Chapter 140

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Sunday 26/12/92

Dear Spencer

I didn't manage to get away, even for the two weeks holiday. I'm back at Hogwarts. Unfortunately, my grand escape plan didn't work out. It started promisingly, I sat with Dean, Seamus and Neville and we were left mostly alone on the train and we had a great trip, Seamus started coming around once we were away from the school and nobody harassed me on the platform and I was able to catch a normal train to Leicester Square and walk along and through the Leaky Cauldron onto the Alley without anyone seeming to notice me but I'm not sure if that's actually where it went wrong. Whether someone noticed me on my own then and contacted Dumbledore or not. Hopefully that's how he knew I'd be there.

I got to the bank and the goblins were extremely helpful, though I'm sure I paid plenty for their help. I now have a magical passport that says I'm two years older or younger when I need it to and it looks British if I tuck a pound note in the back and tap it with my wand, or American if I use a dollar note, it will also turn into a Italian, Spanish and Mexican passport if I use their money but Gringotts only gave me a British pound and an American dollar. The only thing it won't change is my name, apparently names have a magical connection you your identity that the goblins aren't willing to mess with. At least Harry Potter doesn't seem to be that uncommon a name in the nonmagical world so it doesn't stand out.

I wonder what would happen if I snuck onto an airplane under my invisibility cloak, would there be any empty seats for me to sit in? Then if it worked I'd be in another country with a passport saying I was a citizen and no proof that I'd come from England so I couldn't be sent back. Maybe I should have got out of there as soon as I had money and a passport and just hoped that I could find a magical shopping district in whatever country I ended up in, because that's about as far as I got. I stopped and looked around Diagon Alley to see if I could find something like a magical tent so I'd have a hidden place to stay since I was already there, and I got caught by Dumbledore. I tried to bluff and tell him I was just doing my Christmas shopping before I returned home but he insisted that he would accompany me unless I'd had second thoughts about going home for the holidays and would prefer to go back to the school with him. Needless to say, I chose to return to Hogwarts. I could kick myself for being so careless as to hang around a public magical place in full view instead of trying to disappear as quickly as I could. Dumbledore didn't appear surprised by my choice though he was trying to appear disappointed in me it felt false, I don't think he truly cared one way or the other.

I know I might have had a better chance at escaping if I went to the Dursleys than from here at Hogwarts even if I did have to stay there I could run and jump on another train when I got back to Kings Cross at the end of the holidays, but I just couldn't arrive there unexpected, and as they were about to celebrate Christmas with their 'normal' family, especially after all the extra work of getting the house cleaned and decorated and the extra baking had been done without my help. I would've been lucky to survive the beating Vernon would've given me, and Somebody has a way to monitor me leaving from there and to weaken my magic while I'm there. At least Dumbledore didn't catch me in Gringotts so he doesn't know about my passport or my muggle money. At least I think he doesn't know, I still have it all. All I need to do is get to the Chunnel train without getting caught when school lets out this summer. I can shop for a tent once I'm out of the country if I can find a magical shopping district, if not perhaps I could buy a muggle tent and sleeping bag and cast my own notice-me-not charms. Maybe I should keep practicing them on Professor Idiot. Or cast a password protected notice-me-not on Ron next time he starts pretending he's my friend in private while ignoring me in public. Let him know exactly how it feels to be ignored out in the hallways for a change. Problem is I want to notice him, and I need Seamus and Dean to notice him too so we can watch what I'm doing and they can hide the depth of our friendship when he's around and not give him anything to report to Dumbledore that I don't want the old man to know, otherwise I would have cast it on both Ron and Hermione weeks ago. And to be honest I would rather make him a target for minor hexes and malicious charm use out in the hallways than ignored.

