The Girls

“...So.” Tiffany said lightly, a false sort of casual air as she and their other dormmates sat together for a smoke and a chinwag as their children and significant others played either Japanese billiards or rode the parade-style carousel nearby. Petunia had graciously grabbed Wisteria from her, having Dureau on one hip and Lily’s youngest on the other. Frank had all three of his children, Norman and Cecilia in a stroller.“Those girls of yours.”

“Yes.”

“Look like some people we used to know or know of.”

“Yes.” Lily agreed.

“I just...Was it Malfoy? Or, there’s a French family of Malfoy here isn’t there, is that who your sister married? Please tell it wasn’t Malfoy as in Malfoy from back home.”

“Is that what you’re worried about?” Vera asked and Tiffany frowned. Alice and Crystal however looked especially disturbed.

“Malfoy...Malfoy was a Death Eater.” Alice said in a hushed tone. “He only begged off the trials because he was one of the wealthier ones who pled they were under the Imperius.”

“Which we all know is complete bollocks.” Crystal bore her teeth in a snarl. “How old is she? What, eight? Nine? Too young.”

“Mm.” Lily confirmed.

“That’s…” Alice’s brow furrowed. “But I’m sure he was already married by then and I think her parents had been very strict about fidelity Oaths for their daughters. That’s what Andromeda had said about it anyways.”

“Andromeda?”

“A few years above us. She ran off and married a muggleborn, got blasted from the Black family tree- Narcissa and Bellatrix’s sister.”

“What, really?”

“Mm. Her daughter, she’s a full blown metamorphmagus, starting Hogwarts this year. Bet the Blacks were furious about a halfblood getting that particular little trick.”

“Ladies, we can talk about the happenings back there another time.” Tiffany guided the conversation back before it could derail too far. “What happened Lily? And no fathers around, none of them?”

“...You might know I’ve patented a successful fertility boosting potion, and a few charms made to help see if germination occurred.” she said slowly. It brought her a pretty royalty and commission that cushioned her family very well besides being an Entrepreneur Indépendant. Besides the spells and potions that helped to gauge if a witch’s egg-making process was healthy, and if her body was receptive to pregnancy, a lot of the recent research was either very risky and untried, or had strange and very objectionable side effects in terms of a fertility aid. Hers wasn’t the only recently published research, but it was some of the most groundbreaking, and a strong foundation to work and branch out of.

“I- are you saying you used yourself as a test subject?” Crystal asked incredulously, blue eyes sharp.

“Yes.” she admitted freely. “But I have another version of the potion. The first version. The...Prototype. That’s the one I used. And, another charm.”

“Alright? So what does that have to do with..?”

“Well I started the whole thing because my aunt was having...You know, fertility issues.” she waved a hand around. “And then I found that fertility was an issue for Purebloods and digging around saw it was almost perfectly clear that it was the smaller gene pool and inbreeding. You said it earlier, about how a vaunted Black ability showed up after Andromeda married a muggleborn.” she tapped her nails against the table they sat at. “Or, of course, a problem on the man’s part.” she added idly.

“...Lily…” Alice started slowly. “What did you do?”

“Research.” she answered. “Ongoing research.” she corrected.

“Lily that’s...Did you...Did you commit line theft to prove a point?” Vera asked, scandalized in a hurried whisper as she leaned closer. The Huang family wasn’t a huge Pureblood name but it was well enough that Vera had grown up in Pureblood circles and had grown up all her life in the magical sphere where things like that were huge scandals.

“Legally speaking,” Lily started, “All my girls, and I, are citizens of France and therefore, don’t fall under those laws. All my girls were born on French soil.” and, working with and sometimes outright for the Bureau des Mystères as an Entrepreneur Indépendant gave her some extra protection.

“But how did you even- Malfoy would sooner spit on his own mother’s face than even consider bumping uglies with a muggleborn.”

“I’m pretty.” she shrugged. “Maybe he secretly has a thing for redheads. It was before he got married.”

