After parting from Harry, Felix and Winnie stood at the junction waiting for a taxi.
"Is that wand working well?"
"Quite all right," Winnie nodded, "although there are all sorts of restrictions - when I went to register, the man at the Improper Use of Magic Office told me a whole lot, and made me fill in my home address, and warned me not to break any laws, and and that the trace on the wand would last for a while ..."
"But all in all," she breathed softly, and leaped up on her toes, "it feels good."
" It wasn't that those people were targeting you," Felix said casually and reassuringly, "Well, you did objectively increase their workload though, so complaints are inevitable ..." he said in a joking manner. "But to be fair, you are still new to the wizarding world, almost as new as the young wizards who are starting out, so you will receive the necessary attention and guidance. When you are familiar with it, all these restrictions will disappear."
He waved and a taxi came towards them from a distance with its turn signals on.
"Oh yeah, I seem to have seen that last time, is that some kind of band logo?" Felix glanced over at Winnie, who had a badge in the shape of a black and white piano key pinned to her chest area.
"You mean this?" Winnie gave the badge a quick squeeze with perkiness and showed it to him.
She said in a bragging tone, "It's a souvenir of François Crutoy's recital, have you heard of his name? He's famous among Muggles! Known as the next best pianist after Chopin, his music is delicate and graceful, mournful but not sad, highly imaginative, and his most legendary experience was the bizarre overnight healing of an originally incurable injury in his hand ..."
Felix was stunned in place.
"... Although this incident was much talked about, François never responded positively, and many speculated that the injury on his hand might be related to mental stress, and when he figured things out, he naturally got better. And after his low point, he was inspired to write tracks such as 'Angel of Sorrow' and 'Goddess of Magic' in quick succession. He will be performing a concert in the near future, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, for which my friend and I have bought tickets."
"Sounds good." Felix said thoughtfully, "Maybe I can spare some time to attend ..."
His mind wandered back to the somewhat desolated chilly alley where, as the only audience present, Felix had enjoyed a chic piano performance, though he hadn't realized that the nerdy young man had such a reputation ... Felix hoped that the stunning purity of his piano tone wouldn't change when they met again.
After seeing Winnie off in a taxi, Felix took some time to spend at the Sword Castle.
As the Weasley twins graduated from school, they took back their dividends for the past few years and partial ownership of the Communicating Mirror and Anti-Spell product series, and were immediately eager to begin the implementation of their own business venture; from Penelope's mouth, Felix learned that the two had opened three branches. But limited by manpower, they hadn't completely separated cleanly from 'Future World', and the two companies still retained a partnership in more than one project.
"What do you mean by partnership?"
"Apart from functional upgrades for those two current lines of products, there's also - well - OEM (original equipment manufacturer), the two of them alone can't produce two thousand units of the Dark Lord Scare Box set in a week." Penelope said, half grumbling, half proud, "We're the only ones in the entire wizarding world who can do it!"
"Oh, oh," Felix made an admiring sound, "after hearing what you said, I find myself seemingly overlooking some details. Can you give a hint, Miss Clearwater, whether it's time for me to give Dobby a pay rise?"
Penelope showed an odd expression.
"I can't find any excuse for holding it off, sir. He has done a splendid job - in fact, there are more house elves in the company than their kind in the Hogwarts kitchens, and Mr. Lupin had a major headache at one point about how to handle them, as you know, they are frighteningly motivated to work."
Felix imagined the scene of Remus scratching his head and grinned impishly, "And how did you manage to work it out? Oh, the OEM-"
"That's only part of it. We had a couple of meetings devoted to how to position them, and Mr. Lupin came up with the assembly line concept you had mentioned to him, so our entire staff spent two days breaking down the production steps of our existing products and handed over the simple spell-casting enchantments to the house elves to complete."
Felix was quite pleased with this and sat back in his chair and spun around.
"What about their treatment?"
"Strictly in accordance with the Guidelines on house-elf welfare as prescribed by the Ministry of Magic."
"Er - is that some type of law, I don't think I've heard of it at all?"
Penelope sighed, "The Ministry of Magic has had a set of rules regarding the treatment of House Elves very early on, they've been in existence for many years, it's just that they've never been strictly enforced ..."
