The next hour was little more than a bunch of chatting and boring conversation. It was mostly between my mother and Mrs. Figg, though I had to chime in a few times when the old cat lady probed me with seemingly innocent questions, but once I looked back at them, realized they were a lot more pointed than I'd first expected.
'Asking about how I felt about Pureblood nonsense and the Boy-Who-Lived? She was trying to figure out if I'm a plant or spy for the Death Eaters,' I thought as Wisteria Hunch and I walked back to the apartment. 'I wonder if Dumbledore told her what to ask, or if he even knows I exist? Hope it's the latter, I could do without that senile meddler.'
Say what you want about Dumbledore, but I disliked him. It wasn't because he was evil – in fact, without meeting the man, I couldn't know for sure one way or another, but I didn't want to imagine him being a pseudo-Dark Lord like some fanfics portrayed him, but even if he wasn't intentionally cruel to Harry Potter, he was, at best, blind and misguided due to years of being in the know.
He left Harry Potter with his aunt and uncle, folks who were known to hate magic and their own relatives. He never bothered to check in on him at any point to make sure the wards worked, or that the Dursley family was taking care of him.
And either Mrs. Figg, his spy, sucked at her job of reporting what was going on, or just as likely, Dumbledore just ignored her whenever she informed her boss that the Dursleys were terrible people. After all, she was just a Squib. He obviously knew better!
No, Dumbledore was at best an obstacle, a threat at worst.
A twinge of pity for the currently six-year-old boy flickered through my chest, but I stamped it down. I didn't need more problems on my plate!
"Oh, Inky, you've done a wonderful job!" mother exclaimed as we went into the apartment, and I blinked in surprise as I saw that, indeed, everything had gotten better compared to when we last saw it.
The walls had been repainted (a nice, plain eggshell white), the rug properly laid out and cleaned. There was a lot of different items of furniture that hadn't been there before, such as a table and chair set for the dining-cum-living room, a green sofa that looked ancient but comfy, and a cabinet full of plates and cooking utensils next to the kitchenette.
A peek into the master bedroom revealed a lovely queen-sized bed with a mahogany frame, the headboard carved with dragons and unicorns. A nightstand with a Muggle (that is to say, powered by electricity) lamp was set up beside the bed, while at the foot of the bed, a big, wooden chest sat.
"Wow, this place looks amazing!" I gushed. Then, I frowned, as a question occurred to me. "Inky, where did you get all this furniture?"
"This was all stuff we had in the attic or basement or one of the other unused rooms from the house," Wisteria explained as the House Elf appeared next to her, grinning at our praise.
"Yes! Mistress Hunch said I could, so I did," Inky said proudly.
"Huh. I guess that makes sense," I mused. Now that they mentioned it, I did recognize some of the items as having come from a few rooms I'd explored while younger.
'I forgot how much stuff old magical families end up hording,' I thought to myself. Clutter accumulated quickly, even in relatively small and poor family like mine and the Weasleys. Especially when storing stuff that wasn't money in Gringotts was too expensive for anyone not obscenely rich.
"So, do you want to stay the night here?" mother asked, and I glanced at her. I bit my lip, thinking it over.
"Yes, I do," I said after a moment. "That doesn't mean I don't want to have dinner with you, though."
"Of course," she said with a watery smile. "Just call for Inky when you're ready to pop in for dinner tonight, okay? And don't forget, I'll be dropping you off at school on your first day."
"Okay, mom. I'll see you then," I promised with a smile.
She nodded, and grabbed Inky's gnarled old hand. The two vanished in a pop, leaving me alone.
For a couple seconds, I enjoyed the silence. Then, I went back into the master bedroom, and went to the bed. I checked under the pillows, and smirked as I saw what lay beneath it. A familiar old sack I'd last seen in the bushes underneath my window back at Lumpkins' Patch.
"Oh, Inky, you know just how to make a boy smile," I said under my breathe.
I couldn't help but grin happily as I opened up my emergency escape sack and took out a few items. Money, both Muggle and Magical. Clothing, in both styles. And last but not least a tiny vial half full of something that was the source of my newfound freedom.
The liquid wasn't clear, but it was sufficiently opaque that it'd go unnoticed in most liquids. It had a slightly strong smell, but alcohol neatly covered it up.
It was, simply, a heart attack in a bottle. Just add to a drink and boom! Dead almost instantly. It helped if the person already had a strong inclination towards strokes and heart attacks already. Wizards rarely got 'em, thanks to magic being a useful buffer against mundane ailments and afflictions, but it was entirely possible to have a stroke if you drank too much alcohol and didn't live a calm, stress-free life.
Aurors and medi-witches wouldn't be able to locate this with a simple wave of the wand, either, because spells designed to check for poisons or drugs only checked for magical ones. And diagnostic spells always searched for what the spells knew to be toxins. Since this was a Muggle concoction made from mundane chemicals, their precious magic couldn't recognize the substance, and thus, ignored it. This was how Inky and I got away Scott free with poisoning the man I was ashamed to be related to.
Of course, acquiring the stuff hadn't been easy. I'd had to rely on quite a few chemistry lessons and textbooks I'd dug up from the depths of my memory courtesy of my Occlumency training, and making it out of household materials and other things I'd discreetly bought from the local Muggle pharmacy in Ottery St. Catchpole had been tiresome. Still, I'd learned a lot about making potions during my experiments, and a smidge about the more complex subject of alchemy.
'I don't need it anymore,' I thought, holding up the mostly empty vial. I went into the bathroom and dumped the last of the drug down the sink, and washed the container out thoroughly. It had served its use, and watching it gurgle down the drain filled me with a sense of relief, like a weight was lifting off my shoulders.
'Next trial comes up September 1st!' I thought to myself. 'Back to school in a whole new world.'
I shuddered at that thought. Just thinking about it was making me all depressed. Instead, I decided to focus on something else, so I got onto the bed and began to practice my somewhat rusty Occlumency skills. I had a couple hours to burn before dinner, and I wanted to make sure I could remember several things with complete clarity for the coming months. School would not defeat me!
....
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