“Wait, wait. Hang on, he married Black- Narcissa Black- as soon as she graduated with the rest of us. That blonde isn’t even in proper school yet is she?” her friend did the math in her head. “Unless Malfoy was able to weasel his way out of the fidelity thing?”

“Yes. Euh, no. The answer is a little complicated.”

“Then how did you-” Crystal began.

“The charm I came up with, the other charm.” Lily saw where she was getting quickly enough. “It could put fertilized eggs into a stasis. It’s how I got all my girls.”

“How you- then when we were still in school?”

“In sixth year to be precise. I haven’t fully hammered out the patent for it and honestly, neither I nor the Ministère are sure it should be publicized and should only be used for certain medical practices. They’re testing it for use on endangered creatures and beings at the moment alongside the original prototype potion or, at least variations on it.” she told them. “That’s all very hush-hush, you understand.”

“I- you made a-...Lily.” Alice blinked a few times, trying to process what she’d just heard. “In our sixth year, you came up with a working fertility potion, a charm that could essentially safely freeze fertilized eggs for years at a time,and managed to...What, seduce six men? When did you even have the time?”

“I suppose when you put it that way it does sound a little ridiculous.”

Crystal let out a little burst of manic laughter. “Ridiculous? That doesn’t even-” she shook her head. “Alright. Alright, the blonde one is Malfoy’s daughter.” her face screwed up a little at the thought. “Malfoy the bigoted probably-murderer Pureblood Death Eater has a daughter with a muggleborn.” then a greenish tint suffused her face. “Malfoy impregnated a sixth year when he was in his mid-twenties.”

“Oh.” Alice’s face screwed up. Being older, and with children of their own, the thought was an unpleasant one.

“Right, then who are the rest? They all Purebloods?”

“Ah.” Lily pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Well that was part of the research with the prototype potion. I suspected, besides just putting in fresh blood or having recent muggle blood, that my potion was powerful enough to trigger certain genetic traits, or bring out powerful ones that had been more or less bred out from the inbreeding. So, not all of them were Purebloods so I’d have a better target pool.”

“This is mad.” Tiffany whispered. “Isn’t this eugenics? Isn’t that what led to things like the Purebloods in the first place? Breeding for certain desirable traits?”

“So three are Purebloods,” Lily diligently ignored that. That was why the prototype potion was only the prototype and ‘not fit’ for commercial use. People that might look at it, at people and...Well it was better to keep that safely locked away. “Three halfbloods. The Malfoys, you know, descended from their French cousins the Malfois. And the Malfois are known to have relations with Dames Blanches and Zimadevushka if you dig deep enough. It’s where their rather strikingly pale coloring comes from, diluted Being heritage. But, being as far from the Malfois as the Malfoys had become, the coloring was really the only thing left.” she said. “But Mallie has an inherent ability for hypnotic type magic. She doesn’t need a wand for it, doesn’t need a foci or spells or incantations. Her voice can take on this sort of second tone. She also seems to have the freezing breath of the Zimadevushka but her skills with it need to euh...Be polished.” she said delicately. “She also tends to try to shed the cloaks and coats I put her in when we go skiing and demands the warming charms be taken off too, so she’s probably very comfortable in snowy and icy cold weathers.”

“You- you’re using your own children as research?”

Lily sent a sharp look back at Vera. “My girls mean everything to me. That they came about from research doesn’t change that they’re my whole world.” she said crisply.

“And the...The others?” came the swift diversion. Those concerns could come after they learned more.

“Gardenia’s father is Severus.”

