It turned out, where they started was going through the house to see what they were working with, and make a list of what she would need. Which was obvious, when Liz thought about it for two seconds.
They went back up to the kitchen, Liz tucked the letter from the wardcrafters away in her trunk and pulled out a roll of parchment and a pen — she didn't trust herself to remember a whole long list of shite without taking notes. She made a heading for the downstairs bathroom and jotted down towels and soap before she forgot, and then made a heading for the kitchen. "Right, so we're going to need pots and pans and measuring cups and shite, and... There's kind of a lot of things you need for a kitchen, aren't there."
"Yeah, a few," Sirius said, smirking at her from where he stood leaning against the island. "It might be worth it to just have the elves bring things in instead of getting everything new. I'm sure you have plenty of plates and cutlery sitting around somewhere, and a lot of that stuff you'd need to order and have made — it'll take at least a few days for it all to be finished. I can tide you over with conjurations in the meanwhile, but it's probably better to just skip it."
"...Right, that makes sense." She hesitated for a second, then started scribbling off pots and pans and measuring cups, spatulas and whisks, that sort of thing. "I'll still need cooking stuff, since that'd all be meant for elves and they might be different. Pot holders and... Actually, I can just use magic to float things around, never mind that one. Um, knives, would need those, any from the kitchens at Clyde Rock the grip would be meant for elf hands — if I need to wait for them to make new ones, I can just use the knife set Severus gave me. Um, don't tell him about that, they're supposed to be for potions ingredients, I don't think he'd approve."
He snorted. "Just cleanse them after, saltwater and sunlight, they'll be fine." Liz felt her eyebrow twitch — that was a very...witchcrafty thing to say, didn't expect that sort of thing from Dumbledore's people. "Tea pot."
Pointing at him with her pen, "No, coffee machine...thing, Severus has this really neat one, he said... Oh shite, we're going to have to floo back to London."
While Sirius was busy laughing at her — she realised that should have been obvious, she just hated the floo, okay — there was a little pop, Nilanse reappearing a couple steps away. "I'm back! Here's the recipe," she said, holding up a slip of parchment.
"Right, thanks." Liz took it and skimmed through the recipe quick — she'd never really made bread before (besides scones for breakfast at the Dursleys'), but it didn't sound that hard, and Tisme had even included a bit on making the butter for... Oh shite, she had to roast the garlic for the butter in the oven first, that was going to be a pain. Having garlic butter on hand for things wasn't a terrible idea, just took a little bit of work, oh well. The handwriting wasn't great, the letters uneven and jagged — the elves could read, but Liz doubted Tisme actually wrote very often — but it was perfectly legible, no problem. Tucking the paper into a pocket, she said, "Thank your mother for me. Oh, and ask Cediny if there's plates and cups and forks and stuff we can put in here. Nothing fancy, you know, it's just going to be me and friends I might invite over, just normal everyday stuff." If she didn't specify that, who knew, the Potters were stupid wealthy, she might have come back to find fine bloody china in the cabinets and literal silver spoons in the drawers...
Nilanse gave her a funny look, her head sparking. "I'm thinking there is plenty, but I can ask. Are you wanting us to bring it all here and put it away?"
"Ah, sure, thanks." She could figure out where everything was looking around later, it was fine. "Um, I don't know how easy it is for you to teleport all that shite around..."
With a curling little smile, Nilanse said, "I will ask Honish to help, we can do it." Liz was pretty sure Honish was one of the younger men, Nilanse's cousin or uncle or something, but she didn't know exactly. She wasn't even certain elves reckoned kinship the same as humans did...
Nilanse popped away again, and that was pretty much it for the kitchen, they moved back to the room with the fireplace in it. Sirius said this was probably supposed to be the dining room — he said "reception hall," but same difference — which Liz wasn't going to have much use for. She was hardly likely to be holding big dinners here or whatever. While she was jotting down a note to get curtains for this room (underlining it twice), casting a couple analysis charms to measure how wide the windows were, Sirius argued that, while she likely wouldn't have any use for this room soon, she planned on living here for a while, and she might want to have a few people over for dinner at some point in the future. Which, fine, that wasn't a bad point, she guessed they could pick up a table and some chairs as long as they were buying other shite anyway. Oh, some stools to put in the kitchen to eat there, that was a good idea, she went back to measure the height of the counter quick.
"Where did you learn that spell anyway?" Sirius asked as she walked back into the dining room, continuing on toward the other side. "That's not something they teach at Hogwarts, one of those more practical spells they expect kids to pick up at home." Which was kind of screwing muggleborns, but whatever.
Liz shrugged. "I don't remember, honestly, I look at a lot of charms books." That was a lie, of course — she'd learned it from a book on ritual magic, but mostly used it to plan out practice projects in Runes class — but that wasn't really Sirius's business. The spell was a little annoying, since it measured things in the units used in traditional witchcraft, which weren't the same units they used for other stuff — because bloody cubits were definitely something that needed to be kept around. Thankfully, it wasn't hard to convert units, since a cubit was exactly three-halves of a foot...the foot mages used, which Liz thought was like half an inch shorter than an Imperial foot, but whatever, who cares.
(At least there were still twelve inches in a foot, though they were slightly shorter than normal inches, but there were only five thousand feet in a mile, because of course. Liz honestly suspected mages were trying to be confusing.)
The room on the other side of the dining room was actually larger than she'd thought — through the doorway she'd only been able to make out the depth, but it went further to her right than she'd expected, more rectangular than square. It looked pretty much the same as the dining room, wood floor and walls, plain white ceiling, empty and featureless. There were a few windows, but it wasn't nearly as bright in here, these ones...north-facing, she thought. "What's this room supposed to be for?"
"This is your salon, I think." Sirius scuffed the toe of his boot against the floor, scowling just a little. "They should have put carpet in here."
"I asked them not to, I wouldn't know what to pick and I figured the wood would work fine everywhere. I can always get some rugs, or put in carpet later if I change my mind." She made a new heading on her list, measured the windows for some more curtains. "So, like, chairs and stuff? I don't know what I'm doing..."
"How about you take down the measurements of the room, and we'll tell the carpenters we have a salon to fill, and they'll make recommendations."
Liz shrugged — why not, it wasn't like she had a better idea.
Before moving on, Liz paused for a moment, looking out the windows. The gardens around the house were pretty big, there was a sizable patch of grass stretching out, a tree here and there to the left, ending in a line of hedges. She could see a brick path to the right, the front door must be over there, leading up to an iron gate — there must be a wall somewhere in the hedges, but she couldn't actually see it from here. The street beyond was paved in some kind of white stone, little bits of quartz glittering in the sun, there was another row of big, fancy houses on the opposite side of the street, half hidden by the trees in their own gardens. There were a few people wandering around on the street, mages in colourful clothes, as Liz looked around a sizeable cart pulled by a pair of pegasi rattled by. Shaking her head to herself, Liz turned toward the doorway she hadn't gone through yet.
(Pulling an open cart on the ground with flying horses seemed slightly ridiculous to Liz, but she guessed they were probably just using the animals they had around — they had to keep pegasi hidden from muggles anyway, so.)
Though the door was the entryway, which was...a bit much. Everything was done in rosey wood and polished white tile, the double-height ceiling and the upper half of the front wall done entirely in glass, letting sunlight pour on in, the wood gleaming and the lines of gold between the tiles sparkling. Against the opposite wall was a staircase, ascending toward the back of the house before taking a right angle and continuing on to reach the second floor over Liz's head to her right — the post at the bottom of the bannister had been carved into a sitting gryphon, the rest of the posts all the way up shaped as though covered in vines. At the centre of the floor was the big formal Potter...thing, the quartered red and white shield, rearing hippogriffs to either side, printed in capital leaders on a banner beneath constamvs ivge, nos fideles. ("Stand together always, we faithful" — she'd looked it up in the dictionary Mg.a Madeline gave her.) The people who'd gone over the place had just said they'd restored the entryway, they hadn't said anything about it being so over the top...
Anyway, there was a door under the stairs, she checked that quick to find a toilet. Which was slightly ridiculous, because the one down the stairs from the kitchen was not that far away, but whatever. This one also had a basin under a spigot, like a tiny bathtub, which was bloody weird. Sirius said it was to wash off shoes if they got muddy, or clean up after working in the front gardens, which made sense, Liz guessed. Anyway, put a couple more tally marks next to the towels and soap, and they moved on. The opposite side of the entryway led into a hallway, going around the corner of the house — there were a couple doors here, opening into a little featureless room that was probably supposed to be for gardening supplies or whatever, and then there was a sort of oversized closet, already equipped with a long rack for shoes and plenty of hooks for coats or cloaks or whatever, more than enough for herself and several guests. Nothing she needed to get for these, so they moved on.
The next room — the last on this floor, Liz could see the kitchen through the opposite door — was supposed to be an office space sort of thing, for the master of the house to have business meetings and the like in. She would need to have a desk somewheree, and she could get some shelves to put her books in here, but that still left the room much larger than she really needed — the offices she'd seen before included a little table and chairs to have tea at, so. Maybe she could stick her potions lab in here? A few minutes ago, Liz had been thinking of putting it in the basement, but potions let off fumes sometimes, as big and open as the basement was it was still an enclosed space. She knew the potions labs at school had special magic vent...things, which obviously wasn't something she'd be able to set up herself, she'd need to pay someone to do that. And this was an outside wall right here, that should work, right? And, the brewing process could be very sensitive to sunlight — sunlight did have magical properties of its own, after all, brewing in the sun basically meant adding an extra ingredient constantly through the whole process — but there weren't any windows in here, and the kitchen wasn't super sunny either, just close the door and it should be fine. Right, desk and chair on the inside wall, some bookshelves around, potions shite along the outside wall, got it.
The stairs led them up to a hallway, turning to the right. There were bedrooms up here, one, two, around a corner, and then here was a bathroom. A toilet and sink area, set off by a half-wall (kind of like their rooms at the Greenwood) was the bathing area. This was also a bit more involved than she'd expected — it was rather plain and undecorated, everything just in red and white tile, but there was a bench along the half-wall, hooks for people to hang things up, and the shower and bathtub were kind of big. There were definitely space-expanding enchantments in here, Liz was pretty sure at least part of the room should be in the same space as the entryway. She just shrugged off the fancier-than-expected bathroom, added more tally marks for soap and towels. Oh, also some bath towels, obviously, and she should get some bland generic shampoo and shite too — she wasn't planning on using this bathroom, but if she had guests and they hadn't brought things, why not.
Mm, it was kind of open and plain in here, maybe she should get some plants? She had liked their bathroom at the Greenwood, so. She'd have to do something to the lights in here to make them count as sunlight, to make sure the plants grew right, but she didn't think that enchantment was that hard? Oh well, she'd think about it.
