To Be Opened in the Event of My Death

TO BE OPENED IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH

Dear, beloved Ginny,

If you ever read this letter, I shall be dead. If you are alive and free, I shall probably have succeeded in my duty, and the greatest evil of our time will have fallen with me.

If you love me half as much as I love you, dearest, dearest Ginny, I can imagine how much this will hurt you. You will know that it was necessary; but no amount of knowing will be able to silence the hurt and the loneliness. It is the same premonition I feel at the very thought that that monster could do anything to you again.

That is why I have to go and do it. I want you all to live free of threats and blackmail; of daily fear; of murder as part of the landscape. I care too much for you and all of yours to allow that monster to be part of it.

In my mind, Ginny, you and your fate are the image of all the world; all the people who would suffer, who already suffer, because of brute ambition and cruel vanity, of men who have power only because each of them satisfies and flatters the murderous evil of his accomplices. To say that I do not want it to happen to the world, and that I do not want it to happen to you, is one and the same thing; and it is the reason why I go to war.

You cannot imagine the difference that loving you has made to me. It is as though I had hardly lived at all until I awakened to you; as if the beauty of the earth and the sky, the nobility of history, the glory of magic, the splendour of mankind, the special value of every human being, had remained unrevealed, unnoticed. Loving you has changed me from top to bottom; I can hardly think I even lived before.

Remember that. When grief and loss tear at you, remember that you have made me happier than I have ever been, happier than I imagined a person could be, happier than, I suspect, many people will ever be. (For if they really understood what love was like, would anyone want to be Death Eaters?) The few weeks we have had together were different not just in quality but in kind from anything I ever experienced before. You made me whole; you made me a man. What I owe to you, merely for existing, merely for being you - that extraordinary single person, Ginny Weasley - is more than words can say.

And for that I am more willing, if not to die, then to risk my life, to stop this monster - this ghastly abortion - this repulsive image of corrupted intellect and evil will. He has already laid his hands on you once, Ginny. He shall not be permitted to do so again. If I have to die to keep you alive and free of his reeking claws, then so be it. I do not say so lightly; not when I have only just learned how good life can be. But under no condition will I allow him to threaten you or anyone else ever again.

I do not tell you not to grieve, Ginny. You have a right to your tears; and I shall be honoured, if the dead, as I believe, know anything, if someone of your worth grieves for me. But do not let it take over your life. You are young and beautiful, full of strength and grace. You were made to make someone happy. Live; open yourself to the world and to people; and if you meet someone else who can make you happy as you can make him, please, dear Ginny, do not let the memory of me get in your way. Do not forget me; but do not let me get in your way. If you live, and are free, and eventually happy, then I shall truly not have died in vain.

Yours, and nothing else,

Harry James Potter.