For teh tarik's Epistolary Fic Challenge on HPFF

DISCLAIMERS: I did not create the card game, Bullshit. The story submission where two Muggle prisoners fight and one is murdered because of a pencil in his neck is heavily inspired by the novel, Made: A Sempre Novel by J.M Darhower, in which Vito Moretti is murdered in prison in this way. You should read the book. It's great.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Before we go on, I would just like to say that I am not an expert in how wards like the one in the story are like in real life which would usually make me stay far far away from the fic but I think that it helps the story? It always seemed like the wizarding world weren't really advanced when it came to mental illnesses or anything in a similar realm so they'd probably be as lost as I am. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Also, this is largely an experimental one shot so just bear that in mind. It does have bits of conversation, but they're included in the diary entries, if you get what I mean. If you have any concrit, please let me know in the review box below. If you don't, leave a comment anyway ;)

WARNING: Very sensitive topics explored, mainly suicide, and it is done in a rather blunt way since Lavender is really not in a good place. If this could trigger anything, please do not read. Hopefully, it doesn't seem trivialised, but still retains the same sort of tone.

09-05-98

I'm not writing in this for the reasons you might think I am. I'm not writing in it because they told me to or because it makes me feel better. I don't care about what they say and I don't feel better at all, if I'm honest, but I want to make sense of my thoughts and they said that they wouldn't read this. Even if I think their advice is shit, they're pretty honest people so I'm going to trust them on that. I hope that they don't ruin that.

I've kept a diary before. Third year to the end of sixth year. When I think about the sort of shit that I used to fill mine with, I kinda wanna laugh and cry at the same time. I used to be so innocent, thinking that boys and tea leaves were the answers to everything. It's kinda pathetic. But I wish it was still as simple as that. Just me, Parvati and whatever boys we were crushing on at the time. We used to sit in the dorm and giggle about them for ages as we made ourselves pretty and Hermione Granger sat behind her drapes as she made herself smarter. Countless afternoons like that replay in my mind, over and over again.

I remember there was this one time where Parvati was braiding my hair – I think it was a fishtail or maybe a Dutch braid, I can't really remember – and we were talking about wedding dresses because one of our favourite singers had just gotten married. Witch Weekly had covered the event down to every last detail for us to enjoy and it had sparked a new topic for us to think about: our futures. I remember this afternoon because it was the first time me and Parvati talked about what we'd like in our own weddings.

"It'll be big and beautiful," she said. "Bright colours, mehndi, belly dancers. The whole lot."

"You'll be beautiful," I told her. "Your husband will be one lucky man." After a small pause, I laughed, "He'll get two girls for the price of one! I'll be around so much, it'll be like he's married me too!"

Parvati also laughed, that real, genuine one she had where she snorted first, the one she didn't really use around other people. "And if he has a problem with that, he can get out. You're my best friend. You came first and you'll stay till the end."

And the thing is, I did stay until the end.

But Parvati didn't.

13-05-98

I know that people thought we were stupid. Me and Parvati, I mean. We were the ditzy ones that stayed with Professor Trelawney and giggled about boys and did all the quizzes in Witch Weekly. To them, we were the annoying ones.

I feel sorry for all of those people.

Because they never got to know Parvati. They never knew how she snorted when she actually laughed, how her favourite colour was actually periwinkle blue and not hot pink or how she had a beauty mark on the soft edge of her jaw. They didn't know that she felt inadequate because Padma was the smart twin or that she was scared she wasn't a perfect Gryffindor or how she was only obsessed with the One because her Mum married the wrong man. They didn't know that she felt just as strongly as Hermione Granger about the injustices to Muggleborns. They didn't know anything about her.

