Chapter 15: Schooled

After their urgent housekeeping was dispensed with, Graham, Remus, and Delia were finally able to turn their attention back to housekeeping of a more lucrative kind. Sirius' slip-up had burnt through half of April, and if Graham wanted to obtain his healing qualification, he needed to make quite a lot of money in not a lot of time to afford the attendant school fees. Oblivious to the existential threat which her client had been facing, Graham's lawyer had managed the conveyancing of a further three properties, leaving plenty of work to be done.

Unfortunately, three more dilapidated properties hardly scratched the surface of Graham's construction agenda. The magical world was undergoing a long-awaited resurgence after Voldemort's demise, but the muggle world was still in the midst of a bitter recession which showed little sign of relenting. Listening to Radio 4 (partly for information, mainly out of habit) had made their position sufficiently clear: the housing market was in an abominable state, and if they were going to make enough money to finance Lockwood, they would have to do it on a model which valued quantity over profit margins.

Remus found all of this rather difficult to grasp - not least because magical economics was either (to put it kindly) rudimentary or (more accurately) nonexistent.

"You're telling me that - because of oil and inflation, whatever that is - ten percent of the country just doesn't have a job anymore?" He said, wonderingly. "But - why don't they just make some more jobs? And do the people without jobs just starve?"

Graham had already given up on explaining general economics to Remus, and quailed at the thought of trying to explain social welfare on top of it, given that its wizarding equivalent went no further than letting wizards have wands (with no provision for squibs, naturally). In fact, he suspected that introducing Remus to muggle politics would require a little more in-depth information than he could provide.

"Look - take it on trust from me for the moment, and Delia and I will make sure that you get a proper grounding in this stuff before you start a muggle course this autumn." He offered. "But the important point is that we need to scale things up - and quickly. So here's what I'm thinking…"

Delia kvetched a little at the apportionment of labour when she heard Graham's plan, but she agreed with its necessity - not least because her father had lost his job of forty years and she wanted to provide for him as best she could. To that end, she and Remus found themselves renovating properties while Graham dealt with a more cerebral challenge: dealing with a property consultant.

"So, let me make sure I understand this correctly: you've decided that now is the time to set up a home renovation empire?"

Graham's lawyer had been only too happy to recommend a friend of hers in London when he'd broached the subject with her - conveyancing was relatively lucrative, and she was understandably keen for the business. But he found himself wishing that she'd referred him to someone less intense. Everything about the woman was sharp - from her asymmetric bob to the critiques she was firing at his business proposal.

"Well, our in-house team runs a very tight ship, including artisanal craftspeople - and we never need to bring in a consultant, which offers, uh, further price savings..." Graham faltered, having run out of inspiration about five words into his spiel.

"Price savings." The consultant echoed, dubiously. "Look, Mr. Longshaw; I've seen pictures of your first renovation, and it's clearly good quality work - but I'm not a charitable institution. Why, exactly, should I be taking a punt on assisting a company which has, forgive me, a dubious cost-base and a lack of anything approaching a business plan?"

Graham had known that he lacked a muggle-suitable business case, given that his plan depended on being able to make building supplies appear out of thin air. But this, at least, was a question he'd prepared for.

"If you're able to source as many properties as we need - and I'm anticipating that we'll be scaling rapidly - you can charge initial work at cost, paid up front, and take a 3% commission on final sale." It was a generous offer - over-generous, if anything - but, more importantly, it took the element of risk out of the equation for her.

Graham was treated to a long, inscrutable stare, and did his level best not to squirm in his seat.

"Mr. Longshaw, I think that your business model is foolish; I have no idea how you're planning to turn a profit from it; and I suspect you'll be bankrupt within a year." The consultant made a note in her diary, and treated him to a narrow smile. "But if you want to fritter away your money on me up front, I suspect we can make something work."

Graham's new arrangement quickly began to pay dividends. His newly-minted property manager began to send across sheafs of suggestions in a matter of days. Even better, she put him in contact with a developer who was happy to purchase renovated properties at a good (frankly, astonishing) price, connect the utilities, and place them on the wider market. The first three properties were sold on in the span of a week and a half, and the proceeds promptly ploughed back into six more. By the end of May, they had stabilised at renovating nine properties per week, and were finally in a position to start making serious bank.

