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To: Spencer Reid
From: Harry Potter
Monday 13/7/92 7:04pm (GMT)
We started school today and I wish that I could tell you that it went well but I'd be lying. First we found out that we're not exactly boarding through the week like we thought when Mrs Finnegan insisted that we all take our trunks with us this morning, but the whole school operates in a time dilation bubble of some sort in the summer and we will spend 'nights' at school during the normal day and go home every normal evening and night. That's what intensive turned out to mean, a week per day. The classes we had today seemed okay, the teachers all seem to know more about teaching than a lot of the professors at Hogwarts. There are no ghosts or racist bullies teaching classes. They all seemed keen to be here teaching too but I thought that the biggest benefit to being a teacher would be the summer off not coming and spending all this time trying to cram the same work load into us in half the time as it took the regular students. A surprising number of the students seemed happy enough to be there too, the problem was that they weren't happy to have us there, and Dean and Seamus definitely weren't happy to be there either and are a bit cross with me that I was happy about catching up on my nonmagical schooling. They aren't shunning me for it but things are a bit strained.
Dean's more frustrated than angry about going to summer school, I talked to him about the level of bigotry against muggleborns in the wizarding world. He was aware that some of the Slytherins looked down on him but he thought it was a school bully thing and didn't realise that it was so widespread in the rest of the world. I told him that many muggleborns are stuck in low paying jobs for the rest of their lives because they don't have the education to get a good job in the nonmagical world or the connections to get one in the wizarding world. He got it, he's seen his mum and stepdad struggle financially all his life and he understands that she's just trying to make sure he has more opportunities than she did and has the choice to return to the nonmagical world after he finishes Hogwarts if he wants to. Unfortunately though, that doesn't make him happy to be spending so much of his summer at school. Seamus however is pissed off, he plans to return home after Hogwarts and help out on the farm and in his uncle's pub and eventually take over the farm when his father retires. He doesn't think that he needs this extra education and as a halfblood he could get a decent job in the magical world if he changes his mind about what he wants to do. I tried to encourage him that learning nonmagical subjects would help him fit in better with his uncle's nonmagical patrons but he's still pissed about losing his summer vacation.
It doesn't help that the other students seem to be excluding us, so even the time outside of classes wasn't fun and that we're stuck here for five days at a time so there's a lot of time to fill outside of classes. Nobody has tried to bully us but even the people Seamus used to be friends with don't seem to want us here, the other boys at school are very standoffish, they all know each other and Seamus knows most of them too. He says that some of them used to be friends and he's been trying to reconnect but none of them seem to want to be friendly. The other students all look down on us a bit, quite few of them are only doing one subject that they failed during the year and a couple of extra electives to keep busy or there's a couple doing the whole second semester because they missed too much school helping out on their parent's farms in the spring and one poor girl who managed to injure her magic and wasn't allowed to cast any spells for most of last semester. As you can tell, the school teaches magical subjects too and there are students here who look down on us because we aren't doing any wand use subjects, though Seamus' friends, or former friends, knew he was going to Hogwarts they've put about the rumour that he is a squib. It doesn't help that Mrs Finnegan hasn't allowed us to bring our wands to school for the day, hopefully she will let us bring them tomorrow. Though I have to believe she knew of the time dilation and that we wouldn't be in class the whole time we're here. Mr Finnegan has enrolled us in potions theory and preparation as well as the nonmagical subjects though, after hearing our stories about Snape and we're learning a whole heap of things we should've been taught at the start of last year. Disappointingly, they're still not teaching much about the why you'd use certain ingredients over others or why you need to prepare them in specific ways to get the right effect. The whole school uses some sort of time compression magic to teach a whole semester in one month, so depending on how busy we are you might hear from me several times a day because several days have passed for me and not for you, but we probably won't be able to chat because I'll have classes and meals and stuff at odd times and time passes so much more quickly here so even if you reply straight away I might not still be on the computer.
