DISCLAIMER! This Harry Potter story was written for fun. All rights belong to the wonderful lady (JK Rowling) who gave the world Harry Potter to read and enjoy. New Movie is coming in April! Hurrah! Yeah, for Fanfiction – a great place to stretch your imagination and enjoy someone else's creativity too! This is the sequel to The Potter Cartouche.
Lavender's grandmother's name is Eloise Hoodwinked.
Chapter 30 Sandstone Plates, a Legacy of Harry PotterHarry worked diligently on ideas for defence and offence with different runic arrays in the private classroom that Hogwarts kept hidden from others in the castle. He'd made two bags of gold for Bloodhook this week – his attorneys were busy with ICW paperwork affirming his rights to his family magic.
He paused to stand and stretch for a moment when Dobby popped into the room with a request from Professor Babbling for more sandstone plates for students in her runes classes. The elf also had two letters for Harry – one from Professor Tofty and the second from one of the Italian rune masters asking for three-brother, and four brother plates. Both wizards offered a substantial number of galleons for the plates.
Thinking there would be more letters and requests in the future, Harry asked, "Dobby, could your elf magic make the sandstone plates?"
"Dobby can't snap fingers and make…" the elf replied, shaking his head. Harry grinned because Dobby was dressed in his Yoda outfit but with mismatched socks on his ears, a sock on the top of his walking stick, and another pair of mismatched socks on his feet.
"No, I understand. But if I make the paper…fold the paper and draw the cartouches and words, could you be the magic that makes the plates then?"
"Dobby not know," the elf explained and watched his wizard carefully; Mr Harry Potter never got mad at Dobby because he didn't know something or couldn't accomplish something for his wizard.
Harry grinned and asked, "Let's experiment and see what you can do."
The elf proved clumsy at writing and Harry took the carving tools away from his friend after only one minute.
"These be not things Dobby taught when elfling, so can'ts do."
"Okay. But can you learn to write?" asked Harry. "You can read, can't you?"
"Dobby does read and maybe maybes can learns to writings," the elf replied sadly.
"That's fine Dobby. You do great at everything else – we'll figure it out as we go along."
The pair quickly moved up to the seventh floor and entered the Come-and-Go room where thousands of items were stored when thrown away. The elf assembled a collection of old chamber pots while Harry prepared the paper to make the sandstone plates needed by the school. He drew the cartouches, wrote the words, folded the paper, and placed the piece of gold on the paper pointed at the old chamber pots. Then Dobby touched the tip of his walking stick to the paper and his magic created two hundred sandstone plates for Babbling's runic classes.
Then Dobby watched Harry prepare the paper to make two brother sandstone plates. This time the paper was aimed at twenty pairs of old chamber pots and Dobby's magic made twenty of the two-brother plates. After checking on the new plates, Harry noticed that Dobby was quiet, so he asked, "How are you feeling Dobby?"
"Mr Harry Potters kind to asks how Dobby feels. Dobby feels tired, Mr Harry Potters. This be different way to use Dobby's elf magic and Dobby must learn how to use new magic like learned how to pop, move things, cook food, make tea, bake biscuits"
"Here, let me give you a hug," Harry said, lifting his elf off the floor. "I like all your socks."
"All elves in Hogwarts be wearing socks on feet and Dobby saw some with socks on ears to keep ears warm so Dobby do too. Keep ears warmest."
"And are the elves dressing like Yoda?" Harry asked setting Dobby back on the floor.
"Some do but some don't. Head elf not mind so long as elfeses get work done and behave."
Harry grinned and set about making the papers to make the requested three-brother plates and four-brother plates. He allowed Dobby to collect and arrange the sets of old chamber pots for the plates, but he used his wand to make the plates and let Dobby rest. When they were finished making sandstone plates, Harry asked several questions about elf magic.
Dobby carefully wrapped the ten sets of three-brother plates for shipping while Harry revised the knowledge Dobby had shared. "So house-elves don't create tea with magic, they brew it like everyone else?"
"Yes, elves just be fast fastest. Wash teapots, fill with hot tea and deliver to wizard fast fastest."
"How do you do the laundry?"
"There be tubs and soaps where elves dump dirty clothes and then dance on top of waters to make clean. Rinse and dry to hang. Then snap to remove wrinkles, fold and puts away."
While Harry handed the four-brother sandstone plates to Dobby, he asked, "With practice, can you learn to do this magic without it wearing you out? Like that time I made the gold from pure magic without a target? Remember I slept for an hour after that."
"Dobby can learn to do this new magic but takes some time because Dobby is old."
"Really? How old are you?"
"Dobby be seven tens and five years old."
"Seventy-five! How long will you live?" Harry asked, suddenly worried about losing his friend.
