The characters, setting etc. belong to J.K.R not me.

This is a sequel to Unfreezing Ron Weasley but you don't need to have read that to make sense of this.

Unfrozen Thoughts

Well that didn't quite go according to plan, did it?

The future of the Wizarding World depends on my having a clear head. My family's very lives depend on my ability to stay focussed. I have a job to do and a limited amount of time in which to do it.

Yet every time I secure myself within the Room of Requirement to work on repairing the Vanishing Cabinet, the unaccustomed solitude drives the plan for its repair out of my head by letting in thoughts of muscular, freckled arms, a long back, blue eyes and ginger hair.

I am clever enough to overcome this obsession. I will free myself. Unfortunately my first attempt backfired so badly that I have in fact intensified the problem instead of lessening it.

My plan was: to declare my interest in Ron Weasley in a manner designed to increase his already considerable loathing for me, to consequently suffer rejection, probably including a physical attack, thus forcing myself to feel resentment leading to dislike and hence an end to my current state of mind. I had planned to then Obliviate him. My head would have been clear. I would have been capable of killing Dumbledore. He wasn't supposed to respond.

Usually the best thing to do with something confusing is to ignore it. It was such a weird thing, way beyond any of the weird I'd had before, that it was easy to pretend it just hadn't happened.

Sure, for a few days I ate with my back to the Slytherin table.

I've got Lavender now for snogging and Hermione acting all jealous and Harry's always got stuff going on. There's Quidditch and N.E.W.T.s, family stuff, Order of the Phoenix stuff. No time to think about anything else. Even if it was something comprehensible.

Sure, for a couple of weeks I made myself late for Potions lessons, so we wouldn't be waiting in the corridor outside at the same time as Malfoy.

He's always late for Potions now. That section of dungeon corridor used to be one of my favourites. I could gaze under cover of a smirk, speak to him under cover of an insult.

Potter is watching me but I'm sure he doesn't know anything. He doesn't know the task I've been set and Weasley hasn't told him about the events by the boundary wall. I should forget it ever happened, pretend I never abducted him, paralysed him and declared myself to him.

Yet I feel his thigh between my legs when I close my eyes.

Harry's obsessed with Malfoy. He practically lives in that Invisibility Cloak, trying to find out if he's up to something.

I probably ought to tell him what I know . Malfoy admitted he was doing something, something that would make me hate him even more than I already do.

But how would I explain it to Harry? How could I expect him to understand? His enemy gave me an orgasm. I'm pretty sure that's not what best friends do.

Could Malfoy have anything to do with Katie and the cursed necklace?

He is an evil, slimy git after all.

It's just that he's smooth-skinned and slender, too.

It's not me who's obsessed with him.

Weasley is my king. Last year that was sarcastic. How ironic! I delighted in tormenting him. Him more than anyone else. His reactions are always so clearly apparent: spelled out in colours on his skin. Red usually.

I began to wonder. When his complexion flamed with anger or embarrassment I would wonder whether that was how he looked when he was aroused. I imagined him blushing as he stroked himself; I imagined him blushing as I stroked him. I pictured all that Pure blood rising to the surface.

Now I know I was wrong. He wears a special deeper, darker claret colour for sex. It begins on his neck, spreading slowly down his collar bone, up his jaw, then rapidly over his chest. Beads of sweat shine on his forehead and upper lip. Next time I'll lick them off. There won't be a next time.

It's been a long time since I've fantasised about Potter when I masturbate …

I hardly ever think about Harry when I wank now. Even when I try to, my head gets full of wet leaves …

… I picture dusk beyond the trees, a broom lying in long grass …

… slim, pale fingers brushing across my skin …

…a muscled chest of ginger hairs and pale pink nipples …

… silky hair the colour of moonlight.

I press my nipples between my fingers. Exactly the way he did.

Sometimes it's like I can smell him …

Sometimes I can almost smell him.

I remember what his voice sounded like saying my first name.

I hear how he cried out my name when he climaxed.

But during the daytime I'm fine. I try to get my head round the lessons. I get pissed off about all the homework and Slughorn ignoring me. I get turned on and wound up by Lavender. I get excited about coming of age on my birthday.

