Chapter 142

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8/1/93

Dear Spencer

No, unfortunately, I didn't find a magical tent and camping supplies, I barely had a chance to start looking before I got found. Probably just as well as I'd have bought them and unless the shop had shrunk them to fit into my pockets I'd have been caught with them by Dumbledore giving away my plans for the summer as well as this holiday. I doubt that Dumbledore would even consider that I was planning on not coming back to Hogwarts at the end of the holidays unless he asked me a question that made me accidentally reveal it, but buying camping supplies in the middle of winter would have been suspicious. I'm going to have to leave without them and hope I can find something in my new country if I can get away in June, I don't want to risk getting caught again. I'm not even going to try to leave school during the Ostara/Easter holidays, hopefully that will convince Dumbledore that I was just taking the opportunity to do some shopping and have a bit of a break before coming back for the new term and he won't watch me as closely when I leave for the summer. I really should have gone to the Dursleys' then I hopefully I could have convinced him that was my intention after doing my Christmas shopping.

The passport stays in whatever state it was in until you put a different currency in it, which is good. Otherwise, someone checking it as I entered a country could take the money out and see it turn into something else and discover that it wasn't real. The goblins said that it's guaranteed to stay in that form for at least six months but they also advised to keep a banknote in it when storing it away so someone doesn't mistake it for a blank notebook or something.

I believe that Snape did substitute the potion, that's not just disparaging Hermione's potions skills because I thought she was stupid to be trying to brew Polyjuice in the first place. I think that the potion was off colour a couple of times when I checked on it during the brewing process and while I'm sure a potions master might have been able to fix it if he saw it at the right time Hermione doesn't have that knowledge or the ingredients she would've needed to do it, and even if I was wrong about the other times I thought it was wrong I'm sure that it was more lavender than lilac before the last ingredient was put in and that is one of the things the book warns against stating that it effects the time the potion will last in unpredictable ways and Hermione didn't have access to the ingredients required to fix it but from Ron and Hermione's report of using it the potion did last exactly one hour, so either she went to Snape and asked for the ingredients to fix it, she managed to rob him again without getting caught, Snape fixed it for her with or without her knowledge or he substituted the potion for one he'd brewed himself. I think if I were him and was charged with their safety, I would have replaced the entire potion because there's no way he could have known that Hermione hadn't made another mistake that she didn't notice, or that she hadn't corrected properly. I'm surprised he wasn't there to catch them coming back from the dungeons in their Slytherin robes as the potion wore off. I doubt Ron knew that the potion had been switched. Certainly, he couldn't know unless Hermione knew, and you'd honestly have to be an idiot to tell him, he couldn't keep it secret. Next time they argued about something he'd be throwing it in her face, not caring whether she already knew or who else heard him. I don't think he'd trust Snape to have correctly brewed a potion if he knew or believed that the three of us would be the only ones going to take either. I certainly wouldn't trust him unless Dumbledore wanted him to make it safe, but there isn't much he could do to cause side effects that manifest slowly over time while making the potion still work perfectly at the time. I will keep my eye on them before I decide to take my own dose though.

Polyjuice has a relatively long shelf life, it's good for a year or more depending on how perfectly it's been made and the only effect as it starts to get too old is that it doesn't last as long so with only one dose I'd have to be careful to have a place close by to run to and put on my invisibility cloak if I started to change back before I expected to. The book warned that using it to change size hurts and Hermione said it hurts just as much to change back so it can't happen without me noticing.

I agree that Hermione couldn't have known which Slytherins would stay during the term beak, she got lucky that Draco was one of them. It doesn't really matter when the potion was finished they could've waited to use it after everyone came back. I don't know if they would've managed to find Draco on his own somewhere during term, he never seems to be out of the common room without his friends and our common room is never empty except in the early hours of the morning so I imagine theirs wouldn't be either. I'm not sure that they would have got away with kidnapping and impersonating Crabbe and Goyle in a school full of students. For one thing they left them in a broom closet. Broom closets are prime places to hide and snog for some reason. (It doesn't make much sense to me when there are so many unused classrooms, though I don't think that there are any couples staying over break among the senior students.) for another Malfoy may have been thick enough not to notice his friends were acting out of character but someone else might have or several different people noticing and mentioning small things might have made them suspicious. That and they didn't give themselves enough time to get back to Myrtle's bathroom before the changes wore off. If the school hadn't been nearly empty they would have been caught running up from the dungeons in the wrong uniforms for sure, so maybe it was just as well it was over the holidays. Overall getting away with this seems to be suspiciously lucky rather than a result of good planning.

