Chapter 13

Hermione hadn't touched her breakfast. As every time she was about to take a bite she happened to turn another page in the ledger and wound up goggling at something else.

"You'll never finish your breakfast at this rate," commented Harry who was sitting across from her at his desk.

He saw her eyes pop up from the ledger. "Harry, this is amazing. Whoever did this family's financial planning was a genius. The Black estate wasn't any richer than most of the nobles, but for some reason around fifteen years ago they got onto the ground floor of a lot of Muggle businesses. It made them hundreds of millions. It looks as if Sirius' mother died right after a lot of the purchases so they never made the mistake of selling."

Harry nodded. "I kind of got that impression from the Senior Goblin last night when he told me that the gold in our vault was 'ready cash'."

"He wasn't kidding." She pointed at the large book. "I don't think I could even estimate how much you're worth right now, Harry."

That seemed to surprise him. "I didn't think there was anything that you couldn't do?"

She raised an eyebrow at him and smiled. "Well given a team of accounts, and a really big computer, I'm sure I could. But why would I want to. I doubt even you could spend all of the money you have, even if you wanted to."

"All the money we have," he corrected her.

She shook her head. "No, Harry. It's all under your name and been placed as such to prevent anyone from ever taking it from you."

"Well I'll have to change that."

Hermione shook her head with resignation.

The Thin Lady interrupted. "Professor Potter, you have visitor." "Thank you," he responded. "Come in."

Ron stepped through the entrance into Harry's study followed by Neville.

"We've got the information you need," said Neville with a smile on his face.

************************

By Christmas break, construction was in full force and Harry was able to devote almost all of his time transfiguring supplies and materials. The Goblins of Gringotts were the first to move operations in their show of support for Harry's ideals; they also wanted to be able to construct their vault tunnels unobserved by anyone but their oath-brother.

The earth and stone removed by the Goblins provided more than enough material for Harry to use for the building of a township that was soon to be known as Solidarity.

Solidarity was being built in the largest valley southeast of Hogsmeade. Masked by the mountains that boarded on either side it would be a simple matter to ward the township against muggles where they would only see a snow covered, unfriendly valley if they happened to fly overhead.

The middle portion of the valley was were the buisness district would be located as to be accessible from either side where the majority of housing would be located. The surrounding mountain area was also saved for those that had the need for more private accommodations.

On one end of the business district stood the nearly finished Gringotts Wizarding Bank and the other end was the skeleton framework of the new St. Mungo's Hospital Magical Maladies and Injuries. St. Mungo's was soon to follow once Harry promised state-of-the-art facilities which they had apparently been hounding the Ministry about for the last decade to no avail.

The rest of the businesses of Diagon Alley had plans to relocate in the spring. A number of incentives had been offered in order to persuade them: For anyone with a current business or who wanted to start a business, Harry offered them free land for their personal housing and construction costs of their new homes would not include anything but labor of the building-wizards. In return five percent of net proceeds of their business' would go to the community government, a far cry from the twenty percent the Ministry was collecting.

At the notice of much lower taxes and higher interest being given by Gringotts, the Ministry knew it was the beginning of the end. Harry was still waiting for the backlash and the threats of imprisonment for being a traitor or some other crime against the Ministry, but none had come as of yet. The only thing that was being done about the forming of the township was the occasional interview in the Daily Prophet with the Minister saying how disappointed he was with the actions of people that he had grown to respect.

Harry was still waiting for the other boot to drop.

A few of Ministry officials jumped ship at the first sign of its sinking. He had taken that opportunity to lure some of them into the provisional ad-hoc government that would make up the first staff for the ruling body of the township. He had known he knew next to nothing about what made a government work and decided he would leave the day to day running in the hands of people that knew what they were doing. The difference being that Harry was being pressured to provide exactly what they were supposed to be doing. If all the old rules were being scraped, they needed new laws to follow.

First he needed to separate the various divisions of the new government. Some Departments he chose to leave alone because they were doing fine all on their own like the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Granted, none of the professional teams had left the rule of the Ministry, but Harry knew it was only a matter of time.

He had appointed Arthur Weasley to the newly developed Department of Muggle Relations, which incorporated the Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, Misuse of Muggle Artifacts, and the new Office of Information. The new office would introduce Muggle families, with magical imbibed offspring, to the wizarding world. Harry hoped with the addition of these Muggles into the community that there would be a lesser divide and more understanding between the two cultures.

The greatest effort was starting a Department of Magical Law Enforcement. This was where Harry knew the widest amount of change would present itself. Only two Auror's left the Ministry: Tonks and Applegate. No others would risk their tenure so soon with the current struggle.

However, while Harry was transfiguring materials, all of the details involved in politics were pushed to the wayside. The Goblins, having a different sort of magic akin to house-elves, transported the raw materials to a prearranged location where Harry would change to whatever was needed for the days to come. Sometimes he would spend the entire day and then go to his rooms in a exhausted stupor from the amount of concentration he would have exerted. But two days before Christmas he was interrupted.

"Lunchtime, Harry," someone said from behind.

Massive piles of wooden beams lay to the side and was soon thereafter joined by many more.

"Harry?"

He lifted his wand once more in almost robotic repetition. The incantation was on his lips, but he felt a hand on his arm disturbing his concentration.

"Wha?"

Hermione was standing to the side with a frown on her face. "Lunchtime."

"Oh," he said plainly, "right, then."

On their short walk back to the temporary hut set up for breaks of coffee, tea, and lunch, Hermione held tightly to his arm. "Harry, you're overextending yourself."

He couldn't agree more. Nights found him falling into bed, dead asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He knew it was going to be hard work, building a town from scratch, but it was even more difficult than he imagined. "Sorry, I'll try to cut back a bit."

