Dear Ginny
Part 6, Ending, and Beginning
By Chem Prof
Part 6, Ending, and Beginning
Letter 19
December 20
Dear Ginny,
I have to let this out or I’m going to go mad. It’s over Ginny! We did it! We killed him! But Ginny, I don’t know if I can bear it. Harry’s hurt really bad. He’s in a coma and they don’t know if he’s going to live. Oh God, Ginny what am I going to do? I don’t think I can live without him. He’s my whole life! If he doesn’t come through this I think I’ll just curl up and die!
I’m sorry. I’ve got to try to pull myself together. I hope I didn’t smear the parchment too much. Let me try again.
The three of us are here in this hospital. I don’t know where it is though. It’s a secret location Moody set up for us. Ron is unconscious but will be all right. I’m injured, but okay. Harry is …
I’m sorry, I lost it there again. Harry was hurt so badly that they don’t know if he can recover. He killed Voldemort but not before Voldemort almost killed him. Please tell all of our friends at Hogwarts that it’s finally over, but don’t tell everyone about Harry. Just those you can trust to keep quiet. There are still some Death Eaters about and we don’t want them coming after him. Hedwig is the only owl who can find us, and the wards here won’t let her in if she’s carrying anything but a single scrap of parchment, so you can send a short reply with her but that’s all. And no one can come and visit us either. I promise to let you know as soon as that changes. Be sure to tell your mum that Ron will be all right.
Is everyone celebrating like the last time? I read that back then they were toasting the ‘Boy Who Lived’ for days. (Did you know how much Harry hated that nickname?) And meanwhile there was Harry, who had just had both of his parents murdered, being dropped off on the doorstep of a couple who would hate him all of his life. It makes me cry every time I think about it. But now I’m living that all over again. I just can’t even think about celebrating now, not while Harry is like this.
I’m afraid I’m going to go mad with worry. I think it will help if I have someone to tell it to, even if it’s only a letter, so I hope you don’t mind if I ramble on a bit. Writing seems to be helping me calm down.
I’ll try to start at the beginning. The big secret that we couldn’t tell you before was that Voldemort made himself immortal by splitting his soul into seven pieces. Six were placed into various objects and the seventh was him. Dumbledore figured this out and told Harry about it last year. That’s what they were doing in those private lessons he had.
Oh, I need to go back even further than that. You know that prophecy that we found at the Department of Mysteries? The one that smashed so no one heard it? It was about Harry and Voldemort. It turns out it wasn’t completely lost because it was originally given to Dumbledore and he remembered it. He told it to Harry right after we got back from the Ministry that night. Harry told it to Ron and me the summer before sixth year. No one else knew about it, not even anyone in the Order or any of the other professors. What it said was that Harry would have the power to destroy Voldemort, and that one of them would have to kill the other. That’s why he tried to kill Harry as a baby and he’s been trying to kill him ever since. Harry’s been living with that for a year and a half now. I hope you can understand why he didn’t tell anyone else. Now that I’ve told you, you’re the only one besides the three of us that know it.
Anyway, that’s the mission we’ve been on since June. Since Harry was the one who had to kill Voldemort, he felt that he was also the one who had to destroy all the pieces of his soul. And he had to do that first. That’s what those ‘magical objects’ were that he wrote to you about last summer. Oh, by the way, the first one was the diary from your first year. That’s how Tom was able to possess you. No one knew that at the time though. By the end of the summer we had found and destroyed all of them but one. The last one was Voldemort’s snake, and we killed it on Halloween. Since then we’ve been training to go after Voldemort himself, and learning spells to use against him. We finally found a way get him by himself without any Death Eaters with him and went after him last night.
Oh Ginny, it was so horrible. I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about it for the rest of my life. I had spent most of my time learning how to block unforgiveables. I know they’re supposed to be impossible to block, but Harry discovered that marble stone would stop them, so I’ve been practicing conjuring those as fast as I can. So I was able to stop Voldemort from hitting us with killing curses, but I couldn’t stop all his other hexes. Ron and I were set up on either side of Harry behind a low wall where we were mostly protected, but Harry was out in the open. Ron got in several good shots and managed to hurt Voldemort quite a bit before he got knocked out.
Harry held his own with our help for a long time, but finally Voldemort wore him out. He just knew too many different curses and was too powerful. I just couldn’t block them all! If Harry dies it will be because I wasn’t good enough!
I’m sorry, I’m getting all wound up again. I know Harry won’t blame me and he would probably yell at me if he heard me say that, but I just feel so helpless right now. I failed him because I couldn’t stop everything. And then Voldemort managed to petrify me and I had to watch him try to finish Harry off.
Oh Ginny, it was the most awful experience of my life. Harry tried to hold him off, but he was hurt so bad. I’ve never seen him suffer so much but he never gave up. Then, when Voldemort had him down and bleeding all over the place and with I don’t know how many bones broken he hit him with Cruciatus. I couldn’t stop screaming, Harry was in such agony. Finally Voldemort stopped it and walked up to him to finish him off. That’s when Harry somehow pulled himself together and blocked out the pain enough to get up to his knees. Then he looked at me and I could see in his eyes that he knew he was going to die. I tried to send him as much strength as I could.
