I'm not as think as you drunk I am.

July 23^rd 1996

Dear Harry,

Disregard my previous letter, I've received your last. You don't have to say anything else if you don't want to. Bill and I will be arriving tomorrow morning to bring you to the Burrow. This isn't open for discussion Harry. You're spending the rest of the summer here. So you had best be packed or I'll be obliged to stay at your house for the rest of the summer. Do you honestly think that would improve your situation at all?

Be ready to go by noon Harry. See you then.

Love (as a friend),

Ginny

That had been a week ago. True to her letter, Ginny and Bill had collected Harry at noon the following day, a week before his birthday and promptly transported him to the Burrow via portkey from Mrs.Figg's house. That night, the Weasleys had held an enormous feast in honor of Harry's arrival. Noone had brought up the contents of Harry's last letter to Ginny and noone pressed him for details of his summer or the cause for his early arrival at the Burrow.

After several cursory questions of how he was feeling and things to that effect, Mrs.Weasley had commented on his weight and the fact that his aunt and uncle seemed to finally be feeding him decently. Fred and George regaled him with details of their joke shop, which was slowly coming together. They promised him several sample boxes of their wares by the time September 1^st came around.

Bill had laughingly offered to pierce Harry's ear and give him advice on an earring to wear to help attract the girls next year at school. Harry merely scowled at this.

Ron, who was slightly cool to Harry upon his immediate arrival slowly warmed to his friend and informed him he had written a letter to Professor McGonagall asking he be relieved of his prefect duties on the grounds he found it too difficult to keep up with his studies as well as with quidditch. Harry suspected his desire to improve his studies had something to do with a bushy haired girl they were both acquainted with who had been unable to attend the feast due to her parents desire to spend as much of the summer with her as possible.

Ginny, on the other hand, behaved perfectly normal around him. She had barely said a dozen words to him since her arrival at the Dursleys and since their arrival at the Burrow seemed to be taking moderate pains to keep herself occupied. At dinner that night, she had simply handed him an envelope with a note on top saying he should open it before going to sleep. Since Percy had moved out the preceding year, Harry had been placed in his old room.

That night, after having collected his belongings and moved them up to his new room and biding everyone a good night, Harry collapsed into his bed and opened the envelope Ginny had given him.

Dear Harry,

I reckon after that last letter I wrote you, you probably wouldn't be in much of a mood to want to speak with me. After the letter you wrote me, I couldn't say I'd blame you. I'm sorry. Not for caring, because I do. I'm sorry for being so out of line when you obviously decided to open up to me, just like I originally asked you to. I'm not going to back down from you Harry, but I'll do my best to respect your privacy while you're here. I reckon if I play my cards right, by the time we return to school, I'll be able to sort out this mess I'm currently calling my life.

Ginny

The next morning, Harry snuck out of his room and crept down the stairs and paused as he reached the door outside of Ginny's bedroom. He knelt down, and placed a journal on the floor. He promptly stood up and knocked quietly on the door before proceeding down the stairs in search of breakfast. When Ginny opened her door and spotted the journal lying at her feet, her curiosity got the better of her and she picked it up. Opening it to the first page, she saw a note written in Harry's distinctive scrawl. Walking back to her bed, she began to read.

Dear Ginny,

First, let me assure you, this is a perfectly normal, ordinary and muggle journal. I picked it up in a shop near my aunt and uncle's the day I received your letter saying I was to spend the remainder of the summer here.

I can't say I know what I'm feeling towards you at this exact moment. I'm torn between relief and gratitude for your helping me escape the Dursleys, and furious resentment for the tone of your letter before that. I'm going to assume our letters crossed in the night; otherwise you wouldn't have taken the tone in your letter that you did. I accept the apology you offered me last night.

I honestly don't know what to make of you Ginny. First you act like you're over me, then you say you aren't. Then you say you're not over me, but last night you acted like you were. Would you care to explain that to me?

