C O Potter

Year Five

Chapter 50

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Caroline Coulter stepped out of the floo and into the reception area of Cleansweep Brooms. She was dressed very well in a grey wool business suit consisting of a knee length skirt, matching coat, and white silk blouse. Her red Prada heels clicked as she walked across the tiled floor, holding her red Prada clutch. A moment after her, Oswald Greengrass and then Sirius Black stepped through the floo also.

After brushing himself off, Os looked over at Caroline, "Please follow me." He said as he started up the stairs to the second floor of the office.

Oswald led them down the hallway to the end where it formed a 'T' and stopped.

Caroline looked at the large breasted, dark-haired witch sitting behind the desk, already forming opinions about who this person was, that she was to meet with this morning.

"Just a minute sir," Cassy said as she stood up and went over and knocked softly on a door. Then she opened the door without waiting for permission. She only stuck her head inside of the crack that was made by the open door, she pulled her head back out and closed the door. "Follow me please." She addressed the group of business people. Then she turned led them down the hallway to the conference room.

Cassy led the group of business people into the conference room, both doors open, and pulled out a rolling highbacked office chair, "Mam, if you would please sit here." she said.

Caroline didn't like the chair; her back was to the doors, and she was looking out of the windows into the bright sunlight that had broken through the clouds, causing a lot of glare. It put her in a weak position for negotiations.

Several minutes later, Cassy reentered the room, "Would you like something to drink?" she asked.

"No, I'm fine," Caroline said. She was getting tired of waiting.

Cassy looked at the two men in the room.

"No, I'm good," Os said.

"I'll be okay," Sirius told her.

Several minutes later, Caroline heard the doors open again, she looked to the side to see Lord Gryffindor enter the room and start walking around the conference room table. She didn't see the young woman dressed in business attire that he was leading until she sat down across the table from her. Her gazed shifted from the end of the table, where Lord Gryffindor sat with her other bosses. Then she snapped her gaze back to the young woman sitting across from her. She didn't see the two other occupants of the room enter and sit against the wall behind her.

Vic introduced herself to Caroline, "Good morning, I'm Victoria Potter, and you come highly recommended to me." She said leaning across the table to shake the woman's hand, before sitting down.

Caroline stood up quickly to take the offered hand, "I'm Caroline Coulter." She said, trying to figure out what was going on here.

"I can see that you're a little confused," Vic told her.

"Yes."

"You were probably expecting to be speaking with some stodgy old men about this new position." She summed up her thoughts for her. Well, at least she knows some occlumency.

"Yes, I wasn't given much information before I came here. I was just told that there was an opportunity for advancement if I was interested." She said looking between her bosses and this young girl in a thousand-galleon business suit.

"I apologise for that. The decision wasn't made until this past weekend." Vic told her. "Please, tell me about yourself."

Caroline told her about her O.W.L.s, her N.E.W.T.s, and that she had gotten her Masters in Arithmancy. She had worked for this company until she had gotten passed over for a promotion. Then she had worked for another company until Lord Black had found her, and he had hired her away from there, that's how she had met Lord Greengrass and his daughter.

"They were willing to give me a chance." She finished up.

"What's employee retention like in your department?" Vic asked her.

"I have the lowest employee turnover in the company, and we have the highest productivity in the company." She bragged about her accomplishments to her.

"How did you achieve such an outstanding feat?" Vic asked her.

"I believe in training my people and paying them what they're worth. With even as much as I pay my people, which are some of the best paid in the company, my numbers are as good as, if not better than, any other division in the company." She told her firmly.

"So, you believe in paying your people well then," Vic stated, reiterating what Caroline had just told her.

"Yes, I believe in paying for experience." She told her.

"So, do you know what you're here for?" Vic asked her.

"If I were to guess, I would say that you're interviewing me for some position, but I don't know what position." She told her hesitantly.

"You are correct, I am interviewing you for a position. What do you know about Cleansweep Brooms?" she asked her.

"Honestly, not a lot. I know that they're the largest broom manufacturer in Great Britain. But not much more than that."

"Cleansweep Brooms is the largest broom manufacturer in all of Europe. We own Nimbus and Firebolt brooms too. I am the sole owner of Cleansweep Brooms. On my first board meeting, I fired the entire board of directors for embezzlement. I fired the whole second board of directors for theft and sexual immorality. I killed the good ole boys' club in this company, and I was unable to keep tabs on my own company for a wide variety of reasons. I am fully capable of running my own company, but outside obligations prevent me from doing that.

"That is why I am interviewing you. I am looking at you, to be my new COO, as the muggles would call it. Is that something that you would be interested in doing?" Vic asked her.

All of this revelation knocked Caroline back in her seat. This little girl, she was what? Fifteen? Sixteen at the most? And she owned the largest broom manufacturer in all of Europe? Plus, she had the courage to fire her full board of directors, not once but twice? Who are you?

"So, if I understand what you're looking for; is someone to run your company for you?" she asked.

"Yes. I will check up on you from time to time. Is this something that you're interested in?"

Again, Caroline was knocked back in her seat, she wasn't expecting something so significant as to be the COO!

"What are we talking about in compensation? And when would you want me to start?" she was almost overwhelmed! This is what she had been working towards! But so soon? She wasn't expecting something like this for another ten or more years!

"Your pay would be performance-based, you would have a base salary, plus a quarterly bonus. And, as far as when would I would want you to start?" Vic looked at her watch for emphasis. "In the next forty-five minutes."

For the third time in this meeting, she was knocked back in her chair. Now?! She wants an answer now? How old will I be when something like this comes around again? Will something like this come around again?

"I'll do it." She told Victoria.

Vic stood up and shook her hand sealing the deal. "Okay, first things first. Congratulations on becoming the first COO of Cleansweep Brooms! The second is; we're going to need you to give an Oath of Loyalty." Vic told her firmly.

