"Good morning!" she said brightly.
"Morning," Harry replied, doing his best to hide his irritation.
It didn't take him very long to shower and get dressed. They stopped at a small restaurant for some breakfast before Bellatrix started them on their journey to find a more permanent home. The speed and efficiency with which Bellatrix whisked the two of them to different sites throughout Britain was quite impressive.
Upon arriving at each potential location, Bellatrix would walk slowly around the property, weighing its merits in terms of how easily she could ward the place. Many of the locations were dismissed as being unacceptable on this factor alone. However, if the location did pass this initial test, they found a way to take a tour of the inside. Sometimes this involved contacting the agent listed for the property. More often, they were fortunate enough to find the seller at home and willing to show them around. Occasionally, they had to result to a simple unlocking spell.
Eventually, Harry noticed that each location they visited shared some basic characteristics. Specifically, he had realized that each of Bellatrix's proposed purchases did not initially resemble what people would identify as being a residence. They were searching through properties that were primarily commercial or industrial.
"Why haven't we looked at a normal house?" he asked. "Or even a basic flat in a high-rise?"
"The last thing I need is some nosy Muggle saying to herself that her good friends the Joneses used to live in the residence between the Johnsons and Smiths," Bellatrix said as she opened a closet and looked around. She shut the door and walked down the hall of the property they were examining. "The first step to effectively warding a property is finding one that hasn't been noticed by anybody in a while."
"I see," Harry said. "Well, I don't like this one. It smells funny."
"Yeah, I had pretty much already come to that conclusion," Bellatrix replied. She looked out the window and waved down to where the property's slightly crippled real estate agent was waiting for them. "I suppose you'll want to properly say goodbye to him, won't you?"
"He was nice enough to let us in," Harry retorted, making his way to the exit.
They stopped briefly for lunch in Leeds. The property there turned out to be a dud, so they moved on to Manchester. In a street rather close to the town center, they found a three-story building standing on a corner. It was older and made from brick. The ground floor was split into three storefronts, two of which were currently vacant. The third was a specialty book shop. Above the shops were two floors. Though only three stories, the building was quite tall because the first and second floors were one and a half times bigger than the average story. The third floor on the top was the normal height for a story.
Harry yawned while Bellatrix busied herself with calculating whether she could put wards over the place. Soon, she had determined that it was indeed possible to ward the place to her liking. Excitedly, she suggested that they find the local agency that had listed the property.
"I'm sensing that you like this one better than anything we've seen thus far," Harry said.
"It's perfect," Bellatrix told him. "We'll be able to collect rent from the tenants in the shops on the ground floor. Then, when we find tenants to fill up the two vacant shops, we can leave them with the impression that the third tenant has access to the upper floors and vice-versa."
"If the inside is worth anything," Harry said, "I guess we can go for it."
The inside did prove to be very nice. The second floor was spacious, and nearly every room boasted a large window. The third floor was quite cluttered and not nearly as attractive despite its very open space that had no walls. It had apparently always been used as storage for the former residents. Harry observed that ironically, it seemed very much like a basement rather than the top floor of a building.
Bellatrix, however, seemed to like the third floor very much. "I could keep all of my clutter up here," she declared to Harry. "It could be my workshop for different projects."
Harry agreed that this would be a very good use for the third floor. There was more than enough space on the second floor for them both to live comfortably, and he had already observed that Bellatrix had a tendency to spread out her things when working on something.
Consequently, they soon found themselves signing papers at the real estate agent's office. The agent was surprised, but agreeable when Bellatrix produced her own contract from a pocket. Harry and Bellatrix signed as co-owners of the property, though the majority of the money came from Harry's fortune. Bellatrix quietly reassured Harry that she'd pay for furnishings. Harry shrugged it off and told her that he'd reimburse her for the furniture as well and not to worry about it. This seemed to make her very happy.
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