CH 5
Harry - James - Potter - Harry - James – Potter
Yule & Other Stuff
Harry bounced around his three bedroom apartment located in Hagen Junction, No. 400 South District, Building 27, Apartment No. 6AB. The town was small to mid-sized, big enough for an initial starting population of about two hundred and ninety-three people and growing quite quickly.
There had been enough land and properties to accommodate about two to three thousand people, but most will entirely depend on the muggleborn and their families, the exiled squib families or the number of sentient creature families that are willing to live among humans in a town-like setting. The word had gotten out about affordable and subsidized housing for those families in need. Many of the 'pure-blood' poor found in Knockturn Alley or Diagon Alley had moved to this new mixed town where the rumours of jobs and more affordable housing existed.
That meant more magical humans moving there too.
The town had begun with a kind of standardized legislation, loosely based on how Hogsmeade was run with a local Mayor and a few 'prominent' citizens running the place. It was a small uneven numbered council with the Mayor being the deciding vote for most of small town's community affairs. It usually meant coming up with some kind of magical policing unit that would report larger offenses to the Ministry's trained Aurors or coming up with community related punishments for the smaller stuff.
It had also meant that the community would come together to discuss festivals, carnivals, fairs and other types of gatherings to ensure that all members of this new town were included in decisions and city projects. They'd decided to meet on a monthly basis until something formal occurred. Their monthly meetings were open to the public and archived in a building they chose to be the town's library.
The town had started importing or gaining several people whose jobs that were community oriented like: Healers, Teachers, Potioneers & Alchemists, Lawyers, Restaurant Owners, Tailors, Book Shop owners etc…
Hagen Junction even had a young family in charge of producing a local bi-monthly paper to start. That family had links to the larger witch and wizard newspapers and magazines where they'd paid a very modest fee to acquire and re-print news stories that were considered outdated, meaning anything two or three days old was fair game for re-printing. They had the rights from the Daily Prophet, International Wizarding Times, The Quibbler and several other daily papers from other countries like India, Ireland and Scottland, Korea, Russia, Japan, America, Canada and several from the South American countries, plus a couple from the less war-torn Arab countries too.
The end result was really more of a large magazine than a newspaper, but the locals had entirely loved it for its unique method of presenting non-discriminating magical news from 'around the world' which was the name of the paper, Hagen's Round the World Bi-Monthly News. Besides it was even fun using translating charms to read news from other countries since sometimes the translations were a little off and those never came with cultural explanations to common sayings or phrases. That meant if someone had wanted to understand the translation they'd have to work at properly interpreting the information or the context of the articles.
The house-elves that Harry had been bonded to were pleased to set up the apartment with some Christmas decorations and a tree every year. They'd been bonded with the boy for a couple of years and this was the first year that the boy was going to have a long term holiday guest. They were giddy at the thought of cooking for more than one human during the acknowledged two week holiday time frame. However they also knew that the new guest could be persuaded to stay longer.
Remus had apparated at the Southern Apparition Point of Hagen Junction.
He'd heard about this new town where many of his old contacts had mentioned was open to many different people from all walks of magical life. Considering the fact that it was a real town they'd figured that not many purebloods that were well-off would move there especially if the rumour of enforced neutrality barriers were true. He'd been surprised when Harry had given him a business card with the boy's contact information for his summer and winter housing.
The amber-eyed man was still curious about the town and had been looking forward to visiting the shops that had been set up. He was eager for the visiting time with his honorary nephew too and to learn more about the boy's activities.
He quickly opened up the small map that Harry had provided with his last owl post.
The map looked like a wheel or a clock face with four major quadrants leading to the different districts set up in the cardinal directions of North, South, East and West. He had to take Dunmer's Way South which was conveniently next to the apparition point until he reached Brook Path Crossing. He had to turn left and follow the path to the end where a square building stood.
He arrived to find that it had large 'No. 27' above the main double doors and was a six story red brick building with secluded, private and secure balconies on either side of the building. Apparently the boy had purchased the entire building through his money management corporation and had elected to combine two top of the floor apartments into one along one on the west side wall which was why his apartment number was 6AB. The secondary kitchen had been converted, plus one of the smaller bedrooms into a very, well equipped potions lab and potions storage for his home-studies.
Remus had climbed the stairs not trusting the old wire caged muggle elevator that now ran on magic. He waved off the aged elevator operator who'd nodded back in understanding. He ran up the spiral stairs that twisted around the central mechanism and smiled when he saw two Christmas wreaths on the set of double doors that had been placed in the middle of the hall. The opposite apartments 6C and 6D had their main doors that either end of the hall and for some reason that balance had worked for those currently living in the units.
He knocked on the door and heard a high-pitched, chastising squeaky voice saying, "Is Tizzy's job. Master sit!"
"Yes, Tizzy," a young boy's voice huffed, but with the fine hearing of a werewolf, the man had heard the indulgent smile behind the boy's huffy tone.
Remus had to smile again this time at the sight of the tiny house-elf that had opened the door. He couldn't help but grin when he noticed the elf's uniform had been decorated with red berries and holly leaves on the two corners of its collar and the motif continued ringing around the cuffs of the tiny, properly pressed shirt. It wasn't dressed in the standard tea towel, but in an old fashioned muggle footman uniform.
