Pack!

               Chapter Twelve

               A slightly red cheeked Harry returned Hat to the planning committee, a.k.a. Remus, with a mumbled apology.

               His lingering embarrassment caused him to start one of his verbal burbles. “How goes it,” he asked, pulling a stool from the elves’ table over. “I don’t need details, but I do need to get started shopping. Oh, trunks. These four are ones Dorea charmed, no wait, I want those back, and here’s a bunch from Stowe and Packers, expanded and stasis charmed. Use ‘em for food or whatever. And the Patil’s are packing up their warehouse and weaving looms, they own a business that weaves… you know, I didn’t ask what. If you think you need to know, ask them when they get back. Jenever Ogden is also coming, he’s packing up his distillery and warehouses, but has no employees to run things. He thinks he can pitch in with the farming, but he’s going to need help, he’s not on the sunny side of middle age. The Patil’s don’t have any employees either, so there’s that. Luna Lovegood and her father are coming, and both have indicated they have a plus one. It’s Luna, so it could be anything or anyone from anywhere. Brace yourselves. I originally tasked her with all the creatures we couldn’t communicate with, so yeah. Might have an entire tree trunk of bowtruckles, who can say. Oh, Moppy, there you are. Nice hat… wait, is that a puffskein? No, don’t answer. Here, multiple pet carriers from Stowe and Packers.” He handed over the four door trunks to her, resizing them, and she snapped her fingers, moving the large items to the nearest wall. “Oliver Wood is coming and he asked about friends, could be one, could be twelve. Oh… and Durmstrang is kind of coming with us. Did I tell you? Well, part of it. Well, I say part... it’s kind of like four professors and twenty six students. And maybe their boat. So, any more buildings I can go get for you?” He concluded his verbal monologue. “Why are you staring at me? We’ve got things to do. Shopping, lists, busy busy no time for staring.”

               Remus sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, then rolled his neck with several loud pops. “Cub… what on earth, no. No, don’t answer. I don’t want to know why you’re like this.” He drew a pile of parchment back towards him, absently copying one and handing it to Harry. “Known muggle medical supplies. Bandages and such. It’s a start, anyway.” Harry looked over the list and pocketed it. “On it. Oh and hey, Angelina Johnson’s sister is a muggleborn, so when the Durmstrang students arrive-”

               Victor’s borzoi suddenly appeared, with Victor saying “We are here, by large larch tree to side of castle.”

               Harry gaped for a moment. “Well that’s convenient,” Harry said. “Room, could you please open an outer door on the side of the castle facing that silvery larch tree, and could you please expand the room to make space for another 30 people? Four bedrooms for the professors, and nine rooms of three beds each for Victor and the students? Viktor can make up his mind if he wants his own room later.”

               He moved over to the new doorway, “Welcome back to Hogwarts, Victor, and those of you from Durmstrang. I wish it were under better circumstances, but at least nobody brought a dragon this time.” Viktor led the group in, each person carrying at least some baggage, that was good; nobody was left with just the clothes on their backs, he hoped. “Come on in, we’ve got the professors one to a room over there, and the rest of you are three to a room for tonight. Angelina! Your new victims are here, you can have them for an hour, and then Remus is going to need at least a few students and your sister for supply runs. If your mom and dad have drivers licenses, that would be fantabulous too. Plan is for your sister, oh, rude, did you tell me her name? Sherri? Apologies, Sherri, I’m volunteering you for this because you know how to find things in the muggle world. If your parents do too, same plan, rinse and repeat. Plan is for Sherri to rent a van, and with a few of the Durmstrang students to help, head out on specific runs for Remus. I.e. to a farm store for chicken feed or beans, peas, wheat, oat seed stock that kind of thing. Industry based supplies, building supplies, paper and pens, because damn, I refuse to do the quill thing anymore if I don’t have to, that kind of stuff. And bloody hell, I just realized I have no British Pounds or Euros, all I have is gold. I knew I forgot to do something important yesterday, so yeah, sorry about that, I’m going to head out to Gringotts in a few minutes to see if I can fix that. I’m opening up my vault to those going shopping. If you have the ability to convert the gold, do so as it’ll make things easier. If you have access to mundane British currency, I’ll buy it from you for use in this project. The gold will be useful to you where we’re going, as we’ll ask that it hold it’s value, but the mundane cash won’t be. If you spend your own money on this, let me know and I’ll reimburse you with gold. Gold we got, supplies, we don’t. If you don’t have any pounds or euros, plan to stage a bunch of night-time raids on your identified businesses and leave the value in gold as payment. NOT the value of the galleons, but the value of the gold, different thing entirely. If I can come back with local funds, we’ll nix those plans.”

