But what other option did I have other than that if I wanted to become fast friends with the head of the DMLE? I couldn't say that I remember the first hours of my life and heard my mother plead for me to be given to her and then have Albus Dumbledore, Lord of Light, simply ignore the plea and ship me off to an orphanage. That was something I would want to take to the grave.
For the entirety of lunch, I noticed Susan giving me a complicated look every time she looked up from her plate. I myself was wondering about my next plans outside the gossip queen plan.
I prepared muggle games that I wanted to charm and sell to wizards through the Weasley twins who would likely give me a better deal than an established shop like Zonko's Joke shop in Hogsmeade. I banked on the fact that this was right up the original Weasley twins' alley so that I wouldn't have to do any work at all. Simple games like Battleships, that could be turned into something with brooms with self-moving pins acting on voice command or Jenga with a tower that could reassemble itself. Of course, as an orphan, I couldn't just steal the super old versions of the games from the other kids at the orphanage - so I had Patrick steal a few boxes from a warehouse somewhere in London.
And while on the topic of the thieving house elf, I had also ordered him to get me a few recipe books. I fully intended to not eat greasy, tasteless British Cuisine with beans on toast as its highest accomplishment. The house elves, eager to please, should be delighted to cook something different. Especially if I ask them nicely with the gift in hand.
And then, for my fourth plan for the year that had nothing to do with Voldemort or Dumbledore, I needed to gather some herbs in the forbidden forest. Patrick told me that the Macnair home had a fully functioning agriculture infrastructure that even allowed for mundane animal husbandry, but it fell into disrepair with Walden's generation. Earning money through games and joke items was well and good, but it was the Weasley's business, and I would get knuts on the galleon at best, even if my initial deal was better. They'd rightfully cut me out eventually, and I needed other avenues to earn money.
And, on the topic of money, I took in a deep breath and stood up from the table after I was done eating and slowly walked over to the Gryffindor table. Many people looked at me, not too sure about my name or purpose, but they started gossiping nonetheless.
"Look, Gred, I think he's here for us," one of the twins said.
"You think we pranked a sibling of his too hard last year or something, Forge?" Asked the other.
"Maybe he's scared and wants to pay us protection money."
"Or he wants to take us as his masters in the art of pranking?"
"Misters Weasley, I come to you for a business opportunity," I replied once I was close to them and interrupted their speedy back and forth. "If you want in, please lead the way to somewhere without prying eyes."
Both twins looked at each other and then back to me.
"Wow, business? If you want to buy pictures of Tonks, I'm afraid you got the wrong guys."
"Yeah, we may have sold pictures of her feet to that Slytherin troll last year, but Tonks nearly mauled us after and took all the money we made."
"She even stole the camera." "Took it, Gred." "True, took it as it was rightfully hers after our folly."
Both twins looked towards the witch with pink hair looking at them with narrowed eyes and started sweating a little.
"You know what, ickle firstie? Let's get out of here."
"Yeah, we'll hear you out," one of the twins agreed and dragged me out of the room to lead me to a statue right behind a corner outside the Great Hall, pulled me into a hidden shortcut and pushed me into a wall.
"You're brave going to us so openly." "You sure you're not a Gryffindor at heart?" "Could have fooled us."
"Uh, hi Fred, George. Do you still want to hear this business opportunity, or did you just want to escape Tonks?"
"We already lost big time because of our big mouths. So your opportunity better be good," one of them threatened.
With a nod, I reached into my extended pouch and pulled out a box of Jenga, one of the easier games to sell and create. I wouldn't mind if they stole the idea to sell it without me if this discussion went wrong.
"When I entered Diagon Alley for the first time, I saw a joke shop that had quite the assortment of magical prank items and such things. But compared to a muggle toy store, they lacked dearly in the variety of games. I heard about your conduct from the upper years in Ravenclaw and thought that you two might be the best as business partners to bring games into the magical world, or, well, Hogwarts at the very least."
Both twins conversed with eyes alone before one of them asked, "Our conduct?"
"General mischief and smuggling," I casually answered with an easy smile.
"Wow, if there were ever words to sum us up as a person," the twin on the left bemoaned while wiping away a fake tear.
"So you got a bunch of muggle games, and you want us to peddle them?" The twin on the right inquired with a tilted head.
"Something like that. I brought a few games that might become hits, but I was thinking you two could work on charming them to be more magical. Self-moving parts. Voice activation for certain outcomes, that sort of thing. You were also said to be wickedly smart and inventive. That's why I came to you," I explained with a shrug.
"Wickedly smart and inventive, that's words to describe us if you aren't aiming to insult us," the same twin as before praised and wiped away another fake tear.
"What do you want for this business?" The other twin who was apparently playing serious cop asked while the other was silly cop. It worked better for them than good cop, bad cop, that was for sure.
"I fully recognize that you could just cut me out and somehow get these games yourselves now that you know that this might be a decent idea. That's why all I'm asking is three sickles for every galleon you make in profit for the games I bring you and help create magical versions of. It's not like they are my intellectual property to begin with."
Both twins looked at one another for another silent conversation that ended in one of them taking out a parchment and started doing calculations while the other looked to me.