The uniform had been 'ahem…customized' and consisted of an unstarched, short sleeved soft cotton shirt with button cuffs at the elbows, a dark green vest with what looked like too many pockets and matching, loose knicker or capris type pants. They were sandals made of coloured leather straps and wood base in the style of the Japanese 'geta', summer shoes, the straps matched the colour of the pants and vest.
The final piece of the outfit had been what had made the werewolf grin. It was a matching green squat top hat made of solid felt that had a very colourful miniature toy train that had been charmed to toot periodically and travel around the hat's brim in various patterns. It was just too cute and was a completely inspired idea that Remus had to grin at it.
He knew that his old school chums, all of them, would have loved that hat. They would have most definitely improved upon it especially adding to the effects that the red and green coloured smoke released from the tiny steam engine as it could have based on potions or 'other' recreational smoke products. They had been children of the seventies after all.
"Yous name," the tiny elf demanded.
"Remus Lupin," the man said as he stepped within the doorway when gestured to do so to remove his boots and outerwear. He elaborated after putting on a pair of warm guest house shoes as soon as he heard the clacking sound of a wooden shoe tapping on the floor. "I'm the honorary uncle to your young Master Harry Potter," he added with a standard history of association that a guest would've usually added when visiting pureblood type families and at large parties.
"Yous follow me," the little elf told him. The elf knocked on the door frame where a boy of about seven stood waiting. He had dark messy hair, sparking green eyes and was dressed for the season in a colourful red and green, chess-squared patterned wool jumper and black muggle jeans.
"Tizzy be presenting to Master Harry Potter sir, his honorary uncle Remus Lupin, Wolf-man," Tizzy bowed with a serious expression.
"Thank you Tizzy," Harry said as he lifted the top hat to pet the elf's clean hair. The tiny elf beamed and smiled when the boy told him, "Good work. You may return to Aven and your studies," he handed the little elf a colourful box with a lot of bows tacked all over and around it. "Xeni will take care of us for the rest of the day."
"Yes Master Harry," Tizzy said gripping the package tightly to his chest, hopping up and down before popping away loudly.
Harry looked up to Remus and approached the man cautiously, not knowing protocol and only flinched minutely when he was hugged by the man who ruffled his hair a bit. He returned the hug shyly and tightly. Then led him further into his sitting room where there were several places to sit and all looked quite comfortable.
"Tea," he asked and received a nod. "How are you?"
"I'm quite all right," Remus said. "Were you busy getting ready for Christmas?"
"Quite," Harry nodded with a smile. "I usually have visitors over on different days leading up to the actual Holidays. You'll meet quite a few of them while you're here. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to demand that Oath of Secrecy and Discretion that I mentioned in my last letter."
"I understand," Remus said. "Do you have specific wording that you'd like me to use?"
"Actually yes I do," Harry said and handed him a piece of parchment with a very carefully worded Oath.
It was kind of lengthy, but it had been worded in such a way that it would protect the boy's secrets and the werewolf's mind from intrusion by any known and unknown method of magical interrogation. It was also one that expanded with time as it was meant to remain open-ended and made specifically for the keeping all of Harry's personal secrets before the boy attended a magical school to further his education.
Remus read it thoroughly, three times, before releasing his wand from its holster. The magic of the oath swirled around the room before the cords of mage light wrapped around the crown of both their heads, sinking in and dimming when the man finally said the magically sealing phrase, "I so swear so mote it be!"
"So mote it be," Harry agreed with a relieved sigh as he was the one the oath revolved around. "Thank you!"
"Anything for you Harry," Remus told him honestly.
"I'm so glad that you found me in October," Harry said. "I wasn't sure if anyone would tell me anything about my parents or how I became an orphan. I mean I've read the books, but some were complete trash meant to line the writer's pockets with gold and the rest, well…were all dry, academic and mainly speculative theories about what really happened that night."
"So now that I'm under a magical oath to keep all your secrets, I take it that you'd like to hear my version of their lives and what I believe happened that night," Remus said as he sipped his tea. It had been provided by another gaily dressed house-elf wearing a colourful red skirt, this time with small tinkling bells that dotted the festive pattern with a similarly embroidered soft cotton blouse and red, platform geta sandals.
Harry nodded and began his explanation with having developed the alias of Lunar P. Black as a child's game. But that it had been one based on a video game that his cousin Dudley had played on a regular basis until the portly boy had lost interest in it. The Boy-Who-Lived had liked the smallish character because it was known as a 'Black Mage', but it was a 'good' or 'light' creature.
He spoke about how one day when he was in London, not specifying whether he'd been brought there by his relatives or not, that he'd managed to find his way into Gringotts. That once there, they'd performed a small ritual to see that he was who he said he was. The supposed ritual had identified whether he could have access to his vaults and the estates linked to them or not.
"For magical accuracy they told me at the time when I was tested," he explained. "The Goblins were very thorough about explaining everything to me." He received a nod in understanding, considering that the man had learned from his own experience when he'd inherited a vault full of money. That he had obtained his own GFN (…i…) registration number years after he'd been schooled had surprised him.
Harry had never specified which ritual or which vaults he'd been permitted to access. He never told an outright lie either as every word was technically the truth with a few words missing from his tale. It was how he'd perfected his explanation and over some time it became his forefront belief regarding that particular series of events.
