An Unwise Choice

My name is Virginia Weasley, and my love was broken in a glitter of gray eyes and a sneering smile.

He said he loved me.

Through all of this, through all of the pain, that's the one thing that I kept remembering. The one thought that kept playing over and over again in my head.

He said he loved me.

And, fool that I was, I believed him.

"Merlin, you truly are beautiful. Why haven't more people told you how beautiful you are?"

He told me I was beautiful after our first kiss. Funny, I had expected his lips to be cold. Silly, really--he's human, after all. But still, the warmth of his lips shocked me when I felt them against mine. And then those words, those wonderful words, telling me that I was beautiful, that I was special, that I was . . . worth something.

When he asked me to go to Hogsmeade with him, I thought it was some kind of a sick joke. I was so sure that at any moment someone would pop out of one of the hidden passageways, pointing and laughing at the wonderful joke they'd played on poor unsuspecting Ginny Weasley. Well, I didn't live with Fred and George for fourteen years without learning a thing or two. So I accepted graciously, planning on slipping some of the raw potion from the twins' Transfiguring Taffy into his butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks. A return of the amazing bouncing ferret and good family fun for all. But when the time came . . .

I couldn't do it. Because by that time I had been convinced of his sincerity.

He didn't grin at me the entire time, or look deep into my eyes and profess his undying love. THAT would have tipped me off right there. No, it wasn't any of the normal signs that made me so sure that he truly wanted to be there with me.

It was the way he sneaked glances at me when he thought I wasn't looking.

The hesitance in his step when we entered the pub, right before he squared his shoulders and led me to a table right in the middle of it all.

The way his gray eyes weren't cold at all when I finally managed to catch them with my own.

"I know I've been horrid to your family before. And I can't really expect you to forgive me for that. But I wanted . . . I needed you to know that . . . I'm sorry. And I don't think you're worthless, Virginia. I think you're probably worth more than the rest of my family put together."

From the very beginning he only ever called me Virginia. Never Ginny, never Gin, only Virginia. The only other person to ever constantly call me by my first name . . . but I don't want to think about Tom Riddle just now. And I wasn't thinking of that at the time. All I could think was that finally, finally, someone thought that I was really, truly worth something.

I didn't realize then that he was talking in terms of trade.

I lost so much when I fell in love with him. My friends were unable to see what I saw and, after a shorter time than you might think, they stopped trying. My fellow housemates glared at me in the halls. In Potions I was safe from neither side--both Gryffindors and Slytherins thought that I was trespassing where I didn't belong. My own brother came close to abandoning me after he found out how far my relationship had gone.

"Just relax, Virginia. Shh . . . I'm not going to hurt you . . . oh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, are you all right? Thank Merlin. Don't worry, we'll go slowly . . . if you want to stop, anytime, just tell me . . . I love you so much Virginia."

I gave myself to him under the cover of darkness, on a bed of pillows he had arranged in the Charms classroom. And he had been so gentle, so wonderfully sweet, so unlike the façade he showed to everyone else. I felt cherished, and protected, andoh, so completely loved.

After Pansy walked in on us, searching for him, the news spread like wildfire throughout the entire school. If life had been difficult before it was damn near close to impossible after that. Ron wouldn't so much as speak to me for almost a month; it wasn't until Hermione dragged him into the Astronomy tower where I had been crying that his walls finally broke down. Ron held me then, stroking my hair and apologizing for being such a prat. He got detention for a solid week after that for attacking a group of seventh years who were calling me filthy names. He always was my favorite brother.

If I hadn't meant so much to Ron, if Ron hadn't meant so much to Harry . . . I had hoped that after my first year I would never be used as bait again. The thought that we could all still be up in the Gryffindor common room playing Exploding Snap or trading Quidditch stories is too much. I'll go quickly mad if I torture myself by asking 'what if'. I simply can't think of it right now.

But right now is all I'll ever have.

In the end, I think, it will play like tragedy has always played.

An innocent girl loves a boy. Others only see his faults, his flaws; but she believes that there is more to him than the evil that people see. She is willing to look deeper.

And she doesn't see until too late that the flaws run as deep as they can go, all the way down to bone.

As he stands over me with his other Death Eaters, his wand pointed at my head, I know my fate. Didn't he tell me just moments ago that he doesn't need live bait to set the trap? His long, pale hand reaches out to finger a lock of my hair.

"I meant it when I called you beautiful, Virginia." His fingers drop my hair, and his face is lost for a moment as I feel his breath whispering over my ear. "You will be the loveliest corpse I have ever seen."

One last sneer from that beautiful, colorless face, and I am lost to a brilliant blast of green.

My name was Virginia Weasley. May you choose your love more wisely than I chose mine.