章節 73: Chapter 69: Employing the stupidest house-elf has given me what skill?
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"Give me your stupidest house-elf."
Narcissa stared at Harry as if he'd started speaking Gobbledygook. "What?" she asked, for the first time in the whole conversation looking completely baffled.
"Every pure-blood house has that one elf, you know. The one getting ideas beyond its station." He meant, of course, Dobby.
"You want a house-elf. A misbehaving one," Narcissa asked slowly, as if unsure that she'd heard him correctly.
"Yeah."
"And you'll sign a teacher's contract."
"Well, no, I'll sit down with you and negotiate one. If we don't come to an agreement I'll keep the elf. He's just a fee for the time we'll probably need to agree to the specific wording and the payment for you getting my real name."
Narcissa frowned. "What do you imagine the contract to say, approximately."
"It will stipulate a pay. Since I know you've hit on hard times perhaps ten galleons an hour and free access to your entire library. A room in your mansion in case I ever want to sleep over. Lodging and meals and such, you know," Harry said idly. "In return, I'll oblige myself to teach your son to the best of my ability." Which wasn't saying much, since he didn't even know legilimency yet. "I'll promise to not harm him in any way that was unavoidable for the sake of teaching or my safety during the duration of the contract, which I can cancel at any time, as long as I give a week's notice." Narcissa made to say something. "Provided I am not, during that week intending to kidnap your son and wait for the period of non-harm to run out."
Narcissa licked her lips, looking nervous. "You'll sign a clause not to share anything you've learned in the library, or my son's head. Ever."
"Unless I've received that information somewhere else."
"I'll let my lawyer sign up a draft. Send it to you. We'll go over it together through correspondence," the woman decided when she noticed that Harry wasn't going to be unreasonable about it. The only thing he wanted was not to be obliviated, and not be forced to not harm Draco if it was the boy initiating conflict in school.
Narcissa paused, noticing an issue.
"I'll book a mailbox in Diagon, put it under Charon. The correspondence will go there, and my new house-elf will check it once a day in the afternoons," Harry decided.
A sniff. "Good luck getting him to do anything correctly, he'll probably cook you the letters for dinner."
"Oh, so it's a him?" Harry asked curiously, leaning forward.
"I sincerely hope you need a house-elf as a ritual sacrifice, it's about as much use as you'll get out of this one."
Harry refrained from telling her that she didn't know the value of a truly loyal house-elf. But, hadn't her mother had Kreacher, who'd defended her long after her death, taking orders from her portrait? Or was he mixing up the Black family tree somewhat? It was a complicated one. Walburga was the mother of Sirius, but Sirius was the cousin of Narcissa, so Narcissa was not the daughter of Walburga.
"You leave handling the house-elf to me," Harry ended up saying. "And, if I'm not misjudging the situation, we've discussed what we had to discuss."
"I'd want the lessons to start before September," Narcissa said.
"That can be arranged$. We should have the contract handled by then. Depends mostly on you really, I'm not too picky about what's in it. Keep it simple."
The woman breathed in, deeply. "Alright, that's settled." It was clear that it was taking her a lot of strength to do what she was doing.
How low must have house Malfoy fallen if the matriarch was stuck picking the mind arts teacher of her son from the street?
Or was it perhaps that if she put up an ad for a teacher, only vultures would apply? Picking someone at random in this case was more likely to end up in a mutually beneficial relationship.
"Dobby," the lady barked suddenly, a pathetic creature appearing at her side with a crack. "You're being sold," she informed the nervous-looking elf dressed in a tea towel. Its already large green eyes bulged out even further, before a handkerchief landed on his head, covering them along with his snout-like nose.
The house-elf put up a hand that was trembling something mighty to pull off the offensive piece of cloth. He looked at it, then back to Narcissa, who refused to meet his gaze. Then to Harry, who had a small smile on his face. He'd felt a magical connection between the elf and Narcissa snap.
"Dobby, is a free elf?" he asked confusedly.
"Oh, I wouldn't say so. More like under, new management," Lady Malfoy said snidely before promptly standing up, throwing a galleon on the table and walking past Harry, where she paused for a second, gently laying a hand on his shoulder. "You'll hear from me soon," she said, before rushing off.