I can't tell you how frustrated and disappointed I am to be back at Hogwarts especially after the abuse from nearly everybody last term. I had really hoped that I'd found a way not to come back even if I hadn't really got much of a plan what to do after I got away. At least I didn't need you to send me back my last letter, I don't think that my memories have been tampered with at all and if they have it could only be 15 minutes at the most because I looked at the clock as I left Gringgots and I'm not missing any time. Of course, if I am missing up to 15 minutes, he could have used it to interrogate me and now knows all of my summer plans both the Chunnel and flight from Paris idea and about Scoil Draiocht last summer, my friendship with Dean and Seamus and possibly you, and my application to Nezcalilizcali Naualotl Tlateotokani Toltekayomeh. Merlin only knows what I might have told him. I really hope I didn't tell him enough about you for him to find you. I don't know whether this even happened or if I'm freaking out about nothing and the worst of it is there is no way to find out unless he acts on the information to meet me at the Chunnel or prevent me from enrolling in the other schools. Maybe it didn't happen because he didn't take my new passport away from me and I can't feel that the magic on it has been changed in any way. It still looks like it works the same for me, I'll ask Dean and Seamus and maybe Dean's mum if it still looks alright to them before I try to use it.

Perhaps if I have to be stuck here until June I should go straight to Ireland, I know where their magical shopping district is and it would be safer than trying to shop on Diagon Alley. I could buy a tent and spend a month camping before going back to Scoil Draiocht and catching up with my year level at nonmagical school before trying to come to America. Perhaps the school there would have a book about magical shopping districts and tourist destinations around the world. I don't think that Hogwarts does and even if it did I couldn't afford to get caught looking at it now.

I swear that if Dumbledore forces me back to the Dursleys and prevents me from being able to leave I will protect myself from Vernon and Dudley's abuse and those wards even if I have to blow the house up to do it before the wards take hold and weaken my magic too much. I know that if he's monitoring the situation he would just heal them and remove all our memories and I'd be stuck there again and if last time is anything to go by even less able to defend myself but even he can't bring back the dead and I don't want to become a killer but I am done being someone's victim. If I blow up the house he'd have to wipe the memories of everyone in Little Whinging and rebuild the house to get me back there. But it also gets the Dursleys out of the wards and magical surveillance as well. I think that the wards must protect them from me instead of protecting me from them. It's the only explanation I have for why my magic does such a poor job of defending me from them.

Hermione, Ron and I had a huge dust up on Christmas Day which was a pain because Hermione and the Weasleys were the only other Gryffindors staying this holiday, that should have been a good thing, if they were ignoring me I would have more freedom to do my own thing without having to worry too much about them or anyone else finding me but they're curiously insistent on following me everywhere I go even if they are mad at me. They were already pissed off at me for going home and now they're equally pissed off at me coming back again. I don't understand what's behind all that but I am totally fed up with both of them!

If the Dursleys weren't so horrible, or if I knew that they'd gone to Aunt Marge's then maybe I would've been better missing Christmas and staying on my own at Privet Drive. I'm not sure if Ron and Hermione are more angry about me going home when they were staying or my being caught on Diagon Alley and being brought back when they were glad to be rid of me, or upset that I hadn't confided in them about my plans for the Christmas break. Then to compound the problem I hadn't bought either of them a Christmas present since I never intended seeing either of them again. I told them it was Dumbledore's fault, he found me before I got the chance to shop which was true but I wasn't planning on keeping in contact with either of them, let alone sending them a Christmas present. I'm glad that they don't know that I already sent Dean Seamus and Neville their gifts bought in the muggle world before I went to Gringotts, and that Seamus and Dean at least know not to thank me in front of them. I think that Neville knows not to say anything in front of Ron but I'm not sure whether he realises that I'm keeping my other friends secret from Hermione too since Dean and Seamus avoid her when I'm not around as well.