I'm not sure I'm up for having an actual conversation with you Ginny, but I owe it to you to open up to you. You did break me out of the shell I was trying to hide myself in and that's probably a good thing. That's where this journal comes in.

Maybe while we're here we can talk about all the things that are bothering us in written form? That way we don't have to worry about stuttering and stammering around each other, or worry about someone walking in on us. I had Professor Lupin put a charm on it so that you and I will be the only ones who can open it. To open the journal, touch your wand to its cover and say 'Detego'. To lock the journal, just touch your wand to the journal and say 'Zotheca'.

Obviously I left the journal unlocked so you could read this note. But this way we can talk without worry of what anyone else will say. I already mentioned this to Professor Lupin when he enchanted the journal and he said he would explain everything to your parents so they wouldn't worry it was a repeat of your first year.

Oh, I have been talking to Professor Lupin, or Remus as he's repeatedly asked me to call him(I still have difficulty with that,) about what's happened. He's still shook up about it, but he seems to be dealing with it better then I am, and a lot better then how I expected him to. He's still has a bit of a pale aura about him, but I suspect that he's being kept busy so he can't dwell on the past too much.

That's partly the reason I didn't object to coming here Ginny. Talking with Professor Lupin reminded me of something Dumbledore said to me my first year. There's a mirror at Hogwarts, maybe Ron told you about it, where if you look into it, it shows you whatever your heart most desires. I found it over Christmas break and kept going back to it every night because it kept showing me my parents. One night Dumbledore found me there and told me, he told me 'it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.'

I suppose it wouldn't do to dwell on the fact Sirius is gone, or that he's with my parents now. Or that I feel so alone so much. Even now, I'm sitting here on Percy's old bed, in Percy's old room, in your parents house, and I still feel alone. I feel the warmth of your mother's cooking in my stomach, and I still feel empty inside.

Fred and George can come up with some truly frightening pranks that I know I should be wary of, but they don't even phase me at this point. You tell me, can a ton-tongue toffee actually compare to what we both know Voldemort is capable of doing? I can see the headline now, 'Boy who lived defeats He Who Must Not Be Named with Canary Cream! See page 10 for feather by feather account of the battle!' That'd be something for Luna's dad to write about in the Quibbler wouldn't it? Voldemort living in Central America as a parakeet, exclusive photos inside.

But truthfully Ginny, I don't see the pain I'm feeling ever going away. And part of me doesn't want to let it go. You know, I must sound awfully repetitive saying I hurt, I pine, I perish, I mourn, etc, etc, etc. But it's true. I'm sure I'll get past it eventually and that's why you showed my last letter to your parents, who showed it to Dumbledore, who agreed to let me come stay here even though I was safer where I was.

I'm not angry at that Ginny. Under normal circumstances, there's nowhere I'd rather be then here(though I admit that not listening to Ron snoring is a pleasant change). But this year, it's just not the same. It's not just the risk to me, or the risk I'm inflicting on your family. It's not my desire to be alone with my grief or that I want to keep everything to myself. I see it all unwinding before me, and I'm not sure it's a road that I want to travel with anyone.

It's difficult to explain, to see all the bent, burnt and broken bodies scattered all across the future of your life and know that one way or another, you're responsible. It's all I can do not to scream. But if I don't, it will be worse. It will be my worse nightmares come to life, it will be all my fears magnified a thousand times. Because no matter how horrible the future I see is, the future Voldemort is capable of creating is, well you know what that's like. Or do you sleep through History of Magic like the rest of us?

Anyway, I'm starting to yawn and I realize I should probably leave you a tiny bit of this journal so you can write back to me. Feel free to leave it in my room if you want. I can trust you to behave yourself near my bed can't I?

Harry

Ginny closed the journal and hugged it to herself until she could feel it pressing deeply into her flesh. She fell back into her bed and slowly began pondering what to write back to Harry.