The grey nowhere didn’t so much become a room as suggest one, the way a memory of a place is realer in some ways than the place itself.
A table appeared, because I think I expected one to, and on it, unrolling itself with a soft rasp, was a piece of parchment that stayed stubbornly blank no matter how hard I stared at it.
“It responds to intent, not scribbling,” Death said, settling into a chair on the other side that hadn’t been there a second ago either.
“Think about what you want.
It’ll draw.”
“That’s either the best or worst way to do architecture I’ve ever heard.”
“You’d be amazed how many people get here and can’t decide whether they want a fireplace.” Death folded its hands.
“You seem like you’ve thought about this before.
Most people haven’t, at your age.”
“I read a lot,” I said, which wasn’t strictly false.
Enough fiction about people getting dropped into new lives to have very specific opinions about the difference between a house and a fortress with delusions of coziness.
“Can I actually ask questions, or is this a one-shot deal?”
“Ask as many as you like.
I have,” Death glanced at something that might have been a clock, if clocks existed where we were, “unusually flexible amounts of time today.”
“Where is this house going, exactly?
You mentioned dropping me somewhere with — connections, I think you said.”
“I said you’d be landing without threads to snap.
That’s not the same as landing in isolation.” Death considered.
“You’ll be in England, a village called Ottery St Catchpole, in the summer of 1993.
There’s a family nearby with more children than money and more decency than either — the Weasleys.
Another family a short walk past them, smaller, stranger, and kind in its own way— the Lovegoods.
Good neighbours, if you’re the sort of person who wants any.
You don’t have to be.
I only mention it because proximity tends to produce plot, and I thought you’d rather know that going in than be ambushed by it.”
I filed that away with interest rather than alarm.
Neighbors weren’t a threat.
Neighbors were context — people who’d notice if I was up to something, and people I could learn from without ever needing to explain who I really was.
“That works.
I’d rather not be a hermit at the edge of nowhere.
Just — not in anyone’s business either.
I want to build something, not audition for a role in somebody else’s story.”
“Wise instinct.
Hold onto it.” Death nodded at the parchment.
“House first, then the shop.
Talk me through it.”
I closed my eyes for a second, and thought about what a home actually needed to do, rather than what it should look like on the outside.
That felt like the right way in.
“First i would like the house to sit on a decent size of land.
For the house itself three stories above ground seems not overly excessive, as it leaves room to grow into.
For the exterior something similar to a georgian style manor” I said slowly, watching lines start to bleed onto the parchment as I spoke, faint as pencil, darkening the longer I held the thought.
“Ground floor — kitchen, a proper sitting room, a study when I need quiet.
Second floor, 4 bedrooms with large closets and attached baths— I don’t need many, but I want the option of more than one, in case that ever matters.” I didn’t examine too closely why that felt important.
“Third floor — I want that to be mostly one open space.
Library, maybe.
Somewhere to think.”
“And below ground?”
“Two levels.” This part I was more certain of.
“The first one, a proper workshop — stone floor, ventilation, the kind of space you wouldn’t mind setting something on fire in by accident.
Storage for ingredients and materials that need to stay cool and dark.
I could use it for enchanting work, spell practice, potion work.
The second, lower level…” I hesitated.
“Take your time.”
“A vault of my own, separate from Gringotts.
Somewhere I can keep things I don’t want anyone — not even a very determined thief, not even someone with a warrant — finding easily.
And a room I can properly ward off if I ever need somewhere safe to sit and not be found.” I opened my eyes.
The parchment had filled in almost the whole shape of it now, rooms sketching themselves into being, staircases threading down through the layers like the place had always existed and I was only remembering it.
“Is that greedy?
Five levels feels like a lot for one person.”
“It is a bit greedy, but it’s also foresight.” Death studied the drawing with something that looked almost like approval.
“Foresight is planning for a future you can reasonably expect.
Greed is grabbing more than you’ll ever use because you’re afraid of running out.
You’ve built a house that makes sense for what you’ve told me you want to become.
That’s not the same thing at all.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t noticed holding.
“Wards?”
“Standard package, to start — you’ll want to build on it yourself later, once you’re settled and can tailor them to actual threats rather than hypothetical ones.
Anti-Apparition inside the boundary unless you key someone in yourself.
Notice-me-not layered lightly over the property line, enough that it reads as unremarkable rather than invisible — invisible draws more attention than boring, in my experience.
Basic intruder wards on the doors and windows, keyed to alert you rather than do anything violent — you can escalate that later if you decide you need to.
Floo connection, your choice whether to open it to the network or keep it private.”
“Private for now.
I can open it up later if I actually want visitors dropping in.” I thought about the underground vault again.
“Can the deepest room be warded harder than the rest?