Back in the hall, and they continued on, past a couple closets — to store linens and towels and things in. If she was correctly keeping track of the distance she was going, she was pretty sure these closets should be in the same space as the entryway, but magic buildings did shite like this sometimes, it was better to just not think about it. After that was a room for people to hang out in without having to go downstairs, kind of reminding Liz of the living room in Severus's apartments at Hogwarts? She meant, not visually, since the place was made out of the same faintly reddish wood as everywhere else, but it had a hearth at one end (not connected to the floo, just a normal fireplace), and toward the opposite end of the room was a tiny kitchen area, a few cabinets and a sink and a hob with only two burners. One side of the wall was mostly window, facing the— Liz tipped up onto her toes to look over the railing, and yeah, that was the street out there, they were still on the front side of the house. And she had to look over a railing because the largest bank of windows was actually a door — double doors, made entirely out of glass, Liz had expected them to slide but they opened out like normal — she stepped out to check, and there was room to put a few chairs out here, but not much else, just a place to hang out outside for the hell of it.
It was a pretty nice day, maybe high teens and sunny, a light breeze fluttering at her hair. A bit cooler than it'd been back in England, she thought, but pretty nice. She could hear a bit of noise from the street, but not a lot, the murmuring of indistinct noises, now and then a faint clattering or a clunk of something. Definitely much quieter than London, but. She was at the corner of the building, could see over the hedges into the neighbour's yard — a man tending to something in the garden noticed her watching, waved up to her, she waved back without thinking.
Anyway, back inside, just took measurements of the room like she had for the salon downstairs, since she still didn't know what she was doing. Through the opposite door was another hall leading toward the back of the house, with doors to one, two more bedrooms — Jesus, was that four bedrooms? five, actually, counting hers? A bit much, don't you think? Nobles were bloody ridiculous...
The hallway ended at another big open room with a bunch of windows — it was brighter in here than the last one, but these windows were south-facing, the sun at an angle that it could shine directly into the room. It was basically just like that other room, but mirrored to face the south, and without the tiny little kitchen area. According to the measurement she took, it was a little smaller than the other, but she guessed it didn't also have a kitchen in it, so. There was a balcony out here too, she stepped out onto it just out of curiosity.
The back garden was noticeably larger than the front, dotted with trees and bushes, a few empty flower beds here and there, whatever had been let grow wild there torn out by the people who'd cleaned the place up. There was a tiny pond just there to the right, meant for decoration, patches of brick set into the ground dotted around it, probably to support chairs for people to sit around. Leaning over the railing, Liz could see the bottom floor of the house had trellises set against the walls, she should drop by a greenhouse, see if she could find something neat to let grow up those. And, she should tear out the grass, since that could be a pain to let grow wild — that should be easy to do with a few charms, no big deal — get a bunch of seeds for flowers and trees and shite and just scatter them around. Get like a little forest growing in here, like. She'd need to keep an eye on it, cut down things growing in a way that might fuck up the foundation or the hedgerows, but she thought that'd look much nicer. Liz had never liked grass, anyway...
There was another gate at the back end of the property, leading through the hedgerow into what looked like an open field. Looking around, the block they were on had houses around the edge and an open space in the middle they all had access to — not huge, maybe the width of a quidditch pitch and twice as long...which was pretty damn big for being in the middle of a city, how big was the Refuge, anyway? It looked like they'd made most of the space into a little farm, growing crops set into rows, some toward the edges were definitely fruit trees of some kind. Liz wasn't an expert on farming, but she assumed it couldn't be a big enough of a plot to feed everyone in these houses (unless there was only one or two in each, she guessed), probably just something they did for fun — and also to keep children busy: there were a few people poking around in there and the figures looked pretty small. In the middle was a sort of big gazebo thing, a roof built up for shade (and to keep off the rain), tables scattered under it. She leaned over, squinting, she was pretty sure that right there was a barbeque pit or something? A spot the people living here could have parties and shite, maybe. That was neat, she guessed...if you were the sort of person who liked hanging out with your neighbours.
She made more notes for stuff to put in this room, most of it just measurements to give to people who knew what they were doing better than she did, and moved on to the last door. "Open it," she said, nodding at the door.
There was a flicker of surprise in Sirius's head, he gave her a funny look. But whatever he was thinking, he shrugged it off, stepped up to open the door — but the latch didn't turn at his touch. "It's locked."
"Try to unlock it, then."
"...This is a trick, isn't it."
"Yep. Do it anyway."
Sirius shot her an exasperated glance, but he did as she said, his wand appearing in his hand and turning to flick at the handle. There was a faint crackle of magic, and Sirius let out a yelp, flinching back and shaking out his hand, his wand clattering against the wooden floor. He turned to give her a glare, but Liz could feel he was mostly just amused with her, playing it up for the hell of it. "Ow? What was that for?"
"Just checking." When talking to the wardcrafters, she'd asked for an extra layer of security on her door — if they'd done it right, Liz should be the only one able to open it. (Well, and Nilanse, because wards read elves as the humans they were bound to for complicated magic theory reasons Liz didn't get.) She'd have to test it with someone keyed in as a resident to be certain, but it looked like it'd worked. If she were going to be having guests over, and especially if Sirius was going to be staying here for a good chunk of the summer, she wanted to have a place she could go where she could just be alone for a while. Also, having a lock on her bedroom other people couldn't get past was just better for her peace of mind in general.
(Severus had been reluctant at first, but agreed it was fine after Liz pointed out Nilanse could pop her out if she had a medical emergency or something.)
The door opened easily enough when she tried it — the room on the other side didn't really look any different from the other bedrooms, maybe a little bigger, just as plain and empty as the others. The floor was wood here too, as she'd expected, she quick made a note to get some rugs. And also for the curtains, there were a few windows in here and she'd want to cover those...
"That was mean, you know," Sirius whined, his tone high and wheedling. Overplaying it to be silly, because Dorea's father was a very silly man, she could feel his mind so she knew he didn't really mean it. "With the door. So cruel to me, Liz."
"Yes, I know." Proving her point about not really meaning it, Sirius laughed. "I just wanted to make sure it worked. And now you know not to try to barge in here." She'd need a bed, obviously, and maybe some bookshelves for the things she shouldn't put somewhere people might see...
"I wouldn't do that anyway. Grown men barging into young ladies' rooms unannounced is the sort of thing they teach good noble kids to not even think about growing up."
And she definitely trusted a man she barely knew to keep to that. "Still, if you're going to be staying here I'll sleep easier knowing you can't get in."
"Fair enough." There was a flicker of something cold and hard at that, but Sirius was acting casual, trying not to give whatever that was away, so Liz tactfully ignored it.
She'd also need a dresser — there was a closet just here to hang stuff up, but she'd still need somewhere to put pants and socks and things. There was definitely an enchantment on the closet, maybe to keep out dust and pests? Neat. Hmm, maybe a desk to do enchanting work at, she'd want somewhere quiet she wouldn't be interrupted for that... That would probably still leave a fair bit of space, this was quite larger than she really needed...
Liz could have done with a much smaller house, but she didn't think the Potters owned a smaller one — or at least not one they weren't already renting out, and Liz would rather not kick people out of a place they'd been living in for years just because. (Except the one in Godric's Hollow, but Liz didn't think she could live there.) But if she was going to be having people over it was better to have more space, and she was still going to be living here when she was grown up and supposedly a fancy noble lady or whatever, so.
After taking notes on the furniture and shite she wanted — plus measurements of the room itself, so she could guess what sized rugs she was going to need — she moved on through the opposite door into the bath— No, just a toilet, actually. The room was roughly square, a toilet over there, on the other side a sizeable counter with a sink set into it, the entire wall behind it stretching up to the ceiling all one big mirror. There were cabinets underneath the sink and built into the walls to either side, so, somewhere to get ready to go out, she guessed? Fine. There was another door across from the bedroom, and this one led into the bathroom part.
This also wasn't quite what she'd expected — she'd said she really only need a shower for her bathroom, but they'd put a bathtub in here too. Which was fine, she just wasn't likely to use it much. The shower wasn't enclosed, just open to the room where the barrier would go up, which wasn't that much of a surprise — the showers in Slytherin worked the same way — she switched the barrier on quick, and— Oh, damn, it was translucent. You couldn't see through the barrier on the dorm showers, but this one looked a lot like a standard shield charm, a shimmering pale blue, distorting the objects on the other side, but...
Wait, nobody else could open the bedroom door, so it didn't matter that the barrier was see-through. Also, she could just lock the door to the toilet, and— Oh, she got it! Once the barrier was let down any steam that was built up would be let out, the halves of the bathroom were separated so the mirror didn't fog up, and maybe so make-up didn't run or anything. Right, that made sense. But anyway, showering with only this barrier blocking the room off might make her nervous the first few times, but her bedroom was sealed off from the rest of the house, she'd get over it, this was fine.
"So," Liz said, stepping back out into the bedroom, "that's everything, right?"
Sirius hadn't followed her into the bathroom, standing waiting here with his hands in his pockets. "I think so. Unless you want things for the gardens."
"No, I'll leave that for later." Assuming a bunch of seeds to toss around counted as things for the gardens, but she hated gardening, so. Walking back out into the sunny sitting room, not bothering to close the door behind her, she asked, "So, how do we do this?"
"Let me borrow that for a second." Liz handed Sirius the roll of parchment and the pen, he plopped down to sit cross-legged on the floor — rather more smoothly than Liz might expect of a man in his thirties, but she guessed mages aged slower. He skimmed over the list quick, then pulled out his wand, highlighting sections of the list in different colours. Carefully sinking down to her knees next to him (she was wearing a skirt), she looked over his shoulder, what was this about? "Right, so, white is the carpenters', orange is for weavers', and green is for crockers', and the smith is blue. I think we'll be able to get everything today, if we're lucky. We should go to the carpenters' first, then the weavers', and then the smith and crocker — the furniture will take the longest, and then the curtains and towels, but the cooking stuff, you don't need a lot so they might have enough just lying around already. If we get to the carpenters' soon, we should hopefully have beds tonight, at least. I can conjure stuff quick if they don't make it in time."
"And you know where to get all this? Because I don't have a clue."
"Sure, we can go to the Glynlaw workshop in Edinburgh for the furniture, and the rest we can get here in the Refuge." Liz was a little surprised Sirius knew a carpenter by name, but alright. He flipped the parchment over, slid it closer to her, holding up the pen. "You should make a grocery list, as long as we're at it."
Liz shot him a flat look, took the pen to write just EVERYTHING. She then underlined it twice.
