Chapter 15
Wizarding tents, Harry discovered, were amazing. Like Narnia, they were bigger on the inside. A tent could hold anything from a simple studio flat to a twelve-bedroom mansion. The enchantment that made it so, the Undetectable Extension Charm, was very strictly regulated by the Ministry, firms selling goods that used them were rigorously licenced by the Ministry, and anybody purchasing a wizarding tent had to read and keep a booklet about possible Statute of Secrecy breaches and how to avoid them, and then fill in a form to register with the Department of Magical Transportation. Harry didn't want to fill in a form while he was still underage - what if it got back to Dumbledore? No, it would be better to focus on getting the gate sorted out for now.
After a not-too-harrowing discussion with Apprentice Wardsmith Jones, it was decided that the new gate to Potter Manor would be 'in the style of the Hogwarts gates, after the fashion of Muggle wrought ironwork, but proper Wizarding bronze.' As well as the name 'Potter', the family motto would be incorporated into the design, as would the Potter escutcheon, which would also form the lock, keyed to Harry's magic so it would open at a touch of his palm; a more sophisticated version of the lock on Harry's room at the Hopping Pot. Harry had never actually seen his family's coat of arms before, but there were enough references in the family vault that they would manage. Small pieces of rock pried out from the drystone wall (by Harry) were to be incorporated into the design on the shield, forming the eyes of the thestrals and stags, and possibly the cauldron handles as well. The bronzesmith seemed quite gleeful, and promised delivery in four days; Apprentice Jones was quite pleased that Wardmaster Abbott trusted him to install the gates without supervision. Harry was sure the 25% commission Gringotts would be taking didn't hurt either.
But it was while rummaging through the vault to find the best available parchment image of the Potter arms (which turned out to be the letterheads on Henry Potter's Wizengamot stationary), that Harry found an answer to his tent-related quandary. 'Sputnik Volkov' of Plovdiv, Varna and Vienna sold tents, and the paperwork relating to the Potters' 5% stake in the business included a twelve-year-old flyer with a floo address, and the words 'International Orders Welcome! We speak Bulgarian, Russian, German, English, French, Greek, Turkish, Serbo-Croat and Romanian. Deliveries can be made via floo, owl order or Gringotts. Discreet and Reliable.' He wasn't going to announce himself as their long-lost cousin, and it wasn't as if he could make any changes to his investments; but surely he could make a floo call, and inquire. The fireplace in his room at the pub was floo-capable, and he could buy international powder at the bar.
Two hours later, Harry felt as if he had passed through a whirlwind. The old man on the other end of the Floo had been very reassuring at first: "Papervork! Pah! All meeneestry iz good for iz to drrown you in papervork. Your meeneestry, your papervork. You want to buy a tent, you buy a tent. Rrregister two, tree months later, never rregister, not my business, not my problem. If you want to be borink and legal, can give extra invoice, date one month later, no problem. You file it zen, your Meeneestry vill zink you just bought." He had then strong-armed Harry through the floo - "Passport? Vizards don't need passports for Vizard areas. All rright, maybe if you go muggle areas, zey might ask to zee your papers. It happens, and if you are too young to confund zem, maybe you need passport. But for my shop, no. No need. And how can you choose a tent vizout seeink inzide? No, no. You vill floo home, easy-" and showed him around a bewildering variety of tents, waving his arms enthusiastically. He had been disappointed Harry only wanted a small flat - "young people zese days, zey scairt to drream beeg!" - but recovered philosophically. Even with a combined sitting room, kitchen and dining room, a combined toilet and bathroom with no extra ensuites, and only one guest bedroom besides the master bedroom, nursery, and elf cubbyhole, it was still a decent sale. Even when his young customer didn't want the full furnishings doing, just the kitchen and bathroom fixtures and fittings. There was still the decorating, and choosing a suitably bland Muggle appearance for the outside of the tent. And of course all his tents had proper wardstone pockets, what kind of barbarian did the young man think he was? And of course he took payment in galleons! Hundred galleons up-front, floo-call with identifying receipt and exchange bag of gold with balance of payment for finished tent in canvas carry-case. What was the English phrase? No names, no pack drill.
At last, Harry could schedule the appointment for the Privet Drive ward examination, and the possible transfer of wards to the tent. There was a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing between the Soho phonebox and Gringotts, since Wardmaster Abbott wanted to pick a day when no callers to Privet Drive would be expected, and Petunia Dursley was in the middle of arranging the sale of the house, which meant viewers might be coming round to see it. In the end, Apprentice Jones ended up cramming into the phone box with Harry to speak directly to Petunia, and ensure that a specific day was booked in advance, and Petunia agreed to tell the estate agent to block that day off. It was, as it turned out, the 31st of July.
His errands mostly completed, Harry spent the intervening days working on his holiday homework. Hermione wouldn't like him slacking; her postcard from France, while mostly filled with enthusiasm for the local museums and bookshops, had also contained two separate exhortations to that effect. Aunt Petunia had sniffed horribly when handing it over, but admitted that "you wouldn't be able to tell the girl was abnormal if you didn't already know," which was high praise for her. Once the gate was ready, Harry accompanied Apprentice Jones to Godric's Hollow, and played his part in installing it as Apprentice Jones directed. Looking at the walls, the gate, the thorns, and the expanse of grass beyond, Harry felt something he had only ever felt before when viewing Hogwarts: this place was for him. He opened and closed the gate several times, marvelling at how smoothly it responded to him, before setting up his tent just inside the walls and transferring his trunk to the master bedroom. On the 27th of July, Harry checked out of the Hopping Pot, and slept at Potter Manor, in his tent, on the carpeted floor of the otherwise empty bedroom, with Hedwig perched on his trunk. He had avoided buying furniture on the grounds that the Potter family vault had boxes and boxes of what looked like doll's furniture, but which he had been assured was real furniture, shrunken. (The goblin vaultrunner had been amused at his ignorance.) He had slept on the floor for months when Daisy and Dahlia were babies, and the cot mattress on the cupboard floor hadn't exactly been the height of comfort, either, any more than the broken-springed mattress on the attic floor had been. At least the tent floor didn't have spikes. But somehow, over the course of the previous two years, Harry had got altogether used to sleeping in a bed. On the 28th of July, he went into Muggle London and bought a bed-in-a-bag futon from a shop on Charing Cross Road, after withdrawing cash from a Post Office using the savings book from his trust vault. After all, it might come in useful if he ever had two guests at once; and this way, he had confirmation that the savings book worked.
From then on, Harry had his meals in Godric's Hollow, and explored the village inbetween homework assignments. He was startled when the war memorial turned into a statue of his parents, and rather horrified to see the ruined cottage with the roof blasted in, and the tourists gawking at it. Being able to put flowers on his parents' graves, on the other hand, was something he would not have missed for the world.