Chapter 22

T4 – A House Joined

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A House Joined

By Teresa Michaelson

Ginny looked at Harry, a smile on her face. They had made a sort of pact after they had graduated - one that kept going even after they got engaged. The pact was simple - they each got a weekend once a month to decide what they would do together - and it was 'her' weekend to choose the activity. Privately, she felt she had got a far better end of the deal - Harry usually chose for the two of them to attend a quidditch match and have dinner together, both of which she enjoyed anyway.

"Oh, no," Harry said, shaking his head at the look on her face. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

"Of course you are," Ginny replied smiling. "And it's not even going to cost us any money."

"Oh?" Harry was definitely viewing that as a positive development. Neither his job as an apprentice auror or her work as a trainee at the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts department paid particularly well.

"Absolutely," Ginny said, smiling. "You know how Seamus got that job with Winthrop's Wizard Housing? Well, they had a few trial enchantments left over that he gave me."

"Huh?"

Ginny suddenly realized that Harry probably didn't have the faintest clue what he was talking about, and possibly didn't even know how wizarding houses were built.

"Do you know how house building enchantments work?"

Harry shook his head no.

Ginny sighed, sitting on the couch. "Ok, wizards build their houses a lot different than muggles - well, at least most do. There are three major styles: Added, Joined, and Formed."

Harry raised an eyebrow and sat down beside his fiancée. "Alright, Added, Joined, and Formed. What do they mean?"

"Well, Added is the simplest. Basically, you magically construct a room, use the enchantments from Winthrop's, and add it to the house. You basically make your house one room at a time."

Harry didn't say anything, but he had the sudden suspicion that The Burrow was a very cheap 'Added' house that didn't quite get the rooms where they were supposed to go.

Ginny blushed, thinking the exact same thing as Harry, and continued on. "The last one - Formed - is an extremely expensive sort that only rich wizards can afford. What they do is, they create a large front door. Once a wizard - or wizards - step through that front door, a house is magically created around it that perfectly fits and suits them. It's literally a paradise inside - everything you could want and hope for."

Harry obviously didn't know quite what to say; Ginny smiled and continued on.

"The second one, though, is what most wizarding families use. Basically, two portals are created, and we each step through one. I don't know how exactly - Seamus said that someone through the portal would help us out when we got there - but we basically design a house individually and come back through the portal. Then the enchantment basically combines them into one house."

"It just... merges them?" Harry asked, more than a bit confused.

"Sort of," Ginny said. "It takes elements from each of ours and meshes it into a single house. It can turn out really bad, but usually the house is well suited for a couple living together."

"So you have some of these 'enchantments'?"

"In a way. They're just trial enchantments - the house vanishes within a day, and you can use finite to make it go away. We'd need to buy one of the final enchantments to make the house be created for good."

"Alright," Harry said, not sure he understood everything yet, but at least enough to feel his way through. "So... what do we do first?"

Ginny pulled out a small box from her robe pocket and opened the top of the box. Inside were nine rings - three were bright spring green and six were a deep dark blue. She carefully picked up two of the blue rings and placed them on the floor of their apartment so that their edges were touching.

Nothing happened.

"Er, did we miss the portals?" Harry asked, not quite brave enough to point out the fact that Ginny didn't appear to know what she was doing.

Ginny frowned. "I thought all I had to do... oh! I forgot the incantation! Portus!"

Two sparkling golden arcs of light appeared, enlarging on top of the rings, until both had a door-sized gateway of blackness outlined by a banner of golden light.

Harry looked over at her, and Ginny could tell exactly what the look was: He wanted to make sure that she knew what she was doing. She smiled at him and stepped through the first portal.

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Unfortunately, deadlines are approaching, so I'm going to be rapidly posting the rest of the book. This time 6 chapters are getting posted, and the remaining 10 chapters or so will be posted soon. Please give me whatever feedback you can, especially since while I've had time to polish the first half of the book, the last half isn't even completely done in rough draft yet – so I can use all the help I can get in refining these chapters.