Chapter 163

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Dear Spencer

We will never know whether Ginny was telling the Diary and/or the Basilisk who was muggleborn, though I suspect she was because I don't know how else they would have known. Perhaps Tom Riddle would have recognised the names that had fathers in his generation or who looked like a wizarding ancestor he knew but that couldn't have accounted for everyone. For that matter I'm kind of surprised that Ginny knew that Justin was muggleborn, unless she'd overheard him talking about planning to go to Eton, which I've heard him say a couple of times. I wish I knew whether the people, attacked were just the first muggleborns that the snake came across or whether Ginny encouraged it to attack them specifically, or a combination of the two.

Ginny claims that she doesn't remember doing any of it. She's saying that she'd noticed missing time since before the first attack, times when she was in one place writing in the diary and then the next thing she is aware of is being somewhere else, sometimes covered in blood, which I think means she was the one attacking the roosters in the chook pens, since nothing else I'm aware of happening would have gotten her bloody other than writing those messages on the walls. If that was real blood then where did it come from?

I really don't understand why she didn't go to someone for help the first time it happened, missing time like that would be frightening, particularly in the magical world where she would've known her memories could have been removed by someone else. Particularly once bad things began happening in the times she didn't remember. If she didn't want to go to a professor she has four older brothers here at school to go to or she could've written to her parents. I don't know if she's telling the truth about not remembering but everyone who knows that she was involved, seems to believe her and accept that she didn't have any control over her actions.

A surprisingly few people even seem to know, or even be speculating about Ginny's part in all this which is odd considering how fast news and rumours travel around the school, and how everyone seems to know everything else about what happened down in the chamber. I think that Ron's been boasting about how the two of us went down to fight the monster.

Ginny seems very quiet and withdrawn to me, but then again she has been all year and I didn't know her before this and her brothers never really spoke much about her as a person, so maybe I'm just concerned now because I know what almost happened to her. No-one else has noticed anything wrong in her reactions, and nobody knows about her part in almost resurrecting Voldemort or letting the Basilisk loose in the castle so she's being treated as a victim, the same as Hermione, Colin, Justin and Penny.

She hasn't approached me, in fact she almost seems to be avoiding getting too close, but I have seen her watching me a couple of times, at first I just thought she was worried about me telling everybody that she was the one opening the chamber of secrets, or that she'd been possessed by Voldemort's diary, but since reading your letter I've also started to notice that she watches more closely when I'm with Hermione which might make sense because Hermione always demands to know everything about everything and everybody thinks she's so smart and therefore Ginny would expect her to be the most likely person to guess what happened if I let something slip. I guess it means that I was wrong about Ginny noticing that I find Hermione annoying, because I would've told Hermione everything if we were genuine friends. But there's something about the way Ginny watches me that makes me uneasy at times. I don't know whether it's because I know she's spent the year writing to and being influenced by the darkest wizard in recent history or that I know she must have been the one to tell Voldemort that Hermione was a muggleborn but I find myself wanting to warn Hermione to stay away from me outside of classes when Ginny might see us together.

I still say we should have tried to take someone other than Professor Idiot down into the Chamber of Secrets, if we couldn't get a decent professor to go then Ron's brothers surely would have been a lot more use than the idiot. I'm not sure whether Percy would have agreed to do but the twins would've in a heartbeat. They're actually pissed off that we didn't come and get them and they have two more years magical education than us and a habit of thinking outside the box for solutions which is rare in this world.

Of course, I haven't confided in Hermione, she'd tell the Headmaster what I was saying and the Weasleys seem to be some of his biggest supporters so I don't want him finding out that I don't trust one of them when he seems so keen to encourage everyone to see her as a victim. I did tell Dean and Seamus the whole story though and I've warned them about what we suspected about Ginny, that she's dangerous when something gets in her way and she could be a danger to me if her obsession gets out of hand. They're running interference as best they can without letting her realise we're close friends. I'm glad that we get to leave soon and if I'm lucky I will never see her again.

