Fair lady payday lending.
Daphne was quite proud of the name she'd come up with, and now all she needed was an office somewhere her prospective customers would find her, and to work out the finer details of how to lend to women with awful jobs – like she'd had till yesterday.
She was fairly sure that the dancers she'd worked with all knew she could break a bouncer's wrist without any apparent effort, so they'd know she was serious about getting paid back.
That left, she mused uncomfortably, the drug addicted ones, and the ones who simply didn't turn up at work again. That was usually, she ground her teeth, something shitty happening to them, not girls deciding to move to somewhere where nobody knew their old job, and start new lives for themselves. Well, going from the rumours that went around, not voluntarily, anyway.
On reflection, the muggle girls really had as rotten a life as the half-bloods under the Death-Eater run government of magical Britain.
The odd club occasionally had protesters turn up in front of it, complaining that the girls were being exploited – which they were, that they were being abused – which was so bloody obvious it didn't bear mentioning, but not that the girls were making, in some cases, quite a lot of money for being pretty, and good at taking their clothes off and prancing around to music. Well, and lap dances.
And, obviously some people were not cut out to be dancers, just because they were too plain, or simply had no sense of rhythm, but it was a job where if you were born good-looking, and could learn to strip, you could make a living without having to learn anything particularly difficult.
Daphne avoided thinking about the fact that her two marriages were basically that, only without needing to be able to dance. Being good-looking and female had got her out from under the thumb of her family… and much like most club dancers, into a mess filled with arsehole men who only wanted to shag her. She wrinkled her nose. Ugh, though at least only one at a time. And, she had to admit, she hadn't even ended up a rich widow, much as she'd clutched her pearls and thought Sophia Zabini was diabolical as a teenager. She'd been wrong, after all. Sophia was a fairly pleasant woman really, and obviously, gorgeous. Her son… Blaise was, she was sure, her reference, for life, of how awful a man could be.
Daphne pondered how to solve the repayment problem. It wasn't like she could get a muggle girl to make an unbreakable vow. And besides, she'd need a binder. No, that wasn't practical at all.
Though, Marietta Edgecombe had fallen afoul of some sort of cursed contract in fifth year. She'd ratted out the illegal defence tutoring club Potter and co had run, and got acne spelling out 'sneak' on her forehead for her troubles. She didn't know if that had stuck around. Not that some acne was going to make a girl pay back a loan if she skipped town.
Daphne went and asked Tracey, because enquiring minds and all that. And it was bugging her, because Harry Potter was disturbingly professional healer, and he might be to blame for someone getting cursed with acne.
She slipped it into conversation subtly. Tracey frowned, ate pizza thoughtfully, and said "Um, yeah, it was still there in sixth year, I think. She got better some time before Christmas. I remember because Theo asked her out, angling for a snog at Christmas."
"Oh, how dreadful," said Daphne.
"Well, not as bad as being buggered by Blaise Zabini" said Tracey pointedly. "What were you thinking?"
"That he was good-looking, a smooth talker and rich" admitted Daphne, not for a moment considering that a failing in herself. He was very good-looking, very rich, and spoke two languages. Getting chatted up in Italian was tres chic. And at the time she'd been in no state to tell him no – she could hardly remember her own name at the time, due almost entirely to his expert ministrations to her body. She sighed. In comparison, her reference decent wizard her age, Healer Harry Potter was handsome, kind, good, and came right out and said that buggery wasn't medically advisable. He was admittedly not that rich, and not that smooth, but he way he swallowed and his hand shook when she flirted outrageously, well, if that was how worked up he got from talking… the idea of being able to reduce a lover to a mindless love-slave without recourse to dark magic… it certainly made one feel rather witchey and powerful, and she realised… she missed the feeling of manipulating men by their lustful urges. But not the sweaty hands and body oudour, or having to smile and strip, with people she'd rather not strip in front of, thank you.
"You all right?" asked Tracey.
"Fine," said Daphne. "I have got out of the financial hole I was in."
"Thank god for that," muttered Tracey.
"I'm still trying to work out how to ensure the people I lend to pay me back," said Daphne.
"Well, you could just duplicate the money, and vanish the duplicates when you get it back" said Tracey. "Thus minimising the amount of dodgy duplicated money you put into circulation."
"Why not just duplicate a single twenty point note over and over?" asked Daphne.
"They have serial numbers" said Tracey "And there are, I think some sort of anti-counterfeiting things on them."
"Huh?"
"Saw it in a movie," admitted Tracey. "There's markings you can't see without a special light."
"So, I um… only duplicate money when people don't pay it back?" asked Daphne.
"Before they leave with it. At worst there will be a few duplicate notes" said Tracey. "And there's clearly some way to curse things that people sign."
Daphne went home to look in the family library, because if there was one thing the Greengrass family had, it was loads of books on curses. For three hundred years they'd spent several fortunes trying to solve the mystery of the family curse.
Daphne pulled down the dustiest book from the 'Evil Curses' section, and considered that really, Potter had made her save herself. The muggle 'Specialist' while very serious, had seemed incredibly clever. They certainly were expensive.
She sat down, and opened the book, and considered for a moment, that she had not, at any point had to marry or shag Potter. She licked her lips. Not that she fancied him at all. Well, not enough to do either of those.
Nearly a week later, wondering if maybe she needed reading glasses, because she had endless headaches, Daphne found a suitable sort of a curse.
A way to put what was technically a geas onto a magical contract that forced the signee to comply with the contract, or get, ironically, enough, in the worked example, headaches.
Daphne had a headache already, but thought that she'd hard of some sort of spell for making muggles do things.
That led to having to go and buy the definitive history of the muggle-repelling charm, which did explain the workings of the 'Charm that changed our world'
And she sort-of stumbled through the explanation of how the muggle-repelling charm worked, and realised she didn't know what half the words meant.
Tracey was pleased to get another visist, but frowned when seeing Daphne take a large book out of her robe pocket.
"Just hypothetically" said Tracey "As a recognition question, who was your last boyfriend, and why did you dump him?"
Daphne rolled her eyes "Blaise Zabini, and he screwed me silly then buggered me" she said bluntly. "I need your help with this spell. I can cast it, but I want to change what it does a little."
"Right" said Tracey, smiling weakly. "You do realise that I am actually your mate Tracey, not some nerd?"
"I trust you" said Daphne "I told you about that. God. Anyway. New question – what did Potter say when I asekd him to save my sister?"
"Dunno?"
"You should have that back" said Daphne.
"What?"
"I had handed him a… suggestive photograph," said Daphne, blushing.
"How suggestive?"
"I was not naked," said Daphne.
"Right," said Tracey. "And he what?"
"Handed it back to me," said Daphne. "And proceeded to help me, without asking for anything… extra."
"So, is he gay?"
"His hands were shaking," said Daphne, with a smug grin.
"He could be sick."
"I'm an expert on sexually frustrated men, Tracey. He was dying for it. Shows a laudable level of self-control."