The Aftermath
Chapter Six
Reunions
It was Hermione.
"Harry! You got here! Isn't this place wonderful!" she squealed in his ear.
"Hey there mate!" said Ron standing behind Hermione grinning broadly.
"Hi!" Harry said breathlessly (still trying to recover from Hermione's tackle).
"Hermione just got here yesterday, so she's still amazed with this place," Ron said with a small chuckle.
"What are you talking about? You're the one who's still trying out all of your rooms special features over and over again!" Hermione said defensively.
"Oh yeah! Harry, you have got to see our rooms! You can make your pillows have pillow fights with you – " Ron said.
"And the bookshelves have tons of books – " Hermione began.
"And the bathrooms! Mate you have to see – "
"The view is so beautiful – "
"Okay, okay!" Harry said. "Can you lead me to my room then?"
"You're in room seven right?" asked Hermione.
"It's the one next to mine," said Ron. "Our rooms are connected."
"Ginny's room and mine are connected as well," Hermione said to Harry. "We're in rooms two and three, across from yours."
"We're in seven and eight, they're over here," Ron said walking down the hall talking all the while.
"Here we are," Ron said pointing towards two adjacent doors. The one on the left had a fancy gold "seven" plated on it and the one on the right had a silver eight.
"Go on, Harry! I'm dying to see it!" Hermione said.
Harry opened the door and he felt as though he had stepped into a forest because the wallpaper that decorated the room was of a forest scene and the animals in it moved around.
"Wow!" Hermione exclaimed. "Mine is meadow like with a bunch of little squirrels."
"Mine is water based," said Ron. "You'd think it was cool to feel like your underwater, but it's not half as fun when you've got to go to the bathroom and the first thing you see is a waterfall."
There were footsteps behind them and Ginny entered. "Hiya Harry!" she said looking around approvingly.
"What type of room have you got?" Harry asked her, gaping around his own.
"Mine is a bunch of air and clouds and stuff, and I'm excessively glad that the birds aren't real because it would be such a pain to clean bird droppings off my pillow every morning," she said.
They all laughed and Harry continued exploring his room. His bed was a four poster, but it was huge – about four times the size as his Hogwarts bed and about four times as high, so there was a small set of stairs by the bed so that climbing into it would be less of a jump. The bookshelves that covered a small portion of the walls really held more books than imaginable because, as Hermione demonstrated, if you spun them, they had different contents each time they came around. The lights were voice activated and the pillows self fluffed when ordered. The bed made itself and there was a Gobstones corner – a designated place to play the game. The bathroom was immense, obviously, but not as big as the bedroom. It had a Jacuzzi tub with a several showerheads floating in midair over it. And the walls of the bathroom were decorated as if the person inside was sitting under a willow tree, in private.
Harry was shown the others' rooms and they had similar features as well as specialized ones. Like for the girls, they had vanity mirrors and such.
There was a bell.
"That means a meal," Ron said to Harry. "In this case, dinner! Let's go, I'm starved."
Needless to say, the dining room was huge. The guard had left with the exception of Lupin and Tonks and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were there. They sat down to a luxurious meal at a table that could seat one hundred. Mr. Weasly knocked twice on the polished wooden table and it shrank to accommodate their numbers. The Weasley twins entered and they were at once bombarded with questions about "business" meaning their joke shop.
Dinner was a quick affair because it was so late in the evening and the younger attendants were shunned upstairs as the clock struck half after eleven. And they went to their bedroom corridor.
"Where's my stuff?" Harry asked as he opened his door and went in, followed by the other three.
At that moment, two little house elves came up carrying the trunk. They zoomed past the four of them and set Harry's trunk at the foot of his bed.
They came back and bowed low to Harry. "You must be Mr. Potter, sir," said the first, who seemed to be female. "An honor, sir," said the other, a male house elf.
"I'm Dolly, sir," squeaked the girl one, bowing again.
"Moochi at your service Mr. Potter," the other one said, bowing as well.
"We've had our orders from Dumbledore," Dolly said.
"A great friend of our masters'," Moochi said, nodding vigorously.
"And he is saying we is to make your stay as comfortable as possible, Mr. Potter, sir, as well as the rest of the young uns," Dolly continued.
"So anything we can be doing for any of you, sirs and misses," Moochi said.
"We is to be glad doing," Dolly finished.
"That's really not necessary, as I've told you before," started Hermione with a frown.
"Okay, if we need anything, we'll ask," Harry said quickly, cutting her off.
"You can go now," Ron said.
The two house elves bowed and left.
Hermione yawned. "Sorry Harry, but it is very late now. I like those two house elves. I think I'm making progress with them," she said retreating to her room. "Good night."
Ginny giggled quietly when Hermione had closed the door. "Yeah, progress," she said in a hushed voice.
"More like they listen politely as she talks at them," Ron said. "Then they scurry off to the nearest adult and say there's no need to give them clothes."
"Don't tell her that though," said Ginny. "I'm going to turn in too. Night all." And Ginny went into her room as well.
Harry and Ron turned to their rooms saying good night as they opened their doors and Ron promised to show Harry the Quidditch room the next morning.
Harry, once in his room, got changed and climbed (literally climbed) into his bed and took his glasses off and resisting the temptation to jump on the bed reminding himself that if he bounced off, it would hurt indeed, and said sleepily, "Lights off." The room went dark and he drifted off to sleep.