A/N: So here it is! The third chapter! Some of you guessed who it would be, but there were a lot of different answers. To be honest, I liked them all! But this is what was planned. You did give me some ideas though, so check the A/N: down at the bottom for more info! :D

Also, these aren't my characters. None of them. I own nothing!

The first chance Ron saw, he grimaced, closed his eyes, and leapt.

Ginny was, miraculously, it seemed of late, alone. Harry was exiled to the dungeons for his Saturday morning detentions with Snape for what had happened to Malfoy, (Ron could not feel too sorry for Malfoy, since it sounded like he'd been trying to torture Harry at the time) and Hermione was, unsurprisingly, ensconced in some deep and dusty recess of the library, researching Merlin-knew-what. And, with all the other fifth-years bent feverishly over books and notes, frantically studying for their impending exams, this left Ginny on her own.

She had spread her books out over a table beside the window of the common room in an effort to enjoy all the sunlight she could trapped inside, and kept glancing longingly out at the grounds as she read through an early section of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi.

A shadow loomed over the page, blocking her much-desired sunshine.

"Something I can do for you, Ron?" Ginny asked, looking up to see her brother and trying not to sound impatient at the interruption (exams were coming up much faster than she would like and she was starting to get an anxious knot in her stomach).

Ron rocked back on his heels, looking awkward.

"Think I could talk to you for a bit?" he asked, not looking at her.

"What about?" she asked suspiciously, a vague dread settled heavily in her stomach.

Ron's ears turned red. "Harry," he muttered.

Anger flared in her. Why was it that her brothers thought they were involved in her dating life? But Ginny quickly snuffed it out with a grudging resignation. She couldn't say she hadn't been expecting this. Harry was Ron's best friend.

"Right," Ginny sighed. "Might as well get it out of our systems," she muttered.

Ron glanced around at the groups of students chatting, working, and laughing around them in close hearing-range, so many with a keen ear for eavesdropping when it came to Harry lately.

"You mind coming up to our dormitory? Only I don't want to be overheard."

Ginny tried to stay out of her brothers' rooms whenever possible, having come across far too many dirty socks and fake bugs that had spilled over into the rest of the Burrow, but appreciating the necessity of discretion, followed Ron up the boys' staircase anyway. To her relief, the boys' dormitory was not nearly the disaster zone Ron usually lived in at home. The beds were made, stray sweet wrappers were picked up, and most of the laundry had made it into a hamper. She supposed having Hous-Elves and close living quarters tended to help.

Ron threw himself onto his bed, plopping back to stare at the canopy above him as Ginny slowly lowered herself onto the edge of the mattress beside him, gazing at him steadily.

After a minute passed in silence, she grew impatient. "Well? What is it you wanted to talk to me about?"

Ron let out a gusty breath and propped himself up on an elbow, rubbing a hand sheepishly through his hair.

"You're dating Harry now," Ron stated obviously.

Ginny raised an eyebrow. "Yes. I am."

"It's just… Ginny –"

But she headed him off. "If you're going to try to dictate my social life, you can save your breath," she told him evenly, lifting her chin ad setting her jaw. "I've told you before, Ron; it is none of your business who I go out with or what I do with them."

"I'm not trying to 'dictate your social life'," Ron said with an edge of anger. "And besides, when you're dating my best mate, it becomes my business. Harry isn't like the rest of the blokes you've dated."

"I've only had two other boyfriends, Ron," Ginny huffed, but Ron spoke over her, sitting upright now and looking at her more seriously than Ginny was accustomed to.

"Look Gin, Harry's different," he told her, his tone effectively subduing her former irritation. "He's a part of the family, and no matter what happens between the two of you, he's always going to be around. So if you two screw things up and this whole thing turns into a disaster, you're not going to be able to run away from it."

Ginny swallowed. In the glow of them getting together, she had not stopped to consider what it might be like if things ended. Had she expected them to end up married and living happily ever after just a couple of weeks of dating? Or had she assumed that war and death would be more likely to end their relationship than a messy break up? But Ron, who had paused to let his words sink in, was going on now and Ginny fled from those thoughts.

"And there's no guarantee that the whole family will take your side of things," Ron continued. "And if they did, think what that would be doing to Harry? He'd be out of a family because of all of this. Do you want to see that happen to him again? Where do you think he'd go?