“Snape? You fucked Snape after the things he said? If it weren’t for some sort of deal he made with Dumbledore, he’d be in Azkaban where he belongs! He became a Death Eater!” Alice whisper-shouted despite the privacy charm they had around them. Her unusual use of coarse language momentarily shocked the rest of them. “How a haflblood could follow people with ideologies like that, people who would hurt or kill someone he supposedly saw as his best friend from childhood…” she growled. “I’ve heard the whispers about him you know, from Frank’s coworkers in the Aurors. The things he did...He participated in the Revels.” she said grimly and Crystal’s face went pale as Vera covered her mouth in shock. Tiffany clenched her jaw and Lily’s face hardened. Even away, of course they’d all heard of some of the things that happened in ‘Revels’ as they were called. After most of the Isles were so heavily drenched in a losing battle against the Dark Lord Voldemort, he seemed to begin to try to set sights on the rest of Europe. The Lestranges had gone out of pocket, supposedly, in their attack in a French market place but Alice shared that Frank’s higher-up speculated it was a sort of test for the Dark Lord to see what response would be made after. He’d already been in talks with certain groups through central and eastern Europe and if he had been able to gain a foothold there, he could close in on places in Western Europe that would have tried to fight back harder. The Isles were still in a process of trying to recover and repeal certain laws that were clearly made from Dark Lord supporters and Death Eaters suggested and passed ‘under duress’ and that was besides things like Snatchers, raids, and the horrible, horrible Revels. “He probably worked right beside people like Bellatrix and her husband.”

Lily’s hands curled into fists slowly. Being a dumb child and making a ‘bad decision’ was one thing. But following that route was another altogether.

“He- doesn’t he work at Hogwarts now?” Crystal asked in a numb mumble.

“What?!”

“That-...Dumbledore.” Tiffany muttered. “If he’s the one who kept him from going to Azkaban- and he has to have some amount of say in the staff-”

“But what could he be thinking?!”

“Isa’s going to Beauxbaton.” Crystal said abruptly, eyes pinpointed on her daughter where she was laughing with Bibi on the carousel. “I won’t let her step foot in a school that has a- has a-”

“You didn’t...You were still furious at him in sixth year.” Tiffany recalled. “It’s...It’s not because you still thought there was good in him was it?”

“His mother came from the Prince family. They used to boast natural occlumens. An obscure branch of mind magics that could protect the mind from those versed in those magics and an incredibly difficult magic to learn, let alone master.” she said curtly through her teeth. She didn’t bother saying anything about remembering a boy who told her she was magic once upon a time.

“There...Aren’t any more Death Eaters who you ended up shagging is there?”

“No.” Lily pursed her lips and took a deep breath, uncurling her fingers carefully. She hadn’t paid much attention after she left to be honest, but she did know from Alice that both Potter and Black (Sirius) had been fighting against the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters and there was no way Hugo would have gone to the Death Eaters, or Yuze.

“Right...Right. So. The redhead is Snape’s daughter. The blonde, uh-”

“Malva.”

“Right, Malva is Malfoy’s daughter. The rest?”

“Mimosa, Malva’s twin, is Sirius Bl-”

“Sirius?! That slag? Lily!” and at least it wasn’t as tense, as dire as the previous fathers.

“I mean...We saw with Andromeda that new blood brings out things that had been dying out in families, or at least that it might be the case.” Alice said thoughtfully, clearly trying to disengage from the more personal aspect to try to understand Lily’s reasoning.

“Mimosa has some metamorphmagi ability. She can change her facial features and hair, but not anything else.”

“So was your potion just..?”

“But she is a natural animagus.” Lily went on and her friends stared at her.

“Was that a thing in the Blacks?”

“Well there was usually so many of them before, it’s not that shocking I guess that they would manage to have more than one bloodline affinity.”

“Rarer and more closely guarded than the metamorphmagus ability because of it, quoi? I think the most it came up in recent generations was just that they had the affinity to be able to become animagi at all.”

The ability was rare after all and very few even attempt the arduous and difficult process of it. It was intensely difficult and even then it wasn’t guaranteed that a wixen could actually become an animagi. A natural affinity or ability? That bypassed all of that? Very incredible. Even the students of Uagadou known for their ability to transfigure themselves into animals (among other things) used an advanced transfiguration that wasn’t actually the animagi magic but another branch of transformation magic.

Another thing, a certain amount of competence and adroit understanding of transfiguration was needed as well.

Lily herself, unfortunately, didn’t have the ability.