Harry tried to share an amused look with the elf, with whom he, decisively speaking, did not have any sort of magical connection yet. Dobby just looked at him suspiciously, backing off a bit.
"Dobby, right?" Harry asked, extending a hand. "It's nice to meet you."
The house-elf looked at his hand suspiciously, perhaps more used to things that looked like it striking at him, rather than being offered as a greeting. Eventually, after a few long seconds, the elf stepped forward, clutching the handkerchief like a lifeline and shook Harry's right hand, with his left. "It is nice to be meeting you sers."
"Now," Harry started. "I'd like to fix a little misconception. I didn't as much buy you, as I did negotiate your freedom. You are, in fact, a free elf," he explained, causing Dobby to look at him wondrously. "I just know that all these old families have a bunch of house-elves that don't want to work for them and Lady Malfoy asked me for a favour. The thing is, she didn't have anything I needed, so I decided to negotiate a good deed instead." He nodded.
"Sir is very kind to Dobby," the house-elf said with a reserved smile, however, Harry didn't have too much time. He'd dallied a lot, and he wanted to still get some stuff done today. Perhaps Dobby would also appreciate having some time alone to consider his situation.
"Now, with your newfound status as a free elf, I was wondering if I could hire you for a little job. As the Swiss would say, the pensum would be 5%, implying, going by a 40-hour work week, that you would work for me 2 hours a week. I'd be willing to part with four galleons a month for this, with two days a week off."
Dobby narrowed his eyes at him. "Dobby works all 40 hours a week, gets paid 4 sickles a month, and gets one day off every half a year."
Harry blankly stared at the elf. "That's not how you negotiate," he said, before shaking his head. "Two galleons a month, 6 hours per week, one day off a week."
"60 hours a week, 3 sickles a month, a day off every nine months," the elf shot back.
"Alright, alright, I take your previous offer. But be warned, I don't have that much work, so you'll mostly just be on call, not actually doing anything," Harry conceded with a groan at the stupidity of this conversation. "Is it possible to start right now?" he asked. "Have something urgent that needs to be done."
The elf nodded, and with a snap of his fingers, a magical cord shot out of its being and towards here, where it tried to latch on. The boy allowed it, and with no bang and no fanfare, he got himself a new house elf. He pulled out four sickles from his money pouch and handed it over to the house-elf, who looked at the money oddly as if it had never held any before. Then he showed it somewhere in his tea towel.
"What do sirs need Dobby to be doing?"
"Can you teleport me and my belongings to a place if I mentally hand you the coordinates?" Harry asked, at which Dobby paused, before slowly nodding.
"Dobby can. Master not want to apparate?"
"No, I'm fine without for the moment," Harry replied, before mentally prodding at the hat. 'Send him the coordinates to our special clearing,' he prompted. Before he knew it he felt a mental packet fly from the hat to the elf, who nodded seriously, took Harry by the hand and with a crack, they disappeared from the spot.
-/-
It was an hour or so later that Harry was sitting on a train heading for Manchester. He'd shown Dobby his little clearing, sworn him on all kinds of secrecy in regards to its location, Harry's own identity and basically everything else.
Perhaps it was a bit dangerous to employ a house-elf who had foiled his master's schemes in the past, future, and potential timeline? But, Harry had always liked Dobby's character, and the house elf was already growing on him now, after just an hour.
The little guy seemed excited by the new opportunity. Being given a pouch of coins and told to make the cave Harry used to practise magic in a hospital with some furniture, some magic. He told him to buy himself an actual outfit instead of a tea towel which had almost caused a misunderstanding in the elf thinking he was being fired a few minutes after landing the new gig. Shown the mailbox Harry had decided to rent, ordered to bring him whatever letters arrived in it with some discretion.
The usual.
The most important order had been, however, to not under any circumstances interact in any way with the Horcrux buried several feet underground. Although, Voldemort probably wasn't that likely to possess the body of a house-elf.
Well, you could never tell with these dark lord figures. Anyway, for the moment the Horcrux was secured in a place nobody had access due to the natural wards that had sprung up there. Harry's ill-begotten gains from his deal with Burkes were similarly stashed away in the cave, which was being renovated into a more liveable situation by Dobby. It was more for the house-elf than Harry really, as the boy wasn't going to sleep over at the cave anytime soon. But, if he'd told the house-elf itself that the cave was partially for him, he would have likely tried to haggle Harry down to a dog house next to the furnace or something.
