Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JKR, of course. Just puttering around in her world.
Draco was the last to the kitchen for breakfast, which made him glad Kreacher and Lannie had a tendency to cook too much. While he'd managed to get extra beds in rooms with a little help from his mother for adding a couple of extra feet in his room for the Bulstrode boys, it didn't help the limited number of bathrooms that had resulted in his wait for a shower and thus breakfast. He wished it were easier to add bathrooms, but adequate plumbing spells were hard to master and beyond his current skill level. If Harry found more orphans, and Draco was certain there'd be quite a few, Grimmauld Place would be beyond capacity very quickly.
He grabbed a plate and filled it from the platters of food spread out on the kitchen counter. Passing Luna to take the open chair on Harry's left side, he squeezed her shoulder gently in greeting and delayed eating to smooth the dark silky hair on Alexander where he was perched on Harry's shoulder. Glancing around the table, he noted that the two boys seemed to be settling in nicely, both chatting to George with a bit of awe evident in Edmund that he was next to an owner of Weasley Wizarding Wheezes.
Millie was another story. She was eating quietly, her plain features set into the carefully neutral expression he was used to seeing from her at school. Being a half-blood in Slytherin hadn't been easy, especially being from a disgraced branch of her family. He knew he'd been one of the prats who'd made life harder on her, so he had some behavior to make up for. Maybe his mother would have some ideas on drawing the young woman out of her shell.
"Andromeda and I went over the family ledgers a bit last night," Harry said, interrupting Draco's train of thought. "I copied out a property list I want to visit, and she suggested I take you along since you're familiar with family wards and house spells."
"I was just thinking we needed more space, if things work out on collecting the children who need homes." Draco fiddled with a piece of bacon. "We're short on bathrooms here and you'd need a true building spell master to get those expanded or added."
The dark-haired wizard nodded before turning to Luna. "Do you want to come along? I want you to have input since I figure we can all move if I find a property large enough for us plus any kids we need to look after."
"I think it sounds lovely," she said, a faraway look in her eyes for a moment. She refocused and poked George in the shoulder. "Uncle George, would you like to babysit for a few hours today?"
The redhead shrugged. "I don't mind. I can always send a Patronus if he gets lonely for his mum."
"Good. We'll leave after breakfast," Luna declared. She took a last forkful of jam covered eggs and pushed her chair back. "I'll just go get bottles ready."
Harry summoned a parchment, passing it to Draco. "I wrote Gringotts this morning to get a multiple use portkey that would go to any of our properties. They should owl it over any time now."
Draco almost missed the phrasing of "our" properties as he'd begun to study the list. He smiled slightly. "Your handwriting is atrocious, Harry."
"I've never quite gotten used to writing with a quill. I ought to get some Muggle paper and a pencil or biro." Harry fiddled with a piece of bacon. "What place should we visit first? I just wrote them down in the order I found them in the ledger."
"Well, since those ledgers never list any real details beyond location and value, we're kind of stuck with randomly choosing." Remembering that it wouldn't take Luna long to finish her spells to fill bottles with breast milk for the babies, Draco decided to ignore finicky table manners in favor of eating quickly. He piled eggs on toast, with a couple of pieces of bacon on top. Folding the toast around eggs and bacon, he took a large bite while scanning the list. "Do you want to stick to British or Irish properties? You copied down a couple abroad."
"We'll save those for last. There's one that didn't have a location, just like Grimmauld. Andromeda said it meant the property was unplottable. It's from the Potter ledger, so I'd like to visit it too, just to see if we can figure out where it is."
Draco found the property in question and nodded. "It's got the highest monetary value, even more than the traditional Potter family base in Wales. A couple of these are dubbed cottages, so we might skip them until later, since they aren't likely to be large enough."
"Sounds good." An owl pecked at one of the basement windows, and Hermione got up to let it in. She relieved it of its package and passed it to Harry as Luna returned. Harry rose carefully and passed the baby to George, so Draco polished off the last of his breakfast, washing it down with tea that was almost too hot to drink. As soon as Harry finished reading the letter from the goblins, he offered the length of braided ribbon to both Draco and Luna. All three bid farewell to the others before Harry tapped the portkey ribbon with his wand, speaking the name of the Potter family seat, and they were swept away.
Draco grumbled as he held out a balancing hand to Harry as they landed at the last destination for the day. He'd have thought that repeated practice would have improved the other wizard's landing skills after a dozen portkey jumps today, but apparently not. Luna was already stepping away, her wand out and twirling it thoughtfully as she looked around the island that had turned out to be the unplottable location they'd saved for last.
The petite blond cast a spell he didn't recognize, but the area of the island they could see lit up like Hogwarts under a ward revealing spell. "Dear Merlin," he breathed, thinking it was a miracle they'd landed safely there at all, as he recognized a layer of blood wards similar to ones present at Malfoy Manor.