"Why would I need to give an oath of loyalty?" she asked nervously. She knew that if she ever broke it, she would lose her magic.

"Because, there are things that you might see, and things that you might hear that we want to be protected," Harry told her, speaking for the first time since he had entered the room, over an hour ago.

She had forgotten that Lord Gryffindor was even in the room! Caroline looked back and forth between Vic and Lord Gryffindor quickly. Then she settled her eyes on him. She had heard that he was big on this kind of thing, but she had never heard of anyone regretting to give the oath. She looked at Lord Greengrass and at Lord Black, then back to Lord Gryffindor. This young woman sure moved in some powerful circles!

Caroline pulled out her wand and started to give a blanket wizard's oath, "I Caroline …"

"No! There's specific wording that we want in the oath. I'll walk you through it." Harry told her gently. Then he walked her through the oath as he wanted it worded.

"… so mote it be." Caroline finished with her magic sealing the oath. "Okay, so, what's so secret that I needed to do that?" she asked.

"What I am about to tell you," Vic started, "Nobody outside of this room knows."

This ought to be good!

"I would like to introduce you to my spouses." Vic knocked her back down into the chair with that revelation. She waited for the woman to stand back up and turn around to face the two people that she didn't even know were in the room. "This is my husband Cedric, and my wife, Cecilia."

Caroline turned around with eyes as wide as saucers, she at least had her mouth closed she hoped.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Ced told her as he held out his hand.

Caroline's mouth dropped open as she took his offered hand.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Cici said as she held out her hand to the awe-struck woman.

"The reason," Vic started to talk to her again, wanting to get her attention, "That I am telling you this, is you may see my spouses and me walking around holding hands. And now you have an understanding of what may seem an odd behaviour to others.

"Let's talk compensation, now, shall we?" Vic was bringing her back to the meeting.

"Okay." An overwhelmed Caroline said softly.

"Are you with me Caroline?" Vic asked her.

Caroline forced herself to get refocused on the young lady sitting across from her. "Yes."

"For your base salary, you will be paid 125,000 galleons a year. For your performance bonus you will receive 1 ½ % of the profit quarterly," Vic told her. She knew that that was a very generous amount and that Caroline couldn't beat it anywhere that she went.

"That's more than generous. Thank you very much." She told her humbly.

"The dark-haired woman with the, …" Vic paused for a moment, "Anyway, the dark-haired woman that you met as you came in here?"

"Yes."

"She's our executive assistant, Cassy. She was hired by the man that just tried to steal my company from me." Vic looked over at Sirius, "If my Uncle Sirius will get back to work, the man should get the veil this afternoon for murdering my last executive assistant who was loyal to me to the bitter end. So please, don't fire her. Teach her whatever it is that you need her to know." Vic told her tenderly.

Vic looked at her watch again. They still had close to half an hour before the next board meeting was to take place. "Do you have any questions for me? Or would you like to take a look around?" Vic asked her.

"I'd like to take a look around if you don't mind." She said calmly. "How is it that you're married to a guy and a girl, and you're still so very young?" she blurted out. "What did your parents say?"

"My natural mother was killed in a terrorist attack over a year ago."

"Oh, Merlin! I'm so sorry!"

"Thank you, But, my spouses and I are something that doesn't exist." She told her cryptically.

"And what's that?"

"We are a soul-bonded threesome," Vic answered. "That is one of the reasons that you took the Oath of Loyalty today. There are things about us that we don't want just anybody to know.

"So," Vic said as she stood up to walk around the table, "Let's go show you to your office."

Caroline stood up also, and when she turned around, she paid a lot more attention to the two younger people in the room. She noticed that all three of them were much better looking than average, none of them looked their age, and she also saw that they were all impeccably dressed.

As Vic approached the conference room doors, they opened for her without a wave of her hand or anything. "We learn magic at an accelerated pace," Vic answered the unasked question.

"Okay," Caroline said sheepishly.

Vic led her down the short hallway to the big office in the corner with windows on both out-facing sides. Caroline noticed that the two walls without glass were covered in Maple wood shelves, her desk was also made out of Maple. The light coloured wood, along with all of the glass, gave the office a very light and open feeling. She decided that she liked that, after living in an indoor office, where the only window that she had looked out onto the production floor.

"Cassy!" Vic called her assistant.

"Yes, mam?" the dark-haired woman with deep blue eyes said as she approached the empty office.

"Cassy, this is Caroline, Caroline this is Cassy, your executive assistant." Vic introduced them.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Cassy said a little nervously.

"It's a pleasure to meet you too," Caroline said.

"Well, it looks as if things are going well enough here." Sirius said, "I have a murder to convict this afternoon, so I need to be going."

"I'll also be leaving," Os said.

"Thank you both, very much!" Vic told them excitedly.

"Do you need me to stick around some more?" Harry asked.

"No, thank you for your help, dad," Vic said to him. Just before she gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

"I will see you tonight at dinner then." He told the whole group of his kids.

"Bye, dad!"

"Bye Harry!"

Vic checked her watch again.

"You keep checking your watch. Is everything okay?" Caroline asked her.

"I'm just trying to keep track of the time. Our friends are coming over to help us break some wards that have been set up, and you and I have a board meeting in less than fifteen minutes.

"Did you want me to have some house elves help you move your stuff into your new office?" Vic asked her.

"Um, that would probably help." She said, still overwhelmed by the activities of this morning.

Vic walked into the empty office, "Lucy, Maco, Leo!" she called out to their elves.

Pop, pop, pop! "Yes, Mistress?" all of the elves bowed to her.

"Would you please go to Caroline's old office and get all of her things and bring them to this office please?" Vic asked.