Weird guy. A bit confused at his new lot in life, which was why Harry was fine with leaving him be for a few days as he hung out with Tonks. He'd always adapted best alone when other people weren't there to influence his mood.
For now, Harry was on a comfortable train reading a nice book and drinking some tea. Manchester would soon appear on the horizon, ruining the view, but Tonks would be there to salvage the visual aspect of that experience.
The meeting that he hadn't had with Skeeter he could do on the way back and overall everything was pointing towards a fun weekend.
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AN: This chapter was a bit short, more intermezzo, but that's life sometimes. I sometimes think I should be more consistent. Two chapters ago it was 6k words, last one was 4k, this one is 2k. But, it just makes more sense to cut it of where it feels natural rather than wasting my time making arbitrary word counts. Just makes me lose my energy on stuff that isn't writing.
On Patreon you can now read ahead up to chapter 92. Or, you can just support me for the sake of supporting me. Every dollar counts and Imma have to pay my yearly taxes soon so i've been saving up.
章節 74: Chapter 70: 0 Rizz Manc Twats Common L
Chapter is 3 days late, had some issues to resolve. Next one will be in seven days to keep the 1ch/10 days schedule
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Gringotts broken into! Wizarding Britain in shock!
After having stood as an unassailable bastion of wizarding banks, we here at the Daily Prophet are shocked to report that Gringotts has been broken into during the previous night. While the Head chief of the bank Sir Gribblybock tells us that the vault broken into was one that has been dormant for the last ten years and that nothing was stolen, people are, understandably, concerned about the safety of their funds.
A specific timeline of the break-in has not been released yet and likely will not be due to security concerns about copycat robbers.
Soon-to-be former minister Crouch, whose mandate is running out at the end of this winter session had this to say about the potentially worsening goblin relations in the context of this most likely wizard-planned robbery.
"It is truly concerning that the black underbelly of our wonderful country is growing impetuous enough to challenge institutions as old and powerful as our national bank. This situation is certainly troubling when one considers the recent tension between the government and the bank over the requested personal information of several disreputable clients…"
Having managed to read a bit, and had remained mostly undisturbed on the blissfully empty train as it drove into the Manchester Victoria train station. Exiting the quickly, not encumbered by the luggage that he'd reduced the weight of, he made his way to the adjacent parking lot where he'd discussed meeting Tonks.
It didn't take him long to find her, mostly because she was involved in some sort of altercation with a pair of teenage boys, or young men.
"Come on, Luv, why wait around this groggy train station when there's so many more exciting things to see," one of them said, with his stupid bright red mohawk hair. He was leaning on the car Tonks was with his right hand and was holding a beer bottle in his left.
Tonks for her part, remained firmly unamused, standing there with her arms crossed, but with her right hand twitchy. "Will you two bugger off already, I'm here to pick up a friend. Not to get harassed by two punks with no style," she ground out, her eyes flicking to Harry when she noticed him approaching out of the other parked cars and the throng of people decisively ignoring the developing shitshow in their midst.
The other punk looked over, shaved head this one, super tall and built dude, but with a bit of fat around his torso. Too many chains, Harry thought. "Is this yours little brother?" the man asked.
Harry couldn't help but laugh. "She wishes I was her little brother, it would make her genes more valuable by the default of association," he said, approaching the situation.
The two punks both turned to him and gave him a queer look at that. "He a London twat or what?" they asked almost in unison.
The young boy rolled his eyes. "Look, no matter which part of England we're from, we're all brothers in the end. Does it matter if we're having an angin or a horrible day? If Manc United wins the Champions League I'll cheer just as much as if it was Arsenal. Quite frankly I just want Madrid to lose, I hate those Spanish bastards. Think they're better than me just because they have some fancy ham." He turned to Tonks. "Can we ditch this place? I hate train stations."
The two men looked at each other, obviously a bit confused at the confidence with which Harry was entering the situation. They were probably more used to eliciting fear, or with their dress style, disgust.
"Yeah, let's go," Tonks said with a sigh and got into the car.
