Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or Criminal Minds or any of their characters. I do however own this story, I wrote it and I do NOTgive permission for anyone to post it anywhere else. If you want to share it post a link.
Thursday 8/22/91
Dear Harry
I'm sorry I didn't have faith in our friendship. You're still my best friend in spite of meeting Ethan and my friends from my classes, and of course I want you to keep writing if you can. I should have trusted that you'd want to keep in touch too just like you trusted me.
Your new world sounds so different, it's as if they are deliberately trying not to do anything the way the rest of the world does them or a more potentially sinister reason occurred to me. I think they might be deliberately making it more difficult for people to move from one world to the other, both for students born to families without magic to assimilate and/or for people who grew up in the magical world to leave. Of course, it makes more sense that only one of these reasons is deliberate and the other one just an unforeseen side effect of the first. We need more information to come up with a sound hypothesis. Perhaps the prejudice you mentioned is the cause but it sounds like they turned their back on the rest of the world centuries ago and have stagnated while the rest of the world progresses. But that by itself doesn't make sense either if there are wizards and witches born to parents without magic then they would bring new knowledge and technology when they enter the wizarding world, but as you said there is prejudice against witches and wizards with a nonmagical upbringing and families so maybe they've just refused to make any changes to their world suggested by them.
I know you are worried about the workload but I do think that it is important that you keep up with normal schooling in case the day comes when you don't want to stay in the magical world. If you don't finish high school in the muggle world then you'll find it difficult to get a decent job and make a life for yourself. In other words, you'd be trapped in the magical world just to be able to make a living. I'll help you as much as I can. In fact, I'll look into correspondence courses from here and once we find a way to write I can send them to you.
If I'm right about the wizarding world trying to make it harder for people from the nonmagical world to fit in, then your magical guardian was deliberately trying to make life harder for you by having you raised outside of the magical enclaves. Even if the Dursleys had turned out to be a good and loving family for you he as part of the magical world should have thought it better for you to be raised in that world, not raised to be an outsider in it by the time you started school at eleven. Add in the fact that the past eleven years you have been abused and neglected and if it wasn't for your own efforts in sourcing food first from dumpsters and then by befriending the restaurant owners then you'd also be half starved, smaller and weaker than your classmates. In short, those circumstances are highly likely to have made you submissive, overly eager to please and a target for manipulation and bullying. I'm worried that they knew how the Dursleys would treat you and that's what they planned when they gave you to them.
I can't blame you for wanting to take the risk in going to Hogwarts. I would make the same choice if it was me and I'm looking forward to hearing about all the things you will learn in that world, but please be careful. Not everyone there can be trusted and it's going to be truly hard to tell the difference between enemies and other people who are being used by you enemies and those that can really be trusted. If the headmaster is capable of changing people's memories, then those who have proved they can be trusted could still be coerced or fooled into acting against your best interests without being aware of it. I wish you could find a magical school in California to come to where I can visit you and know you're safe and well.
What you told me about the incident in the zoo has to be something to do with you being a wizard. A snake couldn't speak English even if you could teach one to understand it. They just don't have the mouth structure for human speech. It must be something to do with magic, though I'm not sure what. I don't think it could be that common though, otherwise wizards would be encouraged to have snakes as pets instead of cats and toads. You've never said that you can't understand Mrs Figg's cats or any other animal, but I think you would've mentioned it if you could.
I've read your book and have been practicing my occlumency. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether it is protecting my memories but sorting through them has taken the sting out of some of the worst memories and allowed me to see them from a better perspective and I haven't had a single nightmare since I started. It's also increased my reading speed as well which was very unexpected. So the effort has helped me, thank you Harry for thinking of protecting me like this and trusting that I could do it even without magic.
The summer semester here has been interesting and I'm glad I stayed for it though I do miss spending more time with Mom and I do feel a bit like I need a break from studying before the first semester of the year starts, I understand why they don't recommend it to most students. There's a week between summer semester and the start of classes which I'm spending at home with Mom and I've resolved to attempt to spend at least three days without reading anything at all. My address for during term time hasn't changed, Ethan and I have the same room again and I'll admit I'm looking forward to him coming back. I didn't enjoy living here on my own over the summer as much as I thought I would though the specialist summer classes were enjoyable and well worth staying for.
I hope to hear from you soon with details of how to stay in contact.
Your Friend Always
Spencer.
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.