"And don't forget that Hermione's Harry's best friend, too. I don't know how much sympathy you can expect from her if things get rough. It'd be a tough spot to find yourself in."

"I realize that," Ginny said quietly. It was true, though she hadn't given much thought to it until Ron had laid out all the potentially-explosive possibilities. "But this isn't some drama-production rubbish like Mum listens to on the wireless. Harry and I are mature enough to deal with things rationally, and, unlike Cho Chang, I am capable of seeing Harry as a normal person."

"But that's just it," said Ron, leaning forward. "Harry's not a normal person."

"Of course he is!" Ginny exclaimed, shocked that Ron, who had always seemed to see through the glittering vale of fame before, was suddenly pulling it out.

But her brother only shook his head. "No, Ginny he's not. I reckon there are three stages when it comes to the way people look at Harry. At first they're like everyone else, all staring and gaping like fish and they just see the famous name. But if you actually spend a little time with him, you figure out he's not that much different from any normal person, and that's where people like to stop 'cause they think they're something special for getting past the fame. But if you look hard enough, you start to see he's just a normal kid who's had to deal with a hell of a lot."

Ginny did not need to ask what Ron meant by 'a hell of a lot', but he went on anyway.

"You still have nightmares about your first year, yeah?" he asked. "Well, Harry was there too, and even though you got the worse end of things by a long shot on that one, Harry's also got the end of our first year and the dementors making him hear his parents' murders and the graveyard…. Then there's the everything that happened at the Ministry and after… And that's not even touching on what the Dursleys were like to him or the publicity crap the Ministry keeps chucking at him. I mean sometimes I don't know how he keeps on going the way he does. The world's asked him to be a lot stronger than it had a right to."

Ron lapsed into silence, staring vaguely at the bedpost behind Ginny's head. She sat, slightly open-mouthed, not least because of this profound statement coming out of Ron's mouth. It wasn't as though this was anything new to her either, but to accumulate it like that…. She had once been brusque with Harry for allowing her possession by Voldemort to slip his mind, but it was easy, in the flow of ordinary days, to forget past traumas like this, at least temporarily.

"Harry makes it easy to forget," Ron said, breaking into her thoughts as if he'd been reading them. "I mean, most of the time he is normal and you don't really think about it. But then something happens and all of a sudden you remember. He's been through a hell of a lot, Ginny, and if you add one more thing to that list, I swear–"

"You make it sound like I'm going to rip his heart out and stomp on it," Ginny interrupted coolly. "Is that what you think I'm going to do? I actually do care about Harry, you know, outside of everything else; he's my friend, too."

She delivered the last line with such fierce conviction that Ron looked sheepish.

"Yeah, I know. Sorry…" he muttered, rubbing the back of his head. "So, taking all of that into account, you two are actually going to give this a serious try?"

"Yes,, I think that's the general understanding between us," Ginny nodded, still eyeing Ron reproachfully for his insinuations.

"Right," he nodded, taking a breath with the air of rolling up his sleeves in preparation for the difficult part. "Then there's some things you need to know."

He bit his lip as if trying to figure out where to begin and Ginny waited patiently, something in her brother's expression melting any coolness or defensiveness she might still have been harboring. She could tell this was an important conversation.

"Harry… I know him better than you do, differently than you do. He's like a sponge for guilt and he doesn't ever tell you what's going on in his head. Course it doesn't really matter 'cause you can pretty much guess it by his face and he's pretty predictable in the emotion department. But don't expect him to be very open about that. Maybe it will be different since you're his girlfriend and apparently bloke's are supposed to tell their girlfriends stuff like that, at least that's what Lavender was always whining about" – he grimaced – "But I don't really see how girlfriends are so much different from everyone else you care about except you can snog them."

Before Ginny could reprove of his complete lack of tact and romantic grace, Ron was moving on.

"Either way, I don't see Harry letting anyone in anytime soon, and that's something you've just got to deal with. It's not personal, it's just Harry.

"And don't be too disappointed if those fan-girl fairytales don't work out how you always dreamed."

At Ginny's indignant sputter, Ron rolled his eyes.

"I was forced to walk you down the aisle when we were little and you pretended to marry Harry Potter," he reminded her. "I know you got over that, but just don't get so wrapped up in the fairytale and forget the real person behind it."

