The flat above the bookstore slowly began to feel lived in.
Not immediately, of course.
Turning a place into a home took time and care.
At first the place had been clean in the impersonal way empty properties always were, with bare walls, echoing rooms, and the faint lingering scent of dust and old wood.
But over the following days, Harry and Dobby transformed it piece by piece into something warmer.
Something human.
They painted the walls soft cream and muted green, replacing the colder colors left behind by the previous owner.
New furniture arrived gradually over several afternoons: an old but comfortable sofa for the living room, shelves for books, proper kitchenware, rugs, lamps, curtains, etc.
Dobby took the entire process very seriously.
Harry returned from one shopping trip to discover the elf standing atop a chair while obsessively judging curtain placement like a general overseeing battlefield strategy.
Apparently, “atmospheric harmony” was extremely important.
The butler also developed a frightening talent for restoration magic.
Broken hinges repaired themselves beneath careful wandless gestures.
Scratched wood regained its polish.
A crooked cabinet straightened itself after Dobby spent twenty minutes muttering darkly about “structural integrity.”
By the third day, the flat no longer resembled a recently purchased property; it looked like someone genuinely lived there: Books rested beside the sofa, tea cups sat forgotten on tables, a blanket lay folded near the window nook, one framed photograph showed Harry, Hedwig, and Dobby together beneath the Welsh mountains while another displayed an increasingly offended-looking Hedwig after failing to catch a toy mouse.
Harry found himself smiling every time he noticed them.
The place felt warm.
It felt safe and alive, like a real home should feel, which only made what he planned next feel more insane.
“You are entirely certain about this, Master Harry?”
Dobby stood near the kitchen counter, watching him with visible concern while Harry checked supplies inside his enchanted bag for perhaps the fourth time: Snacks, potions, maps, an emergency medical kit, and other supplies.
The Invisibility Cloak folded neatly beneath everything else.
“I’ll be fine,” Harry assured him.
Dobby’s expression suggested he found that statement quite unconvincing.
Harry sighed softly before closing the bag.
“Dobby.”
The elf straightened immediately.
“Am I not the great Harry Potter?” Harry asked with mock seriousness.
Dobby gasped quietly as though Harry had just said an undeniable truth.
“Of course, Master Harry is!”
“I killed a Basilisk a few weeks ago,” Harry continued.
“Exploring some supposedly cursed land will be easy.”
Dobby looked horrified instead of reassured.
“Master Harry saying the word ‘supposedly’ about curses is making Dobby extremely nervous.”
Honestly, fair.
Because the estate was definitely cursed, Harry knew that much for certain.
Two days earlier he finalized the purchase of his actual future home.
Or rather… The place where his future home would eventually exist.
The estate sprawled across roughly seventeen hundred acres along the edge of the Cotswolds, though portions of the land stretched beyond the region itself into neighboring countryside and forest.
The price had been absurdly low: Two hundred and thirty thousand pounds for an estate of that size should have been impossible even accounting for its ruined condition.
There was, naturally, a reason: Nobody could live there, not for long.
The curse attached to the land had persisted for centuries, old enough that even magical historians argued about its origins.
Unlike ordinary cursed objects or dark enchantments, this one resembled the infamous Defense Against the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts: persistent, insidious, and strangely difficult to break permanently.
Everyone who attempted to settle there eventually suffered misfortune.
Some lost fortunes.
Others suffered accidents.
A few simply vanished.
The last recorded owner who genuinely tried living on the estate had been a Muggle historian from Oxford sometime during the 1970s.
According to local records, the man restored a small cottage near the southern hills and moved there hoping for peaceful retirement.
A week later he died from a sudden heart attack despite possessing no history of cardiac illness whatsoever.
After that, the property remained abandoned again, most people considered it unsellable.
Harry bought it almost immediately.
Not because he was fearless, not because he was reckless.
Mostly because the system tempted him with a truly ridiculous quest.
[Main Quest Available!]
Description:
Some places remember tragedy.
Some places refuse to let go.
An ancient curse has poisoned Ashford Estate for centuries.
The dead do not rest peacefully there.
Uncover the truth behind the curse.
Bring peace to the land.
Objectives:
Investigate Ashford Estate
Discover the origin of the curse
Lift the curse permanently
Rewards:
+10,000 EXP???
???
Special Condition:
Quest must be completed alone.
Outside assistance will reduce rewards by 50%.
Ten thousand experience points, that was absurd.
At Harry’s current pace, ordinary quests awarded anywhere between five and several hundred experience points depending on difficulty.
Ten thousand bordered on insanity.
Which probably should have warned him this entire situation was a terrible idea.
Unfortunately, Harry Potter had always possessed a deeply unhealthy relationship with dangerous mysteries.
Not only that, but he also possessed Gryffindor bravery, unresolved childhood issues, and a magical progression system actively rewarding poor life decisions.
Together, those factors created problems.
Dobby still looked deeply troubled.
“Master Harry does not need to face dangerous curses alone,” the elf said quietly.
Harry hesitated briefly, part of him wanted to agree.
But another part—the stubborn reckless part—already made the decision days ago.
“If things get bad, I’ll call you immediately,” Harry promised.
That, at least, seemed to reassure Dobby slightly.
At least enough to let him go.
Hedwig landed soundlessly atop the couch nearby, watching the conversation with bright intelligent eyes.
Harry reached over automatically to stroke her feathers.
“I’m just doing reconnaissance first,” he added.
“Flying around, investigating the place, seeing what’s actually there.”