Sirius let out a little snort, his hair floofing as he shook his head. "Yeah, okay. You good to go now, or do we need to take care of anything else?"
"I'd like to have a bed tonight, thanks."
"Yes, good point. Will the wards let me apparate out of here?"
She frowned, confused, but answered anyway. "Outgoing, yes, but you'll need to take the floo in."
"Right, right. I've never been to the Glynlaws' before, so I'll need to go look up their floo password quick." He hesitated for a second. "Would you be comfortable with being side-alonged? I can apparate from here to Edinburgh no problem, and the floo clearly doesn't like you."
Liz let out a little huff — being apparated wasn't that much better than the floo...at least when flooing within Britain, it turned out water crossings sucked. She realised Sirius was asking because apparating would require touching him, if only for a couple seconds, she guessed she appreciated he was being so cautious about it. "Yeah, that's fine. I'd rather be side-alonged than go through the floo, honestly. Just don't drop me."
Sirius snickered, his mind darkly sparkling with amusement. "I won't, promise — I've been apparating since I was twelve, my Aunt Cassie taught me."
"Can you teach me that?" Being able to apparate herself would be far more convenient than being forced to use the floo whenever she didn't have an adult around.
"Sure, it's not hard, especially if you can already do a little wandless magic. Just be careful not to be seen at it by anyone who gives a damn. We can afford the fines, but going through the song and dance is a bloody pain." Sirius pushed himself up to his feet, letting out a little groan of effort. "Right, I'm going to pop over to Ancient House quick to look up the Glynlaws, and then floo there to take a look around, so I can apparate us. Meet you downstairs in a few minutes." He waited for her to nod before vanishing with a brief turn and a quiet snap — Severus was a little quieter at it than Sirius, but the difference was pretty small, Sirius was obviously really good at it too. Though, when she thought about it, Sirius probably hadn't had reason to try to make it quieter, seemed like that would be a spy thing.
Liz used the toilet quick (she hadn't since before the train ride, and it sounded like they'd be out for a while) before heading downstairs. Since she had to go in a circle practically all the way around the house, it took kind of absurdly long for her to get back into the dining room, but she could see the logic in her bedroom being as far away from the entrance as possible — it was a privacy thing, she thought. Besides, she had a toilet right next to her bedroom, and another one on the way, so it wasn't like she'd need to rush downstairs for that. Mm, maybe she should put a few drinks and things in the tiny kitchen area thing upstairs, but she'd need to put a cooling enchantment on one of the cabinets first, she'd ask Severus about how to do that later.
Thankfully, Liz didn't have to wait too long for Sirius to come back, probably only a couple minutes. She considered shrinking her trunk and bringing it along, but she was being silly — she had activated the wards, they'd warn her if anyone stepped into the gardens and hex anyone who tried to force the doors, it was fine. Her draft book was in there, though, she tracked that down in a pile of important papers, and... It didn't fit in her pocket, of course. She found her bookbag, took out a few of the school supplies that were still in there, emptied her pockets — a few potions, her shopping list, a pen — into it along with her draft book, which went into a special pocket on the inside with a little flap to hold it closed, so things didn't slip out. As long as she was at it, she grabbed some loose sickles and knuts, but she didn't imagine she would use them. Maybe if they stopped for a snack or something quick, dinner was probably going to be pretty late...
She was just closing her trunk again when she heard the roar of flames from the dining room behind her, good timing. When she walked into the room Sirius was brushing imaginary ash off his shirt, shot her a smile. "Right, Glynlaws' looked pretty empty today, we shouldn't have to wait our turn. If you want, we can apparate out from the street, so we don't have to take the floo back."
Liz grimaced. "Yeah, okay." She started stomping off toward the front door, her boots clunking against the floorboards, Sirius falling into step alongside her. "Is there a way I can do the water crossing without having more nodes after it? I think if I flooed from here to London I'd end up falling out or something..."
There was a tingly flash of something, crawling over her skin, Liz shrugged her shoulders in an unconscious attempt to shake it off. "Ah, yeah, that's not good — if you fall over in the floo you could be kicked out from a random grate on the way, or even get lost in the network. Floo accidents are rarely fatal, but they're definitely not pleasant. It sounds worse than I thought, if you're almost falling out, I'm teaching you to apparate as soon as possible. But yes, there are public grates in Belfast and Dunskey, we can get you a floo directory. And some floo powder while we're at it..."
"If you're going to teach me to apparate anyway, do I really need one?"
"Well, sometimes you need to get somewhere you've never been before, or there are wards you can't apparate through. It's not feasible to get around magical Britain without using the floo, unfortunately."
...Well, that was annoying. Why was magical transportation so bloody terrible? Hopefully the portkey to Romania wouldn't be too bad...
They stepped outside, Liz didn't bother locking the door behind them — she'd left the key in her trunk, and nobody would be able to get in without cracking the wards first. The brick walkpath was narrow enough there wasn't enough room for them to comfortably walk side-by-side, she followed behind Sirius instead. When Sirius tried to open the wrought-iron gate, there was an itching from the presence of the wards in the back of her mind and the gate didn't move an inch, he kept yanking it at it, the metal rattling a little. Liz sent a quick compulsion in the wards' direction, and then the gate opened with a high squeak, suddenly enough Sirius stumbled back a couple steps, nearly running into her.
Apparently the wards wouldn't let the gate open without asking her first. Neat.
Now that Liz was looking more closely, she could see the stone the street was paved with wasn't quite a pure white marble, a faint muddy greyish colour sort of like the stone at Hogwarts, tiny bits of trapped quartz glittering in the sunlight. The street was quite wide, easily enough for four cars to pass side-by-side — though there weren't any of those around, obviously — there were people about but not nearly enough to fill the street, making the place look oddly empty. The houses along the street were in different colours and shapes, but were all quite large, surrounded by sizable gardens, most of them quite varied and colourful, blocked off from the street and each other by rows of hedges. To the left there were two more houses before the street ended at an intersection, and maybe five or six in the opposite direction — it looked like there was another line of similarly absurd houses in both directions, they must be in the upper-class residential neighbourhood. Liz said "the" because, as small as the magical population was, she kind of doubted there was more than one.
Distracted looking around, Liz jumped at the call of a voice from nearby — a man was approaching them from the right, the same one she'd seen working in his garden from the balcony earlier. He was rather taller than Sirius, though soft-featured and smiling, wrinkles visible across his forehead and framing his mouth, black hair (long, as mages tended to prefer, and held back in a plait) just starting to grey at the edges. If Liz had to guess, she'd say he looked about fifty, but he must be a mage, so he could easily be over a hundred. Pulling off his gardening gloves, he called out again as he walked closer...asking them something, she was pretty sure. It wasn't English, sounded sort of like Cambrian, but she couldn't follow it — Gaelic, maybe? They were supposedly pretty closely related...like the difference between English and German, but...
Sirius yelled something back in the same language — a little awkwardly, Liz thought, slower than the man — and started wandering in that direction, to meet him partway. Sighing to herself, Liz followed him. There was another quick exchange back and forth, before the man said, "No, that's alright, I speak English. Or good enough, at the least." He did have a pretty strong accent, very Celtic-sounding, but it wasn't that bad. He came to a stop a few steps away, setting his gardening gloves down on the hedges. "I was saying, you are moving into Lyndon Potter's old house? We seen the work being done, but."
"Liz is moving in," Sirius said, with a sideways nod in her direction, "I'm just helping her get settled in. Sirius Black," holding out his hand to shake.
Both of the man's eyebrows arced up, but he didn't otherwise react to the name. He grabbed Sirius's arm a bit higher than the hand, clasping each other's wrists instead, but Liz didn't catch a hint of surprise from Sirius — she was aware that was a thing a lot of mages did, just didn't see it very often at school. "Séadhgha Gharbháin Ó Flaithearta." Oh, shite, that was a name...
"Ah, Ó Flaithearta. They're one of the big name families in Ireland," Sirius said in an aside to Liz. "This is Elizabeth Potter, she'll be staying over the summers from now on."
The man blinked, a pulse of surprise fluttering through her head. Which was slightly ridiculous, who else did he expected to be moving into Lyndon Potter's house? "Ellie Potter."
"That's the one."
He let out a little hum, tilting his head a little, but thankfully didn't react beyond that. Throwing her a smile, he didn't offer his hand to shake — which was good, because she would rather not — instead dipping his head in one of those little bows the nobility did. "Pleasure to meet you, Elizabeth. Welcome to an tAnacal na Caoimhe."
She wasn't sure what to say, so she just settled for, "Thank you, Séadhgha." She was only mostly certain she'd pronounced that right. It sounded sort of like what she'd spell Siêcha in Cambrian, but the "ch" was voiced, like the difference between "kah" and "gah". That sound didn't exist in English, or in Cambrian, but she thought she got close.
Sirius and Séadhgha talked for a little bit after that, about moving in, that Liz would be living mostly on her own — she could tell by the cool prickling that Séadhgha didn't approve, but he kept it to himself. She picked up the thought that Séadhgha planned to keep an eye on her, to make sure she was doing alright alone, but it'd also taken him five seconds to put together she was an antisocial, neurotic mess (her words), so he was going to try to avoid drawing attention to it and making her uncomfortable, which she guessed was good enough. Sirius got directions to the nearest marketplace, where they could get all the shite on their list, so being diverted by Séadhgha wasn't completely pointless, Liz tried not to be too annoyed about it.
A few minutes later, Séadhgha was picking up his gloves and walking off again, and Sirius apparated them to Edinburgh. The trip was as smooth as apparation ever was, not really any different than Severus doing it, but Liz still needed to take a moment to get her balance again. Liz had never been to the magical quarter in Edinburgh, but there really wasn't much to see — cobbled streets, blocky multi-story buildings made out of old-fashioned brick and plaster, hemming in the street with only a few alleys here and there, not really any different from some of the side-streets in Charing. There were a fair few people wandering about — most with long hair and in mage-made clothes (though more trousers and jackets than actual robes) but without the gleam to the cloth Liz was used to, must be cheaper stuff — but not that many, plenty of room to move around. There were signs above some of the doors along the street, but they were all in Cambrian with some of what Liz assumed was Gaelic, she didn't see any English at all.
Weirdly, most of the signs included pictures, sometimes worked into the text like a logo, at other times just off to the side, sometimes on their own, separate signs — what the hell was that about?
