Chapter 127

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Tuesday 9/11/92

Dear Spencer

The Vassal Amulet and the chain it's hanging on came from my vault, I didn't spend any money on them or the protections for your house so you don't need to worry about the cost, and I don't know who they belonged to or who whether my parents even saw them let alone wore them so there's really not much sentimental value either other than being grateful that my ancestors had left me a way to help keep you safe. They also weren't a present, I would do anything to protect our friendship and knowing that you're protected from whoever is trying to manipulate and influence my friends benefits me as much as it benefits you. So yes, I still felt that I needed to get you a great birthday present and honestly while the bag was expensive compared to a couple of books and a home baked cake and it was too much to consider paying for a gift for someone I think is being paid or manipulated to be my friend, it was nowhere near the exorbitant price I paid for my trunk or the cost of a brand new racing broom, it wasn't even as much as I paid for my own dragonhide backpack. Please stop feeling bad about it. I have plenty of money in the wizarding world, Well and truly enough to get me through Hogwarts and University if I choose to go and then there'll still be at least enough for a house deposit if not to buy one outright if I want a small cottage out in the country.

I don't care what Hermione thinks I bought the satchel for, it's none of her business and that's exactly what I will tell her if she asks. Her birthday was about six weeks ago though so if she hasn't said anything by now I don't think she will. I don't know whether she's realised that if it wasn't for her and I'm obviously not using it, it was a gift for someone else, maybe she's still hoping to get it for Christmas or maybe she's ignored all the hints I've given them about the Dursleys and believes it was for one of them or a friend at home. I'll be in for one hell of a lecture from her about the statute of secrecy and responsible gifts for muggles when she does realise I've given it to someone outside of Hogwarts since she doesn't know that I know any other witches and wizards. If she is being paid to be my friend then she can spend that money on a satchel and pretend it came from me if her parents ask.

I found out more about the legend of the Chamber of Secrets, apparently it's been hidden in some way that only Salazar Slytherin's true heir will be able to find it and open it and there were rumours of some sort of monster inside it. Of course the monster itself couldn't still be alive, nothing lives that long and even stasis charms wouldn't have lasted long enough to keep something alive, unless the monster was a mating pair in which case there could be thousands of whatever it is hidden in the chamber if they had an adequate food source.

Hermione asked Binns about it and the ghost professor just lost it, insisting that there was no chamber of secrets, that it was just a nasty story to frighten the gullible.

I didn't tell anyone about hearing the voice the first time. Well, I was in detention with Professor idiot and I asked him if he'd heard anything but I didn't make a big fuss and run after it like I did this time. Since it wasn't about him I doubt he'd have mentioned it to anyone. There was definitely nobody else in the room that I could see, we'd been there for hours. His room is covered in pictures of himself but they're photographs not portraits so I don't think they can get into other frames to gossip with the other portraits like the paintings do sometimes and of course his pictures all seem to be as vain as he is so they wouldn't have said anything unless it makes him look good.

I really hope you're wrong about why I heard the voice and nobody else did. If that voice I heard is a snake then it's a bloody huge one. The voice sounds so much deeper than any snake I've ever heard. Even the twenty meter python in the zoo didn't sound anywhere near that big. But you might be right that's why Ron and Hermione didn't hear it. Snake hissing wouldn't carry as far through the stone walls as the voice, and hissing of a snake that big might sound more like steam in the pipes or rain on the stones than a snake. I'm not going to mention the theory to anyone but if I can get some time on my own I'll try too look up magical snakes to see if there is anything.

We took a look around the area where the cat had been found, there isn't much near there except for a girls' toilet, not even any portraits who could tell us what they'd seen. Hermione showed us inside, she said it's not used much because there's a ghost who haunts it. Magical cleaning means the lavatory is cleaner than any public lav I've ever been in and it does look like marble tiles on the floor but there's nothing spectacular or even homey and comforting about it, it is just an old public loo. I don't think I could imagine a more depressing place to haunt, which fits with this ghost, she looks like she might have been a student older than me but maybe about your age they call her Moaning Myrtle because she's always moaning and crying, she's the one Hermione wanted to avoid at the party and we ended up accidently insulting and upsetting. I think she may have killed herself but if that's the case I don't understand why she chose to stay as a ghost rather than move on to whatever the afterlife holds. I would've thought killing yourself was a way of trying to escape from a situation not tying yourself to it forever. Wouldn't that be the last thing you'd want? Even if your motivation was revenge it would make more sense to haunt the person you blame for making you want to kill yourself than the scene of your death. We got caught by Ron's brother Percy who is a complete git. He cares more about his image and his chance of making Head Boy next year than he cares about anything else.

