As part of the Ministry of Magic's two year initiative, in conjunction with the Hogwarts Historical Society set up by Headmaster Granger, to document the Second Voldemort War, I had been asked to collect what personal papers and recollections I could from those who had lived through those times, whatever would be of historical interest. This work, now public, was necessary, and certainly valuable, but seemed to lack something essential. As I was engaged in compiling this part of the history, in conversation with some of the principle characters, most of whom, as you must know, I am more than acquaintanced with, my part in Dumbledore's Army being described in all the standard histories, a more personal project began to develop in my mind.
The sail I constructed over the ten years of my self-imposed exile, which has now found a permanent home in the gallery of the Memory Section of the Department of Mysteries, is one element of that personal project. What is contained in these pages is another.
It's a personal quest, in a way, to somehow validate, for myself and my comrades, what was lost. Loss is a theme that recurs in these personal writings. Where the sail is composed of loss, however, these writings speak to what remains, even as they fathom the darkness.
Contributors to this archive have all agreed to limited public release of this material, though, in some cases, names have been obscured, or removed altogether from the writings.
For those who come after, this archive is a most personal and, we believe, essential resource for understanding that other part of the Second Voldemort War, which still resides inside us like a testiment of void, from which there arises, we hope, hope, all the more powerful because, for the longest time, it has seemed impossible.
Parvati Patil
I am writing to you from a great distance, farther than the stars, though I see you now, in my mind, as I did then, when curses that flew wild had died and the ragged voices that cracked along their trajectories like frozen lightning had fallen silent.
There was always something lacking then, in the daily chaos our lives became. Not like here, where everything is substantial. The city haze, the sidewalks, the noise - all substantial, all lined up, in an order born of weight alone.
Then, we were tossed about in our lives like cushions in dormitory horseplay. Even an Avada Kedavra wouldn't have slowed us down.
The grid that surrounds this survival tightens when I try to do anything at all. I'm like a trickle of water across searing concrete.
When I last saw you, magic no longer meant anything. (I wonder sometimes now if it ever did mean a thing.) You were standing half in the shadow of the Forbidden Forest, and though you were not moving, you gave the distinct impression you were looking for something you'd lost.
Of course, I guessed what it was, even if, at the time, I had no words for it. Now, everything I say or think seems to come from that place.
I need to ask you, did you ever find what was lost? It just seems important to me now.
What I remember of my life, I must admit, at times seems to revolve around that moment when I understood, and knew you understood too, that reaching the farthest circumference had turned us around from our intentions, and left us no way back to the centre. It has always been with me, I now realize, that memory, that dark fold of time, watching you in sunlight and shadow. Yet, it has been an uninvestigated longing. Today, in the city haze and concrete and noise, the pull of that moment feels irresistable.
How do I speak to you? Are you so far into whatever life you have entered that it would be ugly and boring and stupid and useless to even recollect that moment? Will you say to me, "but that was so long ago..."
Everything that's left now has to be enough for us, who have made it here. And what that moment was, that is a part of the everything that's left. Isn't it? It draws me more powerfully even than the veil, behind which we heard the voices, when we were young, before the world became this city haze and concrete and noise, before it was drained of passion.
Some have told me it is only in us that the wildest passions are truant. I think I understand that now.
There was a slight breeze. You were half in sunlight. The leaves were trembling. How can the forest be so dark in the middle of the day? Yet there it was, a black backdrop in which half of you seemed to have dissolved. A mere 20 steps between us. I felt panic. I don't know why. Things seemed so fragile then, the days following Voldemort's downfall, an inopportune time for the merest of things. Everything was supposed to be alright, yet everything felt all wrong.
20 steps. I count them down in my mind, sometimes, until I reach you. Then a memory of your smell, I don't know where it came from, one of our actions together, comes to me, and a horrified clench stops me in my tracks.
But listen, I am not broken. Not entirely.
I remember you standing in light and dark, your eyes closed, looking for something.
I am writing to you from a great distance, farther than the stars...