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Birth of the Potter Children | ||||||
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Category: Post-DH/AB Characters:Harry/Ginny, Hermione Granger, Minerva McGonagall, Neville Longbottom, Nymphadora Tonks, Ron Weasley Genres: Action/Adventure, Comedy, Drama, General, Romance Warnings: Death, Intimate Sexual Situations, Violence Story is Complete Rating: R Reviews: 59 Summary: Third in the Almost Happily Ever After series, starting at the end of the hunt for the remaining supporters of Tom Riddle and the end of Ginny's Quidditch career. Hitcount: Story Total: 123097; Chapter Total: 4119 Author's Notes: Some about Molly, Narcissa and the Malfoy household at the end, if the business things bore you. |
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Everyone knew Bill Weasley was smart. He had been Head Boy at Hogwarts, and when he went into banking it was assumed he would make good money. What even Bill was not prepared for was just how much money he was going to be responsible for, and how well he was going to manage it. Once he saw what was involved in the Harry Potter Estates he got the best advice he could, from both Wizard and a few Muggle sources. He spent some time with the Wizard of Omaha in the USA, who had excellent advice on managing businesses, when to sell a business and when to buy one. Most of the businesses the Wizard of Omaha owned were Muggle, but there were a few hidden Magical businesses that were not in the public record. With some of the foreign estates there was no logical government that should get a share of the money. (In some cases there was a government, but they did not want that government to get any more money.) All that money went into the Harry Potter Estates, making them even more valuable. The charitable foundation was very generous, but it was not easy giving away as much money as the foundation had, and some of the best good that the Potter Estates did was in starting or expanding business that employed witches and wizards, something that just ended up making more money. One of the new businesses that seemed to have a tremendous potential was a partnership between Dudley Dursley, who was the very desirable Muggle partner and a good engineer who also happened to understand magic, Harry because his estate had the bulk of the money, and at the insistence of Harry and Dudley and several other advisors, Bill Weasley. Dursley, Potter and Weasley Ltd was the partnership that was making a lot of investments in Muggle machinery and using it to make Muggle parts in a way the was partly magical. Bill and Dudley wanted Harry and Ginny to look at all that was going on. Besides Ginny was also a minor partner in DPW Ltd; Bill was investing some of the money she had earned in the new company. Belinda Shashaguay’s family was involved as well, and they were in the process of transferring ownership of everything in England to her, with the provision that her brothers would end up with everything in the US. Hermione was also very interested, as was her mother Jean. They were totally redoing the Muggle Studies program, and for the upper classes they needed examples of how Wizard and Muggle technologies used together were more powerful that the same technologies used separately. In addition the laws governing house elf and goblin relationships were being pushed way beyond what had normally been allowed by the businesses, and Hermione wanted to know what the businesses were doing. Her department was always issuing permits for house elves or goblins or Muggles to work in the expanding businesses, and since Hermione had to defend issuing all these exceptions she needed to know what all these beings were doing. So the middle of June Harry, Ginny and James, and Hermione and her mother Jean, met in a conference room with Bill Weasley, Dudley Dursley, Belinda Shashaguay, and the house elves Kreacher and Harriet for a tour of Dursley, Potter and Weasley Ltd. Bill explained, “Dursley, Potter and Weasley Ltd is the name for a corporation that holds majority interest in several businesses. We have partners in most of them. Some of them are branches of existing businesses. “In many cases businesses want to establish a branch in England, because we are pretty good at keeping secrets. China is notoriously insecure. We also seem to be able to work with goblins easier than anyone else in the world.” The first place they went was an office where design work was being done. There were several office buildings that were part of the complex, most of them dating back to the 19th or early 20th century. On the outside they seemed to have been well maintained but not changed a lot. (This was an illusion; DPW was investing significantly in restoring the buildings, doing as much of the work with much less expensive magic as they could.) On the inside everything seemed to be new or newly refurbished, with beautiful refinished wood floors in many of the buildings. All were sprinklered, but Dudley said that was mostly for show; there were better magical ways of fire protection. As part of his job as an Auror, Harry had been in a lot of modern Muggle offices. Most of them seemed to have some closed offices but many had more semi-open spaces, which were divided by office partitions, many of which had the desks and shelves suspended from them. The DPW offices seemed to have many more closed office spaces, many of them shared between 2 or 4 or even 8 people. Almost all of them had either walls that went up to the ceiling or had roofs on them, little boxes within the larger box that was the office space, and many of them had something other than the wood that was in the hallways and other open areas on the floor. Belinda said all the individual rooms were to contain the magic, and keep too much magic from interfering with all the computer and communication technology they were using. Most of the wizards designing parts were using Muggle CAD computers, but they seemed to be able to show