Please? Did she just say please to a house elf?

Vic caught the look of surprise on Caroline's face at her display of respect to the house elves. "All of the house elves at the Potter Mansion are free elves, but one, and she couldn't deal with being a free elf, so they allowed her to be bound to the family. All of the others are paid a fair negotiated wage, with scheduled time off." Vic told her.

A moment later all three elves were back, and then a bunch of boxes appeared around them.

"Thank you very much for your help," Vic told the elves.

"It is a pleasure to serve." They said, bowed, and popped away.

"You're an amazing young woman," Caroline said almost in awe.

"Thank you, but if you want to meet an amazing woman, then you need to meet my mum, well, my adopted mum," Vic told her.

As they were stepping out of the office that now had a bunch of boxes in it, they could hear a bunch of commotion from down the stairs. Ced and Cici were walking that way quickly.

"It sounds like our friends are here!" Vic told her. "Are you ready for your first board meeting?" she asked her. "Cassy? Are you ready to take notes?"

"Yes, mam!"

In the conference room, Vic took the same chair that she had before, with Caroline sitting next to her, their backs to the sunlit windows. Caroline watched as five women and four men entered the room. Not one of them was over the age of thirty. She really had gotten rid of the good ole boys' club. Vic had everyone go around and introduce themselves again for Caroline's sake. Caroline was taking notes as quickly as she could. She got a feel for where everyone was at, in the company, and as she looked over the financials, she could see just how much damage had been done to the company over the last several years. She also saw how much had been recovered from all of the embezzlements that the company had suffered through. Then they walked through product development.

"What's an exotic broom? And why are we only looking for two hundred sales of this broom?" Caroline asked.

"Lucy!" Vic called again.

Pop, "Yes, Mistress?" she said with a bow.

"Would you please bring me my broom?"

"Yes, Mistress." And she was gone with another pop. Almost instantly she was back with the red broom.

"Thank you."

A bow and a pop, and she was gone again.

Vic levitated the broom to the centre of the table.

When Caroline saw the Italian Exotic, she let out a low moan of "That's beautiful!"

"That, is an exotic broom. And until I came here, they had never considered building one. They did have a poorly executed broom that cost us several tens of thousands of galleons and not one sale. We should have gotten all of those back by now. Is that correct?" she asked, looking at the Head of Sales.

"Yes, ma'am! All of the brooms are back and accounted for."

"Good. Disassemble all of them, but ten. And I want the ten of them." She told him. "The good thing about the program is that we have been able to salvage a lot of the technology that went into the broom, and use that in other places," Vic told Caroline.

"That's good, so it's not a total loss." She commented.

"Correct, and that's how I look at it.

"As of right this moment, we only have one supplier for each of our components. That's a direct result of the man that tried to steal the company." Vic looked at the Head of Procurement.

"Yes, ma'am." She said to her.

"How can they only have one supplier for each item? That's insane! We should have at least two and closer to four or five!" Caroline said.

"Correct, and they're working on that as we speak, correct?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

And so, it went with getting Caroline up to speed on what was happening at Cleansweep Brooms.

.

As Vic was taking care of her board meeting, Cici, Ced, and the others had selected a couple of different wards to start working on. Julia, George, and Rose were working with Cici, while Amber, Angel, and Fred were working with Ced. The two groups had chosen to work on opposite sides of the office, to keep from getting distracted by each other.

Cici quickly learned that Julia had a knack for working with disabling the curses and the wards. She made it look easy.

Over with Ced, Angel was having a blast disabling the wards and curses, to her it was a lot of fun.

"Hum," Julia said under her breath.

"What's it?" Cici asked.

"It's just something odd."

"Like what?"

"It's like it's connected."

"Connected to what?" asked Rose.

"That's just it. I don't know."

"Okay, so what do we do now?" George asked.

"Hold on a second, Angel found something too," Cici told them.

"What'd they find?" George asked.

"They're not sure, either," Cici told them.

"Yeah?" asked Julia.

"Angel says that it's like hers is connected to something too," Cici informed her group.

"Okay, so what do we do now?" George asked again.

"Go to Ced." She looked at George. "He's got an idea. Rose, come with me. Ced thinks that all of the wards are connected somehow and have to be taken down together."

"All of them?" Fred asked? He was probably the worst when it came to working with Ancient Runes.

"Yeah, I think that whoever set this up, set it up that way as a booby trap," Ced told him.

"We only found seven of them," Amber said.

"Yeah, but all seven of them have to come down together to avoid setting off the trap," Ced told her.

"Right, with you and Cici helping us, we should be able to get it done."

"It would be nice to have a set of walkie-talkies about now," Ced mumbled.

"Let's go out and buy a set!" she told him like it was the most natural solution in the world.

Maybe she's right, Ced thought to himself.

"It would definitely help." Cici thought to him.

"But can we get everybody in the building to stop using magic for an hour or so?" Ced thought back to her.

"I'll just send everybody home for the rest of the day," Vic told them. "I'll just tell them that we found something and they all need to go home for the rest of the day with pay."

"While you do that Cici and I will go out and buy a bunch of walkie-talkies. Any idea where though?" he asked.

"Try a muggle sporting goods store," Cici said. "That's where my dad bought his from when he bought some."

"Okay, I'm going to wrap this meeting up and have them all send all of their employees' home for the rest of the day," Vic told her mates.

"Okay, Cici and I are going to go find a muggle sporting goods store. Where would we look for one?" Ced asked.

"Let's just ask a cabbie," Cici told him.

"Okay, before you go, come up and visit me, so I don't have to explain anything to anybody in here," Vic told her spouses.

"We'll be there in a few minutes. Then we can have everyone else sweep the building to make sure everyone is out of here. I don't need a dedicated worker to screw this up for all of us." Ced told them.

