InsaneJournal

Dear Madoc,

I confess I am not much of a writer nor do I have any particular mastery over words. As you may have guessed, I have very few skills and talents to my name. But you held out this olive branch to me when you did not have need nor desire to and I cannot help but seize it with both hands.

How do you account for nearly thirty years of history? I imagine you have only heard the worst about me, if anything at all. That I am a murderer. That I betrayed my government, my fellow Aurors and the entire letter of the law. I read all the things my former co-workers and friends had said about me after my arrest. Dangerous. Unstable. Callous. Secretive. Vindictive. I cannot deny these things. I am reminded of these scarlet letters every day.

After I was pardoned and released from prison, I suppose I only wanted to stop doing harm. I had just a little money to my name from my prior days of gainful employment, so I bought a small plot of fallow land in Yorkshire very cheaply with only the thought that if I could not make something of this dead, infertile earth, then I would know there was nothing left of myself worth saving either.

I poured my heart and soul into that land. Maybe I bled away the last of Azkaban's poison in my soul as well. Still for the following few years, there seemed to be no change. I despaired.

But Madoc, little by little, it did come back. My trees, my fields, my gardens. My hope. My ability to love the world again.

Sometimes I think I am glad you did not know me as I was then and sometimes I think had I known you then, I would never have become that at all.

It stays cold up here for quite a bit longer than it does down south. The gales can be brutal. Today, though, I awoke and I was content. I have life all around me: too many animals and someone who, one day, if you should ever want to come visit this little bit of earth in which I have grown roots again, I would like for you to meet. But that is a conversation for another time.

Gideon