Chapter 10
Levitation spells took most of the effort out of moving stock around. Not that I had all that much, to begin with, but paper was heavy and my back wholeheartedly appreciated the existence of magic just then.
My initial print run had completed a day after I'd moved into Number 14, leaving me with a stack of boxes to organise and shelve. I'd ended up contracting a company that primarily printed children's books as they'd offered the best rates on works with a high proportion of pictures. I was actually moderately proud of the artwork I'd come up with. After my first Christmas in Hogwarts, I'd taken to tracing and painting pictures from various other volumes from the Library and using them to experiment with the more magical side of artwork.
My initial vague dreams of kickstarting a magical animation industry had never progressed beyond fantasies, but I'd become quite proficient in making magical moving drawings and even managed to instil basic behaviours in them. When I first thought of gamifying the Defence Against the Dark Arts course I'd quickly hit upon the idea of working them into the project.
The storeroom wasn't even half-filled once I'd finished moving all the boxes in. Well, almost all the boxes. I kept about half-a-dozen separate for the shop floor itself.
The basic rules of the game I'd put together were hacked together from a few Muggle systems I'd looked at. Given that my goal was to try and get people to learn something through playing, I'd had to simplify a lot of the rules, which had made balancing... Problematic. I was confident that I'd got it right in the end though.
In the end, I had four main products. One was a book explaining the rules of play, intended for players. Another was a different book of rules for people running the games. The third was an enchanted set of a game board and player pieces that I'd managed to create over the course of two years. Rather like wizard chess sets, they could move at the players' commands with the added interest of the board being able to shift itself to provide a variety of possible battlefields. The final product was a small crystal ball on a stand that was—in spite of the ornate appearance—a glorified random number generator.
In truth, I'd have preferred to have made them much simpler. A cardboard map, a set of plastic figurines and some dice would have served just fine for Muggles. Except that while Muggles were reliant on their imaginations to live their fantasies—and were subsequently less demanding on the quality of the props used to enact the gameplay—magical people were used to magic. They were accustomed to pictures that moved and statues that spoke. Magical beasts were something everyone's second cousin had run into at some point. To capture a magical audience's attention I'd had to brush up on the aesthetics.
That said, McGonagall herself had approved of the work I'd done on the board. Though technically made of wood, it could assume the appearance and texture of stone, dirt, ice or metal at the game master's command. I had plans to create more detailed models and sets and sell them as expansions, but those could wait. Similarly, the basic tin monster figurines could adopt the shape any of the creatures listed in the basic handbook but I had about a dozen other animated pewter statuettes of magical creatures that I hoped people would buy to supplement their games.
I was fairly sure I was making a few mistakes—probably more than a few—but I would deal with them as they became problems.
—tN—tN—tN—
"Impressive craftsmanship," Frank said approvingly, holding one of my dragon figurines up to the light. As my neighbours had shown an interest in my plans, I'd invited them over to show them what I was working on. Henry had promised he'd be over once he'd finished taking a batch of cookies out of the oven, but Frank had come with me. "Did you make all of these yourself, Poe?"
"I made the originals myself," I explained. "After that, I enchanted a few Muggle machines to produce copies and enchanted them with animation separately. Each of them is a little bit different as a result."
"Enchanting Muggle machines, eh?" Frank grinned, prodding at the dragon's head with a finger and pulling it free from the grasp of its—blunt—fangs with a chuckle. "Hope you won't get in trouble for that. There's some tricky legislation around that."
"No, I'm in the clear. I went through everything with Arthur Weasley from the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts before I started work and he gave it the stamp of approval. I have to keep them safely stored secured so they won't fall into Muggle hands, but otherwise, I'm good. I think it's the same sort of deal as the publishers who use modified Muggle printing presses."
"That's convenient, I suppose," Frank said, putting the dragon back onto the table.
My figurines were made at a scale of roughly one-to-a-hundred compared to their real-life counterparts, putting the player pieces at a bit under two centimetres in height and a Hungarian Horntail model—the largest one I had—at a bit over fifteen centimetres in length. Getting the proportions right was a pain, but it was worth it to see the player pieces standing next to a larger piece and getting a sense of how small and fragile they were by comparison. Educating people was my goal, after all.
"I'm working on other stuff as well," I said, making an effort to fill in the silence. "I'm not the best at crafting, to be honest. Even these models are basically just tracing. Same for the pictures." I gestured at some of the few large-scale pictures I'd made and hung on the walls, depicting teams of witches and wizards in battle against assorted opponents. Including one showing a fight between two groups of witches and wizards. A fight, not a duel. The distinction was important and written in blood. "I want to create buildings, like houses and shops and castles and stuff that people can put on the boards and have the players explore."
"Nice. Little building models that they'd have to buy separately, I'd imagine?" Frank asked, a knowing grin forming.
"Exactly. Once I have the production process down properly I'll properly sell them in sets. So people could buy a village or a town street or a farm or whatever. Or they can pick out particular buildings they want. I think it'd make sense to make the packs better value though. It's how I've seen Muggles doing it."
"Makes sense. What about forests and rivers and the like?"
"I'm working that into an upgraded version of the board that I'd sell as a premium product once it's complete. I think I can work it into mats that can be applied to the older boards as well though. The eventual idea is that the game master can just tell the board what to look like and it'll do it. There are limits of course. I'm not sure how I'd do mountains or slopes beyond a certain steepness."
"I'd be impressed to see that, not gonna lie. Say, what if someone wanted something custom? Like, if they wanted models based on their own house or player pieces based on themselves?"
There was a glint in Frank's eye this time and I suspected that he wasn't just asking hypothetically.
