Chapter 162

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Criminal Minds or any of their characters. I do however own this story, I wrote it and I do NOT give permission for anyone to post it anywhere else. If you want to share it post a link.

Authors Note: I've explained this before but I still get a lot of reviews correcting me. Harry and Spencer are deliberately mixing up Superman and Batman to prove that the letter is genuine, something only a muggle or muggleborn would understand.

Dear Harry

Thank heavens you are okay. I'm not going to scold you, I know you didn't want to put yourself in danger and you did all you could to get help. I always knew you weren't the type of person who can let an innocent person be seriously harmed whether you like them or not. I've known that since those days at the hideout when your magic healed me even though you were so frightened that I would kick you out for using the power you couldn't explain at the time. You couldn't stand to see me hurting even if it meant losing the only friend you ever had and the only place you had to stay. I always knew you were destined to be a superhero whether you wanted to be or not. I just wish that you didn't get hurt trying to save other people. Especially as this time you're not going to be rewarded with a genuine lifelong friendship.

To be honest as much as I wished you'd chosen a more competent professor, it may not have done any good. Remember when you went to McGonagall and Flitwick for help at the end of last year. It's possible the only reason that Professor Idiot wasn't spelled to deny you help was that he was so useless that whoever was doing it didn't think that they needed to bother, or they recognised your animosity and thought that there was no chance of you asking him for help. Or perhaps he had been spelled and it didn't have any effect on his willingness to go down the Chamber with you since his motivation never was to help you or any other student. On the other hand, if you were staying at Hogwarts next year it might have been useful to know whether the others had been spelled not to help you in this instance as well, if they weren't it might indicate that it was Quirrell/Voldemort who spelled them last year but if they are still spelled not to help it's much more likely to have been Dumbledore. Of course, it wouldn't be conclusive, because they could still be affected by the spells Voldemort or whoever cast last year and not have been spelled again, I don't know whether spells like that would wear off and need to be renewed or not, or whether the actual spell was to stop the professors from interfering with the philosopher's stone and nothing to do with helping students. It is frustrating not to know more about magic and not to be able to access reference books to study more about it, not only on a personal level because I hate the thought of knowledge being denied to me but also so I could be of more use to you.

The fact that Professor Idiot didn't know his own name but could still speak in sentences seems odd to me. There is such a thing as that sort of amnesia that only affects personal memories so a person will still be able to do a skill such as speak a second language or play the piano even when they have no memory of having learned to do that or even trying it before. But for Professor Idiot to be like that the 'Obliviate' spell must only remove conscious memories, it would also mean that Professor idiot is still able to use a wand and recall spells, not that he'd be able to cast them any more accurately than he did before but he'd still know how to try and he wouldn't have a reason not to do it so I hope you disarmed him. Generally that sort of amnesia can be temporary and the memories either slowly or suddenly return as the brain heals. Does that mean that when someone is obliviated the memories are still there to be retrieved, could they come back one day if the spell isn't cast strongly enough? It must have been really tempting to tell him a ridiculous name, though he would have recognised what the words meant.

When you were trying to find the reason that Dumbledore didn't come down to help you himself, you missed what I as an outsider think is the most obvious answer, that he didn't come because he knew that the creature was a Basilisk and wasn't willing to risk dying to rescue you. Either the man is a coward or he values his own life far more than he does yours. Considering the way that he's treated you the rest of the time we know he doesn't value your life but that doesn't necessarily mean that he wasn't also afraid of dying. A Basilisk that can kill just by looking at you is a thing of horror, it's not like a witch or wizard which he has experience fighting against.

I hope I haven't hurt you by pointing this out but you've never trusted him so I don't think you will be too surprised.

As for not sending Professors to help you it could be more of the same, he didn't think your life was worth risking theirs. Or he didn't want them to see the horror of what you were facing, if they did survive the experience, it might have risked opening their eyes to some of his manipulations around you. Especially if he sent them and didn't come down to the chamber himself.

It's odd that Myrtle has been missing for weeks and it was only when you were desperate enough to go down into the chamber yourself rather than tell a professor where the entrance was or write to someone in the ministry about it that she shows back up and tells you how to open the passage. Do the ghosts have to follow the Headmasters orders.

If Ginny chose Hermione to be attacked it may not have been because she noticed that you found her to be annoying. Remember she found the diary the in Hermione's possession when she took it back from her. Maybe she was scared how much Hermione knew, or perhaps Ginny had nothing to do with it, Voldemort may have chosen Hermione to remove a potential witness since he would've been getting close to the time he'd be able to make his own body and Hermione would've recognised him if she saw him.

I really doubt Ginny was that perceptive not to be fooled by your apparent friendship with Hermione, though if anyone was going to notice that you disliked Hermione it would be one of the two students watching you obsessively. Though Colin seems awfully naïve from your descriptions, so his rose tinted view of the world probably wouldn't allow him to notice any falsehoods or anything else about his hero that tarnished his image of you.

