Chapter 116

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Thursday 9/5/92

Dear Harry

I'm very sorry that you had to go back to Hogwarts and are still surrounded by people you think you can't trust. It cannot be good for your mental health to be always thinking that way, never knowing if you're just being paranoid or if you're right not to trust people. There must be someone there you could trust but the problem is identifying who they are. At least with the amulets you know you can trust Dean and Seamus.

Please whatever this something terrible is, try to stay out of it and stay safe. If you can't trust a professor could you perhaps trust Mrs Finnegan and maybe Neville's family. I don't know how much they could do but I'd feel better if there were adults not under obligation to Dumbledore who knew what's going on. Hell, I'd rather you sent an anonymous letter to their newspaper asking for help than try to get involved yourself.

Your friends made some good points about Dobby but they don't sound like they know all that much more about elves than you do even if Neville did grow up in a house where there was one. Maybe you should try to talk to an elf to get their opinion on whether Dobby could have come to warn you without following orders. Would that be possible? Perhaps it would be for the best if he was ordered to come to try to stop you from coming back to school, there might be nothing going on at Hogwarts this year.

The problem you had with the magical barrier sounds really odd, but whoever did it couldn't have targeted you or Ron specifically because they had no way of knowing that you'd be running late and be the last two through the barrier. But you make a very good point that Mr and Mrs Weasley should both have noticed that you and Ron didn't come through with everyone else. It was highly irresponsible of them not to have made sure you all got onto the train safely. Ginny and the twins should have noticed that you weren't with them before the train left too, even if Percy no doubt rushed off to strut around the train doing prefect stuff. Has Ginny got over her crush on you yet, you didn't say? She must have started to if she didn't notice you weren't there to get on the train with her, so that's one less thing for you to have to worry about.

As for why they drove the car to the station rather than floo, they might simply not have had enough floo powder or driving a magical car might be cheaper than flooing that many people. Remember that it may not have anything to do with you staying with them, they came through the nonmagical part of the station rather than flooing straight onto the platform last year as well, so maybe they've always done it that way. Which is a bit odd if that's what most magical families do. Could it have been just to meet you, were they hoping to meet you before you got to the platform and met anyone else or had they been told that you wouldn't know your way onto the platform? If so, they might have decided to drive this time so you wouldn't realise how unusual meeting them on the other side of the barrier last year was? Though that involves more rational thought than you say most witches and wizards have. You got lost flooing to Diagon Alley so Mrs Weasley might not have wanted to risk losing you again. Of course, teaching you how to floo properly in the first place would have been a better idea, but maybe she didn't realise that you needed more instruction than her own children who had probably been through the floo hundreds of times with their parents before trying it on their own.

I can't explain why Ron would be jealous of you receiving letters, surely he realises that it would be easy for him to receive more letters too, most people will write back if you write to them.

How are Dean and Seamus? Does it feel better having people around you whom you know you can trust? It makes me feel slightly better about you being back at Hogwarts, knowing they're there.

Your new defence professor sounds terrible, but your last one sounded like he was too. Even if he hadn't been possessed you can't successfully teach if your pupils cannot understand you. IT's a wonder he could have gotten the job in the first place. And then this one, he might be an amazing teacher but it's exploitation to make a whole school full of students buy all his books. If they were honestly any good then they'd sell without this sort of thing. Just because he's an opportunist and you believe that he's a fraud, doesn't automatically make him a bad teacher though.

Classes have started and I think I'm going to really enjoy this semester. The professors all seem really enthusiastic and nobody got irritated at me for going to ask questions during their office hours.

The new students in our house all seem nice enough, it helps that I've grown a bit since last September and don't look quite as much of a little kid as I did when I started, even though I still look like the youngest person in the room everywhere I go, people are more willing to accept a teenager than a kid.

I feel guilty that I feel so relieved that I can be out in the library and lose track of time without having to worry about Mom, or that I can fall asleep with the computer on and not risk waking up to Mom hitting it with the frying pan to stop it from trying to control us or steal my brain. Ethan has moved into studying computer science, coding and programming things and he bought a computer back to school with him and he doesn't mind me using it to type assignments or check my email when he's not using it. It's really nice of him but I'm having to get used to falling asleep to the sound of his typing. My new Chemistry subjects are all more practical than the pure Chemistry I was doing last year. They're interesting but they're all about the applications for using Chemistry in industry or commercial research. It's fascinating but I'm not so sure I want to do something like that long term.

Your friend always

Spencer

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

Stay safe everyone. Please stay safe.