That's what pissed me off about her funeral. There were too many people that had died that day when the war ended so the funerals were quick - unfeeling - because there were so many in one day and Harry Potter had to attend every single one of them. And when it came to the eulogy, no one wanted me to speak so they had her sister speak instead, her sister who hadn't even been that close to Parvati ever since she became a Ravenclaw and too fucking smart to talk to her and Padma went on and on about how Parvati was always brave and never afraid to get her hands dirty to be so. And then Harry fucking Potter came on and mumbled a few words about how Parvati had been a good girl and that she'd been kind enough to be his date to the Yule Ball when no one else would be and how it was such a loss to the wizarding world that she'd died.

But the thing was Parvati hated getting her hands dirty. She fucking hated it. And she wasn't always brave. She was terrified half the time; we both were. We fought because it was the right thing to do, not because we wanted to be brave.

They should've talked about her tendency to sing to birds like she was a princess out of a fairytale, of how she liked to dance around in her underwear and had small, slender hands that played the piano as if she was a fucking goddess. They should've talked about how she was gentle and full of life, not about how she was someone's date once and how she liked to get her hands dirty when she didn't, when that sort of shit was irrelevant.

When I think about that sort of thing, I get so fucking angry that I want to hit something and I think it shows on my face – or whatever's left of it, anyway – because the Healers look at me all alarmed and gently put their hands on my upper arm and ask me if I'm okay.

What a dumb question.

Are you okay, Lavender? I mean, your best friend just died and your face is disfigured – which is the reason why her dad wouldn't let you speak at her funeral, by the way – and everything in your life has gone fucking wrong, but are you okay?

Of course, I'm not fucking okay.

But I don't tell them that. I don't tell them anything. Why should I? Who are they to me? They don't care about me. They don't care about Parvati. They just care about their Galleons. That's the only reason why they're here. It doesn't matter to them whether I'm okay or not. They just wanna do their job and then go home to their cushy lives. They make notes on their little notepads and nod understandingly and put on that stupid baby voice to make me "come out of my shell" for the sake of it. But I'm not saying a damn word.

That's why I write here. Because I still need to get my words out, put them somewhere in the world, and they sure as hell aren't going to them.

03-06-98

It's been one month and a day since Parvati died. Since I died. Because I did die back there in Hogwarts in the final battle when Fenrir Greyback pinned me to the ground and tore into me and I turned my head to see that Parvati was a few metres away from me, lying there with her neck snapped.

I tried to die 'officially' yesterday.

I used to like that section of Witch Weekly where people would send in short stories for everyone to read back when things were okay. Most of them were romances with dreamy guys and cute girls and fluffy scenes that made you feel all mushy inside, but there was this one that Parvati and I took the piss out of back in fourth year since it was so different and it seemed so stupid. It was about a Muggle prison where two criminals got into a fight and one of them died by being stabbed in the neck by a pencil. A pencil.

Do you see why I thought it was so stupid?

I only mention that because it's what inspired me yesterday since the Healers are careful not to leave us with anything that we can use against ourselves and there's nothing else I could get my hands on. Basically, yesterday was the day that my Muggleborn Healer came in. I know she's Muggleborn because she uses a pencil and no one else would ever use a pencil in St. Mungo's. She's also the one that likes to sit really close to me because she thinks it makes me feel close to her, makes me wanna open up because it shows that her focus is completely on me. It's a load of bullshit and it usually pisses me off, but yesterday I was happy about it because it meant that it'd be easier for me to grab the pencil. All I had to do was wait for an opening.

It came quicker than I expected. After about fifteen minutes of trying to coax me into a conversation, the Healer sighed and mentioned that she had some sweets in her bag and would I like to try some and when I nodded – my first response to her all day – she smiled in relief because she thought she was finally getting through to me and then she turned and I grabbed the pencil and stabbed it into my neck.

It didn't work. Apparently, I missed the main artery or something so they managed to fix me right up, but it now means that I'm on 24 hour watch and they're taking every caution with me. They've taken anything and everything that can even be considered as a weapon, charmed my bedsheets to stick to my bed unless I'm under them, watched me eat my past couple of meals, have upped my potions and informed me that a personal Healer will be with me more often now to listen to what I have to say.

