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Harry sat in the window of his dorm room looking out at the moonlit castle. It had been a long day but he couldn't sleep. It was partly that he was surrounded by the other boys who he didn't know yet. Bad things happened when he fell asleep in front of Dudley or Vernon or at school. The only person he'd ever felt safe sleeping in front of was Spencer.
Dean looked up and saw Harry sitting in the window and got up to join him. "Can't sleep either?" he asked.
"No it still doesn't feel real, I'm afraid if I close my eyes I'll wake up back in Surrey at my relatives house," Harry said.
"You didn't write to your family?" Dean observed. The others had all jotted at least a few lines, even Ron though his letter had only been notification he was in Gryffindor and a request for his parents to send something he'd forgotten.
Harry sighed. "The only person I want to write to lives in California and everyone I've asked said that it's too far for an owl. But nobody could give me any other ways to get a letter to him from here," he said sadly.
"Do they know about the muggle world? If they have a muggle mailing address, I could ask Mum to forward letters for you, if you put it in a proper envelope and give her the money for stamps," Dean offered.
Harry smiled, "That would be fantastic," he said. "I can put stamps on the envelope, I stocked up in the hope I could find a way to get a letter into the muggle post. Do you think that your Mum would mind if I give Spencer your address to write back to? Maybe your mom could send his letters on to me here when she writes to you? I could send Hedwig each week to take your letter to your parents and check for letters."
"I'm sure she wouldn't mind. But what about your family, surely they'd forward letters for you?" Dean replied.
"No, we don't get along. They're afraid of magic, they'd either ignore it and refuse to take the letter or freak out if I sent them an owl. I'd worry that they'd try to hurt her," Harry said shaking his head.
"My Mum is the opposite. She was so excited about everything to do with magic. I think she actually read all my textbooks before I even got through the first one. It was a real struggle for them to send me here, not just the fees though they're pretty steep but she'd never considered sending me to boarding school and didn't want me to leave. She cried every time she saw me yesterday and today. Dad had to bring me to the station on his own because she was afraid of making a scene and changing her mind about letting me go," Dean said.
"That must have been nice, my aunt and uncle dropped me at Kings Cross on their way to do something with Dudley. They dumped me at the curb and drove off laughing their heads off because I didn't know how to get onto the platform and they didn't think it existed," Harry said.
"Didn't McGonagall tell you when she came to visit and took you shopping?" Dean asked.
"No Hagrid did my visit and I think I was the first student he visited he didn't seem to know what he needed to tell me and was quite anxious about something the whole time, he must have forgotten that the platform is hidden and I wouldn't be able to ask the station staff," Harry replied
"So your family freaked out when you got your letter, or did your accidental magic frighten them before that?" Dean asked.
"Both, they freaked out every time I did magic around them, and then again hugely when I got the letter and tried to stop me from coming. It was so stupid really, they already knew about what magic was, even if they never told me. My Mom was a witch her sister grew up with her. I honestly don't know why they took me in since they hated magic so much, they had to have known that I'd be a wizard. What about your family?" Harry said, voicing what he'd been thinking since Hagrid had taken him to the Alley.
"So, you didn't already know Ron? The way he was talking you were best mates," Dean said surprised.
"No, I met him on the train this morning. We got along fairly well, I guess. His Mother helped me get onto the platform and he explained a lot of things about wizarding candy and quidditch and the houses and he stood up for me when Draco Malfoy came to tell me who I should and shouldn't be friends with. What about you and Seamus?"
"We met on the train this morning too, his Dad's a muggle and they live mostly in the muggle world so we had stuff in common and he explained some things to me too," Dean replied yawning. "I'm going to try to get some sleep. Night Harry."
"Night Dean," Harry replied, but instead of going to sleep he got out his pen and paper and started writing to Spencer, not wanting to leave him unknowing about when and how they'd manage to write to each other.
Sunday 1/9/91
Dear Spencer
One of my new dorm mates lives in the muggle world and in return for being able to send his own letters to his family with Hedwig once each week, he is going to ask his mum to put your letters into the nonmagical post and then if you write back to me there, she'll give your replies to Hedwig when she next comes with his letter. The address for the outer envelope is:
Mrs F Thomas
37 Bedford Road,
ILFORD SOUTH
RM6 4NA
GREAT BRITAIN
And on the inner envelope
HARRY POTTER
Hogwarts
As you can see owl post doesn't require such specific addresses. Especially as Dean will be sending my owl to his mum each week with his letter to her. Just as well since I still have no idea where in Scotland we are. I didn't even get a chance to look if the station we got off the train at had a name. So, each letter we write will be sent by magical and muggle post, I don't know how long it will take in transit, especially as Mrs Thomas doesn't own her own owl and will have to wait for Dean to owl her before she can send your letter on to me but it's the best plan I can come up with. Hopefully it will work out.
I still don't much like the word muggle but it draws too much attention not to use it here, everyone keeps correcting me as if I've just forgotten the word.
