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Wednesday 14/8/91
Dear Spencer,
For a genius you can be a daft git sometimes. I have no intentions of dropping our friendship. You didn't stop writing to me when you made new friends in college why would you think I'd want to stop writing to you just because I have the opportunity to make new friends? What did I say to make you stop trusting me?
Unfortunately, at the moment, I have to admit that I have no idea how we are going to manage to write to each other from Hogwarts. I think I mentioned to you in my last letter that wizards don't use normal mail delivery, instead their letters are written on parchment sealed with wax or rolled into a scroll and carried by post owls. Hagrid gave me one for my birthday but I'm trying to make sure it's safe for her to travel so far before I send her to you. Nobody could give me a straight answer. None of the people I spoke to seemed to understand why anyone would want to write to someone in America. As to telling you the address for the school I don't know it. The letter I got from them doesn't say an address, and all Hagrid could tell me is that it's somewhere in Scotland. They have their own train so the ticket didn't tell me anything about where the school is either. So, it may be a couple of weeks before you hear from me once I go to Hogwarts, but that doesn't mean that you're not still my first friend and you need to trust me that I am still trying to find a way to contact you.
Now I know that you can get magical things, I'm sending you a book about protecting your mind from the spell that makes you forget things. I don't know if it will work for you without magic, hell I don't even know if it will work for me but I've been practicing it since the day Hagrid took me to Diagon Alley. I can't tell if I have done enough that it will work against the obliviate spell or against someone else reading my thoughts but it seems to have improved my memory. It's still not as good as yours though. Don't worry about me giving you the book, I bought this copy for you, I have one of my own to refer to and I'm working hard at learning it. I hope that you will too.
My Hogwarts booklist didn't include any math or science texts or novels or anything else I'd expect to see on my booklist for Stonewall Secondary. It is all magical books Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Defence Against the Dark Arts, History of Magic, Herbology and Astronomy. I didn't even see any normal schoolbooks in the bookshop on Diagon Alley. I know you would recommend that I try to apply to a correspondence school or summer school to keep up with normal subjects, and I know you're probably right, but I don't know that I can without an adult to support the application. I can't see the Dursleys allowing me to do it. I also want to see how hard the work is at Hogwarts before I commit myself to a whole lot more as well. I am going to try to buy the textbooks I would have used if I went to Stonewall High next year so I can read them at least then I'll learn the information, even if I won't get the credit for passing the year level.
My supply list also included a cauldron for potions, dragon-hide gloves, and quills and parchment rolls instead of pens and notebooks or paper, as well as the school uniform of old-fashioned robes like in the newspaper pictures. The stores were lit with candles and lanterns, not a sign of electrical switches or power-points anywhere or anything plastic or vinyl or that looked like it could run on batteries or have been made in this century in our world, and the whole place looked a bit like a living history museum, even most of the children and teenagers seemed to be in costume. One of the storekeepers suggested that I would be treated better if I wore a robe like the wizard raised students. Apparently, there is a prejudice against the nonmagical world and witches and wizards from nonmagical families.
I don't get to watch a lot of movies so I can't tell you which characters the goblins look most like but they're really short, none of them was more than about one meter tall. They're all wrinkly with pointy ears that stick straight out sideward and their skin is kind of a bronzy colour but not like a sun tan, more a bronzy white colour. They have incredibly long fingers and finger nails and noses almost like a beak shape, but their arms and legs are a lot shorter than their bodies. They're dressed in old fashioned suits, some of them even wore cravats rather than ties, and they physically keep your money in a vault under the bank accessed by carts driven by a goblin, riding in them feels like I'd imagine a rollercoaster in a dark narrow tunnel would feel. Goblin money is all coins the Galleons are gold and about the size of my palm and worth about fifty pounds, Silver Sickles and Bronze Knuts are the other coins but it's not a metric system. There are 17 Sickles in a Galleon and 29 Knuts in a Sickle. They'd weigh a ridiculous amount if you put them in a normal bag but the goblins gave me a bag that fits in my pocket and only weighs as much as Uncle Vernon's wallet no matter how much I put in it. I guess working out what to pay will help me with my mental arithmetic if nothing else.
No surprises that the Dursleys weren't happy to see me again, especially dragging a trunk full of magical things. They were home when I got there and basically pushed me into my new room and told me to stay there, which suits me because I have heaps of reading to do, and I packed a heap of food in my trunk to eat. The compartment the owner of the trunk shop said was for potions and ingredients has a stasis charm so everything stays fresh until I want to eat it. Which is good because it's going to be a whole lot harder to sneak out during the night and raid the cupboard without getting caught so I stocked up on meals. The things I bought hot are even still hot and the milk is still cold. There's only a month to go before I leave for school and hopefully I can work out a way that I don't ever have to come back here without arousing the suspicion of my enemies.
The owl Hagrid bought me seems to understand me like the snake did. The book I got about post owls said that they're normally really good at understanding addresses and instructions but sometimes they will understand more than that and develop an emotional bond called a familiar bond. Maybe the boa constrictor at the zoo was someone's familiar. Though I don't know how a witch or wizard's familiar would end up in a nonmagical zoo. But one other thing that I didn't tell you about the snake last time, is that after the snake got out of the enclosure he thanked me before slithering off. And I understood him too, it sounded like he was speaking English but nobody else seemed to notice. I don't know what that means. The book didn't say anything about Hedwig learning to talk to me.
Don't worry, I promise that I will find a way that we can keep writing somehow. Your friendship is far too important to me to lose. Please believe me.
Your Friend Always
Harry.
Other than writing to Spencer, preparing to say goodbye to his friends at the restaurant, practicing his occlumency and studying his new text books Harry had given a lot of thought to how he could keep using his powers without becoming dependent on his wand. He decided that the best way was possibly to make a fake wand so he could at least try to learn the spells without his real one. If it didn't work then he would keep trying to use magic without his wand outside of classes. So, he found a stick that was a similar size and colour and concentrated on using his power trying to make it look the same as his wand. It took a long time, and a lot of effort. He'd never tried to use his power to turn one thing into another like that. But that's what the subject transfiguration was according to his text book. It discouraged him a bit and made him doubt the possibility of his plan working. If he couldn't turn a stick into a similar looking stick without his wand, what hope did he have of turning a matchstick into a needle or a beetle into a button. He reminded himself how hard it had been to learn to unlock locks and how it was now so simple he barely needed to think about it once he was away from the dampening field around his house.
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.