August 1995
Harry smiled genially, shaking the hand of the man opposite him, accepting the wads of cash. He'd been planning this for a few months. Having gone to a car-boot sale, he'd bought a thousand pounds of broken antiques for not even a tenth of their value, and five-hundred pounds bought him the hire of a van and driver to get it to the garage he'd hired. Dumbledore shouldn't have left his wand lying around where it could be stolen. Repairing the antiques, he'd sold them at auction and made an even twelve-thousand pounds.
He'd done this for week after week, and eventually bought a Ferrari F355 some moron had wrapped around a tree. Leaving it in his garage for several weeks, he'd bought a second and repaired them both as the electrics weren't damaged, only the bodies. That had netted him two-hundred thousand pounds when he sold them both for thirty-thousand under new price with a profit of one-hundred thousand.
As he reached the end of July, Harry was admiring a bank balance of over three million as he had sold over a dozen exotic cars and even an aeroplane someone had bent. In HSBC of course, he loved the goblins and their stereotypically evil bankers image, but it was inconvenient to get Galleons turned to pounds and vice-versa.
Of course during a couple of visits, he'd removed some of the ten-gram Galleons, reassured by the goblins that they were pure gold... and melted them down. Each Galleon could be converted into five pounds or sold for its gold content at eighty-pounds a coin.
Therefore, each coin would be sold for pounds which would be converted back into sixteen Galleons, worth about thirteen-hundred pounds. He was very careful to not cause a crash on the gold market, so he'd had ten pounds converted into two Galleons for each of the coins he'd withdrawn, deposited one in his vault, turned one into bullion and kept the rest of the cash, meaning he was keeping seventy pounds for each Galleon.
The latest deal he'd made was for a full cosmetic restoration of a rare '60s Ferrari needed urgently for a show in one week. He agreed that if it wasn't up to expectations or in time, he'd cut the cost by seventy-five percent. Moving from a small hired council garage, he was operating out of an elegant 1930s car dealership he'd bought, derelict, and resurrected.
Perched on the roof was a Supermarine Swift he'd bought, also derelict, from an Army Surplus shop. It had taken a few weeks parked in his workshop, working through many sleepless nights, but the rust was gone, the internals were restored and sealed from the elements and he'd given it cosmetic restoration, also protecting it from the elements. Now people would come, comment on the aircraft and often he'd have their cars come in during the morning and out in the evening. It was lucky he'd stolen Hermione's Timeturner when she'd turned it in.
Waving goodbye to the stately gentleman and walking over to admire the Ferrari, he had a moment's thought drift into his mind, causing him to grin. Climbing in and starting it the classic, he gently drove it around his car-park before easing it into the workshop.
Inside were two BMW M cars which simply needed a 'flick of the wand' repair, an Audi Quattro rally-car which needed a slightly more delicate restoration including the electrics, which he could do, a badly-scraped Lamborghini Urraco and a boxy Maserati needing a complete cleaning of oil from the engine.
He'd become quite popular with the supercar owners because he didn't lie. He would answer a question with exactly what he thought, and he never tried getting them into things they didn't want. The cars he sold and restored were always in perfect condition, not even a stone-chip present.
"Dobby, Winky!" he called out in the open space.
Dobby appeared with a loud crack, followed by a rather subdued pop as a distinctly careworn Winky appeared, her scorched and stained dress nearly falling apart.
"Great Master Harry Potter Sir is calling!" cheered Dobby.
"Please Dobby, if you have to address me so, just let it go at Master Harry." Harry sighed; "Anyway, I thought you worked for Dumbledore, why do you call me Master."
Dobby frowned and lowered his head, looking a bit subdued.
"House elves isn't living without bond to a master, the magic stops coming. So Dobby is bonding himself to you. Dobby is still free because Master Harry doesn't force him to work for him."
"So Winky is dying of magic-loss?" Harry asked, shutting his eyes for a moment as Winky burst into tears.
"And she is drinking butter beer to deal with it and it isn't working." Dobby nodded.
"Bloody hell, why didn't you tell me?" sighed Harry; "Damn, I could do with a couple of elves, if Winky bonds with me, would you both be willing to work here?"
After much crying, wailing about the greatness of Harry Potter Sir, he had two assistants. And to think it had only taken a hundred-pound bribe for the Dursleys to ignore the lack of his presence, a fifty-Galleon bribe to the goblins to set him up with legal papers as Hadrian Black, eighteen and from London, as well as a driving license.
Looking up from his current toy, a Ford Transit chassis, a massively stretched Ford Capri body and a Meteor engine out of a tank, Harry blinked. He was certain that next to the man in Arab dress was his godfather, wearing bike leathers.
"What can I do for you gentlemen?" he asked, brushing off his hands on his scruffy jeans.
Sirius was silent, but looked on in amusement as the man Harry had mentally christened Sheikh Money al-Gold-Plated-Diamonds began talking in a thick accent.
