Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Five
Day Twenty-Two
Harry looked around in satisfaction. After considerable discussion of their finally complete map and scouting of nearby points on foot, then sending out aerial scouts to a handful of more remote points that looked promising, they’d decided to relocate to what they had generally agreed was the most favorable of the sites. They’d no sooner arrived than people had erupted into a fizzing whirlwind of activity. Within hours he could see paint splotches and lines marking out the various roads and sites. If he looked hard enough, he could see a few of the unbreakable cases of some Pack!ed buildings set into various plots, waiting to be expanded back to size.
Harry was currently seated on an old tree stump that was tagged for removal as it was in the middle of one of the four planned roads leading out of the town. Beside him, and jiggling in what Harry thought might be happiness, its color currently a blush pink, was one of his gelatinous oozes. Harry was keeping an eye on Crystal, his current companion. A small but steadily growing hole was appearing under her, causing it to look like she was shrinking into the stump. He’d learned he had to tell them before he set them down if it was okay to eat that surface, he’d nearly lost a book he’d been reading when he set one down to free his hands for a few minutes. Fortunately, “Don’t eat that,” was a phrase they understood and responded to. A few days ago, Harry had mentioned to Sirius that he had fifteen and asked what did people do with them? Well, that’s what he’d meant to say, but Sirius had slammed a hand over his mouth halfway through “gelatinous”, or more accurately a third of the way. He hadn’t gotten past “gel-“ before the hand over his mouth became a headlock and despite his struggles Sirius had dragged him out of lunch in the great hall to an empty room he’d promptly warded silent the moment the door was closed. It was Sirius, so nobody even bothered to look up from their chips as they scuffled past.
“Pup, if you were about to say you have fifteen gelatinous oozes, your clothing would have been in tatters as people tried to strip search you on the spot. For Merlin’s sake, you gotta be more careful when you come out with stuff like that! I don’t know if I hope you’re kidding or not; do you really have fifteen oozes?”
Harry blinked at Sirius as he scratched his nose and worked the fingerprints off his lips. “Erm…yeah? Why’s that sending you off your trolley? They were in the pet store, Moppy found them in a box behind the Labracadabrador’s pen. There was a shipping invoice from like twelve years attached to the box, so when one of them hummed at me, we figured out what they were. They’re at least sort of alive, right? It was mean to make them stay all stacked up in that tiny box so Moppy and I rigged up a sort of playpen for them in my room. You should have seen it, once she put them in the pen she spent like twenty minutes scolding all these little bits of jam as they just sat there and turned colors. I have no idea why she was scolding them, it’s not like they were doing anything, they just jiggled a bit, but to hear Moppy go on, you’d think they were about to destroy the universe. It was weird. Anyway, so I have them, and I’ve no idea what to do with them. I mean, they’re pretty and all, and at night it’s like having a bunch of personal night lights, but I’ve no idea what they’re actually for. And why were they in the pet store? Is it like having a pet rock?”
Sirius dragged a hand down his face then grabbed the hair over his ears in a tight grip. “Circe grant me patience, because I don’t even… Who in their right minds collected fifteen of those in one spot? Who? Who could possibly think that was a good idea?” He sighed, deeply, then let his hair go and sat cross legged on the floor, motioning Harry to sit as well.
“Okay. So, oozes. Nobody knows what, exactly, they are, but your friend Moppy’s fears about destruction of the universe might not have been all that unfounded. If you know your history, it’s relatively easy to figure out when an ooze might have been involved. Eruptions of Tambora and Krakatau? Oozes. Chernobyl? Somebody dicking around with an ooze. Battle of Torrington? Some arsehole snuck an ooze into the gunpowder. You have fifteen. In one spot. Pup, if it were me I’d tiptoe out of your room and run screaming, but if they’re turning colors they probably like you. From what little research survives the research, it’s when they go dark you have to worry.”
Harry nodded thoughtfully. “So I probably shouldn’t have one in my pocket, is what you’re saying?”
Sirius froze for a long, long moment. His head swiveled to look at Harry so slowly Harry could almost count the individual muscle twitches and he was soon in receipt of an intense, worthy of a basilisk stare. “You do not. Tell me you do not. Please tell me I did not just drag you out of the great hall with an ooze, one that likes you, in your pocket? Because I’m not done living yet, I still have plans!” Sirius started to sound a tad hysterical there at the end, Harry noted.