Hermione is more upset about not getting a Christmas present than Ron which I didn't expect, he's usually the one who is greedy for presents and I know she got a whole pile of gifts from her family. Unless she was still hoping that I'd bought your satchel for her. The twins were fine about me not getting them a present, I think they would've been surprised if I had got them something, but Ginny seems oddly disappointed. It's not like we're friends and she didn't give me anything but she's acting like she's insulted. I don't think any of them realised that I didn't intend to return to Hogwarts at all. I'm not sure about whether Dumbledore knew but Ron and Hermione disappeared for an hour after dinner the day I got back and I think they were even angrier when they got back so I suspect they met with Dumbledore and he either told them off for not telling him about my plans before I left on the train or demanded they keep a close eye on me because he was worried I might try to leave again. I wish I knew if it was a coincidence that I ran into Dumbledore on the Alley or how he found me, is it some sort of magical trace or was he having me followed? He did have several parcels with him which could have been props to make our meeting look accidental otherwise why wouldn't he have shrunk them or called a house elf to take them directly back to Hogwarts instead of the inconvenience of carrying an armful of stuff around. I wonder if he put tracking spells on me because he knows I wasn't at Privet Drive all summer like I told Ron and Hermione? I need to have another look for books on that sort of magic next time I can get to the library on my own.

Hermione finished the Polyjuice Potion Christmas morning and wanted us to use it after the Feast at lunchtime. Surprisingly since Malfoy can barely have a complete conversation without mentioning his father and gets more care packages from home than anyone else in our year, he didn't go home for Christmas either. I'll admit that they'd be more likely to get away with it over the holidays with most of the other students gone. Or at least if they didn't they wouldn't be ambushed and outnumbered too badly. Hermione had a plan, she dosed two cupcakes with sleeping draught and was going to trick Crabbe and Goyle into eating them, she had a hair from one of the Slytherin girls that had gone home and was going to claim to have come back early.

I've been telling her from the start that I wasn't going to take the potion, that it was too dangerous and that I was sure that the heir of Slytherin wasn't Malfoy so there was no reason to go down there and try to trick him into talking about it. The potions book isn't clear enough on what the finished potion should look and smell like to know she's got it perfectly right. Anyway, they either hadn't been listening or they didn't believe me or thought they could change my mind so they got really angry when I refused. Hermione was also really offended that I didn't trust her potion making skills. I said that I did trust her as far as we had learnt I would happily take any of the potions she made in class if she said they were correctly made but this is way beyond her level of expertise. I told her that I'd already suffered one night in the infirmary regrowing the bones in my arm because someone believed that they were more competent than they were and had cast on me without my permission and I was damned if I was going to willingly put myself in that sort of situation again.

Hermione got upset at that but I don't think she could decide whether she was cross with me for disrespecting a professor or for comparing her to Professor Idiot. She might be starting to get over the crush she had on him and she has to admit that he's a braggart with delusions of adequacy who shouldn't have been allowed to try to heal my broken arm when there was a perfectly capable mediwitch only a minute away, but he's still a professor which she seems to think automatically must be respected even if he doesn't deserve it as a person.

Hermione pointed out that we needed to impersonate both Crabbe and Goyle because they're almost never seen apart which made perfect sense to me, but I pointed out to her that there was no reason she couldn't impersonate one of them and that would make more sense than wasting precious time trying to convince Malfoy that Crabbe or Goyle had gone off on their own for some reason and Bulstrode had come back to school early, particularly since even if she did convince him at the time he would have realised by dinner time that it hadn't been her. Bulstrode wouldn't be back until the train brings everybody back for the start of term and Hermione certainly didn't plan to impersonate her for more than one hour. Surprisingly, Ron agreed with me about that but still thought it should be me and him not him and Hermione. I'm not sure if he wanted me to do it with him or was merely being sexist, or they were worried about what I would get up to while they weren't there to keep an eye on me.

Anyway I wouldn't budge so after a lot of arguing they agreed to do it without me but they insisted that I mustn't be seen anywhere without them while they were gone. It could've been that they thought it would be suspicious if I was seen roaming about on my own or they could have been ordered to keep an eye on me for some reason. Perhaps Dumbledore is worried that I'll run away again, they have been around a lot since I got back. I didn't notice how insistent they were that I never be alone before since there's not anyone else to want to get away from them to hang out with, but Ron's even hanging about waiting for me when I get out of the shower these days.