"Am bringing my Rolls-Royce here because my chauffeur tells me this is where to go if repairs you are needing in quick time? I do not obstacles have with money, but I am without time." he stated; "It is being badly scraped down the doors by another car, the metal is being bent and the paint is going."
"Let me come out in a minute and have a look, depending how bad it is, I could put it to the top of my work queue and have it done by tonight." Harry replied, internally comparing his English to that spoken by the elves, though they'd improved greatly under his tutelage. "And you, Mr?"
"Black, I have a motorbike that's not been used for about a decade which I'd like you to have a look at, it's not urgent." replied an extremely amused-looking Sirius.
Harry nodded and followed Sheikh Money al-Gold-Plated-Diamonds from the showroom into the carpark where a Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn was sat, with a massive scratch down the right side, the mirror still in place but bent forwards, the doors slightly bent.
"If you can be fixing this by tomorrow, I am paying you ten-thousand, if tonight, then I you are makings twenty-thousand." said the Sheikh, passing him the keys; "Many say you are good, if young, please look after her. I am trusting you, I am not trusting many young people."
"She'll come back to you gleaming." Harry promised, he never cut corners on his work.
"Two thousand advance, I pay you more when it is ready." said the Sheikh, passing Harry a bundle of fifty-pound notes and a scrap of paper with a number scrawled on it; "And here is my cell phone number, call when my car is ready."
He then stepped into a nondescript Mercedes and drove away, leaving Harry with the Rolls-Royce which he quickly moved into the workshop before walking through to the showroom where Sirius was sat, grinning.
"I didn't expect you running this place pup." he laughed.
"Thing is Sirius, are you going to tell the Order of the Deep-Fried Chicken?" Harry asked seriously.
"And wreck your little set-up, hell nah." replied Sirius; "In fact, can I help?"
"Let's see, no. I don't want one of my customer's cars ending up wrapped around a tree, or the electronics fried by an over-application of magic." Harry responded.
"Can I at least stand around and look cool?" Sirius begged.
"You need some smart clothes." Harry replied; "I only wear scruffy clothes because I spend most of my time in the workshop and get covered in grease and oil."
"How did you come to be running this anyway?" asked Sirius.
"Well, I started out with an untraceable wand repairing antique furniture, did that for about two weeks before I did my first car, and then I just kept going, even did a couple of planes, one of which is on the roof of this place. I bought this, derelict, for very little, though that nearly drained my resources. A few bits of equipment I got second-hand, but then people started talking about me, now I do have a minimum of one car come in a day." Harry replied.
"Are these customer's cars or yours?" asked Sirius, gesturing around them.
Harry glanced around, the Meteor-engined Ford, a '75 Ferrari 308 GTB, an '86 Aston Martin V8 Vantage and a Dodge Viper were all parked in the showroom.
"Yeah, apart from the Ford which is a project of mine, I bought all of these crashed and spent ages repairing all the damage from the body, the chassis, the mechanical parts to the electrics which is horribly intricate." said Harry, leaning against the front of the Ford, relaxing with soft '30s Jazz playing around the room.
"Anyway, you're looking great." Sirius commented, glancing over his godson who had shot up several inches and put on some proper muscle tone visible through his t-shirt and jeans. There were also no glasses
"Aren't I just." Harry chuckled; "I hired a couple of elves and one forces me to eat a meal five times a day and to go running, and I admit to feeling awesome. I got a wizard who specialises in eye correction to fix my eyes. And I also had the bit of skin with my scar taken off and replaced with another bit of skin grafted on. I had to do some hasty Obliviation because it leaked some kind of magic. But since then I've been able to think a lot more clearly and I've had no pains from the scar."
"Damn that's brilliant." said Sirius.
"Anyway, I need to get going on Sheikh Money al-Diamond-Plated-Gold's Rolls, you want to watch?" Harry asked, straightening up.
"Hell yes."
Harry spent the next hour dismantling the doors of the Rolls, carefully repairing the scratches and the bend in the metal caused by whatever had impacted it. It was quite intricate as he avoided applying too much magic to the electrics. He'd worked out from Diagon Alley's presence and the fact it wasn't killing all the electricity in the area that Hogwarts was an exception, rather than the rule.
A small amount of experimentation had shown him that large concentrations of magic fried electrics. That had been one phone in the bin.
Evening was approaching when Harry had set the mirror back and had also had several owners pick up their cars, and he rang the Sheikh. An hour later, the Rolls was driven away by a chauffeur, and Harry had another eighteen-thousand in his bank, as well the earlier deposit of two-thousand.
"Well, I'm going to get some dinner." Harry sighed, yawning slightly before noticing the sad look on Sirius's face; "What's wrong Sirius?"
"I'm still a wanted criminal. I wish I could be a proper godfather to you, but I'm still wanted dead by the Ministry." he said sadly, looking haggard.