"Have a good one," Harry told the punks. Once he entered the car he rolled down the windows so that he could address the two punks one more time as they quickly drove off. Tonks managed to choke out the vehicle by starting too quickly twice. "Don't do drugs," Harry said and waved.
The two punks waved goodbye as well, nodding half-heartedly.
"Sorry you had to go through that," Harry said as they exited the parking lot and entered their first traffic jam. Getting out of the city would take a while. "Worst types of people at train stations, no idea why, it's not like it's very residential."
"Dad always said poor people take the train, which means there's always rats there," Tonks joked. "But don't worry about little old me, a spell or two would have fixed that. My trace is already gone."
"And what if you didn't have your wand? Or if it was a muggle in that situation. It's fucking horrible. Those people piss me off," Harry said as he watched buildings slowly move past him as their little red Fiat Panda traversed the urban landscape.
Silence descended on the vehicle for a minute as they waited at a red light before Tonks broke it. "Yeah, well. One of the joys of womanhood," she said bitterly.
"I'm sorry for ruining the mood."
The girl sighed. "Don't worry about it. Life always finds ways to drag you down if you let it."
"I see that turning 17 has made you very introspective," Harry joked.
"I'm finally an adult in one world," she joked, gripping the steering wheel and not taking her eyes off the road. It was odd seeing a witch drive a car. She wasn't dressed in anything special, just jeans and a t-shirt, and she'd actually come with her natural black hair today. But, there was something so casually mature in picking up a friend from the train station with a car. Harry sighed.
"Well, it suits you, being an adult," he said.
"Thanks. It suits you as well. You've grown a bit," she noted.
Harry had, in fact, grown a bit. In several directions. He'd gained a few inches, but also some muscles since he'd started working out with the sword. His birthday would be coming soon, in Vienna. "I'm hardly an adult," he said bitterly.
"Well, you know more about wine than I do, so that adds at least a decade."
"Oh, you're younger than me then? I'm not sure I'm comfortable spending the weekend at your place then, someone might accuse me of being a cradle robber."
"Your sense of humour is as exquisite as always," Tonks remarked as she took an exit from the highway they'd taken to get around Manchester. "We're almost there."
"Got the grades yet?" Harry asked.
"Yes, actually. I got an O in DADA, Transfiguration, potions, Herbology and care of magical creatures. EE in runes and an EE in Charms. Got unlucky with the last one, some stuff I didn't expect."
Harry whistled. "You got an O in four out of five cores, I think that's pretty impressive," he said. "As long as you just got unlucky in Charms, maybe you can go for all five next year."
"Maybe someone will help me with the Patronus charm."
"It's not that hard," Harry mused. He'd already promised to help her anyway. "It's just light magic, it's different. Takes some getting used to."
Tonks remained silent as she turned into the drive-away of quite an average-looking two-story red-brick house with a green lawn and some flowers. "Yeah, sure, it's so easy picking up types of magic you've never cast before," she said sarcastically as she pulled the handbrake and turned off the car.
"Most things are quite easy if you're willing to invest 40 hours into it," Harry replied as he opened the door of the red Fiat Panda and got out, taking a look around the neighbourhood. It was frankly, just a random Manchester suburb a dozen or so minutes out of the city centre.
"Have you ever considered investing 40 hours into knowing how to act normal?" Tonks joked, before noticing something. "Where's your luggage anyway? If you think you're wearing my clothes you can keep dreaming."
They went up to the front there, where Harry bid Tonks to stop what she was doing as he focused inwardly, then outwardly, trying to nail down what he was feeling. He wasn't an expert or anything, especially wards. It was hard to be considering that the Hogwarts ones were so big it was hard to tell when one was in them. But, there was a layer of something on the house. A sort of stickiness. Like a film of magic clinging to the property. Harry growled when after a minute of trying he couldn't distinguish anything important or relevant or even slightly useful. He could feel that there was something there. But he couldn't tell exactly what.
"What's up?" Tonks asked when she noticed his frustrated countenance.
"Nothing, just not good enough yet to try something I wanted to try," he muttered as they entered the house. "So this is where you grew up, huh?"
Unlike the outside of the house, the inside was a tad more magical, but not by much. Everyone followed the standard system of corridor into the living room and kitchen which was the norm for several-story houses in the UK. The Tonks family had a fridge, a television and a dining table. It was just that all these everyday objects and flowery patterns were interspersed with the occasional magical item, like a potions book, a moving poster, a magical radio, the floo powder next to the fireplace or a cauldron.