It was only a short walk from the alley they appeared in before Sirius was leading her through a door, the sign saying... Liz wasn't certain, actually. She knew Glynlaw was a name, and that was master, in the sense of the master of a craft, but she didn't know what the rest of it meant — she was pretty decent with Cambrian, but she'd only been studying it for a few years. Whatever, not important, Liz followed Sirius into...well, a big bloody warehouse, it looked like. There weren't any internal walls, what must be most of the footprint of the whole building open from one end to the other — Liz suspected the room had also been expanded — the only interruption the lines of pillars cutting across the room. The ceiling was double-height in places, the ceiling cut out in sections here and there, narrow rickety-looking staircases leading up. And, of course, the plain concrete floor was filled with furniture scattered all over the place — tables and sofas and armchairs and rocking chairs and dressers and wardrobes, the corner back there was filled with an array of beds, everything. There was an occasional sign stuck into the floor, Liz wasn't close enough to any to read them, a handful of people walking around and poking at the merchandise.
And it was surprisingly noisy, clunking and scraping and grinding, the air feeling rather dusty, with a smell of dry wood and a harsh tang of some kind of chemicals. They must actually make all this shite in here — she was guessing that's what the upper floors were for. Seemed inconvenient, having to carry things up and down those shitty staircases...but, she guessed they could just magic everything around...oh, and that was probably why they'd cut out such big sections of the floor, so, never mind.
A straight shot ahead from the door several metres, passing by benches and hat stands and the like, there was a desk stacked with roughly-bound books (homemade, not proper binding) and loose papers, writing utensils and inkwells here and there, sitting behind it a woman with long, curly auburn hair, a heavy textbook sitting in front of her. No wait, Liz spoke to soon, that was a girl — she was maybe only a year or two older than Liz, wearing a sleeveless dress in light blues and yellows, a light summer cloak hanging from the back of her chair. "Hello!" she said (in Cambrian), shooting them a bright smile as she popped up to her feet. "Can I help you find something?"
"Yeah, you can help me find a Glynlaw."
A sharp, prickly feeling crawling across Liz's skin, the girl crossed her arms under her chest. Liz felt her own eyes flick downward — her dress wasn't that low-cut, but that gesture made her, hmm — forced herself to look away, staring blankly at a nearby shoe rack instead. "I am a Glynlaw."
"A grown-up Glynlaw then, if you please. I'd like to talk business with one of the masters."
The irritation in the girl's head dropped off significantly once Sirius got halfway through the second sentence. She still gave Sirius a few more seconds of suspicious frowning before she let out a sigh. "All right, my uncle should be able to get away. I'll be back in a minute." The girl slipped out from behind the desk, started sashaying away toward the nearest staircase — the skirt went down below her knees, as was usual for mages, but she wasn't wearing shoes, bare feet silent on the concrete as she padded off. Liz noticed her heels didn't seem to touch the floor at all, walking on the balls of her feet, giving her step a sort of bouncy, mincing feel to it...
It took a few seconds for Liz to realise she was just standing here watching the girl walk like a creep, forced herself to look away again. She could feel Sirius's eyes on her skin like ants, his mind shivering with...amusement, probably — she was certain he'd noticed, but he didn't comment.
(Was she that obvious about it all the time? Ugh, she hoped not...)
A couple awkward minutes later — or, it was awkward on Liz's end, anyway, Sirius seemed to be wavering between amused and contemplative (she was watching, she could tell he'd nearly decided to say something multiple times before changing his mind) — and there were people coming down the stairs. The person in back was the girl from before, but in front of her was a man with similar auburn hair — not the exact same shade, a little more red in it, but they looked similar enough Liz would believe they were related. He was wearing work boots, heavy, clunking against the stairs — must be steel-toed, or whatever the magical equivalent was — in cloth trousers and a long-sleeved tunic in sedate browns and reds. The sleeves were tight, very close against his skin from wrist to elbow, which Liz knew enough by now to instantly recognise as professional dress, for people who worked with their hands — like potioneers, though Severus's were normally made of richer cloth, this bloke's things looked pretty rough.
Not terrible, Liz had worn worse, she was just saying, if being a special highly-qualified healer made Severus the equivalent of middle-class, she was guessing she'd just found a working-class mage. She didn't see those very often — they didn't tend to turn up at Hogwarts much, being a school for the nobility and all.
The man sauntered toward them, giving them a curious look over — they were both wearing muggle clothes — something at his waist clinking a little with every step, his mind smooth and curious. "Hello, there," he said as he came to a stop, a strong Northern drawl in his Cambrian. "I'm Blaiddig Glynlaw, my grandfather owns the workshop. What is this about?"
Liz had to bite her lip to keep herself from laughing — his name literally meant wolfy, mages' names were so silly sometimes. (Though, not as bad as a werewolf named "Remus Lupin", she guessed.) While she was busy with that, Sirius sidled a few steps closer, holding out a hand to shake. "We've got an empty house, you've got a bunch of furniture, think we can put two and two together. Sirius Black."
Wolfy the Carpenter gaped at Sirius for a second, eyes wide; the girl audibly gasped, hand jumping up to clamp over her mouth, eyes wide. "I apologise, my lord, I didn't—" He jumped, as though physically startled, and then reached for Sirius's hand, clasping at the wrist like Séadhgha before. "Ceri here is supposed to tell someone if a Black walks into the workshop." There was an odd emphasis on the name, a slight shade of nervousness in his head, Liz didn't know what that was about.
"I didn't know!" the girl, Ceri, blurted out, her face pinking as eyes flicked toward her. "Forgive me, my lord, your, um, you look different in person."
"I could make a flirty comment about hoping it's an improvement, but I'm tragically old now, so that would be inappropriate." Ceri's face went even redder, Blaiddig letting out a huff of reluctant laughter. "Anyway, this is my niece, Elizabeth Potter—" There was a strangled grrk from Ceri, her embarrassment growing even more intense, squirming and hot and unpleasant, Liz lurched back a step before her brain caught up — that was probably obvious, oops. "—and it's her house we're here for. Ah, I don't know if— Mate, how's your English?"
"I speak Cambrian," Liz interrupted (in Cambrian). "Or, well enough, it's fine."
Giving her a nod and a smile, Blaiddig said, "Very well. My English isn't very good, I'm afraid — but I understand it better than I speak it, if you can't think of a word. Let's get started, shall we? What all are you looking for?"
"Um, a lot. Hold on, I have a list..."
Furniture shopping was kind of long and tedious, if only because they needed so damn many things, but it was relatively painless. Blaiddig retrieved a notebook from the desk Ceri had been studying at when they arrived — she was in the OWL programme at the school in Oxford, apparently starting in on her summer homework to fill the time while manning the desk at the family business — and then led them off through the floor, stopping by one section or another as they went. Figuring out what they should be getting was made somewhat easier by the materials used inside the house being so consistent, so they didn't have to worry about matching the colours in different rooms — Blaiddig first brought them to a spot in the corner where planks of varnished wood were hanging, had Liz point out which was closest to the walls and floors back home.
Actually, she liked this one better — the wood was mostly a solid black, even more black than the ebony the Firebolt was made of (like actual black black), but however they'd treated it had given it a dark reddish sheen, most noticeable in the slightly lighter patches. Very cool, Liz thought it was pretty. That was African blackwood, apparently. They didn't grow naturally in Britain — obviously, it was in the name — and importing the lumber could be expensive — especially since the countries it was from weren't part of the ICW — but a few enterprising mages had started growing them in greenhouses centuries ago. (Apparently, one of them was even owned by the Potters, she caught a thought from Blaiddig about buying lumber from there sometimes.) Still relatively expensive, though, since they grew pretty slowly relative to other lumber trees, and they couldn't survive in Britain outside of greenhouses, and a lot of the wood was bought up to be used in musical instruments and luxury products (especially things like chess sets and snuffboxes and the like) and for some highly-sensitive enchanting, but they did use it sometimes.
It was really pretty, Liz wanted it for the stuff in her room. The rest could be a less expensive wood, though. Blaiddig warned her that they would definitely need to make new things, since blackwood was expensive and rare enough they didn't pre-make stuff out of it (except little things like snuffboxes, to give the apprentices practice), but that was fine, he made a quick couple notes and they moved on.
As tedious as it was to go through every single room they had to fill, Liz not having the slightest clue what she was doing, it wasn't actually that difficult. They would tell Blaiddig what kind of room they were looking at, he'd bring them to a section with stuff for that, and she just picked shite out of the pre-made stuff that looked fine — though she wouldn't be able to take most of it home today, few of the things sitting out were in the right kind of wood, wouldn't match the house. Since Liz wasn't hugely opinionated, and didn't really need things to be super fancy — in fact, she'd rather it not be super fancy, just plain stuff without all the little fiddly decorative bits was fine — the process normally went pretty quickly.
They got a set of four stools for the kitchen, which would be treated white to match the tile — like at the Malfoys', apparently they did that with a potion — and then a dining set which seemed far larger than Liz would ever reasonably need — she couldn't imagine inviting seven people over for dinner. But Sirius made the perfectly reasonable argument that she couldn't know what would happen in a decade or two, and properly setting up the place would make it easier to rent it out to a big family or something if she decided to live somewhere else down the line, so, fine, might as well. When she said she had no fucking clue what to do about the salon thing, Blaiddig used her measurements to sketch out the room on a blank page, fiddling about with different set ups until he liked one, walking her through it asking her opinion — maybe sofas in the corner here, making a circle with a couple armchairs, and then another circle of armchairs in the opposite corner of the room over here (it really was an unnecessarily large room), and some shelves here (with a glass front) to put out the nicer books, some card or board games or whatever, or fancy enchanted shite, you know, whatever she had lying around, end tables here and there like this... She didn't know, it sounded fine, she wasn't an expert at this stuff...
The office thing wasn't that difficult, she just needed a desk and some bookshelves, and a reasonably comfortable chair — Blaiddig said they should go to someone else to figure out the potions set-up, with the vent and all, she'd ask Severus about it. Apparently the Glynlaws had weavers they worked with for the upholstery — Liz wasn't picky about the patterns on things, just nothing too flashy and distracting, sure, reds and blacks and blues were fine — and there were different stuffings they had for things. She found a nice cushy chair that was sort of a half-bowl shape, that she could comfortably fold her legs up in (though she had to be careful about trying it, wearing a skirt and people watching her), and was enchanted to slide across the floor to get in and out more easily, very neat. Blaiddig added to the bookshelves a couple cabinets, to store important papers in, which Liz hadn't thought of, all right.