The two spouses gathered up their groups and headed for the conference room and Vic's office.

For her part, Vic started to wrap up the meeting sooner than planned. Then she heard a knock on the door.

"Can I speak to you for a moment please?" Ced asked through the partially opened door.

"Yes, just a moment." She told him.

Ced slipped around the door and headed for a corner of the room.

"Excuse me please." Vic looked at her employees.

Then she walked over to Ced and turned her back to them. As Ced talked to her and told her how much he loved her, then she got a shocked look on her face and covered her mouth. She nodded vigorously and walked back over to the conference room table.

"Okay, I was just informed that the criminals had left some booby traps behind and that we are going to need to send everyone home for the rest of the day, with pay of course." She said to them. "So, I need all of you to go back to your departments and make sure that everyone leaves the building for the rest of the day. They assure me that everything will be fine by tomorrow morning."

All of the Department Heads gathered up their things and hurried to the doors and their departments. Ced followed them out of the door after giving Vic a kiss.

"What's really going on?" Caroline asked Vic.

With the coast clear, Vic told her, "All of the wards are linked together. There are seven of them, and they all have to come down at the same time. The only way that we can think to make that happen is by using some muggle technology that runs on electricity. And as you know, magic and electricity don't mix. That's why we need everyone to leave, what we don't need is for someone to use a spell at the wrong time and kill the walkie-talkies." Vic told her.

"And you can do this?" Caroline asked her in amazement.

"Yes, we can do this," Vic told her.

"You're amazing!" she told her in awe.

"No, my mum is amazing." Vic corrected her.

"Who's your mum again?"

"You've probably heard of her, Healer Potter?" Vic said.

"She's your mum?!" Caroline said in surprise. "I've only heard stories about what she can do!" Her voice filled with wonder.

If you only knew the half of it, Vic thought. "Well, I need for you and Cassy to leave. I will see you tomorrow." Vic told her.

"Okay, good luck." She said as she headed for her office.

Vic walked over to Cassy's desk and explained the situation. Cassy told her thank you and wished her luck also, as she collected her purse. Then the older witch grabbed her and pulled her into a big hug. After the hug, Vic followed Cassy and Caroline down the stairs to inform the receptionist.

After the receptionist went through the floo, Vic walked over to the bottom of the stairs and teleportused to the top. She walked into her office and told her friends that they needed to do a full sweep of the building, a room by room search, to make sure that everyone was out of the building.

"I'll stay up front to make sure they all leave," Vic told them. As the new face of her company, she felt that it would give her employees reassurance that everything would be okay in the morning, and she was putting their safety above company profits.

Almost a dozen stragglers came moping down the hallway to the floo. Then Vic heard spellfire, the stragglers were no longer moping as they heard the spellfire too, now it was up to Vic, to make sure that they entered the floo safely, and that no one got hurt because of a panic.

"Come on! Hurry up!" She encouraged them. "One at a time! No pushing!" the flames would hardly go out before the next person was in the floo.

After the last person flooed out of the building, Vic shut down the floo to keep whoever was fighting from having an escape route. She turned around and warded the front doors of the building so they couldn't get out that way, and no one could come in from that direction. Then, as she turned to run down the hallway, she charmed her business suit to act as a shield. One hell of an expensive shield, she thought.

"Is everything okay?" Cici's voice rang out in her head.

"So far, I am going to say yes. Have you even made it to the store yet?"

"We just checked out." Ced thought to her.

"Well, I'm almost there. I can hear Rose and Julia." She said.

Vic slowed down as she was about to round a corner, she cleared the corner with a quick glance, and then she walked around it to find a stranger in a red robe lying on the floor wrapped tightly in chains. Julia was performing basic first aid on Rose's midsection where she was bleeding profusely.

When Julia saw Vic, she moved aside so Vic could finish healing Rose.

"We were going room to room when this guy jumps out at us and catches Rose with a cutting curse. I hit him with a reducto/stupefy/expelliarmus, I didn't know that I had put that much power into it. I don't think that I killed him, did I?" she asked.

"I really don't care right now. He got her good." She told Julia.

Rose was the closest thing to a sister that Julia had ever had in her life. "Is she going to be okay?" she asked.

"Yes, you did a good job. See? Not even a scar." Vic moved aside to show her that Rose was going to be okay. "Now, if she survives me telling her mum all of those words that came out of her mouth, that's a different story," Vic teased the two girls. Silently, Vic summoned her clutch to her, and as she saw it sailing down the hallway, she could hear more spell fire coming from across the production floor. Julia was up and running as fast as she could. Vic's purse landed in her hand, and she started digging through it.

"You know, if somebody had told me two years ago that I would be carrying blood replenishing potion in my purse, I would have looked at them like they were daft," Vic said to Rose.

"You're not really going to tell my mum what I said, are you?"

"I think that you might be going into shock. Here take this and let me see," she said as she dug around in her purse. "Here, take this also." She said as she handed her a Vitamix to wash down the blood replenishing potion.

Rose looked down at her top, "Oh, and I just bought this in America too!" she whined. "Jerk!" she said at the unconscious guy. She ejected her wand again and pointed it at her shirt.

Vic watched as the shirt was repaired. As the colour returned to Rose's face, Vic stood up and held out her hand to help her friend get to her feet. They walked for the first several offices, and then they picked up the pace a little, to get to where the sound of the other fight had been.

Once they had cleared the production floor, they looked down a couple of different hallways until they found their friends standing there looking down at two more bodies in red robes.

What is this? Terrorist central? Vic thought.

"How many do you have?" Cici thought to her.

"Three!"

"Have we cleared out all of the building yet?" Vic asked worriedly.

"We got our side," Fred told her.

"I just finished ours," George said as he walked up alone.

