Dear Tom

Dear Tom

I know you can't hear me any more, but I can't get out of the habit of writing to you. I meant what I said when I wrote that no-one had ever understood me like you. And I know that all along, you were just pretending. You weren't interested in me, you just wanted me to trust you, to keep pouring out my soul until you could possess it. But it doesn't change that. You still understood me better than anyone. You never cared, you never meant what you said but always - you knew the right thing to say. No-one's ever done that before. And part of me will always wonder how you managed that. Did you have some scrap of humanity below it all, some trace of genuine sympathy that warped somewhere down the line, became absorbed into the overriding evil, so that what once was good became a tool of wickedness? Did you, Tom? I can't think of you as He-who-must-not-be-named. You'll always be my Tom. My false, cruel, greedy, understanding Tom. Why do I still think of you, Tom? Why did you understand me? Does it show that you had goodness somewhere within you, or does it show that I have a germ of evil? I wonder if you could have been a better man, with the chances, with the love. It is every good girl's dream to reform a sinner - and I dream of what it would be like, if I had known you then, if I could have stopped you from becoming what you became. But then I think - what if I had not reformed you, but you had corrupted me? You understood me, Tom, and it makes me feel that we cannot be so different.

It makes me laugh to see how I write now. Perhaps you were right to mock me then, for my silly adolescent problems. It seems so long ago now. Then, I was a child, and now I feel that I have aged many years. My innocence lost, my childhood gone forever. I have played host to the most evil wizard who ever lived, and now, as I write letters to him even after he is gone, they are the letters of a woman, and not of a girl. No doubt you would still think me childish, Tom. I still have some virtue left, and that to you is juvenile. You lost yours many years ago - even years before the age at which I knew you. To you that is just a phase; a phase for people to grow out of. I will not grow out of it, Tom. My virtue is my own. You took my naivety, yes. I can never retreat back there. I know the world now, and no good person can know evil more first-hand than I. But you did not, will not take my virtue. You can possess my body, Tom, and you can trick my mind, but my soul is my own.

But I feel so dirty.

Defilement spreads deep. You were so close to taking me over forever. I wonder if this is what rape feels like? My mind has been raped, my innocence stolen, and a small part of me has been murdered. Oh Tom, I hate you, I love you, I do not know what to think of you. I am disgusted that I write to you now. I am glad - so glad - that you cannot read what I write. You would find it amusing, no doubt, and give me your false sympathy. Why do I still think of you? You were never a true friend. I list your sins and I find the one that first comes to my mind is that you betrayed me. You, to whom loyalty is something you demand! You, to whom friendship is an alliance of power! Why do I treat you as somebody capable of love and affection? As though you could ever have had kind feelings for me! I take it back, I am still a child. What adult would be so foolish as to feel used and betrayed in such circumstances? An adult would feel shame at being tricked, and I do, but I am glad that once I was so simple to fall for it. Purity is something to be treasured and esteemed, and above all protected. And I plan to. I know He-who-is-not-to-be-named lies dormant and waiting, and when he returns, I will be ready. I will fight alongside Harry Potter, and I will protect the innocent, that no girl ever need go through what I have gone through, or even know that such depths exist.

Oh, Harry Potter. And now, Tom, I am a silly little girl again. I know, and I am. Now I realise how futile are my hopes. He rescued me, and I saw how he looked at me. I am his best friend's kid sister, and that is all I will ever be. But the knowledge brings no freedom for me, for how could I fail but to love him more when he had rescued me? What damsel in distress can resist her protector? What silly little girl could not wish to lose herself in his eyes? He personifies all the values that I hold dear, so I cannot fail to hold him dear. He is a hero, and I cannot resist the force that draws me to him for that. But I must. I must learn to love him as a comrade. Not even as a friend can I love him, for he has friends, and I am not in their number. Perhaps one day he will notice me. I cannot quell that hope, however hard I try.

Oh my dear Tom, you should not have indulged me. If you had only told me that I had no hope, then perhaps I could have quelled the hopes at an earlier stage. But now, my feelings rush on, headlong, gathering momentum as they go, and I feel powerless to stop them. How long will it take me to get over Harry? Will I ever? How long will it take me to get over you? Will I ever?

I fear the answers to these questions, and I long to be back in that innocent state once more. My whole life I yearned for Hogwarts, but now I wish I had never come. Everything was so much simpler at home. My first year here has been a disaster. It is hard to see how much more disastrous it could have been, really. I dread the years ahead. I have no friends and now I feel that I don't deserve any. All around me settle in; all around me laugh and joke. Within lie the traces you left in me. They will never disappear. I shall have to live with them, and feel them constantly. How can I ever laugh and joke and settle in?

You understood me, Tom. You understood me as no-one else ever has. And the price I paid for that is this: after what I have experienced, no-one can ever understand me again. Not even Harry Potter.