The Aftermath
Chapter Seven
Lights
Harry woke up early the next morning with early morning sunlight beaming through his window and birds chirping outside. Looking at the clock by the bathroom door, he saw that it was five in the morning, but he could see that either Dolly or Moochi had been in because the fire was crackling pleasantly in the fireplace (and yes, every room had a fireplace). He decided to get an early start, so he got dressed and prepared himself for some exploration.
He took out his map and said, "Full size." It then expanded and showed him all of the manor. Harry read the labels of rooms with interest. He saw his room was called "The Forest Room – GR7" on the map. There was also a Safari Room and Harry saw the Quidditch Room locatation. He looked on the other side of the manor and noticed something peculiar. The name of the east wing, was Muggle Wing whereas he knew that the wing he was in was the Wizard Wing. The north wing was named the Dual Wing and then the south was called the Entrance Wing. "Zoom format." He said to the map. It was decided; he would start his exploration at the Muggle Wing. Keeping his map out, he saw that instead of going all the way back around to the south or front end of the manor, he could take a short cut through the Dual Wing because he was located in the northwest part of the manor. He just had to make a left when he reached the hall after the hall that led to the center of the manor (where the kitchen, dining, and party areas were located).
He was halfway through the Dual Wing. He hadn't stopped to look around much so he had made good time when he reached a hallway turning his back on it so he could catch the hall's light, he noticed that on the map it was the Central Hall and it seemed to be the corridor that bisected the house and all the hallways branched off of it into the other parts of the house. He also noticed he took a wrong turn somewhere and that he was supposed to go . . . into the floor?
"That's off," he said aloud. And then all the lights turned off.
Startled, Harry groped around in the dark. His hand struck a doorknob and he entered. He was pretty sure he had entered a bedroom. On the map it had been labeled "Bethy's Room," but from what Harry had heard last night, the house wasn't normally inhabited – it was treated more like a summer home. Harry backed into the room, stumbling, and then he hit someone.
"Lights on," said a familiar girl's voice.
"Sorry about that, I di-" Harry looked around at the person he had knocked over and it was none other than Liz Cain and she was sitting on her bottom rubbing her side (apparently what she had fallen on). Now she had curls in her hair and it was in a half moon hairstyle (half up, half down). She was wearing her pajamas – fleece bottoms that were dark blue and covered in pale blue crescent moons and stars and a large fleece almost robe looking pajama top that overshot her wrists by several inches so that you could only see the tips of her fingers poking out from the sleeves.
Her mouth was open in surprise. "What are you doing here?" she asked incredulously.
"What are you doing here?" he asked in the same tone.
"I live here! What's your excuse?" she answered.
This threw Harry off quite a bit. "What?"
"Well, I don't live here, but I own the house," she said standing up and brushing herself off.
Harry stared at her.
"I'm waiting," she said in clear annoyance.
"Dumbledore – he – I was – how the?" Harry gaped at her again.
"Oh, he said there would be others," she said, her expression clearing, "I just didn't know it would be you."
"Wait, so you're a witch? And you know Dumbledore?" Harry asked her, still dumbfounded.
"Yeah, of course I'm a witch – you have seen the house, right?"
"But, you have a muggle uncle – " Harry began.
"Tch! So do you!" she retorted.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked weakly.
"I was waiting to see whether or not you knew me or not," she said smiling.
"Huh?"
"I go to Hogwarts too, but I'm Ginny's age, Gryffindor," she said.
"Really?"
"Yup," she said.
She pointed at the map in Harry's hand. "Where are you trying to go?" she asked him.
"Muggle Wing," he said.
"Curious, hm?" she said cheerily. "You were kind of using the map wrong. You can't get into the Muggle Wing through any of the first floor halls or doors. You have to go down the basement stairs and the Tunnel Hall and up into the east side of the manor, not to mention how much of the rooms of that breed are located underground."
"There's more than one floor here?" Harry said. "How long did it take to build?"
Liz shrugged. "Give me the map." Harry handed it over. "Underground floor please." The current mappings disappeared and revealed a different set of rooms and halls. "Second floor. Third floor. Roof." Each time she said something new a new map appeared.