I don't have any trouble believing that Ron and Hermione don't know that I think they are untrustworthy, they're both too self-centred to even consider how their behaviour would look to anyone else so they have no reason to doubt that I believe their friendship is genuine and you're right about Hermione's arrogance, and her blind trust in all authority figures means she never questions whether anyone else trusts them as well. I think that's why she's so bossy, she admires authority figures so much she's trying to set herself up as an authority figure for Ron and I and the rest of the class. It isn't working but I don't think she realises how much normal teenagers dislike being treated like that, especially by someone who doesn't have the authority they're trying to pretend they have. As for Ron if it isn't food, quidditch or chess then he pays as little attention to it as possible. I find it more surprising that he's passing all his classes than that he hasn't noticed how annoying I think he is. Then again, I think his brothers all think he's annoying too, so he's probably so used to that reaction that he mistakes it for affection or ignores it as normal and if he is Dumbledore's stooge then he would intervene to make sure he stays in the same year level as me whether he deserves to pass or not and apparently it's practically unheard of for anyone to have to repeat any year except fifth and seventh, the one's with the externally administered exams.

So using Ron as a typical example of how observant the average 12 year old pureblood is, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Draco didn't realise his friends were acting oddly after all. From what I've seen of them in public I think that Draco treats them more like hangers on than real friends anyway.

I think you're right that Ron would be furious if he finds out that I don't really like him and depending how he found out he could be violent, but somehow I don't think that he'd be genuinely hurt by it, he cares more about other people seeing us as friends than he does about treating me as a friend. Hermione on the other hand would be hurt. Ron and I seem to be her only friends and I don't honestly think that Ron likes her much either a lot of the time. He's often quite mean to her.

The other students arrived back last night, so I've had to start being careful not to be caught out alone in the corridors again. The worst of it was I was sure some of the curses in the back are coming from Gryffindors who are too cowardly to confront me in the common room or stand in front of me and give me a decent chance to curse them back. Dean and Seamus are hanging around with me whenever we can both break free from Ron's clinging and Hermione's hovering and nagging to complete our Hogwarts homework. Dean's there a lot of the time but Seamus helps me escape even when Dean is busy. We study out nonmagical subjects together, he and Dean seem to have more trouble keeping up in spite of the fact they're only doing one subject each. It would be easier if we were all doing at least one subject in common so we could encourage each other more and help each other when we need to. Dean's studies into magical techniques used in painting, sculpture and architechture is fascinating, and his nonmagical subject is History. Seamus is studying non magical geography. I wish there was a magical equivalent but maybe if you did the class in person some of those titbits would've been included in the conversations, or they might be in the extra supplemental reading that Seamus isn't even interested in trying to do, not that Hogwarts has any of the recommended books of course.

Three of the muggleborn first years didn't come back after the holidays, Hermione said it isn't that unusual there was apparently a girl in our year in Hufflepuff that didn't return after Christmas last year. She berated me for not having noticed but I didn't really know her, I can't even picture what she looks like, she was the person sorted before me and I was too busy worrying what the hat would say to watch her sorting, and I never even heard anyone talking about her not coming back. None of this years drop-outs are in Gryffindor either so I didn't know them. Ron said that's obvious, Gryffindors don't run away like cowards but two of them were Ravenclaws so I pointed out that leaving a school where someone or something is trying to kill you and at least a quarter of the school looks down on you because your parents weren't magical might be seen as the intelligent thing to do. Hermione just gave me a dirty look and I let it drop because I didn't want her to realise how much I meant it. Even still nobody seems to have suspected that I wasn't planning to come back if I hadn't been caught by Dumbledore.

Batman is the best because his cape is Gryffindor Red.

Your friend always

Harry

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

Please stay safe everyone.