Chapter Eleven

The Memory

Friday August 18

As they portkeyed into their shop, Harry asked, "Who's getting their wands today?

Hermione replied, "Some of the local shopkeepers."

"OK, let me get the wand blocks glued and into the clamps and I'll put out the nine samples on each table. Would you like some tea?"

"Dobby will be getting Miss some tea."

"Dobby and Winky, we'll be getting in an Elder trunk today. Can you two watch for them and slice them up after they arrive?"

Winky nodded her head while Dobby replied, "Yes, Harry Potter sir. We get to have lots of work this afternoon." Their eyes were alight with excitement at the prospect. "Guards are taking us to spider forest this morning. Winky and Dobby are having a busy day."

"Have fun and be careful."

Just over a half hour later, there were thirty blocks in the clamps and Harry had set out the nine sample wands each. Tom Dodderidge was Harry's first customer while Stanley Flourish happily sat in front of his favorite customer. Needless to say, Harry had finished with three fittings before he saw Hermione actually hand Flourish a wand to try.

Silvia Malkin handed Harry her signed card and five galleons. "How long was your old wand?" asked Harry.

"Nine and three quarters."

"Try this one."

"Oh my, that's lovely. Thank you, ever so much." She got up to leave at the same time Flourish finally departed.

Tanner Sprout came in, carrying the latest edition of the Quibbler. He handed Harry his card and five galleons while Lance Tattling sat down in front of Hermione. As Harry bent down to get some more wands out of a box, Hermione noticed Tanner whap a beetle that had landed on the floor next to him with his paper. Realization hit her as she put her hand to her mouth.

"Harry said, "Twelve inches, maple."

Tanner said, "Perfect," as he vanished his newspaper. He leaned towards Harry and said. "My mum said to say that she really likes hers and to say Thank You both again."

"You're very welcome. Have a good day."

… - …

As John Macmillan patiently stood in line, Blackeye the guard recognized that he was the late addition and stated, "Out of thirty thousand witches and wizards in Britain, your name was moved up to number two hundred-fifty one. Hopefully your two children also have excellent manners. Enjoy your day, John Macmillan."

… - …

Harry was reading his copy of the Quibbler in the break room that afternoon. There were three interesting pieces that caught his eye.

Queen Says Lord V is a fraud

The Queen proclaimed that they have no record or a Lordship for anyone named Voldemort but officially proclaimed a revocation, in case one may have at one time existed. Minister Bones reported Monday based on a direct conversation with Her Majesty and the Prime Minister...

Marked Supporters Go Missing

DMLE Director Kingsley Shacklebolt reported that a number of missing person reports have been filed for a group of prominent conservatives. When asked for names or descriptions he replied, that they all seemed to have a skull and snake tattoo on their arms. No further details were available...

Subscription Rate Soars

The Quibbler is happy to report that prepaid subscriptions are up 500 percent over the same period a year ago. The writers and staff at the Quibbler, thank you, our readers for this success.

Winky came up to Harry with obvious pride in her eyes. She said, "Dobby was finding three thousand feet of spider strand today."

"Dobby is a wonderful elf, like you are, Winky. I'm very proud of both of you."

Harry hoped that Lovegood continued to print unbiased, non speculative stories and had astounding success.

… - ...

Flitwick was sitting in his office reading when the majestic Eagle owl pecked at his window. He got up, opened the window and the bird dropped a brass cylinder in his hand and immediately flew off.

Flitwick sat at his desk and held the brass cylinder marked with the Barchoke herald and sighed. No sense in drawing this out, he thought. Taking a small silver knife out of his desk he cast a wandless cleaning charm on his hand and the knife. He slit his palm and grasped the cylinder which then opened.

A small hologram of Ragnok appeared and said, "Another service is required of you. A tracking charm has been cast on a witch, Michelle Edgecombe. You need to find her and bring her to the Citadel. She must be able to answer questions. You will be briefed on what we wish to know. Her answers will lead to others. Plan on being gone for a week. No one must see you. The witch should not know who you are before she is secured in a cell. Time is of the essence. You have twenty-four hours to complete your task."

The image of Ragnok turned to smoke and dissipated and the cylinder turned into a small compass like object into his hand and disappeared.

