Chapter 44, everybody! In which the writer continues to work on the buffer….

In other news, magical house-hunting is interesting, as is watching grown men trying to figure out how to work a television. Also yeah, back in the nineties cable was still gaining traction, so most TVs used an aerial in order to get signals.

Slytherinsal, thanks for the review! At least there's that.

Missy96, thanks for the review! Responsible Sirius has been surprisingly fun to write, I gotta say.

Harry Potter © 1997 J.K. Rowling

Harry's birthday was easily the best he ever had, and after that was an excited combination of prepping for the Quidditch World Cup Final (Mr. Weasley and Sirius had gotten enough tickets for the lot of them) and helping Sirius find a house.

The latter was an endeavor that Sirius got Harry and Remus in on, as they'd also be living in said house "And it's not fair to not have your inputs." Harry was slowly getting used to side-along Apparition, as little as he'd like to, and learning more about wizarding houses.

Mostly, he was learning that he liked them better than Muggle housing, although there were many that apparently took after Hogwarts insofar as floor plans were concerned. There were houses with stairs that went up and only up, cupboards that would only show up on Wednesdays, and pantries that would constantly expand to accommodate what you purchased. In all, interesting.

Sirius would also bound along with them in dog form when they went to visit the Lovegoods and occasionally pause to run around a large empty field between their house and the Burrow. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley said that the field had long been empty, had been owned by a farmer and left to his son when he died. Some enquiring on Sirius' part showed that the son wasn't allowed to sell to a developer (Harry had to explain what this was) so it had laid fallow while he tried to find a buyer who didn't mind building a single house out in 'the sticks.'

Sirius did a lot of looking into the feasibility of just building a house over buying an existing one, and after much discussion and figuring out how writing up a Muggle check worked and how that would pull from his Gringotts account Sirius was the proud owner of a vacant lot.

"There we go," Sirius said, turning over a shovel-ful of dirt. "Now we just have to build something."

"There goes the neighborhood," the twins chimed.

That wasn't the only acquisition Sirius had made in the Muggle village, however, and when they weren't all prepping for the remaining Weasley brothers and Hermione's arrival, Sirius and Mr. Weasley tinkered with a television trying to get it to work.

"So on the front here," Mr. Weasley said, as Sirius tried to make sense of the instructions. "There should be a moving picture. Maybe the people are out."

"It runs on electricity," Harry supplied.

"Does it? Oh that's fascinating! Does it use a plug?"

"Yes…or batteries."

"Batteries! I have a whole collection do you mean those do things?"

"Yes…how does the radio work then?" Harry asked Ron when Mr. Weasley scurried off to get his battery collection.

"Magic," Ron said simply. "I guess we could get this to work with magic too? Not sure how though."

Sirius considered this, pulled out his wand and tapped the TV. "Work, you."

Everyone waited a few charged moments before acquiescing that nothing was happening.

"Was worth a shot," Sirius decided.

"Try it in Latin," Remus said.

"Uhhh…workus you-us."

"That's not Latin. That's barely pig-Latin."

"Sorry, I was asleep when they were teaching that particular dead language. You want to have a go?"

Apparently Remus wasn't asleep when they were teaching Latin (did they teach that at Hogwarts?), but trying work, operate, or run in Latin and later Greek didn't help—operate got it to sing opera, while run had them chasing the thing down. Mr. Weasley ended up coming back to an exhausted room.

"So if this is all the work Muggles have to go through to turn one on, I understand why they never turn it off," Sirius groaned.

Harry just decided to quietly help Mr. Weasley with the TV, seeing as how he wasn't sure how to explain the proper workings of the device, especially when that generally extended to plug it in and turn it on. Certainly wasn't sure how he was going to explain an aerial, which the TV was going to need in order to work.

Finally meeting Charlie and Bill properly the next day was an experience, though—Harry had heard plenty about Charlie from Hagrid (and vice versa), so it was interesting to meet him in real life. Bill, meanwhile, resembled what Harry was pretty sure rock stars would look like if they were wizards, and he found himself wondering that night if maybe he too shouldn't invest in a dragon-tooth earring when he got older.

The next day saw Hermione arriving, which necessitated quite a bit of excited catching up (and assuring her that YES they were done with their homework and had been for some time now). It also saw the arrival of the Hogwarts owls with their book lists, and an owl for Sirius saying that his designs had been approved and he would be allowed to start building.

That had everyone heading down to Sirius' lot, the younger wizards collecting along the wall as the older wizards got to work. By the time Mrs. Weasley came along to announce that dinner was ready, there was a huge basement magically dug out with the smaller rocks found transfigured into brick, with several spells and enchantments on it to keep it waterproof, fireproof, and a lot of other proofs that Bill Weasley was especially good at, being a cursebreaker and all.

"Gonna have to look up the rest of the spells and practice those," Sirius said at dinner. "Can't believe I have to study out of school."

"Do you want the house to collapse on your head?" Remus asked.

"The good news is, we should be able to go to the Final and still have the house ready before September, at the rate we're going," Mr. Weasley said. "Bill, what do you think?"

"I can definitely have all the major spells on it before my next assignment," Bill said. "If not me, then Perce, if he ever stops talking about thin-bottomed cauldrons."

"It's important," Percy insisted.

Harry, meanwhile, was still of the firm opinion that he loved magic, and sitting at the window in Ron's room looking out at the foundation of the new house (still weird to think of it as his house, much easier to think of it as Sirius'), he was pretty sure that this did nothing but enforce that feeling.

"It's a little weird, thinking of how we're going to have new neighbors," Ron said. "Usually wizards in old families stay with their family houses, or if they move out they move to the city."

"So there's not wizarding neighborhoods?" Harry asked.

"There's a few—like Godric's Hollow is primarily wizards, but usually we stay out in the sticks to avoid nosy Muggle neighbors." Huff a little. "I guess when you can travel instantaneously it's not such a big deal."

"It is if you don't like apparition," Harry said, Snips crring in agreement.

"True," Ron agreed—which was when Hermione came in, excitedly talking about building wizard houses and oh I bet there's TONS of books I wish we could run to Diagon Alley real quick—the three of them discussing the topic until Mrs. Weasley stuck her head in and ordered them to bed because they had a right early start the next morning, and no amount of coffee will vitalize you if you've only had an hour of sleep.

As Harry tried to fall asleep, he wondered what thought excited him more: the Quidditch World Cup Final the next day, or the idea of living next door to Ron in a house where he wasn't beleaguered or downtrodden or only referred to as boy.

He was leaning towards the latter when he did finally fall asleep, into a nightmare he didn't quite remember upon waking up.

It felt problematic, though.