               Continuing to address the small crowd, “I’m really sorry we can’t relax and catch up right now, Viktor, or that I don’t have time to sit and talk to everyone, we’ve still got lots to do. We’ve been catching up on all the planning that we probably should have tackled earlier. Remus is working on it, and probably has at least a decent idea of the basics we need. If anybody thinks they have useful skills that can get us up and running as a self sufficient community relatively quickly, please make yourself known to Remus, this is him,” he said, holding a hand over Remus’ head. One of the Durmstrang professors headed for Remus, as did Ranjini Patil. “For those unaware, and so you can start tossing ideas around, we are currently taking most of the buildings from Diagon Alley, no contents, buildings only. Madam Rosmerta is bringing The Three Broomsticks tavern from here in Hogsmeade, Jenever Ogden is bringing his distillery and warehouses. He has no current employees, so that’s an option if you’re interested. He’ll also be consulting with Remus on farming, which is another opportunity for those with an interest. The Patils do something with weaving, couldn’t say what but they’re going to be looking for employees at some point. We’ve just acquired the St. Mungo’s building and the Ministry building. And for the two big surprises, we’re bringing London Gringotts, with no contents, and Hogwarts, with contents. We have a school, so teachers and students can stay teachers and students, if they want.” The Durmstrang contingent were all looking at each other with both surprise and pleasure.

               “Dobby, you’re in charge of opening up my gold trunks and feeding the gold to shoppers that need it. Remus, you stay focused on plans, draft someone you can just slide a list to and they can dispatch anyone available to locate and acquire. For anyone I didn’t call out that knows how to drive, find Remus’s soon to be named assistant and volunteer, please. Remus, I’ll get the list you’ve already given to me taken care of. For the food supplies people, I’m thinking the best option is to use the Hogwarts kitchens and Great Hall for meals, at least for a few months. I have 15 expanded and stasis charmed trunks that I know we can get at least a six month supply of fresh food into, probably more. I also have a few trunks left from my Gringotts vault that are heavily expanded, not sure about the stasis charm, but they’ll be able to store a heck of a lot of non-perishable items. Let’s work to a goal of one year of food stores. Hopefully we can be up and running to some degree before that point. If you have favorite foods, make sure they get on a list that…. Ginsey, do you mind starting a shopping list for what favorite items people would like? If we can’t get to it today, every minute we can spare tomorrow, starting at 6 AM is going to be supply acquisitions. I gotta get to Gringotts to see if I can fix things before they close. Thanks everybody, and I’ll be back within the hour to give an update on the money situation.” He dashed to his room, pulling out his featherlight and expanded pouch, flinging open his trunks to find which had his gold, then shoveling gold in his bag until he couldn’t make another coin fit, then he grabbed his broom, which would have been useful earlier, had he remembered it. He asked the Room for the outer front door again, and mounting his broom, flew down to use Roz’s floo.

               He stepped into Gringotts and was immediately bumped hard from behind as others stepped out on his heels. He quickly moved forward and entered one of the teller lines. They were moving surprisingly quickly, as the teller would step away from his window, retrieve a trunk from their meeting room, and hand it over in exchange for the wizard’s key. It was only a twenty minute wait for him to reach the front of the line, where he asked if it was too late to exchange galleons for muggle currency. The goblin teller looked astonished at that, he and his fellow tellers had been doing the opposite all day, wizards who had any amount at all of muggle currency had turned it in, knowing the muggle currency would be worthless to them in the immediate future. There would be no time to exchange it back into gold through the Swiss Gnomes, and Gringotts had resigned itself to the loss. “How much,” he asked, hoping to recover even a small portion of that forfeiture. Harry handed over his bag, and The goblin near slid off his stool. The magic in the counter informed him of the amount in the bag, there was enough here to recover all of their losses, and more! “One moment,” he said, climbing down and moving to the floor supervisor. He explained the situation, the supervisor agreeing with the teller’s proposed plan, with the supervisor then making a note to shepherd this teller’s career. He was honest and honorable, and that deserved nurturing. The teller returned to his window. “We can exchange your currency for muggle funds. As Gringott’s has no further use for muggle funds and will not be able to exchange said funds back to wizarding currency through our normal channels, we will be including all our remaining muggle funds in your transaction. Gringotts thanks you for preventing what would have been a sizeable loss. Would you like the muggle funds as cash or would you prefer a prepaid debit card?”

               Harry perked up at that and when advised of the amount, after near choking on his own spit, said half cash, and the other half equally split on a dozen prepaid debit cards, please. “May your future be bright and filled with profit,” he said to the teller as he left. “You have again shown the honor of Gringotts.”