It looked like something Harry would have probably grown up with, had his mother survived long enough to raise him. A mix of muggle and magic. Decisively average in both.
"It's a house, I guess," Tonks muttered from behind him. "Inherited it from my dad's side of the family so there was never a reason to move elsewhere. When you're magical it doesn't matter much where you live anyway. Apparition can get you anywhere."
"The wizards," Harry said quietly. "They truly live, amungus."
"What?"
"Nothing, anyway, where's my crib?" Harry asked quickly.
"Guest bedroom is right next to mine," Tonks said as the two of them took off their shoes and started going upstairs. Harry went behind and enjoyed the view as Tonks led him to the second floor, where it was quite obvious which room was hers. The band posters and the stop sign were pretty good indicators. Tonks was just about to open the adjacent door when Harry's spidey sense got tripped, before she could put her hand on the knob his arm shot forward and grabbed hers, pulling her back.
"Stop!" he hissed loudly as he looked suspiciously at the door.
"You got some strength for a brat," Tonks complained as she uncurled her arms from his and rubbed it with a wince. "Well, you did kill a werewolf with a sword so I guess that kinda makes sense, fuck," she muttered and shook her head. "What's up?" she asked suspiciously, but not at him. Considering their shared near-death experiences, they were a team. Dysfunctional, but together, against the world, for better or worse.
"Let me double-check," Harry said and stepped forward, extending a hand and focusing his senses on the simple brown door in front of him. After a few seconds of what must have looked like him mysteriously waving his hand up and down in front of the door, he stepped back and nodded once. "Doors warded with something. So, unless you spelt the door-knob to prank yourself, there's something up with this room," he concluded.
Tonks pulled a face and pulled her wand out of the back pocket of her jeans. It was a thin light brown thing under the mercy of which Harry had been quite a few times now. She pointed it at the door and began humming. A light vibration started originating from her hand, making her handshake a bit, she bit back a curse and put it away. "Ughh, really, mom?" she asked exasperatedly.
"How did you figure it out by waving your hand around?" she demanded.
Harry gave her a queer look. "How'd you do it by waving your wand around?" he returned.
"Harry," Tonks said softly as her hair turned purple, stepped up to him and put her hands on his shoulders. "You're a good friend. I love you. But please, stop being a little shit," she asked politely.
"Ok, ok," the boy sighed. He'd been so secretive for so long that it had become a part of his nature. "Once you're in tune enough with your magic you can turn that sense outwards to get a feel for magic that isn't your own. It's an integral part of curse-breaking and quite frankly, helps with most disciplines."
"Harry," the girl said with a smile and closed eyes. Then she violently shook him for a second. "What the fuck are you talking about?!" she shouted. Then she shook him again. "AAAHHHHHHHH!" she screamed, before sinking to the floor. She was a bit taller than him so her hands didn't actually detach from his shoulders to do so.
"I mean, the Hogwarts curriculum isn't really the end all be all of magic, overall they definitely teach maybe 1% of what you can learn all in all?" he said softly while awkwardly scratching the back of his head.
"Is it a genius thing? Do I not know about it because it's a genius thing?"
Harry nodded. "It's either an adult or a genius thing," he said confidently.
"Alright…" the girl said softly. She had somehow teleported while Harry had spoken and was now hugging her knees and drawing circles on the floor while hanging her head.
"What's that spell you did, looked cool?" Harry asked, trying to cheer her up.
"It's just a diagnostic spell I learned recently. I got a summer practice as a healer in St. Mungos. Was supposed to be a surprise," she mumbled.
"Healing, huh? Well, the Aurors will love that, that's for sure," he muttered. "How about an exchange, I will teach you some stuff and you teach me some stuff."
She looked at him over her shoulder. "You'll need a wand without a trace…"
"I have one," Harry nodded. Tonks just stared at him.
"Go fuck yourself, seriously."
-/-
AN: Let's do some friend stuff to distress. Makes me feel all warm and cuddly inside writing it since I recently moved and am still building a social circle. You can read up to 25 chapters ahead on Patr%& eon (24 chapters and one interlude chapter) That's like 25% of a 100. Crazy.
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