"Harry?"
Harry grinned as he glanced at Hermione, who was staring at the newest addition to the Hogsmeade high street. Where one of the shops had been was now a plaza with a circular building consisting of what seemed at first glance to be a rotating door with two entrances. However, Hermione had seen several witches enter through one entrance and not emerge out of the other.
"The Connection Door, effectively Movable Switching Rooms." Harry explained as he led Hermione and Neville towards the new addition. "You step in and as it goes round, it switches at the half-way point meaning that you exit at either Diagon or the Cavern depending on which entrance you went in."
"And the shop that was here?" Neville prompted.
"Now has triple the floor-space, full freehold and a position just by the Connection Door in the cavern." Harry grinned as he led them into the next available chamber, passing underneath the sign saying 'Tegg's Nose Cavern' set above the door. Hermione stumbled a bit as she stepped onto the moving floor and Neville watched with interest as a series of slats rotated and slid into position to enclose the room, then folded away to reveal a huge rocky vista before them.
"…wow." Neville breathed as Harry towed them out onto the rocky platform that was where the Connection Door was located. "This is incredible!"
Harry looked around, seeing the cavern as if with new eyes. Although only a few of the stores located in secondary caves accessible by apparently free-floating metal walkways were occupied, enough had opened to make it clear that the Cavern was going to be a true center for business when fully active.
The walkways also led to large metal disks between ten and thirty meters in radius affixed to stalacmites rising from the depths and on almost half of those discs were restaurants or other food-outlets with the others showing the fittings awaiting chefs to use them.
Illumination was provided by the charmed ceiling which, as in Hogwarts, showed the sky above while regular lines along the edges of the walkways glowed with a gentle radiance which Harry knew doubled as safety-spells that would reverse the momentum of anyone about to fall off, returning them to the safety of the walkway.
"Harry…" Hermione said with a slight frown, "Did you mean to make this look like something out of Star Wars?"
Harry smiled innocently at her, earning an eye-roll in return.
"Honestly, Harry."
"It does look a bit like something from Star Wars…" Neville agreed. "Heh. Most Pureblood's wouldn't have a clue, though. What's that platform over there for?"
"Broomstick landing pad." Harry said, walking over to it as he pulled out and un-shrunk his broom. "The safety spells on the platforms are set to activate if you aren't on a broom as you try to launch yourself. It's why I told you to bring your brooms. Care to take a flight?"
Hermione looked round, spotting the landing platforms placed to provide easy access to the various shops and restaurants, then she looked down over the edge of the platform.
"Harry, is that a… a Quidditch Stadium there?"
"Yep, built to full Professional Quidditch regulations and with ten times the audience seating of the next-largest stadium. I even had camping areas and three hotels put in, just in case the Cavern ended up hosting an International match. It was Padfoot's idea and he stumped up over half the money. Only one of the hotels is currently open, though, the smallest one. There isn't yet enough demand to have the other two open yet."
"Yet?" Hermione repeated and Harry's grin got wider.
"That hotel is the Lily's Rest… and it's got its own series of Connecting Doors linking it to its sister-hotels in the Muggle world. Anyone with magical relatives is allowed through, meaning that this place will soon be filled with customers, Muggle, Squib and Wizard."
"The Traditional Purebloods will hate that." Neville said, his voice filled with awe. "Nice one, Harry!"
"I thought so." Harry grinned, rising into the air on his broomstick. "So, who's up for an aerial tour?"
"So this is why you suggested we borrow broomsticks from Madam Hooch." Hermione nodded in belated understanding.
.
"Draco, it is good to see you." Voldemort smiled as Draco Malfoy stepped out of the Vanishing Cabinet. "I trust that the other end is secure?"
"It is in the room that you told me about." Draco confirmed as he brushed a speck of dirt from his shoulder, then he bowed deeply. "Welcome back, my Lord. I trust your trip was profitable?"
"Wow, he looks different to his model." A young voice stated and Draco half-turned to see a group of young children staring at him from the doorway.
