Chapter 135

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A/N: This is the reply to both the letters in Chapters 133 and 134

Wednesday 12/8/92

Dear Harry

Rest assured you will always be my friend. I know you are a good person, only a truly good wizard wouldn't have lashed out with their magic against Dudley and his gang's bullying. Remember that I have known you could talk to snakes since you told me about it years ago, we just didn't know it was such a big deal back then, and I don't really understand why it would be now ether. I've also known that you don't use a real wand which I think that majority of your classmates need to use to do any magic. To me being able to speak to snakes isn't half as weird as being able to do magic (with or without a wand), though speaking to snakes does defy the laws of anatomy and common sense. Snakes have no ears and what we hear as hissing is actually a vibration made with their tongue on the roof of their mouth. They 'hear' the vibrations through their skin. The human tongue is definitely not supposed to be able to vibrate like that, and human ears aren't supposed to be able to make sense of it. And surely if your tongue was vibrating like that it wouldn't feel anything like normal speech, let alone speaking English.

I would actually have thought that snakes would only have a dozen or so different words, or rather different patterns of vibration, to communicate essential information like, food, danger, shelter, and warmth etcetera. They don't have the brain cells for a complicated system of language like we do. And the fact that the vibration travelled through a thick glass panel into the enclosure at the zoo and it sounds like English is just preposterous. It defies logic that snakes would speak a version of English, particularly since the boa constrictor you talked to at the zoo wasn't native to any English speaking country even if it had been in a British zoo for most of its life I don't suppose that most of the people who visit it would say enough for it to learn the language, especially without ears and through a thick pane of glass. I also got the impression it was alone in its tank without any other snakes to talk to and the boa constrictors do tend to be loners only making contact with others to mate. From the way you said it gestured to the sign outside it's cage it sounded like the snake could read English as well, and very few humans manage to teach themselves to read without a teacher to help them, let alone teach themselves to read in a foreign language instead of their own.

Not that I don't believe you of course, I believe everything you tell me even if I am sometimes beginning to feel like Alice in wonderland when I get your letters, sometimes having to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Well things that would be impossible without magic around to defy the laws of physics and just about every other law in the natural world.

But it's horrifying that your professors all think that it is reasonable to leave two students virtually comatose in the school infirmary when their parents can't even visit them for more than eight months when there is an alternative. That has nothing to do with magic and it is one of the most difficult things you have asked me to believe, and yet when I think about the way they treated you since your parent's deaths it isn't so difficult, then the only thing difficult to believe about it is that people still trust Dumbledore with their children at all. The entire staff should be under investigation for neglect of their duties to keeping you all safe for letting two students get turned into a statue in the first place when they'd had a warning when the cat was petrified, not to mention keeping the school open when no visible attempt seems to have been made to see how it happened or to stop it from happening again. As for the ingredients needed in the potion to cure them, surely there would be some mature plants from last years' second year Herbology classes? What happened to them? Exactly how expensive would it be to buy the potion or the ingredients to make it immediately? Are there other signs that the school is trying to save money to make ends meet? Even then I'm sure if they were given a choice and able to afford it their parents would choose to pay for the ingredients and have their children healed as soon as possible.

I'm curious, when you say they've been petrified, turned into statues, was their clothing turned into stone as well? If so I think the most efficient way to administer the potion might be to submerge the entire statue in it until they started moving and then pull them out quickly before they breathed it in, but that would take a large amount of potion. Perhaps that's why they couldn't simply purchase enough mandrake root for it all, but if they had enough plants to have the entire year level repotting them like you did this year then what happened to it all? Or is the choice of plants you study each year random depending on what seedlings are available? And if so, did someone buying the seedlings know the school was going to need mandrakes to restore petrified people this year? How could they? It seems too rare an occurrence to have been a coincidence.

One other thing that seems like it should be more than just a coincidence and is probably adding fuel to the rumours that you're the one attacking people, is that you found both the students who've been petrified extremely annoying, enough to complain to me about them. Is whoever doing this trying to frame you? Colin might have been attacked just because he was out of bounds at night and saw something he shouldn't have but after the school started blaming you Justin became the perfect choice to make those sitting on the fence about whether you could have done it believe you did. On the other hand it could be Dobby again trying to protect you from annoying prats and the worst of the abuse. Who else knew how annoying you thought they both were?

The lectures I had to give seemed to be well received. I got through the entire lecture without stammering or getting tongue tied. I still hated it though, so becoming a professor is not a career I'd choose. Nobody got up and left and the students weren't any chattier during the lecture than they normally are for the Professor. The questions they asked after the lecture didn't seem to indicate any more of a lack of understanding of the material than usual. You were right that nobody tried to prank me, even the few students that like to make smart remarks about the professor's lectures held their tongues, and several students came up afterwards to thank me and tell me I'd done well. I was quite pleased with my performance.

My own classes continue normally here without any dramatic revelations or emotional turmoil. I'm enjoying my work and am grateful they let me continue to take a couple of mathematics classes while working on my masters. I should finish both the masters in Chemistry and the degree in Mathematics by either the end of the year if I'm lucky or at the least by the end of the summer. Then I think I want to get my PhD in Mathematics, I'm interested in Engineering as well and will probably want to take some classes but PhD level research and work is more satisfying than undergrad.

You didn't tell me anything about the duelling club you were looking forward to, does that mean this speaking to the snake thing happened before the club and you didn't go or was it cancelled when the second student was petrified?

Your friend always,

No matter what strange things you can do or learn.

Spencer

A/N2: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.

Please stay safe everyone.