So it was just a decoration.
Felix understood the situation clearly. Many wizarding families, such as the Malfoys and the Black family prior to Sirius, were known to mistreat their house elves. Due to the absolutely obedient nature of house elves, the Ministry of Magic couldn't possibly investigate anything, and - it was doubtful whether they ever investigated.
"By the way, there's one more thing!" Penelope suddenly said, "The house elves have been hoping to pledge their allegiance to you-"
"What do you mean?" Felix stood up.
"The kind of allegiance that a servant pledges to his master." Penelope shot him a sneaky look, "There are many house elves who have been kicked out by their masters, or have nowhere to go due to the death of their previous master who has no other successor. In short, they have previously lived a very rough life. Dobby found them and preached to them about your generosity and kindness ... Those house elves are all looking forward to this day."
"Well."
Felix bowed his head and mused.
After a long while, he looked up, "Sign a contract with them - but not in my name, in the name of 'Future World' Company. Also, I need you to do one thing from now on -" Penelope listened with a serious expression and took out a small notebook to make notes. "- Recruit all sorts of humanoid creatures as employees, werewolves, vampires, centaurs, merpeople, veela, giants and goblins, you know what I mean, the ones with intelligence and the ability to communicate with people ... No need to do it all at once, one step at a time. First, we should try to recruit some mixed bloods for a start."
"You're doing this for ...?" Penelope asked, holding her breath.
"Don't you think it would be fun to get them all together?"
Felix grinned, but Penelope didn't appreciate the humour at all as she sighed and muttered: Oh, poor Percy ... They won't be talking about work all the time when they get together, will they?
"Well, I do have a good reason - as the company grows in size, we need to explore new channels for selling our products, and these mixed bloods, especially the ones who are mixed with wizards, can be our guides."
His real purpose is much more than that, such as laying the groundwork for a Pan-Magic Alliance in advance ... From the present-day perspective doing so would have little impact and even be somewhat unproductive, but if the magical world is ever forced to go public, Felix wants the entire magical world to have one and only one voice.
He didn't elaborate; the reasons above were enough to convince Penelope, and she nodded.
"This is going to be tricky to manage, quite a few of them have a grudge against each other, and worse, most of them don't have much of a fondness for wizards either, so there's no point in rushing it now, treat it as a long term task ... I'll talk to Ms. Bones about it, and ideally we can borrow a few a people from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to come over and teach us the do's and don'ts."
Felix said as he tried to rationalize his thoughts. With the fall of Voldemort, it would be time for the Ministry of Magic to find the opportunity to take over the responsibilities that rightfully belonged to them.
What is the responsibility of the Ministry of Magic?
To make laws and govern the entire local wizarding community, with the highest priority on keeping the wizarding world hidden from the muggle world. But if exposure is unavoidable, it is their responsibility to work on the advance plans and study the risks involved to make adequate preparations.
As the capture of the dark wizard came to an end, the next move of the Ministry of Magic would be trial, ordination, and then after that? If there is no Felix, peace will naturally be restored and everyone will shut up and live their little lives.
From this perspective, the entire wizarding community seems rather lazy, with very little sense of crisis.
There is no need to be surprised.
Shackled by numerical restrictions and the great convenience of magic, wizards are unable to set up a large and elaborate political, economic, cultural, and legal system as they do in the muggle world - it would require a huge amount of manpower to keep the system running.
The pace of life in the wizarding world has always been slow, so slow that many rules and customs are not easily changed even after centuries of being passed down. In essence, the wizarding world is a world where progress is made only because of some individuals - the visionary and exceptional wizards who stepped up to drive society forward.
If one looks at this from a higher level.
Every decade or so, a few outstanding wizards are born who are so bright and prominent in their field of study that they can easily drive some aspect of wizarding society forward on their own, not just in terms of the rules, but also in terms of potions, spells, new theories ...
The Chocolate Frog character cards are a perfect illustration of this phenomenon.
"Come on, let's go check out my army of house elves." Felix said with a laugh.