The true series of events was hidden within a shadow barrier where most of his memories of a future that had never happened resided. He'd chosen to have a different childhood experience all the while living in a semi-adult fashion due to the results of his age of magic ritual test. But Remus didn't need to know that part of the story even if he was bound to secrecy and discretion. It was better that he didn't know the whole of it as some things that were future related may be changed if revealed too soon or at all.
'Well they'll change anyway since I'm talking to him now instead of in my third year when I first found out about him,' Harry thought. 'It might just be better this way. Who knows what this new future will hold for me and for some others.'
The werewolf had been fully aware that some part of the tale had been omitted, but he was willing to wait however long it took for the boy to trust him. 'I know that whatever it is,' the man had thought. 'It will be jaw-dropping stuff since there's definitely more to his story like why is he working when he should be playing or why he lives alone, when he should still, technically, be living with his relatives, unless...'
"Remus," Harry said his name, getting his attention. "Did you hear me?"
"Sorry," Remus replied. "I missed that last part."
"Oh," the boy nodded. "Thought so," he rubbed the back of his head. "Well I was just explaining that my guardianship had changed from my Aunt by maternal blood to a company that my parents had entrusted to handle my estates and funds. They had been empowered to ensure that I was properly schooled in my duties regarding my magical family and education, et al. I was made their magical ward in order to learn what I needed to know about my vaults and properties too. Seems I was to become their ward before I started any type of formal muggle schooling so that they could guide me in some of the more advanced studies I needed," he nibbled on finger sandwich. "I didn't mind that at all since I really wasn't looking forward to going to school with my cousin." He wrinkled his nose at that thought.
"Why ever not," his honorary uncle asked. 'If this had been planned then surely Albus knew about it. I've no need to inform the Hogwarts Headmaster about any of this,' which further eased his conscious since he wasn't quite sure what that old man was up to. 'He was the one who told me not to contact Harry until he started Hogwarts, but now that I've met him it eases my mind that someone had measures in place to properly look after the child and see that he learned everything he needed to know about our world. He'd have been overwhelmed otherwise.'
"He's a brat and bully," Harry explained. "Also he was kept back a year because he was too stupid to grasp the primary basics, either that or he was just very lazy. He'd just been to his first year of school ever. Before me even and was going to be made to repeat it. He didn't even have some kind of learning disability to explain his issues away," the boy's tone was incredulous at the thought of someone so lazy as to repeat their very first year of learning.
Harry was physically expressive too standing up and waving his arms about when frustrated. The boy had noted the questioning look and explained, "His parents had been worried about that so they took him to a few learning clinics and had him tested. He was clearly able to recognize letters and numbers. He knew several basic written words, but he wasn't interested in passing onto the next grade."
"That's odd," Remus commented with a frown.
The boy sat down on the chair across from the man. "Nah, I think he did it on purpose because his neighbourhood friends were starting their primary school a year after him," he sipped the last of his tea. "Either that or his parents encouraged his laziness under the guise of claiming that he was 'special' or something. I guess they'd tell him anything really to probably show me up since they didn't really like me very much at that time. So yeah I was very glad to be away from there and am now learning on my own."
"If you are glad then so am I," Remus told him truthfully. "I'd rather you be happy than unhappy."
"Thank you Remy," Harry said hesitantly, cutting the man's name down to the nickname he'd seen in one of his mother's school journals. She'd hung out with the werewolf more often than the other boys, the Marauders, until the later school years and had made notes of various things she'd done or explored whenever she was with her friends.
The man grinned. He was pleased to have been called by an old name. 'It feels like I'm still part of a pack,' he thought. He nodded to the boy to let him know that it was all right to call him Remy. 'Yes a part of a small pack of one, but still something much better than I've had in these last few years.'
Harry - James - Potter
A few days later they chatted as they walked through the village of Hagen Junction. Harry pointed out the new shops saying, "They've re-opened in time for the holidays."
One was a toy shop and another was a strange one for the Wizarding World, it was a convenience shop. They'd been partially closed for renovations and then fully closed for several days while new stock came in and had to be manually counted by their squib employees.
Clearly that was a muggle reference since the werewolf had never seen something called a 'Convenience Store' in their world. He had seen them a few times when he'd traveled through some muggle place or other. He understood their purpose, but in the magical world…
"What do you think they sell in here," Remus asked as he looked in the holiday decorated window of the convenience shop.
"A bit of everything actually," Harry replied. "It's got laundry powder to muggle soft drinks sold in glass bottles to a used book exchange, from general grocery items, like canned goods to inks, quills and parchment paper if you're missing some. In the muggle world they stay open much later for when the regular shops close. I think this one is the same," he glanced at the plaque with the store hours. He noticed the man's curiosity and asked, "Do you want to go in and check it out?"
Remus nodded slowly and said, "I think I might. Do you mind if we go in there?"
"Not at all," Harry pulled the man's sleeve. "I like coming into places like this, you never know what kind of things you'll find. I like looking to see which muggle candy they're able to bring here."
"What do you mean," Remus asked.
