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Ginny was startled when Ron stumbled through the portrait hole that afternoon — winded, pale — and immediately made his way to one of the unoccupied inglenooks on the far side of the room. He slumped down in the seat, put his face in his hands, and groaned loudly in abject despair.
Ginny dropped what she was doing and went over to him, squeezing next to him on the seat. Even in the depths of whatever was going on, Ron shifted to make room for her. She touched his arm with the tips of her fingers, leaning forward futilely to catch a glimpse of his face.
"Ron? What happened? Are you okay?" she said, then added, "It wasn't another fight with Harry, was it?"
She wasn't sure what to feel about Ron's fights with Harry, but Ron shook his head without lifting his face from his hands.
She started when he abruptly jerked his head up, looking at her with wild, horrified eyes. "I think I'm sick, Ginny. I think I've gone mad. I don't know why I did it. She was just there, and I was going to walk past her, I was, and then — I don't know what came over me! Everyone was watching! And she was talking to that pillock, Cedric!"
With mounting worry that her brother really was going mad, Ginny gently interjected, "Er, Ron? What are you talking about?"
"That girl, Fleur Delacour! I asked her! In front of everyone! To the ball with me!"
Ginny's insides gave a funny little lurch at his words while Ron made another piteous moan and buried his face in his hands again. "I can't show my face ever again," he said, and went on mumbling about becoming a hermit in the Gryffindor Tower or moving to the South Atlantic with the penguins.
Ginny gave an airy sort of laugh when she realised he'd been rejected and quickly cleared her throat to hide it. "It's okay, Ron," she said in a soothing voice. "It's not you. All the boys go weird around that hussy."
Ron peeked up to scowl at her distractedly. "Don't use words like that," he said, as if he didn't say things like that and worse all the time. As if Ginny hadn't learnt half of the curse words she knew directly from him.
She smiled with helpless fondness when Ron buried his face again, and she was sure he wouldn't see it. She went on patting his arm comfortingly and tried to reassure him in a low, soothing voice that he didn't need to move to the South Atlantic to live with penguins and seals.
She ignored the tremulous, amused relief in her gut.
It was a little embarrassing, but she used to cling to Ron so hard when they were kids. It'd been just the two of them at the Burrow when the others had gone off to school or moved out, and she'd trailed after him everywhere, wheedling him to play with her. For all of his general grumpiness and reluctance, he always gave in, and Ginny figured she'd ended up a little spoiled. When Ron had gone off to Hogwarts, and she'd had to stay at the Burrow alone for a year, she'd cried for days afterwards, much to her parents' worry.
She'd tried to get over it when she'd started at Hogwarts herself, but whenever something happened, she still instinctively went to find Ron.
Ginny supposed she wasn't quite ready to hand her big brother to someone else yet.