Song for this chapter: Use Your Words by Owen

HPOV

After the battle ended and the wounded had been tended those of us who still lived worked to put our world back together. Harry, Ron, and I helped with the repairs needed at the castle. We took up residence in the vacant rooms in Hogsmeade and it was strange to see the village look exactly the same when the school was hardly still in existence. One evening, when our work was nearly done, and I was closeted away in my rooms for a bit of much needed alone time I decided it was time to at least partially unpack my beaded bag for the first time since the group went on the run. I stacked everything in neat piles and I was surprised to find a stack of journals tied together with a note on top. I recognized the handwriting and I realized that Bianca had left something behind for me.

Dear Hermione,

If things have gone as they were supposed to you are likely in an emotional point of your life while reading this letter. Of course I've hidden this amongst your things so there is a chance you will read this before the end. I hope that isn't the case because things would be much harder for you then. You are a dear friend to me and I wish that you would not suffer at all, but I cannot make that so.

That being said I have given you this letter because I will die soon. I am certain of that, so I am entrusting my life story to your hands. That probably sounds a bit self-involved, but I believe once you have red my journals you will understand why I have done this. I think maybe you will be the only one left who could really understand why this story must be told. Harry would love me too much to want to share my mistakes and after he reads it all Ron will hate me too much to want anything to do with it. I would understand if you hate me as well because of how dishonest I have been with you, but I believe even then you will see the bigger picture.

So I am asking you to take what I have written and have it composed into a book. I am sorry that I don't have the courage to tell you the full truth in person but it is all there for you to read. I really am sorry that I couldn't trust you the way you have trusted me. It is my deepest regret. So as emotionally manipulative as it is I have a dying wish to ask of you. Please fill the final journal with how the story ends. Please make sure that this story is shared with the world. I want people to have access to it on the off chance that someone ends up in the same position I found myself in. I would not want their search for the truth be as hard as mine was.

I hope you know, even now after everything we've been through, how much I love you. We've gone through a lot, but in the end we have been friends for a very long time and it is without regret or trepidation that I will lay down my life so you might keep yours. I hope you and Ron will have the brilliant future I imagine for the two of you as I am writing this.

With all that I have to offer,

Bianca

P.S. I hope you will be able to forgive me for turning my wand on Harry. I can't know if he will survive it, but I do know that he will surely perish if it is Voldemort to cast the curse and seal the prophecy. It will truly be the worst thing I have ever done and as such I would understand if you do not forgive me.

I cried just reading the first few lines. I could hardly hold the letter still in my hands thinking of how she had penned this letter to me expecting her death to come swiftly. How had none of us noticed the change in her? She had been wrapped in so many secrets. How had she lived beside us all year when she already knew she must end the life of her brother? I had thought that I had known her so well but after everything that had happened I was beginning to realize I hadn't known her at all.

I wasn't given the chance to digest her letter properly before an owl was tapping at my window. I went to let him in and he presented me with a thick envelope that I was shocked to see had my name written on it in Bianca's handwriting. I took the letter with shaking hands and the owl flew away without further ado. I torn the letter open quickly.

Hermione,

No I am not alive. Sorry. I paid this owl handsomely to wait until the war was over and you were safe and alone to deliver this letter. Included is the description of what happened when I split paths with you at Shell Cottage. If you chose to follow through with my wish and pen the book this might be something you want to include. Then again perhaps not. Not having even used it yet I wonder if anyone should know about it. I wish I could ask you if this all makes me the villain after all.

Beyond that were several pages describing how she learned of the magic she had come to use in the final battle as well as a brief summary of her memories of all of her other lives. I understood from both of her letters that I was about to get to know her very well. I stared at the stack of journals knowing that the last one would be blank but I worried about the others. Those journals were full to the brim with her brutally honest retelling of her life. He first request was simple, to read what she had written. To know and understand who and what she was. I could do that. I needed to do it if I was going to have any sense of closure.

Her second request was more difficult. She wanted me to fill the blank journal with how it all ended. Could I put that all down on paper? Just thinking about the sight of the flames, the smell of burning flesh, the cries of everyone that was dying… it was torture. Would I be able to stand remembering it long enough to pen even an outline of those last few minutes of her life? I wasn't sure I could.