Flitwick packed a small bag, that included a number of potion vials taken from a charmed hiding spot behind a landscape painting behind his desk, and walked to Minerva's office. His thoughts strayed to his situation. Part Wizard, part Goblin. I straddle both worlds, Goblin and Wandwaver. And I don't fit perfectly in either; as he thought about his goblin parent, "but the Nation comes first." He knocked at the office door and entered.

"Minerva, I find I have pressing personal business I must attend. I'll return in about a week. They linked eyes for a moment. She looked to the bottle on her desk and back to him. A slight nod no. She raised a slim eyebrow in surprise.

"Well then Filius, go with mother magic looking over your shoulder. Farewell."

He shrugged, turned around and left her office and walked quickly out of the castle to pass the weakened wards of the school. He cast a series of charms on himself changing his appearance to a short human. Glancing at the disk in his hand he silently apparated several times. Each time he popped into view he checked the brass compass. It was late when he finally arrived at an old manor house not far from a market town.

Minerva stared at the door her old friend had just left. That was strange but interesting. Strange times, she thought; as she tossed back another shot of single malt, well on her way to oblivion for the fourth night in a row. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. "Strange times indeed."

… - …

Saturday August 19

"Mark Crumb, Mr. Podmore, pleasure to meet you. My Auntie says your house is old and needs some work. Let's take a look."

"Well, she was not kidding, Mr. Podmore. I have an estimate here for you for 62,000 pounds. I'll bring water to the house, run a sewer line, put a bathroom in, connect water and waste in the kitchen and bring electric into the house and put lights in every room and receptacles. It will take a few weeks and your house will be livable again."

"Let me think about it young man. That's a lot of money for me."

… - ...

They had finished their respective tasks by noon. Harry and Hermione had gone into the shop, applied glue and placed another two sets of wands into the clamps. Harry sanded and shaped wands while Hermione applied shellac on the finished wands. Back in Crawley, Emma and her assistant took care of two procedures. Emma had finally allowed Dobby and Winky to do a little light cleaning at their home. Naturally it was spotless. Dan had bought take-away pizza, just because. No excuse was necessary. That afternoon, Harry and the Grangers were sitting in their back garden enjoying the sunny weather.

As lunch was winding down, Emma announced, "I'd like to learn magic."

For a moment there was silence. Then Hermione exploded with ideas. "I'll go find all of my first year books. There's transfiguration, history of magic, potions, defense against the dark arts, ancient runes, arithmancy, charms, the study of magical creatures. This will be so exciting. Oh, did I forget herbology – we could get a small greenhouse. I wonder if Salem offers correspondence classes. Maybe Professor Lupin could..."

Harry and Dan were looking at each other. Dan nodded. Harry walked over to the ever-excited teen as she literally gushed out ideas. He put his arm around her and kissed her. After ten seconds, he looked at her without saying anything. She said, "I did it again, didn't I?"

He smiled at her and suggested, "Let's just hear her out."

Emma resumed, "I'd like to learn a bit of magic; I have no intention of tossing out our refrigerator."

Harry observed, "You can be recognized as a qualified witch if you pass one OWL exam. In your case, I'd recommend charms."

Hermione squirmed like she wanted to add a few things. Dan leaned over and whispered, "You had your five minutes; equal time."

Harry continued, "A lot of the first three years was really just prep work until puberty; then most people grew into their magic with respect to control. My point is, for the first three years in charms, we learned a total of about thirty-six spells. Last year in class, we learned eighteen. I expect fifth year might have twenty-four. Hermione probably already knows twenty-eight of them and she probably taught me eighteen of them preparing for the tournament."

He continued, "Hermione could probably tutor you three evenings a week and cover first through third year at a rate of one year every few weeks. Circling back to your original statement, what did you have in mind?"

Emma admitted, "Honestly, I'm a bit bored with dentistry. I was thinking about taking a leave from the practice and maybe help out at your shop. On that subject, I think the two of you should go get your charms OWL as well. We could do it together. Sooner or later, Minister Bones is going to get pressed into bringing at least half of the bureaucrats back and you two each having more solid credentials wouldn't hurt."

Dan asked, "What about Daryl?"

Harry said, "Emma needs two more weeks of class and some workshop time. I expect that we could do some sort of trade-out. What we really need is a memory viewing device."

Hermione jumped in. "In the wizarding world, they're called pensieves and more or less resemble a bird bath – except with hundreds of runes carved in, I'd expect. You extract the memory - I think it's a copy actually and place it into the pensieve. It plays the memory; lets you relive it, or someone else can see it for the first time. They're supposed to be really expensive."

