Chapter 184

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To:

From:

Dear Harry

If you did manage to go back and save your parents, or get them to run and leave the country so they weren't found then there would be no way your younger self would have any idea that the current timeline ever existed, and therefore he would've had no reason to go back and say whatever it was to make them leave the country. I don't know whether your actions would cause an alternate timeline as in the multiverse theory or whether it would tear time and space apart as others have theorised. I guess we will never know the answer to that unless there is actually a way for witches and wizards to travel in time. It's certainly not likely to ever be possible in the non-magical world.

Don't you dare feel guilty about what potential changes you would've made to the time line if you were able to travel back in time and save your parents. It's not like you can go back and really change things. Besides, I refuse to believe that it was the sole responsibility of two people alone to defeat Voldemort and we have no idea what actually caused his body to be destroyed like that and whether someone else could have done it.

I would hate for my sake not to have met you, but if it would spare you the years of abuse from the Dursley's it's a sacrifice I'd be willing to make. Not that I'd even know what I was missing if we'd never met but I think that my life would be sadder and harder without your friendship and the confidence it gave me to try new things and try to make friends here at college.

I don't know how a boy brought up in the loving support of his family would have survived your last two years at Hogwarts though hopefully you would have written to your parents at the first sign of trouble, and they'd have made sure you were safe. But if it was Dumbledore spelling the professors there's nothing to say he wouldn't have done it to your parents too. In fact, if your parents were as big Dumbledore supporters as everyone seems to be telling you they were, there's no proof he hadn't already influenced their decisions or behaviour. They certainly didn't see the man that you know if they were loyal followers of him.

The idea of having my memories altered like that to suit someone else, whether it be forgetting small things or larger more important events, or even just being forced to remember them differently, or think differently about a person, an idea or an event, terrifies me. Is there a way to implant memories as well, to make me remember something that never happened? There must be something, otherwise people would notice the gaps in their memory when time passed without them having a memory of what they'd done or what had happened in that time, or do they think they just fell asleep. What happens if someone who does remember asks them about something that you don't remember? Just when I start to think that we're being paranoid, something reminds me that everything we think might be happening is not only possible but could merely be the tip of the iceberg.

I wouldn't give up your friendship for anything so never think that but sometimes I wish neither of us had ever heard of the magical world! I feel guilty about that because it's your knowledge of Gringotts and the magical world and the true friends you've made there that has given you the opportunity to escape from the Dursleys but I honestly think that without Dumbledore's interference you'd never have been there in the first place. They wouldn't have volunteered to take you in when your parents were killed (something else that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the British magical world), you'd have gone to someone your parents trusted to bring you up in a loving home, and whoever was supposed to be given custody would have fought for you. Or if you had been sent to the Dursleys for some unknown reason, they wouldn't have had a reason to dislike and distrust you the way they did. Of course that may have meant that you grew up to be more like Dudley which I know that you wouldn't want, even for an alternate version of yourself.

You might be right about not noticing subtle changes in language, there are some words that have a slightly different meaning in British English than they do in American English and even though I already know the difference and I theoretically know that you would be using the British meaning of the word, I don't always register the difference, like pants means underpants to you and I mean what you'd call trousers. So, when you said merlin's pants the other day you meant Merlin's underpants, which is slightly less odd as a swear word than Merlin's trousers would be, but it wasn't until I read through the letter the second time that I realised exactly what you meant. But the point is, if we didn't know the difference most of the time one of us uses the word pants the other wouldn't pick up on the fact that we don't mean exactly what the other person is thinking. There could be a lot of words like that in magical Britain. Not to mention that judging on their popular swear words and Ron's reference to a 'Scarlet Woman', they would find nonmagical foul language to be even more offensive than an elderly person who was brought up to believe that such words should never be said in the presence of a lady. Which would add to their belief that people from the non-magical world are less educated, less well-mannered and from an inferior class to themselves. It's rubbish of course, but the wizarding society seems to be stuck in that part of the past when class barriers we're almost insurmountable, and speech patterns varied greatly between the classes.

You're probably right about the reason for the positive outlook in all comics from the 1930's and then with the way American politics were terrified of communist ideals, Batman's writers would probably have wanted to talk up the benefits of capitalism. I think it may have been more of a survival mechanism for the comic than a political agenda.

Your friend always

Spencer

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