I think that the problem with your reasoning about the cat attack was that you were trying to find a sensible reason for it. The more time I spend in this world the more convinced I am that none of them have any common sense at all, so their reasons aren't likely to make sense to someone as logical as you. There is one reason you didn't mention, I saw on the Tellie that animal torture is one of the precursors of someone who is going to grow up to be a sadistic killer. Considering how many of Voldemort's followers who have children here at school it isn't that unexpected that one of them could have done it for fun.

Ron is convinced that Draco Malfoy is the heir of Slytherin, of course Ron would blame Malfoy for anything bad that happens without a known cause. I think that if Malfoy is the heir, which is no more likely than anyone else being, he doesn't know it otherwise he'd be bragging about it every other time he opened his mouth. I think that a pureblood family as image conscious as the Malfoy's would have traced their family tree looking for famous or titled ancestors, and the whole wizarding world would've heard about them being descended from anyone that famous, so it probably isn't him.

I told Ron why I don't think that it can be Malfoy but he refused to listen and Hermione seems to believe him. She's got this mad idea of how to prove whether it's him or not. She wants to brew Polyjuice Potion. It's a potion that if you put a hair or fingernail clipping or something of someone in it and drink it, it will make you look like an exact replica of that person for 60 minutes. Well from what I've read it gives you their body and face for 60 minutes but it's still you so you'd have to try to copy the way they move and speak otherwise people would probably recognise it wasn't the person that it looks like. She wants us to use it to impersonate some of his friends because she thinks he'd tell them if they asked. Two huge issues with it. Firstly, if Malfoy was going to tell his friends about being the heir of Slytherin, he would already have told them, and we have no way of knowing how much they already know. It would be really suspicious if we asked questions about something the people that we're pretending to be already know, or have been hexed for asking before. I don't want to get caught in the dungeons impersonating someone. If we were that far out of where we were supposed to be who knows what the Slytherins would do to us if they caught us. Secondly, what are we going to do with the people we're impersonating? Kosh them on the head hard enough to knock them out for a whole hour and hope we don't cause permanent brain damage, and tie them up? I know none of Malfoy's friends are nice people but really? They don't deserve that. We'd have to make sure they can't even call for help for more than an hour and these are purebloods who all probably have a family house elf who would come and rescue them if they called their name.

Thirdly, the potion is ridiculously complicated and takes about a month to brew, with dozens of expensive ingredients (some of them quite rare and hard to buy) and hundreds of different steps and the instructions are written in minutes between ingredients which I would think means we'd have to get the timing exactly right. It's so dangerous that second years can't even look at the book the instructions are in in, the book is kept in the restricted section of the library, we had to get a professor to write us a permission slip. Of course that was stupidly easy, Hermione just asked the new idiot teaching DADA. I wonder if he even realised she wasn't just wanting his autograph? Every potion in that book is way beyond our abilities to brew safely, even if we didn't have things like classes and curfew etc and we'd need a place to hide it while we're brewing it. Even if we managed to brew it without blowing it up how are we supposed to know if we got it right and it's safe to drink?

I have learnt the notice-me-not spell and started casting it on myself when I'm in the library to stop Hermione from coming over and demanding that I let her help me with my assignments again, or arguing with me about my refusal to help with their mad scheme. At least this potion nonsense will distract her from that. Does she have any idea how insulting it is to insist that I'm not capable of doing my own work without her help? When I could easily do as well as she does if I wasn't trying to avoid attention and complete two extra subjects. And if she thinks that I'm so thick, why does she need my help with the potion? I'm beginning to think she wants me to be as thick as Ron to make her feel better about herself because she knows that she's not actually more intelligent than the rest of us she's just read more things.

Your friend always

Harry

A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.

Please stay safe everyone.