"Long time, Mr Harry Freshgold Potters, Heir Potters, Runes Master because youse strong magic," Dobby replied. "Dobby be here to put nappies on youse grandchildren."
Harry and Dobby stacked the single plates, and two brother plates to deliver to Professor Babbling. Another house-elf from the castle came and took these plates away.
"Are you feeling full-powered, Dobby?"
"Yes, Mr Harry Potters."
Then can you take these plates to Bloodhook and ask him to arrange delivery to Professor Tofty in London and the other guy in Florence. He'll collect the galleons for them too.
Dobby grinned before he popped out of the Come-and-Go room with the two packages, headed for London. Walking back to the dormitory, Harry thought about making sandstone plates and the money it would generate.
'I don't need more money,' he thought. 'But Hogwarts probably needs lots of money. If she can make plates and sell them, the ministry will have less say in what is being taught.'
After he was in the dorm room and talking to Neville about some homework, he decided, 'I'll start with Lady Longbottom tomorrow.'
After classes the following day, Harry went to the office for the Deputy Headmistress and asked to talk with Lady Longbottom. After about five minutes, she summoned his head of house for the discussion about 'manufacturing runic plates for sale' with the money going into the Hogwarts accounts at Gringotts. The two adults had many questions and also wanted to include Headmaster Bennet in conversation.
Bennet frowned at first and said, "We can't conduct business inside Hogwarts. That would give the ministry inside our doors more than they already are."
Harry grimaced and explained about his concerns on the graft already present. "The Daily Profit…the financial supplement in the Daily Prophet ran a story on the reported tax revenues on sales of the basilisk parts. It's about a third off the actual sales and that means someone in the ministry is helping themselves to the gold.
Lady Longbottom asked, "A third? Are you sure? Of course you're sure because you get the real figures. Samuel Abbot wrote me that he was very unhappy about what he was seeing in the government now that he was in the Wizengamot."
"Selling brother-plates from Hogwarts is something that'll only last until you graduate," Carter said. "Three years of revenue would only just be getting people used to your product before you leave."
"Well, I was going to work with Lady Hogwarts about some way to manufacture the plates without me. It'll be my family magic and she'll protect it for me, but this business would generate galleons for the school permanently."
"Mr Potter, that's a huge income you'd be giving up over your lifetime," Professor Carter said.
"I understand but I've got the money from my estate, from the basilisk, and all the other things I can figure out how to do with my magic…I'll be giving away galleons and gold my whole life."
Headmaster Bennet said, "Write this up, Mr Potter. I won't take it to the board until your efforts are showing income for the school without any detriment to school time or staff."
"How will you handle the paperwork? Orders pouring in and invoices?"
The goblins," replied Harry. "Gringotts London has an excellent world-wide distribution system. The Hogwarts vault manager can add a helper or two for the requests. A house elf can handle the orders to Hogwarts, and they'll get the finished product back to the bank for invoicing and shipment."
"The goblins will love it," Lady Longbottom said. "Invoices will pull galleons from vaults all over the world in London."
Carter snorted and said, "Mr Potter is going to make Britain the pre-eminent Magical nation all by himself."
With a determined tone in his voice, Harry replied, "No, I want everyone to work on this. This money can buy new equipment, pay for more classes and reduce the costs to attend Hogwarts for muggle-born, half-bloods…I want to make this school a place where no one uses those words!"
"But how are you going to handle all the time and effort?" asked Lady Longbottom.
For the first time in the conversation, the three adults and Harry heard Hogwarts laugh in their minds. The teenager explained, "Lady Hogwarts has an idea. But she wants me to keep it secret so none of you are pushed to reveal the secret. I can wrap it in my family magic again."
Bennet smirked and said, "And she wants this to be a special project for you. For the next three years, you're to learn how to build a business, so that when you graduate, you're ready to work with Gringotts on your other businesses."
Augusta grinned and said, "I want Neville involved. We'll call it Estate Management in the trenches."
The adults mentioned several other heirs to possibly involve in this business venture before Headmaster Bennet appeared to hear another voice for a few seconds. He cleared his throat and said, "Mr Potter, the castle…Hogwarts…thinks you're going to have more problems with the purebloods this spring. She's fully behind you and wants you to spend time with Professor Flitwick and me in some duelling chambers she's preparing on the second floor."
"To learn how to fight?"
"You're already learning how to fight. You need some training in formal duels to present yourself properly on the piste and leave your opponent broken and defeated without too much injury to yourself. The purebloods can't claim foul when you follow their forms and laws."
"They'll still complain but we have to talk about honour duels," said Carter. "The purebloods will try using duels to kill Mr Potter and he'll have to be ready to kill his opponent."
Her gaze lost in memories for a moment, Lady Longbottom said, "Killing someone is hard, no matter if you think they deserve to die or not."
