The next day at 9:30 a.m.,126a Diagon Alley.
At the door of a low-rise white building, Felix smiled and shook hands with a woman in a long purple dress and said goodbye.
"No need to send off, ma'am. It's been a pleasure to continue working with you ."
"Oh my!~ Mr. Hap, you are being too humble, your books are always quite enlightening."
Felix walked down the dark brown wooden steps and blended into the crowd, a wave of relief washed over him at that moment, 'First book negotiated, with barely any effort.'
'But it's the next one which will be the highlight.'
He made his way through Diagon Alley, took a turn in front of the Gringotts Wizarding Bank, and turned into another side street, counting the door numbers along the way.
"Diagon Alley south side 13a, 14b, 15a ... So, store 15b should be on the opposite side." Felix turned by and saw a seven-story building.
The building looked dirty and in such a state of decay that the letters on its sign were peeling off. He could barely make out the letter L, which cast a shadow over whatever he wanted to do next.
In the gap between the building and the house next to it, there are huge rows of rubbish cans stacked up, also with traces of the letters L.C.A. on them.
He made his way up the pitch-black stairs to the first floor and pushed open a scraped oak door, and a fine stream of creaking noise broke into his ears.
He seemed to have entered another world, where the walls were covered with dense, colourful comic sketches that concealed the walls themselves.
Most of the drawings featured a young boy with a beret and striped shirt, who live in different scenes: being chased by a group of Bowtruckle; holding a small wooden stick in his hand and constantly waving it; riding a one-horned rhinoceros, excitedly turning his head to greet his companions; standing on the roof of a farmhouse wearing a wizard's cloak ...
But Felix can also see that these paintings are quite old, part of the colour of the manuscript has faded, a few in the corner are also filled with purple mould patches.
All of this suggests that this publishing house used to be glorious, but now it is somewhat in decline.
"Is there anyone there? Mr. Andys?" Felix shouted.
After some time, a door pushed open beside him, the door is hidden in the layer of sketches, Felix did not notice it at first.
A thin, middle-aged male wizard stared at him, unshaven, and he asked in a heavily nasal voice: "Felix Hap?"
"It's me, and I suppose you're Mr. Andys? We made an appointment."
The male wizard unclasped the doorknob, "Come in, it's a bit of a mess in there." He backed away from the door with a self-conscious smile.
Felix frowned slightly, but he didn't say anything and followed the male wizard into the room, which reeked of unpleasant smell, various miscellaneous things were piled up haphazardly, and he saw a few plates of leftover food in the corner.
This makes his scalp numb, subconsciously he wanted to Apparite away from here.
The only thing that gave him some relief about the place, which might be barely considered as a painting room, as he saw fresh paints and canvases with excellent half-drawn sketches on them.
He decided to take a deeper look, but only if the room met his aesthetic.
"Purgato! Purgato! Scourgify!" (there's no incantation mentioned for Cleaning Charm, so I used Purgato)
Felix waved his wand repeatedly, clearing the room of all kinds of rubbish. A sudden gale of wind repeatedly raged through the modest room, the windows emitted a "gra gra" sound, and the table and chairs shook desperately, but the dust and dirt on them were quickly stripped and swept into the gale, finally forming a cloudy mass of air.
He pushed open the window and a silver Rain Swallow flew out from the tip of his wand, "Do me a favour, I remember seeing a dumpster on the way in." The rain swallow nodded at him and flew out the window, wings up, followed by a long gray trail behind it.
"You, you ..." The male wizard named Andys looked at Felix dumbfounded, his tongue-tied for a moment.
"Please sit down, Mr. Andys." Felix waved his wand and pushed the chair that had been swept away in front of him.
Andys sat down with a bewildered expression, he looked around, and only after a while did he respond, "This seems to be my place?" He first muttered in a small voice, and then he turned red and blurted out indignantly.
Felix sat across him with a calm expression and said, "Mr. Andys, let's make it short. Since you agreed to this visit, I will assume, for now, that you have a need and demand for outside submissions."
"And I, as your potential collaborator, have the right to make demands to you, at least until you explicitly refuse this."
"You ..."
Felix tapped the ring with his wand and out of it flew a stack of manuscripts, "This is my manuscript, The Strange Adventures of Young Wizard Mick, which is mentioned in my letter. You can read it first, and afterward you will decide whether we should continue the conversation or not. I don't want to waste the time of both of us."
