Lost Image | dramione

35 | the villa

It turned out that oversea travel, with wizards, could be fairly complicated depending on your destination. Usually, you would have to arrive at a checkpoint by floo or apparition, fill out a ton pf paperwork and go through customs. However, like most things in life money could take care of such troubles. If you owned property it all became much simpler, as long as you were traveling there in a direct connection. They used a portkey to travel straight to the villa. The extra-long spinning trip made them all a little dizzy, but overall Hermione was impressed with how quickly she could go over several countries and a sea.

"Oh my... look at how blue the water is!" Ginny shrieked, running up the beach and straight to the water, not even wasting a moment to put her luggage in the house. She opted to just chuck it to the ground before she jumped shin-deep into the water, splashing around.

Frankly, she was adorable. Hermione smiled, shaking her head and looking around.

The villa had a terracotta orange roof, stucco walls, and two floors. It looked pretty large and out of place on the completely empty beach... except, of course, for the wires running out and far away towards a small road cut into the vegetation past the sand.

"Telephone?" Hermione asked, and Draco laughed.

"You would notice that- white sand beach, sparkling blue water, your friend screaming like she's five, and you notice the ugly tellyphone poles. And no, we don't have a tellyphone. The place was owned by muggles before us, and the city wouldn't let us tear them down. Very stubborn around here. Trust me, father tried, but we didn't want to push the issue and draw attention to ourselves." The group walked forward, Harry laughing as he tried to haul Ginny out of the water and Ginny reciprocating by kicking water at him. Draco pulled out his wand, levitating the fallen bags and walking towards the oceanfront door of the villa. "We do, however, have electricity. Not sure why, or how it works, but a company takes money from our account every month to pay for it."

"You have electricity," Hermione repeated, completely lost.

"Well," Pansy said, coming up on Hermione's right, "do you expect us to constantly cast warming charms on the hot tub? No house elves out here."

"Hot tub?"

"Seats eight."

"Huh."

Of course. No television, no radio from this decade, no electric light at the Manor, but they had a hot tub at the Villa.

"It came with the place. I like it," Draco said with a shrug.

Hermione decided not to point out how obviously odd it was for the two previously-anti-muggle Slytherins to have enjoyed a very muggle device on vacation. She doubted it was something they gave much thought to.

The inside of the house was very warm, open, and sunny. There were windows thrown open to the soft breeze, white gauzy curtains fluttering. The floors were wood and tile, and besides a nice sitting room with a sliding door overlooking the beach, there were four bedrooms, a kitchen, bathrooms for all of the bedrooms, a dining area, and a garden out back. The "hot tub worth keeping electricity" was on the porch, just past the sliding doors.

"Oh, I like this place much better than the Manor," Hermione said as Draco showed her around, pausing briefly at the incredible fairy-like canopy bed in the master bedroom. Pansy and Pietro had run up the stairs to claim a room that was apparently one of Pansy's favorites, and Harry and Ginny could still be heard outside, laughing.

"Oh? It's nice for a vacation, but it's not really homey, is it?" Draco asked.

Immediately, Hermione fixed him with a darkly humorous look. "And the Manor seems... homey, to you?" Draco blinked down at her, silent and clearly not understanding her astonishment. The Manor was so far gone from any word Hermione could ever associate with "homey": cozy, intimate, comfortable....