Hogsmeade in the evening light was quieter than he'd ever seen it. Most of the village's foot traffic came from Hogwarts students on Hogsmeade weekends, and with the school emptying for summer, the shops were closing early. Honeydukes had already shuttered its windows. Zonko's was dark.

  The Three Broomsticks glowed with warm light, its sign creaking in the wind. Rowan pushed through the heavy wooden door and stepped into a room that smelled of butterbeer, roasted meat, and woodsmoke.

  The pub was half full. Working witches and wizards from the village, mostly, occupying tables in small groups. A fire burned in the enormous hearth despite the mild evening. The bar itself was a long curve of polished oak, and behind it stood a woman who could only be Sirona Ryan.

  She was tall, with strong features and dark hair pulled back from her face. Her sleeves were rolled to her elbows, and she was pouring a measure of firewhiskey with the easy precision of someone who'd done it ten thousand times. When she looked up and saw Rowan standing in the doorway with his trunk, her expression shifted from professional welcome to recognition.

  "You'll be Ashcroft," she said. "Matilda told me to expect you."

  "Rowan. Thank you for having me."

  Sirona's eyes took his measure with the frankness of someone who'd been running a pub long enough to size people up in seconds. Whatever she found seemed to satisfy her. "Room's upstairs, second on the left. Bathroom's at the end of the hall. Meals are breakfast at seven, dinner at six. Miss either one and you're fending for yourself."

  "Understood."

  "Good." She set the firewhiskey in front of a waiting patron without looking. "Settle in, come back down for dinner. You look like you haven't had a proper meal in a week."

  The room was small but clean. A single bed, a washstand, a wardrobe, and a window that looked out over the High Street. Rowan stowed his trunk, set Athena's cage on the windowsill, and opened the window to let her stretch her wings. She hooted once, softly, and flew out into the evening air.

  He stood at the window for a moment, watching the last light fade over the rooftops. Hogsmeade. His base of operations for however long it took to find a shop, register the company, and begin production.

  The work started tomorrow. Tonight, he would eat a meal he hadn't earned yet, sleep in a bed someone else's generosity had provided, and try not to think too hard about the numbers he'd been running in his head for three weeks.

  Dinner was shepherd's pie and butterbeer, served at a corner table Sirona had pointed him toward with the words "that's yours while you're here." The food was excellent. Rowan was halfway through his second helping when the door banged open.

  Four wizards walked in. The lead was a tall man with a heavy jaw and cold eyes, wearing dark robes that looked expensive in a way meant to intimidate. Behind him, three others fanned out with the practised spacing of people accustomed to controlling a room.

  The pub quieted. Conversations dropped to murmurs, every patron suddenly attentive while pretending not to be.

  "Sirona." The lead wizard's voice carried the oiled confidence of someone used to getting what he wanted. He walked to the bar and placed both hands flat on the polished wood, leaning forward. "Been a while."

  "Harlow." Sirona didn't stop wiping the glass in her hand. "Not long enough."

  Theophilus Harlow smiled with all his teeth and none of his eyes. "Still charming. I'm here because my associates and I have been thinking about the security situation in Hogsmeade. Lot of dark creatures in the forest nearby. Dangerous times. We thought you might appreciate some protection."

  "Protection." Sirona set the glass down with a deliberate click. "From whom?"

  "From whatever might happen to a business in a village this isolated. Fires. Break-ins. Nasty hexes on the stock." Harlow spread his hands as though the threats were simply facts of life rather than promises. "We're offering a service. Reasonable rates. Ten Galleons a month and you'll never have a problem."

  "The only problem I've ever had in this pub," Sirona said, her voice carrying to every corner of the room, "is people who come in and mistake my hospitality for weakness."

  Harlow's smile thinned. "That's not a wise attitude, Sirona. The Ashwinders look after their friends. We're less generous with people who aren't."

  "Then I suppose it's fortunate I've never needed your generosity." Sirona reached beneath the bar. Rowan couldn't see what she gripped, but from the way her shoulders set, it was her wand. "This is my pub, Harlow. My grandfather built it. My mother ran it before me. I've served every witch and wizard who walked through that door with respect, and I've never once needed hired thugs to keep the peace."

  One of Harlow's companions shifted, his hand drifting toward his robes. The room's attention tightened.

