Chapter 193

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To:

From:

Dear Harry

I was glad to hear from you today, I'm sorry that it's probably too late for you to be still hanging around the library to get this reply immediately, and to chat, and I'm sorry that I wasn't awake to talk to you last night when you were feeling lonely, but at least this email will be waiting for you next time you get yourself to a library. Perhaps if we made an approximate time when you'll be trying to get to a library, I'll be able to talk to you since I have internet access in the house I can talk anytime, and I'm willing to stay up late or get up early to have the chance to have an email conversation.

It's frustrating to know that you have more than one house while you currently have no options but living in a tent under concealment wards or trusting your wellbeing to someone who would rent a campsite or motel room to a 13-year-old on their own, when they should be in school. I'm not going to nag you about security though, I know that you're being as safe as you can be. Could the goblin tell you anything about those properties and do you plan to go back and visit the houses once you do have access to them? I assume they are wizarding properties so none of them will have electricity, do you think that they're as eccentric as the Burrow, or do you think that your ancestors had more sense or planned out their houses before they built them instead of adding rooms at random. I just realized how fitting the name the Burrow is for that sort of house, it's exactly the way it's been built.

I think that I would enjoy living off campus with you. I may be getting closer to the age of the incoming students but I'm still enough younger that it takes time for them to stop feeling awkward about them having me around when they're drinking and partying or hooking up with each other, and they house is rarely what you would call a quiet environment conducive to studying. I would miss Ethan if I moved out, but I still share lab time with him so it isn't like we wouldn't see each other. The real question is whether you can afford an apartment, with or without me. I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to contribute much to the rent or costs. My scholarship pays my accommodation, but only if I remain on campus, and I would hate to be a burden on you. I could try to sneak into one of the casinos in LA and make some money but the reputable places aren't likely to let me in and unlike in Vegas I don't know my way around the less reputable gambling dens to know which ones would be safe to try my luck, and there aren't many in Vegas that would let me in again.

I will start trying to look at apartments and rental houses available to see what the prices are like. Foster care would be free of cost to you of course, but I can understand you not wanting to go that route. I know you really only need a space to set up your tent where you can come and go without being noticed but that's going to be quite difficult to find in a city or on a university campus full of students. There is a fairly large homeless population in California and they do have camps but it wouldn't be a safe place for a boy on his own, the problem is that those camps have already taken much of the free space you might have otherwise been able to consider hiding your tent in. I'd suggest we could save costs by renting a single room and using your tent but the optics of two teenage boys living like that wouldn't be good, and would likely bring the attention of child protection.

It's normal to be concerned about Dean and Seamus going back to Hogwarts, I always used to worry about you being there and what dangers you might be facing. It would also be normal to want to hear how people are reacting to your absence and whether the Professors or the Headmaster made some sort of excuse as to where you are. Though I can understand Dean being wary of sending any controversial information that his mother would have to read as she retyped it for you. Though you probably could ask Patrick to forward an email to them if you wanted to get in contact without involving Dean's mom.

Do you like the beach? I'm not that fond of it myself. It's only about 2 hours from here by public transport, which I guess sounds a lot farther away to you who has spent your whole life living within 2 hours of the beach without ever been taken there except with Seamus in Ireland. There is a beach about 40 minutes from Las Vegas, but it's not the ocean of course, it's the edge of where the Colorado River has been turned into a reservoir by the Hoover Dam.

Classes have started back here and I think I chose well for this semester. The lectures have all been good so far and the tutorials and pracs have only just started but they seem promising. Some of my groupmates from last year's engineering assignment are in one of my new classes and they came and sat with me in the lecture, they seemed pleased that I was in the class and apologized for not keeping in better contact over the summer. It seems that they were just busy, and from the complaints I've heard about their summer internships and some other people's, I'm almost glad I wasn't old enough to get one. Though some people had some positive things to say about the learning experiences, a lot of them felt overworked and underappreciated.

The Supermobile in the 1960's TV version of Superman cost a quarter of a million dollars before they added all the extra features, though of course none of the features were real, they were just props. It was a Lincoln Futura concept car that never made it into general production.

Your friend always

Spencer

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