Chapter 13: 28th July 1991, Sunday: Part 1

The rest of George's morning became a blur as he fell asleep at the dining room table and woke up four hours later in his bedroom. The juxtaposition was rather startling as his brain switched back on and remembered everything that had happened hours earlier. Part of him wanted to believe that it had indeed been a terrible nightmare but reality dawned on him once he saw the expensive clothes he was still wearing. All of that weird stuff with his foster parents really happened and now he had to deal with the consequences.

George had unenthusiastically crawled out of bed with a million unanswered questions floating over him when a thought struck him. What if things weren't really that bad? Sure Amanda and Dominic might be ex-assassins or gang members, and sure they might be planning to kill Remus, but does that matter in the grand scheme of things? Kind of, but not really. George only wanted to get the acceptance letter today and accrue his place at Hogwarts. In that regard, the plan was going along smoothly.

All of his worst fears had been proven wrong for the most part. It turned out that Remus wasn't here to capture him and his foster parents seemed to be more than willing to let him leave. How was that not a good outcome? He might not know why Remus knew of his potential but those were small hiccups for a future version of him to deal with. Everything was mostly on track, he should enjoy it while it lasted. For the time being, he had to worry about stage two in his plan and that was Diagon Alley.

As if to reinforce his optimism, the day resumed and ended without anything of note happening. Amanda and Dominic had returned to their 'normal' selves and Ellie played with her toys in her room most of the day. It was pretty much the same as every other Saturday in the Linwood house, weirdly so considering the crazy events in the morning. George had asked if Remus had gotten home okay during dinner and Dominic reassured him that everything was fine. That was probably true since Amanda caught George up on the conversations he had missed and it turned out the family were going to Diagon Alley tomorrow.

According to his foster mother, the 'holiday' had been cancelled and the suitcases had been put back in 'storage'. Now, they were going to get his school equipment and learn more about the wizarding world with Remus as their tour guide. Obviously Remus couldn't do that if he was dead so maybe his days weren't numbered after all. If he kept living, George might be able to get some use out of him before he left for Hogwarts. There was an issue he had been meaning to solve for a while now and Remus could be the solution. But it was for the best if he didn't get ahead of himself again, look where it got him last time.

The next day, George was woken up by Ellie again in the early hours of the morning with a bit of a twist. He was pulled out of a dream of his patron testing an asphyxiation curse on him by Ellie holding his nose and mouth shut. This was far from her normal approach and the look on his step sisters face suggested that she wasn't happy with him. According to Ellie, Amanda had forced her to stay in her room yesterday as punishment for waking George up. She had been blamed for him falling asleep at the table yesterday and was told to never wake him up again. Being his loyal sister, she disobeyed those orders and awoke him anyway.

Ellie's commitment did earn her an extra sweet, but that didn't change the fact that she was still furious about being blamed for his mistake. She demanded compensation or the unconventional awakening would continue. Since George needed her for the next month until he left for Hogwarts, he saw no other choice. She mainly wanted him to spend more time with her, in other words, that meant more pretend tea parties and a salary increase of three sweets per day. As much as he hated dining with her Majesty, he agreed without haggling to keep her happy.

The only thing George had to refuse was to demonstrate his magic whenever she wanted. Attention was the last thing he was looking for and constant conjuration magic was only going to get the Ministry breathing down his neck. There was a bit of a grace period between muggle-borns getting their acceptance letter and going to Hogwarts but generally magic under the age of seventeen was illegal. One or two small spells were fine since they were ignorant kids and no one got hurt, but dozens of advanced fire-making spells were another ball game. Give it a day or two and a wizard other than Remus would come knocking.

Having explained his reasoning, Ellie gave in and accepted one spell once a week for the next month. The two of them went downstairs at different times and agreed to play tea party later to not rouse Amanda's suspicion. Much like the day before, his foster parents followed after them and appeared to be none the wiser. Breakfast occurred as normal except Amanda and Dominic were occasionally throwing George some subtle questions about his history regarding magic. They did a great job of blending them in with the normal conversation, such as mentioning the trip to Diagon Alley today, but George wasn't so easily hoodwinked.

Essentially, Amanda and Dominic wanted to know if he remembered his biological parents and if he had heard of the Ministry or Diagon Alley before meeting Remus. Sadly he had to disappoint them, George's Hogwarts hindsight was on a need-to-know basis and he legitimately didn't know his real mother and father. Whether his foster parents believed him was unknown but their reactions implied that they didn't mind either way. If it was respect for his personal secrets then there wouldn't be anything to worry about. But what were the odds of that being true?

Remus arrived and set off the pagers shortly after George and Ellie had gotten dressed. This time he was greeted with open arms rather than closed fists, Dominic's knuckle duster was nowhere to be seen. Remus still seemed to be completely at ease which still left George a bit confused. How does someone return to their kidnappers with a skip in their step and a smile on their face? Surely Remus didn't think all muggles were like Amanda and Dominic, he couldn't be that out of touch. The upbeat act had to be a cover for his real intentions, to recruit and bait George to Hogwarts. Maybe Remus was smarter than he looked and he knew that asking too many questions would put him in a shallow grave.