Given how the Blacks spread out and married around, it wasn’t surprising that Purebloods therefore had a higher possibility of unintentionally inheriting at least some of that ability to at least potentially manage the animagus transformation. The Purebloods who noted things like that would crow about it being a sign that magic favored Purebloods or something but anyone with functioning eyes could look at their recent blood history and conclude that no, it was a vestigial bloodline ability that generated from mostly one family that everyone else happened to be in some way related to in recent history. Idiots, all of them.

“I just- Black definitely would have bragged about shagging you despite whatever horrid ‘prank’ Potter would have retaliated against him with.”

“I put a charm on my hair and hid in an alcove. He had no clue who I even was.” Lily shrugged.

“Ugh. That sounds like something he’d do.” Vera’s face screwed up. “Has he changed at all?”

“No.” Alice shook her head disapprovingly. “He and Potter dropped out of the Auror training you know, started up a joke and novelty shop with Lupin. Black will sleep with any bird willing to so much as look at him but I think he used a self-sterilization spell when he graduated so he couldn’t be trapped in a marriage. Pettigrew on the other hand, he shaped up in the Aurors, got married, has two kids now. Very respectable. Still unfortunately close friends with Potter and Black and Lupin but Frank and I have him and his family over for supper every so often.”

“So Black is still just like during our school days then. Figures. Alright, Lily’s baby-daddy line up continues, c’mon.”

“Peony is-”

“Yuze Li’s daughter isn’t she?”

Lily blinked at Alice. “Yes? How could you tell?”

“Yuze works in the same department as me in St. Mungo’s, pediatrics.” she explained. “That hair mainly.” she shook her head. “If it was during sixth year? I’m sure he fancied you for a little while.”

“So his hair is still better than any of ours?” Crystal asked.

“Of course. It’s even longer now and he’ll put it up in this messy bun. A lot of the mothers that come in like to ask for him specifically so they can ogle him.” she told them. “I think he was married but I don’t think it turned out well. He doesn’t talk about anyways except that he gets his sons and daughter on weekends and holidays on account of being, you know, a busy medi-wizard with long shifts. How did you manage to bag him?”

“And not immediately tell us?” Tiffany sighed.

“I really did want to tell you about it, honest. But all I really did was sent him a shirty note.” she said.

“What? You mean that’s all you had to do?”

“Definitely fancied her.”

“Damn Lils, always knew you were popular, but to think it extended that far. Pretty girl privilege.” Crystal teased and Lily shrugged. She’d always been told how pretty she was, and maybe it changed the way she was perceived, If it was something she could use, she saw no reason not to use it. She just...Looked like this. Can’t control how other people react to that.

“Silene came from Hugo Brown-”

“Yuze Li and Hugo Brown? How have you kept that from us this long? I’m so jealous!”

“He married Jasmine Hillam didn’t he? I think they have a kid now.”

“They do,” Alice nodded, “Lavender’s a few months older than Neville.”

“And the youngest one is Potter’s isn’t she?”

“And how’d you manage that one? I would have thought for sure he would have been crowing to the moon and back about finally ‘getting his girl’ and begging you to marry him yeah? More than he already was I mean.”

“I used a spell that he thought it was a steamy daydream afterwards.”

“Oh. Oh Lily, that sounds a bit…”

“‘I accidentally got dosed with a lust potion’ and he jumped on the opportunity.”

“Ah.” Vera said flatly. “Why am I not surprised?”

“So what did you get out of him?”

“Parseltongue.”

“Pardon?”

“Parseltongue. Wisteria is a parselmouth.”

“Parseltongue as in, talk to snakes parseltongue? As in the Dark Lord was known for it parseltongue?”

“It’s not just locked to one bloodline.” Lily pointed out. “None of the animal-speak abilities are. Potter’s great grandmother was a parselmouth.” she said easily.

“Maman!” came the call and Lily looked up, dropping the privacy charm she had put up and tapping off her fag.

“Yes ma louloute?” she smiled for Mimi.

“Come on the Manège de Vélocipèdes with me!” she pointed back towards the attraction.

“Mimi,” Lily smiled down at her in exasperation, “Your legs are too little for that one and my legs are too long for the child’s version.”