There are a few other students doing only the non-wanded subjects too but there's nobody else from Hogwarts, Seamus said he knows some of the other students doing nonmagical subjects come from wizarding families but we don't want to ask them if they're wizards or witches in case they are squibs. We wouldn't want to draw attention to that after the discrimination we've had to deal with. They are a couple of girls even more standoffish than the boys but it seems more like they're being defensive protecting themselves from other people's opinions by sticking to themselves, than as if they think they're better than us. The great thing about school is that we can practice magic there at lunch time, everyone there has to know about magic because of the time compression. Well it would be great if we had our wands with us, I know I don't actually need it but I don't want anyone to know that because nobody else seems to do it. Hopefully we will be treated a little better once we were seen practicing magic.
The school teaches several different languages, unfortunately Spanish isn't one of them but I am taking French, Italian and Latin. My teachers think that I'm crazy trying to learn all three and I admit I'm getting mixed up between Latin and Italian a lot of the time but since neither is totally new, I expect I will get it sorted out. They have the magical equivalent of language tapes in the library and I'm the only one taking Italian so I can borrow those ones as often as I like and set them to play on repeat while I'm walking around or doing chores and stuff, that's really helping. I can do it with the Latin and French tapes too but I only get the French sound crystal on Thursdays, the Latin one on Mondays.
It's a little strange learning nonmagical subjects again after a year away from them and Dean and Seamus are struggling a bit with them. Thanks to your help with my essays during the year I got top marks in my first English class and science and math are both dead easy too after all the things I read in Little Whinging Library. Seamus's Mum is planning to enrol us in the next English class and possibly History and Geography by correspondence this year and invited Dean and I back next summer to complete the second class for maths and science so they don't have to spend a whole month studying, and the best part of it was it was Seamus' Dad's idea so my friends didn't blame me for making them study. It is a boarding school of sorts, we have to stay here during the time compression and can go home every normal night which is every fifth night to us, but there are plenty of students that do stay here for the normal nights and Sundays without classes as well so I could do that next summer if I'm still in Britain.
I didn't try to email you during the nights in time compression because I was trying to spend time with Dean and Seamus who were feeling as out of place there as I was and I didn't want them to think I was abandoning them too. I also didn't think that you'd be checking your email as most of my day is your night or early morning, but I missed writing to you so I'm going to start emailing some nights. Don't feel that you have to hang about the library to be on line every time I email I'm doing it for me as much for you and it's okay if you only reply once every realtime day or two.
Your friend always
Harry
To: Harry Potter
From: Spencer Reid
Monday 7/13/92 11:20pm (PST)
I'm glad you explained about the time compression before you started to message me every one of your days, otherwise I might have thought I'd fallen asleep in the library and missed a day or two or something. It's hard to believe that so much can have happened since we messaged each other last time, which was apparently yesterday for me but five days ago for you. It blows my mind that time can be changed like that, it goes against all the laws of time that I know of. Does that mean you'll actually be older by the end of the month? I find the whole concept of time compression fascinating and wish that I could experience it. Not that I want to rush through my time at Caltech, I do love it here and I will still be too young to be taken seriously in a post doctorate position when I finish my PhD as it is. I'm not complaining about that actually, it gives me a good reason to stay on at Caltech and study something else, get more degrees but I don't think I'd want to do ten.
I'm not going to be able to write back to you every time, your first evening in time compression is before the library shuts for the night but the others will be overnight or first thing in the morning before I can get here most days. I wish that I had the internet at home so I could reply but it would freak Mom out too much to try it.
How is it going sorting out three different languages? I found that listening to a language while I sleep is also a helpful way to input it into your subconscious, if it isn't going to keep you awake to listen to it. It doesn't keep me awake, I find that having something like that to listen to can help slow my mind down to allow me to sleep which I know wasn't a problem you used to have but I'm sure after all that happened at Hogwarts this year and knowing that you are in hiding would give you a lot of negative thoughts to dwell on so the tapes might help with keeping your mind off that.