Her third request confused me a bit. She wanted it all published? Why? Bianca had always been such a private person, why would she change that now? Why would she put that all out there for the world to see? I took her words on faith and believe that I would understand it after I had read the journals. She wrote her love for me into the letter and I thought it might actually destroy me. The sobs it drew from my chest threatened to be deadly. I would never hear her say that again. I couldn't tell her that I loved her. I couldn't tell her how grateful I was that she had graciously stepped aside for my pursuit of Ron. Even the simple kiss we shared before the final battle had been like a moment of heaven and I would always be thankful that she hadn't kept that from me.

I had to stop myself from thinking about Ron at a time like this though. If I was going to focus on reading these journals and getting the end of her story written I could not be daydreaming about the boy who was busy with funeral arrangements at the moment anyway. So I took the first journal from the stack and cracked it open. I was surprised by how rushed Bianca's normally neat and even print looked. It wasn't so messy as to keep it from being legible, but it was not her usual handwriting. It looked as if she was in a race to finish them all before something; perhaps her death.

I started to read and I almost immediately discovered the explanation, however hard to believe, for the incredible magic I had seen Bianca perform at the end of the battle. She wasn't human, not really. Suddenly her disappearances made a bit more sense as I read about her travels via the same flames she had destroyed the Death Eaters with.

I quickly devoured the journals in font of me. Night fell around me but I did not stop reading. I let my wand and continued to learn. I came to understand the secrets she had kept and the lies she had been forced to tell in order to do so. I kept reading well past the breaking of dawn, desperate to know the whole story before I rested.

My mind froze on the very last line she had written. Will I turn out to be more evil than him? The handwriting was sloppy and I could practically see her hand shaking in my minds eye. Had she been? I didn't think so, but how would history remember her for killing so many people in the final battle? Would the people who heard the story in the future care that she had done it for the greater good?

I wanted to understand why she was gone even more when I set the last journal on the floor. She was a phoenix, so why hadn't she risen from the ashes? Had it been the alterations made to her heart by the muggle doctors that did it? Was it the limitations created by her becoming human that made her unable to regenerate? Was it possible that she simply didn't want to? Harry had said that when he appeared in Limbo he was presented with the choice to live or to die. Had Bianca been given the same choice? I could believe that she would choose death if she had been given the choice. Her life had seen far too much pain. Surely she had been done.

As all of her secrets floated through my mind I understood why Bianca had left this task to me. I understood the importance of sharing her story. It was something the magical community needed to know about, but more than that the knowledge needed to be available if someone like Bianca was born again. Her search had been arduous and confusing and I would want to spare anyone else the same ache.

The task could not be left to Harry or Ron though. Harry was still so lost in mourning her that I doubted even letting him read the journals was a good idea at the moment. He loved her dearly and his loyalty ran so deep that he would want to bury these books. He would want to preserve her the indignity of people knowing some of the things she had done, but that wasn't what Bianca would have wanted. Nothing demonstrated the characteristics of the phoenix in human form better than some of the choices she had made in her life. She had told lies, committed crimes, and taken lives, but that was not the end all be all of Bianca Potter.

Ron would be terribly upset. I didn't believe Bianca's statement that he would hate her, but I did believe that he would struggle. She had lied to him and he would be hurt because of that. More than anything though I think he would struggle with her origins. Would he think it bestiality that he had lain with her? I hoped not, but his temper ran so hot sometimes that I wouldn't put it past him to feel that way at first. I loved the man, but he did have a flash fire anger at times. Would he destroy the books if he knew of them?

She would have been forced to leave it to me because I would and did understand. The story needed to be known both the good and the bad of it had to be shared with the world. Everyone needed to know the whole story to understand how we came to be a community who was freed from war but with nearly half of us gone with only heirloom of a black patch of ground before the Hogwarts entrance that could not be restored.

The overall point other than explaining that the conversion from bird to human could really happen was to make sure that people understood that the characteristic of the phoenix came with it. The truest traits were blindingly clear in every choice Bianca made and people needed to understand.

