Disclaimer:
Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 213: Time To Recover
Three Weeks Later
Bella was fully concentrated in front of a cauldron when, all of a sudden, it began to emit a nasty red smoke.
Nyxaris flew closer and narrowed her eyes. "Red smoke indicates a failure in the process of p—"
"I know that!." Bella exclaimed. "What do I do now?!"
"I was about to suggest bringing the cauldron outside the tower before it exploded. But you interrupted me…" Nyxaris' tone of voice sounded bitter.
The smoke arising from the lid of the cauldron was getting more violent, and this one began to shake.
James finally decided to turn his attention away from his project and glance at what Bella was doing. "Don't move it. It will explode instantly if you do."
James extended his left hand, and from it, Tertivor reacted to his mental command, expanding its size and moving to the cauldron before completely covering it and forming a metallic sphere on the spot where the cauldron had been.
A moment later, they all saw Tertivor expand several times its size and make a puffing sound.
Bella looked troubled at seeing this. "Did…did that hurt?." It was obvious that the cauldron had finally exploded inside Tertivor and that it had contained the reaction within its body.
"Bring it outside." He told the metallic slime before pointing at Bella. "You can go clean the mess afterwards, and…this is the second cauldron that you owe me. Those were also professional-quality ones."
"I'll pay you back, don't worry..." Bella couldn't really argue with that. This had been her fault after all.
Nyxaris looked like she wanted to say something about that. "Master, can't you make more money wi—"
"Nyx." The look in James' eyes shut the fairy up immediately. She had forgotten that they were not supposed to talk about the Philosopher's Stone with anyone, not even with Bella.
"Huh?." Bella stared at the two of them with confusion, wondering what that interaction was all about.
"Do you at least know why the cauldron reacted like that?." James asked the girl.
Bella did her best to think about the reason behind it. "It was either the temperature or perhaps I added the last ingredient too soon…"
"You should know it was the second one. You have gotten good at controlling the cauldron's temperature, and the potion would never have reacted so violently for something like that. By adding an ingredient too soon, you didn't give enough time for the cauldron to diminish some of the properties of the previous ingredients, thus causing a bad reaction."
Bella sighed. "So it was like that…I should be able to brew a Veritaserum by now."
"It is considered a very difficult potion, so don't beat yourself too much over it. I don't think there are any students in Hogwarts who could do it." James said.
A smile appeared on Bella's face. "Trying to make me feel better?."
"I was just pointing out a fact." He was also trying to make her feel better. She tried to hide it, but the loss of her younger sister had clearely affected her.
Even if Bella and Narcissa were never too close, it was obvious that Bella still cared for her.
She got closer. "You know? Maybe we could take a break and go d—"
"James!" Sirius appeared floating next to the window of the tower. "Mate, come out and play for a bit!"
"Urg…" Bella groaned at her cousin's interruption and crossed her arms.
"Yeah, go play with him." Andromeda appeared next to him. "I'm sick of babysitting the boys."
"Kyu!" Primum landed on Andromeda's head and let out a cry.
"Right…sorry. Primum had also been helping." Andromeda added.
"What is going on out there? I said I needed some peace and quiet while I'm doing an experiment." James told them.
"We just saw something flying out of the tower, so we thought that Bella was done with her potion." Sirius pointed out.
"Hey! It wasn't like that." Bella responded, looking a bit embarrassed that they had seen her failure.
"I thought you were playing Quidditch with Regulus as well…where is he?." James commented.
"My brother is at the library. He is more interested in books than sports. What a disappointment of a brother…" Sirius sighed.
"That's because you have a weird standard." Andromeda told him before turning her attention to her sister. "By the way, I just got a letter from our grandfather. He said that the new manor will be ready in a week."
"A week?." Bella could not hide her surprise. She had expected to spend the rest of the summer at the Potters already.
Since they could not use any of their previously owned properties because they were all registered at the Ministry, Pollux decided to buy another one from the goblins, place it under a fake name, and install powerful protections on it.
They all thought that this was going to take months to finish, as he would need to bring materials and experts from outside the country so as not to tip off the Ministry about what he was doing.
"He also mentioned that…" Andromeda made a troubled face. "That we can already visit our aunt in Azkaban, if we want to."
Bella's expression immediately filled with anger at the mere mention of her aunt Walburga.
Sirius didn't look too happy either, even though he already knew about it.
Walburga's betrayal was confirmed soon after the attack on the House of Black.
What they didn't expect was just how deep the betrayal went.
The woman had been communicating with the Dark Lord and his minions for months, while planning how to bring her own house down. Until she finally came up with the plan of using Narcissa's blood to break through the extra protections that Pollux had placed.
She had, of course, set conditions that her sons and husband were not harmed during the attack, but she did not care about the rest.
Once she confessed everything under a large dosage of Veritaserum, Lord Pollux had initially wanted to execute her on the spot, but was convinced by his family to just send her to Azkaban.
"I'm not going." Bella simply said. She had lost her sister because of that woman. She no longer considered her part of her family and didn't think she could see her again without feeling the urge to curse her to death.
"I don't want to go either, but…I think Regulus does want to." Sirius said.
After losing their father, Walburga was the only parent they had left, no matter how bad she was.
"Grandfather had insisted that if we decide to go..." She glanced at James. "We need to take a capable bodyguard with us."
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