Harry chuckled and said, "Remind me to show some of my experiments with plastic and muggle packaging. I have them stored in a vault at Gringotts and I'm planning a study or some kind of log system that will monitor the rate of deterioration for those kinds of things. Just a bit of personal interest into why some muggle stuff just does not work in a magical environment since I've never seen any recent studies related to muggle plastics and other types of consumer products including their packaging systems, so I figured why not. I was curious about it and wanted to know the answers to my questions."
The werewolf blinked, but there wasn't much that he could say to something like that. The man looked around the small store and had noticed that they were prepared to sell pretty much anything, but this was nothing like a junk shop or curiosity shop. This was more about ordinary stuff that a shopper may need on their way home from work, going to school or other whatnot.
They had everything from emergency undergarments and cheap robes, Cauldron Cakes and Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans to a few muggle chocolate bars, from uncharmed wand holsters to chilled milk in glass bottles and assorted fresh vegetables and fruits from around the world and from a new magical produce town called Warclaw. It even included basic variety of lunch box meals for those on the go. It really was a place of convenience.
Remus' eye was immediately caught by the far corner display of a set of shelves filled with books of all types from romance and history to intrigue or mystery. Some were text books and reference works whereas others were old work or personal journals that had no family to own them. At the top of the book shelf was a carved plaque of wood stating, 'Book Exchange or Purchase'.
Harry only grinned at the man, pointed to another area of the store and said, "I'll be in the toy section, next to the parchment paper over there."
"Okay," Remus said as he walked over to the book section while the Boy-Who-Lived explored the magical toys that lit up with actively used magic.
Harry - James - Potter
Harry had been intrigued to learn that most noisy muggle toys for toddlers had some kind of magical version. Everyone knows about those kinds of toys. They're the ones with moving parts, flashing coloured lights and make oodles of various noises from animal sounds to childish educational songs.
He'd been pretty much surprised to find several equivalent versions of the self-same toys in the magical
World and he'd even started collecting a few here and there. They were mainly parts of a series of interconnecting toys. All of which he used to practice manipulating his magic without a wand and with one.
Yes he'd been able to obtain a wand to work with the owl outfitter ladies whose business he was backing because they were good at what they did. But it was a simple service wand with several prearranged series of spells packed under a single spell word and a couple of uncomplicated specific wand movements.
The wand was also deemed a learning wand for children and useful for an underage apprentice like him who only needed to learn a few basic spells that were not linked into the series of programmed ones. It allowed the ladies to control the types of spells cast on the eggs and owlets that were in their reserve.
Consistency was the key to a monumental experiment and business like theirs.
Jonquil Bellier and Iris Gabris had been open-minded about asking for financial aid from individuals that their personal and loyal Gringotts' goblin advisers had recommended they approach. They were women of different heights, but had permanently charmed their physical appearance to match those of the flowers they'd been named for. They usually went everywhere together hence their joint business aspirations of the last twenty plus years.
Jonquil Bellier came from an old French family and she'd attended l'Academie de magie Beauxbatons in France. This woman was the taller of the two standing at five foot eleven inches just shy of six feet. It had been rare for anyone in her family to obtain such a height, but there had been family rumours that they all had a 'soupçon' or two of giant somewhere in their biological pool.
Her hair had at one time been charmed white by her parents while her eyes were a natural pale golden yellow and a sure sign of creature magic. Her appearance had been made to match the white daffodil flower she'd been named for. Her hair was now naturally white as she'd aged gracefully. At least her name in French sounded less insulting than the English word and she definitely preferred Jonquil to any version of daffodil or narcissus which were also alternate English words for the jonquil flower.
She was the kind of person that didn't quite care and never quite followed the normal way of things. She'd been a tomboy type of girl all her life. With her current business and life-partner it looked like that would never change by the time or whenever she happened to reach her full dotage. Her family was supportive of her and didn't quite care about her choices of partner as there were ways to get around that usually in the form of distant cousins or the offspring of her brothers and sisters and of course full magical adoptions.
Iris Gabris was a no nonsense kind of woman with hidden inner strength. Her hair and eye colouring had been permanently charmed to be similar to the most exotic of the iris type flowers with hair of dark, dark red, nearly like that of dried blood with purple ends and dark eyes nearly the same shade of purple. Her inner spiritual strength came from a time when she'd openly defied her quite extensive, heritage proud magical blood family of Aged and Noble name of Van Gaysel in order to marry a simple, open-minded yet very loving muggle man named Hank Gabris.
Oh the offense of that had been quite scandalous at the time. She'd been blamed several times over the years for other wayward magical children defying their parents to marry 'beneath' them in magical scheme of things. It was almost as though she'd made it fashionable to defy the parental control against the traditions that a Head of a magical family exerted on their progeny. A defiant fashion to which almost always resulted in that openly defiant family member being magically stricken from their originating family tree or familial records.
She'd been removed from her family's magical tree nearly thirty years ago. However her husband had died during the first emergence of the Dark Lord who had at the time just been named in the press with the moniker of 'You-Know-Who'.
The Head of the Van Gaysel Family had tried over time to prevent her from being able to obtain any viable working position within their meagre magical community. They'd almost succeeded too until she'd re-connected with her good friend Jonquil Bellier to which they had developed a quick, personal understanding and several very cunning business plans that usually started off fairly well.
Most businesses in the Wizarding World started pretty much the same way. You either had money to start a business or you borrowed money to start a business, but woe you if you can't make the loan payments as laid out in your borrowers' contract. The potential to develop a black name or questionable reputation for instability in any business was too great a risk, but these two ladies chose to risk it every single time.