I'm sorry that Seamus' friends are avoiding them. He's going to need yours and Dean's support with that. Hopefully you're right and bringing wands to school and performing visible magic in front of them will help. Be as angry with the boys as you want to be but try to be gentle with the girls, if you're right that they don't have magic, they might be afraid you'll look down on them like the boys are doing to you, and no doubt doing to them as well. Has he forgiven you for enjoying learning yet, surely he knew that about you before this?
To: Spencer Reid
From: Harry Potter
Monday 13/7/92 6:27pm (GMT)
You wanted to know if I would be older because of the time compression and I admit I'm curious about it too, but I don't really know the answer to that. Legally no, I will still turn twelve on the 31st of July, and not a minute earlier because magical people have made sure that mucking about with time or taking potions to make your body older doesn't do that, witches and wizards come of age exactly seventeen years after the day they were born, no matter if they've been in enough time compression or used a time turner to repeat enough time to have lived a hundred years or taken an aging potion or deaged themselves with a spell or potion to avoid growing up or tried any other legal or illegal way of messing with time that I haven't heard about yet. Physically I'm not sure if I age at the same rate as the rest of the world but I'm just moving and thinking faster because of the magic, or if I age at the rate of time in compression. I wonder if there's a spell that tells someone exactly how old they are? I do know however that I feel the need to eat and sleep on the compressed time schedule so in the twelve hours I'm actually at school I eat 13 meals and spend four nights sleeping, if anything I sleep more on those nights than I normally would. Even if I end up two or three months older than I would've been, I don't suppose it will make much difference since I'm currently one of the youngest in my class and the smallest boy so even three or four summers of this won't make me the eldest in the class, and wizards age more slowly once they're adults than nonmagical people do anyway. I wouldn't mind catching up on size with the rest of the class or being a little closer to your age. I do know that we can't leave the building wards and nobody or nothing physical can enter while the time compression is on so it is a bit dangerous if something goes badly wrong which is why they don't teach practical potions in time compression, we only learn some of the theory and ingredient preparation and brewing techniques, it's too big a risk of explosions or dangerous fumes to brew properly when we cannot evacuate or vent the fumes to the outside. We are still not learning the reasons why certain ingredients are used other than the main one or two ingredients, or why some ingredients need to be sliced in one potion and dried and ground into a powder or crushed into a pulp in another, or why some ingredients can be prepared ahead of time and bottled and others have to be used within days of harvesting, or can be kept unprepared but need to be used straight away once they're crushed, which I think would be the most interesting part of brewing. It's also harder to remember which preparation technique to use when without knowing the reason behind it. Still it should help with potions next year to have these extra skills even if we do still have to take it with Snape. I'm just glad that email gets through the time compression wards. It's really weird to think about, we come to school each morning at 7 am and stay four nights then go home and it's six pm the same day we arrived. So, from the Finnegan's point of view Seamus spends twelve hours at school six days per week and is home every night and from our point of view we're at the Finnegan's every fifth night, and we have thirty days of schooling and every week for four weeks and exams on the last day. It's pretty intense because we have 30 days' worth of classes then one day off. You can come and stay at school that day too and take advantage of the time compression to spend five days catching up on homework or just hanging about and doing your own thing or you can spend it at home and only have the single day. Dean and I have decided that we'll spend a couple of days off at school to give Seamus some time alone with his family and Seamus is talking about wanting to stay one weekend too, but he's going to wait and see whether Dean and I like it before he makes up his mind. One upside to all these days of classes is that there's a lot less homework on the nights we go home than the nights in time compression and nothing extra we have to do on our day off unless we've fallen behind, detentions are never scheduled for that day either. The best and worst thing about going to school under this time compression is that we've been enrolled in the program that covers a whole year of school in the month we're here, Seamus' mum got it wrong or maybe she just didn't want to tell Seamus he was going to have to do a whole year's worth of school over the summer, They'll reassess how we're managing and move us into the single semester program if we're not managing the workload but I'm determined to stay in the year long program no matter what Dean and Seamus do, so I'll be completely up to date with the basics if I can find a way to return to non-magical schooling without having a guardian. Dean also wants to stay in the year long program, the fees are the same for each but I think that Seamus would prefer to be doing the single semester except for the fact that Dean and I wouldn't be in any of his classes if he did and he still isn't really getting along with any of his former friends. I'll have to look into how to pay Mr and Mrs Finnegan back the school fees, I wouldn't want them to be out of pocket that amount and it's probably quite a lot seeing it's actually the equivalent of four months of boarding school.
