"Then get houses, at least forty of them, more if you can afford it. At least ten warehouses, the library and hospital." Croaker advised. "That gives you some leeway in case numbers climb."
Hermione stood at the front of the classroom and explained to her involved shoppers, as she called those that planned on going with her and Harry.
"So… that's where we're at…" She finished. "Start making lists of things you want. I'll get each group up to pick a warehouse or building to stock. I'm told that the place that does the RB's has more than enough stock, we won't short them. Neville? You're first. Here's the catalogue, pick out your dream greenhouse, like Croaker told me, think big." It took Neville all of two minutes to choose the design he wanted and put in a request for not one but three greenhouses. "You'll definitely get one, we'll have to see about the others, it depends on how the budget goes, Nev." Hermione warned. "Madam Pomfrey, you next. Your dream hospital."
"But I'm not coming with you." Pomfrey argued.
"So? You're still the closest we have to an authority, at least you know what should be included." Hermione shrugged.
"Oh, yes, that is true." Pomfrey hurried forward and flicked through the catalogue.
One by one, each group came forward and chose a design, then each person was given the chance to choose a cottage layout. McGonagall suggested adding a large many bedroom house, saying that the younger students could stay with her in it, until they came of age, then they could move into a place of their own and she would also downsize into her own place.
"I don't know how long it will take Croaker's people to get all of these, but I doubt we'll have them by the weekend. This week is all about lists and working out what we need. Once the trunks arrive, we can get started on buying up stock." Hermione said.
"What about finances, Hermione? This is going to cost a huge amount." Angelina asked.
"It is. But it's not as bad as it could have been. The RB's usually cost about ʛ10,000 each, but we're not going have to pay all of that. The company that make them have cut the price in half because of the war. ʛ5,000. In addition to this, Harry received so many bequests after his parents died that he wouldn't be able to spend it all in one lifetime. He told me to use it to help the students, I told him what was going on as far as the position that most of you are in, and he thinks that I'm going to get you out of the country. I am, I'm just not doing it the way he thinks. This isn't including anything from his parents, or his godfather. Or anything received since the battle. Those of you that have finances, Harry wants you to keep them, let him pay for the resettlement. That's his request. Mine is, the same. Exchange everything thing you can for ingots, jewellery and raw gold, silver, gems both cut and uncut stones. One of the pocket-spaces in your trunk will be a vault, use it, but let the wizarding world, via Harry, pay for everything thing else. Please?"
There was a tap at the door of the classroom and the door opened to reveal Professor Flitwick.
"Excuse me, Miss Granger, but William and Charles Weasley are here and hoping to speak to you." The tiny Professor apologised for the interruption.
"That's alright, Professor, I think we all need a break. Why don't you guys get some lunch and think about it and I'll talk to Bill and Charlie. Oh, and Professor? May I call a school elf to order some lunch for us?" As she spoke those in the room gathered up their notes and headed out, smiling at Flitwick and the two Weasley wizards as they went.
"Of course, you can, but as I am going to the kitchens, why don't I see to that?" Flitwick was gone before she could thank him.
"Come in, guys, have a seat. What's up? Oh we, meant to ask, how's Ollivander doing?" She asked.
"Ah… He's why we're here… or a part of it." Bill grimaced.
"And the rest?"
"Family shit." Charlie huffed.
"Urgh." Hermione grimaced back.
"Yeah. So, Ollivander? He's offered to custom make a wand for Harry." Bill started. "But he's hoping that Harry has access to Fawkes for feathers, why, I don't know."
"Harry's wand core was one of Fawkes' feathers." Hermione informed them.
"Oh, that makes sense, then." Bill nodded.
"Harry's unconscious at the moment, while the healers repair what they can, he could be out for days. But…" Hermione bit her lip, too a few deep breaths and called. "Fawkes? Harry needs you!"
Bill and Charlie looked at her like she'd grown a second head but said nothing. Seconds passed and just as Hermione was drawing a breath to sigh in resignation, there was a flash of bright light, flames and sparks. When the lightshow faded, Fawkes was resting on the back of a chair.
"Hello Fawkes. How are you?" Hermione asked.
Fawkes gave a sad trill.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, is there anything we can do to help?" She asked, even knowing that she won't understand if there was.
Fawkes just shook his head.
