Dear Harry:

I hope that this letter finds you well. The few hints that have been dropped seem to indicate that you are all right. I don't know where you are, and as curious as I am about it, I get the feeling that I do not want to know. All I know is that you are far enough away that your enemy cannot harm you while you recover.

Several interesting things have been happening. The Ministry has had a major shake-up. The Minister was being very uncooperative until Professor McGonagall requested, no, demanded his help. They were in his office for over 3 hours. The next thing I knew, the Weasleys, my parents, and myself were sequestered at Hogwarts. There will be no classes held, but the Minister has decided that we are all essential to the war effort and wants us protected at all costs. He figures that Hogwarts has the best chance of doing that. Fred and George are furious! They had to leave the shop in the hands of Lee Jordan and go into hiding here. Every secret entrance has been plugged up and the castle will not even allow brooms to enter or leave.

All mail is also monitored. The owls must go through a checkpoint where they are checked for compromising information. I am bypassing this however, Tonks is free to come and go, so she is smuggling this letter out for me. She says that you can be reached by the muggle post, and that she has a muggle postal box that she can receive letters in. I will also help the others to communicate with you in this manner.

The biggest development is Voldemort having his life exposed on the front page of the Daily Prophet. Many of the purebred families are up in arms, either calling the article a lie or calling Voldemort a half-breed, saying that they knew he was somehow impure. He is having a hard time recruiting new followers, so he is relying more on the creatures such as vampires, werewolves and giants to do his dirty work. This is causing even more trouble with the purebreds. Even that toad Umbridge denounced him for dealing with unclean creatures. They found her the next day, dead, with her head compressed into a one litre firewhiskey bottle. It was quite the gruesome scene.

Bellatrix Lestrange was captured yesterday by accident. Neville and Luna were shopping in Diagon Alley when she appearated and attacked them. They had just a split second of warning, and Neville pushed Luna down and dodged the other direction. Her spell went right between them. Neville and Luna fired off countercurses, their wands crossed paths and their deflected joint spell blew off a piece of cornice from the building that Bella was standing in front of. It fell down and struck her in the back of the head, knocking her unconscious. The aurors appeared and hauled her off to a holding cell to await trial. This morning, the Death Eaters broke her out of jail. Neville, his grandmother, Luna and her father have been brought to Hogwarts for the duration. It is keeping Tonks busy relaying orders back and forth to the staff at the Quibbler.

The public relations campaign against Voldemort has hit him so hard that Rita Skeeter was kidnapped the other day by Lucius Malfoy. He told a witness that "Lord Voldemort will be giving his rebuttal to the stories through her. I guess the Prophet put "a bug in his ear", ha ha. Voldemort's latest thing is passing rumors that you are either dead or hiding in terror of him. The rumormongers keep asking where you are.

Something else very interesting was printed in the Prophet this morning, I thought you would like to read it for yourself. I am enclosing the article.

Everyone sends their love, Ginny says that you are a prat, but that you are HER prat. She loves you more than you could ever know, Harry. There is no way that you will be able to insulate her from this battle. She is in Voldemort's sights not just because she is your girlfriend, he hates her for being a Weasley. They are a pureblood family who stands up for what is right and have rejected Voldemort. That makes them all worthy of death in their eyes.

Take care and hurry back,
Your friend,
Hermione

Exclusive to the Daily Prophet
Staff Writer Marietta Snoups

WIZENGAMOT CONVICTS VOLDEMORT IN ABSTENTIA

SENTENCES TO DEATH

Announces10 Million Galleon Bounty, Dead or Alive!

The Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour announced yesterday that the Wizengamot has convicted Tom Riddle, the self-styled 'Lord Voldemort' of multiple murders and High Treason. The Minister also stated that the sentence handed down by the Wizengamot was the extreme penalty of death.

"Tom Riddle has finally been brought to the bar of justice. He had a fair trial in front of the Wizengamot and has been sentenced to the ultimate punishment. The verdict was unanimous of all the wizards and witches who actually cast a vote."

"The Ministry of Magic is also announcing a 10 million Galleon bounty, dead or alive for the capture of Tom Riddle. We are not saying that our citizens should become vigilantes, but if some solid citizen, say, oh, Harry Potter should have to defend himself or another innocent person from Mr. Riddle and , say, accidentally cast a killing curse or one of the other Unforgivable curses, the Ministry would, I am sure, consider it justifiable. It is not as if Riddle has much of a soul left to have to worry about, eh?"

When asked how someone could 'accidentally' cast an Unforgivable curse, the Minister had no reply.

This reporter also questioned the trial in abstentia. The Minister told the Prophet that the Wizengamot had attempted to bring Riddle into the dock, however they did not know his location.

