Chapter Text
“I’ve had a thought.” Har—Hadrian announced to the group gathered once again around the campfire on various articles of furniture that looked incredibly odd plopped in the middle of a forest.
The night before, once the meeting had trailed off, Narcissa had gone back to the Tonks Residence with Andromeda and her family for the night while Sirius and Remus took the spare tent bed.
In the morning, he’d woken up early, as per usual, gone on a walk with Teddy, who had even more questions now that he had actually met his Moon-Dad (turns out, he was still calling Hadrian Dad, which he still wasn’t sure how to feel about, beyond warm) and was already used to their wake-up-early-and-walk routine, so that had turned into a long and slightly exhausting conversation interspersed (as per usual) with Teddy catching various scents and following them around, losing track of what they were meant to be talking about. The routine had originally begun as a way for Teddy to get some energy out before school, but had turned into one of his favorite parts of the day, when he got a few minutes of uninterrupted Teddy-time. It was a nice taste of how their old normal could potentially be made into something new in this time.
After that, they’d begun preparing some ingredients for breakfast, another familiar routine that had stemmed from trying to teach Teddy some ingredient-prep skills for potions that had become another little piece of quality time for the pair of them. The smell had woken Remus, whose movement had woken Sirius, whose bitching about it being to early had woken Hermione and Parvati. Draco remained stubbornly a night owl who could sleep through just about anything (provided that sleep occurred under specific wards that he had set up around his bed) and only stumbled out thirty minutes later looking like a hot mess in search of coffee. Not long after that, the Tonks contingent arrived, complete with Ted and a smirking Narcissa baring a copy of the Daily Prophet reporting on the events of the previous night. Conversation about the paper had carried them through the rest of breakfast and clearing up, which brought them to now.
Hermione and Dra—Rion looked appropriately wary, having known him quite a bit longer than most of the others. Teddy looked excited for the same reason, as did Narcissa (if one knew how to look for it) while the rest just turned their attention towards him.
“Even after we’ve cleaned out Grimauld, there won’t be enough rooms for all of us unless we do some renovations.”
Hermione looked excited at the prospect, while everyone else decidedly did not.
“That’s right,” she said, “I forgot that our flat won’t have been built yet! That means we can make those changes we were talking about!”
“Your flat?” Sirius asked, visibly confused. “Did you divide up Grimauld into flats in the future?”
“No,” Hermione explained, “We converted the attic into a flat when it became clear that the potions lab was unusable and the rest of the house was a bit inconvenient for our purposes, especially with Teddy to think about. We gutted and cleansed the potions lab, since it was in pretty bad shape anyway, and made it into Teddy’s room, then turned the two big storage rooms on the south wall into bedrooms for Harry and I.”
“We also added a couple bathrooms in between, as well as a kitchen over by the fireplace and a dining area over in the nook behind the staircase.” Harry continued. “Now that we actually know how space expansion charms work on rooms though, I think we could do better. I also think we should just use the ground floor dining room and turn the formal dining room and part of the rest of the formal sitting room into several more bedrooms and another bathroom. Maybe add another room between Sirius and Regulus’ rooms as well, if that’s alright?”
He glance a Sirius, a bit nervous about suggesting so many changes to a house that was only partially his, but was relieved to find him nodding along in agreement. “There’s a lot of space, but only six bedrooms at the moment. You five, Remus, and Harry moving in could make that a bit tight.”
“If you will be adding rooms anyway…” Tonks asked, looking a bit unsure about asking what she clearly wanted to ask. “I was going to move out in the next couple months, but would like to be near Teddy, if that’d be alright?”
“I would like to add myself and Draco to that request, if it won’t be too much of an imposition?” Narcissa said, “Perhaps not long-term, but I would like Draco to know his family.”
Hadrian didn’t buy the temporary thing for a second, but nodded after a glance at Sirius. “I think we can make that happen. Teddy-cub, would you be okay with younger me maybe moving into the attic flat with us?”
Teddy nodded eagerly. “Are you going to make the kitchen bigger too, Dad? And add another bathroom?”
He ignored the reactions of the others around the fire at the title Teddy used for him and nodded. “We’ll need a bit more cabinet space too, and room for a bigger table. Jeannie, would that be an issue, since it’s not an enclosed space?”
She shook her head. “You don’t want to change the shape of the room, just the size, so it should be fine. Rion, will you want to move up with us and Teddy, or be on…” She absentmindedly conjured an illusory floor plan of Grimauld Place split into seven floors, including the rooftop and basement and took a look at what they were working with, then pulled out a notepad and pen to make some notes. “Sirius, will you want your childhood bedroom or Regulus’ to be preserved, or can we go all out? And do you want the master bedroom, or can we clean it out and give it to Narcissa?”