"If you're sure?" Fawkes nodded, then tilted his head in question. "Oh, Harry, right. Harry's wand was snapped getting away from Nagini and he snapped the wand that Voldy stole from Dumbledore's grave, he wasn't about to let that get taken by the Ministry." Fawkes nodded. "But that leaves Harry with no wand. Ollivander has offered to make him a custom one, but you know Harry's going through the veil?" Another nod. "Well, that means that Harry' not going to be able to replace a wand if something happens to it. So, he's hoping that Ollivander would make him more than one." Fawkes' head rocked from side to side. "But that means he needs a number of cores and your feathers were the cores that responded to him the best. Would you consider giving him some feathers? Enough for a few wands?"
Fawkes didn't answer, instead he shuddered and shook, and six feathers fluttered to the floor, then another shudder and two more feathers fell. Fawkes gave Hermione a tired little warble and flew over to the desk and pecked at her goblet.
"Fawkes?" Hermione asked, not understanding. Fawkes tilted his head and let Hermione see the tear building in his eye. "Oh, my, yes, of course." She hastily pulled out her beaded bag and retrieved a small phial, holding it under the phoenix's beak.
"Um… Hermione? I hope you've got another phial in that bag?" Charlie's voice was unexpectedly sad.
"Why?"
"Phoenixes only give their tears when they're nearing the end of their rebirth cycles. If Fawkes is giving away his tears, this is his last life. And really? He doesn't look good, not having his familiar bonded wizard still alive, makes that worse. Take what he gives you, all of it. The older a phoenix is, the stronger the magic their feathers and tears contain." Charlie whispered, trying not to alarm the bird.
"Oh, Fawkes, is he right?" Fawkes gave a quiet peep and dipped his head, the fat pearlescent drops still falling, one after the other into the nearly full phial. Hermione let a single tear run down her own cheek, before hastily scrubbing it away before hunting up another larger phial. "Don't hurt yourself, Fawkes, neither Harry nor I could live with that."
Fawkes trilled quietly.
"Alright, gentlemen, Fawkes has provided feathers for Ollivander to make into wands for Harry. And now he's giving us his tears. Was there anything else you wanted to know?" Hermione looked up at the two Weasley's.
"Yes." Bill nodded. "Where's George?"
"Up in the hospital, Katie Bell was bitten by a werewolf. We've asked each of them to try and keep the other from moping too much." Hermione answered.
"Good, you need to warn him, mum's after his shop. She wants him to sign it over to Percy." Bill growled.
"We know. And eventually, he's going to. But not until the day before Harry's sentence is carried out." Hermione replied.
"What? Why?" Both brothers gasped.
"There were survivors, from the battle here. But if the Ministry gets a hold of them, they'll be dead or have their magic bound and their memories removed. Kingsley came up with the idea of an expanded trunk with pocket-spaces inside it and send the survivors with Harry."
"Oh, gods." Charlie whispered.
"Not all of them wanted this, but there's over twenty people that have either agreed to go or asked to go. George was the first to ask. Lee, Angelina and Alicia were only a few minutes behind him."
"George is going with Harry? But… the shop…?" Bill spluttered.
"He says the shop without Fred is nothing. Oh, he'll keep a chunk of the stock as well as the recipes and method of making most of the products. And all the profits, Percy will take over a half-stocked shop with no money in its bank vault." Hermione smirked and switched from the first phial to the second, carefully placing the full phial on the desk. "Will one of you stopper that for me please?"
"Sure." Charlie stepped forward easing his way around Bill, staying in Fawkes line of sight.
"Is Harry still taking requests?" Bill asked.
"Not Harry, me. Harry doesn't know we're doing this. If he did, he'd try and fight for the others and that would just make things worse. But, yes, I'll still take requests, but we're being very careful about who we tell." Hermione warned.
"Just Fleur. I gave her the chance to return to France when the war escalated, but she said 'no'. Apparently, it's a veela thing to leave your birth family and stay with your mate, for life. They may meet up one or twice, but that's rare. They tend to just leave. But… Fleur is a veela, I'm not going to make a decision that important without consulting her." Bill grimaced.
"Yeah, don't be doing that." Charlie muttered. "If you get her to agree, I'm in, too."
"Excellent. Prepare to liquidate all your finances, but don't worry about the cost of the move and what you'll take with you. I've got that covered. Harry was left a hell of a lot of money after the first Voldy war, we're using that to pay for this. If you go ahead and join us, I'll get you a vault key and a card to use in the muggle world. Harry transferred gold into a vault for me to use, for after the war, this is my choice. Don't take too long to decide, we're down to forty-three days to prepare, I want everything ready before Harry enters the veil. And there's a lot of work in front of us." Fawkes lifted his head and trilled, he nudged Hermione's hand and leapt from the desk, flying out the widow, in long tired wingbeats. Hermione stoppered the second phial and placed it beside the first. "I need to add those to our potions' store." She muttered.
