Dear Fred,
I've quite given up on barring emotion from these ridiculous things, and so I figured I might as well just delve into it. Perhaps you'd be disappointed in me, for drowning for so long…
It was so hard to believe that you were really gone. It's been years and I think everyone still feels this hole inside of them, you know? In this place where you used to be. Maybe it's partly because George isn't quite "George" without you, and so we have this constant reminder, or because it makes your absence so much more complete. It's mostly just because you're gone. You were this light that always endured. Even in the darkest of moments, the two of you shone so bright, but each of you also shone separately. To see your light go out… It made the world so much darker—was so terribly profound—like turning off the lights and leaving only a candle burning.
I was so angry with you at one point, because we needed you. George needed you, and Molly needed you, and Arthur needed you, and so did every other damned person that ever truly knew you. And you weren't here. We needed the laughs and the pranks and the jokes. We needed to smile and to be reminded that there was still such a thing as joy, as happiness; that silliness was okay; that things could get better. We all, subconsciously, depended on the two of you, which maybe wasn't fair, but was nonetheless true. I don't really think any of us even fully realised your part in our lives until you died. Not to say that we didn't love you, or value you, but we just never quite got what your role was. Certainly, I never realised how important you'd become to me.
I'm sure you never knew—no one did—but I had the hugest crush on you in fourth year. I could tell the two of you apart by third. You always were that little bit more enthusiastic; your grin was always just a little bigger; your heart that touch softer. I suppose that crush somehow left you in a sort of special place in my mind—in my heart—even though I couldn't ever show it. Not only because it was a frivolous feeling that couldn't ever go anywhere but, funnily enough, it was mostly because of Ron that I tried so carefully to hide it, and here he and I are, not really even talking anymore.
If you were here, you'd make him smarten up. Harry, too. And likely everyone else. Or maybe I'm just giving you too much credit. Maybe I'm just playing pretend, imagining a world with you being brighter, simply because this one feels so dark. But it's absolutely impossible that you could be here without things being so substantially better, if only because your family would never have needed to mourn so deeply.
We miss you. All of us.
Sincerely,
Hermione Granger
