Friday, 31 October 1997

Dear Tom,

You don't know me, but I know you. My name is Ginny Weasley, and tonight I declare war on you and your control of my school – my life.

It's been years since I wrote a diary. Not since I was thirteen, when I decided that writing my thoughts and pretending I wasn't, in my heart of hearts, writing to you, was only tying me down, holding me back. Stopping me from getting over you.

I wish you weren't dead.

There – I've finally admitted it.

I wish you weren't dead, but not because I'm still in love with you. I was – did you know? As much as it is possible for an eleven-year-old to love, you had won my heart away from Harry, for the boy, at first, did not live up to the ideal in the least, and you were there, and kind, and told me all the things I wanted to hear – but then, I hear you always were a good liar.

I wish you weren't dead so I could watch you react when I tell you that I will fight you and your influence with my last breath. I wish you weren't dead so you could suffer, knowing that you're a goddamn book, and can't do a bloody thing to stop my resistance. I wish you weren't dead so I could tell you to go to hell before I killed you myself.

I think you'd be proud, if you could see the witch I am today.

Fiercely angry, of course, but proud, too.

I never told anyone, you know, but I've dreamed your life. In that moment of darkness, when I was on the brink of death, and you were balanced at the edge of life, I knew everything. We were one being, and your memories were mine. It's taken three years for me to sort out what was real, and what was just imagined horror. Bill showed me how, but I did the work of it myself.

It was worth it. I know you, now, better than anyone, I think. I know what you did, making your horcruxes, and the things you told yourself later. I know you killed your father. I know you despised him and your mother both, and the people that raised you, shaped you into the thing you became. I know you wanted to live forever, to shape and change the world, re-make a part of it in your image, simply because you could.

That's why I think you'd be proud, you see – you have changed the course of my life.

I cannot measure the influence you have had, but it has been profound; you have shaped me in your image, intentional or not.

But it is my triumph, not yours, because you tried to break me, and you failed. I have re-made myself, damaged, maybe, and twisted, but not broken, not anymore, and now, at sixteen, I am resolved to see you defeated, even as you resolved at sixteen to see your father dead at your feet.

Congratulations, Tom – you've made your mark. Is it everything you thought it would be?

~ Gin