30 April 1998

Dear Harry,

Fred and George are driving Auntie Muriel absolutely mad.
They're not used to being confined to one place. None of us are.

You lift your quill from the sheet of parchment in your journal; the journal your twin brothers gave you for your birthday. Before you knew what it was to be in hiding, confined to one place, for the simple purpose of keeping you safe.

It's utter rubbish, what you've begun using this journal for; writing letters to a man that you know will never see them, because as much as you want to, you know you'll never show them to him.

You set your quill down and flip back through the parchment pages restlessly. Each letter is essentially the same. It's dated and made to him, and it starts with all the mundane daily occurrences, which are always the same now: Auntie Muriel going on about something or another, always reminding you that she's one hundred and seven, or maybe it's one hundred and eight now, you really can't remember; Fred and George's mail order business being run out of a back room of the house, and driving Auntie Muriel absolutely insane; your mother's constant state of worry; your restlessness over being able to do absolutely nothing, owing to your underage status. At least the letters you wrote while still at Hogwarts were slightly more … eventful.

And then they transition gracefully into why you're really writing these ridiculous letters to begin with, asking questions that you know will either never be answered, or that really, you already know the answers to. Why you always get left behind, even though you know being underage would hurt more than help him on this journey he's on, and you constantly wonder why he had to go to begin with, but really, you know the answer to that too, and would you really love him – because you don't just like him anymore – as much if he were anything other than what he is?

You sit and stare absently out the window, jaw set, and you're mad because you're not mad at him, not really. And you're not mad that it's your brother and your friend that are on this journey with him and not you, because the rational part of you has already accepted that you really couldn't have gone, no matter how much you want to be with him and hope that he wants to be with you. Somehow, you know that this really is the best way.

No, what you're really mad at is how Voldemort's actions and decisions, not only now but from his past, continue to steer the path Harry's life will follow until one or the other is brought down. And you're angry that all of this caused him to leave as abruptly as he did, without so much as a glance or goodbye, and you're just as angry that your brother and your friend were taken from you in exactly the same way.

And mostly you're frustrated with this overwhelming sense of helplessness settling deep in the pit of your stomach, because now there's absolutely nothing you can do to help him fight, not here. At least while you were still at Hogwarts, you were one of the leaders of The Resistance and were behind the revival of the D.A., and every instance of punishment and torture you were put through at the hands of one of Voldemort's Death Eaters for fighting back was just one more log fueling an already blazing fire. Because you've never been meant to sit back, take notice. You've always been meant to fight, act and react.

And the constant worrying about him by everyone else agitates you too, not because you're not worried about him. You are, but you know, somewhere in your gut, in the same place everything else has begun to settle, that he's okay. You'd know if he wasn't. You've learned from him to trust that feeling.

So you hang on to that instinct each day, wondering if today, or even tomorrow or the day after will be the day it happens, whatever it is. And you wait with nothing to do but write these letters that you know he'll never see, until that day comes. Because you know it will, you just don't know when.

You pick up your quill once more and shuffle back through the pages to the one with today's date and ink the quill up before detailing the mundane daily events that are standard when living with Auntie Muriel.

But instead of carrying on with the normal incomprehensible drabble about your anger and frustration, because you're not angry today, not really, you decide to end it as simply as you know how.

I miss you.

Ginny