Chapter 4
Her pest problem solved, she decided that perhaps since the house was housing magical things she should learn how to take care of them. The project slowed as she spent weeks going through books in the house’s library and the library down the street. She found through several rounds of experimentation that potions weren’t all that hard as long as there wasn’t a casting portion. It seemed many muggle, she did not like that term, witches while not entirely correct often had grains of truth in their plethora of spellbooks. Most of the muggle spells and potions, etc that she found worked she was able to find some sort of reason for it in the magical side. Burning sage helped to cleanse the home of evil because it nullified strong emotions. It was like getting the house high, and when in that state it was unable to focus on anything enough to cause harm. The rest of the renovation was spent with sage burning in every room.
By the end of the first year, she had sanded the near-black wood floors to a cherry red and though it took for what felt like forever she no longer feels like she is being followed in the house, only where she passes the portrait that she has yet to focus on enough to get rid of. The walls were mostly stripped clean, many having a coat of primer on them just waiting for some color to be added. Petunia still hadn’t gone through the majority of the things she had cleared out of the house. Most of it sat in the unusable kitchen, knowing what she does now she supposes it might take magic to make the things work for her unless she wants to use it as a wood stove, she does not. Too much work for something she doesn't care about. Take out is food she doesn't have to cook with dishes she doesn’t have to clean.
She had left the area of the kitchen and foyer alone for the most part as she focused on the many rooms and hidden niches she found in the other parts of the house. The house still didn’t feel quite right and she knew she would not be able to put off the rest of it for long. She did everything she could around that area that still made her hair stand on end before she just had to square her shoulders and tackled the kitchen and foyer with the angry portrait.
She decided to go after the kitchen first and started to truly go through all the things she had haphazardly put in the junk pile. Being a house of magic she decided there was a good chance of things being cursed so she pulled on a thick pair of leather gloves she had found in one of the rooms she thinks may have been a potions lab and started sorting. She had brewed a cleansing potion she found in a book about undoing curses, and each item she found that felt wrong to her was dropped into the cauldron, many hissed. She mused that she was rather lucky none of the many cursed objects she found had latched onto her.
Tired and in need of sleep she forgot to move the cauldron, which was still burning hot when she went to bed. She woke up to the feel of heat and rushed down the stairs to find the kitchen was a roaring fire, that wasn't leaving the kitchen. Curious she grabbed a broken part of the staircase, something she was most likely going to replace anyway, and sliding part of it in bringing it out it was clear there was some sort of barrier that allowed things in, and to be taken out but the fire itself was trapped. Going around to the outside she shut the kitchen window and then watched from the doorway as the fire eventually burned itself out. The counters, stove, a few pots and pans, and the cauldron were the only things left, though covered in a layer of smoke, grime, and ash from the fire. It was one way of getting rid of the junk.
Now that she knew she could just burn things in the kitchen without it getting out she quickly dealt with removing as many things she had been putting off because she hadn't wanted to hire a dump truck to carry it off just yet. The portrait still wouldn’t move but after checking for support she decided it didn’t matter as she knocked down the whole wall portrait included. The fact that the portrait screamed when she set the fire unnerved her, but the house started to feel more balanced once it was gone.
It was fun having an indoor bonfire whenever she felt the urge to burn stuff. She started tossing everything she thought might be cursed or unable to be sold into the kitchen before lighting it on fire and watching from beyond the doorway as the fire consumed most things. Those that weren’t destroyed by the fire she experimented on, many muggle cleaning products it turned out were effective in getting rid of a lot of magically cursed objects, even if it did destroy the object itself. Plus bleach was much cheaper and less time-consuming than making the cleansing potion, brewing always left her feeling a bit off.