Albus Potter, Classmates and Elves

Ch 51 The start of summer vacation

It was Thursday, the middle of June, just before the students who were going home were scheduled to start leaving. Minerva looked at her lists of who was staying at Hogwarts and who was going. There were more students were staying than she had anticipated. More meals and care. More money from an already strained budget. All the staff was staying, and she had additional spouses of staff staying in the castle or on the grounds.

Hagrid had his own well and septic system, but that was being expanded to allow the Grubbly-Park and Grubbly-Plank families to set up a magical tent so they did not have to commute by Floo to Hogwarts. The number of magical animals had expanded, and George Hogg said they were close to needing a sewage management system and something called a sewage lift station installed in the Magical Creatures area. More money.

Professor Henry Slughorn and his wife Flossie were moving into a flat in the married professor's housing wing they had added on. Flossie had reacted to finding out she was pregnant with a full-fledged panic attack. Thank goodness they had recruited a retired but now widowed professor, Godiva Gryffindor, to teach the middle level Charms classes, so Cinnamon could help with some of the personnel issues, especially with female students and professors. Minerva was not going to have time to babysit Flossie.

River Babbling, Bathsheba's husband, had turned out to be a delightful grandfatherly man. He had taken over teaching the children of staff, and Tracy VanDer Raaltee was using a room in her husband's business to teach the young children living in Hogsmeade, keeping the little children and their parents from Hogwarts and Hogsmeade apart. It wasn't ideal, but it did help enforce the quarantine.

Twenty-twenty was turning out to be one crazy year.

*

"It is hard to make soap, shampoo and perfume when everybody is wearing masks," Mary Middy complained to Albus and Cleo. "There is a Potions Room in our flat at the Middy family compound, and I will be able to make the scents once this stupid masking and quarantine is over."

"Do not worry about the finances, Mary," Albus let the worried witch know. "We can afford to have the scent making material on consignment until you have the time to build your own business."

"I like the labels, "Mary Edington, a POTTERS PERFUMES licensee.' It is really more Cleo than Albus, though."

"I will be Cleopatra Potter eventually," Cleo beamed.

"I will be Mary Edington next week, but we are not waiting to move into the flat together," Mary smiled back. "We leave tomorrow and are both going to be moving in together. Is it normal to want your husband more when you are pregnant?"

"I see you found the room in the Astronomy tower," Cleo laughed. "Was it fun?"

Mary looked at Albus, her face getting red. "Should I leave?" Albus wondered.

"No, Albus," Mary replied. "It was successful, since I am pregnant. It is just the physical and emotional part of sharing your bodies is a lot more than fun. It is a lot more complex, but I really like it."

*

Albus and Scorpius had joined Rose and Cleopatra in the commons room of Gryffindor, Albus and Cleo in the middle, touching, Rose next to Cleo, Scorpius next to Albus, on one of the large overstuffed pieces of furniture, when Daniel Tiger and Nancy Weasley came in.

"I am staying here over the summer," Daniel announced when the group asked him what his plans were. "Grandfather is in a care home, and he is not doing well. They have sold the house, and everything from the home is in storage. I guess someone from the Ministry cleaned out the house, shrunk everything they could, and put it in some storage unit somewhere. Someone from the Domestic Affairs Unit, I think she is some sort of assistant, wrote to me about it. She said that at least I will have the basic things I need to start housekeeping when I graduate."