The fierce, almost blind, loyalty to those they loved came with it. The compulsion to punish the wicked came as well. With proper training some of the abilities of the bird came through, but maybe learning to use them was not the best choice a person could make. I think if I had the chance to ask Bianca she would agree that she would have liked to forget how to control flames in such a harmful way. I think with what a big heart she had in her human life she would have felt incredibly guilty over what she had done even if her phoenix nature told her it was the right thing to do. Perhaps that right there was why she hadn't regenerated.

So with the weight of such an immense story on my shoulders I took the blank journal in hand. I twirled my quill around between my fingers while I tried to find the best way to write this. My heart hurt to think of those minutes that I wanted to burry away but I did it in honor of her memory.

I detailed her departure from our group and how this was clearly the time in which she learned to use the flame powers she would use in the final battle. I wrote about how she had killed Harry and yet somehow he did not die. I spelled out the exact color and temperature of the flames she threw that immediately scorched the two grown men. My hand shook but I even managed to describe the many colors held in the flame cage she wove around the Death Eaters. I was sobbing again by the time I finished but I told the story of how she had brought death to them all. I finished with the explanation of her final moments and how her body had not been reduced to ash when she burned. She fell just like the others, but it was a black corpse that remained rather than a pile of ash. She did not regenerate like a phoenix should.

When it was done I felt like there was still much left to be said but I didn't know how to say it. Perhaps I was just lost emotionally and that created the need I felt rather than a lacking in the story. I didn't want to change anything Bianca had written so I set out to write the forward instead. My quill began to scratch across the paper for a moment and I stared at the words I had written.

Charles Dickens once wrote: It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever know. I imagine this was written specifically for Bianca Potter.

It wasn't a bad line. If it were an opening for a school paper I would expect high marks, but it felt wrong. I scratched it out and stared at the stack of journals, trying to find the right words to being the story of Bianca Potter's life. My mind drifted to her face, stained with tears and straining with indescribable pain, as she fought to maintain the cage of fire. The words wrote themselves then. They were the perfect words because she had said them herself.

Love is like a kind of fire, but where it is going to warm your heart, or burn you house down, you can never tell. No one better understood those words than Bianca Potter.

From there the forward simply flowed out of me. I stared at the stack of journals and I knew when they were condensed down into print they would be in one book with a somewhat clinical nature as the handwriting was diminished to sterile font. I decided that I would let the boys read the journals in their original form before I went into Flourish and Blots and spoke to them about publishing. Bianca was certain to be awarded an Order of Merlin and I would speak to Harry about using the stipend that came with that to pay for any publishing fees that might exist. If he chose to deny that in an effort to keep this story secret then I would take on the fees myself. I hoped that in the end he would not do something so childish. It had been incredibly enlightening to know the whole story, and to understand the rare magic that had taken place for such a thing to happen. It was only right that other people be given the same chance.

Fin

A/n: I debated whether or not I would include this authors note at the end or not, but ultimately I think it necessary. I have received several reviews (mostly from guests so I can't write back to them about this in a more personal nature) about the psychology behind Bianca. I am being more fair to call it that. In reality they were railing against me for writing a character they felt to be untrue. I must tell you here and make it very clear, Bianca Potter is a broken character and that is EXACTLY as she was intended to be. She is a character that was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused as a child, so of course that effected her later in life. She waited many years to get any sort of help for that so OF COURSE she made choices that you wouldn't make.

I believe however that many readers on here are shaded by the stories they have already written. They have accepted a headcannon as it were of what it means to be victimized. They have decided that all women (or men) that have something like this happen will react in the same way. First of all, every single person is different. There experience is different and so is how they deal with it. I am most frustrated by this lack of understanding when someone tries to tell me that someone who has been raped would never get intimate with someone else quickly. Do your research. Someone who has been raped is just as likely to refrain from sex altogether as they are to start having sex all the time. It just depends on the makeup of that person and how the experience effected them. So please, please, stop sending me reviews meant to teach me that I know nothing about how a rape victim thinks. Honestly you couldn't be farther from the truth.

But even taking sexuality out of it, there has been much disagreement over Bianca's choices. Again I point to the fact that broken characters make broken choices. You don't have to agree with the choices but it is unfair and uneducated to tell me that she would not have made those choices.

That is all. Thank you for reading (yes even those who left rude reviews). I had a wonderful time creating this story and I hope you had a wonderful time reading it.