Ginny may also have had more personal reasons that you're not aware of for choosing the other two students as well and the fact you found or could reasonably be expected to find them annoying may have just been a bonus or coincidence. Colin would have been in all her classes so he might have annoyed her personally, especially if he talked about you all the time and the way you did say hello to him multiple times a day (however grudgingly) when she couldn't even work up the courage to talk to you so you'd say hello to her, and the way Hermione hung around with you and nagged everyone about studying and homework annoyed her brother so she might have found it equally annoying.

I also think that if Ginny was still in control of the choices by then, which she may not have been, she could have chosen Hermione because she was jealous of your 'best female friend' and thought that you might turn to her more if Hermione was out of the way. Which would be a very ugly and dangerous way for her to be thinking. Perhaps she overestimated her own friendship with you and planned to console you about the petrification of your friend.

One of my house mates is studying abnormal psychology and he was talking about the psychology of stalkers from his criminal psychology class. It's fascinating stuff and I'll confess to wanting to at least read his textbooks even if I don't think I'd want to take the class. He said their obsession can move to removing obstacles in your path, such as Justin and Colin to targeting those they think are in their way to forming a relationship with their target, such as Hermione, before moving on to targeting the person themselves.

I honestly think that Ginny needs to see a psychiatrist and psychologist, or the magical equivalents, to deal with what happened this year. Not just what happened to her but what she was influenced into doing to other people. If she did pick Colin and Hermione to be attacked out of jealousy she might feel even worse about their attacks than the others because even if she didn't like them she almost certainly wouldn't have tried to kill them and she would feel guilt and remorse for choosing them and horrified about having made those choices, and what the consequences could've been. She needs to see someone who knows the whole story and won't just look at her as a victim because if she was involved in deciding who was attacked then she was guilty of the attacks as well. If her crush on you has become an obsession she could still be very dangerous to you and those you are close to.

Have you seen Dobby, did you ask him why he told you that what was happening with the Chamber had nothing to do with Voldemort? Was he trying to stop you from solving the puzzle, and if so why? He was Lucius Malfoy's elf, could he still be loyal to the Malfoys or could he have been following orders. Though I can't think that those orders were given to keep you safe if he was. I know he told you he wanted to help you by preventing you from returning to school and by getting you sent home injured or to the magical hospital to get you out of the school. But he isn't required to tell you the truth.

I guess you were right about Hagrid's spider not being the cause of Myrtle's death and the other boy trying to frame him, though the spider would also have presented a risk to the other students, so a case could be made that he would've been rightfully expelled for that anyway. Have they apologised and given him back the right to use a wand?

Don't feel guilty about wanting to point out that the pipes were a stupid idea, but is it really Hermione you want to correct and feel smug about them being wrong, or is it the unknown person who really planted that note to manipulate you. Because they deserve it, even if it did save your life I'm not entirely sure that was the note planter's intention.

The thing that concerns me most about the message in Hermione's hand is that whoever planted it knew that you would need the knowledge the night you did, between being let in to visit her and her being revived later that night or the next morning. I could be wrong, they could have just needed you to find it before Hermione was revived because she would have known it was planted if she didn't rip the page out of the book and write the word pipes and it hadn't been in her hand when she was petrified. She also might have thrown it away without looking at it, thinking it was just rubbish or looked at it and thrown it away because it didn't mean anything to her.

I don't want you to think that I wouldn't love to see you but I think if you've got a safe place to stay for the start of the summer you should stay and complete 8th grade at Scoil Draiocht then come to America. It will be easier for you to slot into the American school system if you're not a year behind your age group, or smaller than your peers, and you could teach yourself a lot of magic using their library over the summer too so it won't matter as much if you can't get into a magical school.

Then you can come to California where I am most of the year. I'm sure between us we can find a place for you to hide particularly since you have your cloak to get in and out. I have my own room so we could share or if you wanted your own space or in the times I need to be alone, the house I live in has an attic space, it isn't much but you could cast a notice-me-not charm and silencing charms on the manhole and pull down ladder and set up there until we find something better. I'm sure you could charm the ladder to move up and down silently.

The house is right on the edge of the campus so there's a high school not too far from here, I don't know how good a school it is but this isn't a bad area so it's probably not terrible and you're good at independent learning so the quality of the teaching shouldn't matter and I'm sure you could find a way to subtly defend yourself from bullies if needed.

If you can't tell from this long and rambly letter, I'm still feeling a bit panicked after reading your last letter about how lucky you were to have survived all that. Part of me wants to beg you to come here immediately or to come to you so I can see in person that you're okay. My mind keeps going over the story and wanting to know more, to understand better what happened. I feel like I need to learn more about it to try to keep you safe which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, the best way to keep you safe would be to get away from that castle and whoever is controlling all the adults in it. I feel guilty for not insisting that you come here last summer rather than going back to that death trap of a school.

Superman subdues most of his bad guys with his fists, his supposed superhero gift is boxing or MMA training, in the real world he wouldn't be seen as a superhero but a vigilante thug and probably arrested not called in by the police.

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.