"Tom Riddle, also known as 'Lord Voldemort' was legally served notice that his trial would be held in the Grand Chambers. Since we did not know his exact whereabouts, we sent the notice attached to a vulture. The Wizengamot decided that if any bird would be able to locate Riddle, it would be that species. Voldemort signaled his refusal to participate in his trial when he returned the vulture, plucked, skewered, and barbecued, staked to the chest of the late Peter Pettigrew. The corpses were delivered to the Ministry of Magic via portkey by an unidentified Death Eater who promptly portkeyed back out."

In a related story, Minister Scrimgeour announced that since the trial of Tom Riddle had been so successful, all known Death Eaters would be subject to the same type of legal proceedings.

Lord Voldemort was not available for comment.

Dear Hermione:

I was really glad to hear from you. That article was hilarious, but completely in character for those numpties at the Ministry. That ass Scrimgeour is doing nothing more than appointing me as the Wizengamot's bounty hunter and executioner for hire. He is even giving me carte blanche to become a real murderer by using an Unforgivable.

Hermione, this I cannot do, I don't have the hatred necessary to cast an unforgivable. Voldemort will not be killed by an Unforgivable, because no one has the amount of evil that it would take to kill him that way. I know that I must be the one to kill him, and this I will do, but I will not destroy my soul to do it. My weapon is love, not hatred. Not love for Tom Riddle, but love for the people who have loved me and died, and the living who still love me. I learned a lesson about being a soldier for a cause from one of my new teachers the other day. I do not claim to completely understand, but I understand enough.

I have also learned another lesson. The people who loved me so much that they died for me gave their own lives willingly. I did not cause their deaths, their lives were given freely, and for me to blame myself is to degrade their sacrifice. Voldemort stole their lives, and I plan to extract justice for them. I will still grieve for them, however I can no longer allow Voldemort to use them as a weapon.

I am undergoing a interesting training regimen. I get up each morning and start off with physical training and boxing training. Dudley is in charge of that. After that session, we shower and have breakfast. Then we go down to the stables, saddle our horses (yes, horses!) and ride the fence line. We take a roll of barbed wire and tools with us. If we find any breaks, we must stretch the wire and patch the hole. My instructor says that a former president of this country once said that there is nothing better for the inside of a person than the outside of a horse. I certainly hope this is true, because after 2 or 3 hours on the back of a horse, the outside is pretty bloody sore!

After lunch I go with my other instructor into what is called a sweat lodge. It clears the poisons from my body and helps me meditate and clear my mind. It is possible to communicate with the spirits of my teacher's ancestors during the meditation. I have learned much about his people and the Way of the Warrior. Virtue and valour were a way of life with the warriors.

Following my time in the sweat lodge, Dudley and I go out for dueling practice. We do not use wands, we use old fashioned pistols. We started out with rocks, throwing them in order to improve our aim. My instructor for that says that I should not underestimate the power of rocks, at one time a man killed ΒΌ of the world's population with one. I have no idea what he means by that though. I do know that it has improved my aim and reflexes considerably. I now shoot a reproduction of an antique gun called a 45 calibre Confederate Navy revolver. It does not use modern bullets, it has 6 chambers that you load gunpowder, cotton wadding and a lead bullet or ball into. You then have to place what is called a primer cap onto each cylinder before you can fire the gun. It is very painstaking and you must pay a lot of attention to speed and detail. I can now load all 6 cylinders and fire those 6 shots accurately in less than one minute. Dudley is almost as fast, but since his fingers are bigger, he sometimes has trouble with the little primers. The interesting thing is that it translates to accuracy and calm while using a wand.

Speaking of wands, Dudley had a funny experience the other day. He had that great club of a dueling wand of his out to the firing range. We were firing hexes at some man-sized stuffed targets and Dudders missed twice in a row. He lost his temper and began to swear terribly. The wand had a blue fire shoot from the end of it. It blew his target completely apart, as well as the boulder that it was resting against. This uncovered a nest of rattlesnakes who came at him in a state of outrage. I had to plead with the snakes to let him live, all while levitating him out of their reach. They left, but told me in no uncertain terms to find another target range.

Dudley also found a standard wand to use. One of our instructors is a wand maker and put together a custom wand. The reason that Dudley could not match a wand at Olivander's is that the proper materials are not available in the UK or Europe. His daily wand is a 13" mesquite wood and on the tip is the fang of a chupacabra. The core is the jaw tendon of the same chupacabra. This is a magical animal from Mexico commonly called a Mexican Goat Sucker, something like a werewolf with vampire-like tendencies. Unlike a werewolf however, they have never been human or sentient.

I must sign off now, I need to work with Dudley on his charms work. He is doing better at it than I ever did at that stage. Tell everyone I love them and hope to be back soon. Please give Ginny my love.

Your friend,
Harry

P.S. Please tell Mrs Weasley that I will be bringing home a recipe for a dish called enchiladas. That and one for chile verde. These are fantastic!
H

a/n: There will be a more training and more news as it comes up..