It was more imploring than advice or warning, and it was for this reason that Ginny merely nodded and held her tongue.

Ron paused before continuing, going rather red and not looking at her. "Look, I really don't want to know what the two of you get up to when your… alone, but Harry's not exactly very keen on human contact all the time…" he kept his eyes carefully on his fingernails as he continued, and Ginny was grateful because she was as flushed as he was. "He's loads better than he used to be, you know, back in first and second year. Gotten used to it, I reckon. But, just, don't be all that surprised if he shrugs your arm off once in a while or, you know… It's not you and it doesn't mean he doesn't want you around, it's just..."

Ron trailed off, giving up on the subject, face flaming as brightly as his sister's.

"Right," Ginny said, clearing her throat. She stood up. "If that's all…"

"One more thing," Ron said, looking up at her, serious once again. "Listen, Gin, you're gonna have to be okay with maybe, not being the focus of Harry's attention. He's got a lot of … stuff… on his plate," he said vaguely, "and, well, you might take a back seat to it. You might have to… to put your own issues away for a while because Harry's tend to eclipse everyone else's around him.

"It's not his fault," Ron hastened to add. "Harry's about the least self-centered person I can think of most of the time, but he's just got bigger things to deal with, and being his friend or his girlfriend, sometimes it means being less important. You make sacrifices."

Ron's eyes seemed far away by the end of this speech, and it scared Ginny slightly. It seemed like he was thinking about something specific, like he was almost warning her…

"Do you know something? Something the rest of us outside your trio don't?" she asked sharply.

Ron snapped back to the present. "No," he said automatically. "I've just been around Harry for six years. I know how things go."

They stared at each other for a long moment, Ginny trying to see past his guarded exterior, Ron trying to look as though there was nothing more to his words. Ginny looked away first. There were always secrets. It was part of the bigger things Ron had talked about. If Harry wanted her to know, he'd tell her, but Ron never would.

"You're a good friend," she told him after a moment. "To look out for Harry like this. I was afraid you'd be all big-brother-protective like you were with Dean and Michel. But at least I can count on one person not flipping over this. God… wait 'til Fred and George find out. We'll never hear the end of it, though they'll be more amused than protective."

Ron broke into a grin at the thought of his family hearing about all of this. He wasn't sure what they'd make of it, but Fred and George would certainly make it interesting. He stood up and the pair of them headed for the common room again, Ron unbelievably relieved this was over.

But as they reached the door to the stairs, he stopped Ginny and looked down at her.

"Look, I know I'm supposed to be looking out for you and everything – and believe me, Ginny, I try to as much as you let me – but I'm Harry's brother, too…"

Ginny nodded, smiling slightly, and slipped past down the spiral staircase.

Ron ran a hand through his hair, looking up at the ceiling. Then he nodded to himself and followed her down the stairs.

It was the truth.

A/N: I hope that was a satisfying final installment! I know it was kinda long, but I felt like it had to be. It's really the most important conversation in my opinion. So many people write all of Ginny's brothers as over-protective and, you know, sitting Harry down for a chat about being careful with their baby sister, but I find that kind of ooc and if you know Harry at all, not really necessary. Ron is happier with Harry going out with Ginny than any of her other boyfriends, he says so himself and only registers shock and resignation. The kissing thing in DH was a special occasion since they'd already broken up and Ron was pretty sheepish afterwards. Basically I feel like this side of things is under-represented.

I think Ron comes off as a little OOC in this, you know, spilling out all that stuff to Ginny, but I figure he'd be a little more open because this is important and Ginny's his sister and all of that. I don't really think Ron is this vocal about his perceptions, but we don't know for sure what he's like with Ginny, so… :D it makes for a better chapter, anyway.

Now about those ideas I mentioned. You guys all had really great guesses (thanks for reviewing by the way! ;D) and I think it would be really interesting to see conversations like the ones you suggested. Unfortunately this is going to be the last chapter for this story, but if FF will let me post it, I might do a sort of companion piece. It would be involving both Ron and Hermione and would have a slightly different tone to it, but it would basically be conversations focusing on what good friends they are behind the scenes, like this. Let me know if you're interested! :D I love your thoughts!