Regardless of everyone's unjust positivity, the family plus one all climbed into Dominic's largest four-by-four and started their long car journey to Diagon Alley. And those four hours couldn't have gone any slower, George hated every second of it. There was hardly a moment of silence, he couldn't even hear the thoughts in his own head over the racket. The verbal diarrhoea came at him from all sides, Dominic was in the driver's seat, Remus was in shotgun, Amanda was on George's right and Ellie was in her booster seat on the left. He hadn't thought it was possible but it turned out that there was something worst than Her Majesty's company. Worst of all, there was no escape.

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Dominic dominated the initial bout of questions with his curiosity about the economic and political side of the wizarding world. He predominantly inquired into the purpose and power of the Ministry of Magic and Gringotts Bank, focusing on the main players who run the show. Some of the answers Remus offered must have been hard to swallow judging by Dominic's less-than-subtle reaction. Learning about the Ministry Department for exclusively removing and altering the memories of muggles who'd seen too much was one such example. Although Dominic was putting on a brave face, George could tell that he must have been having an existential crisis inside.

If George had been in his foster father's shoes, he would have been running through every major event in his life and checking for indescrepencies. Who knew how many times Dominic might have already encountered a wizard in his long life and didn't remember it due to magic amnesia, that thought had to be quite frightening. George must have hit the nail on the head since the car had a habit of swerving on the motorway whenever Dominic got a little too distracted. This near-life-threatening accident resulted in Amanda taking over the rest of the conversation.

His foster mother had a rather different set of curiosities when she had her discussion with Remus. She generally focused more on the education side and wanted to know how it differed from conventional muggle schooling. It was obvious right off the bat that Amanda didn't like the sound of Hogwarts, mainly because it operated like a boarding school. Originally, George had been set to attend a private school where he would come home every evening. Now he would have to leave home for nearly ten months with only one visit home during the Christmas holidays. On top of that, Amanda couldn't even see this school for herself to check if it was up to her standards. For Remus, this was going to be a hard sell.

Remus answered every question regarding the school's staff, curriculum and work expectations for the students over the 7 years to the best of his ability. He made sure to make Hogwarts sound as safe and beneficial to George's learning as physically possible. There was a little bit of fun to be found for George by picking out the exaggerations, and sometimes flat-out lies, in Remus's reassurances. If everything he had said was true, then Hogwarts is a school that has never had a single injury or fatality since its inception one thousand years ago. Back in reality, George was well aware that Hogwarts was hands down the most dangerous school he could attend in Britain. Their education program was like survival of the fittest at times.

On reflection, the first two hours of the journey weren't that bad. It was mostly filled with Amanda and Dominic taking turns to interrogate Remus until he started losing his voice. The real pain came from the time bomb in the shape of a little girl sitting right beside George. For those first two hours, Ellie's face had slowly begun to turn bright red as if she was holding her breath. Her little hands were clenched together as she looked around frantically waiting for her opportunity to speak. She knew that interrupting her parents was a bad idea but the passing of time only caused her to build pressure with an ever-increasing backlog of questions. Once there were more than 10 seconds of silence, the bomb finally detonated and George was ready with his fingers in his ears.

Ellie's booming voice caused Remus's head to hit the ceiling and Dominic to swerve the car for the fourteenth time. She made sure to ask all of her 'important' questions as quickly, and loudly, as possible before anyone could stop her. Most of the time she wouldn't even give Remus a chance to answer. Instead, she would assume his response whilst continuing the line of questioning without any of his input. This would go on for minutes at a time and the rest of the occupants of the car were just along for the ride. A small sample of this two-hour-long tirade goes as follows.

"Are dragons real? Because if dragons are real then that must mean dragons are flying around, doing dragon things like eating sheep or kidnapping princesses, right?

And if they're flying around and stuff then why haven't we seen them? I know you said the Ministry or whatever gets rid of people's memories but how could they make sure everybody who would see the Dragon had their memories erased? Also don't people have cameras so how do you deal with that?

And if dragons are real, then is the dragon on the Welsh flag real? Did Saint George kill a dragon or is that just made up to make him sound cool? Do dragons really kidnap princesses or is that something people made up to make them sound bad? If they're real can…", and that is just thirty seconds of George's hell.

She could ask these 'questions' all in one breath to the astonishment of everyone surrounding her. It would only be after a few minutes and Ellie almost passing out, that Remus would get the opportunity to answer. Unfortunately for everyone else in the car, this would only induce another bout of questioning hence repeating the cycle. George did notice some consistencies in her delirious enquiries such as the interest related to mythical beasts she had read about in books and seen in films. The time that she asked Remus about werewolves was a truly priceless memory George will never forget.

Due to Amanda and Dominic controlling the conversation for the former part of the journey and Ellie for the latter, George never really had an opportunity to ask Remus anything. It would have been ideal if he could have inquired into why Remus had been sent to give him his letter instead of a member of staff. Instead, all he could do was familiarise himself with the plan and prepare himself for what was to come. There was a highly important task he had to complete at Diagon Alley and his timing and execution needed to be perfect for it to succeed. If all goes well, George was going to get back in touch with his patron.

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