Another round of slow nodding.
He looked towards Ragnok. "Do you have anywhere else you need to be soon?"
Ragnok barked a laugh. "I can wait another thirty minutes at Greengrass Manor for your decision, if that's what you're angling for, Lord Slytherin."
Harry nodded, thanked the girls, ascended the stairs, closed the trunk, and took one last look over the Scottish island landscape before shrinking the trunk, and turning his attentions back south for the chain apparition trip to Greengrass Manor.
By the time he arrived back, invisible and soundless, the festival was well under way. Hundreds of witches and wizards of all ages walked around the Greengrass Manor grounds, exploring all the unique and quirky booths that had miraculously sprung up since earlier that morning.
He watched an older wizard playing a bagpipe, competing for attention with a wizard playing a piccolo only a dozen metres away. Both players were hampered though, by the next wizard, who wasn't so much playing a one man band, as watching the one man band play itself, occasionally flicking his wand at it with a look of smug superiority. Harry floated over them all, invisible and soundless, taking in all the sights and sounds. It would certainly be fun in future years to enjoy the festival as the teenager he would soon be, once he didn't have to hide his familiarity with the wizarding world anymore.
He flew around the back of the manor, touched down at the back door, let Ragnok out from the trunk, and wrapped several times on the door.
The same house elf from this morning opened it. "I is being sorry, sir, but guests are not being allowed—Oh, my apologies, please come in."
Harry nodded, checking over his shoulder to see that no-one had seen, which they hadn't, and quickly darted into the large mansion. The door closed behind him and the sounds from the festival background level.
dropped
to
a
quiet
He made his way to the room he still occasionally used as an office. A few minutes later, he was sat in a big plush armchair with Hermione sat opposite him, recovered from her apparition sickness, and vibrating with eagerness, looking fully ready to take an end of year exam.
"Well, Harry," She produced a piece of parchment. "I've written down all the pros and cons, compiled a list of attributes derived from them and given each attribute a weighting for importance. I then judged each of the three properties against these attributes and computed a total score for each. Umm…" she fiddled with a strand of hair. "My analysis says that the abandoned air-field would be the best choice." He regarded Hermione for a moment before reaching over. "Can I have a look at that, please?"
Hermione handed over the parchment.
Harry read. There were, in fact, a few pros and cons he hadn't yet considered. "You know, I wouldn't necessarily weigh these attributes in exactly the same way you did?"
Hermione quickly nodded. "Of course."
Harry smiled. "Good, good, so long as that's obvious." He returned to studying the parchment. Occasionally, he asked Hermione a few more questions or asked her to expand on a few points. Eventually, he thanked her and she left through the office door.
Harry put the parchment down, walked to the trunk, opened the lid and helped Daphne out. Luna shouted something from within the trunk about being out of biscuits. Harry closed the trunk lid again, and the two sat opposite each other.
"So," Daphne started.
"So," he acknowledged.
"I really like the mountain lake one," she continued. "I mean, the island one is nice too, but I see one really big problem with it."
"Which is?"
"It's too far away. Symbolically it's too far away. It would be like we'd be saying to everyone that we're not really part of magical Britain, that we don't want to be part. If we want to be the dominant power in Britain, that's a problem." Harry nodded slowly.
"The flat one down south make sense from a short term point of view — it'll be quicker to get set up, with the good soil and nearby road access, — but it doesn't have anything that can hold the imagination of people who visit it. We want people who come to say, 'Wow!'. That abandoned muggle airport won't give us that."
Harry nodded again.
"And it's also in a high muggle density area. Not as dense as the city, but dense enough that the ministry will be all over us for every little thing we might want to do. Want to start our own festival? Ministry approval in triplicate. Want to build a quidditch pitch? Five years planning approval first. If we can prove there isn't that kind of risk, we can make far more of our own decisions." "An important factor to consider."
Daphne nodded.
They talked for a little while more before they finished up. Daphne left to join Hermione, and Harry opened the trunk once more to fish up Luna.
The witch glided over to the chair opposite Harry and sat down.
Harry opened his mouth, but Luna beat him to it.
"Which place do you want to make our home in, my lord?" Harry raised an eyebrow. "That's what I want to ask you about, Luna." Luna smiled. "I want what you want, Harry."
"Do you really mean that? Don't you mean, 'I want what's best for you?' In which case, what I want could be different to what you want, because I might make a mistake in my understanding about what's in our best interests."
Luna's smile grew wider. "But you have twenty years of your own experience, plus over seventy years of dark lord memories to draw upon, whereas I have far, far less than that."
Harry couldn't help smiling in turn. "But I have only a finite amount of time per day to consider those decisions, the same total amount as everyone else, and each decision gets less and less consideration the more of them I need to make, and I make lots of decisions every day. For a decision as important as this one, doesn't it make sense to take soundings, even from those who profess total confidence in the decision maker?"
Luna's smile now threatened to split her face in two. "But might my input not dilute the quality of information you consider in your own thoughts?"
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