A Flurry Of Crimson

Chapter 16 | Fire Whiskey

My heart shivers with heartbeats of uneasiness, my mind folded between waves of vertigo and distress.

The moon has forsaken into the farthest places behind the clouds surrounding the manor's sky. I force my path down the pitch-black, cold, empty hallway even though...

I hate darkness. I hate solitude.

But there is no better time other than this one, and I am not going to let this chance slip away from me.

It was time to spike Malfoy's favorite booze with the truth-telling serum.

If I can't do anything to flee, at least I have to do my best to know the truth, to escape the bubble of oblivion they forced me into, and to be mindful of my surroundings.
This is an inescapable manse whose walls and ceilings palpitate
in scandal.

I can't go away for one reason. The Dark Lord doesn't want something from my family, he wants something from me.

My feet lead me to the bar dressed in the center of the vast space on the second floor.

My eyes search wonderfully the many shelves arranged by countless bottles of different types of drinks.

I begin to think. I should choose wisely.
I take a deep breath to smell nothing as I am trying to remember him... and this is when my olfactory memory hits.
Whenever I walk past him, he senses more than just cologne. Fire Whiskey.

I need to figure out a way where he'll be drinking the right bottle of whiskey. This is going to be a tough job, and I'm not foolproof yet if getting him to drink the right bottle levels the amount of difficulty I had to go through to get the Veritaserum.

The Potion-Maker was too unavoidable to be twisted off with just a threat. Instead, he returned the threat, and it was to expose me if I didn't give him the end of the bargain which was quite, impossible...

He wanted to use me as an experimental game, secretly.

I was so worried, so helpless that I had to paralyze him with a spell.

"Stupefy!" At an unexpected moment, I had my wand pointed in his face, hollering the spell at him.

My hands started shaking as I searched the place entirely. It took me three times to notice the small door frame at the back of the long potion-making desk.

Thoughtless of monitoring if there was any action on the opposite side of the room, I forced my entire weight to push it open, and undo the locked door till my hands turned red.

My magic wasn't working.

The door collided with the other side of the room and I flinched frightfully at what my rage and foolishness have caused.

Frozen in place, I blinked continuously at the small, narrow room lengthening my sight with arenose muddling it.

Fear has transformed into a person thrusting my head into a bucket of water so my lungs sucked for air.

I cuffed Mr. Edwin's large wrists between my hands and used my entire strength to drag him into the corner of this dusty, spider-webbed room.

I stepped over the threshold and faced the broken door, muttering prayers under my tongue.

Please let my magic work, please, please...

"Repero," I hushed through unheard tones.

The pieces of smashed hardwood seemed to reverse the movement of their breaking. There was a force that brought all of this destruction back into the pristine shape of the door.