Chapter 179
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To:
From:
Dear Spencer,
I asked a couple of people about the side effects of getting your magic bound and nobody seems to be able to give me an answer. Once someone's magic is bound, they're no longer part of magical society and nobody monitors their condition or keeps in contact with them. They're no longer eligible to seek treatment in a magical hospital, and if there were side effects, a nonmagical hospital would not know what is wrong with them. Several people shuddered when I asked them, it's most people's greatest fear to lose their magic, a couple of people even said that they'd rather die, and if they were a pureblood who'd never set foot in the non-magical world I'd almost understand it. You'd be giving up something that you've been taught was essential for living or being seen as someone worth anything, and then you'd have to leave everything you knew and start over in a world where you did not understand the way basic things like lights and transport or their money or shopping worked, and the way pureblood families treat children that are born without magic is disgusting, most of them would be much better off if they were given up for adoption, or put into foster care. The problem is that you can't tell if a child has magic until they start doing accidental magic and some people like Neville said he didn't until he was ten. By that age, they're already going to have trouble fitting in at a normal school. They just don't know how the non-magical world works at all and most of them would've been home-schooled in things like Latin, Herbology and potions theory not mathematics and literature, let alone science, or muggle studies.
One of the people I asked was the school Mediwitch, she's new this summer so thankfully she's not the mediwitch who thought that I was a paranoid hypochondriac or looking for something other than laziness to blame for my poor study habits when I went to ask her about the change in my concentration levels last year. She at least took this question seriously even though she didn't know the answer, but was concerned why I was asking and insisted on giving me a full medical exam. It seems that I'm not as well as I thought I was, and she is very angry with Madam Pomfrey for not doing more for me. I barely managed to talk her out of writing to Madam Pomfrey and cursing her out for her neglect of me, or writing to the Healer and Mediwitch/Mediwizard registration board and demanding that her licence be revoked or she be reassessed and prevented from working in a school without supervision. Or at least I think I did. I explained that I was in hiding from someone who wanted to force me to stay with my abusive muggle relatives and if she contacted anyone, Pomfrey would probably tell my magical guardian that I'd seen her. She's agreed not to do anything until September in return for me coming to see her each week so she can do what she can to heal me and promising to see an actual healer before I go back to Hogwarts so they can heal the things she can't.
The Mediwitch actually is training to be a healer so she has more knowledge about how to test for magical damage. She was able to tell how much self-healing my magic has done over the years and was concerned that I hadn't been sent to a healer after I arrived at Hogwarts or when I first arrived here both last summer and after what happened last year. Apparently even though Fawkes healed me after I was bit by the Basilisk, there are traces of his venom still in my system fighting against the phoenix tears which are preventing it from killing me, and there's some dark magic residue in my scar that she wants me to get a specialist to look at since I have no idea if anything was done to heal it at the time.
After seeing what had happened to me, she insisted on giving Seamus and Dean a full medical exam as well which they are still irritated about. They're more angry about the fact that she thought it necessary than at me, and they had to admit that she was right to be concerned about them, after I told them what she'd found in my examination. Thankfully she didn't find anything wrong with either of them. I think that the mediwitch was disappointed though, if she'd found something wrong with Seamus or Dean then she'd be able to complain about them and get something done about Pomfrey without mentioning that I'm here.
So anyway, one of the first things I'm going to do when I get to America and find the magical society is try to visit a healer. If my magic is helping keep me alive, or if losing it is going to make recovering from injuries more difficult, then I want to be as healthy as possible before people realise that I'm not going back to a magical school.
To be honest as much as I hate the idea of losing my magic, I am willing to take the risk of not attending a magical school if I cannot get accepted somewhere other than Hogwarts. Unless there are serious side effects, it would still be better than going back to being treated the way I was at Hogwarts last year, never knowing when a so-called friend was going to turn on me and being hexed in the back by people I didn't even know. I also believe that my life will be at less risk even without magic to protect me by not going back to Hogwarts even if that means that I'm essentially living alone somewhere.
I finally managed to buy a small magical tent. From the outside it looks like an old fashioned two-person army surplus tent, even looking into it from the outside if you leave the flaps open you can see a normal tent with a sleeping bag on the ground. It might stand out a bit in a camp ground but only because it looks in new or almost new condition but is a style that hasn't been made in years. But when I get inside it, there is a small flat with a full bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and loungeroom. The walls don't even look like you're in a tent though there's a bit more give in them than the plaster walls they look like. I actually struggled to buy a tent that looks as normal as this one. I was beginning to think that I would have to buy a nonmagical tent and try to put the spells on it myself because most of the tents for sale were ridiculous, with moving patterns or colour changing fabric. One even had three stories with glass windows and fully furnished balconies while still looking like it's built out of canvas like a real tent, another had a full size swimming pool with a side you could open to make it partly outdoors.
