Maltratar Camp
Chapter 37 - IKEA
Seth looked around him. He and his father had fought a bit more, thrashing two more crates: one filled with fifty-year-old vodka and one with one-hundred-year-old red wine. The floor was flooded in a brownish-red liquid, somehow looking like blood. Blood. How many more people would die? One? Two? Maybe ten or twenty? If not hundreds or thousands. And how long would it be? How long until the prophecy was fulfilled? Questions that no-one could answer now.
"Seth?" Severus called from upstairs. "Are you still down there?"
"Yeah," Seth replied, still staring at the flooded ground. Blood. How much of his own would be flooding the ground like this alcohol? The ground where the final battle would be? If there'd be one. But if there wasn't, how else was the prophecy going to be fulfilled? More questions that couldn't be answered now.
"Everything alright, son?" Severus asked, coming down. He'd changed out of his alcohol drenched clothes into fresh ones.
"Yeah," Seth repeated.
"How about if we get some new furniture for our new house? Have you ever been to IKEA?"
"Where?" Seth asked irritated.
Instead of replying Severus smirked slyly. "You'll love it. Get changed and we can go."
"Wow," Seth said stunned, his jar dropping down. They stood in front of the hugest building he had ever seen, next to Hogwarts. It was in blue and yellow, and over the entrance were four large letters saying: IKEA.
"C'mon, let's get some furniture," Severus said. They walked into the building.
"Wow," his son repeated over and over again as they walked through the different rooms: from beds to chairs, over cupboards and forks, to whole kitchen furniture and bedroom sets. Name it and it was there.
"So, what do you want your bedroom to look like?"
"Well, I like black and white," Seth answered, still stunned. Then he saw a bar-like kitchen table and high-stools. "Hey, what if we design the kitchen to look like a pup? We do have enough alcohol at home."
Severus smacked him around the head. "Don't say anything about it loud," he hissed. "What would the people think if a twelve year old boy talked about a bar and alcohol at home?"
"That his father is a useless drinker?" Seth offered, smirking. "Is that what you wanted to hear?"
"I will get you back some day," Severus said through gritted teeth.
The pair spent the rest of the day wandering around IKEA, talking about how to design their new home. Severus said that he'd throw the old furniture out and replace it with new, modern ones. Seth talked him into making the kitchen into a pup, but in revenge Severus made the boy design his bedroom in green instead of black. However, Seth was quiet glad about it as there was more green than black furniture which suited his taste.
By the end of the day Severus and Seth had spent nearly one-thousand pounds worth of furniture and daily essentials like cups, forks, knives, spoons and plates. They stood in the middle of the lonely car park with tens and tens of boxes stocked around them.
"Well, we've got a lot do to over the next few weeks," Severus smiled. "I'm only glad that teaching at Hogwarts is such a good-paying job."
"But how are we getting all this stuff home?" Seth asked. He hadn't thought about it before. After all they didn't had a car, or better, a van.
"With magic of course." With a wave of his wand Severus had shrunk all the boxes. "Help me put them away. And to answer your questions, we'll apparate home."
After they finished putting all the dice-seized boxes of furniture onto their pockets Seth took Severus's hand and closed his eyes. A moment later he felt the tingling feeling of apparition in his stomach.