  Rowan set down his fork. He'd been watching the exchange from his corner table, reading the dynamics as he would read a duel. Four against one, bad odds, but Sirona wasn't alone, and Harlow hadn't accounted for the room.

  "The lady said no."

  Harlow turned. His gaze found Rowan and dismissed him in the same motion. A boy. A child, sitting alone at a corner table. Irrelevant.

  "Mind your business, lad."

  "This is my business. I'm a guest of this inn, and you're threatening its owner in front of her patrons. That makes it everyone's business."

  A chair scraped. An older wizard at a nearby table, broad-shouldered with a weathered face, stood up slowly. He didn't speak, but his wand was in his hand and his meaning was clear.

  Another chair. A witch with grey hair and sharp eyes, rising from a booth near the fire. Then two more. A young couple near the window, both on their feet, both with wands drawn.

  Harlow surveyed the room. The calculation was obvious in his face, the cold arithmetic of a man accustomed to operating through intimidation rather than actual violence. Four Ashwinders against a pub full of armed patrons who'd decided they had a stake in the outcome.

  "Touching," Harlow said. "A real community effort." He looked at Sirona, and the mask of pleasantry dropped entirely. The face beneath was flat and dangerous. "This isn't over."

  "It's over when you walk out my door," Sirona said. "Which you'll be doing now."

  Harlow held her gaze for three full seconds. Then he straightened, adjusted his robes, and jerked his head at his companions. They filed out without another word, the door swinging shut behind them with a heavy thud.

  The silence held for a beat. Then the broad-shouldered wizard sat back down, the grey-haired witch returned to her booth, and the room exhaled. Conversations resumed, quieter than before but steady.

  Sirona looked at Rowan across the room. Her expression had shifted since he'd checked in. Acknowledgment. The recognition of someone who'd chosen to stand rather than sit.

  "Dessert's on the house tonight," she said.

  "I appreciate it."

  "Don't get used to it." She picked up another glass and went back to polishing. "That lot will be back. Harlow's been leaning on shopkeepers up and down Hogsmeade for months. He's patient when he wants to be."

  "Who are the Ashwinders?"

  "Dark wizards. Not the organised kind, not yet, but they're getting there. Harlow fancies himself a leader. Recruits disaffected purebloods, promises them influence, sends them out to squeeze Galleons from people who can't fight back." She glanced at him. "You handled that well for a boy your age."

  "I've dealt with worse."

  "I expect you have." She said it without irony or disbelief, which Rowan appreciated.

  He finished his meal, thanked Sirona, and climbed the stairs to his room.

  The ledger Iris had made was beautiful. The charmed columns glowed faintly as he wrote, the numbers rearranging themselves into neat totals as each entry landed. Rowan sat cross-legged on the bed with the notebook on his lap, his journal open beside him, and worked through the mathematics of his entire financial position.

  He started from the beginning.

  Ninety-three pounds sterling, converted to one hundred and fifty-one Galleons, fifteen Sickles, and nine Knuts on the day Professor Weasley took him to Gringotts. Five Galleons deducted for the vault. Fifty Galleons kept liquid, ninety-six invested through Gringotts at a conservative rate.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  First-year expenses. Seven Galleons for the wand. Fifteen Galleons and eight Sickles for textbooks. Three Galleons for the owl. Roughly ten Galleons for robes, trunk, telescope, scales, and supplies. Thirty-five Galleons total from his liquid funds, leaving him with approximately one hundred and sixteen Galleons in the vault and five in his pocket after shopping.

  The year itself had been modest. Hogwarts covered room and board. Owl treats ran two Sickles per week, roughly five Galleons over the school year. His Daily Prophet subscription added another Galleon. Replacement quills, extra parchment, miscellaneous purchases added perhaps another five. The annual vault fee took five more. His investments returned roughly three Galleons on the ninety-six at Gringotts' conservative rate.

  Then the tournament. Silver medal at the International Youth Dueling Championship. Five hundred Galleons in prize money, deposited directly into his vault.

  He'd spent the summer with the Flamels at no cost. Generous of them. Impossibly generous, if he allowed himself to think about it honestly.

  Second year. Twelve Galleons in annual stipend. Fifteen Galleons for new textbooks and ingredients. The same running costs for owl upkeep, Prophet subscription, supplies, and incidentals. Another five-Galleon vault fee. His investments had grown modestly, the returns compounding on a base that now included the tournament winnings.