"What is it?" Harry asked, observing the ward lines that fairly glowed all around them.
"What is the name of this place?" Luna asked.
Draco snagged the now battered parchment out of his robe pocket and did his best with translating Harry's handwriting. "Frodleer?"
"Fróðleikr."
The foreign word reminded him of some of the family spells he'd heard Luna use, back when the household had just been the three of them and the baby. "Are we even still in Britain?" he wondered.
Luna shrugged. "Most likely not." She turned to Harry. "Do you know if any of your Potter relatives we Scandinavian?"
Harry dug into a pocket and unshrunk a book he'd gotten from the Potter family home in Wales. He flipped through a few pages and then nodded. "Eight generations back, an aunt married a squib from 'the icy north isles'. They didn't have any children though, so I'm not sure why any property would have stayed with the family."
"If he was the last of his line, these wards may have recognized her family as the closest they would get to staying with a magical line," Draco answered absently, walking away from them toward the cliff's edge. "Or he sired a child by another Pot…" Completing the sentence was beyond him as he took in the sight below. The other two hurried to join him.
He'd been right that the cliff overlooked the sea, but it also gave a vantage point of where the island curved back on itself. A herd of grazing animals, probably sheep, moved along a scraggly meadow on the other side, a good climb above a rocky beach. But above the animals loomed a building of windworn stone that could only be called a castle. It wasn't as large as Hogwarts, but if the protective wards held on the building as well as on the island itself, the place was perhaps the answer they were looking for.
They discussed apparating over, but no one felt safe trying it just yet. The long walk around needed warming charms cast, since none of them had expected to go so far north that they'd need winter cloaks in May. By the time they arrived, the sheep had fled, but a flock of bold geese merely stared them down.
"Harry, I think you should touch the door lightly," Draco advised after he and Luna had both cast different ward revealing spells. "See if the wards recognize you."
The dark haired wizard nodded and reached out slowly to place him palm against the smooth wood of one of the big double doors. Draco watched the ward spells flicker and then brighten, turning the brilliant blue he knew meant the wards had keyed to a new head of family. They all breathed a sigh of relief, laughing at the group reaction.
"Well, let's see if the place had good preservation spells," Draco announced. They'd been gone long enough, and this place needed a lot of exploration. He had a feeling he and Harry would return tomorrow, perhaps with a few of the others, to check things over more thoroughly. Hermione should definitely come, if Luna didn't. He could admit the young woman was almost Ravenclaw in her wealth of obscure knowledge.
They entered into a large entrance hall, with a staircase along either side leading to a landing that overlooked the entrance. Luna hummed happily. "It feels like the people just left yesterday," she announced. "None of the musty smell or abandoned feeling some places get if the preservation spells aren't strong enough."
Draco nodded, looking around in unfettered curiosity. "They must be anchored with the wards somehow. The place has to have been empty for centuries. You said eight generations, Harry?"
The black-haired wizard checked the parchment again before speaking. "Yeah. That's wizarding generations, so if no one lived here after their lifetimes, this island could have been uninhabited for eight hundred years or more."
"Almost as long as Hogwarts has been around," Luna commented venturing toward the stairs. "Let's give it a quick look. With spells and such for living areas, the important things are bathrooms and the kitchen. Anything else we can adapt ourselves."
"Guess we saved the best for last, eh?" Harry quipped as they followed her.
An hour and a half later, they apparated into the entrance hall at Grimmauld Place, Harry laughing as Luna reached out from where she'd side-alonged with Harry to drag Draco into a group hug.
"I take it the trip went well?" George was halfway down the stairs from the first floor, Alexander tucked snuggly in one arm.
Draco backed away from the hug, only to find himself kept on one side by Luna's arm around his waist. "It's absolutely perfect, George," she exclaimed. "They're going back tomorrow, and you should go along to help."
"The place is so bloody big we practically need to map it," Harry added.
"And with enough usable bathrooms that we could stuff half of Hogwarts in the place and not have the lines we have here," Draco noted. He'd been amazed that the maintenance spells had held up on the pipes, although those used to showers would have to wait on those to be added. The bathrooms in the castle held only bathtubs, although a couple qualified as bathing pools. "The kitchen needs some updating, I think, but not so much we'd need to pay someone to do the spellwork."
"So where did you manage to find a place that size?" George asked, reaching the entrance hall. He held out the baby in front of the three, smiling as Harry plucked him up.
"The last place we looked. The main Potter place would have been workable, but this one's perfect." Harry led the way to the kitchen. With a last side-hug, Luna released Draco to follow. He called for a house elf to bring quill and parchment to the kitchen and fetch the other residents of the house. He wanted to show off what he remembered of what they explored, and his fingers itched to make a list of wizarding books that would assist in making the castle ready for their family and more.
A/N: Thank you for the reviews. Life's been crazy but I wanted to get this out since I kept getting writer's block over it.