Harry distinctly recalled falling asleep before the fire, sprawled over the sofa, yet he woke up once more in the middle of his new bed. Naked. But those weren't the first concerns of the young lord, for he was fighting the sheets tangled around him as he pulled himself from the depths of his nightmare. And loosing terribly.
The dream, ironically enough, started out as a rather good dream. It had nothing to do with the average wizard's desires, like a beautiful girlfriend, graduating as top of his class and Head Boy nor was it about securing acceptance into the Auror program. The dream was simply about his short term end goals; gaining control of his life. About being able to come and go freely, being able to buy what he wanted when he wanted, of becoming someone that others looked to with respect or for advice.
Eventually the dream cycled to seeing his parents and his godfather, of them saying how proud they were of him and that they've been watching him. Then in the next instant, they were frowning and saying how he was an idiot for not realizing that he was being an idiot, for not asking questions, for not taking control of his life. And more importantly, for killing Sirius. If he had done all this prior, or even asked Sirius the questions he should of, then he would be living with and being taught by Sirius.
It was during this scolding that Voldemort loomed up behind the trio with his wand tip glowing a sickly green color. No matter how much Harry yelled or pleaded, the trio ignored him as they dropped dead one by one. It was as Sirius dropped that Harry was able to move out of his frozen state, to lunge for Sirius.
A good thing Harry was too far in the middle of the king size bed, or he may of fallen out of the bed as he struggled with the sheets. Before he had time to calm himself down or fully wake up, said sheets suddenly disappeared to leave him floundering for several heartbeats like a fish out of the water. Harry did calm down as he fully swam into full alertness, blinking at wear the sheet was.
"Bad bad bad dream! Bad bad bad sheets! Spink hate bad dreams! Spink hate bad sheets! er Spink has no sheets! Bad spink for lying!" The young house elf on the side of the bed began to bang his head on the side of the bed, though the soft material was doing little to now damage.
Harry, for his part, almost had a heart attack at the sudden excited words speared the darkened air and almost flew off the bed as he lunged in the opposite direction. Roughly pushing the long hair from his face, which was sticking due to his sweaty state thanks to the nightmare, he peered in the darkness at the unknown elf.
"Spink? Spink! Stop! " Harry yelled at the elf who kept saying 'bad! bad! bad!' with every bang of his face against the bed. A pillow was blindly grabbed, to cover his exposed groin, as he got the attention of the house elf.
"Yes sirree!" The excited elf said as he bounced onto the bed and towards Harry, only to bounce lightly on his feet. "Spink in trouble for comming to see the Master!"
Bounce.
" but spink curious!"
Bounce.
" and Master did not look to be having fun! "
Bounce.
"then Master was fighting with the sheets and spink helped Master! "
Bounce.
"so spink should not be in trouble! No sirree! "
Bounce. Bounce.
Oh. No. Another Dobby. Atleast he was not going on about how great a wizard he is. Reaching beneath the pillows, his fingers blindly found his wand and he performed a tempus spell. Six in the morning. While Harry would of liked to sleep in longer, it was doubtful that would happen. Sighing, he turned his attention back to the bouncing elf.
"Spink stop bouncing."
"Spink want to serve Master. What Master want? tea? biscuits? breakfast? clothes? toys? oh! fire!" The young elf disappeared only to reappear ten feet away at the fireplace, which he got it going after a few moments. Once the fire took, he disappeared only to reappear back infront of Harry and stared at him with big eyes and the droopey ears looked perked somewhat. Translation; an elf looking for praise.
And so, Harry reached out to pat the head of the elf while saying, "Good boy. Now can you draw a bath? " With a rapid nod, the elf disappeared.
Groaning and mumbling about his life, Harry slid from the bed onto the soft rug so he could move to the bottom of the bed. Folded there was a scarlet nightrobe, which Harry was soon pulling on as he slipped into matching slippers on the floor. Walking out into the sitting room, he noticed the fireplace there was lit aswell to provide flickering light since the sky was still dark except on the horizon.
A small table had appeared before the sofa and upon it, were stacks of magazines. Curious about them, Harry picked up the top one and flipped through it. It didn't take long to figure out it was a shopping catalog, they all were. Pard certainly was fast. As he set the catalog back down, to go through later, Pard appeared next to the table and gave a bow.
"Master Potter, good morning. I got a variety of catalogs for you, if there is a type or certain store that you do not have, simply tell me. I have informed all of your elves that you shall be comming to inspect them, you will be pleased to know they are scrambling to make sure everything is in order and they are very excited."
"Morning, Pard. Yes, I was shown first hand how excited they would be. I w-"
Harry was cut off by the sudden appearance of Spink, who was rocking exictedly back and forth on his feet. "Masters bath is ready. Bubbles are fun, spink got bubbles for Master! Master wa- oh, hello Pard." The ears of the young elf drooped upon seeing the older elf and the rocking stopped.
"Spink! I expressly told you to leave Master Potter alone! That you would get to meet him when Master chose! Bad elfling!
"But Mas-" Spink began, only to be cut off by the elder elf.
"No spink! Your being bad!" He ranted, shaking his little fist.
"Enough! Pard, while Spink obviously broke your rules to come here.. he saved me from some very mean sheets and is helping me get ready for the day. Thank you, Spink. But you need to listen to your elders, especially Pard as he is the one in charge of you. Now, I need to take a bath and get ready for today's lessons. Return to where you came from. I will call if I need you."
Abruptly, Harry stalked towards the bathroom to leave the elves behind. It was way to early to deal with yet another fight between the smaller folk. Harry couldn't help but grimace at the strong scent of flowers as he entered the bathroom. The large tub was almost overflowing with bubbles. Tempted to merely take a shower instead, he decided to brave the flowery bubbles for a hot soak instead. Besides, the scent wouldn't cling to him if he showered afterwards. Right?