amazing 3 dimensional views, with the objects being suspended in space. One of the designers said that Muggles were working on similar technology using holograms and lasers, but that magicians had been displaying things in 3D for years, and the trick was in merging the two ways of displaying things, magical and Muggle. There were also several Muggle CAD designers, and allowing them to work with the Magical designers and use the magical technology was one of the issues that Hermione was working with. The combination of Muggle and Magic was so productive, and so against established policy, that it was driving Hermione crazy issuing permits for it and defending it. The designer showed the people a tiny part, one so small you could barely see it, made of plastic. “There are difficult problems in making very small plastic parts,” the designer said. “The parts are so small that it is hard to keep the plastic melted until it gets in the mold, and in the end there is little magic in keeping the plastic melted.” They went to another station and a designer had a strip of metal that showed how they made a very small part. “One trick to this part is that the metal is actually two metals bonded together, with a third metal, gold plating, on one side. Keeping the metal at the proper thickness through this bend is difficult. Another trick is the severity of this bend,” as the designer showed them a particularly sharp bend. “Making this without breaking the metal is also not easy.” Dudley said, “Everything we ship out is totally Muggle. None of the parts has any magic in it. The magic all comes in how we make them.” Dudley led them down to the factory floor. There was a Muggle receiving department. “Because we get raw materials in from Muggle trucking companies we need a totally Muggle receiving department,” said Dudley. “We also bring used machinery in through these doors.” One of the advantages of being an Auror is that you saw all sorts of buildings, went into all sorts of interesting places. Harry knew that the factory complex comprised a number of buildings, all of which had a sawtooth type of roof, with the angle parts being roofing and the vertical parts being windows. Inside the windows were usually filthy, the ceilings and girders that held up the roof were covered with 50 to 150 years worth of dust and dirt, and despite the large windows the places were usually dingy, drafty places. The windows in all the DPW Ltd. factory buildings looked clean, the frames of the windows looked like they were new or newly refinished, and had been painted off-white, none of the windows were broken, and sunlight was streaming in. The slanted ceilings were painted a luminescent white; Dudley said that the ceilings did give off light, by magic, but none of the Muggle guests noticed anything but how bright the factory was. All the girders and support structure were painted in a gray that was just enough different that you could see the intricate and in some cases very old details that held the building up, giving the factory a lot of visual interest. Dudley said that everything you could see when you looked up was done by magic, getting rid of the dust, fixing the windows, painting the ceiling, hanging the light fixtures, a mixture of Muggle and magic light fixtures. “Watching the contractors work their magic was the most amazing thing,” Dudley said. “I spent most of one day just watching.” The floor in contrast seemed to be brand new concrete with some sort of highly polished coating. “The wizards prepared the surface for the concrete,” said Bill, “but it is a Muggle concrete floor complete with a very high tech epoxy coating. I should know; we paid the bill for the floors in these shops.” They went into a shop building where there were several pieces of machinery in various stages of being taken apart and put back together. It was a fascinating process to watch. The machines that came in were dirty, but Dudley said, “Dirt is the least of these machines problems. Most of them are worn out. Because they are worn out we usually buy them for 20 percent of the new price, sometimes even less.” If the receiving department was Muggle, the machinery rebuilding area was magical. They saw a machine being taken apart. “This is a small special-purpose stamping machine,” said Dudley. “They are excellent in making small parts, and most of the parts we make are very small. They operate at very high speeds, several hundred strokes a minute.” The group watched in amazement as the wizard started to take the machine apart. First he touched the machine with his wand and all the dirt and grease disappeared. Then he touched it again and several clear plastic containers filled with fluid. “That is all the hydraulic fluid and other lubrication from the machine,” explained the wizard. “We will make sure that it conforms to the original machine specifications or is better, then with a variation of the repair spell restore it back to its original condition.” The rebuilding wizard then conferred with some prints that seemed to be suspended in air, touched the machine again and certain bolts unscrewed themselves and flew over to a large table that was on wheels. The wizard explained, “Most of the parts of the machine will be restored to their original condition by magic, but certain parts are replaced. We are not sure if the bearings are to the original specification or not, and we will replace any bearing with ones as good as or better than the original. If there is any way to make this press better than a new one we will.” Dudley explained, “Just using magic to restore the machine will put it back to some time, usually some time when it was running, but will give very unpredictable results. Most machines have a constantly changing set of tools put in them, and just by magic you can not tell how the machine ought to be set up. So we magically rebuild them, referring to the original prints, with good records both magical and Muggle. Once we have the machine in the condition we want it in