They're here to help, they say, but I don't want them to help. I don't want them to listen. I've got this diary to listen to me and I just about managed to convince them to let me keep it after kicking and screaming for hours straight because they think it's the only thing that will keep me happy.

07-06-98

Parvati's mum came to visit me today. All she did was sit down at the foot of my bed and fold her patterned hands in her lap. We sat in silence for half an hour before she got up to leave.

"Thank you," she finally said.

For what? Getting her daughter killed?

She pulled out a small box from her robes – it was coloured periwinkle blue and had silver designs that curled in on themselves. She placed it in my hands and tried to smile at me.

"They're things I'd like you to keep," she said. "Things I think – Parvati would've liked you to keep."

Looking down at the box made me want to cry at the time. It makes me want to cry now, even though it's already been a good few hours and I've gone through the stuff that's inside. It reminds me so much of her, from the very shade of it to the shimmery patterns to its contents.

It doesn't contain stuff that's worth anything on the market aside from a charm bracelet. But it has a huge pile of the letters I sent to her in the summer after fifth year. It has a picture of us at the Yule Ball, smiling and laughing with the Beauxbaton boys that have their arms around us. It has the shells we found at the beach that one time we went. The stick of Blackpool rock we bought for memory's sake. Notes we wrote in class. A copy of her favourite Divination book along with her dream diary. Her favourite nail varnishes, a tube of her mehndi, a stick of incense. A sheet of her music.

Everything that made Parvati exists in that box.

It's like she's here with me.

15-06-98

The Healers tell me that I'm not eating enough. To be honest, I forget about food most of the time. It makes me think about other things like the feasts at Hogwarts and how Mum used to make the perfect cookie dough and the fact that I like my meat almost as bloody as I was when Fenrir Greyback tried to tear me to pieces. I don't really like thinking about things like that.

The Healers try to make me think about stuff I don't want to.

They say Lavender, I want you to know that you are very special to us. It might not seem like it now, but you are loved and wanted and worth something.

They say you're very lucky, Lavender, that you've managed to survive this long. So why don't you tell us why you don't want to?

They say we're here to help you, Lavender. We're here to listen to you. Remember that you're stronger than you think you are.

They say we can only help you if you cooperate Lavender. If you trust us, we can trust each other and we can start to introduce you to the world again at your own pace. This doesn't have to be the end.

And sometimes I think that I want to believe them. That I'd really, really like to believe them because I don't know what to do with all this weight on my shoulders, with all this heartbreak and hopelessness. I was never the kind of girl to be upset for too long, I was always laughing and running around and admiring how beautiful life was, but ever since the war, it feels like a light has been switched off and I can't see anything anymore. There's no beauty in the world, only a darkness so bleak that I can't see the light the Healers are so desperately trying to guide me to.

02-07-98

It's been two months since Parvati left me.

Yesterday, I was thinking about how it's also been a month since I tried to kill myself when I suddenly realised that it's been so long. I haven't had the chance to think of any other ways and have been getting distracted by trying to get the Healers off my back instead.

I can't believe it's been so long. Sometimes it seems like it's been less than a second, nothing more than a blink of time. Is that possible? For two months to feel like they've lasted both hundreds of years and mere seconds? To feel like each second is an eternity and eternity is a second. It makes me wonder about what time is and whether pain eventually gets easier to deal with or whether people just become heartless as life goes on.

If so, I think I'd like to be heartless.

06-07-98

Today the Muggleborn Healer came back. The last time she saw me, I was leaking blood from a hole in my neck and her pencil was red and slick in my left hand and we were both screaming. I think she still remembers the red - so much red for a room that's so white - because she flinched when she walked in and was careful to sit away from me for once, careful to let me breathe.