"Well, I'd need material to work with. Photographs and the like. And it'd take a while. Like I said, I'm not really an artist, I just copy existing stuff. So it'd cost extra, especially if they wanted the models to do anything special."
Frank just nodded, thinking deeply.
"I might get back to you on that. I'll wait until you've at least finished the 'standard' models first though. Good quality enchanted models may be more lucrative than you'd expect though. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were people who only buy your games to have the models."
"I can see that," I murmured, frowning. While I was far from objecting at the idea of a more profitable income stream, it was rather missing the point if people ignored my actual goal of trying to teach them about Defence.
Henry knocked on the door just then and broke me from my contemplations. Once let in, he was as impressed with my work as Frank had been, carefully wiping his hands clean before picking up the models for examination.
"They seem sturdier than the kind of models that I could just conjure up," he noted. "So, what were you saying about there being a game with these?"
I smiled and pulled out a rulebook to explain how to play.
—tN—tN—tN—
I was proud of the effect my limited interior decorating and retail skills had produced.
The shop floor of Number 14 was now well-lit all day long by glowing lanterns. The display by the window showed the covers of the few books I had ready but was mostly dominated by several gameboards and sets of pieces that I had charmed to play by themselves. Passers-by who stopped to watch would see a series of battles between assorted magical creatures play themselves out in various different fashions. Given the magical world's lowered standard for violence in their games—the hangman set sold by Weasley Wizard's Wheezes and the 'barbaric' nature of wizard's chess came to mind—I'd taken the liberty of designing the models to ooze a red liquid when wounded that would vanish after a short time.
Inside, I'd covered the tables along the sides of the room with more models ready to strut their stuff before any potential customers, interspersed by stacks of books. I'd had the idea of setting up a few boards and sets of pieces on the tables in the middle of the room so they'd be ready to play if anyone did come in. The walls were decorated with blown-up versions of the illustrations in the books along with a few of the more stylised scenes I'd shown to Frank and Henry.
I'd actually had to remove about half the tables from the shop floor and spread out the ones I did leave. I didn't have enough merchandise to cover them all and this way the shop didn't look quite as empty.
And—of course—everything was charmed against theft in at least five different ways. Albus had told me that my paranoia would earn me even Alastor Moody's grudging respect, should our paths ever cross. I took it as a reason for pride. While I had avoided gaining any enemies—that I was aware of—in my time in the magical world so far, the memories of what had happened on Diagon Alley in the Second Wizarding War in the original timeline haunted me. I'd suffer a reputation of being paranoid if that's what it took to escape being the victim of a random Death Eater attack.
I had my books, I had my workshop, I had my store and I had my own little flat. I was free, comfortable and independent like I'd never been before and I would stay that way if it took everything I had.
And step one in safeguarding that was to earn money. Well, step one was actually the aforementioned paranoid defences, but I felt that went without saying. Which reminded me...
I unpacked the last two boxes and ordered their contents to assemble themselves. With another wave of my wand, the two complete suits of armour I'd pieced together from pieces of salvaged steel took up their stations at opposite ends of the counter. They were a moderately impressive display piece, but could also fight to bar access to my flat if necessary. I hoped it didn't come to that. I was well aware that they would be little more than a speedbump against all but the most innocent of intruders.
The register I'd acquired floated into position on the counter with a metallic ding.
And then everything was in place.
—tN—tN—tN—
Whimsik Alley was not a retail hotspot like Diagon Alley was. I had been aware of that when I decided to set up shop there. I'd also been aware that my store would not find much footfall traffic on Whimsik. However, I had my reasons. Leaving aside my inability to afford a unit in Diagon Alley, I was as much seeking a place to live as I was a place to set up shop. Whimsik was a community quite unlike Diagon and that was what I sought. I liked many aspects of living in a city, but the rush and bustle were not among them. Whimsik was a step outside all that in more ways than one. It suited me and if I had to work harder to make a living, then at least I'd be living a life I enjoyed.
All that being said, I was not unsurprised when my shop's grand opening did not result in a flood of customers. I'd scrounged together enough to afford small advertisements in the Daily Prophet, Witch's Weekly and The Quibbler, but I didn't hold out much hope that they'd receive too much attention.
As it happened, I was visited by about a dozen witches and wizards previously unknown to me throughout the day. Of that dozen, three made purchases. One of them had—as predicted by my neighbour—been only interested in my models and had taken a model of a mountain troll, a Swedish Shortsnout and a hippogriff. The last two had each left with a complete 'standard set' of a game board, crystal ball and books. One of them had also purchased a Horntail model and promised she'd be back for more. I had a sneaking suspicion that she was a Muggle-born witch who was already familiar with the concept.
The bulk of my visitors were people already known to me. Frank and Henry had dropped by with a tray of cookies—"These are the last freebies," Henry had promised—and left with a gameboard and some books that I'd tried to give them for free but that they'd eventually prevailed in paying half-price for. A few of Whimsik Alley's other residents had called in to give their congratulations, though few made purchases.
Professor McGonagall had found time to visit, much to my surprise and happiness. Like the café-owners, she refused to accept a free set. Unlike them, she was able to make me accept the full price. I silently scolded myself for not sending her a set in advance and compensated by slipping a model of a cat into her bag while she wasn't looking.
Some people that I recognised from Hogwarts but couldn't name for the life of me had proved to be my best customers. Unlike with my mentor and my neighbours, I had no compunctions about charging them full price and they—for whatever reason—seemed to like me enough to at least fake sufficient interest to make a purchase.
All told I'd managed to twenty-one models, a dozen of each of the books and fourteen each of the gameboards and crystal balls. I'd made eight galleons and ten sickles. It wasn't much, but it was a start.
I closed up shop as the sun went down and retired for the night with a smile.