Chapter 34: 31st August 1991, Saturday: Part 2

What is worse than trying to navigate through a house that's designed like a labyrinth? The answer is quite simple, it is trying to do that whilst being blindfolded. All it took was one of Ellie's toys tripping him up, and now George was utterly disorientated. Like a blinded basilisk, he had to rely exclusively on sound to find his way. Fortunately, the faint hooting of owls led him back to the living room. From there, he could just use his memory to guide him to the dining room. The last time George checked, the time was half past nine so his family were probably still eating their breakfast. His theory was confirmed once he navigated through the corridors and heard Ellie's obnoxiously loud chewing.

"Look who finally decided to crawl out of bed", Dominic said whilst flicking to the next page of his newspaper.

Or at least that is what George thought his foster father was doing since he could only hear the rustling of paper. He cautiously walked into the dining room and felt around for his chair. Although he couldn't see her, George's sixth sense was telling him that Ellie was pulling funny faces. He wouldn't put it past her to move his chair from its normal position for her own twisted amusement. Ellie was all too predictable as he overheard her accidentally scraping his chair on the ground. George sprung forward like a coiled viper and seized the chair. Then he heard the door opposite him open, followed by an audible sigh from Amanda.

"Oh George, not this again. Could you please take off the blindfold when you're at the dining table? You're going to make a mess."

George smiled in Amanda's general direction, "the blindfold is to help me sense my inner magic. Since I can't perform magic at home, this is the only way I can practise.

The book said that it may take hours or even days before you can feel anything, and the moment I take it off I would lose all my progress."

This little deception had been going on for well over a week, and today wasn't the first time George had worn the blindfold. A solid precedent needed to be set when performing such a suspicious lie. Amanda wasn't the sort to be easily fooled, and she had already been monitoring him much more egregiously since Diagon Alley. Whenever he would leave his room, some of the magic books from George's read pile and the to-read pile would disappear and reappear a few hours later. Also, she would randomly appear at his door and request for him to leave so she could 'clean' his room.

Although Amanda was definitely robbing him of his privacy out of concern and not suspicion, it did compromise his more covert projects. To combat this issue, George had to produce two sets of notes for everything he worked on. He left fake notes inside the books he planted under his bed or in his bedside cabinet. She only ended up finding a redacted version of his projects, all the dark or dangerous parts had been removed. George had no way of knowing how well his manipulation of the facts affected Amanda's opinion of Hogwarts and the magic world, but she was generally showing more tolerance to weird stuff like wearing a blindfold now and then.

That being said, what George was about to request might be pushing the boat out too far.

Amanda paused before saying, "okay, you can wear the blindfold at the table. Just be careful not to hurt yourself."

"Thank you, Amanda", George responded politely.

Breakfast proceeded as usual, and George used his best dining etiquette to eat. He had hardly said a word whilst the family ate and discussed what they had planned for the day. The topic of driving down to London tomorrow came up on a few occasions, and George made sure to maintain his raring-to-go attitude. He just had to find the right lull in the conversation to insert his request. Right as Dominic finished talking about another trip down south with Remus, George threw his question into the ring.

He nonchalantly asked, "speaking of Mr Lupin. Do you think I could go to his house today?"

He heard both his foster parents stop eating at the same time. Then Amanda placed her knife and fork back down on the table.

She returned the question with another question, "why do you want to go to Mr Lupin's house?"

George shrugged and read from his prepared script, "I just want to ask him a few questions about Hogwarts. I'm going on the train tomorrow, so I was wondering if he's got any last-minute advice."

George continued to dig into his meal whilst Amanda considered his suggestion.

She stated the obvious, "Mr Lupin will be coming with us to King's Cross station. Can't you ask him then?"

George was ready for this argument to be made, "I could, but I'm going to be so distracted thinking about Hogwarts that I might forget to ask something important. At least today, I will have a clearer head."

He prepared for over fifteen different reasons why Amanda wouldn't approve and developed layers of responses to counter them. He'd even been reading up on some improvisational acting skills to improve his spontaneous line delivery just in case of an unexpected question or rebuttal. The challenge was correcting her without sounding like he was trying too hard to push his agenda. The last thing George needed was her wondering why he wanted to see Remus so badly. Judging by the silence on the other end of the table, George was already making some progress.

Dominic chipped in, "I think it's a good idea."

He folded up his paper and suggested, "I'm going to be dropping something off at Remus's house in an hour, George can come along."

Okay, it turned out there was a sixteenth option George hadn't accounted for. He was expecting a lot of back and forth over suggesting this visit to Remus, but Dominic had gone and saved him the trouble.

Amanda, after finding no excuse to suggest otherwise, said begrudgingly, "okay, but only for an hour. Just because Dominic has made friends with Mr Lupin doesn't mean I trust him yet."

"We're a day away from sending George to a magic school for nine months, I think we can give Remus some slack", Dominic chortled.

Fireworks went off inside George's head as he revealed a subtle smile, "thanks Dominic. I can only think of a few things to ask anyway, so I don't think I'll need that long."