"Okay, let's sweep it one more time quickly and then meet in the lobby," Vic asked of them. "And charm your clothes!" she told them insistently. She didn't want another incident like what had happened to Rose.

Vic headed off to one of the emergency exits that she could see. She was going to seal this place as tight as she could, she was tired of these people messing with her life. As she walked past one of the stunned terrorists lying on the cold concrete floor, she had to resist the urge to kick him in the face, no, wait! It was a woman!

She flipped open her communications watch, "Aunt Tonks." She said to the screen on the watch. Then she waited for a moment, then Aunt Angelina was calling her. Vic released the first call and answered the incoming call.

"Hello?"

"What do you need?" Angelina asked her quickly.

"I've got three more terrorists at my company." She told her. "And one of them is a woman."

"Are they wrapped like normal?" Angelina asked her. Well, normal for her daughter and her friends anyway, Angelina thought.

"Yes, they're stunned and wrapped in chains, just like we were taught," Vic told her.

"Okay, I'll have a couple of Aurors come by in," she paused, "In almost an hour." She told her.

"Okay, I'm going to stun them again really hard. And lay them out back. We had to go and buy muggle walkie-talkies so we can take down the wards that were left behind by these prats." Vic told her aunt.

"Okay, I'll tell the Aurors to look behind the building and to go easy on the magic."

"Thanks," Vic told her, just before she closed her watch.

"Do you want to let us in?" Ced asked her.

"Can you just shift to me?" Vic asked.

"Do you want me to kill the batteries?" he replied.

"Grrr!" Vic thought.

Vic teleportused to the front doors of the office and removed the wards. She pushed the front doors open and saw her spouses across the street waiting to cross.

Once they were back inside the building with her, she told them, "Why don't you go to the production floor and get those things ready, while I go around, take out the trash, and seal the building?"

"How are the others doing?" Ced asked. He knew what they were doing, but he didn't know how they were doing.

"Well, I haven't heard any more spellfire. So, I guess that they're doing fine." She told him. She waited until they were at least halfway down the hall before she teleportused to the far side of the production floor. She levitated the two stunned terrorists and headed for the back of the building. She pushed the back door of the building open and dumped the bodies across the alley next to that building. Stupefy! Stupefy! She stunned them again. Then she teleportused back to the lobby of her building and started to walk to where the first terrorist was lying. She looked to see how far Ced and Cici were, and then she stunned him again too. She levitated the body and started to walk to one of the side exits of the building, she was getting angry again. She pushed the door open and guided the body around the back of the building. When she cleared the corner, she could see that the Aurors were early.

"Hey! How's it going?" she asked loudly.

Her question was rewarded with both Aurors spinning around with their wands out casting hexes at her. She levitated the body of the stunned terrorist as a shield and watched as the two diffindos cut right through the man. Using expulso, she threw the body at the two Aurors. At least one of them deflected the body away from them, and it landed down the alley, rolling as it hit the ground. Vic hit the free Auror with a triple pack of spells, overpowering his shield and slamming him into the wall behind him. His limp body slid down the wall as Vic's business suit absorbed the spell thrown her way. The next one she rolled out of the way of and came up casting another triple pack of spells. The Auror sidestepped the spells. But it put his back against the wall, and Vic pinned him there with petrificus totalus. Before the body fell forward, she levitated him, and with her free hand she placed a sticky rune on the wall, then she slammed the Auror against the wall, watching as his eyes rolled up into his head.

"Bugger!" she said to the unconscious Auror.

She looked down the alley, and summoned the dead body of the terrorist to her and then she guided it to the other two terrorists.

Opening her watch again, "Aunt Angelina." She said to the watch and then she waited for a few seconds.

"What happened?" she asked. She could see Vic was angry and she looked like she had just been in a fight.

"Those two Aurors that you sent me?" she didn't wait for a response. "They were terrorists too!"

"What two Aurors?" Angelina asked.

"You told me that you were going to send me a couple of Aurors less than half an hour ago!"

"Yes, and I told you that it would be about an hour before they got there."

"Then who are these two guys?" Vic asked as she held her watch face, to the face, of each of the Aurors.

"I don't know, I've never seen them before," Angelina told her.

"Another question is, how did they know to come back here to the alley?" Vic could see Angelina looking off to each side.

Bugger. Vic thought again, and she closed her watch.

"What's wrong?" Ced thought to her.

"The terrorists are inside of the Aurors again!"

"Shit!" Cici thought.

Vic looked at the terrorist stuck to the wall of the building, "Stupefy!" she thought and stunned the man. She turned and left him hanging there on the wall. "Teleportus." And she was back in her lobby. She walked to the production floor and all of her friends and family.

All of them had used walkie-talkies in America to stay in touch with each other during the training scenarios. What Ced and Cici had decided, and run past the others while Vic was dealing with the problems in the alley was, they would turn the volume up as high as it would go and then set the walkie-talkie behind them so they could use magic to disable the wards and stay in touch with the others. Vic would take Fred's place in disabling the assigned ward. They each walked to their assigned wards, Julia, and Angel had to wait while the others caught up to where they were so they could all take the next steps together.

.

It was after dinner time when they had finally finished removing the wards so they could figure out what the terrorists were hiding inside of the building.

"That's a lot of explosives!" George whistled.

"Yeah, it is!" Fred agreed.

Vic flipped open her watch again, "Aunt Angelina." She said once more.

"Is everything okay! I've been trying to call you for hours!"

"Yes, we just finished taking down the wards. Do you have a bomb squad?" Vic asked.

"A WHAT!" Angelina almost screamed. "Stay right there! I'm coming over!"

"Give me five minutes to turn the floo back on," Vic told her.

"SHITE! That's a lot of explosives!" Angelina said when she saw all of the different stashes of bomb-making materials.

