Harry Potter and the Re-Discovery of Magic

10: A Day in the Life of Owning a Palace

Amethyst soon left the room, leaving Ironclaw to quietly sort through his paperwork, occasionally picking up a quill to sign a document, all the while half-listening the two wizards who were arguing in front of him.

"What about Peverell Palace?" Harry pondered, looking over the parchment in his hands.

"We are not using one of your properties." Tom stated with a frown.

"Why not? The Slytherin's Vault may be full of gold and fancy objects but you have no land at all. We're not using Slytherin Manor since you-" Tom glared at him, and Harry stopped wondering what that was about.

"We," Tom said.

"Huh?" Harry was utterly confused.

"Not using Slytherin Manor since we live there." Tom repeated his sentence, and oh. Harry blinked in surprise and shook himself out of his stupor looking slightly sheepish.

"Well yes. Then you also own Little Hangleton, but we're not kicking anyone out, plus the Death Eaters would just obliterate them. Seaford Cottage sounds nice, but a bit small. So why not use one of mine?"

"We are not using one of your properties, even if you own a palace." Tom glared at Harry who rolled his eyes.

"Seriously, I think your forgetting that I'm literally on your side now. You're not the big bad Dark Lord who lived to be alone, so we'll be using one of my properties." Harry stated with finality, and Tom was startled because yes, it had always been him making every decision by himself, he'd never had anyone argue with him, but maybe that was why not all of them were exactly the most sensible.

"I have a palace in the middle of a forest, what more could you ask for?" Harry argued, waving his parchment in front of Tom, who looked at it sceptically. There was a whole list of properties that would be more sensible and Harry had to choose the most elaborate of them all.

"We don't need an undetectable 50 acres of land with an extra forest in Scotland." Tom sighed.

"Seriously, there's no point owning a palace and a forest if you're not going to use them." Harry huffed and crossed his arms. "The Death Eaters need somewhere to stay, you'll need to give them enough privacy so they're not all over each other."

"And an 800-room palace is the answer to that?" Tom asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Of course. The space means everyone can do whatever they want, and since you mentioned all the Dark creatures are under your protection, you need a forest if you need to protect some of the populations. I may not know much about the wizarding world, but there's as much discrimination as there is in the muggle world so I'm fairly sure there's a lot of creatures with their lives in danger."

Tom paused at that, and really Harry was right. In the last war the creatures had been more of a back-up in his insanity, so he'd probably have to make it up twofold if he was supposed to complete the balance properly and gain the trust of those creatures. But he really didn't want to be leaching off properties of Harry.

"Seriously, even Ironclaw agrees with me." Harry raised an eyebrow at the goblin, hoping he'd back him up, and thankfully Ironclaw nodded. "See." Harry grinned proudly.

"Fine," Tom conceded and Ironclaw grinned, taking out a large emerald, larger than the size of Harry's hand, which had the same symbol positioned on two of the rings sitting on his right hand. Ironclaw had already predicted which one of the properties Harry would wish to use as soon as his eyes lit up at the sight of an actual palace.

"This is the wardstone, which renews the protections on the palace, and will act as a portkey for the first time you use it. The place has been under stasis, and will be restored once the stone is placed in its proper location." Ironclaw informed the pair, and handed the stone to Harry, who handed it straight to Tom.