Pack!

Chapter Forty Four

Two weeks later there were still emergency meetings going on in every spare corner that could be found, albeit of much smaller and more targeted groups.  Security, housing, banking, real estate needs, and so on; all had their immediate concerns to address. The Queen, along with Major Smythe and his men, had been engaged in a series of meetings with the Toyohashi Tengo Unspeakables and Circe only knew what they were planning. They’d likely wind up with the most unattackable country in history, though, so everyone chose to remain unbothered. Besides, it was The Queen, who was well on her way to being beloved by her subjects all over again.  Despite her age, she had been making her way through all the settlers, engaging them in conversation, her thoughtful questions and authentic interest in their lives spreading smiles at the mere mention she might be present at such and such event. Had she been a younger version of herself, she might have had her head quite turned at all the attention to her comfort and the pampering she received anywhere she went. Even one of the youngest of the littles had been seen offering her his stuffy, “to keep her comp’ny while she had to do meetings”.

Harry had immediately turned over his trunks of unclaimed vaults to the Gnomes, asking them to please find out if any of the vaults could be allocated to the newcomers; either due to owning them outright or family connections, no matter how tenuous. Gringotts had agreed and each new arrival had met with a gnome to start sketching out a family tree, work they’d already done for the original settlers. Magical verification would have to come later in the case of inheritance vaults, it was possible more refugees would turn up, although Nakamura Tadao of the Tengos had assured them it was about as likely as holding out your hand and closing it on a leprechaun. Harry was delighted to hear that four vaults were back in the proper hands, with some thirty seven pending verification, the Gnomes having included the first group in their research as well.  Harry and Ms. Anderson disagreed about the remaining vaults that had no known inheritors, but Harry was insistent they be held aside for at least a year.

The Indicia community had opened their arms, supply closets, and wallets to get the newcomers on their feet. The Nimbus factory had offered up their reserve professional grade inventory and established a five year payment plan for those players without a broom. Those same players, once they had obtained a competitive level broom immediately took to the air in happiness and the skies hadn’t been the same since. Temporary quidditch pitches were everywhere, games running all hours of the day and more.  On the town pitch, whose use was slightly more regulated, the joyful shouts started at six AM with teams limited to two hours before having to turn the field over to the next in the queue.  

Einstein Calhoun had, in the most redneck manner possible, solved the lighting issue for night games. Those were held only on the weekends and only on the town pitch. When first proposed, the discussion had come around to how they’d light the field and he’d offered up a spell his Uncle Ernest had invented, calling it Beer Beacons.  “Uncle Ern never could make it work with anythin’ but a full beer can. He used the empty cans for his Skeeter-B-Gone, but he ain’t never told nobody how that one worked,” he explained.  It resulted in a brightly glowing can that, when half a dozen of them were hovered over and around the pitch, gave off near daylight amounts of light, lasting about four hours per can. About one in ten cans would randomly catch fire during the game, which added some fun. Feasibility for more than a few games was called into question as beer cans were a muggle item and no one present had brought them. Or so it was thought until Einstein offered up his expanded and three quarters full trunk load. “Ah stocked up ever’ time Ah got back home, PBR ain’t a thing here. Guess my days as a bootlegger are done,” he said with a grin.

The teams had reunited with shouts of glee and club hugs all around and a very happy, tear filled reunion with one of the Vratsa Vultures finding two of their cousins among the presumably orphaned Durmstrang students. By the end of day two, Ollie and Babe had organized a meeting of the quidditch captains, coaches, staff, and if no team had any of the former, one or two designated representatives. He outlined their current plans and the nascent ideas around team businesses and potential for sponsorship, but did say that they hadn’t dug into the minutia of League setup just yet, things will no doubt need to be adjusted as rules and regulations came about. “And every one of you are a valued member of the future League, no preference on first group or second, we’re only using the terms to make it clear that the second group might not have the background knowledge the first one does.  Give it a wee while and that distinction will fade out entire.”  He and Babe Carlin had done a fast survey through the teams, asking if anyone would object to their idea for a League Manager being put forward, and with their agreement they’d pushed Rolanda Hooch over to Percy and Bill, demanding she be hired. She’d whooped in delight and hit the ground running. As it currently stood, she had the structure taking shape, another few months and they’d have a proper League running, with tickets and everything.