Carter said, "People who can kill indiscriminately – like the death eaters – were crazy. And they think that pureblood's have the right to kill muggles, mudbloods, muggle-born and half-bloods because those people are not worthy of breathing the same air."
"Do all purebloods think that way?" asked Harry, disturbed by the conversation.
"No!" declared Professor Carter. After a pause, the man sighed and explained, "I was raised to be proud of my pureblood heritage but while I was here in Ravenclaw, I watched the pureblood dogma destroy and change Magical Britain profoundly. I courted and married a muggle-born witch and that horrified my parents. We escaped and hid in muggle land for almost twenty years, and I loved it. Our children were all educated at primary school before coming to Hogwarts before you were here. My magical family was wiped out by the Dark Lord and his minions. I won't let that pureblood crap affect my children and grandchildren. That's why I came here to teach."
"You have lived in muggle land, professor," Harry admitted with a grin.
CHANGE SCENE: GringottsReading Freshgold's proposal for the first time, Goldtooth, the Hogwarts vault manager, took a moment to absorb what the teenage wizard was proposing.
Looking closely at Bloodhook, the older goblin asked, "This boy…he's going to give some knowledge to Hogwarts and the castle will manufacture the sandstone plates. Freshgold is going to give up all the gold to support Hogwarts. And this isn't something to help that Phvyhgs- Sturrdel-gryhiglzehwe, Albus Dumbledore?"
"No. Old white beard knows nothing of this venture. He'll never get his hands on the galleons," Bloodhook replied to reassure the other vault manager.
Snorting, Goldtooth said, "I'll keep my battle-axe handy. Old Swordtooth will show up at my door demanding a percentage for his client and I'll chop off his other ear this time."
"Isn't he your cousin?"
"Arrgh! Don't remind me of that shame!" growled Goldtooth.
Bloodhook nodded his head and said, "To help with the growth of this venture, King Ragnock and I shall pay for some advertisements in the Daily Prophet's financial supplement, and in Rune Master catalogues.
Goldtooth frowned said, "Set up a separate vault…something 'Hogwarts Plates'. We'll need salaries for two or three youngsters to get it started with processing orders and invoices."
"Freshgold agrees."
The older goblin was surprised at the easy negotiations and continued, "What logistics has the boy planned for?"
Bloodhook pointed to the letter once again and Goldtooth picked it up to read again and snorted, "House-elves. That'll work. Hogwarts has a surplus of house-elves anyway. Old white whiskers tried to sell a few ten years ago and got locked out of the castle for the month of July for his audacity."
CHANGE SCENE: Education of ElflingsIn an abandoned classroom near his study room, Harry spent an hour every afternoon teaching young elflings how to write. The half-grown elves had learned the alphabet rather quickly and they were progressing nicely with using muggle biros to draw pictures on paper. Older elves tried to help but were not able to help with words. "B is for ball" was a foreign concept.
After some guidance from Hogwarts, Harry sought the help of Luna Lovegood, Lavender Brown, and Parvati Patil to help with the lessons. The girls showed a great deal of patience with the elven children, and Luna's artistic talents soon had the classroom filled with lovely illustrations of magical creatures with every letter of the alphabet. The older elves came and sat with their children during lessons when workloads allowed. Flourish and Blotts depleted their supply of dictionaries, so Harry sent Dobby to Gringotts to source copies of the Oxford English Dictionary from the muggle world.
Luna asked about the purpose for teaching the elflings to read and write when it was just Harry in the room with her. He showed her his business idea and the first plates. She asked for two days to think about something important and left a bemused wizard behind. When two days had past, she returned with a stamp she'd made (with the help of Hogwarts) that included the magical seal for the school with the word 'Potter' twined around the emblems of the four houses in a vine.
"This will be the emblem used to seal the cartouche on each plate," Luna said. "Lady Hogwarts told me what she wanted."
When Harry took the stamp to Headmaster Bennet and Deputy Headmistress Longbottom, they just nodded and said they'd each received a note of some kind from the castle that this was Her choice for the plates. The first plates with the emblem were shipped out the next week and the emblem appeared in the next advertisements in the newspaper and magazines.
Albus Dumbledore was terribly disturbed by the news of sandstone plates being sold with the Hogwarts seal on them. He wanted to discuss it with Bennet and convince him he was wrong to allow this travesty of making money off the good name of Hogwarts. But as the headmaster emeritus made his way down the stairs where he'd speak to the usurper Bennet, he saw three elflings sitting in a window seat about fifty feet off the floor reading aloud from a dictionary. They were in the G's, laughing at the meaning of the word giraffe, and arguing that such a creature couldn't exist.
At the bottom of the stairs, he called for an elf and was speechless when the creature appeared, dressed in strange robes with socks on her ears.
"Why are you dressed like this?" he asked the elf.
"Mintsy be cold. Robe and socks keep Mintsy warm."