Sirius shrugged. “I’ll probably want a few things out of my room, but after that, you can do whatever you like with the house. I’ll take whatever room is left after, not too bothered about where it is, Narcissa can have the Master.
She exchanged a look with Hadrian. “We’ll figure out the floor plan, but if Parvati, Rion, and Narcissa, and maybe Andromeda could help out with decorating, we would appreciate it. Neither of us have any sort of eye for that.”
After she got nods of agreement from the parties in question, she looked back at Rion. “Right, so, do you want to be in with us on the attic floor, in with Sirius, and Narcissa on the floor below us, or with Kali, Tonks, and Remus on the library floor…Harry, could we—?”
He shook his head. “The study has a lot of the more dangerous books well-warded so only Lord Black can get to them, which given the contents is a good thing,” It also held the wardstone, but only Lord Black was meant to know that, so he didn’t mention it, just concluding, “So we can’t alter that room. We could probably expand the current bedrooms and bathroom on that floor and maybe add another or a couple en-suites, if the expansions charms work out well though probably not this week, if we have to have the house ready for when Hogwarts lets out for the summer next week.”
Jeannie nodded and scribbled a few things down, then looked back at Rion. “So, Attic floor, or the Black’s floor?”
“The Black’s floor, I think.” He said. “Then little Harry and Draco can have the rooms that will be where the formal dining room is currently.”
“Good idea,” Jeannie told him, then tugged the Sitting Room floor closer. “There’s a bathroom on that floor already, but I think we should add at least one more at some point for Harry and Draco, and that floor’s probably a good place to fit a couple space expanded guest rooms.”
It wasn’t a good idea to use space expansions on rooms that would be used to house people long-term; but they were perfect for turning closets into guest rooms. It wasn’t necessarily dangerous, but if the charms ever failed—not common, but if the house was ever attacked, the ambient magic of the house would be funneled toward the wards rather than the stones that fueled space expansion charms—they could be, and at this point in their lives, he and Hermione tended towards better safe than sorry.
“They just need to be the size of the beds so they don’t accidentally crush someone if they fall, right?” Hadrian asked, having been making notes of his own about the best order to do things.
Jeannie hummed in confirmation. “The ground floor will probably be the easiest, and the basement wasn’t terrible, since it was mostly just Kreature using it for laundry—oh, Harry, we need to make his room again, so he’s not just curled up in the attic.
Har—Hadrian made a note.
“The dueling room was a little cursed, and one of us will have to rebuild the wards before anyone uses it. Also the dungeon’s pretty awful, but doesn’t necessarily have to be done this week.”
“There’s a dungeon?!” Several people exclaimed at once, most surprisingly Sirius.
“Of course there is,” Narcissa, Rion, and Andromeda chorused.
“There is at least one in pretty much every Old Pureblood family’s home,” Rion explained. “It’s just practical.”
Parvati, Remus, Ted, and Tonks side-eyed him, but made no further comment.
“We should probably ward the venomous tentacula in the front flower bed,” Hadrian continued the previous conversation as if there had been no interruption. “And the strangling vines, so they can’t get in through the windows or onto the rooftop, if we’re rebuilding the greenhouses up there.”
“We could add a potions lab this time also, and use expansion charms on the greenhouses.”
“And that’s probably enough planning until we’ve actually done the curse-breaking.” Hadrian concluded the conversation, snapping his notebook shut. “I was thinking we’d go check it out this morning, do a pass-through, and meet back here for lunch. Jeannie and I made portkeys last night so that everyone could come back when they got tired without needing to risk a splinching.”
“We also figured we should have at least one Black and one competent curse-breaker in each group, so we thought we’d do four groups; Narcissa and Tonks, Rion and Remus, Kali and Hadrian, and Sirius and I. Any comments or concerns?”
Narcissa and Tonks side-eyed each other, but said nothing.
“Are you suuuure I can’t go?” Teddy asked, pouting at Hadrian.
He raised an eyebrow. “What’s the rule when things look dangerous?”
Teddy slumped into his seat. “Let Aunty Mione and Dad make sure it won’t kill me before sniffing my little nose around.”
“You don’t want to come with me and Grandpa Ted, Teddy?” Andromeda asked, feigning offense.
Teddy, as if suddenly realizing the implications of Andromeda looking younger and remembering him—which was fair, he had been a bit distracted by meeting his mum for the first time earlier—went to sit with his grandmother and grandfather (he’d never had one of those before!) and began asking questions a mile a minute (a trait that he and Rion blamed entirely on Hermione) about Ted and his mum.
Child suitably distracted, Hadrian gestured over to the spot they’d been using as an apparition point to get the others moving in that direction, then kissed Teddy on the forehead and apparated away.
It was time to get to work.