(A/N) This was partially inspired by the PostSecret project, a website that puts up secrets sent in on postcards.

Burned Letters

Dear Harry,

You're gone, and we're gone, and I'm relieved. Now we can go back to normal life again.

Why did you have to live, and my sister have to die? Why did you have to be like her? It would all have been better if you'd been normal. Magic killed her. My little sister died because of your freakish, abnormal world. Wands and spells and magic, it's all like cancer. She was doomed from the moment she met that horrible Snape boy.

And now you're going to die too.

If you had just been normal, it would have been better.

Aunt Petunia

Dear Harry,

I'm sorry you're gone. You turned out all right. Don't get killed.

Dudley

Dear Harry

I'm really mad at you.

You took off and left me here in the middle of all this madness, and I didn't know where you were, and Mum was no help because she was so worried about everyone else.

Now I'm scared, and you're missing, and we never even had a dance.

Ginny

Dear Hermione

Don't hate me. Please don't hate me. I'm just so tired of all this. I want to know what we're doing, where we're going, and none of us have a clue, especially Harry. Isn't he supposed to be The One? Isn't he supposed to know things? Where's that connection to You-Know-Who now?

I almost wrote the name, but at the last minute I got a bit of cowardice and stopped myself.

Maybe I'll go home. At least it's a destination. And there, I can do something. Mum can't stop me; I'm of age. Ginny needs someone around for moral support, right? All her brothers are off being heroes. She needs one of us around.

Who am I kidding? This is Ginny we're talking about. She's fine without me. She's probably better off without me.

That's what I'm afraid of, that you two are better off without me. Like, without me around you'll suddenly jump up out of that ratty armchair in the living room with a perfect idea, the best idea in the world and You-Know-Who will be pushing up daisies in a week. What've I done lately, but sit around and be nasty? Even to you. Especially to you, for not seeing that I wanted you to tell me off like you always do.

I'm sorry. I don't even know the half of what I'm sorry for, but I'm sorry.

Ron

Dear Ron

I wish I could hate you for taking off. I wish I didn't understand.

I wish I could leave too.

Harry

Dear Ron,

I'm not talking to you.

Hermione

Dear Harry,

Why can't you be the perfect leader? Why can't you know exactly what you're doing so I know what I'm doing? Seems like my whole life has revolved around someone else. My parents, my brothers, you, always someone else who knew what they were doing or where they were going and could take me along.

I'm on my own now, and I don't know what I'm doing.

Is this what you feel like? Except for you it's worse, because Hermione and I are both looking at you, expecting things?

I wonder if my parents feel like this sometimes.

I wonder if everybody feels like this sometimes.

Is this being a grown-up? Well, it blows. Grown-ups are supposed to know it all. They're supposed to have everything under control. If they don't, why do they act like they do?

Maybe it's because kids need them to.

Ron

Dear Ron,

How could you? How could you leave us like that? You've always valued loyalty above everything and now you just take off? Have you been Imperiused or something? Because if you haven't then you're not the person I thought you were, ever, and all this crying I've been doing is pointless, completely pointless.

I hate myself for picking at my breakfast (not that it's much) and for not being able to sleep and for waking up in the morning on a soggy pillow and for occasionally stopping and staring into space so long that Harry has to come over and poke me before I stop thinking of you, and then he has to lend me his handkerchief. He says he's given it to me so often lately I might as well keep it. Although I don't mind telling you it needs washing.

I'm not doing this anymore. I'm so tired of hurting about you.

Hermione

Dear Tom,

I'm not really sure I can do this without Dumbledore. Or Ron. I'm not sure I can do this, full stop.

Can you be beaten? Or have you become so evil that you're like the Ultimate Terror or something and you'll just go on growing, like an Engorging Charm gone wrong?

What ever made me think I could do this?

Harry

Dear Mrs. Weasley,

I had a dream last night about you and my mum. You were sitting in the kitchen at the Burrow, drinking tea and eating biscuits and talking. Nothing about the war, or Voldemort. Not about anything serious, but just . . . things. You said you fed me up just as much as you could, and Mum said not to fuss because Dad was the same way--thin as a rail even though he ate everything in sight.

Then she said she was that glad I'd got together with Ginny, and how you'd raised such a nice girl. Even in the dream I thought, huh, she'd never say that if she knew how Ginny could kiss. You said it was a challenge, and that after six boys you thought you knew what you were doing, but Ginny was sixteen straight years of total shocks. You both started laughing and telling stories about what you got up to when you were girls.

I know it could never happen. But I wish it could have.

Harry

Dear Harry

I'm a prat. I'm a git. I'm a moron. I'm a bloody fool.

I'm coming back.

Ron

P.S. That's if I can figure out how.

Dear Hermione and Harry,

WHERE ARE YOU??

Ron

Dear Hermione

I'm writing this looking across the room at you buried in one of your books. If you could only see the letters I wrote to you when I wasn't here. Actually, better not. You'd only start punching me again.

