The very first time you saw her, she meant nothing to you. There she was, with her mother, a titchy redhead begging to join her brothers on the train. You were focused on going to school, on being a wizard and getting away from that aunt and uncle, and she didn't even register in your head. Barely a blip on your radar. You went through the wall, and boarded the train, and met her brother. But to you, he wasn't really her brother, because you had already forgotten she existed. He was only Ron, and she was only that girl who'd chased the train and cried as it disappeared.

The next time you saw her, it was at her house, and you were too caught up with the mysteries of the wizarding world, the mysteries of Dobby and the Dark Lord and Hogwarts, to really notice the girl with the orange hair and the sunset cheeks whose elbow seemed always in the butter dish. You remembered her name now, and you called her by it, and once in a while you smiled at each other—but then you went to school, and you forgot all about her again, because people were being petrified and you thought you were Slytherin's Heir.

You only remembered her when she started acting funny, and then she was just another pawn in the mystery. When the blood was on the wall and you knew she was in the Chamber of Secrets, you went because she was Ron's sister, because she was a human being and because you didn't want anyone—anyone—to die. You bent over her white body, and begged her to be okay, but only because she was Ron's sister, and you didn't want to fail him, or the rest of the school.

And, when the battle was won and the ink was bleeding on the ground and staining her brilliant hair black and she woke up, you barely noticed her.

The next two years went by, and you were mostly the same; you still longed for the hot sleepy summers to end and the train to come, taking you away, and you still spent most of the year wrapped up in mystery with Ron and Hermione. When Cedric died and the Dark Lord came back, you thought of her even more infrequently than before. In the fifth year, you were caught up with that hag, Dolores Umbridge, and the Order of the Phoenix and the long legs and silky hair of Cho Chang, so Ginny Weasley remained only Ron's sister, only now she didn't blush when she saw you or stick her elbow in the butter dish or send you horrible, singing valentines (which you still have, for some reason, stashed away in Uncle Vernon's old socks).

It wasn't until after all of that—after Sirius had died and Umbridge was gone and you'd found that shiny black hair and big dark eyes couldn't compensate for being overly weepy—that you started to see her as somebody else, somebody who wasn't just Ron Weasley's Sister.

You started to see the way her hair turned molten in the sunshine, and looked almost alive, struggling to escape the rubbery confines of her hair band.

You started to see the hard, slender lines of her athletic body, and you started to appreciate their steely symmetry.

You started to notice how her eyes lit up, and then, because merely lighting up was too passive for someone like her, caught fire—how they burned and scorched and set everything ablaze. And then you started to notice the eyes of others as well, more particularly boys, who would slyly look her over as she walked by, or follow her as she mounted her broom, tossing that live, lovely hair over her shoulder. You started to hate those other eyes, to resent that they looked at her like that, like they wanted to get her in the Room of Requirement and shag her senseless. You told yourself you felt like this because she was Ron's sister, and you were Ron's best friend—nearly her older brother. But, deep down, when you lay in your bed at night with the curtains shut against the moon and listened to Ron's snores, you knew that you felt like this because you wanted to shag her more than any of them, more than all of them combined.

But she was Ginny Weasley, Ron's sister, the crying girl running after the train, and you couldn't have her—so others did.

You were ecstatic when she broke up with Dean. This, you thought, was your chance, now you could catch her in the hall and kiss her until she moaned against your mouth, now you could mumble all your shameful secrets (secrets like the dreams that made you groan and lie there in bed, hot and ashamed) into the softness of her neck, now, maybe, she could be yours, and you could be all hers—but you had to tell her first. What was worse, you had to tell Ron.

And you were certain Ron was going to bloody well dismember you.

So you didn't say anything. You went about your daily business, concentrating on Voldemort and the Horcruxes and memories, and it wasn't until that one Quidditch match you missed, the one you spent holed up in Snape's office for detention, that something happened. You went into the common room, and she saw you, and ran for you—and time didn't slow, but you wished it did, because you wanted to see her clearly, savor every moment, and then either you kissed her, or she kissed you, and her hands were twisting into your hair and your hands were running up and down her back, and you couldn't breathe, but that didn't matter…

Kissing her was not like kissing Cho, wet and soft and salty with tears for Cedric—what had you seen in her, anyway?—nor was it like the many dreams you'd had, the ones which had made your pulse race and your mouth went dry. Kissing her was fierce, and electric, and crackling orange, like her hair, which was tumbling out of its ponytail…

And then that night you dreamed the whole thing all over again, and woke up grinning.

Because a whirling evolution had taken place.

Because it had never been like this before.

Because she'd kissed you again once you'd left the common room, and she'd tasted like peppermint.

Because dammit, you were in love with Ginny Weasley, and, for the moment, Voldemort didn't matter.