Author: tigersilver
Title: 'Dear Mum'
Pairings: H/D, H/G (past), N/G (heavily implied)
Rating: PG-13
WC: 4,600
Summary: Our little Ginny grows up...slowly.

HD 'Dear Mum'

Dear Mum, Ginny Weasley's regular Saturday letter read. Molly Weasley plopped her weary feet on a handy tufted footrest and settled back with her mid-morning cuppa.

Dear Mum, I've finally sorted out what you meant when you said 'to each his own', last September. I was so wound up, Mum, just at the thought of seeing Harry again, at the idea of returning to Hogwarts in the knowledge we'd a full year before us to make up for all the separation and the horrible years we went through while Voldemort still lived. And it was so much better, Mum, to be away, to be at school—to be free of at least one set of troubles. You had cautioned me it wouldn't be same; you'd stroked my hair on that last night and whispered that perhaps it would be 'easier'. Different, if naught else than rattling 'round at the Burrow and waiting for life to go on. Mum, you were absolutely correct about Fred, and how it was so hard, hearing echoes of him and George and the way things used to be, when I was a little girl. He's there, I think, even in the Burrow as it is these days, what with all the rebuilt bits and the scorch marks still in the garden, and probably because he's always in my head.

I know now, I guess, how awful it had to be for you and Dad to send me here again, far away from you both. It wasn't safe, what with the Death Eaters that were still at large, and we all knew that, too, I think, but the Burrow didn't feel particularly safe anymore, either, after poor Bill and Fleur's wedding. Even with Voldemort gone it's still not as it was, when I was small. And I didn't want to go, Mum, but also, at the same exact time, I did. I so did. I wanted to finally get on with growing up, Mum. Harry would be at Hogwarts, and, well, I suppose I thought that his presence would make up for an awful lot of what we've lost. What I lost.

Harry would give it back to me, I was convinced. He'd help me heal. We could…well, Mum, I suppose you knew exactly what I dreamt of.

Mum, I hated it so, when he disappeared. I was such a child—an infant, and like an infant, I felt every emotion that much more powerfully and instantly. I hated Ron and Hermione, too, for accompanying him, off to the wilderness. It was so vastly unfair that they should be allowed and I shouldn't. I hated the unfairness and the awful suspicion that it was only my age preventing me. That I was younger than them and Harry had this odd notion that translated into I must be protected, at all costs. Even though I'm just as good as Ron ever was at hexing and DADA and Charms, even though I was brilliant at all the DADA Harry taught us in the D.A. And after, when it was Nev and I and our little band of rebels against the Carrows, all last year.

Oh, Mum, I was so convinced Harry was wrong, that he was being terribly overprotective when he didn't need be, and Ron as well, the idiot. I didn't see why he should simply be let go to be with Harry and I should be stuck behind, that idiot Ron. I know I didn't write to complain to you then; I couldn't, really, Mum. You were always so tired and fretting over every little thing and then Dad was never home, always off at meetings or bound up in his Order business. I didn't want to be a bother to you; it was the only contribution I could make, I think, allowing myself to be coddled. Though of course I wasn't being coddled and protected at all, but now you know it. Not with how Hogwarts was, last year. But I did hate it, all the same, and I suppose it coloured my thinking, that. I was just so furious with Harry, and Ron and Hermione, and with you, too, Mum, for keeping me back and being a parent.

Not a very good daughter, am I? But when I look at the younger ones here at Hogwarts, caught up in their lives—gossiping and wearing their skirts short and skipping classes to sneak off to Hogsmeade—I feel so old, now. I was likely just as horrid as they, then. Resentful and rebellious and very much all about me.

Mum, when September arrived, last year, I craved so much for it to be all about me, for once. Not the war, not poor old Fred and George and Bill, not anything, anyone else. I desired what was due me, what I thought I'd earned by being brave and not complaining: all the carefree time Voldemort had ripped away and ruined, you see? I wanted it to be finally me and Harry, and for the 'happily ever after' to finally begin. But it didn't work out that way, Mum, and I didn't understand why it couldn't. Harry couldn't possibly be all that changed, I was always thinking, simply due to the war. He's been fighting against Voldemort all these years, I thought. Now he's won, at last; Voldemort's gone, and we're all still alive…well, mostly we're all still alive, but he—he wasn't pleased with it. He wasn't relieved or joyful or much more than shell-shocked. Blank and dulled and very far away, mentally and emotionally, at least in the beginning of Autumn Term.

