The Letters In Between - Summer '96
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26-06-1996
Dear Viktor,
Remember me? It’s your friend Hermione, – you know, that English girl you wrote to about five weeks ago and have been callously ignored by ever since?
In all seriousness, thank you very much for your letter, and for the (overgenerous, but no less appreciated!) package of Sugar Quills attached. I found they made Potions revision far easier to endure, though if Mum and Dad ever discover just how quickly I polished them off I’ll be in for the scolding of my life!
I wish I could tell you that my OWLs went well but so much has happened in the few days since tests ended that truthfully I can hardly remember how I felt about them at all. Things are quite sombre here, naturally, and so I simply can’t imagine fretting about how many marks I might have been deducted for a rune mistranslation when there is so much else to be concerned about.
I have heard from Ron (he made sure the entire hospital wing castle knew exactly how unimpressed he was) that the summer international between England and Bulgaria has been temporarily postponed due to recent (‘utterly unforeseeable’, according to Minister Fudge) events, and so I know you must have gotten wind of at least some of what has happened here in the last while.
Letters are not being checked anymore now Umbridge has been removed, so I am free to share with you more of the truth without having to worry about the Inquisitorial Snoopers. I’m sure you will have guessed that I was with Harry and the others in the Department of Mysteries, however I hope you will forgive me if I don’t write out in detail everything that happened there.
Instead I will write out all that I can’t bear to say aloud to anyone, all of everything that has been haunting my body and my mind since last week.
I dream in purple now.
During the battle I crossed wands with Dolohov, and I could see in his eyes how much he hated me – how good it would have felt to him to kill me. We’ve been teaching ourselves defence in secret all year, but until that moment I don’t think I had truly understood that we will be going to war, and that it will be terrible.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and my breathing is all sharp, like my lungs are slowly freezing from the bottom up. I try to go back to sleep but I can’t get rid of the horrible feeling that I’m being watched from all the corners of the room.
Thankfully Madam Pomfrey has allowed me to keep Crookshanks with me in the hospital wing. I suspect I would be an out-and-out insomniac if he weren’t around – he’s taken to lying on my tummy to help me breathe more slowly, and usually I can get back to sleep after a little while.
For the most part I am fine.
Given that he couldn’t say the incantation aloud, there wasn’t much to tell Madam Pomfrey about the curse Dolohov hit me with, except that it was purple and the wand movement looked a bit like someone miming using a sword. She said it sounded unlike anything she’d ever heard of – even Professor Flitwick couldn’t put a name to it – and so I’m fairly sure I’m being treated with a cocktail of every healing potion known to wizardkind. (One of them tastes so horribly like beetroot, which makes it very difficult for me to convince myself that drinking it will be of any benefit to me.)
In all honesty, the worst part of it all – worse than the restlessness, and the ten different daily healing potions, and the only being allowed to leave bed three times a day to do a circle of the hospital wing and to use the loo – is watching Harry trying to survive losing Sirius his godfather.
He’s already lost more than one person should ever have to, and so seeing him looking so grim, like he was expecting something like this to happen soon – like he’s used to it – it’s just so awful. No fifteen year-old boy, ‘chosen one’ or not, should be used to losing loved ones to war.
Ron and I are in silent agreement to keep him as preoccupied as possible with happy memories and discussions of plans for the summer, but he’ll have to go back to stay with his Aunt and Uncle soon, at least for a little bit. I’m so afraid for him, but that will never help him, so I’ll just have to keep learning all I can so I will be as prepared as I can be when we join the frontlines.
As for me, Madam Pomfrey has said she won’t clear me for travel for another few days at least, but once she does I will probably stay at home with Mum and Dad for a few weeks before heading to the Burrow. I really do miss them, and I can tell from Mum’s last few letters that she’s no longer fully buying the ‘nervous exhaustion’ excuse for my extended stay in the hospital wing.
A few years ago I never could have guessed there would be a day when I’d be looking forward to sleeping in my childhood bedroom again but now I can hardly think of a more comforting thought. I find myself daydreaming about it – about the yellow walls, and the tulips on the curtains, and the dip in the middle of the bed from where one of the slats broke years ago. All of it.
