Chapter 33: 31st August 1991, Saturday: Part 1

The first few days proceeding the trip to Diagon Alley were… atypical, to say the least. It was dark by the time the Linwoods arrived back in Yorkshire, Dominic volunteered to drop off Remus whilst Amanda told George and Ellie to go to bed. Everything seemed perfectly fine until George woke up the next day and found out that the house had gone into full lockdown. Dominic was nowhere to be seen and Amanda wasn't willing to explain what was going on. No one was allowed to go in or out of their house for a whole seventy-two hours. Eventually, his foster father came back home from his 'business trip', and the quarantine ended with no further clarification.

Throughout the month of August, Dominic went on quite a lot of these business trips. He didn't explain what he was doing on these trips or where he was going, but it had to be somewhere hot since he regularly came back with sunburn. Every single trip lasted for roughly two days and Dominic always brought back a black duffel bag which was zipped up and filled to the point of bursting. George would have to be an idiot to not see what was going on, especially considering the agreement his foster father had with Gringotts bank. Clearly, Dominic had been busy gathering that thirty-five million pounds he owed.

After everything George had seen, the trafficking of millions in paper currency didn't come as much of a surprise. What did take him off guard was the frequency Remus turned up at the house to help Dominic. Whenever George's foster father came back from, let's be honest, Cape Town, Remus would come knocking. They would leave together in one of Dominic's sports cars with the duffel bag, then come back a few hours later, and the duffel bag was gone. It seemed that Remus was either being paid or was volunteering to assist in the transfer of the money to Gringotts. And in the process, Dominic and the werewolf had miraculously become good friends.

There were a couple of occasions when George's foster parents would organise a formal night out and they invited Remus to come along. During those evening meals, George learnt all about the leisure activities Remus and Dominic had been getting up to down south. It turned out that Remus had been learning how to drive, and he had been racing around Dominic's private tracks. There was a clear camaraderie between them and at some point, they had transitioned over to a first-name basis. George was speculative about the exact motives of their friendliness. He felt it was more likely that Dominic was trying to use Remus, whilst the werewolf was trying to ingratiate himself into the family.

At the same time Dominic was breaking bread with the wizarding world, Ellie had spent all of her time occupying herself with the owls. She had truly fallen in love with those birds, nothing else mattered to her. There wasn't a single day when she didn't play and groom them. This was great news for George because Her Majesty had ceased to exist for a month, freeing up his mornings and afternoons. Since Hoot and Blinkie were about as intelligent and loyal as a well-trained dog, they could be left outside the cage without any worry of them flying off or defecating inside the house. They really did seem like a great addition to the family with zero downsides, he could happily admit he had been wrong about them.

George even got a little curious and decided to run a few experiments on the birds. As long as he gave them a piece of paper, with the name and address written on the front, the owls would always deliver it. As if by magic, the birds would always know exactly where to go and had a one hundred per cent delivery rate. They could even carry far more weight than an owl should be able to in flight, George estimated their limit was around 10 pounds before they started to struggle. He wanted to deduce if the birds could read, but after some minor tests, he found the results were inconclusive.

Those harmless experiments would later become the greatest mistake George made that month. All hell broke loose when Ellie copied him and learnt how to make the owls deliver letters. Upon realising what the birds were capable of, George's step-sister wrote letters every second of every day. She wouldn't even have a particular reason to write a letter but would send one regardless, it was driving the rest of the family crazy. Pre-owl-armageddon, Ellie would walk into the kitchen and ask her mother when dinner is going to be ready and that would be the end of it. Now, an owl will fly from Ellie's room to Amanda's current location and deliver a letter asking when dinner would be ready.

Being a loving mother who indulged her daughter at every given opportunity, Amanda played along with Ellie's little game. She would write a letter for the owl to send back, and then the cycle would repeat itself. Ellie would have a full conversation with her mother via the poor owls taking dozens of trips back and forth. George couldn't go to the toilet without being smacked in the face by an owl flying endless laps of the house's corridors. As one can imagine, the owls didn't like the cruel working conditions so they ultimately went on strike. Hoot and Blinkie began to avoid Ellie by hiding away in the attic, they stayed up there for over a week. George felt the owls were on the verge of forming a union, they were demanding shorter work hours and higher wages.