So, Mum, I tried my very best to be patient and brave again, and I threw myself at his feet, practically, every chance I had, to jar him out of it. Wake him up.

I think now he was trying his best to be kind to me, all along the way, Mum. Be very kind, as he thought he'd taken away my one brother forever and exposed my other brothers—our whole family—to horrible dangers. He never said, not in so many words, but he was so sorry, Mum. Always so sorry, and I know Ron and Hermione were both very worried over him. It was only worse as we settled into classes and the repairs went on all around us. He didn't sleep and he barely ate, and it was as if he were fading away. As if he felt he should've died, before, or that he'd been the cause of so many terrible events he didn't deserve to live and had no clue as why he was. I saw this, Mum—in fact, I wrote to you, remember? Asking what I should do to help him. I hated that, as well, that I was…doing alright, mostly, and he very definitely wasn't.

Mum, the other person I despised last autumn was that stupid git Malfoy, Draco; the boy Harry has been fending off all these years in Quidditch matches and that rivalry that was always the talk of the school. He'd returned to Hogwarts, just as we had, and he was always hanging 'round the edges, like some pale ghoul. And Harry—Harry!—would go off and talk with him, even when he'd make excuses to me: say he was too busy or too tired to spend time with me, though he always had some excellent unarguable reason for it. Rebuilding Hagrid's hut or their constant meetings with Headmistress McGonagall and the other profs, to sort out what they'd all do after NEWTS. Promoting InterHouse unity or studying, studying, studying, whilst we were all still fixing up poor old Pince's Library all around them, that lot of repeaters.

Always something else going on, I thought, and always taking Harry away from me, and it wasn't fair or right or just! And that git Malfoy was constantly in the thick of it, like some canker or maybe a road block. I'd trip over him, sniffing at Harry's heels, or in with the older ones, even mingling with the Profs, as if he were trustworthy and helpful instead of the slimy evil git he'd always been.

'A cameleopard doesn't just change his spots,' you'd told me, more than once, and I kept that in mind, Mum. Malfoy was still as worthless and horrid as ever, I thought. Still hankering after the limelight, and just as determined to drag Harry into his poor, pathetic life.

So no, Mum, one could safely say I didn't care for him much, either, not then, and I hadn't cared for him at all, in the first place. It was true: Malfoy did help us out a bit, here and there, last year when the Carrows were teaching here and Professor Snape was Headmaster, I do admit that. I admitted it last year, even as I disliked him. I knew it in my head and it was right before my eyes, in the tattle they'd printed in the papers about the Trials. I learned he'd his own family to protect and he'd been very frightened, as much as everyone else, and worse off, likely, than any of us, what with that beastly, ghastly thing taking over his great huge expensive Manor, threatening him with the cold-blooded murder of his mum and dad. And he did some good for us; just a little, yes, to divert attention away and protect us remaining D.A. members, and I knew Nev was—and still is—really very grateful to him, but then Nev's always the optimistic fellow over people's intentions. He believes in the best of people, silly boy. Me? Well, you know me, Mum. I say put your Galleons where your mouth is, 'judge a person by their actions' (as Dad is endlessly proselytizing) and well, to my mind whatever small things Malfoy had tried on last year to perhaps be of help to us rebels weren't near enough to make up for anything his father had done to me before that—or to Harry.

You always say not to keep a grudge, Mum, but I know you do, sometimes, no matter what you say. I suppose I've inherited that long memory of yours. I remember Tom Riddle's Diary; I can't forget nearly dying because of it. And I didn't believe Malfoy was forgivable, Mum, even though you've always said, you and Dad, to keep an open mind. He was tainted by association, even if that was his father and Voldemort who nearly murdered me, and he was an arse, always, besides. Hateful. Deserving of hate. It's difficult, Mum, when one is grown used to hating, I think. When I'd learned how to hate that strongly, that fervently, because otherwise I'd be too frightened of my own shadow to act at all.

But Harry still talked with Malfoy, even so. Included him in, chatted him up at meals and in the corridors. After a month or so of that, Malfoy was in the Gryffindor Common Room, Mum, as much as he was in his own Slytherin! It was this awful, horrible disconnect from what I thought of as real, Mum, and I kept expecting Ron to do something about it. Hex Malfoy stupid or perhaps even go so far as to strike him, have a good old bash-about, but he never did. He did grumble over Malfoy a fair amount, but never did do anything constructive. Or destructive, actually.

