In the wake of the war, when they are all trying to be more honest about their feelings, Ron wonders who can tell that still feels guilty for abandoning Harry and Hermione in the woods. The two people he would normally talk to, Harry and Hermione themselves, would cut him off, assuring him that he’d more than made up for it. As for the others in his life he could talk to? George wasn’t up to talking about much, and Bill had been there for the initial sleepless nights and random searches. Ron knew he was tired of hearing about it. Still, it nags at him.
He finally decides to open up to Ginny about it, setting a tankard of Butterbeer in front of her and asking if she has a minute to talk.
“Sure,” she answers, taking the drink. They’ve never confided in each other before, but somehow, in the gauzy limbo of grief they’re all living under, it doesn’t feel weird.
Ron sighs, and begins to recount the circumstances of his leaving, half-waiting for Ginny to hit him, or scream at him, or summon Harry and Hermione to get the other side of the story.
She cuts him off, instead, at the part in the story where he’d started yelling at Harry, asking firmly, “Were you wearing the Horcrux?”
“Well, yeah,” he answers, a little wrong-footed. “But that’s no excuse -”
“Yes it is,” she says firmly, looking strong and bitter and like she might scream if he argues with her.
He’d forgotten until that moment everything Voldemort’s Horcrux had made her do. If Ginny could still be good….maybe Ron was, too. “Thanks, Gin,” he murmurs, and takes a sip from his own Butterbeer. Maybe there are better things to feel guilty about than dark-magic fueled lapses in judgment.
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