The Haileybury Hammers and Holyhead Harpies had merged their teams, an idea brought up previous to the move, but without the heart to carry it through. They’d relied on the experience of a few members who were talented handymen and two who had worked construction before going pro, promptly starting up a construction firm, Haileyholy Construction. They’d run to check out every book available on magical building and had their noses pressed to the page ever since. A couple of them were assigned to acquisitions, figuring out how to construct or find enough tools to get by until someone able to smelt and forge iron or steel came along.

Braga Broomfleet had all but pounced on poor Rhys Geddings, and announced they were opening a full service stone quarry. Most of the Braga players came from families with a mining history, so they were somewhat familiar, at least in theory, with the work. There had been a couple of old pickaxes among the equipment bought from the Mennonites, but they weren’t going to last long.  They were currently all out practicing targeted and precision high powered cutting spells, hoping that would work in the interim. They didn’t have the tools available to even consider mining, so a quarry it would be.

Irma Pince had spoken to Remus and taken charge of the Indicia Library, her happiness at the posting such that she practically trailed hearts and flowers in her wake, while Poppy Pomfrey had swooped in to clutch the St. Mungo’s building to her chest and straightaway strode off in search of the planning committee, demanding they give her space immediately. “Goodness knows what you’d do at present if there was an injury!” Soon, the building with its green federal cross painted on one side was in place and she was talking to several of the elves who were interested in bonding to the building.

The Academy was once again fully staffed with elves, much to Remus’ relief, and he was talking to part of the Bigonville Bombers group. A few of the family members accompanying the group had previously worked at the Athenee de Magic in Luxembourg and a further few of their party had thought they might also like to try their hand as teachers. Starting in two months, all not yet graduated students would be required to be back in class, so Remus needed to get organized swiftly.  He’d had the four Durmstrang professors slotted in, but Lev Alekhin and Sasha Egorov had just days ago withdrawn; with the new influx of people, they’d decided to devote themselves to the shipyard full time, along with the Grodzisk Goblins, two of whom had graduated from an engineering school. The thought seemed to be that the engineering design experience might be helpful, but the team itself would have to learn ship building from scratch.

Gringotts had bought all the unclaimed business supplies from the community, the Gnomes seeing the prospect for business loans to keep Gringotts flush and able to reinvest. Those that had newly decided on a venture were shepherded to Gringotts to check with Gnomes to see what supplies they may already have for such a business; it made for a much easier stock acquisition process even if it was more expensive.

The Bigonville Bombers were well on their way to becoming glass manufacturers. Team captain Gabriel Litchburg’s granddad, Luca Litchburg, had the knowhow and they thought they could capitalize on it, they just needed to work out financing. They could see there was going to be high demand for bottles and glassware of all sorts coming up soon, and they had a large group to support and provide jobs for. Half the team was currently on beach patrol with Luca, looking for suitable sand while the rest were in talks with Gringotts to see if a viable building for a factory was available for purchase or if they’d need to build.  Between their team and the numbers in their families and support staff, they knew they were in an incredibly lucky position with their finances; they’d one and all come through with their vaults and had managed to have their families pack up a good chunk of their belongings prior to leaving Luxembourg. So, when they realized the situation of the Heidelberg Harriers, they unanimously voted to set aside a charity purse, the Harriers having been the least fortunate of the visiting teams. 

All but one of the German team had come through with just the lint in their pockets, their last few coins had been quietly given to help buy the lumber for the transport crates. Bigonville had walked over their charity purse number and put it at their disposal.  It wouldn’t be enough to fund them completely but would give them a boost once they had some idea of what they were going to do.  Two of the members from Heidelberg, the twins Marta and Mason Grotz, had an aunt who’d owned a sweet shop and their summers had been spent helping out, everything from pulling taffy to designing patterns for rolled candy. They’d gone to Gringotts to look over what they had and realized that with sugar currently in a somewhat restricted supply, taking on the Lloynds machinery wouldn’t have been in their best interests, it was only the machinery, no supplies.  But while perusing the list, they had spotted the chocolate business, and if they put in the work, the opportunity could be a good fit.  While it hadn’t been a focus of the store, their aunt had done at least some chocolate work, so the twins knew the basics. They thought they could take on the challenge, even if it was daunting. The team members blew out a breath at the price on the chocolate business supplies inventory, which, thank goodness, contained its own dedicated sugar supply, and they took reassurance from the twins that they could do this. Straightening their shoulders, they signed their names to the contract. The enormous price tag was the result of Harry not being the only person to have considered the lack of future chocolate; the Cocoa Hub warehouse at Melton Mowbry had been the subject of bulk purchases three different times that same day before Harry and Sirius had staged their massive raid on it. Harry’d, though, had been the only one to think to grab the Master Chocolatier manuals. In one fell swoop, the Harriers had gone from absolute poverty to being one of the best stocked new businesses. The negative aspect was the very large volume of high value supplies they had to take on; Gringotts had wanted to move the entire business off their books in a one-time sale and they’d had to agree to an aggressive repayment schedule even with it being a ten year loan. Bigonville had stepped in with their purse to cover the monthly repayments for the first year, leaving both teams pleased and grateful.