"Damn, forgot about that little niggle." Harry commented before gesturing to a Citroen DS in the corner of the room; "That car belongs to the French Ambassador, and his son attends Beauxbatons."
Flipping open his contact book, he dialled one of the numbers on his phone.
"Yeah, Jean, this is Black, your car is ready for pick-up... Good, good... Do you, perchance know of a place in France called Beauxbatons? No I have nothing against wizards... no I'm not trying to blackmail you. However, my godfather is currently on the run, the British Ministry want him dead, but they never charged him with the conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to attempted murder, murder, mass murder and terrorism. I have it on good advice that if he were to, let's say, be given the trial he never got, it would be like slapping the Minister and the upstart English in the face with a plate of crepes... I could arrange for him to be here with your car tomorrow morning if I have your promise he will actually have a trial and not just be murdered as the English want. Excellent, very good, I'll see you tomorrow."
Sirius looked shocked.
"Right, you've got a promise of at least an audience with the ambassador and almost certainly a trial, while Cornelius Fudge is about to loose some of the voter's confidence." Harry stated, flipping shut his phone; "For now, you can borrow my bedroom, and you are going to eat as much as my elves tell you to because when I last saw you, you were still a skeleton and you'll have trouble picking up the girls looking like that."
He was still so run-over that he let Harry push him upstairs to the Spartan but comfortable living quarters.
Harry laughed, loudly a couple of evenings later. A photo of Sirius Black exiting a courtroom in Paris with his arms wrapped around his two defence lawyers, attractive blondes, and the UK Government blaming everything on Ma Thatcher. He'd never liked the Iron Lady, but it was very amusing that she was getting blame in the non-magical world, while in the magical world, mobs were out looking to lynch Fudge.
The survivor's guilt plea on his supposed admission of guilt and several 'classified' testimonies, relating to magic, had cleared up any chance of him being found guilty, but the Fudge administration was still failing to make any comment. He grinned, threw aside his newspaper and went back to working on a complete restoration of a Mark II Jaguar he'd picked up for a pittance. It was strewn across the workshop in thousands of bits.
The engine was dismantled on a table in one corner, the body-panels stripped to the bare metal were leaning against the wall, the interior was all-but destroyed, the monocoque chassis sat with the axles removed, the axles themselves separate from the wheels and brakes which were lying on the floor.
Having used a few charms on the chassis, healing spells he'd modified, he regrew the metal in certain places before strengthening it. By the end of the night, he had a rolling chassis.
"And I'm back!" declared Sirius, striding into the workshop nearly a week later, looking dashing with the paleness gone from his skin, his beard trimmed, his hair carefully styled and an elegant suit on.
"You are." Harry replied calmly from by the Jaguar, which was sat on trestles as he carefully levitated the engine into the car and, after releasing the spells, connected up the drive-train.
"By the way, are you going back to Hogwarts?" Sirius asked, watching, fascinated, as Harry's fingers danced across the mechanics of the machine.
"I dunno, I mean I started this as a Summer thing, a bit of rebellion, a bit of money, but I've got a customer base, I love messing around with cars... you remember Sheikh Money, he offered me a million upfront for the Meteor Ford as soon as I've finished it, and what is the magical world? A bunch of sheep happily being manipulated by two old men, one with a daddy problem and one with a god complex." Harry replied; "Anyway, do you know if the Order of the Sautéed Turkey are running around like headless chickens looking for me?"
"Nah, Dumbledore declared that nobody was to contact you until he said otherwise. I was going to wait until the next meeting before ripping into him and threatening to ban him from my house to force him to bring you, but I never got round to it." Sirius answered.
"Good. Anyway, how much of our time at Hogwarts is wasted. I chose badly and took Divination, which is crap. Potions is taught by a man with a daddy issue, specifically my dad. Defence is crap unless taught by a so-called 'dark creature' or an insane Death Eater, maybe they could get Voldemort himself in? Astronomy is taught using equipment a century out of date, history is nothing but Goblin Rebellions, you get the picture." Harry shrugged; "Anyway, Winky has nearly finished sewing all of the interior for this car, and I've got a guy doing the wood, she'll be a runner in a week. So, back to Hogwarts, do I want to go to somewhere that has tried to kill me a minimum of twice a year? I love Hogwarts, but I dislike what's done there."
"Oh yeah, I changed the Black Family motto to 'Matrem Tuam Pedicavi." Sirius added as an after-note.
Harry tripped over the air in front of him and sprawled on the garage floor.
Several of the locals gathered as the eccentric father-son pair running the supercar dealership across the road parked a caravan outside their building and spray-painted it with a circular target. Then there was the whining sound of a jet engine starting up, and then a powerful ex-military truck towed out a Lightning jet fighter minus its wings.
The person in the cockpit leaned out, with his thumbs up. The bottom engine shot a jet of blue flame out and the truck could be heard pushing back against the jet as the caravan was roasted.