And with that, part one of the operations was abruptly concluded. If the rest of the stages progressed this smoothly then George had nothing to worry about. Breakfast ended and an hour later, George and Dominic left the house in one of the sports cars. The blindfold was still on so George had no idea where he was going, but he still knew roughly how long they had been travelling. For the first ten minutes, he felt everything was going according to plan, but after twenty minutes, George was starting to get a little worried. Remus had said earlier that he lived a short walk away, so why was the car journey taking so long?

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Now that George thought about it, Dominic had been talking a lot more than he normally did. Whilst they were in transit, his foster father kept telling him about Remus. George learnt that the werewolf had been spending his years isolated in Yorkshire as an antique repair man. He had apparently spent all these years working from home fixing muggle's broken vases and grandfather clocks. It was all very interesting, but this level of communication was extremely rare for Dominic. If George didn't know any better, he'd have said his foster father was stalling.

A foreboding feeling began welling up inside George, and by the half-hour mark, he was starting to feel like his best course of action was to bail out of the car. His plans of retreat were halted as the car suddenly reared to the left and stopped. George couldn't see any light bleeding through the blindfold anymore so their location had to be under some cover. Was this it, his end? Dominic must have found out his secret, or maybe Remus had told him something. Either way, this was sure starting to feel like an assassination in the making. He wouldn't be surprised to lift off the blindfold and see an open grave outside the car.

"You can take your blindfold off now, George", Dominic asked in an eerily calm voice.

Since he was most likely about to die, there was no point in not complying. George slowly lifted the blindfold off his head and was surprised to find the car was parked in what appeared to be a military aircraft hanger. It was a humungous open space with a few attack helicopters and chinooks stored away under tarpaulin. Dominic leaned over, reached into the glove box, and pulled out a box of cigarettes. He lit one and took a deep puff before looking straight at George's crimson eyes. There wasn't a single bit of surprise in Dominic's expression, it was as if he'd known all along. Then he looked off into the hanger and blew the smoke out of his window.

"I told Amanda that I stopped smoking over twenty years ago. She knows that I've been lying to her for over a decade, but she has never once called me out on it. Do you know why George?"

George shook his head.

Dominic took another puff before continuing, "it's because we all have our dirty little secrets. No one is perfect, but everyone is trying to pretend like they are.

As a Linwood, we respect each other's secrets, you understand. We don't ask questions that don't need to be answered, and we expect the same courtesy in return.

So, with that in mind. George, are you going to be a problem for this family?"

That didn't seem like a hard question to answer, or did it? Was there some sort of deeper meaning behind this whole demonstration? George wasn't sure what to say, one wrong answer and he'd probably never leave this hanger alive. Well, the mission set by his patron didn't have anything to do with the Linwoods, so technically he had no reason to say yes. Perhaps the blunt truth was the way to go.

George answered uncertainly, "no?"

Dominic calmly looked at him again, "are you sure about that?"

George more confidently answered, "yes I am."

Dominic stared into his eyes for a few seconds before saying, "good. Then let's go to Remus's house."

Then Dominic flicked the half-finished cigarette out the window and turned the car around. Since George was no longer wearing the blindfold, he saw that the hanger was a part of a massive abandoned airfield. He could only assume that his foster father must have owned this entire place. There was truly no end to the amount of property his foster parents owned. Just as the car was approaching the perimeter of the airfield, Dominic pulled a pair of tinted aviator glasses out of his pocket and handed them to George.

"I've got some men guarding this location, you should put these on if you don't want them to see."

George hesitantly took the glasses while staring at Dominic's calm face. How on Earth could his foster father see his red eyes and not show the slightest bit of worry? What if George had been a demon or, as Ellie had once thought, a vampire? Surely Dominic couldn't be stupid enough to take his word that he wouldn't hurt the family. Deception was basically the devil's bread and butter after all.

"Aren't you going to ask about my eyes?"

Dominic glanced at George and asked, "do I need to know why your eyes are red?"

"I guess not."

Dominic turned back to the runway, "then no. I'm not going to ask."

This casual attitude to George's unholy coloured eyes was beyond hard to believe. But then again, Dominic had the perfect opportunity to deal with George without anyone knowing and he didn't take it. Is this what trust felt like? No... that can't be it. He had only been a member of the Linwood family for less than a year, there was no way he could be trusted yet. Whatever was going through Dominic's head, he was ultimately still taking him to Remus. Since George's luck was currently at an all-time high, he felt that now was the best time to start part two of the operation.

"Do you think I could see Remus alone for about... an hour?"

"Sure, I'll call Amanda later and tell her we'll be home a little late", Dominic offhandedly responded.

The car drove up to the airfield's security fence which was being guarded by three men in black military uniforms. The guards took one look at Dominic and nodded at him before raising the barrier and letting them leave. Two minutes later, the car was back on the main road and was presumably heading to Remus's house.

And just like that, stage two of George's operation was, by some miracle, completed.

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