Chapter 16: Trade and Consequences
The "Archive" project was advancing at a devouring pace. The Room of Requirements had become his true home.
The weeks after Christmas became a feverish blur of work, a routine that pushed the limits of human endurance.
In the morning, classes. "Extraordinary" grades delivered with a distracted brilliance that baffled their professors.
In the afternoon, brief interactions with Harry or Hermione, a social ghost who kept up appearances.
And at night, the real work. Hours and hours in the Room, copying. Archive. Ten seconds. Following. Archive. Ten seconds.
The rest of his waking hours, his mind buzzed with analysis in the background, processing the hundreds of books he had already copied.
It was a monumental effort. And I was starting to pay the price.
One night in mid-February I was in the Room, with my hand on a thick tome of Arithmancy. He felt the familiar pull of "Archivo", but this time, it was accompanied by something else.
A sharp pain, like a red-hot nail, dug behind his right eye.
He turned away from the book with a muffled grunt, his vision blurring for an instant. He squeezed the bridge of his nose, breathing deeply.
It was not the first time. Migraines had become his constant companions.
A few hot drops fell on his hand. He looked up and saw that his nose was bleeding. A slow, crimson drip over the ancient scroll.
"Damn it," he whispered, wiping the blood off with the back of his sleeve. His hand trembled slightly.
He looked at himself in a mirror that he had conjured. He was pale, with dark circles under his eyes. He looked like a ghost.
The problem was obvious. His mind, his obsession, was writing checks that his fifteen-year-old body couldn't afford.
His "Archive" was brilliant, but the biological "hardware" was overheating.
It wasn't a problem of magic power. He had power to spare. It was a problem of biological resistance. Concentration.
He collapsed in an armchair, frustrated. He couldn't afford to be slow. But if he kept going at this pace, he would suffer a mental breakdown before finishing the Herbology section.
I needed a solution. He couldn't refine his Archive magic anymore for now, so he had to refine his brain.
He closed his eyes, not to copy, but to search his own mental library, now vast and chaotic. He dove into the "Potions" section.
He ignored the freshman and sophomore recipes. He searched the RHASY level texts, the ones he had copied from the Restricted Section.
And there, in a dusty tome called Alchemy of the Mind, he found them.
"Sustained Focus Brew." A potion that could keep a magician's mind in a state of maximum concentration for seventy-two hours.
And another. "Potion of Clear Mind." An infusion designed to speed up neural processing and prevent mental fatigue.
They were perfect. They were the crutches he needed to continue running.
He analyzed the recipes. Her excitement faded, replaced by a familiar frustration. Most of the ingredients were ordinary, I could get them from Snape's cupboard.
But the two key ingredients, the ones that made the potions work at that level, were another story.
Bicorne Horn Powder. Weird and absurdly expensive.
And Mercury Tree Frog Brain. An ingredient so unstable that it was almost impossible to get hold of legally.
He leaned back in his chair, the solution to his problem so close and yet a universe away.
He could copy all the knowledge in the world, but he couldn't conjure rare ingredients out of thin air.
And I didn't have any money.
He realized that his project had just hit the oldest and most mundane obstacle in history.
He needed capital.
…..
Frustration was a bitter taste in his mouth. His great project, his Archive, was stopped by the most mundane and pathetic obstacle of all: the lack of money.
He stared at the empty stone wall of the Hall of Requirements, his mind racing a thousand miles an hour. He couldn't steal from Gringotts, not yet. And he didn't want to get into debt to anyone.
Then, an idea hit him. An idea born of logic and his knowledge of the castle.
The Chamber gave him what he needed. But he could also provide things that already existed within the castle.
And what had the students at Hogwarts been doing for a thousand years, besides magic? Losing things.
He stopped in front of the blank wall stretch. He closed his eyes and focused, not on a vague need, but on a very specific request.
"I need a place to find the lost money at Hogwarts."
He thought about it three times, his will poured into the ancient magic of the Hall.
A dark wooden door materialized in the stone. Timothy opened it.
It wasn't the workshop I'd been using. Era... a warehouse. A vast warehouse, the size of a cathedral, filled to the ceiling with the detritus of a millennium of magical adolescence.
It was the Room of Hidden Objects, but filtered by his request.
Mountains of broken desks piled up next to faded uniforms and splintered brooms. There were piles of parchments with failed trials.
At first, he saw nothing but garbage. But then, something glittered beneath a pile of threadbare Hufflepuff robes.
Crouched. It was a small leather bag, rotten by time. He opened it, and the sound of coins falling was music. Galleons. Perhaps twenty of them, forgotten by a nineteenth-century student.
His eyes adapted. And then, he saw it. Money was everywhere.
A pair of Sickles here, dropped out of a pocket in 1940. A lone Knut there, rolling under a desk from 1780.
It was the lost treasure of a thousand neglected pockets.
He spent the next few hours in a very methodical kind of treasure hunt.
He didn't go crazy. He was pragmatic. He searched the pockets of the old robes. He rummaged through forgotten bags of books.
He did it by hand, patiently and thoroughly.
After several hours, his messenger bag was satisfactorily heavy. He stopped and counted his loot.
It was not a Malfoy-level fortune. It did not make him a millionaire. But there were several hundred gold galleons and an almost countless pile of Sickles and Knuts.
For a fifteen-year-old orphan, it was unimaginable wealth. For his project, it was the perfect start-up capital.
Timothy smiled, the weight of the gold on his back comforting. He had found the funding for his magical revolution.
Now, it was time to go shopping.
…..
With the capital secured, the next step was to find a supplier. And according to Robert Hilliard's lead, there were only two viable options at the school. Timothy decided to start with the most chaotic.
He managed to pass a note to Fred Weasley during Transfiguration class, using a simple spell to make the scroll fly from his desk to his.