I guess if this was fourth year, fifth year, maybe even sixth year, I'd be feeling guilty and a little horrified since I wasn't the type of girl that wanted to take my life and I never thought I'd be here in St. Mungo's, not caring one bit that I tried to kill myself with a pencil in front of someone who was trying to help me. But I'm not fifteen, sixteen or seventeen and I do think about taking my life a lot and I'm not feeling guilty or horrified.

In fact, I think it's a good thing for the both of us that I tried to take my life because it means that I've eliminated one method and that the Healer finally stopped trying to treat me like a glass figurine.

She didn't ask me about myself in that sickeningly gentle voice. Instead, she talked about herself. She talked about how she woke up this morning to find that her fiancé was hogging the duvet like always and looked outside to see that it was raining for the third week in a row and found out that they were running out of apple juice and cheese and that their milk was bad so she quickly scribbled down a shopping list before she rushed to work.

She extracted it from the pocket of her robes to show me as she was speaking and I saw it was written on one of those funny Po Stick Notes that Hermione Granger liked. It was hot pink just like the polish on the Healer's nails and I stared at it for a long second because I haven't seen much colour other than the periwinkle blue of Parvati's box and I suddenly remembered how I used to love painting my nails, growing them out so that they were long and gorgeous and looked like a professional had done them and I kinda really wanted to do them again. I still do, now that I think about it, but there's no point anymore since they won't let me grow my nails out. They're always clipped, clinical, safe.

For the first time in what feels like forever, I regret that and not because it stops me from hurting myself but because it stops me from feeling good about myself. Having my nails done used to make me feel so pretty, like I could conquer the world, be at the top of it all on my golden throne with a little tiara on my head. Now, that dream has been destroyed along with my face and I'm nothing more than a nightmare in the shadows.

26-07-98

I've seen Mum and Dad quite a few times since the war ended. They make sure to visit me often, but they can't ever stay for long because neither of them can look me in the eye and I don't usually speak to them and Mum always ends up crying after a bit. She was the one I used to take after. As a woman in touch with her emotions and the latest styles, she used to be my role model, but lately she seems to have forgotten about that second part and put all of her efforts into the first. She's more concerned with crying than looking good; once upon a time, I would've tried to help her as much as I could, but nowadays I can't help but mentally replay the first moment she saw me and completely flinched in revulsion.

When they came today, I thought it would be a normal visit: long stretches of silence with some broken conversation and then inevitably the sobs and Mum running out of the room, Dad following her after a couple of minutes. I even prepared myself for it, sitting down on the edge of my bed with my hands folded in my lap, still wishing that I could paint my nails a brilliant pink. But this time, instead of letting Mum escape so she could cry her heart out, Dad just wrapped his arms around her and he whispered I know, I know in a broken voice that I barely recognised and when I looked up in surprise, he was crying too.

Here's a well-known fact about my dad: he doesn't cry. Dad thinks it isn't a manly thing to do and that, if you are going to bawl your eyes out, you'd best do it in private so that you can face people with your head held high. I've never seen him cry in my life, not even when the Ministry officially announced that You-Know-Who was back and we were at war again. So the fact that he was openly crying hit me in a way that Mum's tears never could.

And for the first time in nearly three months, I opened my mouth and spoke to my parents. I didn't say much, I just told them not to cry, but apparently it was enough because they stopped straight away and looked at me like they were blind men seeing the sun for the first time. For a moment, they didn't seem to see the scars and I think I might have finally tasted something other than bloody ashes in the back of my throat.

31-07-98

Parvati and I used to play this game when we were bored. It was actually how we became such good friends in first year since it was a really good icebreaker. It was basically true or false and we'd use it for both stupid things (Professor Binns looks like he's permanently constipated: true or false?) and serious things (When Daniel called you fat, it really hurt you, didn't it? True or false?). Sometimes, from third year onwards, we'd use Divination to help us out, either giggling about the ridiculously unrefined predictions we made or glowing over our achievements. It was yet another one of our things.