Mum, I kept thinking to myself 'stupid old Ron—he's a coward!' and then I did my very best to oust that pale, nasty, stuck-up git from our territory—out of Hogwarts, really, altogether; turned the Youngers in all the Houses I'd mates in against him whenever I could and generally made his daily life as difficult as possible. Tripped him, stole his notes, dumped ink on his texts: I was Peeves, all over again. Mum, I really wasn't particularly a nice person then; you should likely be very ashamed of me in retrospect. At least I'm able now to see how terribly petty I was acting, and you always do say 'better late than never', right? And that you and Dad love me, no matter what I've done. I hope you meant it.

All my tormenting of Malfoy upset Harry something fierce when he finally found me out, Mum. I didn't Owl you at the time—I daren't—but we had a terrible row over Malfoy, Harry and I, in the middle of Gryffindor. Everyone saw—everyone watched him as he shouted at me. Mum, and I shouted just as loudly at him, for defending that boy. And this just before Halloween and exactly the same day I'd been hoping he'd invite me to the dance Headmistress McGonagall insisted she wanted us all to attend, as a sop to us students, I think—something nice to remember, later. Truly, all that while, Mum, for weeks and weeks before and even though we spent hardly any time together and I barely saw him outside the confines of Gryffindor, I really believed it was only a passing phase Harry was living through. I was convinced it was grief, or he was wrung dry from all the attention others gave him, or perhaps overwhelmed with the NEWTS and planning for a future he didn't believe he'd live to have. He was recuperating, I said to myself, and I should be patient and understanding.

Mum, Nev told me later that he'd known, all along, from the instant he'd heard Harry had saved Malfoy from the Fiendfyre, that this was coming. That it would be Malfoy and not me Harry turned to, in the end. Nev's just like that, sometimes—fey. I think he's a touch of the Seer to him.

Mum, the reason you didn't hear from me then, at Halloween—why I didn't Owl nor want you to come for Days Out before or after, was just that: Malfoy and Harry. It was so…it left me feeling physically ill, Mum. Sick. As if Harry were a traitor, or worse. As if he'd taken advantage of me and my feelings, when he never had. Mum, he hadn't, and I know now you knew it, but I didn't want to know it then. I simply didn't wish to see what was as clear as my nose before my silly face; I'd've rather have sliced it right off than believe it wasn't me Harry was fancying.

But it was fact, Mum. I couldn't deny that Harry escorted Draco Malfoy to the Halloween Ball; not I, even though I badgered Ron into hinting to you in his Owls home it was me who went with him that night. It wasn't. I went along to that dance with Nev, good old Nev, in my old robes from what? Two years ago now? And I spent the entire evening hating everyone there, even Nev, with a passion. Mum, I was horrid. The worst of the worst sort of people, the kind even you can't perceive the good in. Harry—horrible, betraying Harry—dallied the entire time with Malfoy that night, drinking that slop they called 'punch' and dancing with him at the very far corner of the Great Hall. With him! That git, whom I'd always despised! And I whiled away the dance watching them simply be next to one another; in touching distance, they were that closely up against each other!...and plotting how I might unleash really rotten hexes on them both.

That is, I think, the first time I ever understood what might've have driven Tom Riddle mad. It was envy. He wanted too much for any human to safely survive.

I Bat Bogeyed Malfoy the very next day. In public. His nose bled quarts, I hit him so hard. I was utterly furious; hadn't slept a wink all night long, brooding over it, and yes, I do rather think I've inherited Grant Aunt Sophronia's legendary temper. I lost control, Mum, and the Headmistress herself stopped me right there, before everyone, and gave me detention—and sent me from the Hall like a little Firstie, in tears. And Harry wouldn't speak to me at all, later. And Ron only sighed at me, and Hermione sent me these disapproving stares for days on end, as if I were but a badly behaved child and had had a tantrum over a lolly I wanted and couldn't have.

As Headmistress, Mum, Professor McGonagall is very strict. She is not Headmaster Dumbledore, certainly. Not by a long shot, though she really believes in the InterHouse Unity she's always going on about and she believes Houses should be abolished altogether, now. It's very strange. We've always been so staunchly Gryffindor, Mum. It's as though she, too, was betraying me. Everything I'd always believed in—everything I'd placed my trust in—was turned upon its head. I was bewildered by it.

