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To: Spencer Reid
From: Harry Potter
Sunday 19/8/92 6:22pm (GMT)
Mrs Finnegan said the magic when you took your oath looked and felt exactly the same to her as when Seamus, Dean and Mrs Thomas took theirs. I used my real wand for the oaths, I don't know if it would have worked with the fake one but I felt it was something that was better to be sure. In fact I spent a whole day casting with my real wand to get used to the feel of it before the other's took their oaths, (one school day I mean not the whole five days in one calendar day). I'm glad I did, it took a bit of effort to get my casting under control. My teachers and friends were all a bit shocked by how overpowered some of my spells were and I was sent to the infirmary to see if there was anything wrong that I was losing control of my magic like that. Still it's good to know if I ever am attacked and have the opportunity to use my real wand that I'll be able to defend myself against just about anyone. I still have no way of knowing whether it would work against Dumbledore though.
I believe that I might finally have found a way to protect you from your mum. My friend Ruby's sister is about to have a baby and she was looking up charms and enchantments to protect the baby from physical harm, not just people with intent to harm you stuff but accidental harm. I agreed to help her search if she would help me make something similar for you. It won't protect you completely but it will soften the blow when you're struck and prevent you breaking bones and things if you fall. It should reduce the severity of burns and things too. You'll notice that there are two small tags, the second one is protection specifically for your brain to protect it from things like fever hallucinations and illnesses. It won't stop you from getting a cold but it should keep the fever down and stop you from becoming too ill to think clearly or from a stroke or something damaging your brain, Mrs Finnegan said it might also stop you from getting stupid when you drink too much Irish whiskey as well and you mightn't like that since apparently she thinks the main reason to drink Irish whiskey is to get drunk and stupid, but I told her it wasn't a problem, that I thought even if you did drink alcohol you wouldn't want your brain to stop working properly. There's nowhere I can read that tells me whether this will protect you from developing Schizophrenia if you were destined to do so but it might help. I wanted to make a set for your mum too, I thought that maybe they would protect your mum from the more violent delusions and help her think more clearly but you said she wouldn't wear them consistently even with additional charms to make her trust them and it would be the days she'd take them off and destroy them that she would need them the most. I'm sorry Spencer but giving you a false sense of security that she's protected might do more harm than good.
To: Harry Potter
From: Spencer Reid
Monday 8/20/92 9:56am (PST)
It was amazing to hear your voice and be able to talk to you. I wish that we could afford to do it more often, and that the time difference didn't make it so inconvenient. I could feel the magic as you accepted my vow, I understand why Dean and Seamus were a bit freaked out especially as their magic would have reacted as well as yours and it probably would've been even stronger in person if I could feel it even through the international telephone call.
I have an appointment at Caltech tomorrow morning so I'm catching the train there this afternoon and I won't be able to write to you again today but I do have internet access there and for more hours of the day than I do here so I'll leave you a message when I get there and hope my available time matches up with yours. Part of me would like to be able to move back there for the rest of the summer, not only because it would make it easier for us to talk more often but as much as I love spending time with Mom, being in Vegas is getting me down. Unfortunately, Aunt Ethel isn't back from holiday yet and even though Mom's doing well now more often than she was at the start of the summer, I don't think that I can leave Mom alone for more than one night so I'll be coming back as soon as I'm done. Hopefully the lack of other students won't make it too hard to ride the train without a ticket but I'll take money for the fare just in case and catch the bus back if I'm caught on the way.
So you're going to protect me with baby charms, I find that amusing since I'm older than you and I worry about you constantly. You are in a great deal more danger than I ever was both with Vernon and whoever warded the Dursleys' house and at Hogwarts, especially with someone acting in the background magically influencing the professors and manipulating your friends. I wish that I could protect you. Perhaps you ought to make one of those necklaces for yourself.
Did you make any friends at school that you want to keep in touch with?
To: Spencer Reid
From: Harry Potter
Monday 20/8/92 6:08pm (GMT)
I think that it might be best if you go back to writing to me through Mrs Thomas rather than through the restaurant when I'm not able to email. I don't know whether Ron's family are going to come and get me for the last two weeks of the holiday like he originally said he would or not since I haven't heard from him but if it's Mrs Weasley's idea for me to visit I expect they will, I just wish I knew what she wanted from me. I'm also not sure how the Dursleys are going to react to having me back, especially after I told Petunia that I wouldn't have to stay there anymore if she wrote that permission letter for me to have my transcripts and change schools. I would expect at best they're going to have a million chores for me and I will have trouble getting away to the library to use the computer or the restaurant to collect my mail. Not to mention I wouldn't want the staff at the restaurant to think that knowing someone was going to write to me is the only reason I'm visiting if I do get to go. I'm certainly not going to be allowed to use Dudley's or Vernon's computers, though if I can still use magic to unlock my door I might be able to get onto Dudley's during the night when he stays with his friends, that is if he hasn't broken it again and I can find where he's written the password if he's bothered to lock it, or if I can get away I will try to email you from the library and update you on what's going on even if it is the wrong time of the day for you to be able to email back straight away. It really sucks to be having to make all these plans and contingency plans to try to stay in touch after being able to 'talk' to you via email every day.