They left the cupcakes in plain view when Crabbe and Goyle were about to walk past and I can barely believe it but the stupid gits ate them even after stuffing themselves stupid at Christmas lunch, though I shouldn't have been surprised I'm sure Ron would have too if he found a cupcake or biscuit lying around. I helped Ron tie them up and levitate them into a broom closet and left Hermione and Ron to it. I tried to keep an eye out in my cloak to make sure they weren't accosted in the halls though I wasn't going to go into the common room with them. They wasted a lot of time because they'd never bothered to find out the way to the Slytherin common room let alone the password. I'm surprised after all that they managed to get Malfoy to say anything about the chamber before they had to leave.

Needless to say, as you and I predicted months ago, they found out that Malfoy is not the one opening the Chamber of Secrets and he said he doesn't know who is. He is however thicker or more self-absorbed than I thought he was or Crabbe and Goyle both have far more memory problems than Neville because Ron and Hermione managed to fool him into believing they were his best friends and that they'd forgotten the password into Slytherin, and that it was reasonable that they'd forgotten he'd already told them he had no idea who was opening the chamber, even after they had to run away when Ron's hair started turning red. The only things they learned was that it definitely wasn't Malfoy's Dad who opened the chamber last time it was 50 years ago and last time a student was killed that time not just petrified, well and Draco let slip that the Malfoy family have a secret room under their drawing room floor where they keep all sorts of illegal things and that Draco is either a petty thief or an incurable snoop, he was opening other people's Christmas presents. Ron's was really excited about the secret storage of Dark and illegal objects and is already writing a letter to tell his Dad and see if he will get the Aurors to raid the house and arrest Daddy Malfoy.

I was left alone with the potion and since I'd already seen them change, I stole a dose. I will watch closely that it worked without side effects before taking it. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, probably keep it for the end of the year and use it to catch the chunnel train to Paris, unless I find an urgent use for it before then. I'd feel guilty for stealing it but I really don't want to leave Ron or Hermione with another dose of the potion. Hermione didn't even seem to notice, she just thanked me for cleaning and packing up her potions kit. The brew is supposed to make five doses but there was only one left so either Snape kept the other two when he substituted the potion, which means Hermione really got it wrong to have such a small volume in her cauldron not to have missed the extra 40% or Hermione accidentally or purposefully dished them each up two doses instead of one to take, or they each still have one. Watching Ron drink a whole beaker full of the disgusting tasting potion was very amusing but most potions don't need you to take anywhere near that much. I don't know how Hermione got that so wrong, or maybe she knew her potion wasn't as powerful as it should be, in which case she's lucky she didn't overdose herself and Ron with Snape's more correctly made potion. Hopefully if they do still have another dose available they've already got Crabbe's and Goyle's hair added so they can't use it to turn into anyone else. It would make sense for them to have a backup dose already made up in case they needed it to get out of the dungeons safely. It only takes a couple of minutes for the potion to absorb the hair and be ready to use but that could be a couple of minutes too long if you're where other people can see you. I don't like the idea of them having a dose they could use to either turn into me and do something I wouldn't do or use to trick me somehow.

Thank you for the language tapes, you're right, they don't work in the castle itself so I can't use them overnight like I did over the summer unfortunately, but the tape player does work if I'm out on the grounds at least 15 meters away from the castle or the fence and edge of the forest though it's too cold for me to spend much time out there listening at this time of year but as soon as it warms up enough to run outside again I'll use them. Listening while I run is almost as good as listening while I sleep, but I did sleep better when I was using the tapes. I left money with Mrs Thomas and she regularly sends me fresh batteries since they don't last here, the ones I had stored in my trunk went flat. It's good that they don't work inside since then nobody can listen into what I'm listening to. I think that Dumbledore would be worried if he found out I was learning another language.

Superman has the coolest cave.

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.