Chapter 146

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14/2/93

Dear Spencer

I hate Valentine's Day!

I didn't even think Valentine's day was a thing in the magical world I never even heard about it last year, but Professor Idiot came up with the totally ridiculous idea of celebrating with singing telegrams delivered by dwarves dressed up as cupids. Well with the wings and harps, at least they still had normal clothes on, thank Merlin. It's made the girls all silly and giggly all day, even Hermione was blushing at breakfast and when the dwarves came up to us.

The stupid thing is that I saw several delivered and not one of the people they were delivered to were happy about it, though their friends all got a good laugh about it. You couldn't out run the dwarves either they were downright vicious about grabbing their victims and holding them down while they sang their Valentine messages as loudly and obnoxiously as they could. I can't blame them really, it was clear from the start of the day they didn't want to do it. I think Fred and George must have spent most of their pocket money sending a couple of the most ridiculous Valentines to whomever they thought they could embarrass the most.

Someone sent me one, or rather someone sent The-Boy-Who-Lived one it was all about my appearance and defeating the dark lord. It didn't sound like the ones the twins sent, I'm fairly sure it was Ginny. Anyway, if it was her, she got her money's worth, it was delivered right in front of her as she was waiting to go into the classroom we'd just come out of and I'm sure I was as scarlet cheeked as she was. Malfoy made some smart remark to her about me not liking her Valentine and she ran into the class crying, and the twins followed me around for the rest of the day singing the bloody limerick from the Valentine. It was a bit annoying, but at least nobody from any of the other houses was going to hex me with those two hanging about. I would have appreciated the embarrassment to have a whole day with no new bruises or minor injuries, but they even kept it up in front of Ginny which was unbelievably cruel when she was so upset already. I didn't say anything though because I didn't want to encourage her by letting her see me standing up for her, hopefully this persuades her to stop crushing on me.

I hope you had a nice quiet embarrassment free day and that if you did give someone a valentine it was well received and if you got one it was from the person you hoped it would be from.

We found an old Diary that writes back to you. Well, we actually found it a while ago but it took since then to find out what it does and it wasn't worth telling you about until then it was just some old unused diary or homework planner from a muggle bookshop. Ron tried to warn us against touching it in case it was cursed but it was a book so of course Hermione didn't listen. I wonder if she's been cursed somehow to believe in all books the way she does. It's one thing to love reading and learning but her absolute insistence that everything written in a book must be true even when it contradicts another book and this latest insistence that a book couldn't possibly be harmful just can't be natural naivety. Anyway the diary is 50 years old so from about the time the chamber of secrets was opened last time and someone had taken the effort to flush it down Myrtle's toilet which is almost never used, so Hermione was determined to crack it's secrets. It's lucky for Hermione that whoever it was didn't try to throw it away while she was brewing the Polyjuice, since Myrtle the ghost got really upset about someone throwing a book at her and flooded the whole bathroom.

Hermione finally worked out how the diary works, which after all the spells she researched and cast on it it's funny that she finally worked it out by spilling ink on it and watching it disappear so she tried writing in it to see what would happen to the writing and it wrote back to her (I'm not sure why it took her that long to try that). When it wrote back she asked it about the Chamber of Secrets and it showed her a memory of Hagrid being caught with a monster that supposedly came from the chamber and killed a student. It was a huge spider. It's head was about twice the size of an adult person's and it's legs were longer than mine. Hagrid was keeping it in a cupboard when he was caught with it so the Chamber wasn't found but Tom Riddle said the attacks stopped when Hagrid was expelled and the spider removed from the school. I'd like to think that Hagrid would take the death of classmate more seriously but I can see him convincing himself that it couldn't have been his poor misunderstood pet.

What I don't understand though is, if Hagrid was expelled because of the death of a student then how come he's able to live and work at Hogwarts? Did someone find out that it wasn't him and his spider? Hermione's trying to research it but we asked Hagrid and he wouldn't explain things so I don't think he has been exonerated or if he was it was a long time after he was expelled so he couldn't come back to the school as a student and he's here as a gamekeeper because without OWLs or NEWTs he isn't qualified to do anything else. Certainly, some of his spells don't work but he's casting them with an umbrella, which did me a favour by showing me that any wand shaped item should work as a wand to help direct your magic if you have enough power to cast spells wandlessly. I wondered why he isn't using a wand? He can't seem to cast very many spells with his umbrella. But if he was kicked out of school before he sat his OWLs then his wand would have been broken and he doesn't have wand rights to enable him to buy another one. Maybe that's why he uses the umbrella, because the pieces of his broken wand are in it and it never occurred to him that he didn't need them.

Even if they found out that it wasn't his pet that killed the student that time and it wasn't big enough to eat a first year, a spider that size would still be dangerous, shouldn't someone be keeping an eye on what pets he has around the children at school since they already know his taste runs to scary and dangerous animals and his insight into danger isn't very good. That three headed dog last year was one of his pets until Dumbledore borrowed it to protect the philosopher's stone. Not to mention Norbert the baby dragon that nobody seemed to care to do anything about. I wonder if Professor McGonagall even got my letter about that?

I'm looking into your potion idea but I haven't found anything like that yet. If I find that there is a potion that can remove all spells and potions affecting someone then I'd be extremely tempted to see if I could brew a massive vat of it and dose everyone at dinner one night. Starting with Hermione, I need to know if she's betraying me of her own free will. I doubt we'll ever be genuine friends unless she has a total change in personality but I still want to know if I should be trying harder to be her friend or trying harder to keep things from her. And on the professors. The school as a whole deserves professors who genuinely believe the things they are teaching and are free to help students in trouble in the way they feel best meets their needs. Not adults that have been spelled to ignore students in need.

There is such a thing as a flushing potion which will flush all the potions currently in your body out. Neville and several of the others had to have one once after Snape forced us to try our potions one class. It's very unpleasant and certainly not something you could easily take each week without anyone noticing, let alone dose the other students. It causes severe diarrhoea and totally empties the digestive tract so taking it too often wouldn't help with maintaining good nutrition. The other problem is that it doesn't help with spells so it wouldn't do anything against a tracking charm and I don't know how far back it flushes the potions for. If something has been thoroughly digested and absorbed there might not be any left in your gut. Would it still be collected from elsewhere in your body and removed? Still if I'm not being obliviated then potions are the only way I could be influenced while I was at the Dursleys.

Patrick wrote back to me, he hasn't heard of anything that can remove tracking charms and suggested that if I think I'm being tracked by someone who meant me harm I should go to the DMLE and ask them to cast a diagnostic charm to find out. Problem is I'm not sure how to get to the DMLE and if I asked the wrong person I wouldn't even get there before I was stopped and possibly memory charmed again. Rose is more likely to know or be able to find out if she has time between her own studies, but she hasn't written back yet.

I don't think that anyone would risk adding anything to an unknown potion or taking a sample of it, but even jostling the cauldron or stirring it to get a better look at the wrong time would effect the potion in unpredictable ways and there is no way Hermione would know if that had happened, let alone exactly when it happened which would have been necessary to counteract the effects. A senior student would know that but a younger student might not think about it, particularly a first year who has only made potions that even if they go wrong cannot cause permanent harm.

At least Batman is young, Superman must be middle aged to be guardian for his teenage nephew.

Your friend always

Harry

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