The night after Dumbledore died, we were lying in Parvati's bed, just staring at the ceiling in shock.

"Things have gone to hell now," she suddenly said, throwing the words into the heavy silence. "True or false?"

"True," I said, my voice hoarse from the tears I had shed. Voice cracking, I added, "You-Know-Who is winning. True or false?"

For a long moment, she didn't answer. And why would she? Without Dumbledore, the one person Voldemort was scared of, we had no one. Dumbledore had been everything. Now, we only had Harry Potter, a boy who was even younger than the two of us.

"Not if we fight back. With or without Dumbledore. As long as we fight back, he isn't winning."

Of course we were going to fight back. There was nothing else we could do. You-Know-Who wasn't the type of person - if you could even call him that - you could run away and hide from. He was everywhere. There was only one way to run and it was right at him. Even though we were probably going to die for it if even Dumbledore hadn't survived.

I think that was the last time we ever played our game which sort of frustrates me because I don't want what started off as a simple question (your name is Lavender Brown: true or false?) to have ended with an answer that should never have been delivered. It makes me feel as if You-Know-Who did win, not just by taking Parvati from me, but by tainting something that was so innocent.

We won the war: true or false?

True.

02-08-98

The Muggleborn Healer - Tracey, that's what she's called - asked me a question today. She spent a good chunk of the day in my room, keeping an eye on me since it's now five months to the day since Parvati died and took a chunk of me with her, and she eventually came to discussing the subject, probably encouraged by the fact that I now speak in sentences to her.

She asked me if I was in love with Parvati. My natural instinct was to say no, that anyone with a sane mind would mourn for their murdered best friend and that there was nothing more to it. But now that she's mentioned it, I can't stop thinking about whether I was in love with her, even if it was just a little. Stuff like that is too complicated to consider; my feelings for her are too tangled up to unknot. All I know is that she was my whole world while I was at Hogwarts, the one person that supported me every step of the way, even when I was obsessing over Ron Weasley and neglecting her as a friend and that I would do anything in the world to have her back. I know that I love her, but not so much about being in love with her.

So then she moved onto the next question, one I really should've seen coming. And it made me so angry that I'm pretty sure she flinched.

Would she want you to give up?

How fucking stupid. She can't want to do anything. She's dead and she's going to stay that way and if she wasn't, I probably wouldn't be in this position. We would have been recovering together, fighting our demons day after day as one. I would have someone to assure me that I'm still beautiful and would be able to look at my face as if it hasn't been butchered. Someone to give me a little faith in this world.

Tracey thinks differently. She thinks that even though Parvati isn't here with me physically, she's here with me in essence begging me to reach out beyond my grief and latch onto recovery. That if you truly love someone, you have to learn how to let them go. When I didn't say anything in response to that, she moved on and fired more questions.

Do you believe in God?

No.

Do you believe in destiny?

I did a long time ago.

What changed?

Everything.

06-08-98

The 'Social Hub' is fucking disgusting. St Mungo's have tried their hardest to make it seem bright and perky, throwing paint that doesn't match on the walls as if it'll make us come out of our shells. Apparently, it seems to work with a lot of the other patients because they seem to be really getting into the spirit of things, talking to each other over games of wizards chess and Gobstones like they're a great little community when really they're just a bunch of dysfunctional people that life doesn't like very much.

Everything is so loud. It sets me on edge since this is the noisiest place I've been in since May 2nd and part of me is terrified that I'll hear shrill screams over the broken laughter and the sound of bodies falling to the ground.

The Healers don't care. Tracey guided me out of my room with gentle reassurances that the Social Hub is a great place to be and that I'll fit right in. They seem to think that they've left me on my own for long enough and I need to be put in social situations to be fixed. Ha. The joke's on them. From my short time here, I can already see that you do whatever you want to pass time here as long as it doesn't threaten your safety: painting, board games. . . and sitting in a corner by yourself and writing.

Daft bastards.