They arrived on the third floor, where nearly one-third of the place was occupied by house elves, and upon opening a slightly smaller door, the sight of heated labour inside hit them. Over a hundred house elves sat around a huge, low worktable that looked like a raised platform, or a rectangular arena.
They are sitting in little chairs, with various semifinished materials neatly laid out in front of them.
The house elves moved uniformly, reaching out with slender fingers to point at a piece of cropped wrapping paper, which folded up dazzlingly and became an elaborate gift box in seconds, and Felix swore he could never be mistaken, he saw a cartoon version of a bald, noseless wizard ...
"Mr. Hap!"
With an exaggerated squeal, a house elf jumped down from his spot, darting behind on two short legs, and appeared in front of Felix.
"Hello, Dobby." Felix said.
"Hello to you too, Mr. Hap." Dobby said excitedly, looking at Felix with his big, round eyes. Then all the elves stopped what they were doing and gathered around timidly, looking at Felix with the same watchful eyes as Dobby.
"Greetings, gents - er - elves."
"Sir, this is Buck." Dobby said cheerfully, pointing to the closest house elf. "Hello, Buck." Felix nodded. "This is Kiki, Baker, Holly, Button, Chichi," he introduced them one by one, before snapping to attention, "Oh, yes!" Dobby pulled a house elf from the crowd as if by magic, "And Winky."
Winky who is wearing a clean little dress, cowered behind the crowd.
"Winky?" Dobby looked at her beamingly.
"Mr. Ha, Hap-" Winky said formally.
"How is your stay here?" Felix asked.
"Very, very well ..." she whispered.
"Not good, Winky's not good!" Dobby exclaimed, "Winky still thinks about Winky's original master, Mr. Crouch, and Dobby told Winky that we have a new - well, employer, but Winky's not happy about it and refuses to accept any money for work!"
"Buck doesn't want an employer either, Buck wants a master!" The house elf who had been introduced at the beginning said eagerly, staring straight at Felix.
"So does Kiki. Kiki doesn't want to be an elf that no one wants!" A house elf with a slightly shrill voice called out. Her words drew a chaotic chorus of agreement, a group of tiny heads with bat ears nodding up and down.
"That's exactly what I'm here for." Felix said gently, "To be honest, I was shocked when I found out there were so many house elves in the company, and I personally don't need house elves for my services, so I came up with a great idea - you've heard of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, right? "
The house elves nodded apprehensively.
"In the Hogwarts kitchens, there are about the same number of house elves as you, and they don't belong to anyone but the ancient castle in name, but of course, if any house elf wishes to leave, I don't think Dumbledore would ever stop- "
"They won't leave, they're happy as one can be!" A house elf shouted, his tone vaguely envious and resigned.
"Chichi?" Felix asked, with a blink.
"Yes, Chichi, Mr. Hap." Chichi replied excitedly, seemingly honoured that Felix had remembered his name.
"... Now that you know, things have become much simpler, I'm going to use a similar model and create an ancient magic contract, I won't set a time limit, you can stay as long as you like, with specific terms focused on a non-disclosure agreement, if you want to leave, you can't give out information about the Products ... There are also some rules regarding your treatments, which Dobby and Miss Clearwater will talk you through."
"We don't need to be treated or paid for our work!" Another house elf shouted.
"Oh," Felix gave a difficult look, "but the Ministry of Magic has made rules, and this is what you deserve, and I don't want to be bothered by someone from the Ministry coming to my door ... and," his expression turned serious, " when you stay in the company, you will be exposed to more specialized and challenging tasks unlike serving a particular wizard family-" the house elves puffed out their little chests one by one. "-and it is necessary to have standardized rules for ease of management."
The house elves nodded cluelessly.
"As for Winky -" Felix thought for a moment, before crouching down to address her.
"Since you have nowhere else to go for the moment, you might as well stay here and save up some money - Listen to me first, don't you wish to buy a present for Mr. Crouch? Winky, there are no more Dementors in Azkaban, which means that Mr. Crouch will be out soon, three years would go by in a flash. If you want to go back to him, I won't stand in your way, but I think he'll be happy to see a gift from you."
When Felix finished, he extended his hand forward and displayed a gold galleon.