Hermione turned red when I teased her about tearing a page out of the library book but I couldn't tell whether she was embarrassed about being caught damaging a book after all the lectures she's given everyone about treating books with the respect they deserve, ashamed to realise she was wrong about the pipes though I didn't point it out to her, or she's furious that someone else did that and planted it on her so people would think she ripped the book or made such a foolish assumption, or just angry at me for reminding her about it.

I'm pretty sure she wouldn't tear a page out of the book, I could see her believing that she was the only person who'd found this information and rushing out to tell a professor but Madam Pince the librarian is also an authority figure so Hermione would probably have told her, unless she tried and wasn't listened to like we weren't with the Philosopher's Stone last year. Even still, she would have taken the book to show people or dragged them into the library to see the book for themselves not ripped it. I also thought that the older books were spelled to prevent pages being removed like that, I think some of them are over 500 years old.

Dobby told me that he said it wasn't about You-Know-Who because the Diary was made by Tom Riddle before he became 'he-who-must-not-be named. Before he became Voldemort he could be freely named which I suppose might have been some convoluted clue that made sense to Dobby but it sounds to me a whole lot like deliberately telling the truth in a way intended to mislead. I have no idea how he could expect me to understand what he was trying to tell me. I would have thought that maybe elves (or maybe just Dobby) is a little too concrete in his thinking, since we already know his decision making is also a little off. Trying to knock me off my broom at 100m in the air with an iron ball moving at at least 80 kilometers an hour to keep me safe from the Basilisk isn't exactly a sign of adequate reasoning skills.

I haven't been able to talk to any of the other elves enough to know if this is normal for them but if they spend their whole lives following orders then perhaps they've never had the chance to develop the ability to think rationally for themselves. Or perhaps all the hitting his head against things in punishment has given him a traumatic brain injury impairing his judgement and reasoning skills. Still whatever the reason the fact that he could give a tricky answer like that gives me a reason to distrust anything else he tells me, even if I want to believe he meant well. It's a pity because having an elf to do things for me would make it a lot easier to escape coming back here if I could trust them.

As much as I'd like to see you as soon as possible I'm looking forward to going back to Scoil Draiocht this summer. It will be better than to try to catch up a whole year of classes at a regular summer school, or being a year older than the rest of my classmates, I already find most of my class lacks mature thinking both here and two years ago at Little Whinging Primary, and I doubt that Americans other than you would be much better. I'm also looking forward to plundering the library there to find all the information I haven't been able to find in the Hogwarts library, or haven't dared to look up for risk of someone noticing and questioning why I'm learning that or how it's not beyond my understanding.

By the time the Scoil Draiocht summer session breaks up in the middle of August I will be thirteen, my passport will be able to say I'm fourteen and I'll be able to travel as an unaccompanied minor and will also hopefully have time to work out how to get a credit card and buy my own ticket on line so Dean's and Seamus's parents won't know where I've gone if someone does find out I spent the summer with them and questions them. Though I'm sure Mrs Thomas at least will suspect what I've tried to do, she doesn't know about the passport changing my age so hopefully she wouldn't think it worth mentioning if anyone asks her.

I've been invited to spend the first week of the holidays with Dean but I haven't actually received an invitation from Seamus for the weeks before we enter time compression yet. If I don't at least it will be summer, decent weather for camping and lots of other people in the seaside towns that aren't usually there so I won't stand out, and I can make do with a normal nonmagical tent for a few weeks, then once I get to Scoil Draiocht I can spend weekends there. I will research how to ward my tent so nobody can see that it's bigger inside, and hopefully how to apply some decent temperature control wards so we have time to find me a permanent place to live before the winter if I don't pass the language exams to get into Nezcalilizcali Naualotl Tlateotokani Toltekayomeh.

I would have thought that Batman would be your favourite, because he has an eidetic memory like you. Not that Superman is lacking in intelligence either with all the gadgets he must have invented himself.

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.