She gave him a look of strong doubt that he would live up to his word. "Sure you will."

A house-elf that Harry didn't recognize was pouring tea and arranging their lunch as they stepped into the small hut and Hermione closed the door to the frigid air outside.

He pulled his gloves off and stuffed them into his winter cloak which he unsnapped and handed to the little elf before he sat down. His hands warmed against the cup and he took a ginger sip to wet his throat.

"Really, I've got most of the supplies set aside."

Hermione took a seat across from him and laid her napkin in her lap. "You're working yourself to death, Harry. This doesn't have to be done overnight you know."

He blew across the top of the cup and then took another sip. "It's been almost four months. We should be further along than this. The Goblins say that they're almost done with their tunneling, and once that's done it'll only be another month before they have the vaults ready for the big transfer."

Harry had no idea how the Goblins were going to move the massive amounts of gold and vault contents not to mention the dragon that is supposed to be doing the guarding. Dragons were notorious for staking a claim to one piece of land for their entire life. Uprooting one and making it live somewhere else was not an easy thing to do, or at least that's what Charlie Weasley had told him when he got news of Solidarity and the role the Goblins were playing.

"You'll be on time, don't worry so much," encouraged Hermione.

Harry wasn't so sure. The winter snows had put them two weeks behind schedule already. It took a bit of arm twisting to get the construction wizards to put a Tenting Charms over their worksites so that their crews could continue no matter the weather. He had volunteered to perform the charm himself but the forewizard strictly forbad it saying it was against union rules or some such nonsense.

He really didn't feel like talking much about his work and wanted to change the subject. "How's the experimenting going?"

She stabbed at a potato at the bottom of her bowl of steaming hot stew and shrugged. "I could really use an assistant. The equations I'm working on ..."

"Hermione, we've had this talk before. You know why I don't think it's such a good idea."

Her frown had returned. "Not every person in the world is out to get me, Harry."

It was a sensitive subject with Hermione. She couldn't really advertise the fact that she was performing possibly dangerous experiments at the school, so putting a notice in the Daily Prophet was out. Harry nixed the idea because of the how easy slipping in an agent of the Knights of Walpurgis would be. Hermione wasn't on familiar terms with the more well known researchers of the wizarding community, and getting them to drop whatever it is they were working on just to run off and play science lab with a recent graduate who hadn't yet proven herself was pretty much an impossible idea.

"I could help you out," Harry offered.

She smiled sweetly, but with a hint of resignation. "You're one of the smartest people I know, Harry, but I think your Arithmancy skills would be lacking."

He snapped his fingers and looked disappointed. "I knew I should have dropped Divination and went with Arithmancy. But Trelawney was just to good-looking to pass up. Plus all of that incense she burned in the classroom." He looked fondly in the air. "I can almost remember the headaches like it was yesterday."

Hermione picked up a roll and threw it at his head. "Don't think I haven't heard you in the middle of the night, whispering her name and all."

Harry laughed and stood up to lean over the table and kiss his wife. "I gave all of that up for you."

"Aww, you're so sweet," she said sarcastically.

"I think so."

She pointed at his bowl with her fork. "Eat your stew, sweet-boy. It's cold out there."

With dinner complete Harry sat back sipping on his third cup of tea. "Dumbledore said he would help out drafting the Constitution."

"That's great. I guess being Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, or former Chief as the case may be, is good for something."

Harry nodded.

Hermione sighed and stood up. "I guess I'll go back to my lonely laboratory and get back to work."

"Who's your escort?" He looked around and didn't see any of her normal attendants, then it was his turn to frown. "You did have an escort coming over here, didn't you?"

"Harry, I'm perfectly safe. There hasn't even been a hint of another attempt and it's been almost four months," she rationalized.

"And you used to call me reckless!" He stood, setting his cup down. "I'll escort you."

She tried to wave him off. "Harry, I'm perfectly safe. They wouldn't try to do anything with so many people coming back and forth."

Harry nodded. "And once you make it to Hogwarts grounds you'd be all alone for that long walk back to the castle, not to mention the fact that the last attempt was in the middle of the castle with hundreds of people only a floor away. I'm escorting you and that's final."

Hermione rolled her eyes in resignation. "Then you'll have to hold my hand."

He smiled happily back at her. "I can't think of anything else I'd rather be holding."

"I can," she replied. "You've been a neglectful husband this last week."

His eyes widened a little and he knew she was right. The work he was doing wasn't necessarily physically demanding but it was definitely mentally draining. He never had much energy to do anything other than sleep when he arrived in the evenings. "Well then I'll take off early today and we'll make up for that."

She grinned back at him and raised up on her toes kissing him lightly. Harry wouldn't have any of that and pulled her closer to explore the depths of a much more impassioned kiss. Just before things became physically uncomfortable they separated and Hermione dropped back down.

"I'll hold you to that, Mister Potter."

Harry's head was somewhat cloudy at this point. "Maybe I can just take a longer lunch."

She smirked and grabbed his hand. "No, I stink. I need a bath and I bought us some fun things at the new shop in Hogsmeade this morning."

"Fun things?"

She nodded as she threw on her cloak and handed Harry his own. "I know how tired and worn you are by the end of the day. I thought after you took a bath tonight I'd give you a rub down. I bought some scented oils that would be perfect. And then maybe you could rub me down," she said coyly.

Harry's face went limp and lips parted slightly. "I think I might have to take off the rest of the day."

She shook her head and hopped spryly to the door. "Nope. Have to make sure the bedroom is set up properly and all. Might take me all afternoon."

"Bollocks, it'd take you five minutes, if that long."

Hermione opened the door. "Escorting me or not, Mister Potter?"

Harry withdrew his gloves and pulled them on as they left for the Apparation and walk back to Hogwarts.

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