A/N: So! Apparently ff doesn't do strikethrough text in stories (or if it does I have no clue how!), so I've denoted strikethrough text (like this). If anyone knows a better way, please let me know!
Anyway, this little drabble is for the second round of the QLC. Hope you enjoy!
Prompt: Little Hangleton (setting)
Optional Prompt(s):
2. (quote) 'Freedom is still the most radical idea of all.' -Nathaniel Branden
11. (style) letter-fic
14. (word) contagious
Dear Cedric,
I'm not quite sure how to start this. It feels strange addressing a letter to you that I know you'll never read, but I've been seeing this therapist, and she suggested that I try writing to the "ghosts in my past that I can't let go". You see, I've been having trouble sleeping, and she seems to think this will help. Not sure how. It's not like writing this letter will make you any less dead…or make it any less my fault.
I'm actually sitting in the graveyard where you died right now. Another idea of my therapist. She says I need to face the places where horrible things happened—see them in broad daylight—if I want the nightmares to stop. I'm not sure how much it will actually help though. There's something eerie about Little Hangleton that the sun can't seem to break through. Maybe there's something about death that causes that. Maybe if enough people die in one place, the light just stops trying to reach it. I wonder if your death was the final straw.
Now that I'm writing this, I do wish that there was a way that you could read it. I wish that I could hand it to you myself. And I feel like a complete idiot because I don't even know if I remember what you look like anymore. Isn't that stupid? I think about you almost every single day and yet I can't even remember if your eyes were blue or brown. I'm pretty sure that makes me a hypocrite.
I am sorry though. With everything that I am, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you had to be here with me that day. I'm sorry that you got caught in the crossfire. And I'm sorry that I couldn't save you.
Shit, that was hard to say. I'm not sure it made me feel better but it did make me feel… something.
I think I'll bury this letter here. Is that wrong? Maybe it is, but I think I'll do it anyway.
I'm so, so sorry, Cedric.
-Harry
Dear Sirius,
I miss you every day.
Sometimes I think about going back to the Department of Mysteries and seeing if I can hear you through that veil. But I don't think they'd let me back in. And even if they did, I'm not sure I'd be able to go through with it when the time came. So I've never tried. Maybe I never will.
But I want you to know that you meant more to me than anything I write here can possibly convey. And I want you to know that it's okay that you called me James. If all you ever saw in me was him, it wouldn't change anything. It wouldn't change anything at all…
-Harry
Dear Dumbledore,
(I just wanted to thank you for)
(I want you to know that you have been the greatest influence of my)
Merlin, this is ridiculous. You were one of the most important people in my life and I can't even figure out what I want to say to you. I keep thinking that I should thank you, but I just can't get the words out. But, I mean, we're a bit beyond that, aren't we? What would you do with my thanks anyway? You've been thanked by so many people… and I've always thought that we owed each other something more. Honesty, maybe.
That's still something you owe me a lot of, actually.
I've never understood why you felt like you needed to hide things from me. You said it was to protect me, but that doesn't feel quite true now, does it. (You never were good at being honest.)
Maybe that's why I can't get this out. I don't know how to trust you anymore. You really can't blame me when you hid so much… knowing I'd find out eventually. And you didn't even try to let me help you. I know I was just a kid to you, but that doesn't make what you did right. I wanted to help, and you…(you just did whatever you could to keep me alive long enough that I would be ready to die.)
I know that people aren't supposed to be mad at dead people. It's like this unwritten rule. But I don't care. Because I am mad. I'm so mad that I can't even see straight right now. And maybe that's because, I'm sitting here, writing this letter in the middle of a damn graveyard, but I don't care. Because you shouldn't be dead. I could've saved you. Why didn't you let me save you?
Why didn't you even let me try?
-Harry
Dear Bellatrix,
I hate you.
I hate you so much that it makes me sick to my stomach.
You killed the only chance I ever had at having a real family. And the sad thing is that you probably never even realized it. You were so lost in Tom's darkness that I doubt you understood the repercussions of death. To you, the rest of the world was probably as cold and dead as this damn town I'm in now. Cold and dead and bleak. I swear that the sun has never touched this place. And if this is what the world looked like to you, then I get why you went to Tom. But that doesn't make the things you did any less terrible.
I hope they buried you here too. I hope the worms are feeding on your corpse and that you'll never be able to escape this cold, dark place that even the sun has abandoned.
Maybe one day I'll be able to forgive you for what you did.
