Harry Potter's revenge.

Harry retrieved his shrunk trunk and unshrunk it on the dirt road. "Alright, everyone in."

The girls all clambered in. He closed the lid, shrunk the trunk again, concentrated, and apparated away with a crack of forced magic.

He arrived a moment later near an exposed hilltop, surrounded by little else but exposed hilltops for miles and miles. Up here, the sun had succeeded in reaching the ground, and cast an ethereal light on the still misty valleys bellow, making them look like lakes of smoke.

"Greetings, Lord Slytherin."

Harry de-disillusioned himself and placed his trunk on the ground. An older man stood in front of him in a grey pinstripe suit. He looked rather like an old style butler, if old style butlers were in the habit of carrying five foot long battle axes.

"Greetings, Ragnok," Harry said, opening the trunk's lid. "Alright! We're here!" he called down.

The girls clambered back out.

Luna pouted as she did so. "Didn't even have time for the in-flight meal. Oh, hi, Ragnok!" She waved enthusiastically.

Daphne and Hermione stared.

"Polyjuice potion," said Ragnok, by way of explanation. "Rather difficult for my kind to do business in the muggle world otherwise." They then made their way around the crest of the hill. Daphne gasped. Revealing itself as they edged around the long slow hill-top corner, and nestled between the hill they walked on and the next, lay an almost perfect circular lake of absolutely still and crystal-clear water. Not a single ripple marred its surface. Despite being green, the grounds around the lake were completely devoid of tall plant growth, like a never ending carpet of moss as far as the eye could see, although Harry easily spotted it to be an optical illusion, and that the greenness actually came from the short grasses that grew even around the path they walked on. It was beautiful.

"Ten out of ten for aesthetics," Luna said.

"Yes," Hermione added, weakly. "I don't know, do we even have the right to spoil something so… pure?" "Hardly pure," Ragnok said, waving his axe at the surroundings. "This all used to be forest, until the muggles cut it all down — same with most of the island." He snorted. "That's actually how we'd set up this deal. The cover story would be we're buying it as part of a reforestation effort. Since you'll need a small wood regardless of what you do anyway, that won't even be a lie."

Harry nodded. It was certainly tempting. "What are the known resources?" he asked, mostly for the girl's benefit.

"Well, the soil's rubbish. You'll have to build that from the ground—ahaha—up, but there are known silver deposits in an abandoned mine in the gully there." He pointed to the far side of the lake where the land snaked away around another hillside. "It would take quite an investment to get working again though. More than you have at the moment, if I know anything about it, which I do."

Harry nodded again and Ragnok continued. "The soil as it is can support all the basic wards with a one year transplanted nursery, but it would take a few more years to get them to strength with your other option down in East Anglia, or up north in the Orkneys."

Hermione stopped examining the dry stone wall separating them from the steep drop to the lake. "Why?"

"Their soil can support more plant growth, quicker. You can't just buy in good soil for growing magical plants. You have to build it yourself. More plants means more magic, which means more and stronger wards, faster." Harry watched Luna, now climbing onto the drystone wall and walking along the top of it, hands stretched out on either side for balance. "Anything else we should know?"

Ragnok looked thoughtful. "Unicorn herd just a few hills in that direction—" He pointed to the West.

Daphne's gaze followed the goblin's finger with a longing look.

"—And the nearest road for the Knight Wagons is one kilometre that way." He pointed in the other direction. "So we'd be best off to build that first before construction properly starts."

A few minutes of sightseeing and questions later, Harry, once again, pulled out his trunk and had the girls and Ragnok descending into it for the trip to East Anglia. Harry had to actually put an arm around Daphne's shoulder to lead her away from where she'd been staring westwards for the last few minutes, along with a whispered promise that they would come back sometime to see the herd.

It took a many more than one apparate to arrive at their next location, on the other side of the country in the East Anglian county of Suffolk.

Hermione climbed out of the trunk, looking rather ill, while Luna, Daphne, and Ragnok seemed to fair better.

"Urgh," Hermione groaned, leaning over while facing one of the massive hedge rows, as tall and a half as an adult wizard.

Harry rubbed her back. "Looks very flat," commented Daphne, still sounding a bit down, and indeed it did. They stood in a large field, the hedge Hermione was still using as a crutch to the West, and forest boxing them in to the North, East, and South. A dilapidated concrete control tower lay on the far side of the field.

After Hermione recovered somewhat, Ragnok led them onto a large concrete road that stretched from one side of the field, all the way to the other. "Used to be a muggle airforce base during Grindelwald's war. Hasn't been used since," he informed them as they made their way through the property.

"You said the soil here was good?" asked Hermione.

"Yes, young vassal. The muggles have been alternating grazing cattle here for the better part of thirty years now. The soil here is alive."

Harry couldn't help thinking that the way the goblin had said 'alive' suggested white sheets, body parts, and lightning storms.

Luna crouched at the edge of the runway and pulled a wriggly thing out of the soil. "You're right. Look."

Hermione made a disgusted face and turned away. "How big is it?"

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