They Flooed back through the Leaky Cauldron in the early evening, the specific quality of people who had been somewhere and done something and were in the aftermath of it.
He had photographs — he had taken four, which was less than he usually took for something significant but more than the occasion strictly required. The house from the lane, the grounds from the first-floor window, the kitchen in the afternoon light, the east-facing library with its empty shelves and the morning light available in theory if not yet in practice.
He would develop them tomorrow.
Harry was quiet on the Floo journey back and quiet for the walk from the Leaky Cauldron to the point where they needed to part. He had the quality he had when something had settled in him — not resolved, not completed, but placed correctly, the way a thing that had been carried for a long time found the right shelf.
At the corner he stopped and looked at Ron.
'If it comes to it,' Harry said. 'If things go wrong and people need somewhere — '
'That's what it's for,' Ron said.
Harry nodded. The specific nod he had for things he had understood before he asked and had asked anyway because the asking mattered as much as the answer. 'Right,' he said. 'Okay.'
He went.
Ron and Hermione walked the remaining distance to the Floo point in the specific quiet of people who had a lot to say and were taking their time getting there.
'The ward specifications,' she said, after a while. 'You have a plan already.'
'Since January,' he said.
'You'll want the outer perimeter anchored to the property boundary, not the building. Otherwise the grounds aren't covered.'
'Yes.'
'And a second inner ward keyed to the house itself. Two independent systems — if the outer is breached, the inner still holds.'
'That's the plan,' he said.
She was quiet for a moment. 'I want to help with the specifications,' she said. 'Not just the shelves. The whole ward plan.' She looked at him. 'The directional intent modifier we've been working on — I think it's ready to be incorporated into a real ward rather than just tested in the Room. The Wulfhall would be the right first application.'
He thought about this. The directional modifier was at approximately eighty percent of where he wanted it — functional, tested, and reliable in controlled conditions. Incorporating it into a real ward before it reached full confidence was a risk. Having it as part of the Wulfhall's outer perimeter, with the warder's professional framework around it and the magical saturation of the walls providing additional stability, reduced the risk considerably.
'Yes,' he said. 'Send me the specification and I'll incorporate it into the ward plan before I send it to the warder.'
She nodded. They reached the Floo point. She stopped and turned to face him in the specific way she had when she was about to say something she had decided to say rather than leave unsaid.
'It's a good house,' she said.
'Yes,' he said.
'The east-facing library.' She paused. 'Morning light is right for reading. You knew that when you were looking at the criteria.'
'January,' he said.
She looked at him with the expression that had been in the green book since September of second year — the one that had started as observation and had become something else entirely. 'You planned a library with morning light,' she said, 'in January, in a house you hadn't found yet.'
'The planning needs to happen before the occasion,' he said. 'That's the principle.'
She shook her head very slightly. Then she stepped forward and kissed him, briefly, in the specific way she had since February — not the performed version, not the managing version, but the real one, the one that said I know exactly who you are and I find this continuously worth it.
'The Wulfhall,' she said.
'The Wulfhall,' he confirmed.
She went through the Floo. He stood at the Leaky Cauldron entrance for a moment in the March evening, with London doing its complicated Muggle work around him and the signed documents in his bag and the name of a house that did not yet have a sign over its door but would, eventually, and which he already knew was the right name because it had arrived without being chosen and had not left.
He went through the Floo.
The Wulfhall waited on the outskirts of London dark, its walls full of the accumulated quality of many years and the beginning of what came next.