"And I thought it was difficult before," Harry said his eyes wide open as he looked at the map.
Liz looked at him sympathetically. "This might help you out. Three dimensional view." The map reverted to a side view of the house and its interior. "In color." Colors and furniture appeared in the rooms. "There you go. Just press which places you want to go through. Oh, you can also do this. Locations!" she ordered the map and it split into four views. One with color and furniture shown, one with the floor mapping with a "you are here" dot, one with a three dimensional view with a "you are here" dot, and the last showed the route to, "The Electronics Room," said Liz. "I think you'll find that fun."
Harry nodded, at a loss for words. Still unsure of what to do, he just stared.
"What?" she asked, looking a little uncomfortable.
"It's just . . . " Harry couldn't find the right words. He realized he was staring so he looked around. It was then that he noticed her bedroom.
Of course, it was huge. Bigger than all the guestrooms put together.
"Blimey, does your room take up the whole Dual Wing?" he asked her.
She laughed. "No, but my room and my parents room do take up almost half of it. Would you like a tour?"
"Sure," he said.
Her walls were decorated like the guest rooms; only her walls were able to incorporate all the ecosystems shown. Her ceiling was a clear blue sky with big, fluffy clouds that actually moved. Her ceiling fan was painted like the sun so it seemed that when the fan panels moved, the sun's rays were revolving.
Her bed was a king, as high as Harry's and covered with a white, gauzy mosquito net that made the bed look like it was a tent, but see through. All of her blankets were made of down, as were her pillows. Harry was inclined to wonder why when Liz went to sleep, she didn't sink down into the feathers and out of sight.
Not far away was her closet. It was the sort of closet of every girl's dreams (not that Harry would know – that's just what it looked like). The door was like that of revolving doors you see in front of Muggle corporate buildings, except made of mirrors. Once inside, it was about as big as the Harry's guest room and circular. All of the clothes racks on the walls moved along so that the chooser of the clothes didn't have to. The accessories section was color coded and located on a set of racks that worked like conveyor belts. The shoes were on the perimeter of the room and that rotated around like a conveyor belt as well. Then, there were two other doors branching from the closet.
"I think you'll enjoy this," she said, beckoning him into the first door.
Curious, Harry stepped forward. The moment he did the lights came on. There were several lights, and each individual one came one at a time. With each brightening light, Harry's eyes grew wider and his jaw dropped a little lower. It was Liz's own little Quidditch room. Each light in the room was like a spotlight, and each shone on a different piece of Quidditch equiptment. There were gloves, and robes, and care taking kits, and there were books, and posters, and several copies of Quidditch Players' Magazine. There were several autographed quaffles, snitches, bludgers, and beaters' clubs.
"Your parents must be rich as sin!" Harry said in an awed tone.
Liz shifted uncomfortably. "Well, you've already seen some of the stuff that they've patented."
"Like what?" Harry asked. Everything he had seen so far looked pretty much like money and magic.
"Well, in the main closet for example," she said to him. "Any of those special features look familiar?"
"Er . . . "
"That's basically some of the stuff that they're paid to produce," Liz said, as if it were that simple.
"Er . . . right," Harry said, even though he still had no clue.
They exited the closet. As they did, he wondered what was in the other door in the closet. He was about to ask when Liz spoke to him again.
"Oh, and here's my desk," she said.
"Where, what desk?" Harry asked.
She only grinned at him slyly and revolved one of the shelves. This one, unlike the others, opened like a door.
"Well, go on!" Liz said, pointing him in.
And with that he entered the room. He felt as though he had stepped into the Muggle world and entered the office of a CEO of a successful corporate company. Except, it had definite signs that a fifteen-year-old girl owned it, such as the mess on the desk, the soda bottles in the trash can, and the CD and DVD cases strewn all over the floor. There were yet more books lining the shelves, but things that looked like speakers lined other places, and what looked like mini blue fires set into little squares in the walls. An entire wall showed pictures – moving pictures and the picture changed every few seconds.