In any case, I had to serve my detention by helping Malfoy the git restore the Pitch. It would've usually been Harry working with him, but Headmistress sent him and Ron and Hermione off to help Neville and the older Ravenclaws with the remaining outbuildings, so it was me and Malfoy, instead. It took a solid week to complete it, Mum, after classes and before classes and during all my breaks. And the horrid git was just…so quiet, Mum. Wouldn't speak to me, either, any more than Harry was. As if he didn't know what to say to me, and didn't understand why Headmistress was punishing him, too, when all he'd done lately was bleed all over the stone floor of the Great Hall, which is hardly a crime. Because Harry had stepped up to defend him, of course; had put himself right between us and set a Shield up over him, and then Headmistress was right there watching me go at it, run mad as a hatter, the entire time. She saw exactly what I did, Mum; heard every petty, hateful, acid word I shouted at him: about stealing Harry away and taking advantage of him whilst he was weak and on and on over how he was the worst possible person ever for Harry to place trust in, because he was such a coward. Such a destroyer and worthless and evil to the core and simply 'bad'. Yes, Mum. That was me. Your daughter, the one you're always so very proud of—the apple of Dad's eye. It wasn't a particularly proud moment for me, needless to say, and I'm so glad Headmistress spared me the ghastly possibility of summoning you and Dad to her office, after, to be confronted with my foul-up, my mistake. My monumental foul-up. I don't believe I could've stood it, seeing your faces looking at me, had you been told of it. I'd have died of shame, Mum.

In any event, I suppose you're thinking that week I spent working with Malfoy in the Pitch was what changed my mind about him? Well, it wasn't. I can hold a grudge, yes, but I'm also not unintelligent, and Nev caught up to me and began his little talks about people changing and events changing them and how such a huge thing as simply surviving what had looked to be hopeless changed everything again, and more so. Nev's a smooth talker, for all he's shy, still. And he never let up, not once. I'm not thick, Mum; you know that. And I respect Nev's opinion. I trusted him far more than I did Harry at the time, then, or even Ron-the-useless-idiot-big-brother.

Mum, it's months gone by now. Christmas hols long been and gone, and I know you and Dad were surprised and hurt that Harry didn't show at the Burrow on Christmas morning. So was I, but I knew, too, exactly why he didn't come. I was the one directly responsible for that, Mum. I'd succeeded in chasing him away and Harry had never been a coward. I forced him into it, I think, by simply existing. By not forgiving, when there was nothing to forgive. He'd done nothing wrong, Mum. Never had. Never would. It was all in my head—all in my chest, like a living thing. Nev told me often enough to let go; I barely listened. But I did watch them, Mum, when we returned to Hogwarts for Spring Term. I'd resolved I'd make my peace with him, too. With Harry—Malfoy wasn't worth my bother, that is, but Harry was. Perhaps I still had hopes, even then. 'Foolish girl', you're likely thinking, Mum. Well, yes, I was. There are times I still am, even now.

I kept tabs on them, and if they'd been friendly before, it was ten times worse, after Christmas. They were attached at the hip, always in company, and no one said a word about it. Not Ron, not Hermione. And all the friends I'd thought I'd turned against Malfoy before? Well, they'd have nothing to do with harming him or harassing him by then. Malfoy was Harry's business, it seemed, and they'd not go against the one who'd saved him. But, Mum, to my very small remnant of credit, I no longer wanted to hurt the git—I only wanted him to stop. Stop snogging Harry where I could see them do it, stop sitting with him at meals and in the Library and on the one armchair they always claimed in Gryffindor Common Room. Stop touching Harry's hair and straightening his school tie and looking at him like that. As I looked at Harry. As I had looked at Harry, before my heart was broken.

Nev, Mum, is very determined. He never shut up about how Harry deserved to have his happiness and I deserved my own, and how it wasn't to be found together—obviously!—and I should move on, like the adult woman I was becoming. Was in body, if not in heart.