It should be noted at this juncture that this was an entirely ludicrous situation, and ought to have attracted far more attention than it did. Their renovations should by rights have taken months, and large crews, after all - so Graham had, reluctantly, agreed with Remus and Delia that careful confundus charms were a vital step in their plan, and ensorcelled his lawyer, developer, and consultant against asking the wrong (or, in fact, any) questions about his line of work.

In fact, he needn't have bothered. Humans are not psychologically predispositioned to question how a goose lays its golden eggs, so long as it doesn't stop: the developer was almost printing money, the consultant had already exceeded her annual target, and the lawyer had brought a worryingly fast car. None of them would have risked such a lucrative arrangement for something as unbankable as professional curiosity - but the confundus at least put Graham's mind at ease.

It was, in fact, one of the few elements of ease in his newly chaotic life. In addition to raising a considerable sum of money - The Miskatonic institute in Massachusetts required up-front payment in full for postgraduate courses, and he needed tens of thousands of galleons (plus a hefty currency conversion fee from Galleons to Dragots) - Graham had also failed to account for the academic requirements he'd need to attend.

This was an understandable mistake. Graham felt that his work in the war had given him most of the capabilities of a healer and more hands-on experience than most practitioners, and had seen the course as more of a rubber-stamping exercise than an academic venture. But he'd been shocked to find that he'd need an MSAT score of 170 to attend - about the equivalent of an "Outstanding" in Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration, Charms, Arithmancy, and Ancient Runes NEWTS.

In other words, Graham had both a full-time job and a bottomless study commitment, and just two months to prepare for exams he'd reliably been informed were harder than anything Hogwarts posed. When he'd been at Oxford, he'd scoffed at the mere idea of holding down a job and studying full-time; it didn't seem quite as funny now.

It was a cruel 6 a.m. alarm clock which prompted the start of another day in Graham's new routine, and a crueller enchantment which forcibly tipped him out of bed five minutes after he turned it off and went back to sleep. After showering and pulling on some sensible clothes, a pre-spelled breakfast greeted him in the kitchen, accompanied by the mellifluous tones of John Timpson on the Today programme.

Then, after a few minutes' respite, he turned off the radio, settled himself, sighed deeply, and began the most uninteresting aspect of his day.

"Amato Animo Animato Animagus." He muttered. "Amato Animo Animato Animagus, Amato Animo Animato Animagus…"

As he had a vested interest in not being irreversibly transformed into a half-human chimaera, Graham understood the importance of spending an hour every day carrying out centering exercises. The animagus mantra wasn't really a proper spell (hence its idiotic phraseology, he'd thought) - it was symbolic magic, both deeper and simpler than the spells which made up most of wizardry. Repeating the mantra had a reinforcing effect on an aspiring animagi. If Lily had been there, she'd have told him about the way that its repetition weighed on the firmament of magic like a lead ball on a rubber sheet, creating a praxis which would later help to unite animal and man - but that was deep charms theory, and Graham wasn't that kind of theoretician, so he just treated it as tedious, theoretically useful rote work.

He was just a few days and a storm away from his transformation, now that he'd prepared the potion he'd need - and while the vaguest impression of feathers during his chanting had led Graham to the general idea that he might become a bird, that was sparse clarification by itself - he just hoped that whatever he became, it would be something common enough to avoid unwanted attention in Britain.

Eventually, a chime notified him that he'd managed the requisite hour of chanting, and he allowed himself another few minutes of listening to the radio - this time, the wizarding wireless, which only began broadcasting at 7 a.m. in any case. Remus had made his own way downstairs, and offered Graham a mug of tea - they shared a few minutes' idle conversation, before Graham tugged on his boots and headed out to his first real task of the day - a solo renovation.

Nine properties between three wizards worked out at three per person per week, which would have been intense enough without other work to do: the preparatory steps for renovation were quite arduous by themselves. Beyond the surveying and planning involved in preparing for the repairs themselves, Delia had sensibly suggested that they erect muggle-repelling measures before doing anything else; and while that was certainly prudent as their work brought them into steadily more urban areas, it was hardly quick.