Harry realized that he loved his girlfriend. That said, he (silently) wondered how she had managed to say all of that in one breath. He said, "I know a place, two actually, where we could have the use of one.

"Minister Bones must have at least one. She asked if she could see the memory of the fight in the graveyard. We could offer to show it to her and a few of her pals in exchange of the use of one for a week or so."

Emma replied, "Good idea, and the other?"

"Hogwarts has one, or had one – it may have belonged to Professor Dumbledore and been shipped somewhere, McGonagall is looking for four wands."

Hermione said, "Harry, we can't give them any of the shop wands; our contract prohibits it."

Dan observed, "You can't, I can. Aside from my first one, I brought back four."

Emma added, "Me too. Eight wands is a lot of trading capital."

Harry, continued, "I was thinking, we could extract the memories from the last two weeks of class. Emma could watch them and use our shop for the hands-on."

While the other three considered his idea, Harry added, "We have a lot of strand and will soon have access to literally tons of basilisk. If eight wands is a lot of trading capital, a few pieces of the basilisk and a couple thousand feed of strand would be the mother-load."

Trading of monster parts was so far out of Dan and Emma's world, they wisely remained silent. Instead they asked, "What could Minister Bones offer?"

"A pensieve and dispensation to take the OWL exams whenever we want."

"How about McGonagall?"

"Probably a pensieve and access to a tutor – actually Amelia Bones has more resources. I was going to say, someone to teach us apparition. They have eighty aurors. The only thing McGonagall can give us is access to the chamber of secrets but when we, or I go there to do the wand-fitting. I could stick a portkey on the basilisk and move it almost anywhere."

He thought for a few seconds and added, "The easiest thing to do would be to bring in the rendering goblins into the deal and have them accompany me into the castle in the guise of being guards. Then I could send them down into the chamber. They could render it down; probably at night and portkey the interesting components to the shop."

Hermione asked, "What parts are you wanting?

"The venom, the rib bones, a few teeth and some of the hide. The fangs, the rest of the hide, the skull – all of it would be pretty valuable. It's fairly likely that the Nation would accept the meat in pay for their work."

Emma said, "So to summarize this;

* We try a little night school.

* You contact Daryl and ask about using the class memory as a sort of distance learning tool. Winky could always bring him the class projects to look at.

* If he agrees to that, you go to Amelia and offer to show her your memory - asking for the loan of a pensieve, and a couple of lessons from one of their aurors in return."

Harry said, "Connie Hammer. She'd asked to talk with you about the break-in."

Emma continued, "Four;

*You bring over four wands to McGonagall as a gift of good faith and mention that the Gringotts guards will be accompanying you when you are on site for a week doing wand fitting, Hermione, you probably should keep the shop open that week."

Harry said, "Wait a minute. Serpensortia. A three foot garden snake appeared. Harry hissed, "Don't be afraid. There are lots of juicy mice outside."

The snake hissed, "A speaker,"

Harry took the snake out back and let it slither off, in search of mice. He came back saying, "Sorry for the interruption. I had to be certain that I could still open the door to the chamber of secrets."

Emma smiled at the effort. "Fine. Ask Daryl if the school would have any use for the monster parts that you don't want to keep. I assume that they're relatively rare?"

Harry replied, "The one that I was involved with was over a thousand years old."

… - ...

An hour later, "Emma announced, "First, I'm not saying this to embarrass you. You two own a business together. That holds true whether you stay lifelong pals, choose never to speak to each other again, get married, or move on to other occupations."

"Setting that fact aside for a moment, you're currently enjoying the benefits of;

*Unprecedented demand.

*No expenses – Security services, material acquisition, or the like.

*No rent."

Harry wanted to say something but waited.

She continued, "In balance, your product selling price is being held artificially low. Ollivander charged us twenty galleons for Hermione's wand. What were you going to say?"

"Ragnok gave us the building and the tooling. He let me pay for the break-room furniture and the desks."

She continued, "OK. The other thing they're doing is constraining – limiting how many you can sell in a day."

They nodded in agreement.

"So my first question is, why are you making so many more than you're selling?"