"Less than a fifth of the profits, that sounds rather reasonable."
I nodded and added, "Less incentive to just screw me if you're not giving up more than you can stomach. Plus, it's to get on your good side."
"Maybe you are a Ravenclaw, after all. We'd surely be dissatisfied easily for having to give up, let's say half - if we're doing all the work that is."
I kept nodding in contemplation. This was going in a decent direction, but maybe we needed to do more.
"Hogwarts has less than four hundred students, and the upper years are less likely to buy the games. Do you have a way to reach younger clients? Connections to Zonko's or something along those lines?"
The twin writing down calculations answered without looking back, "Our dad could register them through his work if they have origins in the muggle world. Might mean we have to pay a higher tax initially, but stealing the idea would become harder. With that in place, we could sell the patent or give rights of production to someone like Zonko."
"We're trying to surpass the old oaf, though. So we wouldn't give it to him. We could contact Travis' Trunks & More. He sells enchanted items."
The other twin watching me nodded thoughtfully.
"We planned to open a shop next to his since he's willing to rent out half of his shop space, but we're still lacking funds. This could be a good opportunity."
I felt a little left out despite knowing about Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, their future joke shop. I hadn't planned on becoming the reason they could open the shop outside of them getting a loan from Harry Potter. The chances of that happening were low to begin with, with Harry no longer being best mates with their younger brother Ron. Something I hadn't thought about before.
"And all you want is three sickles on the galleon from the profits?"
I ignored the narrowed eyes he looked at me with and shrugged, "And only for games I brought you. If you continue with that line of products outside my interference, feel free to cut me out."
The twin writing on the parchment leaned in and whispered something in the other twins' ear.
"Fred and I agree. But we're going to give you three knuts out of a galleon for the games you didn't bring us until we're out of Hogwarts and opened our shop additionally. Think of it as a gesture of goodwill. We see a lot of potential in the idea... depending on the quality of these muggle games, that is."
I took that as the signal to take out all the games I had on me and handed them over. If they truly wanted to rip me off at this point, I could only lament that I was a poor judge of character. But ultimately, I wouldn't lose too much.
"Sit on it for a day or two and get back to me on your ideas. I put a small note in the boxes on the ideas I had on how to enchant them or create wizarding variants of cards for example," I concluded and walked back out of the hidden passage back towards the great hall.
As much as I wanted to get the Marauder's map, this first meeting was not the time to ask them about it. I couldn't just pretend my father was one the four either, I wanted to stay on their good sides for the time being, and a lie was a terrible way to make that happen.
In the hall, I sat back down next to Harry, who scrutinized me with a lifted eyebrow before turning back to his book. The girls of our year were already gone, and the other three boys were ignoring us again.
"Are they off to the library or something?"
Harry hummed in confirmation without looking up from his book.
"Do you want to come along? Still got half an hour before we have to make our way to Magical Etiquette," Harry nodded absentmindedly before we both stood up to go to the library. "I'm still wondering who's going to teach us."
"Three different speakers on rotation. A lord from the Wizengamot, a lady from a noble house, and finally a vice-department-head level ministry official," Harry answered curtly to my surprise.
"How'd you know? No wait, Flitwick? But how'd you know how to ask yesterday during your one-on-one without knowing our timetable?"
"He told me without me having to ask."
'Haaa, to be the protagonist... well, I still found out despite asking rhetorically.'
As we found the library, I wondered about my silent companionship with my roommate. Harry hadn't said a word without prompting today outside of helping out Sue during charms, and he didn't pry into my business with the Weasley twins either. Harry truly was an introverted person. Like me, before I somehow started changing the moment I stepped into Hogwarts.
At the library, Mandy and Sue immediately started peppering me with questions about my dealings with the menaces of Gryffindor as the upper years had called the twins when the girls asked about who they were.
I told them about my idea of selling games because it was too late for them to get in on it and steal the business and earned a few respectfully glances from the Ravenclaw girls listening in for my business savvy nature.
After that short 'court hearing' on my deal, I started leisurely browsing books without picking anything just yet. I needed to take stock of my options before doing what Hermione was clearly doing: reading advanced books without the necessary foundation. It would all click into place for her eventually with her intelligence, but despite my reading speed and mature mindset, I wasn't so sure if that was the case for me.
"Hey, sorry, do you happen to know where the transfiguration section is?" I eventually asked a Ravenclaw student looking to be around 18, who I found in the hundreds of rows of books.
She looked incredibly beautiful with a slender physique her somewhat slim-fitting robes didn't hide the contours of her body and dark brown hair done in a long, singular braid laying over her shoulder.
"Down this row, go left, ten rows down," she curtly answered without looking up, though she didn't sound annoyed, merely absorbed into the book she was holding.
Intrigued, I looked up where exactly I stood and noticed it was the history section.
'Oh, must be terrible to be interested in history with Binns teaching at this school, poor girl.'
Instead of bothering her more and possibly interrupting her concentration, I merely thanked her in a quiet voice and moved on instead of introducing myself like every instinct in my hormonal body was urging me to.