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.
Saturday 2/11/91
Dear Spencer,
Happy Birthday for last Monday. I hope you had a truly great day. I'm only sorry that I couldn't plan a party for you like I did the year we met. It remains the only birthday party I've ever been welcome at. They don't seem to celebrate birthdays much around here. I've heard some of the older students wish each other a happy birthday and close friends sometimes give gifts, but I mostly find out about birthdays from the number of gifts arriving by owl-mail at breakfast. I don't even know any of my friends' and classmates' birthdays yet and by the time I find out I'm sure to have missed a few.
To answer your questions that I didn't yet know the answers to last time I wrote, I've not seen any of these creatures other than the ghosts and goblins but yes all of those things you mentioned are supposed to be real, and a dozen or more other mythical creatures as well. That or someone's having the muggleborn and muggle-raised wizards on to make us look foolish! Not everyone here believes that people from nonmagical families should have the right to learn magic. Some people are quite nasty about it, even sometimes the professors.
Werewolves are definitely real though there was a story in 'The Daily Prophet' about an attack last full moon, not that I think that you'd take anything they've written as proof of anything, but the story was calling for the laws regulating werewolves to be tightened to keep us all safe. I'm not sure how limiting what jobs a werewolf in human form can do during the rest of the month has anything to do with keeping us safe from attack during the full moon. It doesn't make sense to me.
I'm glad you're enjoying most of your classes, they sound fantastic the way you describe them, and that you and Ethan are still good friends and things are going well for you in your college house.
I've made a new friend, it's someone I already told you about but we weren't friends before this, Hermione Granger she's one of the girls in Gryffindor in our year. She' She's a bit of a know it all. One of those kids who always has their arm up waving in the air, even after someone else has answered the question wanting to show off that she knows more than that. I think that she inadvertently helped me figure out one of the things that influence the sorting hat. Hermione didn't want to be in Ravenclaw, she wanted Gryffindor because she'd heard that Headmaster Dumbledore was a Gryffindor and that was the best house. I think that if she wasn't muggleborn then Slytherin would have been a better fit for her, she's the one with a thirst to prove herself much more than I do. But you're right about her not being able to think for herself she almost idolises all our professors, and her respect for rules and authority figures above common sense is ridiculous. She spends every spare minute studying or in the library reading, it's as if she hasn't realised that Hogwarts is not just a school it's also our home for the next nine months and we need to live not just learn. It's lucky that she's too fond of rules to ignore our recommended bedtime or she'd be studying all night every night until she collapsed. I tried to be nice to her earlier in the year but she didn't seem to want to hang out with us. She hasn't really made friends with anyone and Ron was really horrible to her today and nobody said anything to either of them before she ran off crying and missed dinner. I felt awfully guilty for not standing up and defending her.
Then in the middle of dinner Quirrell, the scaredy-cat DADA professor, comes in and said a troll had broken into the school. Dumbledore cancelled the rest of dinner, vanished the food and sent us all back to our dorms which was stupid at least at dinner we were all I one place, he could have checked who was missing and locked us all in safely instead of dividing us up and sending us out into the corridors without an escort. Especially since the Slytherin dorms are in the Dungeons and the Hufflepuffs are under ground level too and that's where Quirrell said the troll was.
I didn't go looking for the troll. I swear I didn't. Lavender and Parvati said that Hermione was holed up in the second-floor girls' bathroom crying all afternoon but they weren't willing to go get her. So, I dragged Ron along to apologise and warn her about the troll and bring her back to the common room. I wasn't trying to be a hero. It should've been perfectly safe. Quirrell said the troll was in the dungeons, at least five floors below the second floor and it was kind of on our way to the dorms. But it wasn't safe, we arrived just as the troll entered the girls' bathroom and we heard Hermione scream. None of our spells seemed to work on it so I jumped on it and my wand went up it's nose. I remember wishing desperately that I could stop it from attacking Hermione. It seemed to pause and Ron managed to levitate its club out of its hand and drop it on its head knocking it out, so we all got away pretty much unharmed. I apologised to Hermione for not stopping Ron and Ron apologised for what he'd said and we're friends now. Weird huh? I thought she'd avoid Ron more than ever but she doesn't.
I mentioned to her that a friend had suggested that I try to take correspondence classes or go to summer school to keep up with my nonmagical education. I hoped she'd be interested in studying with me and I thought she'd think it was a good idea because it would be nice to have someone to work with and she likes studying and has a burning desire to learn everything and anything but she thought it would be a waste of time. I wondered if her home life is as bad as ours or mine, since she was so determined that her life was now in the magical world but she's spoken of both her parents fondly and from what she's said they seem like nice people. Her clothes and things are all nearly new, good quality and well fitting, so she isn't neglected financially and her parents write to her weekly and she seems happy to receive the letters. Maybe she was bullied at school but she's been bullied here until now too so that wouldn't explain it. She's kind of bossy and always acts like she knows better than everyone else. She's one of those kids with her hand waving enthusiastically in the air every time the teacher asks a question, and she gets insulted if the teacher asks someone else to answer or anyone manages to cast a new spell before she does. Her dorm mates don't want to hang out with her, I thought maybe she didn't want to hang out with them because they aren't interested in studying but neither is Ron and she wants to hang out with him. Still Ron doesn't talk about fashion, makeup, boys and gossip and he isn't all giggly all the time.
Because I know that you'll ask, Hermione said it was a mountain troll but it smelled like a rotting swamp, it was about 12 foot tall and about the same shape and girth as a Volkswagen beetle stood on its rear end. It had grey magically resistant skin, not that any of us knew any good defensive spells anyway and it didn't understand English and it certainly didn't look as cheerful and benevolent or anywhere near as attractive as those ugly troll dolls in the normal world. And it had hardly any hair. I assume Hermione is right, she usually is about stuff like that and I have no desire to read up on it. I think they killed it, or I did. It was breathing after being knocked out but I saw them levitating it down to the dungeons. Rumour has it that Snape was going to render it for potions ingredients.
Your Friend Always
Harry
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.