The teens, glanced at each other a moment and Hermione nodded at Harry, who answered, "Ragnok called it competitive advantage. We have access to... I won't say unlimited, rather a large colony of man-eating monster spiders – thus a large ongoing supply of core material. That's something that I doubt many other countries have. We can easily make enough wands for all of the witches and wizards in the country without having to kill off a bunch of dragons, kill any unicorns, or the like. Strand and tail hair certainly both have a finite supply but over time are renewable resources."

He added, "Right now, in France, there are probably a half-dozen flying Abraxans with bald behinds. I told Ragnok to look for other countries that were short, as we could probably help, and get a much better sale price at the same time. We get fifteen, give the Nation two and end up eight galleons ahead on each wand. Honestly, if we got some more glue tables, we could probably make two hundred-fifty a day and sell an extra fifty-thousand."

Emma decided that she could forgo the lesson on product pricing and asked, "Have you two thought about how you were going to pay yourselves?"

Harry was suddenly embarrassed. He had plenty of money. Hermione...

Emma saw his look and knew that they'd never discussed it. She suggested, "Dan and I pay ourselves a draw once a month – a bit like a fixed salary. Some businesses do it on an average sustainable amount that can more-or-less be counted on each month. Others calculate it monthly as a percent of revenue or profits."

She saw that she hadn't lost the teens yet so she continued, "In your case, since you really don't yet have many direct expenses relating to selling, for sake of discussion, you could divide half of your revenue, net of any sales or VAT tax that the ministry might impose on you and allocate that for salaries or your owners' draw. That way, your business can build up a cash reserve that you two can decide what to do with later on."

Harry said, "I'll ask Barchoke to give you a vault, Hermione. We already have one for the business but you should have your own. Let's go see him."

… - …

Five minutes later, the four of them were walking up the stairs to get into Gringotts lobby. Harry gave a respectful nod to the guards as they passed by. Dan noticed that they nodded back.

They walked to the teller and asked if Barchoke was available. The teller said that he was in and called for Gumeye to escort them to his office.

"Good afternoon, How can I be of assistance?"

Harry explained what he wanted to do with respect to the basilisk.

Barchoke said, "Before you go any further, Director Ragnok would want to hear of it first hand. Please allow me to see if he's available." Soon he and Amelia Bones came into the now crowded office. Barchoke said, "Perhaps we could move to the conference room. Mr. Potter has a memory that he'd like to show us relating to some business."

Barchoke held the cube to Harry's head as he recalled the events of second year. He flicked his finger to start it. Emma immediately thought that twelve year old Harry looked adorable until Lockhart tried to obliviate them and caused the cave-in. Ragnok and Barchoke immediately recognized ghost-Tom as a horcrux. Then the snake slid out of the open mouth. "Fifty five feet, I estimate."

"Sixty two," replied Ragnok. Those two would bet on anything.

As twelve-year-old Harry rammed the longsword into the snake's mouth, Dan and Emma couldn't fathom how a boy could summon that much courage.

As Fawkes came and healed Harry, Emma mentioned, "That's your phoenix."

Amelia grumbled, "That thing was slithering around the castle. It could have killed everyone." She was thinking that it was a miracle that her Susie was still alive and knew who to thank for it.

Hermione added, "I was turned to stone for six weeks, So were a handful of other students."

"That bastard never said a word. If he wasn't dead, I'd kill him myself."

Barchoke said, "To business, the snake clearly belongs to you. Would you like us to retrieve it and sell it on your behalf?"

Harry said, "Kind of. I want a couple of teeth, half of the hide and all of the rib bones. I was going to offer you the meat and hope that you could sell the rest?"

Dan asked, "Is it that valuable?"

Ragnok was going to say something but Barchoke was Harry's account manager. He said, "It's beyond valuable; it's legacy money. When can we start on the project?"

Harry started to explain his plan. Amelia cut him off, "You don't need to sneak into the castle to collect your own property." She said, "Hand me a quill."

Hermione pulled a quill, sheet of parchment and a bottle of ink out of her beaded bag and handed it to her.

Bones wrote a five sentence note, signed it and handed it to Ragnok to look at. While he was reading it, Barchoke drew up a letter of agreement regarding the basilisk. He handed it to Ragnok, who initialed it and handed it to Bones who did the same. She handed it to Harry, who handed it to Emma to look at. She read it and suggested, "You should read it and sign it, if the terms are to your satisfaction."

Barchoke asked, "Did you have other business?"

"Yes, actually Hermione wants to set a vault up and I had some questions for Director Bones."