I have four dorm mates, Dean Thomas of course, who's mum and step-dad are both not magical, he has two little half-sisters but he says neither have any signs of magic. His biological dad walked out on them when he was a baby and his mother and grandparents won't tell him anything about him, so maybe he was a wizard. He doesn't know that side of his family at all. Dean's a mad West Ham football fan and likes to draw, which he's really good at. Seamus Finnegan who unsurprisingly is as Irish as his name, his dad is a muggle and his mum has magic and didn't tell his dad until after they were married. Seamus laughed when he told us that and said it was a bit of a shock to his Da but I think he and his mum are damn bloody lucky that his dad didn't react like Vernon would've. Then there's Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom who are both purebloods and neither of them have ever set foot in the non-magical world. Ron kept poking Dean's football posters, pictures that don't move are as surprising to him as the pictures in the newspaper I sent you was to us. They all seem okay, though Neville is really shy and nervous about everything as if he's expecting to be bullied by the rest of us and his manners are very formal as if he's been surrounded only by adults most of his life. He's an only child and he hasn't mentioned his parents at all only his Gran and Uncle. I met Ron and his mum on the platform this morning and Ron sat with me on the train and explained a heap of things, Ron's family are relatively poor and he has five older brothers and a little sister all magical. He seems to have a bit of a chip on his shoulder about having so little money and so many siblings but I think he's incredible lucky. His second hand clothes are a lot better than the Dursley's gave me, of course it was amazing to have a brand new uniform for school and Ron's is handed down or second hand and being a bit faded you can tell it isn't new, so I do understand where he's coming from. Dean says his family don't have much money either and that paying the fees for Hogwarts will be a struggle but he didn't have anyone to hand down a uniform and I didn't see a second hand shop in Diagon Alley so he had to have new clothes.
I know four people sounds like a lot to share a room with but the room is huge and nearly round with a bit cut off for the bathroom. We each have a four poster bed with curtains about the size of a double bed and our own bedside table and wardrobe with space for our trunks at the foot of the bed. Stone walls and a large wood stove where the middle of the circle would be.
Hogwarts divides its students into four houses, it uses a singing and talking hat to read your mind and decide which house you belong in. Yes, I'm aware how ridiculous it sounds but it reads your thoughts and decides where you fit best. I'm in Gryffindor, home of the brave but I was also nearly in Slytherin home of the cunning and ambitious because the hat says I have a thirst to prove myself. I met some of the Slytherins on the train to school and didn't like them and Hagrid told me that all of the people who supported the wizard who killed my parents came from Slytherin so I begged the talking hat not to put me there. That sentence sounds totally insane doesn't it, but it is true. Just as true as the fact that I'm going to spend the next nine months wearing a uniform that looks like a bloody dress. You would've been in Ravenclaw, home of the smart and studious, though you'd also fit in the fourth house which is Hufflepuff which values loyalty and hard work. I know you would tell me that I shouldn't trust what Hagrid said. He might just be prejudiced or the person who sent him might have wanted me to think like that. But you didn't meet these three students. One of them acts like a total spoilt brat, as bad as Dudley in his own way, not fat but clearly from a very wealthy family and he seemed to look down on all of us, especially Ron and the muggleborn Hermione. The other two I think might have been his body guards. He's going to need them if he shoots his mouth off to everyone like he did to us.
The food here is great, really well cooked roast meats and potatoes and a heap of different crisp vegetables and gravy and then four different desserts and I can eat as much as I like, a bit like a buffet but it all appears on the tables. We get three meals a day and there's a big basket of fruit in our common room we can help ourselves to at any time. Ron's table manners are as bad as Dudley's so I try not to look at him while we were eating, I don't know why though all three of his brothers at school seem to have reasonable manners.
We spent seven hours on the train but it seemed to go a lot faster than the muggle trains I caught with Hagrid, so I don't know how far north we are. It was an old steam train and the carriages were divided into little compartments, I think the train was only half full but Ron asked to sit with me and told me there was nowhere else to sit, then once I introduced himself he asked to see my scar. The scar I got the night my parents died. I heard his mum telling the twins that they were forbidden from asking me if I remembered that night. And then a girl came along looking for someone's missing toad and excitedly told me she's read all about it. And another kid came in and acted like because I was famous I shouldn't be friends with Ron or Hermione, I should be friends with him even though he wasn't nice to me at all when we met in the robe shop and he didn't know my name. I seem to be more famous in the wizarding world than Hagrid said I was. It's going to really suck, everyone wanting to talk about my parent's deaths like that.
Then after the train ride we got to the station and the older kids all went off in carriages while we walked down to the lake and went across it in little boats. I don't know why except that we then had to wait until everyone else was sitting down before going in to the dining hall to be sorted by the hat. There were four big long tables and everyone sits with their house as well as shares a dormitory and classes with them. I don't know why we are so divided up there isn't really enough of us to have four classes, there are forty first years, too much for one class but barely enough for two.
Hogwarts castle is amazing, it's huge, I'm sure it's far bigger than a school this size needs to be even with everyone boarding. Everything here is magical, they halls are lit by burning torches on the wall and the dining hall was lit by floating candles. You can see the sky on the dining hall ceiling just as if there was no roof but there must be floors above it, someone told me it was enchanted to do that. The portraits on the wall not only move they can have a conversation with you and some of the painted people move from one portrait canvas to another to talk to each other. The staircases move, not like an escalator which would make sense since the castle must be about more than a dozen levels in places and that's not counting anything below the ground, but actually swing about and connect to a different hallway without warning and the way to our common room is through a portrait you have to tell a password to. They call her The Fat Lady, they didn't tell us her name. Her portrait is hundreds of years old from the look at it so maybe nobody remembers but surely she remembers and could tell us. I'm glad we didn't have to carry our own bags up the common room is on the seventh floor and the step over through the portrait is higher than my knees. Then there is another flight of stairs up to the first year dorms (seven to the seventh years' dorm, not that I'm allowed up there). Our dorm room is round with a coal heater in the middle but there's nowhere to store coal. Hopefully it's magical because I don't fancy having to clean up after it. I know from the state of the room after they finished getting ready for bed that none of my dorm mates are used to tidying up after themselves let alone doing any real cleaning.
Anyhow I've told you all about my new school and stuff, I hope everything is good with you too.
Your Friend Always
Harry
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.