The next part was incredible. Just when Voldemort had his wand to Harry’s head and was about to cast his final spell the sword of Gryffindor appeared out of nowhere in Harry’s hands and he grabbed it and thrust it with all his strength right through Voldemort’s chest. There was a bright light and a horrible scream and then he collapsed and his body disintegrated. I think it was because it was being held together by magic. As soon as that happened Harry collapsed too and he passed out. I almost think he decided he had accomplished his task and felt like it was all right to die now.
But he can’t die, Ginny! He just can’t! I need him so much!
I can’t write any more. I’m going to go back to see him again. Sometimes the Healer lets me lie down beside him and hold him. I think it helps. I know it helps me.
I’ll write more as soon as we learn anything about him.
Love from,
Hermione
-oooOOOooo-
Letter 20
December 24
Dear Ginny,
He’s going to live!! Ginny, he’s going to be all right! He woke up for just a few minutes and looked at me. I could tell he knew who I was from the look in his eyes. He can’t talk or anything yet, and he’s still too weak to move, but he’s alive! Oh my God, Ginny this is the best Christmas present ever! Be sure to tell everyone.
Ron says to tell you he’ll be coming home for Christmas. He woke up the other day and he’s up and around now. He’s been waiting to find out about Harry, but now that Harry’s going to be okay he thinks it will be all right to go home for a while. He’ll be able to fill you in a little better on the sorts of things we’ve been doing for the last five months. I’m going to stay here with Harry.
I’m going to stop here and send this off right away. I was sure you and the others would want to know as soon as possible. I’ll be going back into his room now. I want to be there in case he wakes up again. I’ll try to write more tomorrow.
Love from,
Hermione
-oooOOOooo-
Letter 21
December 25,
Dear Ginny,
Happy Christmas! This is such a wonderful feeling. We’re finally free after so many months of having such a heavy burden hang over our heads. I’m so happy I want to sing and dance!
I got the note you sent back with Hedwig. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you any more. I know it must have been so frustrating for you to read that out of the blue after not hearing anything from us for so long. I’m glad that the story that the public heard was more or less accurate. Now that I know that Harry is going to survive I’m much more in the mood to hear about all the celebrations going on. I’m also relieved to hear that the Death Eaters haven’t caused any trouble for any of you. I pray that the Aurors can round the rest of them up without too much more bloodshed.
Harry continues to improve. He woke up several more times, the most recent one for more than an hour. He can’t talk yet, but he moans a little and I’ve been able to understand what he’s trying to say. (Ron has been teasing the two of us this year about communicating without words – now that ability is coming in pretty handy!) He was pretty alert the last time. I told him I wrote to you and let you know what happened and he seemed relieved.
Now that I know he’s going to be all right, I have some things I need to tell you. First, Harry and I aren’t going to be coming back to Hogwarts. It will just be too awkward. As you know, Harry has always hated all the attention he gets and after this people just aren’t going leave him alone. I’m afraid he’ll go crazy with all of the publicity. He’ll probably agree to make a few public appearances, just to stop any rumors that he’s dead, and I think I’ll be able to persuade him to accept the medal the Ministry will want to give him, but that’s about it. I know you’re desperate to see him, and so are all the rest of your family and our other friends. When he gets well enough I’ll have Moody lift the protective spells on this place enough that you can come to see him. I’m sure he’ll want to come to the Burrow at least once, too, but we’ll have to talk about that when he’s feeling better.
But that will be about it. We discussed this during the last month and pretty much figured out what we wanted to do when it was over. We just need to get away. We’re going to go off to a place where no one knows us and just try to relax and live a normal life for once. We both have a lot of horrible experiences to come to terms with, especially him. It won’t last forever, I’m sure. We’ll be back eventually. I just can’t say when right now.
The second thing is that I hope you and I can somehow become friends again. I know you must have been so angry with me over the way things turned out last summer. I’m deeply sorry that you were hurt by it all. I mean I’m not sorry that I ended up with Harry, but I’m sorry for the way it happened. I didn’t intend to fall in love with Harry, I just did. I couldn’t help myself. Even while we were growing closer to each other I held back as long as I thought the two of you had any chance to get back together.
If I had had any sense at all I would have realized how I felt about him a year ago while you were still going out with Dean and I wouldn’t have wasted time going after Ron (what a mistake THAT was!). Of course, at that time Harry didn’t realize how he felt about me either so maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Perhaps things had to happen the way they did. Be that as it may, I sincerely apologize that you had to have your heart broken for us to be together. As nice as it was having Ron and Harry as best friends, you were the best female friend I ever had and I needed that too. I really hope we can get that back.
I’m sure I’ll see you a few times before we leave, but this is probably the last letter you’ll get from me for quite a while. Things will probably be quite hectic so if I don’t get a chance to tell you this when I see you – take care Ginny. I love you like the sister I never had.
Love from,
Hermione
-xox-XOX-XOX-xox-
In case anyone was curious as to why Hermione would write to Ginny after the battle - it wouldn't have been the first letter she wrote, but it's the only one you see in this story. I would guess that her first letter was to her parents, and she also communicated with Remus and Tonks, and probably McGonagall. I think writing is something Hermione would do to relieve the stress.
Although this would be a good place to end the story, it's not quite done yet.