And that was the bottom floor fine, so they moved on upstairs. After a little talk, they decided to fix up only two of the bedrooms, one for Sirius to put how he liked — he'd be staying there semi-permanently, after all — and a second if Liz had any guests over. They could get to the rest later, once Liz had a better idea what she wanted to use them for. (After all, they didn't need to be bedrooms, maybe she'd decide to put something else there, she'd think about it.) Sirius lingered a bit longer deciding what to put in his, but Liz just told Blaiddig a bed and a dresser and one of the little desks for writing letters and a bedside table big enough to fit a reading lamp would be fine. Then they moved to the first upstairs living room...thing. Blaiddig put together another sitting area set, a sofa and a couple armchairs, but in the other half of the room he went with a table and chairs — much smaller than the one for the dining room, and a bit thinner and less nice-looking, reminding Liz more of Severus's kitchen. To have tea at, she guessed, so you didn't spill whatever on the upholstery. Add a couple more chairs and an end table to put out on the balcony (enchanted against the elements) and bam, done.
The other living room up here took a little bit longer, because Blaiddig had an idea. When they'd been talking about enchanted shite for the case in the salon, Liz had mentioned she had a pensieve, and he thought this was a better place for that. He came up with a neat set-up, showing it to her with illusions: four two-seat sofas, not particularly wide but deep, arranged in a square and offset a little like this, and put the pensieve on a short stand in the middle. People could recline comfortably on the sofas (perhaps get a bunch of pillows to prop people up how they liked), and be in a convenient place to reach their hands into the pensieve, so while their mind was in the memory their body was left somewhere comfortable — which was a brilliant idea, Liz loved it. She couldn't imagine she'd be taking three people into a pensieve with her any time soon, but still, she'd take it, along with a glass-fronted case heavily enchanted to protect the contents, to store the memories in. The rest of the room was just more sofas and stuff, and a couple more chairs for the balcony, no big deal by comparison.
Her bedroom took a little bit, but not because what she wanted was in any way complicated — just a bed and a couple bedside tables and a dresser, and also a desk to do her enchanting at. Like, one of these plain double-wide desks would be cool, plenty of room, and the chair could be simpler, one of these padded wooden ones was fine. Mm, a reading chair in the corner, not a bad idea, sure, they could do that. And a few bookshelves, for things she didn't want displayed where visitors might see them, and there, that was it. She got a kind of big bed — Sirius made a joke about her being a little young to be having boys over, but of course she wasn't thinking about having anyone else in there, it was just her bedroom was so damn big, she might as well have more actual sleeping room — and not one with all the curtains and shite (she hated feeling trapped), just a normal bedframe was fine, thanks.
It took a little longer to pick out the mattress. The Glynlaws didn't make these themselves, they had people they worked with for that, but they did sell their bedframes with one just because, sending on a cut of the sale to whoever else had been involved in making the thing. (They had deals with various suppliers, sounded complicated, Liz just blocked out Blaiddig's thoughts as well as she could.) There were several different kinds, stuffed with different things, and one of them was soft but also really nice and springy, and completely silent and without firmer spots where the springs actually were, what was that about? Apparently, the filling was some kind of alchemically-produced...thing — it wasn't anything that naturally existed, but something some alchemist had made with the explicit purpose of it being the perfect mattress stuffing, his intent permanently imbued into the stuff. Blaiddig didn't know how it was made, exactly, just knew it took no small amount of time to make so much of it, so it was the most expensive of the options, but it would last basically forever and never lose its springiness, so it seemed like the obvious choice to Liz. Besides, it was like normal person expensive, she could definitely afford it. Might as well make the other two beds out of this stuff too, it was neat.
Also, since Liz wanted the blackwood stuff they'd need to make her bedframe special, but they had plenty of the mattresses just laying around — they wouldn't be able to finish the bedframe by tonight, but she could just sleep on the mattress on the floor, no problem. Sirius could have conjured something to last the night, but this was better.
And that was it, they were done. It had to have taken at least an hour, and that really was an absurd amount of shite to buy all at once, but it hadn't been so bad. And they could finally work on getting out of here and moving on with the rest of the shopping they had to do.
After paying for everything, of course. They moved back up to the front desk, where Ceri was still sitting working on...Potions, that was a Potions textbook. (Not the same one they used, and it was in Cambrian, but those were definitely reactions tables.) Pulling papers from this stack and that drawer, Blaiddig put together a booklet of order forms, scribbling down the descriptions of everything they'd be doing complete with some sketches, occasionally glancing back at his notes from their walk around the warehouse, filling the air with gossip about politics with Sirius. Apparently, the Blacks were still putting together their official demand for restitution over Sirius being wrongfully imprisoned for a dozen years — the real problem was Sirius couldn't get the Tonkses (and Dorea by extension) to agree with what he wanted to do, but he didn't say that out loud — and the Wizengamot was a fucking mess right now just in general. There'd already been a vote of no confidence against Dumbledore, which had passed, but they were still early enough in the process that he hadn't actually been expelled and replaced yet. Something about the way the debate in the Wizengamot was proceeding was giving some of the people Sirius was in contact with an odd feeling, like something even bigger than just replacing the Chief Warlock was going on, but they weren't really sure what yet.
Sirius remembered Andi saying they were almost certainly on the edge of a political realignment — there were big ideological disagreements within the various factions, the upheavals of the last few months straining them to the breaking point, and the Light had primarily been organised around Dumbledore, so with him disgraced and dismissed the faction could easily crumble apart. But even if she was guessing right, Andi had no idea what the Wizengamot would look like when the dust settled, apparently things were very confusing in the government right now.
And as long as nobody tried to bother her about it, it continued to be not Liz's problem.
Then there was a bit of talk about actually getting things to the house — magical transportation was kind of shite to begin with, and didn't get easier when heavy, awkwardly-shaped loads were involved. Though, it turned out that problem was much easier to solve than Liz realised: it was perfectly feasible to send inanimate objects through the floo. Easier, in some ways, since they were less likely to interact poorly with the magic of the floo, and weren't going to go losing their balance and tumbling out like a clumsy idiot. They had these special boxes they shipped things in, they could be expanded out to a size everything would fit, then shrunk back down to its natural size, a levitation enchantment to float through the floo (and also get up stairs) — they just had to pack the box up with her shite and push it through the floo, it'd appear in Liz's dining room, the levitation spell cutting off gradually to gently set itself down on the floor. Which was very neat, the enchantments it would take to do that...
Actually, now that Liz was thinking about it, it wasn't that difficult? The levitation was easy, she could probably script that herself — though it was possible the standard ones did weird shite in the floo, she didn't know. The growing and shrinking thing, it could be difficult to properly isolate the inside so enchanted objects wouldn't be ruined, but that was a problem that needed to be solved in all kinds of simple contexts, so while it was theoretically difficult there were plenty of solutions out there to copy. Still, neat.
Liz gave Blaiddig the house's floo password, he assured her no one else would see it, and he'd destroy the record of it once they'd sent everything to her. Trying to reassure her that nobody would be using it to fuck with her, but she wasn't actually worried about that — the wards would put people coming through who weren't keyed in into stasis (on a delay to give her a chance to tell them not to), or would just bounce anyone they detected harmful intent from. The wards would almost certainly put any deliveries through the floo into stasis too, Liz quick asked to make sure that wouldn't fuck with their neat cargo boxes, but it was fine, they were good.
And then, after a few quick checks over the paperwork and some muttered comments with Sirius, they were done. They'd send the things they already had on hand through in the next couple hours, but it could be several days before they started finishing the new stuff, probably a couple weeks before they got all of it to her. If something came up, they'd send her a letter, but Blaiddig didn't expect any issues. Right, they'd get out of his hair, they still had a lot of shopping to do and—
"No, wait," Liz blurted out, interrupting Sirius in mid-sentence. "I haven't payed you yet."
Blaiddig shot Sirius an uncomfortable glance, Sirius feeling faintly amused, an irritated itching from...Ceri, that was from Ceri — she hadn't said anything for a while, seemingly focused on her school work, must be eavesdropping. "Don't worry about it, Liz." Blaiddig had insisted on calling her 'Lady Elizabeth' at first, but she'd gotten him to stop pretty quickly. "There is no payment."
She stared at him blankly for a few long seconds, Sirius to her left just growing more amused. "That can't possibly be right." Came out in English, didn't really mean to, but Blaiddig said he understood it fine, so...
"The Glynlaws are vassals of the Blacks," Sirius said, voice wavering a little with an edge of laughter. "We don't pay here."
...So that was why he knew the name of a carpenter off the top of his head. "I'm not a Black."
"I know that, but you're—"
"Shut up, Sirius. All of this is for my house, it's all going to belong to the Potters. So whatever agreement the Blacks have with the Glynlaws doesn't apply to me, right? You being my godfather doesn't change that." Maybe if he were actually her guardian it might, but...
Looking rather uncomfortable all of a sudden, his mind twitching with something warm and cloying, he gave her an awkward shrug. "Well, no, but—"
"No buts, I'm paying them." Turning back to Blaiddig, ignoring the cold, blank shock from Sirius, she asked, "How much do I owe you?"
There was a brief delay, Blaiddig glancing between her and Sirius, before he got down to the maths — and it did take quite a while, going through the booklet page by page, coming up with lists of necessary supplies for each thing, multiplying those against prices he got out of a big binder on the desk (which he did in his head), adding in the work hours he thought it would take to do a thing, and then using that to do something with the numbers, she wasn't sure what, one page and then the next and then the next. Because, apparently Blaiddig had expected they wouldn't be being paid for this, so he hadn't been keeping up a running total the whole time they were wandering around, like he normally would have. The whole time Sirius stood next to her, silently save for the occasional scuff of his boots against the concrete as he shuffled in place, his mind folding and turning with an almost nauseating mixture of surprise and guilt and affection and sadness and a couple other things that went by too quickly for her to interpret before they were gone, a storm of memories and thoughts dancing around like a low hiss at the edge of her hearing. It was a little irritating, but she could hardly ask people to stop thinking so loud around her, so, she just waited for Blaiddig to finish his maths so she could write a draft note and get out of here.
Ceri was grinning down at her textbook, her mind ringing with something warm and soft and... She did catch that Ceri thought Liz's insistence on paying said good things about her moral character, that she was pleased that the 'Girl Who Lived' wasn't just another stuck up noble brat like some of the other girls their age Ceri had come across, but it wasn't about that, really. Mooching off of the ridiculous noble privileges of a bloke she'd hardly even met before to get an entire houseful of furniture — and not cheap furniture, either — just didn't feel right.
She couldn't put her finger on why not, exactly — she didn't have a problem with stealing things on principle, she'd stolen more shite than she could clearly remember. It just bothered her this time, she didn't know why.
Honestly, it might just be because Sirius was still new to her, and she didn't want to get tricked into owing him a favour if she could help it. And it wasn't like she couldn't afford it, so.