Harry sighed. “Calm down, Sirius, nothing happened. But yeah, I’ve been picking one up every morning and carrying it around with me, ‘cause I have to make sure they get fed, right? And I don’t know what they eat, so I’ve been trying different stuff while I’m running about. Besides, they seem to like the company, they hum at me when I put them back in the playpen at night.
“Merlin and Medea save me from my godson, please.” Sirius pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He heaved a sigh and rested his hands back on his knees, visibly pulling his shoulders down from his ears, they’d crept up while he’d contemplated the situation. “Okay, oozes,” he started again. “They’re some sort of something that has the ability to store energy in massive quantities. I mean, magically impossible quantities, and if they don’t like you, or don’t like whatever you’re doing, they tend to go all explodey, leaving little bits of you to decorate the countryside for many, many miles. Then they go back to happily being an ooze like nothing ever happened, not a scratch on them. So far as anybody can determine, they’re indestructible and will eat anything, quite literally anything. Rumor has it ancient Rome used one in the sewers, and I sincerely hope that one wasn’t ever in your pocket because, ew. Also, one powers the hot springs in Iceland. One. All by itself. Again, you have fifteen. Do you see the problem? They emit power. Might be light, might be heat, might be electricity, or even magic. They can emit nearly any kind of power in any amount from your nightlights to Tunguska on demand or at their whim, and they can do it multiple times in a row, nobody’s ever found a hard limit.”
Harry hmmm’d in thought, reaching into his left cargo pocket to pull out a pale lilac cube that hummed and quivered a bit. “This one is Rocksanne. I named her when I was still thinking about the pet rock thing, but she likes it and turned brown when I tried to call her something else later.” Harry shifted over a bit, then pulled up Sirius’ hand and placed the little 3 inch cube in his palm. “You need to be a good girl, right Rocksie? You’ll like Sirius, he’s funny. I think they turn purple when they laugh, they do it every time I tell them a joke and she’d kind of purple-y a lot.” He paused. “There. Now I don’t have fifteen anymore. I’ll have to find some more good homes for them, any ideas?” Harry stood up and wandered out of the room, leaving Sirius staring in horror at his hand, where Rocksanne jiggled and turned a deeper purple.
*-*-*-*-
As Bill had thought, they were in fact on an island, which caused nearly all the Durmstrang contingent to smile in glee, the thought of all those unexplored seas filling them with anticipation and igniting a drive to explore. First things first, though, they needed to get their new home in order. They’d originally arrived near the center of the island, in a large grassland area between the mountains and a forest. It had taken some time for the scouting teams to progress from very cautious exploration of their surroundings, proceeding on foot and with a firm limit on how far they could go, to exploration by broom once the initial scouting expeditions had returned with various samples of flora and fauna and reporting that exercising reasonable caution was working for the teams so far.
Their newly chosen site was on the eastern coast, on the south side of a largish bay. There was a river nearby that flowed down from the mountains in the interior of the island and emptied into the bay, and they were backed onto an offshoot of the same forest they’d landed near, just on the other side of it. Once they chose the location and knowing that after moving, they would have ready access to water and wood, they’d taken advantage of their current mountain access and spent a week establishing a quarry site and stocking up on stone for building. Whether they would continue to use the same quarry going forward was currently a question, but they had a known location should they need it. With every able-bodied person pitching in and under former mine engineer Rhys Gedding’s direction, they’d loaded up a sizeable amount, one that should see them through the first rush of building.
They’d tossed everyone up on brooms and what carpets they had, Pack!ed Hogwarts back up, and slowly made their way to the new site. It wasn’t a comfortable trip, it was tedious and somewhat painful to be on a broom that long, especially as most of them were on racing or quidditch brooms that were designed for speed and maneuverability, comfort sacrificed in the process. Jedediah’s pickup and the large carpet it towed were very popular, people cycling on and off as they could to sit a bit more comfortably, only the children staying put on said carpet. They landed periodically, but only once a team of scouts had descended, setting up such minor wards as could be quickly established. They were all anxious to get to their new home and consequently willing to push on, so such stops were as infrequent as they could make them.