The note was simple: "I need a supplier. Commercial matters. Seventh-floor hallway, behind the one-eyed witch. Tonight at ten. Bring your partner."
At ten o'clock, Timothy was in the dark hallway, lit only by his wand.
A moment later, two figures appeared out of nowhere, removing an invisibility cloak with a flourish. They were Fred and George Weasley.
"Wow, wow, Hunter," Fred said, his eyes shining with mischief.
"A Ravenclaw in a dark hallway after curfew," George added. "You must be terribly lost."
Timothy didn't smile. "I heard you can get things," he said bluntly.
The twins exchanged a look, their smiles becoming a little more calculating. "It depends on the 'stuff' you're looking for, my friend."
"Bicorne Horn Powder. And Mercury Tree Frog Brain," Timothy said. "And I need them regularly. A constant supply."
The silence that followed was total. The twins stopped smiling. They looked at each other, genuinely impressed.
"That's ... top-notch, Hunter," George said quietly, whistling.
"Materials for Apothecary-level ECSTASY. And very expensive," added Fred, his merchant's mind now fully operational. "What do you offer in return?"
They expected a barter. A joke potion. Perhaps the answer to an impossible exam.
Instead of a scroll, Timothy took the messenger bag off his shoulder and dropped it on the stone floor.
The sound it produced was not a thud. It was the unmistakable, heavy, and wonderful sound of hundreds of gold coins colliding with each other.
The Weasley twins' eyes widened. They looked at the bag and then at Timothy, their respect for him increasing exponentially.
"I offer this," Timothy said. "Constant and resounding gold. I will pay you the market price, plus a twenty percent premium for your discretion. And for the delivery service."
Fred and George looked at each other. It was the first time a client had offered them real, substantial capital, rather than a simple barter. It was a businessman's dream.
"We like your style, Hunter!" exclaimed George, his smile returning in full force.
"We really like it!" confirmed Fred, patting Timothy on the back.
"Getting those ingredients will be a pleasure," George said. "We know a guy..."
"... who knows a guy...", Fred added.
"... who owes a favor to a centaur."
Timothy nodded, his face serious. "I just need it to be discreet. And reliable."
"Hunter," Fred said, holding out his hand. "You just became our favorite customer."
Timothy shook his hand, sealing the deal. "A pleasure to do business with you."
As the twins covered themselves again with their cape and disappeared chuckling, planning their new venture, Timothy picked up his bag, now a little lighter.
It had established its first supply network. The Hogwarts black market now worked for him.
…..
The deal with the Weasley twins was a success, but Timothy was too pragmatic to put his entire project in the hands of two chaotic pranksters.
The Weasleys were the black market: fast, well-connected, but volatile. I needed a second option. A more stable, more professional font. The gray market.
Following Hilliard's logic, this led him directly to Slytherin.
However, he did not make the mistake of approaching the main heirs such as Malfoy, who was too loud and arrogant.
Instead, he spent a week observing. He identified his target: a group of sixth- and seventh-grade Slytherins.
They were not the sons of the most infamous Death Eaters, but of old, wealthy families in decline, or of pragmatic merchants. They were the kind of magicians who understood the value of money and connections over purity of blood.
He arranged the meeting with the same discretion as with the Weasleys. An empty classroom in the dungeons, late at night.
When Timothy walked in, three older Slytherins were waiting for him. The atmosphere was cold, unlike the friendly chaos of the twins. This was purely transactional.
"Hunter," said the oldest, a seventh-year Slytherin named Cassius Warrington. "Are you wasting our time?"
Timothy didn't mince words. "I've heard that their families have connections in the apothecary world and trade."
"Maybe," Warrington said, his tone cautious.
"I need a steady supply of rare ingredients. Bicorne powder. Mercury Frog Brain. And others from a list that I'll prepare," Timothy said.
The other Slytherin laughed. "And why the hell would we help you, Ravenclaw? Are you going to do our homework?"
Timothy took out the heavy leather bag he had retrieved from the Hall of Requirement. He dropped it on the stone desk.
The sound of gold and silver echoed in the silent room, deep and heavy.
The Slytherins' sneers disappeared, replaced by calculating attention.
"I pay in hard and fast Galleons," Timothy said calmly. "I pay the full market price, plus a thirty percent premium for your discretion and for the risk of dealing with a minor student."
The Slytherins looked at each other. This was not child's play. It was a serious business proposal.
Warrington, whose family had lost much of their fortune, saw a golden opportunity. He saw the initial capital for his own plans after Hogwarts.
"An orphan's gold spends just like a Malfoy's," Warrington said, a slow, predatory smile appearing on his face. "And it's much quieter."
He held out his hand. "Send me your list, Hunter. You'll have your ingredients. It's been a pleasure doing business with you."
Timothy shook his hand, the deal was closed.
He left the dungeons that night feeling a deep satisfaction. His project was no longer in danger.
He had used his ingenuity to create capital, and then he had used that capital to set up two opposing supply networks.
The chaotic black market of Gryffindor and the aristocratic grey market of Slytherin.
Unbeknownst to anyone, he had positioned himself at the center of Hogwarts' underground economy. It wasn't a lion, or a snake, or a badger, or an eagle.
It had become a fifth entity. The Neutral Trader.
- - - - - - - -
Hello everyone!
Sorry if I've been a bit quiet lately. I started a new job that is taking up a lot of my time, so I haven't had as much time to write and edit as I would like.
However, I managed to make good progress this weekend.
Here on Webnovel, the schedule will remain the same: 1 chapter from Monday to Friday.
For those supporting me on Patreon, I will be publishing 2 daily chapters during this week to make up for the delay.
Thanks for reading and for your patience.
Mike.
@Patreon/iLikeeMikee