13-08-98

They've made Tracey my official Healer now. I guess that the others must've seen how she managed to get through to me and word somehow got around to my parents because when they visit, they tell me very quietly all about how she's a nice girl with lots of compassion and talent and did I know that she's planning to have a winter wedding?

Tracey, my official Healer, led me to the Social Hub again, but this time she set me a task and said I had to talk to someone by the end of the day. I only did it because she promised to bring pink nail varnish on her next visit and said we wouldn't have to go to the Social Hub either and Godric knows I don't want to be around all of the other crazy people here.

I ended up choosing some girl in the corner, mostly because she was alone which meant that I wouldn't have to try and socialise with a big group. Her hair was dyed as silver as a sickle and she had a sharp face, almost a mean one, but I sat down next to her anyway and stared at her, waiting for her to acknowledge me and when she did, she didn't flinch. She just asked me what I wanted.

I told her Tracey, my official Healer, told me that I had to have a conversation with someone today so that I could get a reward and she asked me why I chose her and I told her the truth. Not much conversation happened beyond that for a good half an hour until the girl pulled out a pack of Muggle playing cards and asked me if I wanted to play Bullshit. I told her that I didn't know what that was so she explained the rules and we played it, but it didn't really work since there were only two of us and you can't play Bullshit with only two people.

At the end of the session, I went back to Tracey, my official Healer, and told her that I'd talked to silver-haired girl - Chloe, apparently - and she said that she knew since she'd seen it all and she was very proud of it. I don't really care what Tracey, my official Healer, thought; I'm just glad I'm not going there for a while.

27-08-98

Chloe, the silver haired girl, was in fourth year when I came to Hogwarts and turns twenty two in a few months and told me that she was in Ravenclaw, even though her parents were convinced that she was really stupid and true, she never got the best grades, but then she realised she was in Ravenclaw because she was creative and looked at the world in a different way. She told me that she likes to look past the surface of things, loves things with a deeper meaning like the art of Picasso and the literature of Shakespeare, famous people I've never even heard of, which is why she doesn't flinch whenever she sees my face because apparently, she doesn't think it's very important anyway.

I think it's all bullshit, but I don't really say anything because Tracey, my official Healer, really likes the fact that I talk to Chloe and play Muggle card games with her since it's a sign that I'm growing or healing or whatever. On some level, though, I do like staying with her because she's really quiet compared to the animals that surround us with their chit chat and their laughter and socialising with Chloe doesn't really feel like socialising since we're just sitting there with a bunch of cards.

It makes me feel almost normal since I don't have Mum trying to hold back tears even after all this time or Dad looking as formidable as a mountain or Tracey, my official Healer, looking after me carefully, as if I'm about to hunt down the nearest pencil and jam it into my neck. I don't even have the embroidered periwinkle blue box in the corner of my room because, even though it comforts me, it also reminds me that Parvati is gone, gone, gone along with my beauty and my laughter and my heart.

Chloe is like a calm breath of fresh air. Understated and necessary, but something I'm not going to admit I need.

Sometimes, she seems so normal that I don't know why she's here. I mean, she's weird and she really likes Muggle things for someone that only has one Muggle grandparent and she looks at everything in a different perspective, but that doesn't mean she needs to be locked up with the rest of us, deemed too unstable to rejoin society as we relive our nightmares, screaming ourselves hoarse, and they see the light of a new dawn.

I told her that today. That she was normal, I mean, and that I don't know why she's here.

"They murdered my big sister. Right in front of me. One of the Death Eaters, he - he was in my year and he'd fancied me ever since seventh year, but I don't really - I don't swing that way - so I said no to him for ages and ages and he hated it. So when they found out that my brother-in-law had ties to Dumbledore, they killed him after work. And then that - that boy - that monster gave my address and he made me watch my sister bleed to death on my bedroom floor.

