It turns out that confundus charms have their limits.

For example, if you used one to get a room at an expensive hotel that you hadn't, technically, paid for, then employees will eventually show up demanding that you either pay or leave.

And even if you continually confundus them, the system that keeps track of guests and payments will still say that you haven't paid for your room and will keep sending people up.

Harry did not know about the system.

What's more, if you spend enough time in an unpaid room and show no intention of leaving, the system is then authorized to send police officers to escort you off the premises.

Harry didn't know about that either, right up until the police officers showed up and suddenly he did.

This was why, a week and a half later, Harry Potter had left his former hotel room and was now trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the two unconscious police officers he had left there.

Okay, so he panicked.

While the hotel had been a nice vacation, it wasn't a permanent solution. Harry needed to find some way to make money for food and shelter.

Okay, think. I can't keep confunding everybody I meet. I need food and shelter, and both of those require money. I don't know of any jobs that would be willing to hire an 11-year-old boy, either.

Hmmm.

As Harry walked, he saw a middle-aged man on the sidewalk playing a battered saxophone. The man had long, scraggly grey hair and a weatherbeaten face. Next to him was an open instrument case. Harry stopped to listen to the music. A passerby dropped money into the man's case.

A thought came to Harry: maybe he could do something similar.

Harry stepped next to the man and conjured a bluebell flame onto his palm. He held it up proudly to the passing crowd (which ignored him completely), then made a fist with his hand and slowly opened his hand, showing it to be empty. He repeated his actions, slowly coming up with variations on his hand movements. Nobody noticed his actions, but Harry was intent on doing this until somebody did notice.

Eventually Harry got bored playing with harmless fire, so he took to conjuring birds out of thin air. Several passersby turned to see where the birds had come from and saw Harry, conjuring more bluebell fire onto the back of his hand. Harry waved his hand about as it trailed wisps of blue flame harmlessly in the air after his hand. A few people clapped in appreciation for the pyrotechnics. Harry grinned and summoned more birds while waving his free hand about.

Unfortunately, that's where things went wrong. The birds flew through the flames and unexpectedly caught on fire, crying loudly as they flew outwards at the audience. Several people shrieked and ran away to avoid the flaming birds of death.

Harry was mortified.

The man playing the sax stopped and caught Harry's eye. "Hey man," the man said, "don't do that."

Harry quickly ran away, his cheeks burning with embarrassment.

Harry spent the better part of the day wandering around downtown London. He almost despaired of finding something that he could do before finally spotting a store nestled between a korean hair salon and a video rental store.

Jackpot! Harry thought to himself.

As Harry entered the store he saw a middle-aged man sitting behind a glass counter, facing sideways to Harry. The man was eating a bowl of microwavable noodles and watching a rugby game on a small television set on a ledge extending out from the wall. There was a door set into the wall behind him. To one side, Harry could see another section of the store which contained bicycles, engines, television sets, and all sorts of odds and ends, laid out against the walls and on tables scattered around the shop.

Harry approached the counter. "Excuse me!" he called.

The man turned and faced Harry, not bothering to keep the annoyance from his face. "Yeah? Whaddya want?"

"I want a job."

The man appraised Harry for a second before snorting and turning back to the game. "Beat it, kid," he said.

Harry stepped outside and grabbed a rock off the ground that was a little larger than his fist. He stepped back inside.

"Excuse me", Harry said loudly. "I can fix anything that you have broken. I can do it cheaply, quickly, and more efficiently than anything you've ever seen before. I can fix literally anything that is broken, in a fraction of the time it would normally take to fix. I want a job, and it's in your best interests to give me one."

The man had turned to face Harry again. "Are you still here?" he asked. "Beat it."

"Last chance," Harry said coolly.

The man turned his attention back to the television set.

Harry stepped forward and threw the rock through the glass case.

CRASH!

The glass exploded out of the case and shattered into dozens of smaller shards. The effect on the man was instantaneous: he bolted up out of the chair and yelled "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The man stepped to get around the case and physically stop Harry, but Harry just said "watch" and pointed his wand at the shattered glass.

"Reparo!" Harry yelled.

The glass jumped back in the case like a videotape being rewound. The seams disappeared, and a second later there was only smooth, unbroken glass inside the frame.

The man stopped, staring at the case in shock.

"I told you," Harry said grimly. "I can fix anything."

The man looked at Harry, then at the glass.

The man asked weakly, "Wh- When can you start?"

A/N: Thanks to reddit users onyxindigo and TheJoshwa for the ideas of "repair shop" and "street magician", respectively.