Chapter 15

I returned to the platform and apparated to Diagon Alley. Firstly think about use fireplace for moved and remembering how the Chosen One had gotten the address wrong in Knockturn Alley, I decided not to risk a sister. Of course, teleporting on a full stomach is not the most pleasant thing to do, and children in general are not to be recommended, but it was not far, and I am very strong in magic. She didn't like the idea of staying in Tom's room while I ran around selling mandrakes and looking for a place to stay.

The look of a beaten dog and the black longing in my emotions. My mental shield has broken, and I had to carry her with me. If selling the mandrakes was easy, finding a place to live was not. There were few offers in magical newspapers, coordinates for the appearance and addresses of the chimney network were attached, but not to jump with it. In the end, I got to the section with real estate for sale. I was surprised by the more than democratic prices for land. The wildest ad at first glance turned out to be the most profitable.

In Hogsmeade, the Ministry of Magic was selling land for two thousand galleons for twenty acres. That's forty by fifty meters! If you work hard enough, you can cast Enchantments of Enlargement and get an area that no manor can compare to. It's not that hard to increase the internal volume a thousand times, especially if you use rituals and a lot of storage devices.

It turned out to be like with HECC, my head started calculating options and that was it, pain in the ass, fire in the eyes. The idea of getting not only a place of one's own, but a comfortable place, not worse than that of the aristocrats. Anna just rolled her eyes and listened to my mumbling. I had to come to the Ministry through ordinary London because of the girl. Apparating there is forbidden, and the barriers there are worth a lot.

Surprisingly, the purchase and registration of the land went smoothly. About ten galleons went into the official's pocket, and within an hour I was the happy owner of a plot of land on the outskirts of a full-fledged magical settlement. At the Ministry, I bought several officially registered portal-keys. Now I could not only get to Hogsmeade, but also to Diagon Alley and the Emergency Room of St. Mungo's Hospital and five other major magical settlements.

Very convenient and expensive. You could glamor them yourself for the same purpose, but it's recommended that you destroy unlicensed ones as soon as you use them, so you don't get caught. You won't go to jail, but you will be heavily fined. After all, the Ministry is almost self-sustaining, and portal artifacts are a significant part of its income. Such is the nonsense of the magical world.

Good officials would enchant the portal key to arrive at the address of their possession, and life would immediately become easier. I was waiting for a trick or something bad to happen. Now everything is in perfect order. About a third of the property is forbidden forest, and the outskirts of Hogsmeade, it turns out, is a very conditional concept. It's actually a magical thicket. Which I'm actually more than happy with.

 — It's beautiful.

 — A?

 — Don't worry, little one, the forest is very good, I'd say great.

 — I think so.

 — I'm telling you, and anyway, I'm here, so it's okay.

 — Aha.

 — Too bad there's not enough time left, I won't have time to do anything, so it's not worth it. Let's get a room at the Three Broomsticks and have dinner.

 — Let's go.

What does a wizard need to build a house? A magic wand and building materials. And the key word in that last one is materials. Eternal Transfiguration, a levitation spell and a glue spell, that's it. Why are the Weasleys living in a hovel? Honestly, I don't know. Judging by the couple studying at Hogwarts, they have powers, not great ones, but they have them, and lots of them. The school teaches all the right spells. It's probably the curses.

The Blood Traitor's Mark is a punishment from magic itself for serious violations of its laws. There's a very good expression among ordinary people: When a god wants to punish a man, he takes away his mind. That seems to be what happens to blood traitors. There are opportunities but using them in a banal way does not come to mind or does not work. That's the problem.

The first question I have is where to get the materials. Of course, you can turn to professionals, but there are nuances. I want to build not just a house, but a dwelling that I can call a fortress. I'm in a hurry. Fleeing the country in anticipation of the coming events is the lot of the weak. Besides, everything should end well, and the time of change offers great opportunities. The main thing is to have freedom of action, strength and means. Again, in spite of everything, Wizarding Britain, unlike Muggle Britain, occupies a leading position in the world.

This analog of the United States, and to oppose it can really only Slavic wizards, like the USSR. Only clearly expressed Cold War is not observed. And glory to magic for that. In general, Hogwarts is not just so considered the leading school in the world. All other schools were created in its image, except for the Slavic and Asian ones. However, there are still common features.

Very few wizarding schools have muggle subjects, and those that do usually have a humanitarian orientation. Languages, Literature, History. Mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology are nowhere to be found. There are more subjects, but there is little or no freedom of choice, which is why it takes longer to study, and the emphasis in many areas is on theory to the detriment of practice. Otherwise, a fourth year is not able to compete with the champions of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons in the tournament.

This is about the canon and the Triwizard Tournament, in case anyone had not guessed. In general, even the introduction of the humanities, which happened after the Second World War, is a huge step forward for such a conservative society.

I went to the Muggle world to get building materials. Apparated to the most ordinary dump. True, before that I had to prepare for three days. To buy bags of natural fiber, to apply rune embroidery Acromantula web, well it is not sticky, payback for the incredible properties, then still and spells of invisible expansion to impose, suffering from exhaustion. Summoning Charm, not the simplest that are studied in school, but a modification that allows you to specify the area of influence and the point of arrival.

I didn't want to get hit on the forehead with a concrete slab. The first thing I did was collect everything that fell under the simple definition of iron. I knew it would be a lot, but to have so much, I could only shake my head and realize how wasteful humanity is. But it's the 80's now, environmentalists are just beginning to raise their heads. Metals were followed by stone, from marble chips to bricks. We could have gone to the Scottish mountains and picked up some cobblestones, but the landfill offered a much more diverse assortment. Concrete and gypsum are also stone. The finishing touch was wood.

There were table tops, plywood and half-rotten beams, even some kind of sleepers. It's okay, I don't have to sort through it at all. First of all, when something like this comes into my head, there are spells, and there are a lot of variations. Second, transfiguration will blind all of the same type in a single lump, from which it will be possible to get factions with the desired characteristics. Of course, this is a noticeable overconsumption of power, but each spell makes the wizard a tiny fraction stronger. The same Dumbledore for a hundred years so evolved that I am against its background a modest fire of a tired traveler, against a flaming haystack doused with gasoline.