"That's what all of us said too, mum," George said to her.

Angelina looked at Vic, "What happened with the terrorists that all of you captured?"

Vic shrugged, "I don't know. We got focused on taking down all of these different wards, and well, then I called you. It took a lot longer than we had expected."

"Where did you put them, again?"

"I put the trash out back with the trash. Here, I'll show you." She said as she indicated for the Auror to follow her to the back alley.

Vic opened the door onto the darkening alley, and the two of them could see that there weren't any bodies still there. Angelina walked over to the wall that Vic had stuck the one terrorist to with the sticky rune. She ejected her wand and ran a magic detection spell over the spot.

"Well, I can detect your magical signature, I can detect Wolfe's magical signature too. I can't really detect anyone else's magic here, Vic." She looked up and down the alley as if hoping that she had missed something the first two times she had scanned the alley as they walked across the narrow thing. "Could you give me a copy of your memory of the fight that took place here? I want to see if I can recognise anyone. Or maybe, just maybe, the two Aurors that I did send, came and went without making a scene like I told them." She sighed heavily, would she at least catch a break? For once, today?

The raid with Tonks this afternoon had tried its best to go pear-shaped, and now, she had more explosives than she had ever seen in one place to deal with. She would need to call Tonks, and have her call the muggle police for the bomb squad, she and her guys were nervous handling something the size of a toaster!

"Why don't you go back inside with the others and go home and get some dinner. Are all of the doors unlocked?" she added as an afterthought. If Harry saw his daughter's picture on the front page of the newspaper, she knew that he would be mad! Plus, with what all of the kids were doing now to earn money, none of them needed to be in the papers. It would destroy their careers.

"No, I'll unlock them and turn the floo back on fully," Vic told her, then she turned to go back into the building.

"Tell the others to put the walkie-talkies in my office and then we're going to floo home for some dinner." She thought to her spouses.

"We'll see you in your office, Mon Amor." Ced thought to her.

"I'll see you in a minute, Little One."

Vic left one of her desk drawers open, so everyone could put their walkie-talkie in it before they headed to the Potter Mansion for a late dinner. She looked down at her business suit, it was dirty, torn, and wrinkled. She sighed again, and her shoulders slumped, as she was looking down at her feet, she noticed that her heels were scuffed also. She shook her head to let her hair flow freely when she saw George and Amber walking to her office, followed by Ced and Cici, Rose and Angel, then Fred and Julia with their arms wrapped around each other. This is what's important, her family and her friends.

"I want to go to our house in Greece tomorrow afternoon." Vic thought. "Rose and Angel can come if they want. I'm getting tired of wearing clothes."

"Sounds good to me! I haven't like wearing clothes for a long time."

"What do you want to tell Fred and George?" Ced asked.

"Nothing. As far as I 'm aware of, neither one of them has seen me in the nude." Vic thought back to him. "And when Angel and Rose get boyfriends, we'll stop inviting them too."

Vic got everyone's attention, "We're going to head to the Potter Mansion for dinner. Aunt Angelina will probably want to get some statements from all of us. Aunt Tonks should be talking to the muggle police about getting their bomb squad to take care of all of the explosives and the other bomb-making materials. Any questions?"

"Yeah! Are we getting paid for this?" Fred asked humorously.

"Yeah! We're feeding you dinner!" Vic joked back with him.

With that, Ced started to herd the group down to the floo. Vic walked over to the floo and cast the correct spells to allow full access again, she checked that the front doors were unlocked, and then she nodded that it was okay to start going through the floo. In ones and twos, they all went through the floo, for her and her spouses, they went through it as a trio. All of them were greeted by Gareth, with a bow.

He looked at the lot of them, "If you would like to freshen up, dinner will be ready for you shortly." He told them with another bow, and he was gone.

.

Angelina showed up just as dinner was finishing up. Harry and Hermione had joined the kids at the dining room table to talk with them, and see how things had gone after he had left. Harry told Angelina to have a seat and order herself something to eat because Vic had cut her dinner short with the news of the explosives. All of the adults were very impressed with the level of teamwork the group had shown in disabling all of the wards at the same time. After Angelina had finished her dinner, the group moved to the library where there would be enough tables and chairs for all of them to write out their statements for her. As she collected the statements, she asked that the ones that had been in the fighting to please give her a copy of their memories so they could be analysed later before the trials. She was a little frightened when she picked up the vials of memories from Angel, George, and Amber. Her babies were growing up too fast. She was proud of them because they had beaten full grown wizards in an unfair fight. Angelina was also amazed that all of the kids could give her a copy of their memories without help from her. She collected the memories from Rose and Julia, and she saw that they seemed to be doing just fine. Then she collected a couple of vials of Vic's memories of the fight in the alley, too.

.

.

Tuesday morning came earlier than what they had wanted, but as one muggle said, time and tide wait for no man. Their morning run helped to clear the cobwebs out of their minds, and the group of teens were feeling better as they walked back to the mansion. All of them waved at Uasal and Car-baun as the two of them headed out to find breakfast.

Inside of the training room, Harry looked at them as they were all clustered in a group. "Sean McMillian contacted me yesterday afternoon. It seems that all of you made an impression on the American government. They would like to work with all of you again." Harry informed the teens.

At this news, the teens became wary, they liked the money, but they didn't want to become famous. The one thing that had been ingrained in them from the time they were born was to stay hidden. Wizarding law punished them if they flaunted their magic in front of non-wizards. Part of their History of Magic classes dealt with magicals being burned at the stake. Being thrown into freezing lakes to see if they would float or sink, (if they floated they were a witch if they sank and drowned, then they must have been innocent. This is where the Bubblehead charm came from.)

"Is it Robins?" Ced asked.