Once they had arrived, the town planning committee had gone to work with a vengeance, laying out the schema they’d put together in advance, adjusting as they went for small topography issues not available from the larger map. That first night after their latest move, and once in his room at Hogwarts, Harry had finally made an initial pass through his trunks and at least begun the process of sorting his stuff, something he should have done weeks ago, and he automatically winced again in guilt. He knew he should have been more on top of it, but he had such a weird mix of stuff in his trunks, he’d felt genuinely intimidated at the thought of combing through them all to separate out his stuff vs community supplies. The Gnomes had taken immediate possession of the gifted Gringotts building once Harry had stated his non-negotiable requirement that the legacy and honor of the Goblins would remain an integral part of their banking operations, tearing through it at speed to inventory what was present and establish what they had to work with. Less than twenty-four hours later, they’d handed him a pocket vault that contained all the leftover items in the teller conference room. Harry had taken it with very mixed feelings and set it aside. He wasn’t ready to open that, he felt like he might not ever be with how many memories it might pull forward. He wasn’t prepared to work through those issues and decidedly of the opinion that right now ignorance was bliss, he had enough other trunks to be getting on with.
The very first point laid out for the town when they were sketching out plans and planted dead center, was the pitch. It would double as a weekly market space once the economy was productive enough to support it. Once they’d heard that Harry would pay for the initial pitch, the Montrose Magpies talked amongst themselves then made a deal with the Gnomes. They sold their pitch to the town with Bill, in his role as interim administrator standing as “the town” for a low but still reasonable price, which left the team with enough funding to get creative and use either to establish a business or in some other manner that would leave the team intact. Currently they were internally debating talking to Jenever Ogden, but with so many options open to them they hadn’t reached a consensus.
Harry and Sirius had already turned their gold over to the Gnomes, minus his capital for the Puddlemere business plans and a couple small bags Harry’d kept against emergencies or future needs. The Gnomes immediately earmarked a large portion of it as working capital in a handshake deal that allowed the funds to be used by Bill for town use. Later on they could either repay the funds with minimal interest or exchange land for it, to be determined at a future time. Hogwarts, via Hat, had assured them via whatever means she was using that the land was unclaimed, they’d made sure to immediately clarify. Most of the buildings from Diagon Alley that he had Pack!ed up, he had given to Bill for disposition as a donation, although he kept the pet shop as well as all the buildings from the Malfoy, Lestrange, Dolohov, and Carrow estates. The Lestrange, Dolohov, and Carrow manor houses he left with the Gnomes, asking them to ensure they were gone through by a team prepared to deal with any nasty surprises and pillage them for any loose items. Once the houses were clean, they should put them up for sale at some future point, and he didn’t care how far in the future said point was. He could afford to wait for the economy to rise to a level where disposable wealth was available. He was keeping the Malfoy estate for the time being, they may have documentation needed for their horse business, what with as long as the Malfoy’s had been an equine establishment.
Despite standing in the middle of it all, Harry was feeling somewhat removed from the hustle and bustle he could see going on around him. It was nice, feeling like he could trust others with more experience than he to take on full responsibility for tasks. It was a novel experience and he still periodically had to deal with bouts of anxiousness regarding his self-imposed hands-off policy, but it was working, and he knew he couldn’t have done as well as what he saw going on around him in all directions.
He’d spent the last few weeks pitching in with everyone else, but not having to plan or be responsible for squat. Well, other than talking with Oliver and the rest of the Puddlemere team about ideas and how he’d fit in with those plans. They’d all spent some time with a couple of the Gnomes hammering out an ownership agreement for the business, now named “Puddlemere Paddocks” (courtesy of a suggestion from reserve keeper Noel Rees), that left no one on the team owing anyone anything.
Harry had put forward the idea of equal pay for all of them, with maybe a bonus for Oliver as he’d be leading the group and spending a lot of time teaching in addition to regular work. The team had tried to insist on paying Harry extra as well, knowing that it was his money they were using to get themselves going, but Harry firmly declined. He had to stumble through trying to explain, as his initial rejection of the offer was a knee jerk aversion to the thought of getting more than his new teammates. He finally found his truth in explaining that everyone’s contribution to the business was a matter of scale. He had money he hadn’t really earned, so it personally cost him almost nothing, where the rest of the team, by chipping in their finances as well, were making a real personal sacrifice. He didn’t deserve to be rewarded more than them for doing what was realistically less than them. Everyone seemed to get it, and while they still made it clear they very much valued Harry’s initial funding and emotionally appreciated it, they logically, if still somewhat uncomfortably, agreed with his reasoning. Harry just hoped they forgot all about it.
