Thomas Prest: A Simple Magician

Tom, Natasha, and the kids returned to the portkey point where Arthur instantly scolded the trio for running off on their own before they all returned to the Weasleys with the portkey.

From there, Ron's big mouth showed and it didn't take long for the story of what Natasha and Tom did to spread throughout the family, ruining all vestiges of Tom's good mood.

The shrieking Molly made it abundantly clear with her incredibly high decibel harpy-like voice that she didn't wish some murderers to camp on her lawn... completely ignoring the fact it was almost midnight and they were in the middle of literal nowhere so finding a hotel would be a massive chore.

Arthur at least seemed to understand that when you are attacked, you don't just roll over and let the other party kill you, so he sympathized with Tom and Natasha for fighting back... but he was too big of a pushover in front of his wife to say anything. He simply stood a few tens of feet back and silently threw apologetic looks at Tom.

The only ones who tried to argue Tom's cause were the twins but these were easily ignored by Molly, even being grounded for the rest of the vacation for their efforts.

Well, at least they will have a lot of time to think about new products this way...

As for the two oldest children of Molly... Bill and Charlie just watched the show with amusement, not participating at all. Tom couldn't fault them for that but it still annoyed him. His opinion of these two kinda dropped a lot as a result.

So, like that, Tom and Natasha were 'kicked out' in the middle of the night.

Honestly... if Tom really was such a bad person, their little family would have been killed for such a thing. He and Natasha had just gone through being ambushed and then almost arrested. They were definitely not in a jovial enough mood for 'jokes' like this.

The biggest kicker, however, was when Hermione refused to leave with them after they packed their tent. For some reason, the girl disapproved of their actions and decided to spend the rest of her summer with the Weasleys because according to Ron, Tom and Natasha were bad Dark Wizards.

Really swell...

And so unbelievably childishly dumb.

But Tom could see that while Hermione was shaken and hesitant, she was stubborn and tended not to think when she got all self-righteous. At least the Weasleys were willing to take the girl in for the remaining two weeks before they had to go back to school.

Annoyed as heck and in a bad mood, Tom and Natasha drove their way into the night, leaving the Weasleys' property, the relationship between the two families ruined.

Tom managed to assure the twins that the deal he proposed to them still stood but as for the rest of the family, any future consideration Tom could have had for the Weasleys because they were the family of Hermione's friend was completely gone.

Which jerk throws their guests out at midnight anyway!?

...

Two days passed and after a quick return to Tom's family house, both Tom and Natasha packed everything important to them and moved out, getting themselves a temporary room in the Leaky Cauldron.

Not that they were using the dingy room itself. They simply set up their tent inside and lived in its more spacious and luxurious rooms.

The reason for moving out of the house was simple. Tom felt like it.

He was getting quite paranoid and after the recent month of silence from the Magician Community, Tom started to be a bit fidgety as he anticipated at least some kind of trouble from them, yet, it was simply not coming.

It was hella suspicious...

So, as an added security to his shitty luck, Tom decided to move out completely. That way, nobody from the Magician Community would know his whereabouts, and their schemes would be unable to reach him. Hopefully...

Since he gained a new interest in the Wizarding Community goods anyway, it was much more convenient to live within it anyway. Tom wanted to eventually buy a house here but right now was not the time.

Not only did he not trust goblins with it.

Since if he could just walk in and demand information based on his strength, what's to say someone else from the wider supernatural world could not do the same?

But Tom also realized that with his nonexistent influence and foreigner status, he will have a hard time getting a permit for a house.

Admittedly, it was nothing that couldn't be solved by some leisure throwing money around but why waste the money he painstakingly scammed from devils when Alfred Greengrass was such a conveniently well-connected man who just so happened to need Tom's services.

It remained to be seen if the man could pull a few strings in Tom's favor but Tom didn't hate waiting. On the contrary, he liked the slow and leisure approach. It was the testament that nothing was going wrong and it also gave him more time to tinker and experiment.

He just hoped nothing would go wrong and force him to actually get involved. That would have been such a bother!

Natasha suddenly came into the part of his tent that was labeled as his laboratory and hugged him from behind, curiously peering at the suitcase on the table from behind his shoulder.

"What are you doing?" She asked, finding her chin a comfortable spot on Tom's shoulder as she enjoyed their closeness.

"I am making myself a shrinking and portable laboratory." Tom hummed, "Moving out of our house at such short notice... it made me think. What if I one day have to leave my laboratory behind because of an emergency? Hence..." He nodded at the suitcase on the table.

"So it works kinda like the tent, then?" Natasha quickly caught up to what Tom meant. "That's kinda convenient. How many of them did you get?"

She was thinking of getting one as a portable armory or something. Sure, she had her pocket space, but that was really, really small. Even if the suitcase was a lot less convenient, it definitely could hold more goodies.

Plus it was inconspicuous so there was that.

Tom, however, only wryly frowned, "Only two. I had to pay fifty thousand galleons for each and even then the goblins were very reluctant to part with them. According to them, these are rarer than Phoenix feathers."

The space expansion method of wizards worked best on trunks. The businesses focusing on it did not yet have the knowledge of how to apply it to suitcases. The goblins said these suitcases came from confidential sources... well, Tom knew it was made by Newt Scamander but that was a moot point because Newt apparently refused to make and sell more of them.

The only way to get more of these was to reverse engineer them and that would take a lot of time. Time Tom could spend on more important things. That's why Tom only wanted to slightly alter them as he did with the tent and not bother with it any further for now.

'There goes my dream of having my own armory.' Natasha inwardly wistfully sighed, not letting her disappointment seep into her expression.

"And the second suitcase? What are you going to do with that?" She curiously asked but Tom's answer was something she did not expect.

Tom raised his hand and put it on hers, "I noticed you started enjoying gardening in the past few months so I thought why not make it into a portable garden for you? That way you will always have it at hand and will not lose all your hard work whenever something unexpected happens."

Natasha was utterly bewildered at Tom's reasoning.

She started gardening because she thought it would be a way to be useful to Tom. He was an alchemist and needed ingredients for a lot of his experiments. Ingredients that were mostly metals, gems, or... plants.

But over the months, Natasha found out she loved gardening. Especially after she learned some basic spells that made it almost trivial. It was her way to destress. A way for her to nurture something rather than only destroy as she had always done.

Funnily enough, most of her ideas about new techniques with her Power of Destruction were born while she was tending to her plants too. Something about nurturing plants made it easier for her brain to come up with more ways to kill and destroy.

It was ridiculous but it is what it is.

Hearing that Tom planned to waste such an important resource as one of these suitcases for her hobby made her heart melt.

Tom felt Natasha's hug affectionately tighten at his words and smiled to himself.

It was totally worth it.