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Monday 17/2/19 Dear Spencer
You'll never guess what Hagrid is doing! He has a dragon egg and he's got it in his fireplace trying to hatch it. Ron Hermione and I went down to visit him today. He's really excited about having a new pet, but dragons breathe fire and grow to be about the size of a lorry, and he lives in a wooden house. Dragons are among some of the most dangerous creatures in the magical world, this is about as stupid as one of your friends trying to keep a lion or wild bear cub in their dorm room and leaving the door unlocked for anyone to come by and get mauled. Not to mention the possibility that the mother will come looking for it. I don't know if she will or not, because Hagrid couldn't tell me anything about where the person who gave it to him got the egg. I didn't know what to do. I know I probably should try to tell someone he's going to listen to about the dangers because he just wouldn't listen to us. It didn't help that Ron was nearly as excited about it as Hagrid is and even Hermione has agreed to keep Hagrid's secret.
I don't want to be a tattle-tail or to get Hagrid in trouble but I felt I had to do something. Having a dragon on school grounds was just too dangerous and Hagrid just wouldn't listen, he never thinks any creature is too dangerous he says they're just misunderstood, like those religious do-gooders who try to keep delinquent teenagers out of jail believing that a little religion and positive attention will cure everyone. Protecting this unborn dragon is more important to Hagrid than the hundreds of students that could be hurt if it got into the school and went on a rampage. So, I sent an anonymous letter to Professor McGonagall telling her that Hagrid had a new very dangerous creature in his hut and I was worried about the safety of the school if it gets out. They're friends and I'm sure she will try to help without telling the authorities. I just hope she takes the letter seriously enough to investigate and find out about the dragon for herself. Of course, if Ron or Hagrid find out I did it they're not going to talk to me again for a very long time, but Ron's more likely to blame Hermione.
I know you will tell me that I shouldn't let her take the blame and if he finds out about the letter I will tell him it was me. Maybe if he and Hermione were angry with me I could spend more time hanging out with Dean and Seamus and Neville and get to know them a little better and get some work done in peace.
I'll keep you informed and try to send you a photo of the egg and the baby dragon if it's not taken care of before then. I promise I will try my best to be careful.
I thought about what you said about them forgetting, and I don't know who would take those memories away, let alone why anyone would do it. I want to dismiss it and say that we must have been mistaken. I mean look at the facts. Ron forgetting our fight and choosing to act like my best friend again when it was clear I didn't consider him to be that. It only benefits Ron I guess since he's the one who's so keen on us being friends and in that case, he could just be pretending to have forgotten the whole thing so he didn't have to apologise, which you have to admit fits with his personality. For that matter making me annoyed at Hermione about the essays again also could benefit Ron because he might have thought I'd hang out with him more, if I was hanging out with Hermione less and that if I was cross with her we could both ignore her nagging us to do our homework and stuff. I can't see how the incident with Ron benefits anybody else, why would anyone care which dorm mates I hang out with? And if someone wanted me to stop trying to do my work on my own and learn as much as I could, making Hermione forget not to correct my first draft isn't going to make much difference to that. It might stop me hanging out with her if it happens again but it's not going to stop me from learning.
One potentially good thing if Ron and Hermione find out that I told McGonagall about the dragon egg then they will be upset with me again like Ron was over me telling him off for accepting the duel. Then if someone does have a reason for wanting them to be my friends, they'll do something to solve the problem again. I'll try to keep an eye out and see what happens, if he seems to forget that we're fighting again I'll ask him about the letter and see if he has really forgotten or if he's ignoring it to be friends again for some reason, and I'll know if someone is interfering with their memories. That won't tell me who or why of course. I've also stepped up my occlumency practice again, I'd begun to slack off on it with so many other things to learn and do. Hopefully, that will be enough to protect my own memories.
There's something else we found out about Hagrid. He was employed as groundskeeper at Hogwarts after being expelled, though he won't tell us what he was expelled for. It really doesn't make sense if he did something bad enough to be kicked out of school, then he should have been sent away but I think he was employed straight away, how does that punish him for what he did. That explains his loyalty to Dumbledore who gave him a job in the wizarding world when he should have been outcast. Anyway, when Hagrid was expelled his wand was snapped. He's got the pieces hidden in his pink umbrella. Remember how he pointed it at Dudley to give him the tail and then couldn't reverse it because he said the tail wasn't what he'd intended to do. So, Hagrid isn't doing wandless magic like I thought. He's using a wand but because it's broken the spells don't work out properly. I wondered whether the broken wand makes such a big difference or if the spells don't work properly because Hagrid believes that they won't. Belief in yourself and that the spells will work has a lot to do with your success. That's one of the reasons that Neville struggles so much learning a new spell because he doubts himself so much. I don't think that I'm that my magic is much stronger than an adult wizard but I am able to use more magic than most of my year level, or at least I was at the start of the year because even those who grew up in a magical home didn't use magic regularly before starting school. I remember how my magic grew after I came home from America and started trying to use it all up every day, and again after someone tried to weaken it at the Dursleys. The others' magic doesn't seem to have grown like that though, they still seem tired at the end of a practical class. I guess that might be one way I'm giving myself away without noticing. Even doing it without the help of a wand, one class doesn't use enough magic to wear me out.
I wonder whether using wands prevents them from needing to use enough magic to cause it to grow or perhaps the wand itself is designed to somehow prevent the growth in magic? That would be one reason for someone insisting that all children are taught that they need to use a wand, to limit the strength of the new generation, but I don't know why someone would want to. Unless it's applied only to certain wands, to limit the strength of muggleborns and muggle raised and I'm not seeing a growth in magic from the others because they've been doing magical strengthening exercises to maximise their magic before coming to Hogwarts. I'm starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist nutter? Am I becoming too paranoid? I wish I knew who was behind me being sent back to the Dursleys and whether this wand thing has anything to do with that person trying to stop me from being able to do magic before coming to Hogwarts. Maybe it wasn't meant maliciously but was just done to try to stop me from building up my magic and realising the truth about wands being unnecessary and bad for a person's magic. And if that's all true how many of my classmates are also using fake wands? I can't even try to find out because apparently touching someone else's wand is more personal than touching their cock without permission.
I did ask Professor Flitwick why we learn so many silly charms instead of more useful things like cleaning and ironing charms and stuff we're actually going to use. He said that while some of them seem a bit silly they're a good easy spell to practice particular wand movements and the spells I think more useful are more complicated with multiple wand movements and don't appeal to most eleven year olds who would prefer to make fruit and plates dance than wash or cook them. So, the short answer seems to be we learn the spells we learn to make us associate certain wand movements with a particular reaction, which makes us more reliant on our wand to cast the spell. I didn't dare to ask him why wand movements are necessary in the first place because I didn't want him questioning whether I could do a spell without them.
I sometimes wonder whether I should tell my friends this theory and help their magic to grow too, but then I'd have to work out who my real friends are first and whether I could trust them not to tell anybody else. Sometimes I think that you are the only person I can trust and I really don't like feeling like this. Not that I regret trusting you at all, I'm so thankful we found a way to keep in touch. I don't think I could cope with all this without you to write to.
Your friend always
Harry.
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.