Once they could put pencil to paper for their budget, any profits from the business after that point would be paid out to the employees, share and share alike, with a double share for Oliver for the first five years. After that, they’d come up with something more structured to account for job requirements and length of employment, setting up a job hierarchy and such. But for right now, it would be equal money. All players had agreed to a basic five-year plan; they understood that the first five years would require sacrifice, there wouldn’t be much profit to be made. As employees, they weren’t going to starve; their salaries were allocated as part of the budget, but they’d be operating out of their reserve cash. They needed to stop the negative cash flow as soon as was reasonable. To do that, their current plans were to evaluate all their horses, and set up three programs. One for breeding and training of draft horses, a much smaller one for breeding and training of Abraxans, and a mid-sized program for breeding and training of riding and carriage horses, the latter two to probably include some sort of a riding academy.
Wizards and horses were not something that were a historical tea and crumpets match. They’d never needed horses before, but here and now, the benefits were immense. Yes, you could plow a field by enchanting the plow to work on its own, but the continuous energy needed for a guided enchantment came from the person powering the enchantment. With their limited manpower, it would be much better to save themselves from magical exhaustion and charm the plow to be sharper and maintain a specific depth, letting the horse provide the continuous energy. With apparition not available, travel would be a mix of broom, carpet or foot power. Harry knew they could train the Abraxans to pull a flight worthy carriage or cart but there would always be those who wanted their feet firmly on the ground, in which case they could let a horse double those feet for them.
The draft horses and working ponies would be their priority for the first few months. With their limited stock, Oliver had thought that they’d probably be better off renting them out with a minimal fee for the first year or two. Although they had sixty horses in various barns, only the ten Belgians were suitable for heavy draft work. They’d been unable to source more of the formidable work horses prior to departure, and what they currently had was made up of six mares, two stallions, and two neutered males. The six mares would need to be put into foal as soon as possible, so if they got any plowing done quickly by putting all ten to work, they could temporarily retire the mares, leaving the geldings and stallions available to work as needed until the following year. None of the Belgians or their future offspring would be sold for at least five to ten years. They were far better stocked on the smaller sized working breed ponies, they had eight Shetland ponies, twelve Dale ponies, and five Highland ponies. Two stallions for each, all others being mares. These could easily fit in with generalized farm work or light hauling, but none would be sold for at least a year and all mares would need to be put in foal immediately as they came into season.
Riding horses were also available in some measure, again needing to be increased in number before they could be sold, as well as careful thought given to breeding, as they lacked sufficient stallions to preserve their purebred stock. Currently, there were four Dutch Warmbloods, all mares, fifteen Hanoverians comprised of three stallions and twelve mares, and five Cleveland Bay mares.
They were quite a bit richer on the Abraxan side, with fifty-two of them. They’d have to sort out how their coloration had occurred, most likely a genetic mutation which meant potential breeding issues to watch for, according to both Oliver and his dad. The elder Mr. Woods had elected to be an unpaid business consultant for their first three months at which point they could either hire him on to handle the paperwork side of things or not. They all knew there were dozens of job options available to him, but the Woods were “Family First” as an unofficial motto. He’d thought they could sell eight to ten of the Abraxan without issue and told Oliver to ensure they sold only once they verified their training was in good order, and both agreed that even then they’d sell geldings only. The Abraxan were historically treasured animals amongst magicals, and they’d need to find a balance between what the fledgling economy could afford and ensuring they could retain their value. These would be among the crown jewels of Puddlemere Paddocks and they’d do their best to ensure they were the only source to buy from for as long as possible.
Franky Armstrong, one of their seekers, brought up a concern that such limited stocks for sale would drive villagers to finding alternate options and that when the shortage corrected itself, they’d find themselves without a market, but Oliver remained composed. “Wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about it, mate. The available alternatives are all well and good, but a horse is still the better bet when it comes to straight up convenience. Plus, they’re affectionate and bond well with people. Nobody’s going to cry when their flying carpet passes on, eh? We just need to keep their multi-purpose nature front and center, hence renting out some of the horses to keep that versatility in people’s minds. Then, once we’ve got the stock, we just to keep reinforcing the value they provide. After that it’s Bob’s your uncle and Fanny’s your aunt.”
The house elves were still making themselves scarce, with only Somley and Tadpy, who had assigned themselves to the kitchen, remaining visible. Once in an infrequent while one of the others would surface, such as Moppy when Harry was unpacking the oozes, but other than that nobody was sure of what they were up to, the elves changed the subject when asked, or refused to answer when pressed. Harry let his two elves be, as did Neville with his four. Remus was a bit more worried about his six, but at least he limited himself to concerned looks and repeated offers of help to Somley and Tadpy. Harry just shrugged, time would no doubt tell.