Dobby muttered something under his breath about “famous last words.” Harry pretended not to hear it.
***
Dobby apparated them to the very edge of the estate just as the sun began lowering toward the western hills.
The transition left Harry standing beside an old crumbling stone wall half-swallowed by ivy and moss.
Beyond it, the land stretched endlessly beneath drifting grey clouds and summer light.
Even from here, the estate felt… wrong.
Not openly hostile, but heavy in the way abandoned churches sometimes felt heavy, as though something unseen lingered quietly behind the silence.
Dobby looked deeply unhappy the moment they arrived; the elf’s ears drooped while his eyes darted nervously toward the distant tree line.
“Master Harry,” he said cautiously, “this place feels bad.”
Harry could not disagree.
The magic here pressed strangely against his senses, subtle but constant, like standing too close to distant thunder.
Still, he forced himself to smile reassuringly.
“I’m just scouting for now,” he promised while adjusting the strap of his enchanted bag.
“No charging into cursed crypts, no mysterious rituals, and definitely no touching obviously haunted objects.”
Dobby looked entirely unconvinced, and Harry decided not to mention that half those things sounded exactly like the sort of trouble he usually ended up involved in accidentally.
“If anything goes wrong, I’ll call you immediately,” Harry continued.
“So don’t worry.”
“As Master Harry commands.”
Harry waited until Dobby disappeared with a soft crack before exhaling slowly, then he turned toward the estate properly and understood immediately why nobody stayed here.
The property stretched across nearly seventeen hundred acres along the edge of the Cotswolds, where the gentle beauty of the countryside slowly gave way to something older, wilder, and deeply wrong.
Once, people had lived there, and Harry could still see traces of them everywhere: collapsed farmhouses swallowed by ivy, broken stone walls dividing long-abandoned pastures, and the remains of old roads winding through the hills before disappearing beneath roots and moss.
If the old records were accurate, there had even been a village once, complete with a mill beside the river, fishing docks along the lake, and small cottages scattered throughout the valleys.
Now, however, silence ruled over everything.
Not peaceful silence: empty silence.
Harry threw the Invisibility Cloak over himself before mounting the Nimbus 2000.
After the disaster with the flying car last year, he had absolutely no interest in becoming magical Britain’s latest airborne headline again.
The broom rose smoothly into the air.
His plan was simple: reconnaissance first, exploration later.
Flying above the estate quickly revealed just how enormous the property truly was.
The southern lands still resembled the rolling countryside the Cotswolds were famous for: gentle hills spread beneath him in waves of green and gold while streams cut lazily through abandoned farmland bordered by ancient hedgerows.
It was beautiful, almost normal, but the farther north Harry traveled, the more the atmosphere changed.
The air itself seemed heavier somehow.
Mist clung constantly to marshes and riverbanks even beneath full daylight, drifting unnaturally between clusters of dead reeds and black water.
And then there were the woods.
Harry slowed instinctively as he approached them.
Ancient forests blanketed the northern hills for hundreds of acres, dense enough that sunlight barely penetrated the canopy below.
Massive twisted oaks stretched skeletal branches across narrow overgrown trails while dark yews crowded together like silent watchers.
Nothing moved beneath those trees: no birdsong echoed through the forest, no animals rustled through the undergrowth.
The silence felt unnatural in a way Harry struggled to explain.
Even the wind seemed reluctant to enter.
Stories from nearby villages surfaced in his memory as he circled above the woods: Travelers getting lost despite walking straight paths, strange lights glimpsed between trees at night, and voices heard whispering just beyond sight.
Harry found himself gripping the broom tighter.
Then he saw the lake.
It rested near the heart of the estate beneath the shadow of an enormous hill crowned by ruins.
Dark water stretched motionless beneath the grey sky, eerily reflective despite the constant breeze sweeping across the land.
Near the center of the lake stood an isle containing the crumbling remains of an old tower.
Harry immediately slowed.
Something about the isle drew his attention instinctively.
Even from high above, the place radiated wrongness.
No animals approached it, no birds crossed overhead, and the surrounding water remained unnaturally still.
And above everything else, the ruins watched over it.
The old castle must once have dominated the entire estate centuries ago.
Even shattered by time, the remains still carried an imposing presence atop the hill overlooking the lake.
Collapsed towers rose like broken teeth against the horizon while sections of the outer walls appeared violently destroyed, as though something inside the castle exploded outward long ago.
Trees grew through ruined halls, rainwater filled cracked courtyards, collapsed staircases vanished into darkness beneath the earth.
Harry could even spot sealed entrances partially buried beneath rubble and roots, leading toward what were probably old crypts or tunnels beneath the hill.
Despite the decay, the estate didn’t feel abandoned.
That disturbed Harry far more than the crumbling walls or overgrown paths.
Most ruins felt hollow, like echoes of something long gone.
This place felt awake somehow, and that was infinitely worse.
The reconnaissance lasted nearly half the day.
Harry mapped rivers, roads, ruined structures, and forest trails from above while carefully avoiding descending too close to the woods or the lake.
By the time the sun began lowering toward evening, he had reached one very firm conclusion: The isle was important.
Whatever cursed this estate…
Whatever poisoned the land badly enough to drive away generations of owners…
The answer almost certainly waited there.
***
I need a few more so the story can be ranked.
***
While posting this chapter, I posted Chapter 21 (which is the one I wrote today) by mistake.
I took it down immediately, if you saw it for the less than 1 minute it was up, which I honestly doubt: please don’t share any spoilers.