out trolls. But I´m sad, too. I couldn´t be there with him. And now, he has best friends to do all kinds of stuff with - girl stuff, boy stuff, school stuff...all stuff except sister stuff. He doesn´t need that stuff anymore.

He makes that easy to see. He doesn´t come home for Christmas. He stays at Hogwarts, stays with Harry, or else Harry will be alone. I don´t hate Harry for wanting Ron there with him; I want Ron with me, too. He was my best friend first.

Now I´m always alone.

The months go by slowly. Ron barely writes - nothing good, anyway - until at the end of the year. Then he tells me about how he, Harry and Hermione kept Voldemort from rising again. I get chills all over. I´m excited and terrified at the prospect of Ron facing a Dark Lord. I want him to write me about it, but I know it´ll be much better if he tells me in person.

I try to pretend I don´t want to talk to Ron so desperately, but I do. I know he doesn´t love me the way he did anymore. I´m not everything to him now like it once was. Yet he´s still everything to me. So over the year, I let my hair grow.

When I see him at King´s Cross, I don´t care that he smiles just because I´m his sister.

I care that he smiles.

"Ginny!" he cries. "What did you do to your hair?"

I touch it nervously. Hair grows so much in a year.

Not enough - it´s only just past my chin. It might´ve gotten longer, if Mum hadn´t had to fix it all the time, because of the way I cut it. I didn´t want her to. I didn´t care if it looked bad while it grew in. I wanted it long when Ron came back.

Now I´m not even his pretty sister.

He looks confused when I burst into tears, throwing my arms around him. He strokes my back comfortingly, anyway. "What´s wrong, Ginny?"

"I cut it all off," I wail, looking up at him, my vision blurred with tears. "You left, and I was so angry, and I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to cut it all off, because you liked it, and then I was so sorry...it takes so long to grow back, Ron, and I´m not pretty anymore..."

He´s shocked. "You´ll always be pretty to me, Ginny," he says, brushing back my hair. "No matter what your hair is like, no matter how you change."

"Because I´m your sister?" I ask sadly.

"No, because you´re Ginny. Because you´re my best friend in the world."

The tears spill silently down my cheeks, and I smile. "Really?

He holds me close, and I remember why I could never replace him. Safe, warm, loved in Ron´s arms, I feel like more than Ginny. Ron´s like the sun in the fields; he makes everything brighter.

"I´m sorry I wasn´t here with you, Ginny," he says. "I missed you every minute. I never forgot you, like you said I would, silly girl. There´s so much to tell you...but we have a whole summer, and then we go back to Hogwarts together, and I can show you everything. There are all these places, Ginny, they´re perfect - just meant for you."

He remembered me. He wants me...to share all stuff with me, school stuff with me, to tell me about everything. He found things - things just for me, things that he wouldn´t share with Hermione, or Harry, but things that were perfect for me, not his sister, but Ginny.

I kiss him on the cheek, and I dry my tears in his hair, in the process of a long hug.

He smiles. "What was that for?"

"Because you make me pretty," I reply.