Ragnok excused himself and Harry asked, "Minister Bones, You'd asked to see my memory of that night in June. I was wondering if you might have a pensieve that we might be able to borrow for a few weeks?"

"Unrelated to your answer Minister, Harry there is one in your family vault. Apparently someone had borrowed it as well as a substantial quantity of rare books without making any notation in the records. They were recently returned a few weeks ago," Though the name wasn't spoken, everyone there knew who Barchoke was referring to.

"That settled, I'm happy to give that to you and was wondering if one of the Aurors could tutor Hermione and I in apparating? Ms. Hammer mentioned that she wanted to visit with Emma about something. Finally, the three of us would like to take an OWL exam in a few months and were wondering who we could talk with?"

Amelia smiled and replied, "These are all things that I'm happy to help you with. I'll ask Connie to come to your house at one tomorrow afternoon, if that would work? You said, the three of you. Emma, are you able to wield magic now?"

"Yes. Healer Windsong removed a bind that had been placed on me when I was a toddler."

Amelia replied, "I'm certain that Hermione will be a more-than-able tutor. You're attempting to take the charms OWL?"

"Yes."

Amelia replied, "That's a good choice. Remember, all you have to do is pass it, not get a perfect score."

Harry wasn't certain exactly which one of them she was referring to but they all nodded. She said, "As long as we're trading favors, I'll take a turn. Would it be possible to raise the weekly number of wands sold?"

Barchoke replied, "The ultimate decision goes to the wandcrafters. Perhaps we could talk it over and we can meet in the wandshop Monday at noon?"

"Agreed. Without all of the help from the legion of bureaucrats, my days have more free time than I ever envisioned. Thank you all. Connie will be over at one and I'll see some of you Monday at noon."

That said, she left and was escorted back to the lobby.

When she had left, Barchoke commented, "To date, she has received many wands, promised much and delivered nothing. That said, I trust her."

Harry nodded and remarked, "In a day where we did nothing but make wands, we could reliably make two hundred. In a day where we did nothing but sell wands we could probably fit one hundred-twenty but that would quickly grow tedious. In a blended day, we could easily manage sixty on a sustainable basis, seventy-five if pressed."

He collected his thoughts for a moment and added, "That said, there are three other factors to consider – the social experiment, the likelihood that Ragnok will identify other customers if we have the inventory available to sell and last, but not least, the hardship being imposed on people."

Barchoke suggested, "If you were to increase your sales by twenty percent and sell sixty a day, she would be pleased at the possible cost of some lost profit should you have excess wands to sell and we find a buyer. I would assume that there is a related motive for Emma trying to acquire accreditation as a qualified witch and your request to borrow a pensieve from the Ministry?"

Harry admitted, "Yes, We were hoping to add her as an employee of the Wand Shop, which will require some assistance from Daryl Whitehorn. Specifically, we were hoping to have her watch the last two weeks of class, do the workshop exercises at the Wand Shop and ask Winky to deliver the samples to Daryl for his inspection."

"An inspired, if temporary arrangement. While you could raise you sales even further, you would be better served producing wands for other countries. You could sell those for as much as you wanted. What contract revisions were you looking for?"

"Just a clarification that once the thirty thousand wands designated for Britain were actually produced, that we would have leeway to make other wands to be sold later in Britain and to make and sell wands to other countries at the market selling price, which we currently estimate at between twenty-five to a hundred galleons. Since Ragnok was brokering the deal, we were planning of giving the Nation two galleons each on the foreign delivered wands."

Out of habit, Barchoke was ready to counter with eight and accept five, when he remembered that the Nation's cut from the basilisk sale would be significant. He nodded, said, "Agreed," and drew up the contract amendment. "The effective date will be Monday August 28."

… - …

Devlin Whitehorn was delighted to see that all of the employees of his broom company had received their wand Purchase Permit cards for the coming week. He also received a call from Harry Potter wondering if he could use an extra five hundred foot spool of acromantula strand. Between that five-hundred feet and the extra from the first spool, there would be enough to make the brooms needed to restart the national Quidditch league and sell the idea of parity of equipment.

Seeing as the ministry sports department was still on layoff, he called the owner of Puddlemere United to see if she was interested in the idea. After that call, on a whim, he called his uncle in the states.

… - …

A/Ns

It was a tough day to be a nosy unemployed reporter.

Tom wrote the Podmore and Wick arcs in this story.

Thanks for reading.