The two women had been quite prepared to sign a borrowers' contract with nearly anyone that would lend them their start-up money for any of their ideas. They'd succeeded several times, but the Van Gysel Family had a very long reach and they had made sure that the ladies always received a small taste of success before experiencing the bitter failure of business closure.
So they'd been completely surprised when they met the famous Boy-Who-Lived the last of the Noble House of Potter and had found that the boy had eagerly agreed to back their business idea about a semi-local Magical Owl Reserve. He agreed to everything that they'd asked for including the terms of the loan and the amount for their starting capital.
In turn they offered him the right to purchase business shares as the business grew allowing him to gain up to forty percent of the business. All had been approved on the one condition that they hired him to work for them during the summers and only paid him with room and board; meaning a place to sleep and enough to eat.
These two same women had both been past the child bearing stage in their life when they had found companionship with one another. It had been during the course of their earlier scholastic acquaintance that they'd discovered that they both had an abiding love of post owls. They wanted to breed more of them in a place of safety, a sanctuary or a magical reserve of sorts.
Hence the conception of one of their ideas that had yet to have been financed and executed. Too risky they'd been told repeatedly.
It had been coincidence or perhaps it had been through the canny female goblin, Sibilo who'd guided the ladies to her young and wealthy client's attentions. Harry had wanted to open such a business too, but he was more of a physical worker than a manager at this stage in his life. The goblins on his management team had known it too. They manoeuvred him and his businesses to support these two women. He'd known that they'd done so for his sake based on the plans he'd spoken of during his long ago initial meetings with them.
In the end with the two ladies running the business side of things, Harry had been able to do what he'd dreamed about ever since he'd discovered that he was a 'Striparole' or an owl speaker. Someone known as a Striparole was defined as a human able to fully speak and understand Strigizoot, the language of owls. He'd already been classed as a Parseltongue in his past life and speaking to owls didn't make that much of a difference to him as when he spoke to snakes. He just didn't know that a Striparole was just as rare a gift as someone who's known to be a Parseltongue, if not a little more so because no one under the UK Magical Jurisdiction had been discovered to be a Striparole in over two hundred and sixty plus years.
Working with these two ladies had allowed him to pursue his projected future profession of owl breeding. The challenge of monitoring their growth plus the fact that in order to do the job you had to fly on a broom with the birds was a joyful bonus to the young human. He had to fly in order to chart the number nests for pairings, number of eggs in a clutch, the number of magical owlets surviving and to be able to successfully put monitoring tags on them before they flew away from the family nest or away from the sanctuary.
Jonquil Bellier and Iris Gabris had found a steady worker and someone that they could readily trust with their future business plans for the reserve. He'd brought forth a couple of ideas which had helped them to get their business off the ground such as paying owl stud fees to those who've invested time and magic into the care of their magical post owl. The service had also been made available to those whose owls were nearing the bird's technical retirement age and whose human family could do with another magical post owl sired from their faithful family companion.
People could earn money if the birds paired up with whichever owl was unpaired in the reserve. It had been done with the hope that more than one owlet from a mixed pairing would be magical. It had worked exceedingly well and continued to work to this day.
The two women had been surprised that such an idea would work, but the growing number of magical owlets didn't lie. That breeding-stud service was an even better idea. It was better than forking over a large sum of galleons to purchase rare pairs of owls and hope that nature would take its course with the two of them.
The boy's ideas had been accepted and were found to be quite sound.
There had also been the fact that the ladies believed that he charmed the owls whenever he was in the reserve with them since he'd never once come out of there with a bite or a scratch on him, unlike some of their other workers and apprentices. They'd also never heard him talking to the birds, but that was something that he was quite content in keeping to himself for now.
Harry - James - Potter
"Harry…," a voice called out to him.
The boy blinked his eyes, turning his thoughts back to the here and now. He'd been concentrating on a child's toy that had looked like a complicated clockwork owl where each piece had the potential to move with magic. It would take some intense concentration to move every piece to make it move in a natural owl-like fashion on a more permanent basis, but that was how it had been charmed to work and improve a child's concentration on magical mechanics. It was also designed to allow a child to learn unconscious magical multi-tasking.
"Huh," Harry blinked, looked around and then remembered where he was. He saw his honorary uncle with five books in his hands. "Oh hey," he said. "You found some. Did you want to put some money in the purchase jar to buy them or did you have some prepared to exchange?"
"I'd rather buy these," Remus told him. "I kind of like keeping the books I buy, although if I know that I'm never going to re-read them I'd definitely like to exchange them or sell them."
"Okay," Harry headed back to the corner with the book shelves. "Did you pay for those yet?"
"No, I came to ask you on how to go about it, but you were lost in thought staring at that toy owl," Remus teased him lightly.
Harry grinned, rubbed the back of his neck and said, "You should see my collection. I have over a hundred different owl type toys. Plus I have a couple from the magical mobility creature series too. I usually buy them so that I can play with my magic."
He pulled a clipboard from the middle shelf and explained its purpose. "You write down the title of the book and name of the author. You tick or check the box 'Ex' for Exchange or 'P' for Purchase. The price for each book is based on the number of pages in the book and each page is worth one knut."