"Watch this," she said. She pulled out her wand and pointed it at the wall. Suddenly, the wall turned black, and there, showing on the wall, was a showing of an episode of Coupling.
"Whoa! How does that work?" Harry asked her.
"It kind of works like a projected image," Liz said. "But with magic, it's made simple. Or more difficult – whichever way you look at it. Through magic, the telly signal is intercepted and sent here, without interfering with normal broadcasting, and the images appear on the wall and the sound comes through those special speakers along there," she pointed to the speaker things on the walls. "Of course, they needed to be special speakers, and they had to be speakers because we haven't developed a way of projecting sound from thin air. It can be done with regular voices, but seeing as how this is satellite stuff, well, it's different."
"What?"
"Sorry mate, that's the simplest form I can put it in," Liz said, shrugging. Then she brightened again. "Over here!" she said, rushing to her desk. She tapped the surface with her wand and things quickly moved upon their own accord out of their way as a floating screen appeared over the desk. It reminded Harry a bit like holograms, but still, the images weren't projected from anywhere. It also reminded Harry of something else . . . a computer screen.
"Is that . . . . ?" he began.
"Yes, it is," Liz answered. "Complete with internet access (e-mailing and the like) as well as games and music players. This sound can be sent into midair, except for internet sounds (those go through the special speakers)." She shut off the re run of Coupling (as Jeff was saying "You don't want to know about the Giggle Loop . . . ") and turned on the music. The label that showed on the screen told Harry the artist was Mest and the song was Misunderstood.
Much to Harry's amusement, Liz started jumping up and down pretending to play a guitar. He laughed at how silly she looked, in her baggy pajamas, with her hair flying, rocking out. With a funny leap in his stomach, he noticed that this image didn't bother him a bit. He actually quite liked it. She ended up panting and laughing as she did the finishing two chords.
"Interesting," Harry said, still laughing.
"I'm sorry, I just really like the song," she stopped suddenly. "I hope I didn't set it on household mode . . . if I did I probably woke everybody up!"
"What do you mean?"
"I can make the stuff play through every room in the house . . . " she said distractedly as she checked the computer. "Oh no, I did," she said putting her hand to her mouth and starting to laugh again. Harry himself was starting to chuckle.
"It would be a rather loud wake up call, but they probably didn't mind so much," he said while thinking 'What a lie, but Fred and George probably would congratulate her for it."
"Who else is here?" Liz asked him.
"Uh . . . Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Ginny. Oh and Fred and George Weasley," Harry answered.
"Have Fred, George, and Ron seen the Quidditch Rooms yet?" said Liz.
"Yeah . . . wait, rooms? As in plural?" Harry looked at her.
"Let me guess, they haven't explored the other floors yet have they?" Liz shook her head. "Do you think they'd like to see them?"
"Sure!" Harry said excitedly.
"Ok, let's go," she said, and she made for the door. She stopped.
"What?" Harry said.
"I haven't showed you the best part!" Liz said running to the center of the room next to Harry under the ceiling fan/light.
She reached up, holding out her hand expectedly and a chain holding a golden sun shape and a silver moon shape on it. She pulled it and the room went dark. The wallpapers changed to look as though they were night. He looked up and saw that the ceiling had reverted to night mode, the silver stars and moons gleaming palely in the dark. She pulled another chain that had magically appeared that had a little music note ornament on it and suddenly, there were sound effects. Gentle cricket chirping and soft owl hoots met Harry's ears, as did a song . . . Come Away With Me by Norah Jones.
Harry found himself standing rather close to Liz. He looked down at her (she was about five inches shorter than he was) and noticed her looking up at the moon/fan. She looked up at him and he smiled. She smiled back, fleetingly, before suddenly reaching up and pulling the chain again. The room became dazzlingly bright again. Bird chirping replaced the crickets and Westlife's World of Our Own replaced Come Away With Me.
"I gotta go to the bathroom, go ahead and I'll meet you by the guest rooms," and she positively fled to the other side of the room leaving Harry feeling rather abandoned and highly confused.