Blaiddig added another page to his booklet, and then flipped through the whole thing, copying totals onto this last page so he could tally them all up. Once he was done, he held the booklet out to her so she could see. It came out to twenty-three galleons and change, that was...a bit over five thousand pounds? Something like that, she didn't know exactly. That wasn't a small amount of money, but she wasn't buying a small amount of stuff either, and having it specially made for her and everything, and some of the materials were supposedly kind of costly. Given some of the other things she'd bought over the years, seemed reasonable, maybe a bit less than she might have expected. And it was only a one time expense, she could definitely afford it — Liz pulled out her draft book without comment, flipped over to a fresh page and started copying the number.
Carrying around a bunch of coins could get horribly impractical very quickly — especially since the goblins annoyingly liked to use prime numbers, and the coins were pretty big so took up a lot of space. It was bad enough with small, everyday purchases, but it was even worse with big things like this. Thankfully, they'd come up with a solution to that problem ages ago. A person could write what was basically a cheque (though they called it a "draft note" instead), worth whatever value they wanted, and give it to someone; they could then bring it to Gringotts, and have that amount of money moved into their vault or withdrawn; when the goblins balanced their books at the end of the day, that amount of coins would then be taken out of that first person's vault. Quick and simple, no problem.
There were some complications, though. Because how the magical economy worked was stupid and overly beareaucratic, a draft note was technically a contract to exchange property between two Houses — the formal language of the contract was even printed on the back, though the text was very small and hard to read. That meant it actually required two signatures, from the person writing the note and the person it was for...and also those people needed to have the authority to negotiate on behalf of their families. (Liz, as the only member of the house, obviously did, and Blaiddig wasn't the head of the Glynlaws, but he had been given permission to sign for things like this.) It was possible for the purchaser to just sign their name, and for the shopkeeper or whatever to pass it along to someone who was allowed to sign it to get to it later, which happened for big purchasers all the time, but it was a little risky, legally speaking. Also, writing a note you didn't have the funds for meant you were in violation of a contract, which could get you in serious trouble with the goblins — that wasn't something Liz had to worry about, but she'd heard that the goblins' bad side was a bad, bad place to be, so.
But, as complicated as they were legally, they weren't difficult to use. Liz copied in the value, and in the place of what the money was being exchanged for — since this was a contract and everything, that was actually required — went an order number Blaiddig made up on the spot (himself writing it down on the booklet for their records). And Liz signed it, and then Blaiddig signed it, she tore it out of her draft book and handed it to him — Severus had warned her that she should only tear them out of the book after they were fully filled out, because as long as it was still in the book a copy would be made in the paired book hidden in his potions lab for safe-keeping, so there would be a record of everything to use as evidence if someone tried to scam her or something — and there, they were finally done.
Before long they were back out in the street, the door clunking closed behind them. Sirius's head was still shifting with too much stuff to keep track of, his hands stuck in his pockets, blankly staring across the street. After a second of hesitation, he said, "Sorry about that, in there. I wasn't..." He trailed off, then just shrugged helplessly.
Liz wasn't entirely sure what he was trying to say. Apologising over the whole thing about paying the Glynlaws and whatever, obviously, but. She got the feeling Sirius thought she was annoyed with him — which she was, a little — but she had no idea what he thought she was annoyed about, exactly, so she couldn't guess where that sentence was supposed to be going. It didn't help that she wasn't certain why it'd bothered her either, because she was the most self-aware mind mage in history.
So she just dismissed it. "It's fine. Where to next?"
Liz felt a clang from the presence of the wards at the back of her mind, glanced that way quick — someone was coming through the floo. Telling the wards to ignore him, she pulled out her wand to check the time. Oh, it was almost three o'clock already? Daedalus was a few minutes early for their meeting, but she hadn't realised it was that late. Oops?
She'd been at the desk in her room working on her Transfiguration homework — there would be a lot going on this summer, she was trying to get her homework out of the way early — so to get down to the dining room she had to loop all the way around the top floor, and then down the stairs and through the entryway and the living room, which was a little irritating. She did get the logic of having her bedroom as far away from the entrance as possible, for both privacy and security reasons, but. Maybe she should switch to doing homework downstairs? The Glynlaws had sent the desk for her room first, by the time the one for the office had come in she'd already unpacked her school things...
By the time she got down to the dining room, Daedalus had likely been waiting a minute or two — standing only a few steps from the hearth, curiously looking around the room. Liz had only met Daedalus once before, back in March when she'd re-hired him to deal with all the money stuff. He was a small man, probably only a hand taller than Liz, and tended to dress in vibrantly colourful suits (which she knew now was a thing the common houses often did), this one a vivid reddish-purple. Because magical clothing styles tended to be dated, the jacket was overly long, in the back reaching his knees, and it came with a matching top hat. From what Liz had picked up recently, walking around Charing and Edinburgh and the town here, Daedalus was actually a very dapper, stylish sort of bloke by the standards of the common houses, but the nobility would think this suit too muggleish — Liz sometimes had to wonder whether these people had ever actually seen any muggles before — because of course mages had to have multiple standards of dress for her to try to keep track of. Couldn't possibly not make this shite complicated, after all.
Her feet were quiet enough on the floor he didn't hear her coming. He twitched a little, his mind flinching with surprise, when she said, "Sorry, lost track of time."
"That's alright, I am a little— Oh my!" The instant he turned her way, he jumped, and looked away again, the hand not holding his hat coming up to shutter his eyes. "I apologise, Liz, I didn't— Dear oh dear. If you need a minute to...?"
Hitching to a stop, she frowned at him. After a couple seconds, she glanced down at herself — she was in the usual shorts and vest she always wore at home. Right, these weren't considered proper clothes, she'd basically just walked down and met him in her underwear. Forgot. "I've got a dress hung up over here, give me a second." She walked past him into the kitchen — to his back, so he didn't have to do the shite, under-dressed young lady, must dramatically avert eyes so she knows I'm not staring thing again — whipped the dress from a hook near the back door. Since she did walk around the house in what she realised mages considered to be too little clothing (even though she felt fully dressed and didn't really care), she'd thought it was a good idea to keep a dress here, to remind herself before stepping out into the garden. She tugged the thing in place, floofed her hair back out from under the neck, straightened her scarf for a second before stepping back out into the dining room. "Sorry about that, I'm decent now. Come on, kitchen's in here."
While Liz went about making coffee, Daedalus took off his jacket, hanging it over his arm, looked around the place. "The kitchen did turn out nice, didn't it? I saw the notes from the cleaners, and, well, it had become quite a mess in here. Though it is rather dark..."
"If there were windows in here, the glare would probably be pretty bad." Though Liz suspected whoever had built the house had assumed the cooking would be done by house-elves anyway, so hadn't been particularly concerned with the aesthetics.
"True!" Daedalus chirped, chuckling a little. "How is the house doing for you so far? There was quite a lot of work done on it, and I saw the order for the carpenters, it sounds like you've had a lot to deal with right away."
"Yeah, the place was completely empty when I got here." The coffee machine only did one cup at a time, Liz set aside the first one (under a light warming charm) and started on the second. She waited for the grinding to stop before saying, "It was a little tedious getting everything set up, but Sirius knew what he was doing better than I did, it wasn't so bad. The house is a bit bigger than I need, and I'm still figuring things out, but, I have ideas." It probably wasn't wise to admit she was thinking about putting a duelling circle in the basement — responsible adults tended to object to teenagers tossing potentially dangerous spells at each other unsupervised.
"Mm, mm. Have the neighbours been giving you any trouble? I don't imagine you have to worry too much, no, not with the wards you had put on this place, but—"
"Oh!" Daedalus blinked, startling a little at the interjection. "Sorry," she said, "I just remembered, give me a second and I'll add you to the wards." The only reason they weren't still annoying her about an unknown person being in the house was because she'd already told them to ignore him for now. Closing her eyes, it took a second to follow her connection into the wards, and through them to reach toward Daedalus, a quick thought to add him as a guest, the wards copying an impression of his mind and magic with a brief flash of not-light. Opening her eyes again, "Right, there we go. Anyway, the neighbours, they've been mostly fine. I could have done without the house-warming party, though..."
He chuckled, shaking his head to himself. "Yes, I imagine that might not have gone over well, but it's tradition, I'm afraid. Not properly welcoming you to the community when you moved in would have been terribly rude."
Yes, Sirius had explained that, she wouldn't have played along otherwise. A couple of her new neighbours had showed up at her front door the day after she'd moved in with gifts of ale (which she didn't like) and herbs (which were at least useful), completely unannounced, it'd been very awkward at first. Liz didn't want a whole bunch of strangers traipsing around in her house, so she'd negotiated them into holding the party in the big field out back — they did have that barbeque area thing out there, if they must have a stupid party thing that seemed like the place to do it. She got the feeling some of the neighbours thought it was weird she was insisting on doing it outside, but they quickly realised she was awkward and shy or whatever, so nobody made a big deal about it.
Honestly, it hadn't been that bad. The food had been pretty good, and while she generally wasn't happy with strangers walking up and talking to her, asking questions and making small talk and whatever, at least everybody was being polite and not making a big deal about Ellie Potter moving onto their block, so. Also, having a little bit of some kind of local liquor helped — not sure what that stuff was, the name was in Gaelic, but it wasn't bad. She wouldn't have chosen to have the party if she'd had a choice in the matter, but it hadn't been complete torture.
After a little bit more directionless babbling about the house — Daedalus wondering out loud why it'd been left abandoned after Lyndon's death, it was a nice place — the coffee was done, and they moved into the office. Or, after Daedalus put some honey in his — she'd completely forgotten some people liked sweetener in their coffee, honestly. (Sirius had gotten the honey for his use, even the smell of the stuff made her a little nauseous.) Liz slipped into the nice, wide, padded armchair behind the desk, Daedalus stripping off his jacket to hang it over the back of the chair on the other side (which Liz had forgotten might be necessary until Blaiddig had mentioned it) before sitting down himself, placing his hat down on the corner of the desk.
The waistcoat Daedalus had under the jacket was also colourful, red and white and violet, the fabric thick and textured deeply enough she could see the pattern. The shirt under that was a bit silly-looking, with lace along the collar, the sleeves baggy and ruffled, white with gold and purple stitching here and there. Looked like something she might see in some of the paintings at Hogwarts, but she guessed it wasn't ugly or anything, just dated. (By muggle standards, anyway.) Without the hat and everything, the wrinkles thick around Daedalus's eyes and mouth were more obvious, brown hair slashed through with grey — he was right around Dumbledore's age, but Dumbledore had aged unusually quickly for a mage, Daedalus was closer to what a mage was expected to look like at a hundred and change. Right around the same age, but they hadn't been classmates at Hogwarts, Daedalus had gone to the school in Oxford for OWLs and Beauxbatons for Proficiencies, they'd met at an academic conference years after school.