"I see," Remus said. "So if one book contains seventy-five pages, the book can be bought for 75K."
"That's right," Harry replied. "If you put a mark in the P box, you have to mark the number of pages on the line beside the box too. Just put the book on the plate with the dial and it will tell you the number of pages. Then you deposit the money in the mechanical bank beside it." The man looked at the bank in question and grinned as it looked like a tin toy made to look like grumpy goblin sitting at a banking podium. "You open the bottom drawer here under him, put the money in and then close it in order to receive your receipt that comes out looking like a piece ticker tape paper."
The boy demonstrated the method by going through all the stages; writing a book title and name of the author, check the box P for purchase and put the book on the magical scale. The result was two hundred and eighty-nine that floated above the book. Then he put 289K in the mechanical bank's drawer and they both watched as the receipt ticked out like a ticker tape machine of old, spitting it out with the word 'Sold, 289K'.
It had almost been cute the way the tin goblin grumped happily and twirled in its seat as the money was placed in the toy bank and the receipt had been given. As everyone knows goblins liked money.
"Put the ticker receipt in the book and then do the next one," Harry told him. "To exchange books it's pretty much the same thing in reverse order. On the clipboard you write the title, author and number of pages. The clipboard is pretty much the book ledger. In order to exchange anything you first have to bring in a book and know how many pages are in it to exchange for something of similar value."
"Ah," Remus noised. "I understand. For now I'll just pay for these books."
"Okay," Harry said. "I'm going to buy that toy owl. I'll meet you at the door and then we can explore Hagen Junction." The man nodded, turned back to the tin toy bank and paid for the four other books.
Harry - James – Potter
Remus had been surprised to have actually made the acquaintance of the two women who ran the Jonquil Gabris Owl Outfitters business that his nephew worked for. The women were funny, tricky and enjoyed a good pranking tale as well as magical and muggle board games and card games.
Harry had invited them to his place for an evening meal and an overnight stay. It had been a common thing during the past two winter holidays as the ladies visited friends and family throughout the magical world. They had also taken to visiting the post-Hogwarts magical institute that the boy had yet to go to in order to earn his breeding and business degrees. They went there to search for their summer employees or maybe gain some apprentices that wished to join them in their endeavours. Their business was a growing one and it had reached the point where they needed full time reliable, seasonal workers.
The women usually visited the boy to check up on him. Due to his age they worried about him and he was grateful that they'd done so. They asked about his studies and had learned that he's already passed his potions O.W.L. They congratulated him and were eager to see if he'd take up a potions career or if it would remain a hobby. So far he'd declared that potions were useful and that he'd been thinking about it, but not too seriously which had made them all laugh.
Remus and Harry were on their own Christmas morning along with the elves that bonded recently to the House of Potter. Remus had laughed when he heard that the boy had had to hire three for the gobliness named Sibilo, but the female goblin had been adamant about their needed usefulness.
"She'd been right too," Harry explained and sighed looking at the decorated tree with a few packages tucked away under the ornament laden branches as he drank is his warm chocolate milk. He didn't like it so hot that it burnt his tongue and that he couldn't taste anything that. He did like it warmer than room temperature and it was delicious to have after spending a day outside in the cold air and snow. "Those vaults were a mess and without house-elves working to organize them, some prizes would have been lost due to erosion, time or badly done preservation spells."
"Like what," Remus asked. He'd visited the Potter vaults before, but they'd always seemed to be in order. 'Perhaps it was the fact that the Potters always knew what they were seeking and where it had technically been located.'
"There were some ancient looking weapons that needed a bit of maintenance work," Harry told him. "There were some old scrolls and books that were not under preservation spells or in cases that would protect them. We were lucky with those since we were able to copy them first and then set up the originals properly in a preservation case that would allow them to be read under magically protected glass just in case mistakes had been made during the copying process."
The boy smiled remembering a very rare handwritten muggle bible which had been written by a muggleborn priest where each page was a treasure of information in diagram and symbolism. Much of it had been cross-referenced with a magical version complete with ancient or complimentary tales that included more demon lore, magical beasts and ancient god worshipping rituals, along with the familiar stories about the prophets and the disciples in the purely muggle versions of the common bibles.
It was a treasure that he planned to keep well preserved in his family's vault as it was something he'd rather not share with anyone in the world. He had a feeling that people just wouldn't understand that it was a valued history book now rather than something to be followed or used for worship. More true now since the Wizarding World had moved away from anything remotely similar to muggle religions.
"Harry," Remus said and earned him a blank look from the boy sitting cross-legged in a large poofy-soft looking pillow chair. "I've been meaning to say this for a while now. You don't act much like a normal kid. Someone your age would have been down here in the early hours, tearing open the packages under the tree."
Harry smiled sadly and said, "I know." He looked at the man and explained, "When I lived with my mother's sister and her family, they didn't treat me like family." He looked back at the colourful packages under the tree. "At the time, I didn't know why they didn't like me. They never treated me as anything other than an unwanted burden and free house worker." He paused and then continued, "I never even got a Christmas present or one for my birthday until I'd moved out and the owl ladies had sent me two packages at Christmas. One contained two books on rare breeds of owls, muggle and magical. The second parcel contained a heavy canvas work robe with tight sleeves specially made for potions work."
