A few days later, Hagrid arrived.
"Why do you want to buy the Leaky Cauldron?" he asked. He thought Harry was just being reckless and hoped to talk him out of it.
Harry said, "Do you know why adults hit children when it rains?"
Hagrid was confused. What on earth did hitting kids have to do with the weather?
Harry sighed with frustration. "Because they've got nothing better to do!"
"I've just got all that gold sitting in Gringotts, and it's not doing me any good. It's just rusting away. I might as well use it to have some fun."
Harry honestly thought the goblins at Gringotts were downright stupid.
Gringotts wasn't really a bank—more like a giant vault.
They didn't invest wizards' money, so there were no interest earnings. If they had, they'd be the richest beings alive by now.
…
Harry wasn't focused on making profits. He just wanted his money to actually do something.
If you never spend money, is it really still money? What difference is there between that and being broke?
It's like wearing fine clothes at night—what's the point if no one sees them?
"Besides, it's my pub now," Harry added, "and the drinks are always free for you."
At that, Hagrid immediately decided this was the greatest idea in the world.
Whoa—free drinks, forever? That was his life's dream as a happy, lazy man.
…
Harry and Old Tom headed to Gringotts.
With such a large transaction, they obviously weren't dumb enough to have Harry lug around sacks of Galleons and hand them over in the street while Tom wandered around with them on his back.
They didn't want to get robbed!
Instead, Harry transferred the gold directly to Tom's Gringotts account. After all, Gringotts was the only wizarding bank.
Nearly every wizard had an account opened at birth, regardless of whether there was any money in it.
Tom's troubles were solved, and he beamed with joy.
Smiling broadly, he signed over the ownership of the Leaky Cauldron to Harry. Once Harry wrote his name, the contract took effect immediately.
Harry felt a jolt of excitement—he was now a man who owned real estate!
As a Chinese person, the ideas of "house" and "home" carried deep meaning.
He had lived at his cousin Dudley's house for eleven years, but never once felt like he belonged. It was as if he were floating in the clouds.
Sure, part of that was because the Dursleys despised him.
But more importantly, Harry had no attachment to that house at all.
Now, the old, shabby Leaky Cauldron was his—and it was his alone.
For the first time, he felt grounded.
To give a bad example—if Harry ever became a beggar, at least he'd have a corner in that building to shield him from the rain and wind.
He flicked the contract parchment with his fingers. What a great day. Time for a feast!
…
The Leaky Cauldron.
After introducing Harry to the construction company, Old Tom packed up and left, completely at ease.
Harry carefully toured the entire pub, checking every floor.
And what he saw gave him a headache.
His original plan was to renovate—no tearing down walls, no changing floors, no touching the roof.
But after seeing the layout, he realized that with just renovations, there was no way he could turn this place into the kind of pub he imagined.
The Leaky Cauldron was tiny, dirty, chaotic, and ugly.
No wonder Tom sold it so cheaply—it was a total dump.
Sure, it had the legendary name, but that didn't change the fact: it was a beggar's den.
Harry now wondered why he hadn't noticed any of this last year when he stayed here.
Maybe he'd gotten the best room?
He stepped on the creaking, sticky, moldy wooden floors. They felt like they were covered in ancient gum that had been stepped on for decades.
The place reeked like rotting wood abandoned in a damp forest—and maybe turned into a rat's nest.
No wonder no one ever stayed in the upstairs rooms. No wonder only a few old wizards sat downstairs sipping drinks at dirty tables. No one ever ate here.
Only an idiot would come to such a wretched excuse for a pub and inn.
Probably nothing had changed since it was first built centuries ago.
Harry walked down the stairs, face dark.
A chubby wizard—head of the magical construction company, basically the foreman—watched Harry with concern.
Harry looked pissed. Was the whole deal about to fall through?
"I'm not going to renovate the Leaky Cauldron," Harry said.
The foreman sighed. Work was hard to come by, and he had over a dozen men to feed.
"But I am going to demolish it," Harry continued, "and build a brand-new Leaky Cauldron from scratch."
The man's eyes lit up.
Harry didn't pay him any attention and muttered to himself, "It's going to be at least ten times bigger than this dump."
The foreman beamed from ear to ear—this was a major job.
He'd make good money from this one.
"Can you handle space expansion magic?" Harry asked.
The foreman thumped his chest. "Our company consultant is a Level 3 Certified Spatial Architect—an old magic engineer. Piece of cake."
Of course. What Muggles couldn't even dream of, wizards handled with ease.
"Good. Then let's begin," Harry nodded.
The foreman asked cautiously, "What do we do first?"
Harry's eyes narrowed. "We burn it down, of course. Do I have to teach you that too?"
"Burn it? You mean the Leaky Cauldron?" The man swallowed hard.
Harry had no intention of slowly tearing the place down. He'd already sentenced it to death.
Might as well torch the whole thing.
He didn't want to see another inch of that pathetic place pretending to be something it wasn't.
The foreman said, "I—I have a Ministry-issued 'Fire License'!"
And so, the wizards took out their wands and began lighting flames here and there—one spot, then another, and soon the whole place was ablaze.
Harry scowled hard. One of the wizards had to chant a spell three times just to summon a tiny flame. Honestly, even a first-year Hogwarts student would've done better.
Hagrid explained, "Not all wizards go to magic school. Some have only average—or even poor—talent. Squibs, for example, wouldn't even get an acceptance letter. Others can't afford the tuition. So they learn magic in private little tutoring sessions or borrow books from shops to teach themselves."
Harry hadn't known that. It shattered his previous assumption that all wizards went to school to learn magic.
In that sense, schools like Hogwarts were like studying abroad.
Wizards who didn't attend a formal school for seven years were like dropouts who never finished elementary school.
Whereas graduates of elite schools went on to become Potioneers, historians, alchemists (scientists), Aurors (police), or Ministry officials (civil servants).
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