Wrong. Having met Neville in the hallway to walk to breakfast together, he had already been teased by Neville. Neville had put on a show by pointing out various flowers that were used to get that particular scent as he attempted to guess the name of it. At the doors to the sunroom, where they casually ate meals in the morning and afternoon, Nevile grinned widely and snapped his fingers to exclaim.
"I got it! I don't know the name, but you smell like Grams!"
Whatever happened to nice quiet and shy Neville? Harry was beginning to miss him.
Breakfast was a relaxed atmosphere compared to dinner the night before, only a few corrections made. But Harry wasn't sure if that was due to him becoming more civilized, as Augusta called it, or because she liked the way he smelled. She had commented on it after the boys seated themselves at the small round table.
"You smell quite refreshing, Lord Potter. I have several different varieties of oils for a bath if you wish to expand your collection." She stated as she spread jam upon a croissant.
Needless to say, Harry was quite ready to depart the table in embarassment when breakfast was done.
Surprisingly, the first lesson had nothing to do with his responsibilities on how to manage his properties, employees, politics, how to behave and manners. Instead it consisted of two beautiful young women and their mother, along with a magical wardrobe.
"Lord Potter, this is Madame Luca and her two daughters, Annette and Antoinette. While you've acquired a formal wardrobe, she will be outfitting you with a complete wardrobe. You might aswell learn to look like a Lord, since that is much easier to accomplish than learning such a complex role. Now I shall leave you until lunch tomorrow, I have important meetings to attend to." With that stated she nodded to the women and Neville before turning to take her leave.
"Wait! Lady Longbottom, how am I to know what to buy?"
"I keep telling you, Lord Potter. Your no longer a minor and in control of your own life. That includes making your own decisions." And with that, she swept out of the room.
Neville, while he was standing there quietly, looked highly amused. Atleast, when he wasn't being distracted by the two lovely twins. "Don't worry, Harry, I wont abandon you to these lovely ladies." A smile was given before giving a mild bow to the Madame.
The twins giggled and courtsied to the two boys before being shooed off by Madame Luca to go and get things ready. Turning to Harry, she began to wave her wand around to clear the furniture out of the way and conjure up a raised platform.
"Now, no worries Lord Potter. All three of us have signed a contract to not let anyone know where you are, nor are we allowed to tell anyone you shop with us until you present yourself to the press. Now! Up you go!"
Much like in the past, measuring tapes flew about Harry to measure him as Madame Luca walked around him to get a look to see what she is working with. The wardrobe had been opened to show that it folded out to show several different garments at a time. Various catalogs were laid out on the table, where Neville seated himself in a chair to begin pointing things out to one of the twins.
Four hours. It took four hours for Madame Luca to decide he was done, for now. Thank Merlin for magic! She had been able to magic various articles of clothing on and off of Harry, so he didn't have to spend those four hours dressing and undressing. The colorscheme of the Potter family was scarlet, cream and black. So he got several outfits to include one, two or all three of those colors. Almost all of his clothing would have the Potter Crest upon it, whether it was embroidered on a sleeve, collar, on the back, side or front. Or in the form of a patch. A lord was to show pride in his heritage, afterall.
Best of all, Madame Luca had muggle style clothing. Of course, they were made out of wizarding material and mostly popular with the wealthy muggleborns of halfbloods. But, Harry loved them. Everything was fitted for his frame with spells to adjust with his growth spurts and made from the most expensive of materials. Harry wouldn't really realize that until later, though.
While Neville refused hour after hour for Harry to buy him anything, he finally relented on one outfit for muggle London to fit in, if they ever decided to go exploring. When asked about battle robes and armor, Madame Luca explained she could have him pick out what he liked, but she would have to give the measurements to her cousin who specialized in making them. Harry selected three styles that would do better in different circumstances and managed to order Neville a general set without him knowing.
Harry was quite frankly amazed at how many charms could be applied to clothing or embued in the material and then the clothing made. Those would take the longest, but he would recieve the first shipment of clothing in a few days.
Harry was definately glad that was over with and that it was done in the comfort of Neville's home and not various stores. Clumsily, Harry got to flirt for several hours with the twins, remain red almost the entire time.
Also, they kept mentioning flowers and looking for bouqets.
Dinner that night was a relaxed atmosphere, both boys taking the opportunity to slouch on furniture outside in the garden as they ate and joked around. Which led Neville to giving Harry a tour of his private gardens, where they engaged in conversation for hours. Potions, of all things, was the main topic as Neville introduced Harry to different plants. Neville, apparently, was great at potion theory but Snape and the Slytherins just scared him or made him too nervous to be any good in the classroom practical.
When quidditch came up in conversation, Neville mentioned he was too out of shape for sports.
"I got over my fear of heights during the flight to the Ministry. There was just too many other things to worry about, more important things. But it isn't just flying, Harry, its the physical aspect of the game I can't keep up with. " Neville said in response to Harry inquiries about why he never tried out, since he sounded like he liked the game.
"Well, Neville, that isn't going to change unless you get out there and be active. You probably have good upper body strength due to your time in the greenhouses and your garden. How about we both work on that this summer? While learning to be a Lord is important, it wont mean shit if Voldemort kills me. I need to train that aspect of my life too. "
"You mean, have our own little DA here? Just the two of us, Harry?"
"Great idea! I was thinking of exercise, but we can do both. I have all my books and we can order more. We should revise what we can while seeing if we could learn new spells."
"Lets check the library then! I have Aurors in the family afterall!" An excited Neville exclaimed with a grin.
And so both boys disappeared back into the House, Neville leading the way to the Master library.