"Assuming Fleur agrees, we'll be joining you." Bill said.
Five days it took before the healers released Harry from the DMLE hospital wing. Within half an hour, Hermione had briefed him on his trunk, but had not said a word about the survivors and their allies. She and Kingsley were keeping that well under wraps.
"So, can I see the trunk?" Harry whispered.
"Sure." Hermione removed the matchbox-sized trunk from her bag and placed it on the floor, a tap of her wand and it was the size of a school trunk, a second tap and it was the height of a door. "Come on in." She led the way into the empty trunk. "It's completely empty, I only collected it an hour ago." She reminded him.
"What's where?" Harry stood in the centre of the trunk and looked around him.
"Right, that's the entrance. So… going in a clockwise direction, you have… A potions storeroom, one side is ingredients and the other is completed potions. Next is a potions lab, that's self-explanatory. Then it's the first of a number of storerooms, Croaker's people haven't finished all of them, so you'll just have to wait to see them. Running anti-clockwise from the entrance is a bathroom, followed by a laundry, a kitchen and a bedroom. Then here we have the library. When Luna's finished with it, it will be amazing."
"But just yet, it's completely empty." Harry nodded. "I get it."
"The storerooms with be filled with shelves and each section of shelf will have individually applied stasis charms."
"Individually applied? Hermione, that's going to take you forever!" Harry exclaimed.
"Not me. The D.A. are doing it. Well, the students, the D.A. and the staff. Professor Flitwick worked with Professor Babbling on a rune sequence and the lower years are carving them into the shelves and the D.A. and the staff are activating them. They can do, roughly two hundred sections in an hour, but are limiting it to a thousand a day."
"A thousand?" Harry gasped. "How many bloody sections are there?"
"It's not a case of how many, it's a case of so many people wanting to help. We're doing many more than we plan on putting in your trunk, Harry. Just to give people a sense of involvement." Hermione didn't say that all of the shelving sections would be used, those not used in Harry's trunk, would go into the hundred-acre-space, for the refugees to use. Currently the hundred-acre-space was being tentatively called Hedwig's Nest, in honour of the owl.
"Oh, hell." Harry muttered. "This is getting out of control."
"Don't panic. Everything will be used. Either it will end up in here, in other trunks or be used in the reconstruction of Hogwarts and other places. Fawkes came through the other day and left you some feathers for wands. Charlie thinks that Fawkes is at the end of his rebirth cycle and if that's the case, you'll take anything he gives you, to refuse is an insult. Without Dumbledore to ground him, Fawkes is not likely to have long left. Respect that and be grateful for what he's shared." Hermione told Harry, firmly.
"Oh, Fawkes…" Harry whispered.
"Mr Ollivander will be in this afternoon, he's moved his shop into a trunk like this one, he doesn't feel safe on the alley anymore and no-one can blame him. He's an old man and like McGonagall, he's decided it's time to retire, he'll do a few custom wands to keep occupied but he's closed the shop down."
"It won't be Diagon Alley without an Ollivander's." Harry whispered.
"After Mr Ollivander's been, depending on time, Mr Twilfit and Madam Malkin will come and measure you up for clothes. Once that's done, we'll see to your clothes and robes. Hopefully by this time tomorrow, we'll have something for you." Hermione told Harry.
"That would be good, I don't think these are going to last much longer, muggle clothes aren't made with cleaning charms in mind." Harry joked.
"Not really." Hermione agreed. "A Gringotts goblin will be here in a few minutes. We need to work out what to do about your properties. Given the wards that most of them will have, Bill and Professor Flitwick suggested that it might be easier and will be a lot cheaper and quicker to just sell them all to Gringotts."
"What? Why? I was going to give them to people."
"Something to do with the wards having to accept a new owner, and with no way of knowing what each ward will consider as acceptable, extracting the wards and discharging any other magics on each property is going to less of a physical risk to the new owner. And Bill seems to think if you're going to do that, you'll get better money selling direct to the goblins, who'll sell them on to muggles. Then you can divide the total between the people you want, and they can buy a place with less… aggressive wards." Hermione shrugged.
"And what do you think?" Harry leant against the wall of the trunk and studied his friend.
"Me?" Hermione blinked.
"You." Harry nodded.
"Um…" Hermione bit her lip. "I think… sell the lot to the goblins, everything, every property, all of it. Combine the funds into one vault and parcel it out, piecemeal. Get it over with as fast as you can. Then you don't have to think about it again. You can concentrate on working with Croaker and McGonagall on your animagi transformation."
"Huh…" Harry grunted. "I forgot about that."