"He didn't say who it was," Harry told them.

The group moved to the weight room to work on their strength and flexibility training. After everyone had done a complete circuit of the weight machines, all of them headed up to get their showers before breakfast.

.

As breakfast was coming to an end, Charles brought the morning mail into the dining room. Harry held out his hand to his Head House Elf. Charles placed all of the letters in his hand.

"Thank you, Charles."

"It is a pleasure to serve." The old elf said with a bow.

"Humm, we have a letter here for Rose. And we have a letter for Angel." Harry looked at the envelopes, then he looked up and handed the letters to the people next to him, so the letters could make their way to their recipients.

All of the other teens looked at the two girls.

Rose opened her envelope just moments before Angel opened hers. These weren't envelopes like what they were used to. These were more muggle envelopes. Both girls scanned the letters quickly to see who had written to them. When Rose got to the bottom, she froze. Her letter was from Marc, in the United States, Angel's response was similar.

"Who's your letter from?" Rose asked Angel.

"Gregg." She told her.

The two girls read their letters over much slower and more thoroughly than the first quick scan of the letters. When they had finished rereading their letters, they looked up at their group of friends.

"What'd they want?" Fred asked a little more roughly than he had intended.

"Gregg wants to know if he can visit me during the summer holidays.

Rose turned and looked at her, "Marc is asking the same thing." She said.

"Why do they want to do that?" George asked.

All of the females at the table stopped and stared at him. George started to blush intensely at the intense stares from all of the women.

"Mate, why do you think they want to come and visit them?" Ced asked his close friend.

"I don't know."

"Well, why wouldn't they want to come and visit them?" Ced asked, trying some of that reverse psychology stuff on him.

"Well, because they live in America."

"Okay, now, what reasons can you think of, that they may want to come here, to visit Rose and Angel?"

Everybody at the table watched as George's eyes got full, and then his mouth hung open. He closed his mouth and said, "He likes her! He wants to come here and shag my sister!" at this revelation, George's face turned an angry red.

.

.

Vic, Ced, and Cici were the first ones to show up Tuesday morning in the lobby to find half a dozen Aurors still in the building. The place was a mess. Vic started using both hands as she walked, to try and clean up the business.

"Halt! Identify yourselves!" a gruff voice yelled at them.

The trio stopped walking and turned slowly towards the voice.

"Identify yourselves!"

"I am Victoria Potter, this is my brother Cedric Potter, and his girlfriend, Cecilia Ramos. I am the owner of this company." Vic told the Auror, slowly and clearly.

The three of them could see the mental gears turning in his head.

"May I go to my office?" Vic asked him while he was thinking. She had work that needed to get done, and cleaning her business was not on that list five minutes ago.

"Where's your office?" he asked. Maybe that would help him figure out who these kids were.

She almost told him, but then she changed mental gears and said, "If you will follow me, I can show you. I came in early to see what had happened after I had left last night." She started walking towards the steps to go up to her office. "When I had left, the bomb squad was on their way here, did they get everything removed safely?" she asked him.

"I uh, um, uh, they left a couple of hours ago. Who did you say you were again?" he asked more confused than he had been just a moment ago.

"I am Victoria Potter, I own this place." She gave him the shortened version.

"Uh, do you have some form of identification?"

"Is my Uncle King, here?" she asked.

Uncle King? "Who's that?" he asked.

"Uncle King? Kingsley Shacklebolt? The Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement?" she asked him.

"Um, no," he said sheepishly.

"Is Aunt Tonks, here then?" she pressed her advantage. Plus, she was almost to her office, about ten more steps.

"You know Assistant Director Tonks?" he asked.

"Yes," she said slowly, "Is she here?" and the door in front of her opened without her touching it. Her office! Well, at least now I can start on the mountain of paperwork!

"Uh, yeah, I think that she's still downstairs. Are you supposed to be in here?" he asked as he looked around the spacious office.

Vic had given up her original office for her COO. Caroline was going to be the one running the company most of the time, so she wanted to spoil her as much as she could.

"Yes, this is my office." She told him again. "Could you take my brother and his girlfriend to Aunt Tonks, please? While I get started on my paperwork?" Vic asked the Auror.

"Uh, yeah, I guess so." He replied dully. This isn't what he thought he would be doing when he became an Auror. He had gotten the required number of O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s but, escorting kids?

"If you see Caroline," Vic said as she looked at her watch. People should be starting to get to work by now, especially the ones that like to show up early. "Please send her up to me."

"What the hell happened here!" they all heard the screeching voice.

Caroline was here.

"Good morning Caroline," Cici said pleasantly.

"What happened?" she asked her. Her eyes were wide with shock.

"I am sure that Vic will tell you everything," Cici told her.

"Okay, where are you two going?" she asked like her life preserver was floating away from her.

"We're going to go talk with our Aunt Tonks," Ced told her.

"Oh, okay." She said as she looked around some more and then moved slowly to the stairs. What was she getting into?

Caroline climbed the carpeted stairs slowly. She looked around as she approached the second floor. At least the second floor looked normal, so far. She reached the landing and headed to Vic's office.

"What happened yesterday?" Caroline asked, dreading the answer.

"Well, once we got all of the employees out of the building, I had Ced, Cici, and all of our friends do a room by room search of the building. We found three more terrorists inside of the building, and then we found two more outside of the building. After they were dealt with, we were able to bring down all of the wards at the same time."

"What were the wards guarding?" she asked naively.

"What the terrorists were storing here was more bomb-making material than any of us have ever seen in our lives."

"Oh, Merlin!"

"We contacted the Aurors, and they said that they would need to have the muggle police bomb squad come and remove the explosives," Vic told her.

Caroline was as white as a ghost by now.