“But that one’s for babies!” Mimi pouted dramatically. “Look, Silene is riding it!” she pointed out her younger sister with the other children peddling as fast as their little legs could go on the ride.

“How about we play with something else then? What about the Palais Du Rire Forêt? They just added that one a few months ago, we haven’t played with that one yet.” she coaxed and Mimi frowned, peering off in the direction where the funhouses were. “They have real fairies in there.” she bribed but Mimi crossed her arms.

“I don’t even like fairies anymore.” she grumbled.

“Is it because Peony likes them now?” Lily mused and Mimi took on a sulky look. “Alright, then how about Palais Du Rire Déserte?”

“Déserte?” Mimi glanced at her.

“Scorpions and hyenas, sand creatures and magical spiders.” she leaned towards her daughter with a grin and Mimi’s gray-green eyes sparkled.

“Let’s go!” she reached out and started tugging on Lily’s arm. “C’mon, c’mon!”

“Alright, alright.” she laughed. The magical funhouses were something sort of like the muggle ones with things like walking through spinning round tunnels, optical illusions and pushing through hanging spokes covered in something kid friendly, slides, thick netting to climb on or patched tunnels to crawl through and ball pits or pits of soft foam blocks. But the recent line of Biome Palais Du Rire the fairgrounds had been introducing had more than just abstract funnies or wacky things. Different sections were of the an overarching biome or related biome from different countries with different mundane and magical creatures, the safer ones brought in as actual trained creatures and beings interacting with those who went in and the other less friendly ones as charmed statues or moving paintings.

Last time they came to the fairgrounds it had been hard getting her daughters away from the Palais Du Rire section as they scrambled around. Of course, they’d since added three more of the new biome series funhouses. The Forest, Desert and Tropical Ocean funhouses and she was sure their whole group would migrate there sooner or later. Probably sooner she thought as she spotted Mallie noticing their trajectory and tugging on Peony to point over towards them.

xXx

“Come in, come in.” Lily welcomed her friends and their families through the tall stone fence and the wrought iron fantastically floral gate and onto the property properly.

Six children who would grow to become six teenagers in the coming years had meant that she’d moved out years ago. From where they’d originally lived in Dunkirk, Lily had been able to move all the way to the separated magically hidden section of southwest France and specifically, in the Dordogne Valley that was still called on the magical side the Perigordian Valley. It was exceptionally beautiful in Lily’s opinion and, handily, her sister thought so too because she followed not long after, though only for a holiday house.

There wasn’t any rude remarks or strange looks for a muggle living in the hidden magical sector in France. Squibs, also, lived comfortably and freely and so did sentient beings. There were in fact several prominent potioneers that happened to be squibs which would never have happened back in the U.K. and Lily, honestly, never realized how terrible it really had been for anyone who wasn’t a witch or wizard and even then, to be of the ‘right sort’ until she was exposed to the varied and far more open magical culture and people of France.

And goblins were allowed, rather, had laws protecting their ability to have wands!

Their treaty laws were a lot more forgiving and their history with witches and wizards in most of Western Europe was a lot less turbulent, with a lot less wars and revolts.

To be honest Lily hadn’t been pleased with the history classes under Professor Binns and the students had their own clubs to make up for the very bad and limited education- honestly, why was Professor Binns still a professor? Ghosts were fine, but Professor Binns only taught about the goblin wars. There was a lot more to know than just the goblin wars!

Ahem. Anyways, Lily lived in Dordogne, in a hidden magical little town by the name of Fleurirville. Particularly, and accordingly, proud of their flowers and flower gardens and flowering trees and creeper vines, shaped and covering the village. A lot of flower related crafts were done here, pressing, pigments for paints, tea making, dyes, intricate floral shops, infusions.

And, in a château to best house all her daughters, the family that had owned it having unfortunately died out decades ago. There was also a smaller but no less grand cottage-like building on the property as well where Tuney had taken up with her family during holidays or when they stayed a night or two.

At the moment, Gardenia had her own room, the twins shared a room, Peony and Silene shared a room and little Wisteria was safely nestled in the traditional boudoir off Lily’s room.

