This was...very hard.

Interlude: The Hardest Letter He Ever Wrote

Lily:

I don't know where to begin. I don't know if I should write a true response to the letter you sent, or simply record my emotions about you as they flow forth from my quill. At least the parchment insures that these words will be honest.

And yes, I did check the parchment for charms and curses before I used it.

I suppose I can begin with the notion of sacrifice. There are times I hate what you made me. Someone very wise said—things to me recently that make a lot of sense, as much as I hate to admit it. I don't like thinking about them, but one of them was that I consider everyone else worthy of love and forgiveness, but myself. And I suppose that's true. And if that's a result of your training, then—

But no, I can't write that, because I don't believe it. I suppose this parchment works after all.

I think it may be a result of your training, but I've become someone who does put other people before myself. I can admit that much. And that is a good thing. It must be. How can it not be? You trained me to be a weapon, a sacrifice, the guardian of the Boy-Who-Lived, and I think if you had stopped there, it would have been enough, and I would have been what you wished me to be. But you also put on the phoenix web, and that meant I broke free and turned my attention elsewhere, because I felt unduly constrained. So I feel the same way about most of the wizards around me that I used to feel about Connor. And the magical creatures, too.

I am what you made me, always.

Is that evil?

My skills are what have won me allies. My knowledge of the pureblood dances gave me ways to approach those allies. My defensive magic helped save Connor's and Draco's lives in first year, and then other people in the years after that. Being left wide open to Voldemort gave me the magic that made you fear me and introduce the phoenix web, and that means that I broke free, and that means that I turned my attention to other people.

I already wrote that.

Perhaps this parchment brings forth ideas that are very strong more than once? I know already that it forces me to write what I honestly believe. I can write something I am sure is true, and something I'm not sure is true—I tried on other pieces of it—but I can't write something I'm sure is false.

All right, then. Here it is.

I find myself unsure if I forgive you. And then I think about my allies.

Lucius Malfoy tortured three Muggleborn children to death, because they were born possessing magic, and weren't of a pureblood line. That's all. That's the only crime they committed. And I have never upbraided him for it. In fact, I've progressed very far with him in a truce-dance, almost to the final step.

Hawthorn Parkinson was a mistress of blood curses, and cursed Jacob Smith with a blood-letting spell that replenished his blood even as it cut new wounds and opened them again and again, wounds that should have killed him in a few hours. He bled to death for days, screaming as he did so, and the healers in St. Mungo's could do nothing for him. He lived for three weeks before he died. Hawthorn has never said that she regrets that. And I've brewed a potion that she needs for her since last year, and I made a formal alliance with her not long after I met her.

Adalrico Bulstrode was suspected of helping Voldemort design the Black Plague curse. How many lives did that claim? How many Aurors did it raze? How many children died choking to death on the spores? Adalrico has never mentioned that at all. And I've also made formal alliance with him, and sit calmly enough beside his daughter at the Slytherin table.

They did far worse than you have. They hurt other people, which is what I have said I cannot stand. And yet I let the memory of the justice they more than likely deserve lapse. I have told myself that one cannot win justice for the dead, and that it was in the War, when all sides did horrible things, and that I am supposed to have compassion, and shouldn't I forgive them?

Then, if I forgive them, how can I not forgive you? You left Connor exposed to the Dark Lord, and lied to him, and did not train him as you should have, if he was really to be the Boy-Who-Lived. But that is of a piece with their crimes, and with Dumbledore's.

And Lucius loves his son, and Hawthorn has looked at me with kind eyes, and Adalrico has celebrated with me.

And you did what you did in the name of war, in the name of saving the world.

Nothing is ever simple. You taught me to see that at a young age. I thank you for that. I do not think it is a lesson that either Dumbledore or Voldemort ever truly learned.

How can those two kinds of things exist in the same person? But they do. And I will not betray all that I am, all that you made me, by saying that Lucius Malfoy's love for his son is false, or that all your decisions must have been wrong and made in the knowledge that you were doing wrong, simply because I am uncomfortable with one truth or the other.

I do not know if I can forgive you yet, especially since I was not the only one you hurt, and there is the betrayal that you inflicted on me by trying to renew the phoenix web. But if we are speaking only of the crimes against me…

You made me what I am.

You may have saved the world in doing so.

You made me someone who can gain allies in doing so.

And all the time, I know that perhaps I am only forgiving you because you have raised me to forgive all crimes against myself. I know what the source of this feeling is, but that does not stop it. And thus I embody contradictions of my own.

My feelings regarding you will never be simple, and anyone who thinks they are is a fool, including me, if I ever thought it.

I cannot see you yet. I still can't do that. And part of me says that that's fine and only fair, and part of me says that that's weakness, but the parchment only compels me to write what's true, not what's right.

I can think about the things this wise person said to me, but I can't believe all of them. Not yet. And some I know are false, or a consequence of her not understanding everything that she saw.

I've missed you. I've hated you. I've mourned for you. I've called you Muggle in my thoughts, and Mum to please Connor. Nothing is ever simple.

Nothing ever should be.

Regards,

Harry.