"That's not enough reason to wear clothes! Remove them, immediately!"
The little elf had tears in her eyes as she removed the socks and the robe, but Dumbledore nodded, "There…that's better. And a little cold never hurt anyone."
Forgetting about the sandstone plates being sold, and the elflings reading from a dictionary, Dumbledore stalked away, thinking how such things never happened when he was headmaster. Then Albus realized he was suddenly cold.
"Yikes!" shouted the voice of some older student. "Uh…sir, did you forget something before you left your office?"
Looking down, Dumbledore realized he was dressed only in his underclothes and even his socks were missing. He turned around and began the long trip back to his tower, muttering about losing the ability to apparate inside 'his' castle. Fortunately, Hogwarts locked the staircases in place to speed the old wizard's trip and she made certain none of the younger students were in the hallways when Dumbledore waddled passed. She also had elves deliver Dumbledore's favourite dinner inside his office that evening though it remained unseasonably cold there the entire evening.
The head elf appeared before Headmaster Bennet and Deputy Headmistress Longbottom at the staff table with a strange story that left Flitwick laughing. Bennet told the head elf, "Give Mintsy my apologies and tell her to dress warmly. And tell her to ignore the headmaster emeritus after today."
CHANGE SCENE: Production BeginsUntil the elves learned to read and write, Harry would make the paper cartouches and write the words on the paper. He made a sack of gold just for the elves to use to make sandstone plates and the elves learned how to arrange the old porcelain, chamber pots, chairs, and the thousand other items stored in the Come-and-Go room to make the sandstone plates.
After two weeks of training, several young elves were able to make the plates without Harry's guidance once the papers were complete. The advertisements for Hogwarts Runic Plates appeared in the Daily Prophet and in the different magazines for rune masters in Europe.
There was some furore in the Wizengamot again, but Hogwarts was outside the control of the ministry. Then the panic began in the ministry when Gringotts reported the accurate sales figures and sales taxes collected to pay to the ministry. This public reporting created screaming in the Wizengamot because there was little chance of skimming off any gold when everyone knew the totals collected.
Lord Abbot praised Hogwarts for taking this step toward full disclosure and announced that the goblins had decided to begin publishing all the sales figures, (past, present, and future) for sales of basilisk parts. There was a scramble by several undersecretaries and the minister himself to return galleons to the treasury before the figures were published.
SCENE CHANGE: Dumbledore LessonsThe kneazles loved the Hogwarts elves. They were pampered inhabitants with cream and tuna to eat regularly. The plumb and juicy rats they caught in the greenhouses were treats. And when the kneazles found a few of their elves sad because of Old Whiskers, they pulled out their favourite toys and visited the headmaster emeritus at night. For the next week, Dumbledore was awakened by a head singing some muggle tunes terribly off-key for five minutes. When he was able to finally fall asleep again, the same head would return for ten minutes with even worse singing.
'Why can't my nightmares be pleasant songs?' Dumbledore wondered. 'How to Rolling Stones sing anyway? Is that some spell I've never heard of?'
SCENE CHANGE: Duelling PisteHarry, Neville, and a dozen other students from Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw watched Headmaster Bennet and Professor Flitwick face off on the piste. The spell chains fascinated Harry and Neville mentioned several plants that could have impeded one or the other of the duellists if transfigured from the loose stones at different moments.
"Plants?" Harry asked.
Neville nodded and explained, "The Stabbing Nettle shooting into a wizard's leg in the middle of a duel will distract him. Or a Strangling Brazilian Vine…I can think of a dozen more.
"I'll give you the next outline for my transfiguration essay if you'll share that list with me."
"No thanks," Neville replied. "My essays in transfiguration are better than yours. Help with that defence spell to pull objects behind the attacker to strike them in the back."
Harry nodded and kept his attention on the duelling piste while he whispered, "The secret is that you can summon something that belongs to you. Throw a dozen rocks or knives at the wizard and then call them back one at a time, striking him in the back."
"That fits within duelling rules," Neville agreed.
CHANGE SCENE: Gringotts"Add another handler on the Hogwarts Plates vault," Goldtooth told his assistant. "They processed five hundred orders last week."
"Sir, I heard the king was cursing Freshgold this morning," the assistant said.
"Cursing Freshgold? What under the earth for?"
"There's so much work, we have to hire more muggle-born wizards, or bring some goblins in from Norway."
"Nonsense," Goldtooth fussed. "Let me go speak with Bloodhook and Ironstream."
"Sir?"
"We'll need to farm something out to Norway…they've got goblins sitting on their eggs with nothing to do since the war. We should put them to work in Oslo."
The assistant looked thoughtful and asked, "Will that help reconcile them to being ruled by our king?"
"Yes, and remember, King Ragnock is their king now too."
End SCENE