I s'pose I wanted you to fling yourself into my arms and kiss me welcome-back. There was also a faint hope of a bit more than snogging. Chocolate syrup was involved. Not whipped cream though. I'm not greedy. We could try whipped cream next time.

How can there be a next time when there hasn't been a this time? I wonder what you'd do if I just went over there and picked you up. (Not that I could. I'd break my back. But as this is a fantasy I'm allowed to be as fit as I like.) Anyway, picking you up, taking you outside and then finding a really nice cushy bit of moss or something.

I probably wouldn't find my bollocks until my eightieth birthday.

You'll never believe how much I missed you.

Ron

Dear Ron

Oooooooh, I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, and I want to crawl into your lap and kiss you so hard we'd have to look for your tonsils afterward.

You'll never believe how much I missed you.

You idiot.

Hermione

Dear Tom,

I'm coming for you. I don't know what'll happen when I get there, but I'm on my way.

Harry

Dear Dobby,

Why did you do it? Why did you come into such danger just for me?

Your life is yours, and you gave it up. It makes me so angry. Why was it even worth it? Why is anything worth it when someone who suffered so much already can die just like that?

Harry

Dear Harry Potter,

Dobby gave up his life because it was Dobby's to give.

Dobby

Dear Harry, Ron, and Hermione,

Would it kill you to help out sometime? Mon Dieu, this is a house, not an inn!

Fleur

Dear Harry,

I hate you. I hate you, I hate you. Saint Damned Potter, even saves the life of Death Eaters and old school nemeses. How do you walk around with that halo all the time? I hope you strangle on it someday.

I could have saved myself. I didn't need you.

Draco

Dear Fred,

As long as I live I'll remember that you were proud of me at the end.

Percy

Dear Mum and Dad,

Gran's finally proud of me. Does that mean you are too?

Neville

Dear Neville,

You got the sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat. You killed Voldemort's snake, and look at that, you just wrote the name, even. If this doesn't prove you're a worthy Gryffindor, than bloody hell, I don't know what does.

Neville

PS And of course your parents are proud of you, idiot.

Dear Harry,

I've lost everyone to this war. My husband, my daughter, the son-in-law that I was just getting to know.

My sisters were long gone, but knowing Bella is dead is like a cut straight through an old wound long since scarred over, and you'll never believe how much it hurts to lose someone you love no matter what, because she is still your little sister.

All I have now is my grandson, and I want to blame you. I really, really do. I want to say that if you had been different, or if you'd finished off Voldemort earlier, I would still have my family, and Teddy would have someone more than a broken-down old woman to be his family.

I want to say it, but I just can't. They were proud that they could give up their lives to this war, and somewhere deep inside, I am too.

Andromeda Tonks

Dear Fred,

Today is a year exactly since you died, and even though we don't say it, we all spent the day thinking about the things you missed. The parties that you would have de-dulled, the laughs we didn't laugh, the explosions we didn't hear, the dancing we didn't back away from, the Wheezes only you could have thought of.

You would think it would stop hurting by now. But it hasn't. It never will. We'll have these days for the rest of our lives, marking more time since we lost you.

We love you.

Dad, Mum, Bill, Charlie, Percy, George, Ron, and Ginny

Dear Hermione,

How did you know about the chocolate syrup?

God, I love you. How many days now?

Ron

Dear Fred,

Six pounds five ounces, seventeen inches long. 3:27 this afternoon. He's got ten fingers and ten toes and he's as bald as a potato. Morgan swears he's beautiful. I'm not so sure but I don't care because I swear he looked at me and laughed.

When Mum held him, she cried, and when I told her what his name was, she cried harder.

I still miss you.

George

Dear Mum and Dad,

I don't care how often Gran says you gave up your lives for me. I'd rather have you here.

Most days I don't think about it, really. But then there are some days I'm angry and some days I'm proud and some days when I just miss you, except how can you miss what was never there?

I'm not the only kid whose mum and dad are just pictures in an album. Uncle Harry's that way too. But he says just because I'm not the only one doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

Teddy

P.S. Mum, did you ever make the mistake of giving yourself a duck nose when you had a cold? Not fun.

Dear Dad,

I've been really tired of being your son lately. You're all over this school, seriously. You've got awards piled up like cordwood in the trophy case, and Madam Hooch keeps asking me if I'm going to try out for Quidditch, which isn't fun, as she's half-deaf and I always have to yell that no, I'm not. She'd definitely stop pestering if she ever saw me fall off a broom.

There's a plaque on the wall in the Great Hall where you killed Voldemort, and a picture of Dumbledore's Army in the front entry, and the Tri-wizard trophy in the trophy case. We even went down into the Chamber of Secrets in Defense Against the Dark Arts yesterday so we could see the basilisk bones. It never ends. Some days I just wish

. . .

I just got the letter you sent, the one where you said it was all right to be homesick and you most definitely were not going to tell Al or Lily, and plus you were enclosing some of Mum's biscuits. I'm ripping this letter up and writing you a better one.

Maybe I'm tired of being your son, but I'm glad you're my dad.

James

Dear Tom,

I like the world without you.

Harry

FINIS