Chapter 120

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Saturday 10/5/92

Dear Harry

Thanks for your thoughts on Mom. Perhaps you're right and she is happier than I could see. She certainly isn't happy on her really bad days and the days when she's aware enough to know she can't concentrate or look after herself are even worse. But you're right that she enjoys lecturing, even when it's to a room full of people only she can see, she seems to get something valuable out of it and she loves it when someone stops to listen to her and ask intelligent questions. It's one of those things, you can't just tune out and throw in an odd question. If it's something irrelevant or that she's already covered in her lecture she will verbally eviscerate the person asking. I think she enjoys that too though if the secret almost smirk on her face before she lets rip is any indication. I think that those half good days when she's contentedly lost in her delusions are actually the best from her point of view, which I still find sad. I wish that I could find the joy in lecturing that Mom does. But then again if I was only lecturing to you and Mom, I would probably enjoy it without stressing out.

I'm not surprised that your 'Professor Idiot' only got the job because nobody else applied. It sounds like there should be hundreds of witches and wizards who could teach your class better than he does. In fact, since most purebloods are home-schooled up until eleven, any decent parent would have more experience with teaching and all of them must know at least the first three or four years' worth of spells if not all seven years. It's odd though if Hogwarts is the premier school of Witchcraft and Wizardry they should have a much wider pool of applicants for any empty position than other schools and yet from what you've said the teachers at Scoil Draiocht are all equally as good as the better teachers at Hogwarts. That doesn't make sense, the best of the best should be drawn to work at Hogwarts because of the prestige. There has to be something seriously wrong with the pay or conditions to make those teachers not want to teach at Hogwarts, which is also odd because most of the teachers at Hogwarts have all been there a long time so there must be a reason that makes them want to stay. Except apparently for the Defence Against the Dark Arts professors. Maybe that's where the rumours of a curse have come from because if there really was a curse there must also be some way of getting rid of it. It would probably be easier to remove the curse itself than to change people's belief in the rumours of a curse. But of course whether there really is or was a curse or not, if the rumour of the curse is prevalent among the magical teaching world you'd have trouble convincing potential candidates for the position that the curse has been broken or removed.

Your friend Ron is right to object to one team having much better brooms than all the others. How is that a fair competition. But you probably should have realised it was unfair last year too, when your broom was better than the other seeker's brooms and the rest of the team's instead of complaining at the lack of a challenge from the other Seekers. I'm glad that this has made you realise that, but I also remember you telling me that you made the team before you got your own broom, so it wasn't the broom that influenced their choice, it was how well you could perform on an old school broom. The Slytherin team has to take Malfoy to get the brooms no matter how bad he is. Perhaps it won't be as unfair as it sounds if he's a useless player. At the very least, from his attitude I can tell he will be a poor team player no matter how well he flies.

I'm surprised that the school doesn't have a standard set of brooms for the teams to use to make sure the game is about the player's abilities and not how much money their parents are willing to spend. That being said don't you dare buy the school or your team a new set of brooms. It's not your responsibility and you need to save your money to pay for university or the further training of your choice when you finish school. It's not your responsibility to make school Quidditch more fair. And even last year having the best broom wasn't your fault. You didn't choose it.

'Eat Slugs' seems to be a particularly schoolboy spell. It would have been amusing to see and very appropriate for someone who constantly spits out insults. It's a pity you can't keep silently causing him to relapse every time you hear him insult someone, but I suppose unless you follow him around all day in your cloak he would soon realise it's only happening when you're around.

Perhaps Hermione cannot do the spell because she's not a boy, I would have thought that slugs would repulse her to the point she couldn't make them come out of someone's mouth no matter how much she doesn't like the person. But I am a little concerned about her reaction to Ron being able to do a spell that she cannot. You need to be careful! She will not react at all well to finding out that your wand isn't real and that you're proficient with wandless magic, particularly the magic you do without an incantation or wand movements. In fact, I wouldn't put it past her to accuse you of cheating and potentially dob you in to the professors. I know you couldn't possibly get into trouble for not using a real wand as long as you're completing the assignments but I get the feeling this isn't something that you should let become widely known.

My new classes are all great particularly the engineering class. Engineering students have a general reputation of being more socially inept than the other science streams and more practical oriented which might be why I feel I fit in so well. It's also my only class that's open to freshmen so the average age of the students is a little closer to mine and most of these students haven't met me before. Maybe I've learned to fit into a class better because they all seem accepting of my presence and when we were assigned a group project I had no difficulty finding a group that all wanted to work with me.

The house is settling down nicely as well. We lost a few of the loudest residents who graduated or dropped out at the end of last year and we also have less first years than we normally do so there aren't as many parties as there were last year. Two of the students in my engineering project group are in the house and we've been able to work together well so far. Surprisingly none of them seem to expect me to do more than my fifth of the work which is a novelty. I am grateful but it's leaving me slightly anxious about the quality of the other 80% of the project being out of my control.

Your friend always

Spencer

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

Please stay safe everyone.