Maybe. But I doubt it.
-H.P.
Dear Snape,
I think I'm still sorting through my feelings towards you. Which seems like a really odd thing to be doing in a graveyard that you're not even buried in, but I suppose it can't be helped. That's just how it is.
I know that what you did didn't really have anything to do with me. I'm not under any delusions that we actually liked each other. I mean you were a right bastard to me. But maybe I was to you too. I honestly can't say that I didn't try to blame you for…a lot. I had a lot of anger back then and all you ever seemed to do was stoke that fire.
In the end though, you were a hero. Or something like a hero. I still don't know if you actually believed in what we fought for, but… even if you didn't, I think that's okay. Even if you just did it for my mom, well, there's something really beautiful about that too. I can't imagine loving someone like that. I'm not sure I even could. It would take a kind of strength that I don't think I possess.
I've never known my mother, but I think that if she was the kind of person who was loved that intensely over sixteen years after her death, then she must have been a force to be reckoned with. So if nothing else, I appreciate that you could show me that. I appreciated seeing her through your eyes.
(Do you think that) Sometimes I wonder if love is contagious, you know? It doesn't seem possible for me to love my mother more because I know that you loved her, but I do.
I try not to think about the other side of it. I don't want to believe that I think differently of my father after seeing the (things he did) way he treated you. Maybe I'll be brave enough to face that one day, but not yet. I'm not ready to think about hate being just as contagious as love. We've all lived with enough hate. Too much of it. I'm already so scared that it's consumed me. Sometimes I feel like I'm so full of it I'm about to spill over.
But you know that. You saw that part of me—when you were in my head. You saw parts of me that I never wanted anyone to see, and I saw those parts of you too. I guess, in a way, you were the only one who knew that I really wasn't what everyone wanted me to be. I wasn't the savior the wizarding world deserved. (I certainly wasn't the one you deserved.)
Maybe that's the real reason I resented you all of those years; because you were the only other one who knew that I wasn't good enough. And you refused to accept it.
I wonder what you would think if you could see me now…
-H.P.
Dear Malfoy,
I'm not quite sure why I'm writing to you. Considering that you're the only one that will actually be able to read one of these letters, I really shouldn't be writing it. Not that I'll actually mail it to you.
Merlin, I'm a coward.
(I'm just) I'm sorry about Crabbe. (I'm not sorry because I think it's my fault or anything) What happened to him was a tragedy. You lost somebody close to you, and believe me I know—that sucks. It's probably the worst feeling in the whole world.
I'm not sure we'll ever recover from this war.
Or maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the only one that's stuck.
-H.P.
Dear Tom,
Yours should be the hardest letter to write. But it isn't. I know exactly what I want to say to you.
Even up until the very end, you never understood why you couldn't win. It never mattered how many people you killed, or how much havoc you brought into the world, you were never going to win in the end.
It's almost funny how many people were scared of you, because I never was. Not really. The thing that scared me about you was what you represented to everyone else. You were the idea that hatred and fear and oppression could be right. That idea. That unbreakable, unmalleable thing that you wanted to infect the world with. That was what made you dangerous.
It took me a while to realize how twisted you actually were. I couldn't understand that, to you, we were the psychotic ones. And the scary thing is, on some level, I think you were right. I mean, where did we come up with the idea that freedom and equality were something we were entitled to? We try to control everything else in nature, so why does our morality draw a line when it comes to controlling each other? In the end, I think freedom is still the most radical idea of all. Maybe you just realized it before the rest of us did.
I sometimes wonder what they'll write about you in history books. I wonder if they'll even put you in them. Judging from your tombstone, I don't think that they will. I'm staring at it now, you know. It's got nothing on it but your name and the years you lived. As if they could erase everything you did by pretending you did nothing noteworthy in your life.
Maybe I'll etch my own words into your tombstone. I'm not sure what I'd say. I'm not a particularly poetic person. But I'll think of something. There are dangers in forgetting, after all, and everyone seems to have already forgotten so much.
I can see why my therapist thought it would be good for me to come here. I think it's good for me to remind myself that you're actually dead. I think sometimes all I'm doing is waiting for you to come back. I haven't quite figured out how to pull myself out of the war.
You won't mind if I come here occasionally, will you? It's hard for me to talk to people anymore, but I think that I could talk to you. I think that you would understand. And at least when I talk to you, I won't worry when you don't say anything back.
-Harry
A/N: Thanks so much for reading! Hope you enjoyed!