Separately, I mean — so even if someone got through the outer wards, that room’s still its own problem.”
“That’s precisely the kind of layered thinking that keeps people alive,” Death said, and there was something almost fond in it, the way you’d praise a student for asking the right question instead of the obvious one.
“Done.
It’ll hold as its own sealed unit within the house, keyed only to you until you choose otherwise.”
The house sat finished on the parchment now, rendered in soft, warm linework — not grand, not a manor, just solid and sensible and mine, in a way that made something in my chest unclench that I hadn’t realized was clenched.
“Now the shop,” Death said, and a second sheet unrolled beside the first.
This one came easier, somehow, maybe because a shop was a simpler kind of honesty — it only had to do one thing well.
“Single story.
I don’t need to live above it, and I don’t want customers thinking they can just wander up looking for me after hours.
High ceilings if that’s possible, good natural light near the front — I want the window display to actually mean something, not just be a dusty shelf nobody bothers dressing.”
“And the back of the shop?”
“Workroom space, separate from the sales floor — somewhere I can be repairing or building something without an audience, but close enough I can step out the second the bell over the door rings.” I paused.
“A basement underneath, for stock — overflow inventory, raw materials, the ugly unglamorous parts of running a shop that customers never need to see.”
“Location within Diagon Alley?”
I hadn’t actually thought that far, and said so.
“Somewhere with foot traffic but not directly beside your fiercest competition,” Death offered, unprompted, which I appreciated more than I let on.
“Not next to Ollivander — everyone walking to him has already decided what they’re there for and won’t be tempted to browse.
Somewhere mid-Alley, near enough the apothecary and the bookshop that people are already in a buying mood when they pass your window.”
“That sounds right.
I trust your judgment more than mine on the geography, honestly.”
“I’ve watched a great many shops open and close in that particular street,” Death said dryly.
“It’s practically a hobby of mine.”
The shop finished itself on the page — narrow-fronted but deep, a good honest window, the kind of place that looked like it had been there for twenty years even though it hadn’t been built yet.
Wards on it mirrored the house in miniature: intruder alerts, a ward on the till itself so it couldn’t simply be Vanished or Summoned out from under me, something to keep stock from spoiling or degrading if I ever needed to leave it unattended for a stretch.
“One more thing,” I said, looking at both drawings together.
“Can the house and shop be connected somehow?
I don’t love the idea of walking the street every single morning if I don’t have to, and I especially don’t love the idea of someone tracking a pattern in when I come and go.”
Death actually smiled at that — the first time I’d seen anything like a full expression cross that shifting face.
“A private Floo link for now, keyed only to the two addresses, invisible to the wider network.
Nobody will know it exists unless you tell them.
That’s good instinct, by the way.
Predictable routines get predictable people hurt.
If you want another method you will just have to create it yourself”
“I plan on being extremely predictable in every way that doesn’t matter, and completely unpredictable in every way that does.”
“That,” Death said, rolling both pieces of parchment up with a satisfied sort of finality, “is, in my professional opinion, the single healthiest attitude I have heard from anyone who’s sat in that chair.
Most people want to be either invisible or important.
You want to be boring on purpose.
I respect that enormously.”
I laughed, actually laughed, standing in the grey nowhere with two rolled-up pieces of parchment that were apparently about to become an entire life.
“So what happens now?”
“Now,” Death said, standing, the room already beginning to dissolve softly at its edges, “I have one more piece of advice, and then I send you on your way.”
“Go on.”
“Everything we’ve built here — the house, the shop, the ledger for buying knowledge — it’s scaffolding.
It’ll hold you up while you figure out who you’re actually going to be in this life.
But scaffolding isn’t the building.
Don’t mistake having good tools for having a good plan.
Figure out the plan first.
The tools will still be there.”
I nodded slowly, and found I meant it when I said, “I will.”
“Good.” The grey was nearly gone now, replaced by something brighter, something that smelled — impossibly, absurdly — like summer grass and old parchment and rain on stone.
“One correction has been made, exactly as you asked.
Twenty thousand Galleons wait in a Gringotts vault under a name that is now legally yours.
The house and shop exist precisely as drawn, warded as discussed, standing and waiting in a village you’ve never seen.
A full Enchanting mastery sits in your head, whether or not it feels like it yet — Charms, Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, and Magical Theory all layered in beneath it, exactly as you asked for whether you realized you were asking for all four or not — alongside the education of a top student.
And somewhere just beneath your ribs, if you reach for it, you’ll find a ledger only you can read.”
Then brightness slowly started swallowing everything.
“Welcome to your life,” Death’s voice said, from very far away now, or maybe from nowhere at all.
“Try not to be boring about it in the ways that matter.”
And then there was nothing at all, for a while.
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