  No tournament winnings this year. He'd given his spot to Sebastian.

  Rowan wrote the final figure at the bottom of the column and stared at it.

  Six hundred and fifteen Galleons.

  His entire fortune. Everything he'd earned across two years of work, one tournament victory, and careful saving. More than most Muggleborn students accumulated in their entire time at Hogwarts, and not nearly enough for what he was attempting.

  He started a second column. Projected expenses.

  Shop purchase in Diagon Alley. Location mattered enormously. A well-positioned storefront would cost anywhere from six hundred to a thousand Galleons depending on size, condition, and the seller's willingness to deal with a Muggleborn buyer. He wrote seven hundred as a working estimate, knowing it might be optimistic for anything worth having.

  Raw materials. Lead for the transmutation process, copper plate for prototypes, runic inscription supplies, packaging materials. Twenty Galleons to start, with ongoing costs as production scaled.

  Employee wages. This was the number that compounded the problem. He needed someone to manage the shop year-round. A fair wage for a full-time shopkeeper was eight Galleons per month. Over a twelve-month period, that was ninety-six Galleons on top of a shop that already consumed most of his capital.

  Room and board. The Three Broomsticks was five Sickles per night. Two weeks of searching for a property would cost three Galleons and change. Once he had a shop with living space above it, the expense would drop to nothing.

  Ministry registration fees. Two Galleons, based on Weasley's estimate.

  Working capital. Emergency funds, unexpected costs, the inevitable surprises that came with any new venture. He should keep twenty Galleons in reserve at minimum.

  The ledger's charmed columns calculated the total before he finished writing.

  Eight hundred and forty-one Galleons.

  Two hundred and twenty-six more than he had.

  Rowan sat with the number for a long time. The shop alone consumed more than his entire fortune. Even if he found a bargain property at the low end of the range, the remaining expenses would drain him dry with nothing left for the unexpected. No price gouging from suppliers who spotted a Muggleborn customer. No equipment failures or slow opening weeks with no revenue. The budget assumed perfection, and perfection was a fantasy.

  The Flamels' letter sat in his trunk. Their equipment shipment would save him an enormous sum. Athanors, alembics, distillation apparatus, reagent sets worth more than his entire operating budget. That generosity had already transformed the plan from impossible to merely difficult. Without it, he wouldn't have bothered trying.

  But equipment wasn't liquid capital. He couldn't pay wages with an alembic.

  The obvious solution was the Flamels themselves. One letter, one request, and they would send gold from the Philosopher’s Stone without hesitation. Nicholas would probably be thrilled. He'd pace his laboratory and talk about investing in young innovators until Perenelle made him sit down, and the money would arrive by owl within a week.

  Rowan's quill hovered over the parchment.

  He set it down.

  The thought of asking sat wrong in his chest, in the place where the boy from the Foundling Hospital still lived. The boy who'd learned that depending on others meant giving them power over you. That every gift came with strings, and every kindness had a price, and the only person you could truly rely on was yourself.

  It was a flaw. He recognised it clearly enough. The Flamels had given freely and asked nothing in return. He knew that. Knowing didn't dissolve the feeling. It just meant he could see it for what it was.

  So he picked up the quill anyway.

  Dear Nicholas and Perenelle,

  I've completed my financial projections for the business. The equipment you're sending covers the largest single expense, and I'm grateful for it. But even with careful budgeting, I'm short on floating capital. The margins are too thin to absorb any setbacks, and I'd rather build on solid ground than gamble on everything going perfectly.

  I'd like to propose an investment arrangement. In exchange for starting capital, I'm offering you a share of the business. I can have the specific terms drawn up once we agree on a figure, but I wanted to ask directly rather than try to make the numbers work alone.

  I recognise that asking doesn't come naturally to me. I'm working on that.

  Rowan

  He read it over once, decided it said what it needed to say, and went to the windowsill. Athena had returned from her evening flight and was preening on her perch. She held out her leg with the resigned patience of an owl who knew her rest was about to be interrupted.

  "France," Rowan told her, tying the letter securely. "As fast as you can."

  Athena hooted once, nipped his finger with what might have been affection or irritation, and launched herself into the dark.

  He watched her disappear over the rooftops, then turned back to the ledger and a different problem.