The bonus about it was that this one was the cheapest tent I found, being only one bedroom and looking so boring, nobody wanted it and it had been in the shop for years. It was partially furnished with a queen size bed a four-person table and chairs, a couple of armchairs and bookshelves, and stove and stasis cupboards but I had to buy all the bedding and towels and stuff for the kitchen. I only got the essentials, one pot and one fry pan, knives cutting board, and a couple of plates and bowls and things. They're all magical so I can use resizing charms if I need a bigger or smaller pot or bowl, but I'm eventually going to need to buy more than one. I also bought a magical clothes washer which washes dries irons and folds the clothes, so I won't have to hang around a laundromat wherever I'm hiding out.
The good thing is the tent anchors itself to the ground so you can put it up anywhere. I had it up inside the loft over the barn and even the three of us couldn't pick it up or shove it across the floor once I'd engaged the anchoring runes. It doesn't have a notice-me-not charm but I'm pretty good at those and if I cast it before I leave the Finnegans, it should last long enough to camp out until the Queen Elizabeth 2 leaves and even through the journey if I can find somewhere unused to put it up. I could also set it up somewhere like your Hideout and with muggle repelling charms I'd be perfectly safe. I looked up what happens when charms like that wear off and most of the time it happens slowly enough that people will start to see the object they've been charmed not to notice but it won't surprise them or strike them as new or out of place.
As for someone tracking me with magic, I don't think that they can. Hogwarts send letters home with us at the start of each holiday reminding us that we're not allowed to use magic at home. I didn't use it at Dean's because I didn't want him getting in trouble if someone was monitoring his flat but I used sunscreen charms on myself and on Seamus when he started to burn at the pool without thinking about it and nobody seemed to notice or come looking. Even Seamus didn't notice half the time and when he did he didn't say anything about me not using a wand, just thanked me later for not letting him burn. I also used magic last summer while I was at the Dursleys and the only notification I got was for the magic that Dobby did levitating the cake. I have to think that he did it in a way that notified the ministry deliberately.
Mrs Finnegan told us that the ministry can't monitor who's doing magic in the magical shopping district or her house or the barn and that we're free to use simple charms and things but has forbidden us to practice offensive magic, and she checked that we all knew the aquamenti charm an could make a large lot of water to put out any fires Seamus started when his magic blows up. She also told us that everything in the house and barn has fireproofing charms on it. One of the senior students also mentioned that it's the wand not the person's magic that is tracked, and as you know I don't use my real wand and replaced my fake wand since I left Hogwarts at the start of the summer. I will replace it again after I leave Seamus's to be sure that nobody at Scoil Draiocht noticed that I didn't have the ministry notification charms and applied them.
As to the idea of wards that hide magic use, I'm sure that there are, but I'm equally sure that there will be no mention of how to cast them in any of the textbooks found in any school library and I've never seen such a book at Flourish and Blotts either. Wards are advanced magic, far beyond anything taught at Hogwarts, the only mention I've read about them is in the adds in the newspapers advertising either apprenticeship opportunities, employment offers for masters or prices to have a house warded. Not counting the warding on the vassal amulets that was done by the goblins at Gringotts. Mrs Finnegan and her friend said that Goblin wards are the most expensive but they also agreed that they were worth the money during the war. I got some books to read up on them but nobody will sell me anything that shows me how to start making my own wards, and there isn't much in the part of the library here that I have access to.
I didn't tell you much about the library at Scoil Draiocht, did I? instead of having a restricted section that's surprisingly easy for students to break into without any explanation on why books were restricted or who does have access, the library here is divided into nonmagical and magical and the magical section is divided into junior and senior. The part I have access to only includes spells and potions that should be within the abilities of a student up until 5th year or OWL examinations. The senior magical section is warded so I cannot get into it at all. Unlike Hogwarts, where the restricted section is behind what looks like golden fancy gates, tempting students to try to break in, I wasn't even aware it existed until I saw someone coming out of the door which seemed to appear out of nowhere and asked about it. All history books and books about Herbology, and Creatures is in the main or junior part of the library, no matter how advanced they are. The student who told me about it said that it's because anyone could come across those things whether they were ready for them or not so it was better to be able to know about them.
The library is full of various size tables to suit people studying together or working on a group project and smaller tables for those that want to be alone. Each table has a sound reducing ward around it. You can hear from one table to the others if someone's yelling but normal conversations are muted so you can discuss a project without disturbing people working nearby, which is much better than expecting a single elderly librarian to keep everyone quiet and kick out anyone talking loudly. The tables are also individually lit so you can make the light over your table brighter if you want, compared to Hogwarts which has some form of light you can't actually see or control and reflects the light outdoors even though there are no windows, so it is a bit dark and shadowy in the evening, or late afternoon in winter and always smells vaguely dusty.
Superman's favourite food is peanut butter and sardine sandwiches, which sounds totally revolting at first thought, but peanut butter is actually good with a lot of foods you wouldn't expect so it probably would be okay, it's good with raw spinach or in a salad to add a bit of protein or with marmite.
Your Friend Always
Harry
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