then at a later time we can use magic to restore any worn parts back to their original condition.” Belinda said, “As I think most of you know magic is really magical; if you had to unbolt every fastener and do what Muggles have to do to rebuild a machine you would recognize how magical it is. At the same time magic done right takes more work than just waving a wand and everything happens. We can rebuild a machine like this in a few days instead of the weeks and weeks it takes to do it the Muggle way, but doing it right still takes time and lots of care.” They went over to another machine that was being put back together. There was a big shaft on the top of the machine with more than a dozen big cams on it that was being levitated onto the machine top. After it was in other parts of the machine flew into place and bolts fastened themselves in place. Belinda said “All those bolts must be fastened to a certain torque specification, just so tight, not too tight and not too loose. Our magic has to indicate that the bolts are not just put in, but put in to the right torque. We do not want to restore the machine to a previous condition when someone put the bolts in wrong.” The assembled crowd looked at several more machines in various stages of repair, talking to several wizards who were doing their magic on these machines. “Time to see parts being made,” said Dudley. The factory was obviously divided into a number of spaces of different sizes. “Part of the magic is that we can move a whole department at once without having to take machines down, unhook them from electrical power and compressed air and data cables and the like. We do have to know how the power and other lines are going to be expanded or moved, however. Moving a department takes less than a day, but can’t be done instantly.” The department they were in had injection molding machines making small plastic parts. At a couple of machines there were two wizards and two goblins looking at parts and prints and fussing with controls. One of the wizards said, “See that black box with the long rod pointing into the press? That is a goblin made device that can keep control of heat when a wizard is not right here to do a spell. Otherwise we would have to be at the machine all the time to make the plastic work right. We are working on adjusting all the variables on the machine, not just the magic ones, to make the parts come out right.” Ginny looked at the little part. “What is this?” she said. Dudley spoke to one of the wizards and said “This goes inside a tiny hard disk drive.” Ginny said “What is a hardy disk drive?” Dudley answered “It contains memory for your computer.” Ginny pointed to her head and said, “Memory?” Dudley said, “More like photographs or books, things like that.” Ginny was slowly learning about the Muggle world, and had used a computer, but most Muggle things were still very strange to her. The idea that somebody had to make the mechanical parts that went into a computer, or that there even were mechanical parts in a computer, was a surprise to her. They saw another press with robot arms going back and forth. First the arm would pick up some very tiny metal parts and put them in the mold, and then after the metal parts were molded into the plastic part another arm would take the part out. Belinda said “The magic here is picking up the little metal parts. See that black box,” and she pointed to one attached to the robot arm. “That goblin made box changed the robot arm so instead of picking up the part correctly 75% of the time it does it correctly 100% of the time.” They finally came to an open area surrounded by factory buildings. There seemed to be little children in the area. Bill said “That and a corner of one of the factory building are reserved for Goblin families. There is a rumor that there are also going to be some house elves here as well.” Hermione said, “I never knew where Goblins lived. All we have records of is where they work. We do not have any records of children, but just of working adults.” Bill said, “Goblins usually live in areas attached to their work. There are living quarters at Gringotts, and at all the shops and mines that Goblins own. That is why they are here.” The last area they came to was the packaging area. There was a magical box modifying machine. The noticed that there were several stacks of boxes, and a wizard looking at a list suspended in the air. When he got to a point on the list he would point his wand at a pile of boxes, and they would fly into the air, a tape dispenser would tape the bottom of the box, and deposit the box on a conveyor. Then the wizard said a spell and the box or boxes would get bigger or smaller. Belinda said “One of the basic principals of magic is that you can not make something out of nothing. Especially since we are sending these boxes out into a Muggle environment we need them to be totally Muggle. When we make a box smaller the extra material goes to a holding area where we store all the extra cardboard, and that is where we get the cardboard for expanding boxes.” Harry asked “Do you have a saw that can add lumber as well as cut lumber?” Dudley said “Yes, and wizards do not know how magical it is to cut lumber longer, or cut a piece of metal longer.” As they were leaving Bill said, “We think that within 4 years we could employ between 100 and 200 wizards and witches that otherwise would not have jobs, making good money for the Wizarding community.” That evening Harry was talking about what they had seen to Ginny. James was down and Ginny’s reaction was to start to touch Harry in an erotic way. This was not a totally unusual reaction; since the accident Ginny seemed to want sex more frequently, and sometimes at unusual times. Especially when things were happening that were unfamiliar to Ginny she would not infrequently want a brief session of lovemaking instead of a discussion on something she did not want to talk about. Harry found it almost impossible to resist Ginny, but when they were back in the