Interestingly, the master room was not actually in the heart of the house but settled in one of the broad curved towers with fantastic huge tall arched windows. The first floor, admittedly, wasn’t quite as tall as the ground floor but still with the impressive recessed ceiling design and ornate crown molds besides the boiserie that made the walls beautiful on their own.

In her room, the boudoir, the foyer and the dining room the ceiling and crown molding had the added bonus of being tin, in a lovely antique silver leaf.

The double-story foyer had the frankly ostentatious curved staircases that hugged the room led to the first floor balcony and their fancy curtail spilling out on the bottom step and a floral carving in the volutes. The kitchen was in the basement, the stairs down hidden in the traditional serving pantry room connected to the dining room that sat above the kitchen. The two arches on opposite sides of the foyeron either side of a huge ornately designed fireplace (which, being used to muggle homes had been odd that there wasn’t a chimney at all, but instead a set of runes carved into the stone above in place of a flue considering that in fully magical communities and spaces, the need to ‘blend in’ with the muggles around them wasn’t necessary) under the first floor balcony led to a horseshoe-shaped hall with vaulted ceiling that curved all the way around and led to the different rooms. There were two towers, symmetrical on both sides of the building and the first rooms to be encountered upon entering the hall through either side. The tower that held a ‘morning room’ on the ground floor had the master room (Lily’s) on the first. On the second which was really just an attic with short vertical walls that then turned to the steeper slanted walls from the beautiful roof, it was a just a storage room. The other tower, the ground floor held what had been a smoking room, on the first was the library (really, just a study with impressive floor to ceiling shelving all around the rounded room and built over the doorway). On the second floor it seemed to have been a small room for household staff. Whether that was House staff, or some household brownie-type creature Lily wasn’t entirely sure.

The small half bath was right next to the smoking room and on that half-bath’s other side was the spacious drawing room which, as far as Lily had been able to figure out was just a fancy sitting room meant to take guests in- their home on the Isles was a small and very cheap house and nothing so well off as to having a separate drawing room rather than a plain old living den. Then it was broken by a hallway that led from the very middle of the horseshoe shape and which led out to a solarium in the back.

From the morning room in the tower on the opposite side of the building, the serving pantry sat but could only be accessed through the dining room that touched the other side of the hall leading to the solarium and was just as unnecessarily big as the drawing room. The table that had originally been in the room had reminded her a little of the ones in the Great Hall back when she was still a student. Not quite so long of course but still absurdly long to see in a private residence. She’d replaced it of course, given it was broken down and shaky anyways. Now there were three circular tables. Just one had made the whole room far too empty. Good for birthday parties though, with the in-laws, the children’s friends and their parents so there was that.

The kitchen had been gutted and while Lily had grown up with muggle appliances, the magical equivalents were better. The kitchen wasn’t the only room in the basement though. Beneath the smoking room, accessible from a hatch that smoothly slid open from activating the carving of a golden eagle with wings outspread that came from the wall above yet another magically chimney-free fireplace. Either way, the hatch revealed a slim spiral staircase down.

She did need to renovate it a little to get it up to compliance with modern safety standards for personal at-home potions’ labs, but that was a thankfully cheap process as compared to the kitchen and bathrooms. At least most of the plumbing had been put in place before the family had ended so while it needed some touching up, it was fine.

Repairing certain parts of the building had also been needed and while she knew that on the muggle side châteaux were a well known money-sink she hadn’t been prepared for just how much it cost just to get the building to a livable standard that she moved her girls in even with magic at her hands.

The cottage was fine, it had been the groundskeeper’s home and even if the family that had lived in the château were gone, the groundskeeper’s family had technically been left as the owners. It was who Lily had bought the property from anyways.

Still, they had been able to move in just before Wisteria had been able to come home (unexpectedly early).

The ground floor did also have another room. The curved hall had to circle around something to be a hallway after all between the other rooms.

