"You finally decided to show yourself."
"Why do you always like disappearing?"
The moment Albert returned to the Common Room, he saw Fred, George, and Lee Jordan turn to give him resentful looks. The Weasley Twins flanked him from both sides and pressed their hands onto Albert's shoulders, while Lee Jordan gave him a gentle push from behind, ultimately forcing him into an armchair.
"What has you all so excited?" Albert asked with a smile. He suspected something had happened.
"Bill sent us a letter. He looked around Diagon Alley for us and found some shop owners willing to rent out or sell their premises." Fred pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Albert. Inside was information Bill had gathered and organized in his spare time.
Albert pulled out the parchment from the envelope and found that the bulging envelope even contained a simple map of Diagon Alley. It roughly marked the locations of shops up for sale, their sizes, asking prices, the owners' names, and contact addresses.
It seemed giving Bill a few Galleons and asking for his help had been the right choice.
Albert could certainly have had the House-elf Dobby gather information for him, but the details would never have been this thorough, and Dobby might have exposed his connection to Albert in the process.
Of course, there were other reasons as well.
Dobby had been rather busy lately. If he left the school to do errands for Albert, Gryffindor Tower would suffer a terrible disaster.
This was actually related to Hermione.
Since Hermione still had no intention of giving up on freeing House-elves and had put her ideas into action, the House-elves had come to hate Gryffindor Tower and refused to come here to clean. As a result, all the cleaning in Gryffindor