NOVEL NEXT Chapter 10: Wands and Wealth
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Harry stepped outside the woodwork shop and spent a good twenty minutes throwing up a casual detection ward to alert him if any other wizards gained entry. There wasn't much magic around, so it wouldn't last long, but it would do the job for now. He felt he owed a tiny bit of protection to the man for such good work, and who knows, he may have need of him in the future. That, and it would give him early warning if someone managed to somehow trace his wand's origins.
Wow it felt good. His old holly and phoenix feather wand hadn't felt half as natural, or as powerful, as this one did. And there he'd been, thinking this wand was just going to be a rough and ready stopgap measure. Hah! All that, 'wand chooses the wizard,' dragon crap… turns out the wizard just needs to really know himself.
And now that he had a wand, he could attack his next greatest vulnerability, his rather empty and nonexistent vaults.
....
"Hello, my dear. Are you all alone? Where are your parents?"
"Confundo."
...
"Where the hell did you come from?!"
"Obliviate."
...
"Sorry kid, that information is restricted."
"Legilimens."
...
Harry luxuriated on his pool lounger, enjoying the shade cast by a huge umbrella, sipping from a glass of iced orange juice. The crystal blue waters of the Mediterranean lapped but a stone's throw from his new rented apartment, and both the sea, and the pool a few feet away, called to him.
Damn, life was so much easier with a wand!
Harry returned his focus to the pad of paper he'd been making notes on, and once more went over his plans, looking for any loopholes or unthought of problems.
It was now mid September and he'd been back in the past for six weeks. He'd spent the last month continuing his opportunistic little pilferer spiel and for the first few weeks it had been great. He now sat on the tidy sum of just over four thousand pounds, but the rates of return were now too low compared to the risk of getting caught breaking the international statute of secrecy and muggle baiting laws.
He needed something bigger.
The biggest problem was that he needed to use his magic to his advantage, but couldn't do anything that might draw attention to himself, or risk breaking the ISS.
His very brief foray into bank robbing ended in near disaster when he realised, just in time, that the bank—the bog standard normal high street muggle bank—had goblin wizard-detection, key-out, and anti-apparition wards. They even had an invisible-to-muggle, miniature thief's downfall. Gringotts, apparently, took their banking monopoly very seriously.
He'd considered stealing other high value items like artwork or jewellery, but decided wasn't worth it… They were too difficult to get rid of, especially when compared to certain other goods.
He took another sip of orange juice and leafed through the stack of academic journal articles he'd acquired from various British universities. They all had titles like 'the organisation of high-level drug markets' and 'Drug markets and law enforcement'.
Magic could be very flashy. McGonagall demonstrated it to new muggleborn parents by transfiguring various household items into other things… or possibly turning into a cat. Very impressive stuff. But economically valuable? Not so much. You could use it to commit fraud, and be a damn good con artist, but again, you ran the risk of breaking the ISS and getting the improper use of magic office on your tail.
But magic didn't need to be flashy to be damn valuable. The ability to move a small cargo, unseen and undetected, across a national border at low risk to the carrier… now that was damn valuable. And he was probably one of the few wizards that had both the power and skill to pass through the low powered wards governments erected around their borders.
If he were caught, wizarding border control would be looking for contraband magical artefacts. Muggle drugs weren't on the list, why would they be? Wizards routinely made potions that could do the same thing far better, with low risk of complications or addiction. Hell, they taught thirteen year-olds the cheering charm, which was an almost textbook example of an upper. It was amazing the entire wizarding world didn't run around with it cast on them all the time.
That didn't mean being caught had no cost. No, the consequence would be that he'd be back on the wizarding world's radar. Illegal apparition, underage magic, illegal possession of a wand… the list of charges would quickly pile up. True, he could get out of most of them by playing the emancipated lord card—except for illegal apparition—but, when he re-entered the magical world, he wanted it be on his terms.
He wasn't worried though. He'd already made the crossing three times now, and if this little project worked out, he'd only need to sneak over the border a few more times for quite a while.
Putting his drink down, Harry padded over to the pool's edge, and carefully slid his hot, sweaty body into the water's cool embrace.
This was nice. Very nice. Maybe making Cyprus his holiday base would be a really good idea…
But he also knew he had to get on with things. Time was marching on.
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