Her château had a ballroom. With large floating ‘waltzing’ crystal chandeliers and the gleaming dark burnt umber stained wood floors that gleamed more than they did everywhere else in the house and heavy plush drapes from ceiling to floor except at the wall that it shared with the foyer. There, besides a fireplace that mirrored the one in the foyer (back to back fireplaces! Magic will never cease to surprise her, even on seemingly little details), was a huge spanning mural. It was a landscape, with beautiful lush dark forest and lagoon, with dancing nymphs across it. And she did mean dancing, it was an enchanted loop of them spinning and twirling across the wall.

The drapes had to be replaced but she did end up putting more drapes up because the walls somehow just seemed too plain for the extravagance of the room otherwise. Though this time they were a jewel dark bluish-teal color like the shifting water of the lagoon in the mural. At the other end of the room, where the ‘u’ curve happened, there was a bar counter in the same gleaming wood as the floor but the actual countertop part was of a marble that also matched the color of the lagoon. Above, rather than the recessed ceilings or the barrel vault of the halls or even the tin in a few of the rooms there was another mural. This one of the sky, obviously but it was enchanted to shift between night and day with full spectrum of dusk to dawn, sunset and sunrise as well. Not like the Hogwarts Great Hall which pulled from the actual sky above Hogwarts, but fairly impressive all the same. There were two entrances on either side, cleanly symmetrical and handily, the one on the side with the smoking room and drawing room was near the bathroom. There was also a raised dais meant for either a band, singer or group of charmed instruments.

(Or all three, Lily wasn’t exactly the most knowledgeable about that kind of thing.)

Lily wasn’t planning on hosting balls or soirees or something, but it filled her with a sort of child-like wonder every time she stepped into the room.

Back to the foyer, up the stairs led to a balcony that hung over the fireplace and the arches to the hallway.

As said earlier, the room above the smoking room in the tower was a study. Next to it was a room that Lily would assume was just a weirdly small bedroom compared to the others but the door to what she’d thought was a closet actually had a staircase in it that led up to the second story.

But after that room came two moderate bedrooms and a full luxurious bathroom over the drawing room downstairs. The solarium extended to the first floor, meaning there was a balcony there beyond the same hallway as the one below. In place of the ballroom were six rooms. Six. That’s how big the ballroom was.

From the side with Lily’s room, the boudoir took the space that the serving pantry took downstairs, then came another room, another lovely bathroom and then what she could only really call a slim laundry room. It had a strange contraption that she had been told was the magical equivalent of a very old washing machine of the muggle world, the Thor.

Apparently on the muggle side it was the first electric washing machine and several wixen of the time were so fascinated that its design was quickly replicated on the wixen side. It was more or less automatic, all she needed to do was tap her wand on it. And the wringer was enchanted as well and worked not only to dry the clothes but to also steam or press them in place of an iron on different settings. It did make her wonder about the House Elves of Hogwarts and how they cleaned all the students clothes. Did they just use their special form of household magic to do it all? Or did they have industrial magical washing machines?

Hell if she knew. Not like she could find out even if she had the inclination since the laws here were different. House Elves had rights and unions and the like and were typically hired for either governmental buildings, public venues or, should one qualify medically, at-home care. For personal life it was usually certified crones they could form contracts with or weekly or monthly services if it was just a cleaning team necessary for large estates and the like. There were other household-brownies as well, but those could be tricky to form contracts with and very picky when it came to who they would work for.

Anyways, the last room before the hallway to the balcony of the solarium seemed to be orientated into a painter’s room. Which she figured by the shelving built into the walls and the canvas stands and the old lingering phials of pigments, several sets of pestles and mortars left behind and the wrought iron A-frame easel, wooden convertible easel (Lily hadn’t known they even existed before!), and a smaller tabletop easel. Personally, Lily had no luck when it came to art things but maybe one of her girls would take it up? Or one of Tuney’s children?

All in all, it was the sort of grandeur that she never thought would be within her grasp and yet here she was.

...Admittedly, Lily was absolutely loaded by the time she bought the property but even before the renovations and repairs it had taken a huge chunk out of her Vault.

And even all that was before furnishing the near empty château. Several rooms had still been empty as it stood before they planned this get together.

Her daughters (besides Wisteria) were in the three rooms on Lily’s side that sat over the ballroom and as they got older, would split into the other rooms.