I made arrangements to keep in contact with Patrick from my English and history class we've been exchanging extra reading since I started running and feeling like reading again. He's super interested in mythology and the history of ancient Briton and Ireland, both magical and nonmagical. Both his parents are Muggleborns who have moved back into the nonmagical world and he goes to a nonmagical prep school in London and will come here each year for his magical education. His parents attended Hogwarts during the last war, and I guess they didn't want him exposed to the pureblood bigotry there. Surprisingly the other person I want to keep in touch with is Ruby from my science assignment. She actually comes to Scoil Draiocht year round but her parents have already told her that they won't pay for her to continue schooling after her OWLs so she's come for the summer class as well to try to get ready to take her GSCEs or hopefully her A levels and University entrance exams at the same time. She hopes if she can do well enough she can get a scholarship to study veterinary science at University or get accepted as an apprentice to study for a mastery in animal healing. There's no scholarship program here, but I suggested that if she does well enough in her nonmagical subjects she could apply for a scholarship to a day school closer to home, or attend the local comprehensive, but she said that she will be expected to work for the family business. It seems to be monstrously unfair that the best student in her year is the one that can't just take being allowed to finish high school for granted. She's warned me that she won't always have a lot of time for writing but she'll be here again next summer and won't be with the class she's in now so she's a little nervous about making friends with the older kids. I told her about you how you ended up six years ahead of your age group and are now fitting in well at college. I didn't tell her that you were bullied in high school. I hope it doesn't happen to her.
I had another couple of offers to write to me but they were from people who don't really hang around with me here, I don't know if I'm being cynical in thinking that they only want to write to me for the notoriety they'd get from receiving letters from the-boy-who-lived, and that anything I did write to them would be shown around to everyone they knew.
I feel a bit guilty that I'm turning those people down and agreeing to write to other friends when I only want to keep in touch because I will be coming back here next year. If I'd got into one of the international schools for magic then I probably wouldn't have bothered to keep in touch with either of them, not only because it might be dangerous to keep ties to students who're still in the UK, since Seamus and Dean both know that I spent the summer here, but also because, as much as I've enjoyed this summer I would be happy to leave it behind with the rest of my life here and start over in my new country without any ties to this one. But since I am coming back here next summer if I can, it will be nice to have a couple more friends and I wouldn't want to piss them off by rejecting the offer to keep in touch and I can owl them directly so it's not any more work for Mrs Thomas. I don't think Dean has offered to keep in touch with anyone and I know Seamus won't bother. I think that might have been part of the problem at the start of school that his old friends resented that he hadn't been in contact with anyone all year and then he didn't come home until summer was nearly a month in and he brought friends with him instead of trying to reconnect with his old friends before summer school began. At least I hope he hasn't promised to stay in touch with anyone this year because he isn't likely to keep his promise. He barely wrote to his parents last year even with Dean reminding him. Though I'm not sure Dean would've written to his parents as often as he did if I wasn't sending Hedwig to his mother's with letters for you either.
To: Harry Potter
From: Spencer Reid
Monday 8/20/92 10:10am (PST)
I understand your feelings about keeping in touch with your new friends, but you shouldn't feel too guilty, it would be fairly pointless to write to them if you never intended to see them again and it wouldn't actually be kind to do that either, to give them the hope of an ongoing friendship that will never be fulfilled. Even if you did promise to write to them and were able to do so without giving your new location away, even with your closest friends it would probably only be a year or two before one of you stopped replying to the other's letters. You and I are an anomaly. Don't get me wrong, you are my best friend and I'm incredibly glad that we did manage to keep in touch but to be honest I didn't expect it to work out this way, especially with the difficulties we had sending each other letters. I originally hoped to hear from you once or twice before you forgot me. I think it made a difference that we were each other's first friends and for quite some time each other's only friends. Now Ruby and Patrick are just two of many friends you'd be leaving when you leave Hogwarts and the United Kingdom, if you get into another school of magic. Not to mention that even if it was safe to keep in touch, they probably wouldn't be your first choice of friends to write to. Though I suppose with the time compression you've spent nearly as much time with them as you have any of your Hogwarts friends other than Dean and Seamus, who you've already told me are too lazy about writing letters to make good correspondents. But if Dean or Seamus talk about spending the summer with you and attending the school then Dumbledore might well try to meet your friends there to see if you were in contact with any of them so it wouldn't be any safer than writing to your Hogwarts friends. If there was one friend in England it was safe to keep in contact with once you get into an international school, who would you want it to be?
I would expect that it will only be their expectation that they will see you again next summer that will motivate Patrick and Ruby to keep up the correspondence as well. Even if that may not have been the only reason that they offered to write, I doubt they would have asked if they didn't know you were planning on coming back. But Harry, you must know that writing to them or rather receiving letters from them while you're at Hogwarts will make it much more difficult to hide where you spent the summer. I'm slightly surprised, with everything else that is being done to manipulate you at Hogwarts, that nobody has tried to find out who my letters are from, or to stop you from receiving them.
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.
Stay safe everyone. Please just keep being careful just a little bit longer until all the high risk people have been vaccinated.