There was this one time, we were rushing down a corridor and he just turned this corner straight in front of us. He nearly bumped into us. I wasn't expecting him. I did react a bit then: goosebumps and, you know, just a bit, like, down there.

It's hardly my fault.

Him and Harry looked each other in the eye, circled round each other, sneered. We hurried on. I didn't look back.

His face! Priceless! Of course the Mudblood and the hero are too self-absorbed to have noticed. It means he does think about me. Which is exciting. Which is a very bad thing.

He's a ferrety little bastard. Why couldn't he have left me alone?

I'm not responsible for how my body reacts. I'm a teenage boy for fuck's sake!

I'm not dwelling on it.

I'm over it.

He's loathsome.

I mean, You-Know-Who has returned and wants to off my best mate. I'm hardly lying around thinking about some Dark scum's pale skin. Am I?

I mean, if it bothered me, I'd have told someone by now, wouldn't I?

If I had never touched him, then I would never have known. Or, perhaps I had touched him before and never noticed. But I noticed on that evening last year in Umbridge's office. She took off into the Forest with The Chosen One and the Buck-toothed One and left me in charge of the rest of the prisoners. I was quietly furious. She'd used my people, we'd even let her call us uher /u Inquisitorial Squad, until it got interesting. And then we'd been dumped.

We would just have to make our own entertainment. Two girls, Longbottom and Ron. Bulstrode was welcome to Longbottom, I like a bit of fight in my victims. My boys could enjoy themselves with the girls. There was only one there that I could ever have got interested in tormenting. I never realised how interested until I touched him.

Warrington had him in a half-nelson. As soon as Umbridge left the office, he shoved Ron face-down onto the desk, grinding his bleeding lip into the wood. That was a nice sight. He was struggling, writhing under Warrington. Then there was a flash of green light, Warrington fell to the ground. I never saw which Gryffindor started it. Weasley was going for his wand so I leaped on him. I grabbed his arm.

I froze. I could feel the warmth and the movement of the muscles under my hand. I felt Greg fall onto me, or was he helping me? There were spells going off all round me. All I knew for certain, though, was that Weasley's body was pressed between the desk and mine. I had him bent over the desk. I shifted round. He struggled, his buttocks and back pushing against me. My concentration was shot.

Then my face exploded. My hands went to it. I think I fell down. There were bats everywhere, mostly round me. My nose felt like it had burst open. Leathery wings whipped at my head.

By the time I could see, he had gone. They had all gone. He was gone.

So there was this other time, in Charms, the other week. Neville got something wrong somehow, I don't remember the details, but Malfoy made one of those spiteful little remarks that he thinks are so clever.

Which would have been good, would have bolstered the hate, which is the only antidote to that other feeling, only then Dean yelled over at Malfoy that he was a tosser.

I could have done without that.

I was lost for the rest of the lesson.

I was imagining Draco tossing himself off: in bed, in the shower, standing, sitting, lying down, crouching over in a squatting position, with his wand up his arse, on a broom, in the library. I think I must be pretty sick.

I needed to purge myself of my feelings for him. I had to get him alone. And he's never alone. I didn't have a great deal of time for planning. I already had Dumbledore's death and the over-running of the school to plan. My mother's life was threatened. My father was in Azkaban but nowhere is safe from the Dark Lord. I knew I was being used to punish Father. Nevertheless, it was my chance to prove myself, hopefully to find favour and, with luck, earn myself a Mark like Father's and Aunt's. I was excited and just a little frightened.

I was terrified.

I still am. Dumbledore is still alive; Hogwarts is, as yet, impregnable.

The fact that Ron Weasley kissed me has changed nothing. It hasn't even stopped my fixation with him.

In my dreams we go further than we actually did at the edge of the Forbidden Forest that evening. We make love. Which is a ridiculous description for something done by two people who hate each other. But it's tender and gentle and there's no other description for it.

I can hardly be held responsible for my dreams, now, can I?

I can't be seen to be weak. There are expectations that come with the name. I have spent my entire school career building a respected position in my house. I can be bad-tempered, in fact I am expected to be bad-tempered. But I mustn't be frightened or sad.