"I'm just as bad as you are, Lavender. I might seem like I don't have a care in the world, but trust me when I say that I do. That I hurt. That I deserve this fucking robe just as much as you do. But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up because I'm not, b-because my sister didn't die just so I could follow her into the grave. Because if I die, I am giving that bastard exactly what he wanted and no way in hell is any Death Eater going to have the pleasure of seeing me buried six foot under.

"We owe it to them, to everyone who died whether they died fighting or just because they weren't important. We have to keep going. It doesn't matter how hard it is or whether it seems like there's not going to be any end to this - this pain. We're not going to let the Death Eaters win. We're not going to let Voldemort win. There's always time for a new beginning."

01-09-98

Seven years ago, I met Parvati Patil. I can remember her silky black hair, her big mischevious eyes and the beautiful spirals of mehndi on her brown skin. I can remember thinking she was pretty, not knowing that she was going to be my best friend and my other half, not knowing that I would love her, not knowing that I would lose her to a war.

We were so young and innocent. We talked about boys and dresses and dates and our dreams coming true. We imagined being famous and seeing our faces in issues of Witch Weekly and giggling over the gushing comments about us. We imagined living side by side in Hogsmeade, our kids growing up together and playing in the garden and then two of them conveniently falling in love and marrying. We imagined growing old with our husbands by our side, best friends for life.

I remember the day we first discussed this in third year. It was summer and the birds were singing and students were laughing on the grounds and we were sitting on the grass, making daisy chains. I remember the sunlight dancing on her hair, I remember her loud sneeze when she breathed in too much dust and how I collapsed in a fit of giggles. I remember feeling safe, even though Sirius Black had been a threat for the past year.

"No, it'll be amazing," she insisted over my giggles. "I'll have a son called Aaryan and you can have a girl a year later-"

"- Esme, her name will be Esme-"

"- called Esme and they'll grow up and they'll fall in love and then we'll really be family! You'll see, Lav, it'll all work out. I've foreseen it."

"Oh come off it! No, you haven't."

"Well, I'll see it one day! And then I'll wave it in your face."

I remember flopping down onto the grass and hearing her follow and our quiet breaths in the air as we contemplated this future, so right and so far and so attainable, and then voiced a quiet question in the back of my head, so dark I wanted to destroy it, but the thought spilled out of my lips anyway.

"What if one of us die?"

Parvati was silent for a long moment. "It won't happen. But if it does, then we mourn them and we move on. And we tell our kids all about the coolest auntie in the world."

I don't think we ever thought it could come true, not when the sun was shining on us like that and the grass was tickling our bare feet and everything seemed so peaceful. We didn't know that the world would be torn apart within a few years and that words like that are easier said than done.

But for once, it doesn't seem impossible. I can't really say why Chloe's words have stuck with me when nothing else has. Maybe it's because she doesn't cry when she sees my face or flinch in fear or try to smother me with her annoying compassion. Maybe it's because she knows how it feels to lose another half of yourself and feel as if you'll never be whole again. She understands.

I won't forget about Parvati. The image of her will stay with me, all big brown eyes and long black hair, hands stained with mehndi and nails painted periwinkle blue. I'll remember her as she was, laughing in our dormitory, braiding my hair or flicking through her favourite copy of Witch Weekly. Sitting with Professor Trelawney, creating music with a twitch of her fingers, lighting incense candles even as Hermione Granger scoffed scornfully. I won't think of her the way she was in the end with a snapped neck and dead eyes. That's not Parvati. That's not who she was.

I'm going to get better. One day. Someday. Starting today. It's going to take time and it's not going to happen easily. I know that there are days when I'll think of death and I won't want to talk to anyone, see anyone. I won't want to see Mum fight back her tears and try to smile and try to make small talk with my parents. I'll probably just sit there with Parvati's box in my hands and ignore Tracey, my official Healer.

But that'll be okay. And if anyone thinks it's not, fuck them. I'm going to get better on my terms.

There's always time for a new beginning.