(In their first meeting, when they'd been talking about something to do with Dumbledore, Liz had accidentally picked up that the two of them had dated for a couple years way back in the 30s, before he'd been the Albus Dumbledore, but that wasn't her business.)
Daedalus took a sip of his coffee, and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a folder that was much too big to actually fit in there. "All right, then," he said, slapping it down onto the desk, "I don't want to take too much of your time, I'm sure you have better things to do than sit inside talking to little old me."
"When you got here I was doing Transfiguration homework, so not really."
He let out a little titter, much quieter to Liz than the amusement ringing loud in his head. "Of course, of course. Isn't there something about mind mages and transfiguration?"
"Yeah, it's a pain." Supposedly conjuration was easier, and alchemy worked on completely different fundamentals, so hopefully it wouldn't be very long before she just wouldn't need to do transfiguration at all anymore. "But sure, we can get to it."
Halfway through taking a sip of coffee, Daedalus hummed, flipping open the folder. "Gringotts sends out quarterly reports, as you know, I just got it a few days ago. Did they send you a copy this time?" Liz shook her head. "Right, I thought they might not have. I can send you a copy if you like, but I'm not sure why you'd bother, there is very little there that requires your attention. I don't know if this was ever explained to you, but when Teah was given— That's Galatea Merrythought, the secretary Albus hired on before myself. Teah went through the House's various investments and contracts and whatnot, and set everything up so that it could all sit on its own with very little oversight. During my first tenure I did keep an eye on the apothecary trade — depending on how harvests turn out and investments being made elsewhere, the balance of the market might shift year to year, so I would make small adjustments to the family's production to meet demand — and there were a few other investments I've tinkered with now and then, but for the most part I left everything how Teah put it.
"I've gone back through the books since our last meeting, and it doesn't appear there's anything that requires your immediate attention. But we've mostly been letting everything sit, passively, waiting for you, now that you're starting to get old enough to participate, we might consider picking things up, so to speak. You haven't been losing wealth this last decade, but the family's interests have remained stagnant — as slow to change as the British economy can be, this still means many opportunities were not taken. Particularly in the muggle markets, there are some interesting things happening on the other side these days. Also there are some contracts you might want to revisit, particularly the vassalage agreements, even if we needn't renegotiate anything at this time, you still might want—"
"Hold up a second," Liz said, interrupting once she realised she wouldn't be getting a word in edgewise — Daedalus was a rather excitable bloke, spoke in a rapid babble, he hardly even seemed to pause to breathe. "Vassalage agreements? I have vassals?"
There was an odd, warm lurch in his head, like... No, Liz wasn't certain what that was. "Pity" was the word that came to mind first, but that definitely wasn't right. "Liz, the Potters are a Noble House. Of course you have vassals. A fair few of them relative to the age of your family, in fact — many of the families involved in agriculture tend to, it's typical to have a subject family oversee plantations in exchange for certain privileges..."
Plantations, Jesus... "I don't really know anything about any of that." Her mouth feeling oddly numb, clumsy, she could hear the absent note on her own voice. She, just— Sometimes it was still absurd that she was a bloody noble lady or whatever, the idea that she had bloody vassals she hadn't known about was just... She still didn't know how to feel about these things.
"Yes, well, I imagine not. Those agreements are something I would recommend you revisit at some point, some of the contracts are quite old, and... None of this is urgent, they can sit until you settle in to the way things are here in Britain, a few years, but it is something to think about. Ah..." He trailed off for a second, thoughts rapidly flickering in his mind, head bobbing back and forth a little. "It is quite common for a vassal to be offered educational opportunities, to be given help getting into an apprenticeship or a guild, bringing more skills into their family. It benefits both sides, you see: the vassal broadens their prospects and brings greater wealth into their own family, and the lord acquires greater access to skilled labour and a toe into new markets and trades.
"I know the way the magical world works is likely still foreign to you," he said, his voice dropping a little, leaning slightly forward, "but for many people, they have very few opportunities to better their circumstances — making a vassalage agreement with a fair-minded lord is often the best chance we have to move up in the world, to make a better life for the generation after ourselves. And I do mean we, you know, my family were vassals of the Greys not so long ago, and I would not be sitting before you otherwise. Are there people who are terribly mistreated, yes, the Ministry does very little to oversee these agreements, they are abusable. But there are fair lords out there, plenty enough. And the Lords Potter have long been known to be fair — if that eases your mind, at all."
It didn't, really. Daedalus seemed to think she was tripping over the oh no, maybe my ancestors were evil pricks to the help, when she was really thinking it was fucking absurd that she was an actual noble lady, who had vassals and everything, yet she'd been kept in a cupboard most of her childhood and had spent several years stealing to eat. Being told no, your ancestors were nice lords though! didn't actually do shite about that. "So, there's nothing we need to do about any of that right now." They better not, Liz wouldn't have any fucking clue what to do...
"No, no, all that can sit for the time being. The only thing I truly needed to speak of was..." Daedalus trailed off, eyes tipping up to the ceiling for a second with a low hum. "It wasn't a problem this time. But if you are going to be making a series of large purchases within a short period of time, it would be best if I had some warning. Between paying the cleaners and the wardcrafters and then the carpenters, that was no small amount of gold. The vault your draft book is tied to is one intended for use by the lord of the family, and it is refilled from other sources monthly — but the amount of currency in that vault is not infinite. This month I shored it up from your personal account, and there wasn't any—"
"Wait, I thought my draft book was for my personal account. You know, the same one I was using the first couple years?" Liz hadn't questioned it, she wasn't actually the person who'd gotten it in the first place. Severus had handed it over one day months ago now without warning, said that he'd written to Gringotts and gotten one sent over — which was a thing he could just do as her guardian, apparently, she didn't know how all that legal stuff worked.
"No, no, the account you were withdrawing from before was set up by your parents shortly after your birth, for your personal use. Some members of a family having their own account with Gringotts, tied to the family's but managed independently, is quite common in the Noble Houses, especially for the heir — the amount of money set aside for you was unusually large, I suspect Jamie and Lily were concerned they wouldn't survive the war, and wanted to ensure you were provided for until you turned thirteen." Not for the first time, Liz noticed that Daedalus called her father "Jamie", which she took to be a mark of people who'd personally known him — Daedalus had been in the Order of the Phoenix, apparently, though Liz didn't know what he'd done with them. Didn't seem like much of a fighter. "Now that you are thirteen, and have full access to all the family's resources, I would in fact recommend closing that account, and moving the gold elsewhere. Or, I suppose you may keep it open, to be handed over to an heir, when that time comes?"
"We can keep it there, for now." She didn't plan on having kids ever, but she was still thinking of adopting Hermione, so. "You can keep pulling money from there if— Sorry, I wasn't thinking it might run out, I have no idea how much money is in there..."
"Oh, it's alright, it's not something you need to worry about most of the time. Ordinary day-to-day expenses, these aren't going to make much of a difference, in last month's period there were just several large expenses in a short period of time. You didn't pull so much it went negative, even if I hadn't moved some money around, but it was closer than is entirely safe. If you do go negative, the consequences aren't— Well, the fines won't be too much of a problem for the Potters, but if you do it too much the goblins will start to become suspicious of what you're getting up to, and being investigated by Gringotts can swiftly turn very, very bad. You want to avoid making an enemy of the goblins, if at all possible. But there was no harm done this time, simply remember to notify me if you have more big expenses coming up, and I will make sure there's enough gold in the vault. If this happens too often, I may need to sell off things, but with as much gold as the Potters bring in, I don't think it will be a problem unless something goes terribly wrong.
"Unless you wanted to speak in depth about developments in the present markets, and there are also international trade negotiations coming up in the next couple years we may wish to— You'll want to select a proxy as soon as possible," Daedalus interrupted himself. "Your family is deeply involved in the apothecary trade not just in Britain, but throughout the ICW, you hold agricultural land across the Continent, especially in the north, and various traders and sellers, it's a complicated business. Any changes in the treaties managing international trade is going to affect this business, so it is critical that someone is present to represent your interests — that is not something I can do, politics is not my area of expertise, you will need to find someone else."
"Yeah, I know. I've been talking with Cynfelyn about getting help finding someone. That's Cynfelyn Eirsley, I mean, he's the captain of the duelling team. I have a meeting with one of his cousins for the Monday before we leave for Romania to talk about it."
"Eirsley? You're considering joining Ars Publica?" Daedalus's head was practically sizzling with surprise, gaping at her a little bit, which was at least somewhat understandable. The Potters had been a Light family for as long as the faction existed, and had been in (the old, less extreme) Ars Brittania before that — she was basically switching to the complete opposite side of the Wizengamot, so. She wasn't sure she was doing it, she was still pretty ignorant about politics things, that was part of what she was going to talk about with Cynfelyn's cousin. But she realised it was kind of a big deal that she was even considering it. Daedalus blurted out, "No, no," without waiting for a response, "that's none of my business. Do give me some warning before you make it official, because we do have business ties with the Light and the more light-leaning members of Common Fate, and depending on how they react it...may be necessary to make adjustments. But you are the Lady of the Family, it's your choice to make, and not what you're paying me for," he said, with a wry smirk and a little chuckle.
Which did nothing to cover the tingle of unease in his head, but he was aware she was a mind mage, he must know he wasn't fooling her. She wasn't certain what that unease meant, though. The impression she got was just that he thought it would turn into a political shite-storm — as stupid as Liz thought it was, she did realise that the Girl-Who-Lived switching her allegiance to the Dark Dark was kind of a big deal — but she couldn't guess what he thought about that without intruding, so.
"But, unless today is the day you want to begin getting into the details, there isn't anything else I needed to speak to you about. Notify me before big expenses, and when you do pick a proxy get them in contact with me, but beyond that... Was there anything you wanted to ask about?"
"A couple things." Liz played with her coffee cup for a second, wondering how to go about what she wanted to ask. The easy one first. "For the Jassy trip, they told us to bring pocket money along — our meals and everything are covered, but if we wanted to check out the city on an afternoon off, you know. Do they take galleons over there?"
"Well, yes and no." Daedalus folded the papers closed, then reclined back in his chair, coffee cupped in both hands over his chest. "There are a number of ways in which Britain is...unusual, when compared against other magical nations. One is in our relationship with the local goblins. There are goblins elsewhere — particularly in mountainous regions, such as Scandinavia or the Alps or the Balkans, or places underpopulated by humans, especially the African Sahara, there's a very large goblin population in the mountains at their heart — and they do trade with humans, so you'll find their coins can be used almost anywhere in the West. But exclusively, the way they are in Britain, our history is, ah..."
"We started a war and lost, badly. They control our economy now, to stop us from trying it again." No reason to dance around it like that, honestly.
