Dear Parvati,
It's been three years since you last had a birthday. Where has the time gone? Three years, and already the world looks like it did, like the war never happened.
I know that the people haven't moved on. The might have rebuilt everything, replaced all the dark shops in Diagon alley, torn down Azkaban, but you can tell that people haven't forgotten what terror they faced just a few years ago.
It's the kids that have moved on. There's no sign of fear on their faces, no worry lines etched onto their faces by loved ones. For everyone else though, three years hasn't been long enough to forget the fear and pain that was their world for a year or two.
Three years hasn't been enough for them to forget the dead. I know that in a few years though, the dead will be almost forgotten, mourned only by those people who knew them. But right now, the grave yards are still full of them. When I visited your grave today, the graveyard had several students who where their paying their respects to dead. I doubt that they even knew anyone in the graveyard, but they still came anyway.
I always miss you the most on our birthday. I can't help but think of you when this day comes around. I spent most of the day at our parents' house, looking through old photos of us. In the oldest ones, the ones where we were younger, I can't even tell us apart. The older ones are much easier, once we started wearing different clothes then each other.
I never realized how hard this day was for our parents too. I was always so caught up in my own grief that I never thought about them, that I was depriving them of their only other daughter on the day when they needed her the most.
One the bright side of today, a lot of people sent me letters, so I know that I'm not forgotten. Honestly, today feels like the first birthday I've had since the war. It was still sad, but it was more of a happy sad.
That doesn't make sense, but oh well, it's not like anyone else is going to read these letter, right?
Love,
Padma