I asked Dean about whether he was angry with his parents about tricking him and sending him to summer school instead of for a holiday in Ireland. He said his mum had told him about coming to summer school and she told him all the reasons she thought it was important that he get a nonmagical education as well as a magical education. He said he was pretty rude to her about it the night before we left their house but he's written to her and his stepfather to apologise. I don't think he has realised that it was things I said that made his parents think that he needs a nonmagical education but maybe he'll forgive me when he does because I didn't lie to them and I didn't know they'd do this. It's true he might want to leave the magical world to escape the prejudice or even just to get a decent paying job one day, even if it is my fault his parents know about it.
To: Harry Potter
From: Spencer Reid
Monday 7/13/92 10:36pm (PST)
Time compression is one thing, and aging or de-aging potions don't sound too unreasonable either when magic is involved though I don't think that permanently changing your age would be as satisfying as the person taking it thinks it would be. I'm sure there are almost as many disadvantages to looking younger than your peers as there are being younger than them. Or Alternately it might be easier to look more like an adult but if you did everyone would expect you to behave like an adult all the time which wouldn't be much fun and make it hard to make friends. But are you seriously telling me that actual time travel is possible? How can that occur without destroying the time line? The time traveller would go back and change things that have already happened, changing reality or as some theorise creating an alternate reality and the original reality continues on as well as the new reality. There is also the theory that creating this alternate reality would tear time and space apart destroying both universes. It is the stuff of multiple fantasy novels, I'm sure one of the books I recommended to you before you started Hogwarts was H G Wells' "The Time Machine", it's fun to imagine what you could change but it is so inherently dangerous I can't imagine anyone wanting to risk trying it. It cannot be legal. I guess it makes sense with all these options that wizards have made sure that a child can't become a legal adult, though it does take away one avenue of escaping Dumbledore and whoever is trying to keep you trapped in the Dursley's house.
I can understand Mrs Finnegan not wanting to tell Seamus that he has to spend a whole year at another school in the middle of the two months that he's home from Hogwarts, but it isn't like the truth could be hidden from him. Even with the time compression giving him several days between finding out and going home I can't imagine that Seamus was okay with his mom lying to him about the amount of school work he would have to do. It surprised me more that Mr and Mrs Thomas didn't tell Dean about enrolling him in summer school before he left for Ireland, from everything you've said about her Mrs Thomas doesn't seem the type to lie to her son, though I suppose it's possible and Dean either was asked not to tell you or didn't want to be the one to break the bad news.
I'm glad that you're enjoying learning more about potions, it will help you not be too behind the other students in your new school, though if you end up repeating first year in Mexico I guess it won't make much difference but it should make learning the instructions in Spanish easier if you understand them better in English, and it will help Seamus and Dean back at Hogwarts too.
As for the school fees I think that you should offer to pay them but if Mr and Mrs Finnegan decline the offer let it drop and thank them sincerely. You don't want to offend them by refusing their generosity, and if I were you I'd try to talk to them away from Dean because if his mother hasn't paid the fees already it's because they cannot afford the money and you wouldn't want him to feel bad about that.
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.
I wish everyone the best in this time. Please stay safe and keep your distance, stay at home if you can and take care of your mental and emotional health as well. Reach out to your friends and family in safe ways and don't hesitate to seek help if you need to.