A little hint of black amusement in his head, his lips twitching, Daedalus said, "Yes, precisely so, though I wouldn't put it quite that bluntly to most Britons you might come across. It can be a quite sensitive matter, you see." Yes, Liz imagined losing a war and then refusing to admit it could be like that — and mages were very stubborn about not admitting it, she'd had no idea the goblins had basically conquered magical Britain until Tamsyn had explained what happened, just a few weeks ago. "But yes, many sellers will accept elvish currency, as it is often called outside of Britain, but it... Well, it isn't the standard in other magical nations, so most shopkeepers may not be aware of what the coins are truly worth, and may terribly swindle you, intentionally or not.
"I would strongly recommend exchanging a few galleons into the local currency. I think they use ducats in Romania?" It sounded more like a question than a statement, Daedalus frowning to himself. "I can't remember if Romania uses the Venetian, Greek, or Arab standard, the Balkans are very mixed in that way. It may be wisest to bring a few galleons to exchange into the local currency in Jassy. Ah, now that I'm thinking on it, the current Romanian government has quite contentious relations with the local goblins at the moment, the exchange rate might not be favourable — perhaps, exchange a few galleons for pounds, and then exchange those for the local currency after you arrive, that will probably get you the best deal. You can access your gold in Gringotts in any ICW member country, but with the current situation with the goblins in Romania, yes, I would bring pounds to exchange, I think."
"Right, I can do that." Bank notes were much easier to carry, anyway. Bringing a few galleons' worth seemed like a bit much, but if there were an emergency or something, sure, why not. "The other thing was... I don't know, I've been thinking of maybe adopting one of my muggleborn friends into the family, and, how does that work exactly?"
Daedalus blinked at her for a second, his mind ringing with surprise. "Ah... Well, that can be somewhat difficult. If I remember the national law correctly, of course that is something you can do — it was once quite common for the nobility to adopt promising muggleborns, you know. Muggle protection laws, and of course the law on the muggle side as well, does make things more complicated now than once they were. Ah, assuming we are speaking of one of your classmates, your age, currently their guarantor would be the Headmaster of Hogwarts, so Albus would need to sign off on any adoption. Most of the time, this is simply a formality, the Headmaster stating in a family law court that he consents to the arrangement with very little deliberation, but with as young as you still are, and with your House being overseen by Severus, well. And then, of course, to align with current muggle protection laws, the adoption must also be legal on the muggle side — and this must be arranged without violating the Statute of Secrecy. As you might imagine, this can be quite complicated. Especially as you are only thirteen, so can't legally adopt anyone under muggle law.
"But I imagine it would be easier if— Well, you can get around all those issues by making a vassalage agreement with this muggleborn's family, and then adopting them into the House. The particulars of how that would work depend greatly on the Potters' internal law, I would need to check a couple things, but..."
That was completely absurd. "I can just do that? I mean, take muggles and... That's legal? They're not even mages."
In the middle of taking a sip of coffee, Daedalus hummed, his head bobbing in a nod. "Yes, it's perfectly legal. Rare now, of course, but it was not unusual once upon a time. And there would be some significant benefits for this muggleborn's family as well. Being made vassals would give them citizenship, regardless of their lack of magic themselves — one needn't be a mage to be a citizen of the country, elsewise squibs would be out of luck — which would give them far more rights and protections under our law than other muggles have. And, of course, as citizens of magical Britain, with the rights of citizens, they would be able to sue the Headmaster to surrender guarantorship of their child back to them — or perhaps you would do so on their behalf, depending on Potter law and the terms of their vassalage. They would win that claim easily, and then you could adopt this muggleborn without the need of any hearing whatsoever, simply sign a contract with their parents. And the vassalage agreement wouldn't require any approval from the Ministry either, so this would be the simplest way to get it done — you could even void the vassalage immediately after you've adopted this friend of yours, if you like, though I would recommend keeping their family close, just in case. Yes, doing it this way would be much simpler, and with a higher likelihood of success."
...Oh, well, sure, let's claim Hermione's family as her feudal subjects, which was a thing she could just do with no approval from the government whatsoever, and then she could adopt Hermione, also with absolutely no oversight. Simple! Jesus Christ, the magical government was so fucked... "Right, I'll, er. Think about it." It was a little bit of a relief it'd be so easy, she guessed, she just wasn't sure if she wanted to do it. Haven't even mentioned the idea to Hermione yet, so.
After that, they were pretty much done. There were a couple little details about things to do with the house in Godric's Hollow. She'd already had the contents cleared out, everything packed away in a new vault at Gringotts — except for Lily's office, Liz and Severus had gone to take care of that themselves back in May — but they needed to get the place repaired before they could sell it. (She'd initially wanted it torn down, but Severus had made the very reasonable argument that repairing it would be faster and cheaper than having an entirely new house rebuilt, so she'd be able to sell it off and be done with it much sooner this way.) The Ministry had ordered them to stop, claiming that the Potters had signed over control of the property to the government, so Liz couldn't do anything to it without permission, and really shouldn't have cleared the place out either. Liz had, of course, immediately turned around and sued them to give her full control of the house back — Severus had hired a...law person, whatever it was called, on Narcissa's recommendation, he'd handled that without Liz's active involvement. That had been cleared up a couple weeks ago now — the law person argued in one of the Ministry courts that Liz could simply void the contract and reclaim exclusive control of the property at any time, it hadn't taken very long — and now Daedalus was dealing with getting the place fixed up.
Daedalus pointed out that, if they played their cards right, the house would absolutely be bid up to a ridiculous price — it was the actual site the Dark Lord had gotten himself blown up at, after all, some people would be willing to pay an insane amount of gold for it. Which, Liz didn't really need the money, but at least she'd get something out of the place she'd nearly died in, so. He suggested making the negotiations for the sale at least partially public, to drive up the price further, which, fine, go nuts — in fact, take ten per cent of the whole sale, have fun.
That was something they'd talked about at their first meeting, how she'd be paying him. Dumbledore had just been giving him a modest monthly stipend, but while talking about rehiring him Severus had mentioned that secretaries were usually paid a percentage of the profit they helped bring in. Before meeting Daedalus, Severus had asked Narcissa, and supposedly ten per cent was high, but a normal high, like what a lord who wasn't a complete bastard would pay someone, so that had seemed reasonable. Daedalus had argued that most of the family's stuff ran on its own, so he should only be paid for the stuff he actually did anything with, which sounded fair to Liz — but she hadn't changed the ten per cent number, which turned out to be a significant raise over what Dumbledore had been paying him. Dumbledore had actually been paying Daedalus pretty terribly, compared to other people doing the same job, because apparently he was a cheap bastard. Liz was completely unsurprised.
(The real problem was that Dumbledore, being a commoner himself, was ignorant about how the nobility handled their personal affairs, so had most likely ripped Daedalus off by accident. But that wasn't an excuse — Liz was ignorant too, so she'd asked someone. She didn't understand why Dumbledore hadn't bothered.)
The point when it came to the house was, normally, with the way this worked, Daedalus only got a cut of the profit made by something — so from the sale, they'd first have to deduct the cost of the repairs, the cleaning, the fees and shite for everything, maybe even the cost of the land and the original construction if the person in Liz's position was trying to be cheap about it, and then he'd get ten per cent of that number. But Liz didn't give a damn about the Godric's Hollow house, she just wanted it gone. This was Daedalus's project, she was giving him the full ten per cent just for dealing with it so she didn't have to.
After all, it wasn't like she needed the money anyway, so she might as well.
There was a little bit of gossipping after that, about the duelling club and the next school year coming up and whatever, and before too long it was time for him to get going. Liz set their coffee cups down in the sink, but she didn't expect them to still be there when she got back, even though it'd only be a couple minutes — Nilanse was pretty quick about picking things up when she wasn't looking. It'd only been a few days, they were still feeling out how the chores were going to work. Liz was uncomfortable with the thought of doing nothing around here, but Nilanse seemed to think she should take care of everything, so it was awkward, but they'd figure it out, eventually.
(She still caught Nilanse giving her funny looks sometimes, didn't know what that was about.)
Then they were standing in the kitchen, Daedalus temporarily handing Liz his hat so he could pull his jacket back on without knocking it off. Write him if anything comes up, yeah yeah, she remembered. A few final comments, wishing her good luck in the tournament, and with a final energetic grin and a tip of his hat, he disappeared in a flash of green flames.
Her eyes tipping up to the ceiling, Liz let out a thick sigh. As much as how fucked up magical Britain was could go to her benefit — like, the Noble Houses were full of shite, but on the other hand she never had to worry about money ever, so — she was still struck sometimes by how much she hated this country. Bloody vassals, for fuck's sake, what century did they think this was? She was trying not to think about the whole thing, it was just, ugh, made her uncomfortable.
When she returned to the kitchen, she was entirely unsurprised to find Nilanse already here, just finishing levitating the coffee cups up into the cabinet. "Oh come on."
Nilanse turned to her, big eyes blinking and pulling a completely fake expression of surprise. House-elf minds felt off, hard and smooth and cool like polished glass, their thoughts hard to read, but the feelings came through easily enough — and the silly little girl wasn't doing a thing to try to hide her warm, bubbling amusement. "What?"
"I'm making dinner tonight." Nilanse opened her mouth to argue, but before she could get it out Liz said, "I'm thinking of trying that cream sauce Cediny wrote out for me, with some duck and the leftover parmesan, see how that turns out. I was going to put it with potatoes, so think about what you want to do instead." Apparently elves couldn't have more than a couple bites of potatoes, gave them indigestion.
Nilanse pouted up at her for a second, and then grinned. "I'll make some flatbread. I'll put the extra downstairs."
Because she knew Liz liked the herby flatbread the elves made, and was partially making it for herself so Liz would use the leftovers for snacks or whatever. She rolled her eyes, but just shrugged it off. "Anyway, I was in the middle of Transfiguration homework when Daedalus showed up, I'll be back down to start dinner in a couple hours."
"Yep! Have fun!"
Liz snorted — that wasn't likely, bloody Transfiguration...
Wow, okay, this chapter was way more complicated than it had to be. I kept changing my mind about where I was going with the first scene — I ended up cutting a pair of passages totaling 5.3k words, because of course. Still not happy with it, oh well, these things happen. The last scene with Severus was also moved to the last chapter, but those scenes should be short, I should be able to fit all three together and not fuck anything up. We'll see.
My momentum for this fic doesn't seem to be dying, but I've had other things bouncing around in my head lately, we'll have to see what happens. I only realised a few days ago that my general bluhness the last few weeks is probably a depressive episode, because I'm about as self-aware as Liz, so, who the fuck knows where this is going.
I certainly don't! It's an adventure! Weeeee!