Just as peace had returned to the Linwood household, Ellie realised that the owl's kryptonite was the same as her own. She would collect treats such as tiny pieces of bacon from breakfast, and reward the owls every time they delivered a letter. Now the owls were more motivated than before and saw it as a competition to see which one could get the most treats before Ellie ran out. George had once left his room to dispose of a failed experiment when he found Hoot passed out in the living room. Its belly was bulging with all the treats it had received that day, he was surprised it hadn't been sick.

After picking up the unconscious owl and checking it wasn't dead, George found a small note clutched in the bird's talons. It turned out that Ellie had started using the owls to talk to her friends a few miles away, which had been running the owls ragged. He was genuinely concerned that Ellie might kill one of the owls if she wasn't restricted. So he informed Amanda of the issue and his foster mother set a hard limit on how many letters Ellie could send a day. Consequently, the owl's cages were moved out of her bedroom and into the living room.

Once the owl fiasco ended, George could finally work without any distractions. He had been very productive over the past month, even with the owl apocalypse, and had achieved a fair share of breakthroughs. The magic battery had been his greatest accomplishment so far. After acid-burning several holes in Dominic's old desk, George had managed to replicate Sheena's work. He also got both her and his battery to power the family's boombox with only a few technical hiccups. Sadly, the batteries didn't work on anything else electronic. It was like the batteries had a mind of their own, and they only wanted to power devices that played music. The dream of taking a portable computer to Hogwarts had to be put on hold for now.

Some of his other projects crashed and burnt before he'd even got started. George had read ninety per cent of the books he'd acquired from Flourish and Blotts, but he was nowhere near fully comprehending them. Magic seemed to be less black and white than he had initially anticipated, the books were more to act as guidelines than instruction manuals. Most of the literature was just notes compiling people's personal experiences in different fields of magic, there seemed to be no one technique that suited all. The general consensus was that a wizard's upbringing and environment as well as the outlook on life and their emotions were massive contributing factors to how they would learn magic.

Obviously, George's upbringing and environment were not conventional by any means, so these books were nothing more than empty words. The itch to start practising in a less hypothetical sense had become so strong that he had to bury his wand in his leather sack just to remove temptation. The only aspect of magical understanding he'd made some headway in was Transfiguration, more specifically Conjuration. Already having the ability to conjure a flame on demand made the advanced transfiguration books much easier to understand. All he wanted to do was push his limits to see what he was capable of, but the pressure of the mission and the all-seeing eye of the Ministry kept him in check.

George had to redirect those urges to more productive matters like dealing with the Remus situation. That ominous conversation in the car hadn't left his mind, and he knew something had to be done before he left for Hogwarts. After giving the problem a lot of meticulous thought, George came up with a potential plan that could turn this terrible situation on its head. There was going to be a massive risk, but if it worked, he will cut off Remus and Dumbledore's investigation for good. By the thirty-first of August, the preparation was finalised and the plan was ready to be executed. The operation, 'All or Nothing', was a go.

He woke up that day without Ellie's 'assistance' because she was still angry about him selling her out. His step-sister had been in a bad mood ever since she lost constant access to Hoot and Blinkie. And not a day went by where she didn't remind him of the terrible crime he had committed. Because of Ellie's obstinance, George had to start using an eye mask at night just in case his foster parent's decided to wake him up. Luckily, today was not one of those days since Amanda wanted to let him sleep in. Even before he looked in the mirror, George knew that his eyes were going to be red. It was that time of the month, and he'd been putting off his treatment until the very last day.

Since George had been deliberately avoiding his medication, every part of his body was aching. He took off his pyjamas and saw bruises all over his chest and legs, there was even some skin tearing around his armpits and neck. If anyone saw him now, they would probably assume he'd had a nasty fall down a flight of stairs. These injuries prove that George's time was short, he maybe had three to four hours before he would lose control. If this had been any other month, he would have run off to the forest days before he'd degenerated to this point. But for this operation to work, he needed to be riding the line.

George put on a turtle neck to hide the bruises, stuffed the magic leather sack into his pocket, and tied a blindfold around his crimson eyes. It went without saying that he would be tortured for the rest of his life if his patron ever found out what he was about to do. The whole point of being an infiltrator was to not be discovered, and he was about to willingly expose himself to the enemy. Regardless of what his patron may think, George had already made his peace and was committed to his plan. He then ran through everything he had prepared to say to his foster parents one last time before leaving his bedroom.

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