The second storytechnically had rooms as well even if they were far more plain but besides making sure there were no leaks or anything hiding up there, she hadn’t much touched the area at all. Again, it was more an attic, with much shorter walls and the sometimes uncomfortably low slanted walls that were really mostly just the ceiling directly. Probably staff or storage, given some of the old boxes she had found up there.

She was still trying to convince her parents to move in as well but so far no luck on that front.

Besides Lily and the girls who shared two to a room for now, that left six bedrooms.

Alice and Frank would have a room and they’d keep their two tots and baby with them and Vera would be sharing her room with her daughter. Tiffany and Egon, and Crystal and Bibi would have their rooms to themselves. The last two rooms would house their kids for the duration of their week long stay.

She’d run around like mad during preparations for their visit to set up rooms for them (and it was a lot cheaper to buy muggle furniture and upholstery, bedding, things like that she’d found out quickly) but the rooms had ultimately passed Tuney’s sharp eyed inspection even if it wasn’t with flying colors so Lily would take it. They were plain, but they would do.

“Lils, I don’t mean to alarm you...But I’m pretty sure that’s a mansion.” Crystal began slowly.

“Château.” Lily said idly.

“Who does your gardens?” Alice asked, peering out at the main pavilion. Twisting columns covered in climbing flowers made a pergola with those flowers hanging from the trellis above on either side of the main pathway and there was a lovely pond that the bridge arched over to continue the main path. And flashy showy plants made a display up to the building itself.

“The previous owner’s daughter.” Lily said. “They were groundskeepers to the whole property. I don’t think they have an outright landscaping business per se, but they do custom and private contracts.”

There were no long plain areas of trim grass here, instead beautiful groundcover plants and trees and shrubs and flowers made winding paths. It was excellent for the bugs, smaller animals and small magical creatures that filled the grounds.

There was a separate greenhouse visible from the solarium room that was intended mostly for home-grown potions ingredients.

“Tuney’s place is over there.” Lily pointed out.

“Is that just a smaller mansion?” Crystal squinted out towards it.

“Essentially.” Petunia said wryly.

“Now before we go in, it’s not totally furnished yet.” Lily warned them, “But, you know, the kitchen, dining room, the bedrooms you’ll be staying in, bathrooms, those are all good and accounted for. I’ve also got a personal potions lab that’s been done up to standard.”

“Are we liable to get lost in there?”

“No, no,” Lily assured. “The hallways all connect back to the foyer. It’s really not...Castle big or anything like that. It just falls under modern umbrella of château. It’s actually a custom built house, the whole layout is rather, euh, unusual with the hallways and placement of the rooms.”

“You did say that you don’t have any House-Elves.” Alice mused as they made their way down the main path, “So...How...Do you clean?”

“Ah, that. I patched together a charm to enchant cleaning equipment mostly.” Lily waved off. “Anything that needs special care me and the girls do by hand.” she smiled. “Anything else, every half-year I can just hire a cleaning team to sweep through.”

“Really? You wouldn’t have happened to have uh, published those charms at least have you?” Crystal spoke up again.

“No.” Lily chuckled, “That’s a private one. I can share them for a friend though.”

“Brill.” Crystal beamed at her before turning to her wife and sharing a sweet kiss. “Most household spells we know can only enchant a rag for dishes or clear a table.”

And, a lot of the cleaning charms in household charm books tended to be limited in use or unsuitable for certain things, like hardwood floors or vinyl, very fine porcelain, leather, velvet, silk. Those required specialty services who fiercely guarded their methods.

But Lily wasn’t a Charms Mistress and applauded potioneer for nothing. Even if some were still in progress. In the meantime, doing things by hand was still a good way to teach the girls some amount of respect for their things and sense of responsibility. Given how radically different her daughters were being brought up, from the ‘technically half-sisters’ aspect, the ‘no dad’ part, and living with a well off witch mother and growing up in a magical district in a château, Lily relied a lot on her parents and sister and in-laws to help rear her daughters into happy and well adjusted people.