But Graham had done his surveys, warded away any interested muggles, and put together his structural plans - today, at least (he thought) he'd have a little more fun at work. Centering himself, he took one look at the shell of a townhouse he'd set up in - bought for a song, an unrestored victim of the Blitz left to fester for forty years - and, readying himself by the front door, got to work.

Although he wasn't a charms specialist in the same way that Lily had been, Graham did believe in the fundamental oneness of sorcery, and he was coming close to embodying that in his own spellcasting. Wordlessly, he swept his wand in a complex arc, vanishing dust and repainting the walls of the house a pleasant eggshell white in one motion; another twitch restored long-rotted floorboards and slotted them back into position, while a third seamlessly reunited chunks of plaster with the ceiling they'd fallen from. As he moved into the living room, a flick realigned sagging door frames with a sharp crack and refilled long-empty window panes, while the damp in the walls receded into nothing and the fireplace unclogged itself with a clunk; the kitchen was endowed with new counters and its rodent residents summarily evicted.

One floor was enough to tire Graham for a moment, and he conjured a chair to regain his focus. He knew that Dumbledore could have managed his work with an indolent wave of his wand, but he was no Dumbledore, and in any case he wanted to ensure that he managed his changes carefully.

Even so, what he'd just accomplished gave Graham pause - not because of any truly great skill on his part, but because of the sudden realisation that just this renovation represented more magic than most wizards would manage in a week. Magical jobs almost never involved actual spellcasting, after all: with the exception of a few professions (healing among them), they were largely mundane, with just the occasional soupçon of sorcery.

Most wizards hardly seemed to use magic in their personal lives, either. Sirius had been surprised by Graham's self-serving kettle - he had a house elf for food and drink, after all - but even those wizards without house elves seemed to treat magic as little more than an effective tool for chores and travel.

The realisation put him in a contemplative mood, and Graham couldn't help but chuckle, a little derisively, but more in sorrowful realisation.

"We were given tools and talents which let us reshape the world on a whim." he murmured, staring down at his wand. "And instead, we smothered ourselves rules which concentrated power in the hands of the cruelest and least deserving. What a god-damned waste wizards have been!"

It was the kind of thought which started revolutions - with an uncomfortable thrill, Graham realised that You-Know-Who had probably thought something quite similar when he was a child, however long ago that had been. But Graham already had his own cause, and a revolution of his own to foment - one with the distinct advantage of not arising from mindless bigotry.

Graham's schedule didn't have space for hours of rumination, so he pulled himself to his feet, and readied himself for the two extra floors he had to restore. But his musings sparked a conviction which surprised him with its ferocity: that, no matter what challenges the muggleborns he was fostering would face, he had to make sure that they never lost sight of the wonder that was magic.

A leisurely lunch would have been a welcome respite, but it wasn't a luxury Graham could afford. Instead, he scarfed down a bland tuna sandwich, and apparated to his next appointment: a couple of hours revising transfiguration with Jessica. It was a poor substitute for proper socialising - but he'd wanted to try and see more of his old college-mate, and revision was better than nothing.

"Okay, Gray." Jessica said patiently, looking at his latest failure, "You're putting the carriage before the pegasus again."

They were both looking at the chair he'd been working on - not only had it grown simian limbs and scampered up the wall of her apartment, but it had sprouted a mouth and was currently swearing at him.

With a decisive twist of her wand, Jessica dismissed the transfiguration, and the chair clattered back to the floor, then devolved into the rock it had started as. She smiled at Graham - she was enjoying the chance to play tutor, and certainly didn't mind the excuse to practice some magic.

"I understand how keen you are to get to properly instinctive transfiguration," she said, "but the way to do that is to properly master your form-to-form basics, and practice those until it just clicks for you. Otherwise, you end up trying to do applied theory at speed, and it's simply not possible to think on the spot like that. I can tell you're close, if you'd just stop trying to force it! So - let's go from the top? Just keep following my instructions."

"Right." Graham said, centering himself. "Form to form - and no getting ahead of myself. Okay, let's give this another go."

He narrowed his focus to the rock before him, and lost himself in the flow of Jessica's instructions. Rock to dog - that was simple, pre-OWL stuff - then dog to cat, cat to teapot to tea-cosy, tea-cosy to turtle, turtle to tortoise to table to turnip to urn to fern to falcon to aubergine to cello - Graham stuttered, and lost his concentration.

