Investations
The Black Lodge, unplottable mountain-side, Norway
25th September 2003
“You know, Harry, you could make a fortune from these things.” Neville slurps appreciatively at the thick, savoury soup I’ve just ladled into his bowl. “So many variations, and all’s great!”
“If I got three bodies and a hundred hours a day, maybe,” is my smiling rebuttal, as it has always been every time he brings this topic up, usually when I treat him to a new recipe I’ve just learnt from one of my retainers. “I just like cooking, you know? I had to cook, for the Dursleys, but I don’t have to cook now, and I can enjoy what I’ve cooked. Don’t you think it’d turn into a chore again if I opened a restaurant or café?”
“Not if you got fun people to work with,” Luna chimes in dreamily in-between dainty spoonfuls of her own soup, which I’d ladled into her bowl before I did Neville’s. “Lots of blue angels will help you, no doubt. You could even hire some fire spirits to provide lighting and help manning the stoves, as long as the two groups don’t come in contact often. It’d be a hot water bath otherwise!”
I laugh out loud to that, and louder when she harrumphs indignantly and flings a mild Tickling Hex at my waist.
Batting the hex back at her – with a hand coated in a wandless, silent Protego – while dancing away from its former path of trajectory, I humour her with a continuation as some sort of apology for laughing at her: “Where do you think I can go to hire the blue angels and the fire spirits? I do hope they won’t band together and topple me from my chair of chief chef, though!”
“Ask yourself that,” she replies tartly, losing her dreaminess. “After all, you’re a blue angel yourself.”
Hastening to her side, with a soup-dripping ladle in one hand, I give her cheek a loud kiss, possible only after five years of nearly constant, all freely tactile interactions with her and Neville; undoing what the Dursleys worked so hard to mould me into, in other words. “Wasn’t mocking you, you know?” I tell her, with a louder kiss on her other cheek and a goofy grin. “Thanks for calling me an angel, by the way. Why blue, though? I’m even wearing brown today!”
She socks my upper arm, for that.
“Awwwh!” I mince myself back to the stove and the bubbling pot of soup amidst Neville’s gales of laughter, while trying to rub the throbbing spot with my free hand… which is not easy to do given the fact that the biceps being hit belongs to the same arm…. For a delicate-looking witch, one Luna Lovegood apparently packs quite a punch!
Before long, though, and with my biceps healed from the assault to it with a nifty bit of – surreptitiously applied – charm, I’m back at the rugged kitchen counter doubling as informal dining table with my own bowl of soup, with the remainder of it sitting in the pot newly spirited away from the stove and preserved with a food stasis charm Mrs. Weasley taught me years ago.
Hmm. Years ago…. It’s strange to think that years have gone by since I firstly took up the mantel of lord for the Houses Potter and Black.
Since last I communicated regularly with the Weasleys; since last I saw Hermione; since last I staid in Britain long enough to appear in public places like Diagon Alley and Hogsmead….
My other biceps gets poked, and I look up only to find both Neville and Luna looking pointedly back at me, from across the table and by my left, respectively.
“The wrakspurts and nargles have begun to swarm your head,” Luna proclaims, after a beat of awkward silence. “You know that the only way to keep them away, other than by wearing the caps and the raddishes, is to keep ever alert for them. I didn’t see either on your person, so you’d better watch out.”
Neville, meanwhile, gives me a wry look, tempered with shared amusement at Luna’s unique way of showing concern and interpreting the world. “We came here to help you brainstorm for new ideas, didn’t we?” he suggests. “Ways to invest your money or make use of your holdings don’t usually come on their own, you know, and days without Teddy clinging to your back, too. So let’s wrap up the breakfast and go somewhere, shall we? I kinda noticed you think better on your feet, and there’s a perfect forest trail right behind this cabin.”
Good old Neville, always so sensible and – sadly – often overlooked,even by me.
“I don’t know why Andy thinks investing my money in non-magical companies is bad,” I grouse, amidst shovelling the soup into my mouth. “The investments have been going well! Especially with Luna’s suggestions here.” I throw the witch a wink, which she replies likewise, all previous indignance and seriousness set aside.
Neville chuckles ruefully. “Wizarding pride, I’d wager,” he admits. “Gran was like that.” A brief look of grief passes across his face, like a storm cloud briefly blocking the summer afternoon sun, but then he continues, though in a far more sombre note than he must have initially aimed for, “Not all’s about the pride, though, I’d say. All the wars haven’t helped our community, you can see that, especially the last three. They’re so close together, time-wise, and so big. Our economy suffers right alongside our number, and, well, I guess, Missus Tonks would rather your money stay in the Wizarding World, to help its economy recover.”
I open my mouth for a tired rebuttal, but he hastily ploughs on, “I know, I know, you told us before this; you even told her, and I believe we all agree on this point: There’s little to no invention or business venture going on lately, and George’s shop hasn’t even been the same after Fred died. But that’s just the point, isn’t it? You could have opened jobs for people within our world, with all the money and resources you have, and with all those ideas floating in your head. You could rejuvenate our economy and culture without tweaking at the sensibilities of some stuffy old people. – I think she meant that all this time, though she never quite told you.”
“She should have,” is my only answer, grumbled into my bowl as I resume my speedy breakfast. “We wouldn’t spend years doing nothing, then.”
“And you would do that, Harry?” Luna points out rebukingly. “Didn’t you say just now that you couldn’t even open a restaurant to share all these delightful meals with other people?”
Damn. Good old Luna, always so blunt with hard, awkward truths and never repentent about it.
But, well, I only have today and tomorrow to think up at least two things to do with my combined estate, indeed. I can’t just dawdle this whole time and use it to find excuses not to do things instead. I can live without Andy confiscating my driving licences as though I were a naughty child!
And there’s a whole Norwegian forested mountainside right behind this cabin to explore, too.
Well, if put like this….
“Well, then, let’s go out!”