Chapter 144

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26/1/93

Dear Spencer

I hope all your new classes this semester exceed or at least meet your most positive expectations for them. You deserve to have classes that can keep up with your need to learn everything.

My letters from you are very well hidden in my trunk in a section that can only be opened with a password, it's a dimensional store so even destroying the lining of my trunk wouldn't reveal it and the security spells on my trunk would incapacitate any student who tried to do that. You would probably be the only person in the world that might be able to guess the password. Even to someone who knows you or knows of our friendship it wouldn't be obvious.

I'm not sure what the differences between a tent I cast some charms on, and a truly magical tent would be. In fact, I'm not even totally sure they exist but I've heard of students who were not muggleborn talk about camping holidays and I don't think they would use anything that had to be purchased in the nonmagical world, or they knew was imported from the nonmagical world. I've never seen or heard of a magical tent, I was just hoping that they were different from nonmagical tents because I honestly can't imagine living in the tents I've seen advertised on television for months on end or through the winter. Maybe there isn't because camping doesn't seem like something most of the wizards I know would do and the students I heard talking about it don't claim to be purebloods so they must have a nonmagical parent or grandparent and if someone was importing tents I couldn't see how they would resist trying to improve them. Ron would know, his brother works in Egypt curse breaking (which I'm not sure but sounds like it might be a form of magical archeology or tomb raiding) so they probably live near their excavation sites. I'm not positive he lives in a tent but I don't think he lives in a city there either and if he's working with goblins then they'd need a place to stay close to the tombs where they can't be seen by nonmagical folk.

While I can cast the notice-me-not charm quite well now, it isn't permanent and I can't really tell when it's about to wear off. Also once it's worn off I think it would risk my spell being tracked to cast it again though I could use the password protected version but I'm not sure whether that would be any more permanent though the one on Professor Idiot's door is still holding strong even with all the spells people have thrown at it as far as I can tell. Next time I cast a spell like that I definitely need a control person who does not know the password who can tell me if they can suddenly notice the spelled object. I can think of several other spells it would be useful to have on a tent, mild people repelling charms to stop people walking into or knocking over the tent they haven't noticed or hanging about the area as I enter and leave, water proofing, self cleaning, air freshening, space expansion, cushioning charms on the floor under your sleeping bag, cooling charms if you were using it in the summer and warming charms you could activate if the weather turned cold. Most of these charms would make the tent illegal to use in the nonmagical world in case a muggle got into the tent and realised that what they were seeing was impossible but I think as long as they were cast in the magical world there wouldn't be a way of tracking it, but you'd have to be sure that they'd all last the entire time you were using the tent. It could be disastrous if someone saw the tent appear out of nowhere or the tent returned to its normal size while you had too many things in it to fit and either tore the tent to pieces or if the charms to prevent it tearing were strong enough broke your stuff and crushed you with the broken bits. I think that would be the biggest difference with a tent that's been made in the magical world. I could use charms to replicate all those functions for a while but a genuinely magical tent would use enchantments or runes or perhaps a magical material like dragon hide to make the changes permanent the same as our bookbags. I don't know enough to do that so if there is such a thing available I would buy one unless it costs as much as a caravan or something. Dragonhide bags cost more than leather so unless that's because it's so much harder to sew it might cost a lot.

I haven't been able to find anything in the library on tracking charms, I'm beginning to suspect that the books with the information in have been deliberately removed from the library. I've written to Ruby and Patrick asking them if they know how to detect and remove tracking charms but I'm starting to think I'm going to have to somehow get out and try the bookshop in Hogsmeade. I have the extra Polyjuice if I need it but it will only work if I don't have any tracking charms on me to alert people when I leave the castle grounds. I wish that I'd thought to look it up when I was able to use the library at Scoil Draiocht last summer. I'll definitely try this summer if I can get there.

I'm not surprised that so few students choose to leave Hogwarts because unless they've enrolled in another magical school their wands will be taken from them and they're told they will not legally be allowed to purchase another or to perform magic for the rest of their lives and, as I've found out, enrolling in another magical school is incredibly difficult unless you have a magical parent to approve the transfer. I'm surprised more students don't leave after they've sat their OWLs at the end of fifth year. After that they get to keep their wand rights. Yes, I know five years of muggle school if they haven't been studying in the summer or via correspondence, would be almost impossible to catch up on well enough to get into university but not everyone wants to go on to further education, those that want an apprenticeship in a trade or to work in their family's business would get by and they could go to night school if they wanted. Even those options are probably better than any but the very brightest of muggleborns can achieve in the magical world. I don't know that I am surprised that nobody else talks about going to summer school to keep up with some of their nonmagical education, after all someone with a loving family in the muggle world isn't going to want to spend a month of their summer at another boarding school after being gone all year. There might be quite a few students keeping up with their muggle education without telling anyone. I don't think that I would have mentioned it if I was muggleborn and attending summer school in Little Whinging. Even the less bigoted purebloods would look down on someone doing that, and I think that people would take it as a sign that you really don't fit into the magical world, or that you plan to turn your back on magic and the wizarding world after Hogwarts and use it as proof that educating muggleborns in magic is a waste of time. Of course, people would feel much more strongly about it if it were me and not some muggleborn. Until they all turned on me for being a parselmouth they all seemed to have all these expectations that I would be their hero again since my family saved them all when I was a baby.

I really wasn't trying to keep an eye on the potion very much. Most of the times I saw the potion was because Ron or Hermione dragged me in there while Hermione was brewing to talk about something with me or because Hermione needed a second pair of hands and didn't trust Ron. I know I should have stayed away from the girls' toilet she was brewing in and I don't know what I would have done if I had noticed, or thought I noticed, that Hermione had got something catastrophically wrong. Hermione wouldn't have listened to me if I'd told her that it wasn't safe to take. I was thinking about knocking it over or just putting out the fire under the cauldron to ruin the potion. But I was worried that she would suspect that I'd done it since I was the only other person that she thought knew about the potion. If I'd known what ingredient to add to safely turn the whole thing inert or into undrinkable sludge in a way I wouldn't be suspected I would've done it even if the potion seemed perfect.

In hindsight, I can't believe that I was the only person that knew what they were up to. I'm sure Fred and George must have followed them to see what they were up to. Someone must have noticed them trying to be stealthy as they were sneaking out after hours when the potion needed tending in the night. Not to mention that as unpopular as it is, it is the only girls' toilet on that level on that side of the castle, it must get some use, even if it is only by girls running late for class or too desperate for the loo to run up or down the stairs, and it should still be cleaned regularly. I can't believe nobody at all other than the three of us went in there for the entire month. I truly don't know how she and Ron weren't seen coming and going and the potion wasn't found.

It always seemed stupid to me that Batman could just take off his glasses and nobody recognised him. I don't look that different without my classes and I'm sure you don't either.

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.