"I think that we should have some house elves come in and clean up. I really don't want to have our employees spending their time cleaning this mess up." Vic suggested to her.

"Do you know where we can get that many house elves on a moment's notice?" Caroline asked her sarcastically.

"As a matter of fact, I do," Vic told her. "Lucy! Maco! Leo!" she called out.

Pop, pop, pop, the three elves went. "Yes, Mistress?" they asked with a bow.

"Could the three of you get enough elves to clean the bottom floor of this building up in less than an hour?" Vic asked them.

"Yes, Mistress. We will need to go to the House Elf village to get that many elves." Lucy told her.

"What will I need to pay them for their services?" Vic asked.

"I think that one galleon each would be more than adequate," Leo told her.

"That will be fine. Please let me know when they are finished so that I may pay them in person." Vic told him.

"Yes, Mistress," Leo said with a low bow.

Then the three elves were gone with a quiet pop each.

Vic saw all of the questions that Caroline had on her face.

"There is a Free House Elf village on the Potter Estate. And as I told you yesterday, all of the elves that work for the Potter Estate are free elves except for the one. All of the elves receive compensation for their services," Vic told her. "We will probably have over a hundred elves here in less than fifteen minutes, and they will be done in less than an hour," Vic said matter of factually.

Vic could see that Caroline's head was spinning. "I'll be in my office," Caroline told her as she was turning for the door.

"Okay. If Cassy is here, could you send her to me?" Vic asked.

A moment later Cassy entered Vic's office.

"When you see Ian, could you send him to me please?"

"Yes, mam." Her executive assistant said before she left.

Vic went back to reading papers and signing them, or rejecting the majority of them.

"Mam?" Cassy said from the doorway.

"Yes?" Vic was looking at another letter about something.

"Did you request over a hundred house elves?" she asked. She had only ever seen a couple of house elves in her life, and they were dirty creatures. The ones that she was seeing now were well dressed and very clean. Plus, they were cleaning everything as they walked past it!

"Yes, are they here?"

"Yes."

"Good, and Ian?" Vic asked.

"Here I am," Ian answered her.

"Good, I need to know how many house elves are here and will need enough galleons to pay all of them," Vic told him without looking up.

"Yes, ma'am. But, how much are we paying them?" Ian asked.

"I have agreed that I would personally pay them one galleon each for cleaning the entire bottom floor of the building." She told him looking up at him.

Ian didn't move.

Vic continued to look at him, "I can either pay 150 galleons and get the building cleaned and ready to work in again, or would you rather pay all of the people that work in this building a full day's salary to have them clean the building? So, doing it that way, we would lose a full day of production, and they might not get it cleaned in one day!" Vic startled him out of his trance.

"Yes, ma'am, I'll pull it out of petty cash, and you will need to sign a receipt for the money." He told her.

"That will be fine. Bring me the money before the elves are finished cleaning." She told him.

"Okay."

Less than an hour later, the army of elves had started to clean the second floor of the building. They just cleaned everything as they walked past it. Even the ceiling was cleaned and looked new.

"Cassy! Where's Ian?" Vic hollered.

"Here I am! I had to go to the bank to get the money. The petty cash box was empty. Someone stole all of the money in it." He told her.

"Get in touch with the Aurors and file a report." Was all she could say.

After Ian had handed her the bag of gold, Vic could see Lucy waiting at her door. Vic waved her hand and opened the other door fully. Outside of her door, the line of house elves stretched down the stairs and around the corner of the lobby towards the production floor. In less than an hour, the house elves had cleaned both floors of the building. From what Vic could see, everything looked like it was new again.

The line of elves caught Caroline's attention, as she walked over to Vic's office.

Vic got down on one knee and had Lucy send in the first of the elves. "Thank you very much for your help," Vic said and then handed the elf one gold coin.

"It is a pleasure to serve." The elf said with a low bow.

One hundred thirty times Vic thanked the elves and one hundred thirty times the elves told her 'It is a pleasure to serve,' and bowed to her as they accepted payment for their services. As each elf reached the lobby downstairs, they elf apparated home. While Caroline was watching what was happening, Lucy, Maco, and Leo went into her office and cleaned it. They were the last three elves in the line, the three of them walked into Vic's office and cleaned it as the witches and wizards watched.

When they had finished, Vic looked at them, "I know that the best way for me to pay you for your service, is for me to give you my sincere gratitude for your help. Thank you very much for all of your help." She told her elves.

With another low bow, "It is a pleasure to serve." They said together, and then they walked towards the lobby.

"The place looks amazing!" Ian said to her.

"Worth every galleon." She told her Head of Accounting.

"Yes, it was," Caroline told her.

Vic moved to her desk to fill out a receipt, when Ian told her, "Don't worry about it, I'll fill out the receipt." Then he left.

Vic closed the second door to her office. "When I'm finished with the stack of paperwork on my desk, I'm leaving." She told her new COO.

"Okay, when are you coming back?" Caroline asked.

"I'm not sure. I'm taking the rest of the week off. Then I've got school to go back and teach. Then there may be something coming up that will suck up my summer holidays. So, it could be the end of summer before I step foot back in here." Vic told her firmly.

"You teach at school too?" Caroline asked in disbelief.

"Yes, Ced, Cici, and I are student teachers. We have done such a good job of it, that they hired another young teacher to start teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts! She's only a couple of years older than us!" Vic told her enthusiastically.

"When I was there, Professor Greengrass was teaching that."

"Uncle Draco's still there. He's teaching the older students." Vic told her.

"A lot of the girls had a crush on him when I was in school," Caroline told her conspiratorially.

"They still do!" Vic told her likewise. "Well, I need to get back to work so that I can get out of here at lunchtime!" Vic told her new Chief of Operations Officer.

.

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A/N:

Revised 04.15.2018