Harry and Malfoy were determined, too, I think. I know it can't have been easy. There were still obstacles; I was by no means the only one who thought they should stay poles apart. Who found them laughable, unbelievable; insulting to everything that was right and true and known. They must've endured much more than one single girl's jealousy and anger; I read the papers, Mum. But—and here I have to actually compliment that git Malfoy—he stood up to them. For Harry, he did. Gave out interviews, had his Mum talk up Harry's bravery and how they'd had this unspoken agreement between them, spoke of how Harry had always been in his thoughts—that it was Harry who'd convinced him that all Voldemort's insidious talk of Blood Traitors and Mudbloods and the purity of the Wizarding world was nothing but the babble of a madman who wanted power, and only power, at any cost. He bared his bloody soul, Mum, and I was forced to read about it; couldn't help but read about it, when it was what was on everyone's lips. The Youngers spoke of nothing else, and all the little girls (and boys!) sighed over it and were dreamy-eyed, as if it was some fairy tale: Malfoy as Sleeping Beauty and Harry the Prince who'd woken him up to what was real.

Without Nev chattering away, I might've gagged over it, all that guff they wrote. Skeeter was the worst, of course. Horrid bint. But I'd eyes in my head, all the same. And just as those stories you and Dad used to tell me at bedtime, it unfolded and laid itself out for all to see, what was between them.

Mum, I know you think highly of Nev. I know Dad does, too. He's not Harry—he'll never be Harry—but he is himself. A truer friend I could not ask for, a more loyal companion I couldn't imagine. He's not Harry, Mum, and he won't be your son as Harry is—he won't be my brother, which is what Harry is, damn his green eyes, but he's still the one, I think. It was a shock, Mum, to sort that out. I did do, you know, finally.

I was watching Them again, Harry and Malfoy, and the weather was nicer than it had been in ages. It was just after Easter and the grass was greening down by the Lake. They were there, standing on shore's edge, and I was a little ways away, quite by accident, over where the rocks are piled high. I hadn't actually followed them that day; I hadn't truly been following them on purpose for ages before that. Couldn't help but notice them, but I was no longer actively looking to twist the knife, you know? Even I can down a bitter pill, if I've grown used to the taste. But they were there, and they were together, Mum. Wrapped 'round one another, Harry with his chin tucked down firm on Malfoy's shoulder, Malfoy with his arms tight and their robes tangled up, and there was no possible way anything, not even a piece of parchment, could've come between them, that moment. Not snogging, not talking—unless it was in whispers and I wasn't close enough to hear—not engaged in a single solitary other inflammatory act but just standing there on the edge of the Lake shore, together. Very much together, Mum. As if they belonged.

It struck me, hard as a Stunner, that I wanted that feeling. No, not with Harry, not by then. That was a lost cause and I knew it. But I wanted to belong to someone. And then, Mum, I thought a bit more, watching them. I already had someone to belong to: Nev. Good old Nev. Trusty Nev. Who'd belonged to me, Mum, all that time. He did.

I left them, Mum; took myself and my things and went straight away, leaving them to what's theirs, now. It's not mine. I don't want it, either. I've grown beyond wanting that from Harry and of all the lessons I've learnt this last year, of that one single most important one, at least, you and Dad should be the most pleased and proud—of me. For me. For I've grown up, Mum, to be the person you've always claimed I was. Well, not quite all there yet. I'm a bit jealous over Nev, I find. He's earned nearly as much attention from the world as Harry has—as Malfoy has now, telling his side of it—and there's competition, believe me. I've hexed a few of the worst offenders from time to time. I know you'd not blame me for that. 'Weasley's hold on, like badgers', you've told me, time and again, 'to what's ours. We're not all Gryffindors, darling. And that's alright.' I laughed, then; I thought you were joking me. I know better, now.

I know what's mine, Mum, finally, and what's not. I hope you're pleased, you and Dad, but even if you aren't, it shan't change how I feel. How I've learnt to feel. Which is deeper and larger and more. Inside, where it counts. Enough so that I can still love Harry (and maybe coexist with that git Malfoy, one day) and love Nev, too. Enough so the sorrow and the happiness can both be inside me but not tear me into pieces and shreds, Mum.

Mum, dear Mum. I love you. You're the best of all the Mums in the world, for you never, ever doubt me, even when I'm awful. And you're both the best of parents to me—and to Harry, and to idiot Ron, to George and all of us—because you know. I can't say exactly what it is that you know, or what all those pithy, tired sayings you use really mean to you; I'm not a parent. I don't know all of it, never will. But I know you do, and that you've been where I am, where I was, too, and have come through, still with your spirits intact.

Dear Mum, you said 'to each his own' to me, long ago, last year. I understand now. Thank you, Mum.

All my love,

Ginny