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To:
From:
2/9/92
Hi Spencer
There's some good news and some bad news. Bad news first, I didn't manage to get on a flight to America, but I am not at Hogwarts and nobody has come looking for me yet. Hopefully I've been able to layer enough wards on my tent to prevent anyone from finding me. I am still planning on trying to stow away on the QE2 when it leaves in less than three weeks, so hopefully I will be with you in about a month.
I'm writing to you from the Bournemouth public library. Sorry I didn't manage to let you know that I was alright last night. There wasn't anywhere with public internet open by the time I got here. Bournemouth is not far from Southampton and according to the popular tourist guides has some of the best beaches and a large tourist industry, and the train here doesn't leave from Kings Cross so I didn't have to worry too much about running into anyone travelling to the Hogwarts Express or back from seeing their children off on the train. It's not that far from Southampton but not close enough for someone to think from my current location that I'm waiting to catch a cruise ship to leave the country if they find me here. It seemed a good place for me to hide out for the next couple of weeks, and it has enough attractions for people not to try to look for an ulterior motive for choosing to stay here, and it's not like a small town where strangers stand out and everyone would have noticed me if they were asked. I've not seen a single person I recognise or anyone wearing wizards' robes so hopefully nobody will find me here. The dress code even in town is mostly shorts and T-shirts or singlets, so robes, or really anything I've ever seen an adult witch or wizard wear will stand out here, even from a distance so that would hopefully give me time to get away before they noticed me.
The problem with such a popular tourist town is that there are no secluded beaches for me to set my tent up on and leave it. I was able to set up before sunset and stay the night somewhere above the tideline without any trouble. I set a perimeter alert and was undisturbed until the early morning walkers arrived on the beach about dawn. Not the time I would've liked to be up and packed but after working on the farm for the last three weeks I'm used to being up that early, but I'm not confident to leave my tent up all day so I'm essentially homeless from about 6 am to 7 or 8pm. Once I leave here, I'm going to go and walk along the beach to see if I can find a more secluded spot slightly further inland once I've got out of the town, so I might not be able to get back here to email for a few days.
I spoke with Gringotts first thing this morning, before the train was due in so nobody would have paid much attention to me being in Diagon Alley, and they placed an owl mail ward on me. The only owl that can find me now is Hedwig. They also placed anti scrying wards on me as well. It cost a bit but there's plenty of Galleon left in my vault, which the goblins assure me I can access from any branch of Gringotts. They've given me a list and Los Angeles doesn't have an actual branch but they do have a transport hub to the branch in Seattle. I've used an owl from the Diagon Ally post office to let Seamus and Dean know so they won't worry too much if an owl refuses to take a letter addressed to me.
The Goblins also confirmed that I do own several houses though most of them were severely damaged during the war with Voldemort. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to be able to access them before I turn seventeen, while Dumbledore is my guardian. The good thing is that nobody else is able to access any of them either, even if they're calling themselves my guardian or family. My Account manager confirmed that I am the only living Potter and therefore the only person who will be able to enter the wards, and I can't until I turn seventeen. So, they're in whatever condition they were in when they were sealed up but the Goblins didn't have any details what that condition might be. The only one left to the ravages of time and weather is the house in Godric's Hollow where my parents died. I'm not even sure if I still own that one, apparently, it's been turned into a memorial to the end of the war and is a bit of a wizarding tourist attraction though nobody can actually get into the house. Part of me wanted to go and have a look at it, my parents are buried there, in the Godric's Hollow cemetery as well, but it would be a stupid thing to do. I'm ten times as likely to be recognised there as anywhere else.
I'm not so sentimental that I think that I need to go and say goodbye to their graves before I leave the country. I don't know if I even believe that they'll be more likely to hear me or see me there than anywhere else. If they even still exist, I don't believe that it's in their bodies, buried in the ground for the last 11 years. But I feel a bit guilty that I've never visited them, even though I didn't know where they were buried before yesterday and I would have liked to see the house where I was happy before I was left with the Dursleys. Still, I don't think that they'd want to risk me finding a new home I can feel happy in by trying to find memories of the past when I was with them.
I am enjoying the freedom of being able to set my own schedule for the day, not being dictated by what time the chickens and cows need to be looked after and the long list of harvesting and farm maintenance that needed to be done or classes to attend. I don't know if I'd like it for long but it's good to have a rest from working. Though I really didn't mind helping out and it was kind of fun to be working with Dean and Seamus instead of the unreasonable list of chores the Dursley's would've given me to do on my own while dodging Dudley and his friends.
I am a bit lonely though, I find myself wanting to write to Seamus and Dean and ask them about how they feel being back at Hogwarts and if they're safe, even though I only saw them the day before yesterday. I did send an email to Patrick and to Rose, though I felt bad not being honest with them about not going back to Hogwarts, though if they thought about it, they would realise that I cannot have sent the emails from there. I didn't want to send Hedwig to them in case they kept her while writing responses and she wasn't back in time to leave and once I'm gone they won't be able to send me owl mail. If my disappearance makes 'The Daily Prophet', Rose and Patrick will know that I was lying to them. Not that I ever suggested that I had gone back to Hogwarts I mostly talked about some of the books we'd both been reading, my correspondence classes at Scoil Draiocht, and asked about the end of their summers, but I think that they're going to feel that it was big enough that I should have mentioned it. With the mail ward, I can't get the paper so I don't know what it's saying about me.
Are you sure that you want to give up living in your college house for me, now that you're getting older and will be starting to be included in more things. I can't ask you to make a sacrifice like that.
Batman relies on Superman as a friend, as much as I rely on you.
Your friend always
Harry
A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.