The Tarapoto Treeskimmers had leapt at the chance to work with the Patil’s, their home country of Peru being passionate about its fiber and textile history. Everyone on the team was experienced in hand spinning on a spindle or wheel, two were expert weavers, and one was a fairly well known felting artist. Three of them had spent their childhoods working as shepherds for the family herds and although more experienced with alpaca than sheep, they were all eager to get their hands buried in fleece again.  The Patil’s were energized by the enthusiasm of their new employees, and reordered themselves into a partnership with Tarapoto, PerIndia Rugs and Textiles.

There were still a number of teams that hadn’t yet decided on a direction, each was having at least daily internal meetings and canvassing the explosively growing village for opportunities and ideas. 

In contrast to the exploding growth around them, the future of one business segment was grim. Puddlemere and the Falcons Farm team had immediately turned alarmed thoughts to their food supply. As a result, most of the Puddlemere team, Jenever Ogden, all the Falmouth Falcons, Mr. MacPherson, Jedidiah Calhoun, and Bill and Percy Weasley were, for the fourth time in the last two weeks, again clustered around a long table set up in the courtyard of MPC #1 under a silencing ward. Esmae Dawson, keeper for the Falcons, was saying “-and that’s where we’re at.  We can’t get enough land under cultivation unless you’re willing to push harder on the horses, Ollie.  Nobody begrudges the arrival of the new group, we’re thrilled they’re here, I promise.  But we were already on a knife edge on the timing of being able to harvest our crops if the weather turns, and we were only going to have a few months to spare before our supplies ran dangerously low. That year worth of in stasis food has just been cut in half.  We need more full size farms and we have to push harder. We also need half a dozen market gardens to start up, we can maybe fend off going down to starvation rations if we get enough general vegetables covered.”

Mr. MacPherson added, “Aye.  We need to scale up the cattle as well, our herd’s too small to supply beef to this many.  It’ll take us a couple of years to get there, but more cattle means more feed, which means more land under cultivation.”

Einstein Calhoun also chimed in, “Same for the dairy operations. We can live without beef if we have to, but not dairy. We’re going to have to ration and stretch like nobody’s business while we grow the operation. And again, cattle feed.”

Oliver looked exhausted, meeting their eyes, his uneasiness and apprehension near palpable. “I know, and I understand, I promise I do, but if we injure or strain any of the draft horses, it’s catastrophic. We have a small and very finite resource that will take five years to replace. We have even less of that resource if I take the mares out to put them to stud right now. It’s a nasty catch twenty two, because if I don’t get them in foal as soon as possible, the next generation comes around that much later and we’re already looking at that five year wait for the heavy horses, two to three for the ponies. If we need to put in another four or five full size farms now, I can’t pull the mares out, I can’t pull my people off the plowing, and I can’t push the teams much harder. Look, let me and me da run the numbers again. Maybe we can run the ponies in a four harness to help, and maybe we can add an hour to the draft horses field time.  I don’t know,” He ran a hand through his already rumpled hair. “We’re going to need to rethink everything.  You guys go ahead and figure out what you need, we’ll go back and pound our options flat to see if we can find any other possibilities. Meet back here tomorrow afternoon?”  A chorus of weary sighs and nods were issued as they stood up and went their separate ways.

Ollie and Rafe looked despairingly at each other, knowing what they could provide would never equal what was needed. They herded the team back to Site Two for what was sure to be a painful conversation.