"Draco Malfoy, meet the Five, as they like to call themselves." Voldemort waved at the children, who responded by entering the room. "Amanda, Peter Pan, James Kirk, Diana Prince, Mark Grayson, this is Draco Malfoy, currently a student at Hogwarts in the noble house of Slytherin which was founded by and named after my distant ancestor, Salazar Slytherin."
"It is an honor to meet you all." Draco gave them a slight bow and several of the children grinned back at him. "My Lord, I apologise for failing to ensure that Walden Macnair could take his planned position at Hogwarts to help open the way. The plan would have worked but for the actions of Potter."
"He does have an unusual ability to show up at inconvenient moments and act in unpredictable ways." Voldemort nodded. "Why, when I tried to retrieve the Philosopher's Stone, it was Potter who destroyed it, after smashing through a wall bare-handed."
Draco stared at Voldemort in shock. "Through the…? No wonder that Hippogryph didn't hurt him if he's that strong!"
"And with his ability to negate the use of magical spells and disenchant magical objects, he is a true threat to our world." Voldemort agreed. "It is my hope that he has not yet passed his sorcery on to others, it can do too much damage. One use of that Zu Da Ur technique of his in the wrong place could rip away the protective veil of secrecy that protects us from those who would seek to destroy us in the name of their god."
Draco noted that Diana stiffened at the comment, a frown briefly eclipsing her expressionof curiosity.
There was a story there. He knew it.
But how to find out without risking angering Voldemort or his newfound weapons?
.
"That's Flourish and Blotts!" Hermione gasped as they arced round and Harry nodded.
"Yep, I have a one-fifth share in them thanks to my grandfather Fleamont, so it was easy to persuade them to open a branch here and link it to Diagon via a connection room."
"Wow." Hermione whispered, then she looked at the far wall which had only walkway lights illuminating it. "What's over there?"
"Flats of various sizes." Harry replied. "Anything from single-bedroom to multistory flats large enough to take the entire Weasley family, although there's only a dozen or so of the larger sizes and the biggest has already been purchased by Sirius. They're Muggle-style as well, so hopefully it'll help more Muggleborn make their own way in the Wizarding World rather than having to rely on marrying into wizarding families or taking low-paid jobs working for the Purebloods."
"You're trying to turn the Wizarding World into a Meritocracy!" Hermione gasped and Harry shrugged.
"I'm trying to introduce the concept that skill trumps breeding, yes. At the moment, only St Mungo's seems to get it and I think that it's because if people are given the choice of having a competent Healer and living or having a Pureblooded-but-incompetent Healer and dying… well, going for the latter is the sort of outlook that only lasts for a single generation."
"…I never thought of it that way before." Neville mused as they descended towards a platform that served one of the open restaraunts. "Makes sense, though."
.
Amelia Bones looked out over the Tegg's Nose Cavern. She had often visited it to do shopping before it closed and the re-opened Cavern was over five times the size that the pre-refurbished cavern had been. Taking advantage of the possibility presented, she had contacted Evans Enterprises even as the Cavern was still being modified and now the DMLE was no longer located merely on a single floor of the Ministry Building (although a trio of Connection Rooms ensured that she could get to the Minister's Office in moments if summoned) but it had a brand new multi-floor headquarters with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the cavern, windows of the same sort as at the Pottery, meaning that any spellfire was absorbed harmlessly.
The only vulnerable point was the entrance and Broomstick-pad, but they had retractable glass-shields to provide cover in case anything happened.
"That's Harry!" Susan pointed down and Amelia followed her niece's finger to see a tiny dark-haired figure and two others land at one of the restaraunts that she fully intended to try for herself. "He's great at potions, you know. Last Wednesday, he and I worked together to make Skele-gro."
"That's nice." Amelia smiled, turning away from her window and back towards her desk. "So, aside from having the-boy-who-lived stir your cauldron, what else have you been getting up to in the last few days?"
"Auntie!" Susan blushed furiously and Amelia laughed.