I lock myself in an empty loo sometimes and have a good cry.

I never fancied Draco, I mean, Malfoy, before he abducted me. That's a bit weird, really, seeing how good-looking he is. I think I was maybe too hung up on Harry to notice anybody else.

But he's right, Harry's straight. There's no hope there.

And strangely, that doesn't matter now.

I should be devastated.

I feel free, now I've stopped obsessing over my best mate. Only it's worse. Cos now I'm thinking about the bloke we've always hated instead.

It's fucking with my head.

Full Body Bind is easy. Basic second year stuff. Granger threw it at Longbottom in first year. And anything she can do …

Levitation is trickier. I used to practice it in the Room of Requirement with Greg and Vince keeping watch outside. They thought I was busy on the orders of He Who Must Not Be Named. Which I would have been if I could have held my concentration long enough. But the magic working the Vanishing Cabinet was complicated stuff. And Weasley's shoulders are simply gorgeous. So when I gave up in frustration, I would levitate the junk lying round in there: sherry bottles, books off tables, a tiara onto a bust.

It was while I was researching the delicate restorative charms necessary for the cabinet that I came across Depetrificus Specificus , the spell to awaken by touch. That night in the shower I realised how I could make use of it.

If I removed the Bind gradually in this way then I could demonstrate my good intentions, while giving myself time to explain. I still expected to be hexed, insulted, hit and certainly rejected. That was the point, after all. That was to be the cure for my infatuation.

Sure, I picked up that copy of the Slytherin Quidditch team photo and tore out the captain. Maybe I do keep that fragment of paper in my shoe.

At first I thought that everything was working. I caught him leaving Quidditch practice alone, paralysed him and then levitated him through the cover provided by the edge of the forest, down to the boundary wall. I laid him on a bed of leaves, gently though he could not feel.

The moonlight shone on his ginger hair, sparkled in his terrified eyes. I had to concentrate hard on my hands and my wand to achieve the non-verbal /i Depetrificus Specificus i. I touched him for the first time ever. I touched his little finger. The nail was ragged, the knuckle bruised, the tip ink-splashed. I touched it. I stopped breathing. Warmth flowed into his finger from my hands. I clasped it. It moved. I exhaled. I let go.

I stroked every inch of his flesh. I felt it soften, warm, move under my touch. Perhaps you think me a fool. Perhaps I thought you foolish enough to believe me. But no, I was of course aware that the /i Depetrificus Specificus i would require that I touch every part of his body. When I first read that, it seemed such a beautiful bonus. At times during my planning stage, indeed, I forgot my actual motive and that seemed to be the point.

I did know, too, that I might not be rejected. The potential for his physical response became the basis of my fantasies. But I didn't expect it to happen. I did not make provision for that eventuality. For feeling the way I do now. When he had control of one hand, he clenched it into a fist. I thought everything was going as expected. I thought that he was going to break his spell with that fist.

He saw me. Me alone. He touched every square centimetre of me. He looked at me. I was single. I was not a gang of brothers, a dorm of boys, a class of pupils or a trio of heroes. I was one me: Ronald Bilius Weasley.

He was two hands, two eyes, one mouth.

I described to him my desire for him, how it raged in spite of my knowledge of his hatred for me. For five years I have sprayed my father's disdain in his direction: insulting his family, his intelligence, his poverty, his lack of finesse. I have sought out his weaknesses, highlighting them in front of others and steadily tweaking his easily provoked temper, mocking him when he reacted. I have been unbearable.

It should have been so easy. He shouldn't have been aroused by me touching him. He certainly shouldn't have kissed me. As he flew back towards the castle, I sat in the rain, half undressed on wet grass, watching him and feeling the happiest I have ever been.

Consequently, I have not carried out The Dark Lord's orders. I'm sure that I do have the potential to be ruthless. I am a creature of viciousness. I must damp down these soft feelings. I have a new plan. It's a good plan. I have mixed the poison with the mead. All I have to do now is to work out how to get it to Dumbledore.

Sure, for a few weeks I cried myself to sleep because nothing that mysterious, or overpowering, or beautiful will ever happen to me again.