Summer

I don't love him anymore.

When he told me we couldn't be together for MY sake, I thought I'd rip his eyes out. Instead, I acted subdued, and let it slide. I made him think it was alright, and I understood, but that was only in my mind.

As I have discovered in my first year, my mind is not the most important part of me. It's my soul that really matters. That's where I found the strength to throw the diary away, and even though it didn't help, it's one of the things I'm proudest of.

So in my mind, I knew he was absolutely right, and that being with him put me in grave danger, but my heart refused to be this selfish. I knew he needed me. Maybe it was the most selfish thing he could've done, leaving me. Maybe he only did it so he wouldn't be hurt more if something happened to me.

At first, I felt like a dishrag that had been thrown away. It's something I'm quite accustomed to, so it was fine. But then the anger set in. I hated him for a while. Two weeks, at most. Real, white-hot loathing. I thought he was weak, a coward, powerless. I thought he wasn't powerful enough to keep me safe and not brave enough to try anyway.

I've been over my hero-worshipping for a long time. Being so close to him allowed me to observe him, qualities and flaws stark in their unsettling intensity. I could see there was more than he let us know. I saw his eyes taking a faraway look, but there was no apprehension there, like when he thought of fighting Voldemort. Only bitterness.

He's a coward when it comes to certain things. The Cho fiasco springs to mind as the obvious example, but other, more subtle occasions also lurk around. I know now that he wasn't a coward when it came to leaving me.

I had to fight my heart desperately to find some peace, if not acceptance. But the deeper I dug, the more layers of love for Harry I found.

It took me two weeks of painful soulsearching to find myself again. I formed myself around others, so the pure layer was the last one. It was my need for vengeance. Tom Riddle crushed me when I was too weak to fight him. I was weak no more.

Having been left because of him, having been hurt yet again, shaken to my core and nearly broken, I had nothing left to do but fight back. And fight back I shall.

I spent the rest of the summer looking for curses and hexes, and practising them until I was sweaty and my eyes were shiny and I was so flushed that my mother looked at me strangely. Harry was in the house, after all. It wasn't hard to think wrong under the circumstances. But Harry was always with Ron, so she finally gave up trying to find out what was going on with an indignant huff.

I pulled out everything I had from others in my heart. I cleansed myself, and I can finally recognise the girl I would've become had it not been for Tom Riddle, or Harry. I'm fond of my newfound self. Who would've suspected I was this witty and sarcastic on my own? Who would've thought it wasn't Tom or my brothers rubbing off on me?

Somewhere on the way, during this long, tense, sultry summer, I hexed them all out of me. I love my family. I hate Voldemort. I'm fond of those who fought at the Ministry with me at the end of fourth year. I love Harry Potter.

But I'm not in love with him anymore. Not really.