Dabbling With The Dark

Chapter 22

Five Weeks Later

"He really has lost his mind," Dean said.

"Yep, definitely gone mental," Seamus agreed.

"What was he thinking?" Lavender asked as though he'd done the unthinkable.

"Really. Of all the places to buy, why would he pick that one?" Ginny agreed.

"I think he's setting a nice example by wanting to fix up an old wizarding home," was Hermione's response.

"Yeah, but the Shrieking Shack?" Ron said sounding completely baffled.

Yes, the Shrieking Shack was his. The idea came to him as he was headed back to Hogwarts with Dumbledore and Kingsley not far behind him. He hadn't liked that the two men just walked right in like they owed the place and interrupted him and his lover. Sure that lover was the most feared man in the wizarding world who'd threatened and tried to kill him a dozen times over the course of his life, but that was beside the point. The point was that he had nowhere to go that was his and his alone. The point was that he had nowhere to retreat to that was his private, personal space. The point was that once he turned seventeen there was no way in Hell that Dumbledore was going to lock him away at Grimmauld Place until school started again. Not bloody likely. And since he walked into the Shrieking Shack as if he owned the place, too, he figured he might as well buy the place so that no one could say anything about him going there ever again.

While the issue of him having privacy there was debatable with a houseful of Death Eaters on the other side of a closet door, his age wasn't one once he got the new Minister of Magic involved in him buying the place. It had been so ridiculously easy for him to manipulate the man. Three weeks ago the dear, sweet Minister had come to Hogwarts with a few members of the Board of Governors for the usual end-of-term meeting with Dumbledore about O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s testing. He'd politely asked the Minister if he could speak to him in private as the man was getting ready to leave. Dumbledore looked at him questioningly, but he just chuckled and said it was nothing bad, he just wanted some advice. Dumbledore probably figured it was about the Aurors office again, but his purpose had been real estate.

When he'd explained what he wanted and his 'reason' for wanting it, the Minister had been all but too happy to help him out. He knew it would end up in this morning's paper since he's signed and returned the deed papers the day before and that Scrimgeour would use the publicity to boost his rating, but with the Minister of Magic helping him out he was sixteen years old and just bought a new home that he really was going to make into one whether Dumbledore liked it or not. Expecting the latter, he wasn't surprised when Dumbledore stopped at the end of the Gryffindor table where he was sitting and just looked at him with McGonagall and Snape standing in the open doorway to the Great Hall waiting.

He made them wait while he finished the last few bites of his breakfast before standing up with his bag and walking by all of them towards the stairs. After five weeks of playing the good boy role again just so they'd leave him alone he was more than ready to put that to an end. Oh he'd still flown off on his own more than once during that time, four times to be specific, but for the most part he was more mild tempered and mannered. Him doing it was all part of his well thought out plans to end the war once and for all and come out on top with everything he wanted in the end, though, so it was a small sacrifice along the way in the name of progress.

You did not inform me of your intention to purchase the Shrieking Shack.

I needed a place to live once I turned turn seventeen this summer.