  The shop needed someone to run it during the school year. September through June, ten months when Rowan would be at Hogwarts and unable to manage daily operations. Lawrence would return to school as well. Iris would be at school. Every person he trusted was a student.

  Weasley's former students had refused. Sirona was firmly committed to her own pub. He had no network among adult wizards, no connections in the Diagon Alley business community, no way to vet a stranger's trustworthiness or competence.

  The luminaire's production process was proprietary. Whoever managed the shop would need access to the finished products, the customer relationships, the pricing structure, the financial records. Hiring the wrong person could mean theft, sabotage, or simple incompetence that destroyed the business while he sat in a classroom two hundred miles away.

  He needed someone who was competent, trustworthy, and willing to work for a twelve-year-old Muggleborn employer in a business that didn't exist yet. The intersection of those three qualities, in a society that actively discriminated against people like him, seemed vanishingly small.

  Rowan lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

  Outside, Hogsmeade was quiet. A dog barked somewhere. Wind moved through the eaves of the inn. He could hear Sirona closing up the bar below, the scrape of chairs being stacked, the clink of glasses being washed.

  And a tap at the window.

  Rowan sat up, his first thought that Athena had come back. If she'd been hurt, or if the letter had come loose during—

  The owl on the sill wasn't Athena. It was smaller, tawny where Athena was grey, with patient amber eyes and a letter clutched in its talons. It held out its leg.

  He opened the window and took the letter. The handwriting was unfamiliar. Neat, careful script on inexpensive parchment, the kind sold in bulk at Scribbulus. No family crest or wax seal. The address read simply Mr. R. Ashcroft, The Three Broomsticks, Hogsmeade.

  He broke the plain wax closure and read.

  Dear Mr. Ashcroft,

  My name is Clara Goode. I am Lawrence's mother. I hope you will forgive the presumption of writing to you directly, as we have not been introduced, but Lawrence has spoken of you often and with great respect over these past two years.

  Lawrence has told me that he will be spending part of the summer working with you on a venture of some kind. He has been characteristically vague about the details, which I have learned to interpret as excitement he's trying to contain rather than any cause for concern. He is very much his father's son in that regard.

  I would very much like to discuss this arrangement with you, if you are willing. Lawrence is thirteen years old and I am his mother, and while I trust his judgement in most things, I would feel more comfortable understanding what he'll be doing and where he'll be doing it before I agree to let him spend his summer away from home.

  I hope this is not an imposition. I am not writing to object. I am writing because I would like to know the person my son admires so much.

  If you are amenable, I could meet you at the Three Broomsticks tomorrow evening.

  Respectfully,

  Clara Goode

  Rowan read the letter twice. Then he set it on the bedside table and sat for a moment, thinking.

  Lawrence had mentioned his mother in passing over the years. A Muggleborn witch who'd worked in Muggle shops after her husband died, moving to a small flat in Hogsmeade to be near her son. She'd never found work in the magical world. The same story Weasley had described, multiplied across dozens of former students and their families.

  The letter was measured and intelligent. Direct without being aggressive, protective without being overbearing. She wanted to understand what her son was getting into before she signed off on it, which was exactly what a good parent should want.

  He pulled out parchment and wrote his reply.

  Mrs. Goode,

  Thank you for your letter. It is not an imposition at all. I would welcome the chance to meet you and discuss the arrangement properly. Shall we say seven o'clock? I'll arrange a private table with Sirona.

  Lawrence is one of the most talented people I know, and I'm grateful for his willingness to work with me this summer. You deserve a full account of what that work will involve.

  R. Ashcroft

  He tied the letter to Clara's owl, who had been waiting on the windowsill with the patient composure of a well-trained bird. It hooted once and flew out into the dark.

  Rowan picked up the ledger and looked at the numbers again. Still tight. Still nearly impossible. The shopkeeper problem remained unsolved, a blank space in his plans that he couldn't fill with anyone he knew or trusted.

  But that was tomorrow's problem. Tonight, the only thing he could do was prepare.

  He closed the notebook, extinguished the lamp, and lay in the dark listening to the sounds of an unfamiliar building settling around him. Tomorrow Weasley would take him to the Ministry. Tomorrow evening he would meet Clara Goode. The day after that, he would begin searching for a shop.

  The margins were thin and the odds were long and the wizarding world was not built for people like him.

  He'd worked with worse.