He looked to the man and said, "When I moved away from my blood relatives' house I'd purchased three things during that year for myself and had the house-elves wrap and hide them until Christmas morning. It was a bittersweet feeling to have to give myself gifts for Christmas, but I'd had fun buying for those that I counted as my friends." He chuckled and said, "Sure surprised the goblins when I sent them a little something."
"What did you send them," Remus asked wondering what you got goblins for a human holiday.
"A Christmas bonus," Harry snickered and dodged the small couch pillow that his werewolf uncle had tossed at his head. "It's true. I sent them a muggle holiday card that I'd made from an art project box and I added a money voucher to a creature friendly shop along with their yuletide bonus pay. I wasn't about to guess at what they'd want."
"Harry," Remus groaned with his face in his hand. "Be a good lad and open your gifts now."
Harry grinned, summoned a low table for his presents and did the same for the werewolf. He carefully put his ever warm mug of pure chocolate heaven on the side table. Then he attacked his presents to show his uncle that he really was a boy of seven and had been waiting for the go ahead to open the gifts. He had two from the owl outfitters ladies again, one from each of his goblin friends and three from Remus.
Remus had one from his old Hogwarts Headmaster as that old man liked to keep tabs on some of his old students. It was a way to know who was doing what, where and when and who he could count on to come to his aide at a moment's notice.
He had received one from his old Head of House too, but they mutually exchanged letters and small things yearly. He'd been surprised to receive two gifts from his self-appointed nephew, but he chose to save those for last just like the boy was saving the ones from his wolf enhanced uncle as he'd called him in his letters on more than one occasion.
Harry received another set of robes from Jonquil Bellier who believed that he needed practical clothing for his potions work. She never believed that he could modify his robes without a wand and into all kinds of configurations for whatever his work was. He continued to let her believe it.
Iris Gabris had sent him a research journal with an erasable note making kit that came with lead stems of different sizes or thickness. It contained a metallic lead holder which was new to the magical market this holiday season from the makers of the Ball Pens and it came with a new lead vanisher balm. The erasable balm came in a stick format that looked pretty much like the skinny stick lip-balms that the muggles used under various conditions. The new eraser made less of a mess to the paper than a rubber one and it was cleaner too.
The premise or idea for the kit was to create something that could erase the lead pencil marks on parchment without ruining the parchment or smudging the rest of the notes being taken. Extremely useful for those that did extensive research and required two sets of reference books in order to have one to make marks or notes in and a second to preserve its original nature in a personal library.
The kit was given to him so that he could make corrections to his experimental notes in a journal or directly in his duplicate text books as he played and learned to improve his potions skills with lots of practice. It was a very thoughtful gift and he enjoyed her silent encouragement to beat the odds and pass the Ministry Potions N.E.W.T. exam before ever entering Hogwarts.
He'd been surprised to receive two somewhat rare books from his gobliness tutor in potions.
Potions Mistress Gemara Draeger had somehow learnt that he knew how to speak and correspond in Gobbledegook as well as Russian, Dutch, French, English, Arabic and Parseltongue. She did not know about the owl language though. He'd found that he could absorb more languages at his younger age due to his age of magic. Plus he frequently used translation charms to reinforce his knowledge. It helped a lot when he was doing potions research which had been assigned by his exacting tutor.
There was also the rarely known fact that the more you used a complex language translating charm the more of the language you absorbed until you no longer needed to use the charm for speaking, reading or comprehending written texts. It only depended on how you used the charm or the level of difficulty of the charm. For example: if used frequently for only speaking then you'd develop an understanding of that spoken language only. Coincidentally any house-elves would learn all the languages that their masters knew too from overuse of complex translation charms early in their developing lives.
How the goblins found out about the snake language, he'll never know, but the wily goblins seem to have added that information to his GFN file. It was now in his personal GFN passport book. It was more of an identification folio, but worked like a mix of muggle ID cards.
His potions teacher had found him a rare book of potion recipes written in Parseltongue and one oddly enough in an Ancient Pre-Slavic language. Pre-Slavic tribes were supposed to be precursor people to the Russians, Slovenians, Krivichs and Ukrainians. He knew that he could find a way to interpret the information in that book because he'd been studying those kinds of languages for quite some time. He'd been about to open his new books to look through them, but his adopted uncle told him to continue opening the rest of his gifts.
"What about you," Harry asked. "What did you get?"
"I received high quality chocolate from the Hogwarts Headmaster," Remus said and he noted the quizzical expression on the boy's face. "We keep in touch with letters every few months and with small gifts like this during Yule. We used to be a part of an organization called the Order of the Phoenix. It's an order that's still partially in operation, but not as active as it used to be."
"Hm," Harry muttered. "I suppose it has to do with the hypocritical Dark Moron and his sycophantic and supposedly pure-blooded boot lickers."
Remus looked shocked at the venom coming from the mouth of a child and yet having seen the boy's personal library he wasn't too surprised that Harry knew about the Dark Lord that had killed his parents or knew of that man's followers. He snorted softly and said, "Try and find a better name for them."
"Oh don't worry about that," Harry replied with a cheeky grin. "I've dedicated a whole magically growing notebook to coming up with various alias names for the Dark Git and his Death Munchers. It's charmed to let me know, if I've come up with the name already or not. However the fun thing is repeating the names in different languages. You should hear how it sounds in Gobbledegook or Arabic because it sometimes comes out sounding like cute baby babble."
