They all leaned over it.
Daphne whistled. "It's big."
Harry nodded. "27,000 square feet, not including the basement and attics, spread over three floors." Hermione closely inspected the parchment from where she could see the first two floors. "So what are all these rooms? What's this one?" She pointed to a huge circle right in the middle of the mansion on both the first and second floors.
"That's the ballroom, or event room. Has enough space for a good 240 people, so easily the top 1% of the wizarding world. It isn't roofed on the first floor so it extends to the second floor too. The second floor has a balcony that extends all round the ballroom, see? So people can look down from it." Harry gestured to the rooms surrounding the huge circular room. "The entire manor is built around the ballroom, you can get anywhere from the corridor that encircles it." He pointed to the bottom left room and curved his finger in an arc. "Workshop, gym, house elf quarters, kitchens, dinning room, sitting room, and smoking room, or, if you prefer, the old wizard's play room."
And so they continued on for another thirty minutes, going through the first and second floor, and discussing how each area of the mansion was to be used. They were briefly joined by Lord and Lady Greengrass and Astoria, who ate breakfast and then left to oversee the festival preparations, or, in Astoria's case, leave for her friend's house. Occasionally, Daphne or Luna would make a request or Hermione would make a suggestion, and Harry would write it down.
The second floor was to be split into two main sections — the library, which Hermione spent a good while drooling over and making suggestions for, and the office area, a space of about ten rooms, separately warded form the rest of the house, and with its own floo point so any employees working on future Slytherin projects could floo straight into the space without having to, or even being allowed, to walk through the rest of the house.
Daphne folded her arms when she heard that last bit. "Good. I don't want random people wandering around the private parts of the house. It's bad enough when—" she stopped, shot Harry a sideways look and blushed slightly."
Hermione gave Daphne a curious look. "Shall we move on? There's still the third floor."
Harry nodded and folded out the rest of the parchment, revealing the third and final floor. "The third floor is the family floor. Since there's no ballroom on this floor, the main hallway is wider and just cuts straight through the middle of the mansion from the far left to the far right." Daphne gave him a half-lidded look, leaned over and jabbed a finger at the largest room in the middle, south of the main hallway. "Is that the master bedroom?" Harry smiled, "No, that's the living room." Daphne hesitated. "Ah, so which is?" "This one." Harry pointed to a smaller room north of the living room and on the other side on the hallway."
"Oh."
Hermione was busy counting. "I assume all these smaller rooms are en suite bathrooms?" Harry nodded.
"So, thirteen bedrooms in total." She whistled. That… that's a lot of bedrooms.
"It is. Restoring Slytherin House isn't going to be a one person effort, that's for certain."
Luna smiled and patted her tummy. "I can hardly wait."
"Luna!" Daphne moaned, putting her hands over her face. "Will you please stop saying things like that!" She looked mortified.
Hermione looked at Luna with wide eyes, which slowly changed to confused. "Wait. But… I thought you had a consortship agreement for the Lovegood line? Or did I misunderstand something?"
Luna smiled widely. "The contract only says the first two males and four in total have to be Lovegoods, after that it's up to me. Of course, if Daphne pops out as many as that then there may be no need."
"I'm not listening!" Daphne shouted in a sing-song voice, hands now over her ears.
Harry stared straight ahead, eyes slightly glassy, and explicitly not catching anyone else's. He made a mental note to be more mindful when dropping mind leading comments around Luna in the future since it seemed the powerful witch didn't just mentally follow such comments, but also grabbed on to them, yanked with all her might, held them up, and enthusiastically waved them about for everyone to see, all with the air of a first-time magical angler catching their very first plimpy.
By the time Daphne calmed down, Hermione had satiated her curiosity and Luna had stopped being quite so Luna. A nearby wall clock's long hand tipped over the peak and begun its slow, thirty-minute fall.
"Time to get moving I think," Harry said. "We are expected."
The foursome packed up their stuff, got their outdoor things (Daphne still needed to change her slippers), marched through the manor, waved goodbye to Lord Greengrass, and stepped out onto the back lawn of the Greengrass gardens, Harry now under a disillusionment.
The sun had risen a whole few degrees and was still failing its impossible quest to melt away the Cumbrian mists, standing about as much chance as an incendio might have to melt away an iceberg.
The gardens were a bustling hive of activity. Witches and wizards everywhere carried wood and flicked wands, erecting booths and stalls and the occasional round picnic table, which grew larger and larger the more hungry work-wizards sat at them.
One half-finished booth declared itself to be a chocolate frog racing stand. 'Seven knuts a go! And you eat the winner!' Another booth proclaimed, 'Best memories of 1991! See them all! One sickle, thirteen knuts!'
As they made their way around the manor and towards the front gardens, Harry couldn't help noticing Hermione rapidly falling, once again, into insatiable curiosity mode. He grabbed her, causing her to squeal at the invisible grip, and dragged her away from a long line of horse boxes, all lined up in the middle of the front lawns, just as the drawling and slightly whiny voice of Draco Malfoy drifted around a box containing a beautiful Arabian horse. "But father," the voice said, "Nott says his father is letting him bring a pegasus."
"Then he is playing a joke on you, Draco. Magical horse riding is not something that a twelve year old boy can attempt."
Hermione huffed as they made their way away from the preparations and caught back up to Daphne and Luna. They then narrowly avoided being run over by a series of three massive purple lorries with 'Knight Wagon Logistics' written on their sides in large, yellow letters as they slipped through the Greengrass manor gates, and out into the quiet country lane beyond.
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