The male wizard on the other side clutched the manuscript and looked at him with eyes full of confusion.
"What are you waiting for?"
The male wizard swallowed and laughed dryly, "Nothing, nothing."
He quickly looked down and read it, while mentally labelling Felix, a wizard with a strong personality.
The male wizard decided to pick out a few random flaws and quickly kick him out, and if he wasn't satisfied, he would simply run out into the street and ask for help on his own ...
Time passed bit by bit, and Andys became serious from the initial carelessness. Various comments came out of his mouth from time to time.
"It's not bad."
"A bit interesting."
"What is this, the mot ...or... wheel? What does it rely on to spin, and is it truly not magic?"
"Geez, two glasses of water can turn red when poured together? I guess it's some kind of transparent potion."
At some point, he dragged his chair next to Felix and discussed it with him.
"I like this section, I think it's very clever-"
Felix looked over to the scene where Mick, the young wizard, and his new muggle friend went to the store to buy clothes.
"What should I say?" Little Wizard Mick looked at the wide array of clothes in the store and asked timidly, "I'm totally confused, I look like a country bumpkin."
"Don't worry, I don't understand either, but momma told me a trick." His friend said.
The friend looked at Little Wizard Mick with confidence and said to the clerk, " My friend here has a budget of 15 pounds, and he needs a top, pants, and hopefully a bow tie. Can you do that, ma'am?"
The young clerk smiled and said, "Of course, little gentleman." She sized up little Wizard Mick's figure twice and turned around to get the right clothes.
The friend flashed a smile towards young Wizard Mick, "Well, that wasn't so hard, was it?"
...
After almost half an hour, Felix asked him, "What do you think?"
Andys' expression became refined as he quickly judged the value of the manuscript, and after seven or eight minutes, he hesitantly said, "Frankly speaking, I'm not sure."
He added, "Personally, it's a rather interesting children's comic book, but I'm not so confident in my own vision. As you can see, the publisher did have a brilliant run, but since I took over, it has failed a dozen times in quick succession. Finally, I had to put the 30th-anniversary issue of the old book on sale."
"Mr. Andys, I didn't know, what do each of the three letters of L.C.A. stand for?" Felix asked.
"It's the initials of the three founders' names, the A of which is referred to my grandfather who founded it, and L, C is two of his best friends." The male wizard said.
"Then your company's masterpiece, The Adventures of Martin Miggs ..."
"It was my grandfather's idea, and sort of his own personal experience, when he was a child, he once hosted a muggle boy who had strayed into the wizarding world, and they had fun for a week, and then got found out. The staff of the Ministry of Magic erased the boy's memory and sent him back to his home."
Felix nodded knowingly. He took several sheets of parchment from his ring, filled with various tables and data. The parchments fluttered and stuck to the wall.
"Mr. Andys, I can't prove that this manuscript will inevitably help your publishing house turn over, but we can analyse from the data, your company has published a total of seventeen sets of comic books since its establishment, of course, The Adventures of Martin Miggs is the most famous, and I got some data from my friend who is in charge of publishing journal in the Ministry of Magic, and it can be clearly found that relatively new and novel content is much more popular ..."
"At the same time, the manuscript, which targets children, which doesn't look too childish, is also very suitable for adults. If you want, we can cooperate."
Andys didn't really have much choice, unless he still wanted to continue eating the leftovers from thirty years ago.
So when Felix gave him a reason that made sense, he logically agreed to do so. Their initial plan is very conservative, first to publish a hundred books to test the waters, even if it fails, it would not hurt them.
At best, it would be a waste of time for the Andys, but time is the last thing he needs right now.
After finalizing the cooperation, Andys showed him his ancestral craft, he scribbled on one of Felix's manuscripts, and tapped with his wand, soon, the whole picture is filled with colour, the manuscript also became exquisite.
In the picture, a little boy standing in a huge Ferris wheel, and looking down from the window, by his side is a half-chewed, floating vanilla ice cream.
Half an hour later, Felix walked out of the L.C.A. building in a very merry mood.
He is prepared to return to his office through the public fireplace in Diagon Alley, saving him from the Apparition to the edge of the forbidden forest and a further walk. But just then -
"Professor Hap?"
Felix looked back and saw a familiar figure in the crowd, and he said with some surprise, "Potter?"