"Falcon to aubergine?" he said, confused. "And, for that matter - aubergine to cello?"

Jessica stared at him, grinning so widely her face seemed liable to split in two. "Yup - completely made up. That was all you, Gray!"

He stared at her for a moment, then began to smile as well.

"I get it!" he breathed, hardly daring to believe it. "Like you said, it just clicked -"

Impulsively, he returned to the cello, and, without thinking, began to transform it again - and, thinking of nothing but what he knew it could be, changed it into a garden gnome, a bowler hat, and a bunch of roses, which he swept up and offered to Jessica with a grin. It wasn't strictly necessary to manage instinctive transfiguration for a NEWT level exam - but it was going to make his life a great deal simpler, and garner him a healthy heap of extra credit. Unspelled transformations had, until then, taken careful, lengthy planning, not moments of instinctive action - he felt as if he'd discovered an entirely new way of thinking about the discipline.

"And that," Jessica said, not a little smugly, "is why transfiguration is better than charms."

The rest of Graham's day passed in a haze of revision - some of it admittedly practical, as he was using his time studying Ancient Runes to improve on his enormously inefficient ward setup at Lockwood, and both Charms and Transfiguration had plenty of practical applications in his never-ending renovation projects at the manor. But for the most part, he found himself buried once more in wizarding textbooks - a struggle mitigated only by the fact that, in studying medicine, he'd exposed himself to the one profession that wrote even less legibly than magicians did.

He was, at least, beginning to feel more confident in his academic understanding of magic, which had started to slip away as he'd pursued a muggle vocation. Wizarding curricula were hardly as impenetrable as Oxford exams had been, but it hadn't been a walk in the park to become conversant again - magic, at least as taught at wizarding schools, was not a science, and being good at wizarding exams required a hefty dose of intellectual flexibility as well as academic rigour.

It was almost ten in the evening when Graham finally decided he was done for the day, after he caught himself falling asleep over a treatise on antidotes to uncommon poisons. It was as much as he could take for the day - but he couldn't shake the feeling that he still wasn't doing enough. As he dragged himself from the overcrowded dining table which he'd made his study room to bed, though, Remus intercepted him at the stairs.

"As far as I can tell, the most fun you've had all day is listening to the Hobgoblins mangle their new single on the wireless this morning. Fancy a quick nightcap, at least?" He asked, smiling.

Graham recognised the lifeline which Remus was throwing, and took him up on his offer - they retired to the living room, where a decanter was already at work filling a couple of wine glasses.

"Thank you." Graham murmured, a few sips into his drink. "I'm sorry - I haven't been much fun lately, have I?"

"No." said Remus, bluntly. "But why the hell should you be? You're working your arse off for a worthy ambition - you don't have to be an entertainer on top of that."

He paused, and took a draught of wine. "Even so, I think you need to take yourself a bit less seriously, because from where I'm standing - well, sitting - it looks like you've been pushing yourself to the brink, and you really don't need to."

Graham frowned. "I mean - I've got eight weeks and the entire Hogwarts curriculum. It's hardly nothing, and there's so much I still need to learn before -"

"Tell me." Remus interrupted. "Have you actually looked at a mock MSAT test? I know that there was only the one set of written exams on record in Flourish and Blotts', but, well - I took a look through, out of idle curiosity, and it's really not as bad as you think."

"I'm not as smart as you, though." Graham griped. "If I don't revise properly, I'm going to remember sod all when the tests come around."

"Bloody Ravenclaws, I swear - you're plenty smart, and it wouldn't kill you to get some self-confidence!" Remus exclaimed. "Try that test tomorrow - I think you'll surprise yourself. Besides, I think you'll start to have some extra time in a few days - I happen to know quite a good meteorolomancer, and I have it on good authority that there's going to be a hell of a storm this weekend."

"You mean -"

Remus grinned. "That's right. It's time for you to graduate from being a full-time human, Graham: the animal world awaits."

AN: I was very touched by the reviews saying they were glad to see this story updated. I don't have a specific update schedule, but I am planning to carry on writing as long as I'm enjoying it!