Draco looked at Lucius who was doing the same, "They were following us, weren't they?"
"Seems like it," Lucius said clenching his fist. "I really need to have a talk with Fudge about this."
Draco nodded, he was glad that this place had a system to kill of intruders otherwise it would be really bad with them finding out about the animals, other than that, he was really interested in Merc, about how he knew about those aurors and how he knew about himself.
Merc waved his wand around and those dead bodies on the ground were swallowed by the ground itself as if the ground suddenly turned into quicksand.
"Now that, that's gone-- let's start the auction, shall we?"
People started clapping and cheering again, from the looks of it, they weren't shocked by the death of those aurors. Draco figured that this was normal in this area so he tried to calm down as well.
"Everyone knows how our auction goes, but for new people out there--let me explain the set of rules." Merc said raising a finger, "Rule no. 1, A person isn't allowed to buy more than 10 items in a single auction, we don't care if you are the richest person in the world neither do we care about your influences, so try to buy more than 10 items, we will kick you out.-- Rule no. 2, Bringing in your family or friends doesn't count, if you do come in with one, you will be counted as a single unit.-- Rule no. 3, Pay first and take the items you bid for, no loan is provided.-- and last but not least Rule no. 4, What happens outside the auction, we don't care. Even if you were looted or killed, we won't be responsible.-- The auction moves on from common material to rare materials, with inventions and magical items included, be sure to keep that in mind."
Draco noted all the points down and sat down to relax and watch the show, Soon two elfs came in with sliding a huge cage, which contained a lion inside. Draco wasn't interested in normal animals so he just ignored it but looking at some of the people who were raising their hand, increasing the bid, Draco realized that these animals aren't as useless as he thought it was.
"Since normal animals are easier to tame than a magical beast, some wizards have started hobbies of collecting such animals." Lucius explained, "Don't you want it?"
"No." Draco shook his head. "I only want animals with some uses."
The lion was sold for a 150 Galleon which was bought by a dark green hooded witch and the auction moved on, "The next item we have here is out today's first magical creature. Bought here from India." Merc announced.
As soon as he did, house-elves dragged another cage in the stage, but this time the creature trapped in the cage had another layer of caging inclosing it in.
"As some of you might already know, This creature with backward feet is none other than an Abarimon," Merc said pointing at the hairy humanoid figure, who really had its feet twisted the opposite way around, "This creature is nothing special since it mostly lives with wild animals inside a forest, other than their fast speed and extreme savagery, they aren't anything special-- but what makes them rare is their habitat. If you know an Abarimon, you know that they can't live outside of their natural habitat which makes them extremely rare in this part of the country. As far as I know, there are only 6 of them in this continent, with our facility and a genius hunter we have managed to come up with a solution to capture them without killing them. The inner cage you see is the one that provides it with the air, making sure it survives in the outside world.-- Granted, it can't do anything else than be a showpiece stuck inside a cage, we decided to auction it off early on. The bid starts at a Thousand Galleon."
Draco wasn't too interested in buying the creature as seeing it in person was already enough for Draco. Even though some people might want to collect it, due to their rareness, it was nothing too special in the eyes of Draco as this creature couldn't even be used as a potion material. The auction started off slow and reached its climax at eight-thousand Galleons.
The auction kicked off soon with varieties of common magical animals like the Mortis Bat, Bicorns, Billywigs, Bundimun etc. An hour passed and till now there wasn't anything that caught the interest of Draco for him to even bid on, Lucius was bored out of his mind whereas Draco was still having some fun getting to see magical creatures that he had never seen before. Every now and then. they would feature new wizarding inventions, which would interest a particular set of buyers who would bid high prices from the very beginning, afraid that someone else would steal the inventions for them.
"So this our today's last common magical animals, the Bowtruckle." Merc said as a couple of elves dragged a small tree with a couple of Bowtruckles on them, "These Branches (A group of bowtruckles is called branches.) will be sold along with the Mahogany host tree that it's guarding. Not much description is needed of Bowtruckles so let's get on with the bidding, The bid starts at a two-thousand Galleons."
This was the first creature to interest Draco, even though they weren't rare, they were very hard to find and even if you find the tree containing the Bowtruckles, taking them with you was another story. Draco raised his hands in excitement, "2500"
As soon as Draco did a couple of other people similarly started raising their bid as well, The bid soon went up to 5000. Draco annoyed raised his hands again and again, "6000" "10,000" and the bid finally ended on "12,000" which was done by Draco. With 12,000 he finally won 8 Bowtruckles and a medium sized Mahagony tree.
Merc threw a coin towards Draco which floated in front of him. Draco caught the gold coin which had the number 58 written on it, Similar to the bidding number of the bowtruckles.
The auction carried off again, with new rare items appearing every now and then. There were several auctions with different species of ghouls like the Hidebehinds. By the end of another hour, Draco had bought eight more items, one was a Firedrake, it was a species of lizards with long antennae, that flew around. They are sometimes mistaken for dragons, though they do not breathe fire. Instead, they emit sparks from the ends of their tails.
The second item he bought was a device, that could predict dangers. It looked and worked in the same concept as the remembrall but instead of turning black when forgotten something, it turned black when something dangerous was about to happen. Draco was skeptical about the invention but after Merc showed that it really worked by attacking an Elf, Draco bought it, just in case it could prove to be necessary. Next, he bought a potion book which literal title was, "Potion for offensive magic." The book contained several recipes of different potion formulae which could be used in form of offense, like an exploding potion, poisonous smoke potion and many other.
The fourth item was a Golden Snidget, The small bird was basically the first snitch ever used and was like a walking or flying treasure trove. The bird's eyes and feathers are very precious and they are very fragile. Even though the bird wasn't too useful, Draco bought it due to it being an endangered species, making it rare and precious. Draco figured that some luxury now and then wasn't bad at all.
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