"Hrmph," Remus snorted louder. "I think I'd like to see that."
Harry nodded as he opened cards from his goblin and human management teams. They contained Yuletide wishes along with 5G and 10G vouchers for various stores in Hagen Junction and Diagon Alley. They knew that he'd know what to buy for himself. He'd done the same with his employees, only the goblins got the gold while the humans received similar gift vouchers for popular stores in their immediate vicinity.
Remus chuckled at the title of the book he'd received from his old Head of House. He showed it to Harry who chuckled too. "We always try to outdo the other with books of strange titles related to our animal counterparts," he told him as he looked to the title, 'Zen Methods to Tranquil Your Inner Howl.' He grinned at the boy and said, "I sent her one this year called, 'The Cat Who Could Read Backwards'. It's a muggle mystery story by a lady named Lilian Jackson Braun, but I liked that title so I'd copied it into a hard cover parchment version that should last her for years." (…ii…)
"Why would you do that," Harry asked. "Why charm a muggle book like that?"
"It was your mother that had discovered the problem. You're like her in that respect trying to discover why some muggle items work or don't in our world," Remus told him. "She'd read something called, The Hobbit, which had a trilogy series called the 'Lord of the Rings'. She'd brought them to school with her and they'd begun disintegrating after two months."
"Kind of like what I discovered with the plastic muggle pens and some muggle packaging for candies," Harry nodded and leaned over to ask, "Then what happened?"
"She was furious of course and had sent them back home to her parents," Remus told him. "They then sent her several 'used' copies that she'd demanded from them. She planned to do some spell testing while she hunted through the school's library up and down until she'd found that transfiguration spells didn't help and neither did the standard copy charms."
"Hm," Harry noised. "No I don't suppose copying something that disintegrates would stop the process since you're technically copying the problem too. So," he leaned forward eagerly. "Did she figure something out?"
"She certainly did," Remus said with a nod of his head. "She consulted with the Head of Ravenclaw House, Professor Flitwick about her theory of copying the book into any blank paged, general notebooks that had only been produced in the Wizarding World. The spell is 'Transcribo Destini Firma' which transcribes the book and all its contents into a magical blank book. It made the internal written information transfer completely and changed whatever the original cover was to a solid, hard one. The new copy was permanent without fear of disintegration. It didn't matter if the notebook was hard-covered or soft-covered to begin with the final copy was always ended up hard-covered." He paused to sipped is tea. "She'd earned a special award in school for it, had an essay published in Charms Monthly too. It had also become a popular spell trend to use among muggleborns and muggle raised students for quite a long while after that."
"I can see that happening," Harry smiled at the thought of mother beginning a trend for muggleborns and those raised in a muggle environment. "You'll have to show me that charm then. I know that I have my own favourite muggle book series that I'd like to bring with me whenever I go into a completely magical environment, but haven't had the chance to do so yet. I didn't know about the disintegrating book problem, but mostly that's because I'm still reading purely magical works produced witches and wizards. I'm glad you told me about it though. I wouldn't want to lose the ones that I'm fond of. I doubt the problem will occur in Hagen Junction for some time because the town and location was originally pure muggle."
"I suppose with an influx of more magical elements that may change over time. I'll show you how it's done, but I doubt that you'd be able to do much," Remus told him and then explained. "She developed the spell in her sixth year."
"Ah," Harry said with a sagely looking nod. "I'd still like to know more about it and see if I can do it. I'll never know unless I try."
"How about you continue to open your gifts first," Remus told him as he reached for his one of his last ones. It was a box that contained an owl kit that included: a shrunken owl cage, a beak sharpening stone, rope of treats, etc… He chuckled and thought, 'Cheeky brat doesn't want me to forget my promise.' His last gift was a box shaped book storage which came from Harry too.
Harry had just unwrapped, a similar box shaped book storage which contained school journals that Remus had actively sought and copied into a bound book set. The books were larger than the original journal size of five by seven inch as the copy charm added an extra column at the pages' edges with lines to make notes or jot down observations of the contents. The boy just grinned and then had to laugh as his honorary uncle had unwrapped, a very similar gift from him.
"You asked the goblins for gift giving advice," Harry pointed a wagging finger at the man who'd chuckled and muttered something about 'great minds thinking alike'. "A-ha, ha, ha, hah," the boy clutched his stomach at the silliness of the same type of gifts. "It's prank worthy."
That had startled Remus who grinned at the boy in return and nodded. "It is definitely prank worthy." He sipped his still warm tea and said, "Happy Christmas Harry!"
"Happy Christmas Uncle Remy," Harry smiled as he sipped his own warm chocolate drink. He ended up with a chocolate mustache as he gazed and fingered the boxed journal volumes from all the Marauders and his mum. His personal house-elf had taken plenty of photos with a magical camera of the boy's first Christmas with someone deemed to be a treasured family member.
Harry - James - Potter - Harry - James - Potter
TBC...
(…i...) GFN – Gringotts Family Number (from here one this will not be repeated).
(…ii…) "Cat Who…" series of mysteries – see attached link for list - en dot wikipedia dot org/wiki /Cat_Who_series (remove spaces and change the word dot)