Chapter 183
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To:
From:
Dear Spencer
I'm not getting warning letters or fines every time I use magic out in the nonmagical world which is what they said would happen if we used our wands over the summer. The one warning I got was when Dobby used magic at the Dursleys, but house elves don't use wands. I'm not actually using my wand either, but Seamus and Dean do at school and at Seamus's place and they haven't received any warnings. I don't think that either of them used any magic at Dean's, but I didn't even think not to since I've been using magic almost every day at the Dursleys, and I don't need to look around and make sure nobody sees me using a wand, all I have to do is avoid the use of what Dean calls flashy magic. The things that stand out as being clearly impossible to do any other way. So I don't know if they track wand use or if it's just an empty threat to put students from nonmagical families at a disadvantage. Seamus told us his mum had always forbidden him from using magic anywhere away from home and had written to warn him specifically against using it at Dean's. He explained to us that it was okay to use magic at his place when we arrived last year. He thought the warnings notes they gave us only mean not to use magic in front of a muggle, or that we get away with it because his mum has always used magic around the house and farm that they don't notice us using it. But neither of those explanations fit in with the way the note was worded.
Even if they are tracking wand use, they must have some other way of tracking magic other than the person's wand, how else would they find the muggleborns to invite them to Hogwarts? And know not to invite those from magical families that don't have enough magic? I will ask some of the professors a bit more about it but I don't want to make them too suspicious. Perhaps even if they do have a way to track magic like that, they wouldn't use it to look for a missing student because they'd assume I'd use my wand if I was doing any magic.
I think Dumbledore and whoever was watching me at the Dursleys would try to track me down by whatever means they had, and get me back under their control. I'm beginning to think that they might not be the same person. Dumbledore never said anything to me about not having spent enough time at the Dursley's last summer and nobody asked where I had been. I think if he didn't know where I was, he would have got Ron or Hermione to try to ask me. Or if he was more subtle than that he would still have asked them if I'd told them anything about how I spent my summer, and Hermione wouldn't have been able to resist asking me because she cannot stand not knowing everything and Ron would have blurted it out in jealousy because I spent time with someone other than him. Of course, it's possible he asked and then wiped their memories so they wouldn't know I'd been missing, or he could've read the information straight from their minds with Legilimency so they didn't notice what he wanted to know. I hate how magic makes it so you never can be sure that you know what's really happening.
Your idea about the wards being put around the Dursley's house and neighbourhood to attempt to reduce accidental magic and the potential breach of the statute of secrecy is possible, but it hasn't happened at Dean's or the Finnegans or around the Burrow. You'd think that if they wanted to control anyone's magic to prevent something untoward happening, it would be the Weasley twins. Of course, the Weasleys and the Finnegans have adult magic users so perhaps they don't have wards because of that, but there's no good reason that Dean's apartment shouldn't be warded. Particularly against things like fire starting, considering it's a crowded block of flats full of families. But there's no resistance to using spells there at all, even fire or potentially damaging spells. That explanation of the wards at Privet Drive also wouldn't explain why they healed me and made me forget being beaten and prevent me from running away when they increased the wards the way they did.
I don't think that there are many words that mean different things in the wizarding world than they do in nonmagical England, or at least if there are, the meanings aren't as different as British to American and I just haven't noticed. If that's the case it would probably contribute to the pureblood belief that muggleborns aren't as smart as they are. The purebloods at Hogwarts speak more formally than at Scoil Draiocht or Dean's friends in London. The biggest differences I've noticed are in swearing. Ron would call someone a 'Scarlet woman' rather than call her a slut. And he uses Bloody Hell or Merlin instead of Jesus or Fuck. I've heard the others say Merlin's pants or if a guy really wants to be crude, he might say Merlin's Balls or Merlin's ballsack."
I'd like to go back and meet my parents, I'd want to go back to before they were killed and warn them that they were going to be found, encourage them to leave Britain or at least change the way they were hiding but I don't know enough details to know where exactly they were in the months before they were killed or how they were found. I'm curious how my life would've changed but everyone seems to think or want me to think that my parents were followers of Dumbledore, which makes me uneasy about what would have happened if I'd grown up with them. I don't know that I'd recognise myself in the Harry they would've brought up, and I would never have met you.
I know that I should also be concerned by what happened to the rest of magical Britain if my mother wasn't there to do whatever she did to make the killing curse backfire when he cast it at me. I just know it wasn't anything that I did, no matter what people would like to believe. If he wasn't destroyed that night, he and his followers would've gone on terrorising magical Britain and killing until something else happened to stop them and who knows how long that would have taken or how many witches, wizards and non-magical people would have been killed before then. Would it have been some of my classmates at Hogwarts or at Scoil Draiocht. Would I even care, if my parents were alive and well and I grew up safe and loved, away from here.
I didn't notice the political angle in the Batman comics but now that I know more about the history of the time they were written, I realise that they probably did present an idea of a financially stable America where there was plenty of food and money and jobs when most of the world was still struggling after nine years of the Great Depression. I just thought it was because comics are meant to cheer people up, not take away their hope that things would get better by writing/drawing that life is tough even for superheroes.
Your friend always
Harry
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