Red Ink

I have ink that is the colour of his hair. His hair is fiery, alive, and unmistakably Weasley. My ink isn't alive. It's the same shade red, but it doesn't have the liveliness that his hair has.

He is so maddening sometimes. He hardly ever does his work until the night before, and that's so frustrating to see, because he is smart and he could do so much better. He doesn't seem to think that it matters, but it does, and I just can't make him see the importance of schoolwork. He has the ability to become so much (not that he isn't a lot already) if he would just work harder. But (and I really hate to admit this) sometimes he is funny and I want to laugh with him.

Still, with all his faults (and he has many) he's a good friend. Him, Harry and I have done so many things together, that most people don't know about it, and it's something that only we share. Even though I wish we didn't have to do those things, I'm glad that I did them with those two. We're only fourteen, and a lot of people think that fourteen-year-olds aren't mature or feel things as deeply as older people, but we are, and we do. We'd die for each other, and that sounds so sappy, but it's so true. It's actually a bit scary to think that. That we'd die for each other. Maybe because we know how real that possibility is.

He isn't really Harry Potter's best friend. I mean, he is, but he's more than that. People never see him as outshining Harry, but I do, probably because they're my best friends. He's a lot better than Harry is at chess. He's incredibly loyal, too, and brave, but people don't often see that. They see the tall, redheaded kid next to Harry Potter. Or they see the youngest Weasley son, who has older brothers who have already done everything before him. But they haven't done everything that he's done. They haven't been knocked unconscious by a giant white queen, or faced an Acromantula and come out alive, or been in the same room as a convicted murderer (even though Sirius wasn't really a murderer, we didn't know that at the time) and a werewolf. There are a lot of things that he has done that his brothers haven't, but no one really notices them, because he was with Harry when he did them. I don't think he is any less than Harry, though, just because he isn't The Boy Who Lived. It's true, the expectations he has to live up to aren't quite the same as Harry's, but that's okay, because he's still Ron. And being Ron isn't a bad thing at all. Most of the time, anyway.

Sometimes I wonder if he knows, that he doesn't need someone telling him that he is a somebody, and worthy of being a Weasley and Harry Potter's best friend. It makes me kind of sad to think that he feels this constant need to prove himself, and maybe I should tell him, but that might scare him. He doesn't seem to appreciate that whole emotion thing much.

I have ink that is the colour of Harry's hair, too, but the ink that's the colour of Ron's hair is my favourite kind of ink.