章節 45: Chapter 44

Harry Potter swept into Gringotts with the walk of a man who was there with a purpose. He was wearing some of his new clothes, an Yves Saint Laurent business suit consisting of a black, double breasted jacket, black flat front pants, a dark green bordering on black collared shirt, Blake Derby shoes in black leather and a black belt with his traditional wand holster attached to it. He looked decidingly muggle (aside from the wand holster), which brought many stares from a good number of witches and wizards who were at Gringotts that day, but since Harry was here for business, he felt a business suit would be best.

Walking up to one of the empty teller booths, Harry spoke immediately and without waiting for the goblin to ask him to state his purpose.

"I have a meeting with Director Ragnok at half past nine."

The goblin in front him, a shorter than average goblin with no hair and several sunspots, looked up at him with irritated eyes.

"Name?"

"Harry Potter."

"Very well. Wait right here."

With an annoyed grunt, the goblin hopped off the stool he had been sitting on and walked over to the door that would lead to the offices where goblin's specifically assigned to look after the vaults of certain families worked.

Harry paid no more attention to the goblin as he disappeared behind the door, nor did he pay attention to the curious stares he was getting. He instead practiced his breathing exercises and cleared his mind. A few minutes later, the goblin came back through the door and bade him to follow.

Director Ragnok was sitting in the same position Harry last saw him in, making the young boy wonder if the goblin had even moved from that spot.

Sitting down in the chair just as Director Ragnok looked up from his paperwork, Harry began to once again speak without prompting, getting straight to the point of this meeting.

"Have your people been able to insert themselves into HSBC Holdings?"

"They have," he said. Harry nodded. He didn't question how they managed to do such a thing when they were goblins, but he assumed there was some kind of magic involved.

"Last yearly earnings were fifteen percent of the accounts holdings."

"I know," Ragnok leaned back in his seat, placing his elbows on the desk and locking his fingers together in front of his face. "I saw the statements you sent. Not bad earnings for only a year. While it could have been better, it could have also been worse."

"Quite," Harry said with a nod. "And what of the information I gave you on the muggle stock market?"

"I've read through it," the goblin director allowed. "I'll admit, this stock market is a rather ingenious way of making more money. Those muggles came up with a good idea when they made it."

"Since you've seen my bank statements, you should know how I managed to make that money."

"By buying out stocks for two different companies that are in competition with each other when they are at their lowest prices, then selling them when they are at an all time high," Ragnok's feral smile set Harry at unease. He knew it did not mean anything, that was just the way goblins smiled when they were pleased, but it was still unsettling. "Yes, I saw that too. You've got impressive instincts."

"Thank you," Harry accepted the compliment with a nod. Compliments from goblins to wizards were rare, so receiving one just went to show Harry how impressed Ragnok was with his business acumen.

Not that he didn't have a reason to be. Harry had, after giving much thought, come up with a genius way to make money.

And if there was one things goblins loved, it was making more money.

Muggles were in a new age. If the late seventeen hundreds was the start of the Industrial age for muggles, then the past two decades or so could easily be considered the start of the Technological age. Each day people were coming up with new technologies, or improved versions of old technological ideas. In particular, computers had come a long way, changing from those large, unwieldy things that only militaries or the super wealthy could own, to smaller computers that can fit comfortably at a desk and were only around two hundred and fifty pounds.

And it was with these technological wonders that Harry found his means of making the most money.

Apple and Microsoft were two companies that were constantly competing with each other to make better and better products. Every year one or both companies would come out with a new computer that set or raised the standard. Every year each company would try to outdo the other, creating a constant competition between the two to see who could come up with a better product.

Competition in business was defined as "the effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business of a third party by offering the most favorable terms". Essentially, Apple and Microsoft were the two or more parties, while various consumers world wide were the third party whose favor they were trying to gain.