Soon
Arabella Figg could have easily healed her broken leg with a potion. Just because her native world had exiled her did not mean they would not accept her money. The wizard’s disdain for her sort did not extend so far that they would refuse to sell her their wares. In fact, she had long suspected some of the remarkably effective charlatans she’d sometimes read about were Squibs who sold low-grade and questionable amulets and powders at a mark-up. Yes, wizards accepted Muggle money, and Arabella had long ago abandoned the pride that had made her eschew magical solutions to her problems. She was a Squib, not stupid.
Instead, she took pride in having found a part to play in the Wizarding War. Her new calling as a glorified child minder might have been less interesting than her previous assignment of detecting and reporting incidents in the Muggle world that could only be explained by magical interference (the wizards who had been set to this task sometimes seemed surprised that Muggles could walk and breathe at the same time, and one was advised not to get them started on pencils, much less telephones) – but what child had more glory than Harry Potter?
Not that he knew anything about it. Soon, he would learn the truth, and her job would be over... mostly. To mark the occasion, she decided to do him a kindness and spare him (and herself) another long afternoon of agonizing boredom and let her leg stay broken a little while longer. It didn’t hurt so much when she kept weight off it, and she could endure the discomfort, as she knew she’d heal so completely and so quickly her doctor would not know what had hit him. Harry should experience some of the charms of the Muggle world before he is rescued from it, she thought. If Dumbledore has a problem with it, well… I don’t need to tell him where to shove it. He’s brilliant enough to guess for himself.
“Don’t tell him anything,” he had warned her, all these years ago. He explained that it would be a disaster if the boy came to associate his magic with the many calamities that befallen him. Best that he consider himself obscenely lucky, which, after all, he was.
It was extremely rare for a child to both know they were magic and wish they were not. She suspected that she – ironic, has she could not cast a spell even if with seven wands – had unique insight into that experience. But it was not just the isolation, the self-loathing, the fear of letting something slip to the wrong person… the dark and all-engulfing knowledge that you’re wrong, born wrong – no. She shook her head and didn’t let herself succumb to those memories. When a child felt these things who was magical, that child had the power to change itself… not into a non-magical child, not anymore than she could will herself to be what she was not. No. Dumbledore had explained to her what had become of his poor sister. Magical, but no longer a child. Not as she had been. He had been reluctant to reveal this, and he had said many times that he and his family had grown so used to keeping this secret that he suspected that even decades after Ariana could no longer hurt anyone, his brother would still punch him soundly. I’d always liked the sound of that brother of his.
The Boy Who Lived was simply too valuable. It seemed to Arabella that the Boy Who Lived had already fulfilled his function, but she did not object.
Very well, then. A day at the zoo would surely be more enjoyable than yet another afternoon of looking at her cats. In all fairness, the cats were in fact cross-bred Kneazles, the cat equivalent of half-bloods, and thus far more exotic than a cheetah or a lemur, but she could not explain this to Harry, so she could not blame him for finding them a bit mundane.
She shook her head again and banished these thoughts: the sound of the Dursleys’ Volkswagen took her out of her reverie. She had not the first clue of car models, but Vernon had extolled its virtues so much that even her cats could probably recite it. And yet, he could not tip his babysitter. Does he think I’m here out of the kindness of my heart?
She expected to see Harry looking cheerful. Instead, he looked ashen. Vernon was red, almost purple, and his wife white, almost blue. Only the other boy looked as though he got a second birthday. I made a bad decision, innit, she thought. She would read about it in the paper, wouldn’t she? Panic at the London Zoo, as a boy becomes a monkey or some such… mass hysteria, no doubt…
She steeled herself as she heard the shouts. She had to remind herself it was no worse than anything she’d endured – and if it got too bad, the boy’s magic would save him. He had survived the Killing Curse, and he’d survive what passed for his guardians.
She took out some canned food out of the fridge and opened the freezer, to look at the birthday cake she’d bought for Harry’s 11th birthday… when he was nine.
Soon, Harry, soon. Be strong.
The room filled with meows, then the sounds of cats chewing on their dinner. It took her long enough, but she’d found her corner of the world. So will he. Soon.