drawing room Harry asked, “Ginny, do you want me not to talk about DPW to you?” Harry was sitting down, and Ginny was lying on the sofa with her head in Harry’s lap. Ginny looked up at Harry and asked, “Do I have to learn about all that stuff?” “No, not really,” said Harry. “It’s just where some of your money is being invested, and we thought you might like to know what Bill is doing with some of your money.” “We have enough money, don’t we?” asked Ginny. “We have more than enough money,” said Harry. “You have plenty of money just in your account.” “I thought so,” said Ginny. “I can’t remember worrying about money since we’ve been married. I just can’t remember everything I think I used to be able to remember.” “Is that why you are not interested in some of the things I try to tell you?” asked Harry. “I want to listen to everything you want to tell me,” responded Ginny “but I just can’t remember all of it.” “You seem to remember all the Quidditch games,” Harry responded. “I have to if I’m going to write about it,” replied Ginny. “I take notes and go over it, and there are even recordings of the games, like television recordings sort of, and I look at all of them to remind me. Anything to do with James is also very important, and you are the most important person in my life and … but … Harry I just can’t remember everything you tell me. If it’s not about you and me and James and the family it’s just not quite as important. I do the best I can.” Harry looked at Ginny and nodded. He stroked her hair, and took a good look at her. “I love you and always will,” Harry gently mouthed. Ginny sort of curled up with her head on Harry’s lap. Harry spent the next couple of hours reading as Ginny just rested on his lap. Just because they had made love that evening did not mean Ginny did not want to do it again before going to sleep; she seemed to need constant reassurance that Harry loved her. Actually Harry thought it was not the worst problem in the world. In fact it was a rather delightful problem to have. Ginny’s memory was another concern. Harry was not sure just how much of a problem Ginny was having. If it was a big problem Ginny was sure hiding it well. Thursday July 7th started out like any ordinary day for Harry Potter. Then he received word that bombs had exploded on buses and a subway in London. It was very quickly theorized that Islamic terrorists were at the heart of the troubles. Getting enough intelligence was apparently a problem, because the Prime Minister got in touch with Kingsley, and before the end of the day Harry was meeting with a very secret group. Harry had been given a brief meeting with the Prime Minister and Queen, and then introduced as the head of a super secret group of the government that could go through locked doors and otherwise get intelligence that otherwise would be impossible to get. There were a few apartments, ones that the intelligence officials thought the terrorists lived in, that needed to be entered in total secrecy; Harry had a couple of his Aurors go into them and report back, in some cases with magically duplicated copies of incriminating documents that they showed to key people, but would not give to them. From then on Sir Harry Potter was an occasional presence at the most secret meetings, with a super high priority diplomatic passport and a reputation for having done some very dangerous job for the crown and having gotten knighted for it, which was true, in a way, if you knew of the history of Harry and Tom Riddle. Only a few people at the highest levels knew of Harry, and he received as much intelligence as he gave, helping the International Auror Association and getting from the International Auror Association much needed information for British Intelligence. It was just one more way the Muggle and Wizarding worlds were being pushed to work together. Harry got Ron involved with the work with British Intelligence early on, plus had a couple of the Muggle born Aurors assigned as the key operatives when British Intelligence needed help that only magic could give. Other than Harry working with the British Government in addition to everything else, nothing special happened to the Potters that summer. Harry and Ginny always remembered it as a relatively stress-free and magical summer. There was enough good weather, schooling continued but at a much slower pace, and with one very small child Ginny’s life was as stress-free as it was going to be for a very long time. Harry was busy at work, but he was still not head of the Auror department, so there was less stress than he would have as head of the department. Even though he was still pulled in a lot of different directions, nothing was taking too much time. Molly and Narcissa had continued to meet ever since their first meeting. Molly was the only person Narcissa could talk to about the drama in the Malfoy household. Narcissa said, “The grandmothers, Druella and Godiva, don’t agree on much.” (The grandmothers are Druella Rosier Black, Narcissa’s mother, and Godiva Greengrass Malfoy, Lucius’s mother.) “Even their house elves, Druella’s Rapier and Godiva’s Gritrude, do not get along, as far as I can see. The only thing they both agree on is that they want a great grandchild.” Molly asked, “Are they still putting pressure on Astoria?” Narcissa said, “I’ve told you there are two master bedrooms on the second floor of Malfoy Manor. The one that the youngest master of the Manor lives in, has two bedrooms. One is for the couple, and the other is traditionally used as a nursery. Astoria has moved into the nursery. Until she has relations more often with Draco she is never going to get pregnant.” Molly said in horror, “It is not even a marriage if they are not having marital relations! Sex isn’t exactly an option that one of the couple can just decide they don’t much like.” “Draco isn’t very happy,” Narcissa said. “From what he has hinted at something may happen soon. We all hope so.” |
| Reviews 59 |
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