               He made his way back to the outbound floo against the flow of traffic and stepped out of Roz’s floo with a sigh of relief. Waving to Roz, he flew back to the castle, dismounting before he entered, then dashing for the stairs. He knocked on the door, with Taddy letting him in this time. “I’m tempted to dance my way in singing “We’re In The Money”, he said to Seamus, who seemed to be Remus’ newly drafted assistant. He took a minute to greet Seamus with a hard hug and clap on the back of the shoulder. “Is Sherri Johnson still here?” Seamus pointed him in her direction, and he handed Seamus the debit cards with instructions to give them one to each shopping team he sent out, and told him the balance on each. “Send and elf with each team, if you can. They can pop back for cash if they need it, I’ll leave a stash with Remus.” He left a stunned Seamus behind and headed over to Angelina’s sister.

               “Hi Sherri, are we a go for plan A with you, a van, and several mysterious Slavic men?” he teased.

               “We are,” she said in a calm tone, belied by the grin lurking in her eyes. “My parents also have driver’s licenses, so we’re going to rent three vans, once we each receive a supply list. One person is heading for general housewares, one is picking up general stationary supplies and one is on clothing/fabric/sewing supplies. The stationary supplies should be straightforward enough to be accomplished within an hour or two, and so will be retasked with a second mission for farm supplies, with a list to be forwarded to them. We’ll be hitting as many stores as possible, while those nice young gentlemen from Durmstrang will be loading the vans then shrinking the items into trunks. Your elves were quite efficient at finding us a number of trunks, although they’ve cautioned us that there are no more to be had in Hogwarts. If we need more space, we believe we will be able to buy additional storage items as we go. They won’t have your expansion charms on them, but with magic’s ability to shrink things, we should still be fine.”

               “That’s great, thank you for being so willing to jump in, I know I volunteered you without talking to you first. Sometimes I just get going and well… sorry and thank you again.” Harry knew he tended to see a problem and throw unsuspecting people at it, but in his defense, he only did that when he didn’t have the time to take care of it himself and it needed to get done quickly.

               She smiled and waved off his thanks, turning to talk to Seamus when he walked over holding a sheaf of paperwork.

               A shiver rolled up his back, and he turned to find Moppy and her possibly defective puffskein hat staring up at him with a rather bemused expression. “Why is Harry Potter sir buying stables and barns and telling Moppy they is multiple pet carriers?,” she asked. Harry just facepalmed. “Multiple pet carriers my ass,” he thought, recalling the background snort from one of Mister Stowe’s employees. Well, Stowe hadn’t exactly lied, he supposed.

               “Sorry, Moppy, I must have misunderstood the gentleman who sold them to me. Leave them where they are for the moment, we’ll take them with us. I’m quite sure we’ll find a use for them on the other side. Wait, no,” he said remembering his offhand thought on herbivores when talking to Jenever, “give them back to me, I have ideas. Remus! He spun to face Remus, “Wait, no Seamus!” he spun around again, “Seamus, I’m going to find cows. And sheep. Lots of sheep,” he said, thinking of the Patil’s weaving business. “What else do we need, animal wise?”

               He thought furiously while Seamus searched through his lists, handing him a copy of one. He scanned it, and said “Done. I’m all over this, you need to retask this one, I’m going to be busy for a while.” He handed back his medical supply list.

               Oh, oh crap. He just remembered…”Patronus message to Neville Longbottom, Nev, I’m so sorry, we learned some information about the Pack! spell we have that we didn’t know before you left, and I should have told you right away and I’m an idiot. If you have a moment, get yourself back to Hogwarts via the floo at the Three Broomsticks, then come to the Room and see Angelina Johnson. She’ll get you up to speed on the new information, you’ll be able to bring entire buildings with you. I can’t say I know how that would affect plants, but check with the Hat to see if he knows. Might be best to still use your methods to secure them, then grab the building. We’re still going to need every greenhouse building you can lay hands on. If you’re not able to locate a seriously sizeable number, and stop thinking cover Iceland and start thinking cover England, flat packed or otherwise, let Remus know so he can get someone on that. He has people now.”

               He turned back to Seamus, who had just finished with the elder Johnsons. “Hey Seamus, do you know what room Sirius is in, and where’s Charlie?”

               Seamus answered, “Charlie left a bit over an hour ago, he was headed to Bill’s. Said something about the twins being there, too? Sirius is in that room over there, Remus said he had to about sit on him to make him lay down, apparently, there was some trouble in on their way back to England, and he wasn’t in the best of shape. I was already at Hogwarts when I got your Patronus, me’n Angelina met up on the stairs. By the time we got up here, we were just in time to say hi to Charlie as he was leaving and do a quick meet and greet with everyone else.”

               “Thanks, Seamus, I’m really sorry about your Mum,” he finished sadly. He knew his friend couldn’t be taking it at all well, he’d have to make sure he found time for him once things weren’t a frantic rush. “Thanks for stepping up to help Remus. We fell down on the planning part of things, so it’s all double time right now.”

               Harry was closest to the wall when there was a knock from the other side. He opened it to find four Weasleys and a Jordan.