Winky kept blinking her huge brown eyes and her nose, which resembled a small tomato in shape and size, twitched, it was obvious that she was caught in a very torn state and her little brain seemed to be struggling to make sense of the whole complex situation.
It was only when Dobby urged her on for the twelfth time that Winky reached out with trembling hands and held up the gold galleon, as tears burst out of her eyes.
"Thank you, thank you, Mr. Hap."
She lifted her little dress and bowed deeply at Felix.
...
In the evening, after returning to school, Felix and Valen were both a little hungry. They made their way down the twisting spiral staircase and headed to the kitchen to find something to eat.
It is unclear who started it, but in any case, they began to play a game of stepping in each other's shadows. Valen nimbly moved her feet around Felix, running back and forth, yelling excitedly as she ran - she was counting the points.
Felix immediately felt he is at a disadvantage, with his shadow being much bigger.
"Kee!"
Valen suddenly shivered and ran over his shoulder in a flash, twittering at him, that man had such a scary look in his eyes!
Felix turned his head to see Professor McGonagall and Mr. Bagshot, whom he had seen during the day, approaching side by side. Professor McGonagall was talking rapidly about something, not noticing his and Valen's presence. In contrast, Mr. Bagshot fixed his gaze on Valen, his eyes narrowed and his face turned grim.
"Since Dumbledore has agreed ... I can't say anything, but, Mr. Bagshot, please do be mentally prepared for this, managing little wizards is a very hard job. I will explain to you everything I know, including the teaching materials, the teaching tasks, the rules of the school ... Oh, Felix?"
Professor McGonagall looked up in surprise at Felix and Valen who stood on his shoulder.
"Minerva," Felix nodded slightly, but his eyes remained fixed on Mr. Bagshot with an obvious measuring look, "this is-"
"Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts for the new academic year." Professor McGonagall said.
"Ah, of course ..."
Felix looked at Mr. Bagshot, and just as Professor McGonagall thought he would introduce himself - he had always been so polite - Felix's eyes suddenly glowed, and he looked straight at the school's new professor.
Mr. Bagshot displayed an agility that is completely at odds with his age, his exclusive wand instantly appearing in his hand as a fierce swirl of magic erupted, blocking Felix's view, but Felix's quick glance had given him the result he wanted.
Miscalculation ...
He normally wouldn't stare at a stranger with his magical perspective and peer at them, since it was too provocative, but it seemed someone had caught the loophole and disguised himself as a Squib. Not exactly, Felix remembered Dumbledore's words, he is no different from a Squib now.
But what magic had he used to remain free without being imprisoned even after meeting Dumbledore, and it looked like he had secured himself a teaching position?
Felix in no way believed that Dumbledore had perceived it incorrectly.
Just as he had offered shelter to the scattered Purebloods, Dumbledore had done the same thing.
"Felix ... Mr. Bagshot ... you guys ..."
Caught in the middle, Professor McGonagall could barely manage to breathe as she stared, with difficulty, at the two serious faces, wondering why they had suddenly started to clash, and amazed that a Squib is capable of erupting with such a burst of magic.
She wasn't sure whether to feel relieved that Dumbledore hadn't misjudged the new professor or that he wouldn't be bullied by his students.
"Mr. Bagshot?" Felix spoke in an almost whispering voice, the pressure that enveloped the area converging a little, "I've been a little puzzled since we parted ways during the day, the author of the History of Magic book, Bathilda Bagshot, is your-"
"... aunt." Grindelwald said in an equally light tone.
"She lives in the Godric's Hollow, it's such a nice, breezy place, Godric Gryffindor, who founded Hogwarts, was born there, as was Bowman Wright, who invented the Golden Snitch ... A little closer to our house, there is House Dumbledore and House Potter. "
Of course, Godric's Hollow has produced more famous people than that.
One name popped into both men's minds at the same time, Ignotus Peverell, owner of the third Deathly Hallow, the Cloak of Invisibility.
Felix and Grindelwald gazed at each other for a moment and smiled in unison. They extended their hands - one young and chiselled; the other old and wrinkled - and clasped their hands together with a firm grip.
"Welcome, Mr. Bagshot."
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