I daydream about other things too, sometimes. Like the time I was walking along the beach in France, back to the hotel I was staying in with Mum and Dad. The sun was setting, so the sky was going pink but the sand was still warm. And I could hear the swash moving off to my right – woosh, up across the sand, swoosh, back down into the breakers.
Or like when you and I would read by the lake last year, under the wisteria, the few times it was fine enough for us to study outdoors.
I suppose my brain is trying to look after me the same way that Ron and I have been looking out for Harry – by keeping me preoccupied with happy memories.
Anyways, by now I have filled far too many inches of parchment with all of the strange thoughts milling around my head these last few days.
How are you? I hope you are well, and your family too. Have you been reading anything interesting? One of the only upsides of the hospital wing has been that I’ve had plenty of time to start making my way through the stack of non-syllabus books I’d been saving until after OWLs. Charming Time: A Compendium of Modern Advances in Magical Clockmaking has been an unexpected but particular favourite.
How was your visit to Japan? I can’t wait to hear more about it, although I know it’s likely to make me green with envy. Did you get a chance to visit the archives at the Japanese Wizarding National Library in Toyohashi? Or to see Mount Fuji from Kawaguchiko? And of course, congratulations on your win over the Tengu.
I apologize again for taking so long to write out this response to your last letter. I hope you don’t underestimate just how much your correspondence has meant to me over the past year – a brightness to hold against many dark days.
As always, I look forward to hearing from you again soon.
Yours,
Hermione
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30-06-1996
Dearest Hermione,
Thank you for your letter. As always I am very pleased to receive it, no matter how slow or how fast it arrives. I am well, thank you, as is my family. Elitsa and my brothers send their love.
Japan was beautiful, I have enclosed a few photographs which I think you will enjoy. Unfortunately the Library at Toyohashi was closed on the day I visited, but as you can see Fuji was majestic.
I have also enclosed the snitch I caught to end the match. I know you have no need of such trinkets, especially Quidditch trinkets, but I hope it will show you that I am thinking of you in your recovery.
I am glad to hear that you have been allowed to keep Crookshanks by your side. I remember he is good and loyal, and knows you like no other.
Hermione, I must accept you may find me patronising, but I cannot lie. I am worried for you. You say in your letter that no fifteen year-old boy should have to lose so many to war as Harry Potter has, and you are not wrong. But no sixteen year-old girl, even so clever and capable as you, should have to cross wands with Death Eaters, or to be thinking about going to war.
Dolohov is a notorious name in this part of the world, spoken with reverence by some fools with hunger for power, but mostly spat in disgust. I have approached the chief healer here with the Vultures with the description of his curse given in your letter. She has promised to be in touch with some of her previous teachers and mentors. It may be that the curse has its origins somewhere here in the East and one or more of them has heard of it, or even practiced it. I will write to you at once if she hears anything that may be of some help.
Though I am reluctant to steal you from your family after they have been so long without you, I cannot resist to extend you the offer to visit with me in Bulgaria. From July 13th to 24th I have my holiday from Quidditch duties and will be staying with my family near Plodiv. If you would like to and are well enough then to travel, I would love to see you and to show you my home and country. Your parents are of course welcome to accompany you if they would like, and then they would not have to miss you.
If my company is not enough to convince you then maybe education would – we can practice some defensive magic which they may not teach in Hogwarts if you would like.
Of course, do not allow me to force your hand from politeness, you must make only the decision that is best for you. What is most important is that you recover from your injuries at the Ministry.
I have unfortunately had not much opportunity to read recently, as training for the match with England has been long and tiring each day. I am slowly working through the Russian translation of Transfiguring Thestrals: The Dynamics of Invisibility in Transfiguration. It is heavy in parts but very interesting, I am certain you would enjoy it.
I believe Ivan may have a copy in English, which of course he may lend you if you choose to visit. I can also steal it and owl it to you if not.
Again, you must not apologize for being less than quick to write. No matter what I am glad to be trusted to know your mind and thoughts. Your letters are a brightness for me too, more than you know.
Yours,
Viktor
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