"Susan, you're too easy to tease. How do you expect to become an Auror if you can't hold your own?"
Susan pouted and Amelia grinned.
"Let me finish this piece of work and then we'll go get some lunch from one of those restaurants out there."
.
.
"Welcome back!" Ginny called as the trio entered the Ravenclaw common room. "Did you get it?"
"Parchment note-books and the newest issue of Witch Weekly." Hermione pulled the items in question from out of her robe, then glanced round. "Um, wasn't the common room smaller?"
"For several hours, everyone was pulled out of their common rooms." Luna said as she filled in another couple of lines of the crossword that she was trying to solve. "I saw people I'd never seen before come in, they were wearing odd robes. Ones that looked a lot like that outfit you wore when you defeated Lockhart last year."
Harry blinked, then tapped his watch.
"Jor-El?"
"Yes, Lord Potter?"
"The Ravenclaw common room is bigger."
"Yes, Lord Potter."
"Can I have an explanation, please?"
"Evans Enterprises accepted a request from Headmistress McGonagall to apply runic arrays to specific rooms in order to enlarge them. Employees from Evans Enterprises were therefore dispatched with runic array plans in order to apply the runic arrays as requested."
"Huh." Harry managed. "Out of interest, just how big is Evans Industries at the moment? Last I checked, I had maybe forty people working for me."
"There are currently six hundred and seventy-eight individuals in the emply of Evans Enterprises. Of these, two-hundred and fifteen are magicals, of which one-hundred and sixty seven are Werewolves, three-hundred and fifty-seven non-magicals of which one hundred and three are Squibs, forty-three Veela,twenty-two Goblins, nineteen House-elves, sixteen vampires, three Merfolk, two Centaurs and one Basilisk."
"One Basili…" Ginny chopped her exclamation off, then shook her head. "SssSthss, right?"
"Correct, Miss Weasley. In addition to her regular wage for providing security, SssSthss is paid per liter of venom donated to Evans Enterprises."
"Vampires?" Neville asked curiously. "Don't they need to feed off living beings?"
"Incorrect, Heir Longbottom. Vampires can subsist on human-edible food for up to a year before entering hibernation, although their biology is optimised for blood consumption. Evans Enterprises recently began the production of Cloned Blood. Vampires may claim up to one-quarter of their wages in the blood-types of their choice at a cost of one-tenth of the normal retail price per litre. There are currently ninety-six… correction, one-hundred and fourteen Vampires seeking employment with Evans Enterprises."
"You're getting your own vampire army?" Neville asked laughingly and Harry gave him an exasperated glare.
"Are you?" Ginny teased.
"No." Harry stated firmly.
.
.
"No." The pale man stated firmly.
Voldemort stared at the being that he had managed to arrange the covert meeting with.
"…may I ask why, Mr Sanguine?"
The vampire gave a thin smile. "You offer once more the chance to prey on Muggles and the occasional Wizard or Witch who displeases you. However, there is now another, better option available for us Vampires."
"And that option is…?" Voldemort prompted and Sanguine pulled out a small bottle filled with a thick red liquid.
"Blood." He said almost needlessly. "I do not know who came up with the technique, but all that is needed is a small sample of bone from someone and thousands of liters of blood can be produced from it. It is easier to make it from Wizards and Witches as they can regrow their donated bone with Skelegro, but several Muggles have also given of their bones for this. Most of the blood is sold to Muggle hospitals, but more and more is being purchased by we Vampires. Pure blood, no contamination from drinking or smoking and whichever type we prefer. This one is A-positive, although I am not sure if that means anything to you."
Voldemort concentrated on not pulling his wand and killing the smirking undead in front of him.
"I will pass your words to the others, but I would be shocked if even a dozen were tempted." Sanguine took a sip from the bottle, then put the cap back on and stowed it once more. "Good day, Voldemort."
Voldemort bowed jerkily as Sanguine strode off.
He didn't need the bloodsuckers anyway.
He had five Obscurials.
He had Gellert Grindlewald.
His victory was assured.