"I know, which is why I reminded you. You've only got forty days, now, Harry. It's not long. You're going to have work hard to get the transformation in that short a timeframe, you can do it, I know you can, but you'll have to work at it. McGonagall will come in every morning and work with you, sometimes Croaker will join you, sometimes it will just be the two of you. Flitwick's got permission to train you, as best he can in the time left, in duelling and Kingsley will a part of that and maybe a few of the trainees, too. I'll be in every evening to give you an update and take any messages. Gringotts will contact me, for anything regarding your vaults, as per your request, and if I think you need to know, I'll bring it to you. Okay?"
"Fine. What's happening at Hogwarts?" Harry asked.
"Let's go back out and sit down and I'll tell you." Hermione suggested and Harry nodded. The two emerged from the trunk into the interview room that was now assigned to Harry and sat down at the table. "Alright, Hogwarts. Classes are cancelled, there'll be no exams this year, the staff and the WEA are in agreement. Snape may have been a potions genius and he also turned out to quite a… protective Headmaster, but he-"
"Protective?" Harry interrupted.
"It turns out that the Slytherins were encouraged by the Carrows to use the unforgivables on younger students, but Snape was against it, said that if one got it wrong, they'd have a dead student and nothing to use as a bargaining mark, with parents. He was against issuing detentions, instead encouraged the use of loss of privileges. Detentions, by the way were only with the Carrows and usually consisted of being their dark arts practice dummy, in private lessons for the Slytherins."
"Oh, hell."
"He had to walk such a fine line, between protecting the students and placating Voldy." Hermione sighed.
"If he had lived, the public would have crucified him." Harry sighed. "What a waste. He made a promise to my mum and he died just minutes before the payoff."
Hermione bit her tongue, she really wanted to tell Harry that Snape had survived but the risk of someone overhearing was too great.
"Yes. So close." She closed her eyes and begged Harry's forgiveness for lying to him. "So, no classes, no exams. All of the students have been allowed to go home, but many have stayed. They want to be involved in the rebuilding. And helping get things ready for you. Some are helping with the rune carving, some with making potions, some in the actual rebuilding, some in the clean-up. They're everywhere. And not just students. Parents and families, even people that don't have kids at the school are helping. I had to place a notice in the Prophet that we weren't ready to take meals for you, yet. People were bringing cooked meals, under stasis, to be sent with you. We sent them out to those that lost their homes. Meals and clothes have been pouring in. We've put aside some that we think might work for you, but once we have your measurements, we'll have more of an idea."
"Whoa…"
"The disaster fund handled by the Ministry has been a godsend, they've purchased these ready-built houses. There's a company in Technic Alley that makes these, ready to go, shrunk and on the shelf. You can order almost anything. Most of what has been funded by the ministry is two- and three-bedroom cottages for those that lost their homes and tents for the students that want to stay at Hogwarts, but their dorms aren't structurally safe, yet."
"Handy." Harry nodded.
"Very. Without them, people would be sleeping in the corridors and given that the curse-breakers are only just getting started? That would put even more people at risk." Hermione sighed.
"How are the students taking the news? Of what's going to happen to me?"
"None of them are happy about it, most understand and all of them support you, even some of the Slytherins. The Greengrass sisters are spending most of their time sorting through the clothes, they're the ones that have set up a wardrobe-slash-bathroom at the school. Anyone can go in, have a shower and pick up a change of clothes, just leave the dirty change behind and they'll see that the house-elves wash them and add them to the wardrobe. Warrington fronted up and is working with Slughorn, he's useless at brewing, but brilliant at prep-work. Even Malfoy is helping, he's pants at carving, but he's excellent at activating rune sequences."
"Wow…" Harry gasped.
"He actually asked Slughorn to formally request a meeting between him and me, I've no idea why, but he's making an effort, so I'll hear him out." Hermione shook her head.
"Wow…" Harry repeated.
There was a knock at the door and the door opened to reveal trainee Timberly.
"Master Rocksplitter is here, Mr Potter, Miss Granger."
"Thank you, Kristen." Hermione smiled. "Send him in."
"Yes'm." The young trainee stepped back and Rocksplitter entered the room.
"Mr Potter, Miss Granger."
"Good morning, Master Rocksplitter." Hermione stood. "I'll leave you with it, Harry, I have to meet Terry Boot, he's assigned to furnishing your library." She gave Harry a brief hug. "I'll try and pop in later this evening, but if I don't, I'll definitely be in, tomorrow evening." She turned the goblin. "Master Rocksplitter, please excuse me for delaying you." With that she left the room, heading for the Atrium.