Dear Parvati,
A few years back, (60 or so,) you and I discussed what we were going to do the summer after we left Hogwarts. We came upon the idea to travel around the world, like they did in the old days. You wanted to see France, and I always wanted to go south to Spain. Naturally, when the war started, we both knew that we weren't going to leave until it was over, by the time it finally was over, you were dead, and I was in no state to go anywhere.
Skip ahead a few years, when Liam and I finally got married. At the time, he wanted to take me on the tour of the world. I can still picture him, smiling down at me, with a twinkle in his eye, spinning romantic words into one very persuasive argument to go.
I couldn't bring myself to go then. I refused him, and I'm afraid to say that I didn't explained my reasons for refusing until much later. At the time, he was just slightly hurt, and confused. He couldn't have known that you and I had already made plans to do that very same thing. I wasn't ready to go without you yet, and combined with the fact that he had dredged up painful (at the time) memories of you, he never stood a chance of getting me to go.
This is old news of course, since it all happened over forty years ago. The only reason I spent the last hour or so writing that down was to tell you Liam tried to convince me to go again, and that this time I accepted. Yes, it might have been a little later than we planned, but I finally visited Spain, and we spent quite a bit of time in France.
It took a few months, but I'm honestly very happy that we finally decided to do it. It was indescribably beautiful; I tried to write down what it was like, but I gave up and just wrote down "indescribably beautiful." It doesn't do it justice, but it's the best I could do.
I can't tell you how many times that I wished that I was better at writing and this is just another one of them. I tried to be one of those people who can sit down, pick up a quill, and just write down they're whole day, but somehow, I can never manage it. I know that these letters are less than adequate considering how seldom they come, but I could never quite get the right words to properly describe my life.
I'd never admit this to anyone, because I know it's stupid, but whenever I wrote these letters, I never wanted to go into detail, because I felt like I was celebrating something that you had been deprived of, and that you would be mad at me. I know that it's foolish of me to think that, since you would only have wanted me to be happy, but guilt's a powerful force. It kept me from writing everything I would have liked to, and I get a funny feeling that it's still there, preventing me from writing everything I would like to. I wish that I could just tell myself "Hey, Idiot! Stop feeling subconsciously guilty!" I've tried, but it doesn't seem to have had much effect.
I know that you would have wanted me to move past you, but the truth is that I've never quite been able to shake you completely. A much as I've tried, you were my twin, and while we may not have looked as close as some other twins, I still felt closer to you then I ever did to anyone else.
If you're looking for evidence that your death is still affecting me, even 52 years later, just look at this letter. I started out a beautiful trip around the world with my dear husband, and now it's a letter about how guilty I still feel about your death. I know it's not my fault, and it's been so many years since it happened, but I still feel guilty.
It took until I wrote that out for me to understand it. I didn't think I felt guilty, but then I also thought that I had been able to move past you after a married Liam. It' not rational for me to feel survivors guilt after all this time, but I still do.
I'm sorry that these letters all seem to end depressingly. I guess that it's always bound to happen.
Love,
Padma