Chapter 4 - Shopping

(Word Count: 3,031)

First things first, getting the Manor back up to top condition. "Mr. Noggrap, is there an estimate for how much it will cost to restore both my houses?"

Noggrap shuffles through some of the other folders he has. "Here we are, it looks like to originally build the Potter Manor, it cost 600,000 galleons to build, an additional 200,000 galleons for all the enchantments and wards. For the Godric’s Hollow house, it cost only 70,000 galleons to build, and 20,000 galleons to enchant and ward. Though in order for an accurate cost for restoration, you will have to get some contractors to examine the sites."

'Crap, that's 890,000 galleons already. That's like half of my money already.' Maybe he should wait until the investments come through. What's important now is to have as much money down on investments as soon as he can to get rich. Though might as well get a quote down for the actual cost. "Can you arrange for some trustworthy contractors to get separate quotes for both houses? I want to see a precise estimate for clearing any rubble and restoring each to their original designs."

"I can arrange that, yes. The company we usually go through charges 200 galleons per site."

Ugh. "That's fine, as long as they're quick and precise. Onto the next order of business, I want to make some investments."

Harry had racked his brain ages ago for which companies he should invest in right now, and had already written a list.

For the Muggle side:

ExxonMobil, General Motors, Boeing, Kraft, McDonald's, Microsoft, Apple, Coca-Cola, Nintendo, and Sony

For the Magical side:

Daily Prophet, Wizarding Wireless, and Nimbus Broom Company because they will be releasing the nimbus 2000 and 2001 in a couple of years.

If he invested 100,000 galleons in each, that would be 1,300,000 total, leaving him with only 429,815 galleons left. An additional 100,000 for McDonald's, Microsoft, Apple, and Coca-Cola, and that leaves him with 29,815 galleons. Normally this would be quite risky, but he knew all of these were massive companies and would pay out greatly.

There were some other companies he had written down to invest in later, like the Firebolt company, Ollivander’s, Madam Malkin’s, Flourish and Blotts, Honeydukes, and other muggle companies. Then after a few years, Google and the other tech giants will start, and bitcoin. Gotta cash in on those.

Harry listed out his plans to Noggrap.

"For the muggle businesses, we take a 5% fee before the investment, as a currency exchange fee, then from all investments we take 30% of profit earned for our services."

"That’s a bit steep, isn’t it?”

“It’s simply our bank’s policy. In return, you don’t have to worry about anything else, and can just watch your money grow. We’ll even take care of shareholder meetings if you wish.”

Harry could only grumble at that. “Fine. Either way, I want you to take 100% of my profit from these investments, as well as some of my monthly incomes I’m getting, to reinvest into those companies, and the additional companies I have listed there, until I reach my first year of hogwarts. I want as big of a slice of these companies as I can buy. Then we can reevaluate.” Since he was a kid right now, he won't be having any major expenses, so even the couple thousand he has left over will be enough until adulthood.

Noggrap marked all the companies Harry wanted to invest in initially, then looked back at him. "Anything else?"

“Yes, I have to ask, was my parents will read?” If it was sealed, then it would be a large sign of what type of Dumbledore he was dealing with.

“It was entrusted to Gringotts to enact, so of course it was.” Noggrap seemed to be slightly offended that he had even asked.

“Could I read it?” 

Noggrap left and came back with another folder. Harry began reading.

To summarize, there was nothing in it that said Peter was actually the secret keeper, and that Sirius was the godfather. There was nothing in it about how he should absolutely not go to the Dursleys.

Harry placed the papers back into their folder and sighed.

"That's it for business, but I would like to visit the family vault to take some items out and withdraw some gold."

"Let's be off then." Noggrap gathered up all the files and they made their way down to the vaults.

The ride was insane. It felt like an especially dangerous roller coaster, but without the bar or straps securing you in place.

Harry got out, pale and shaking. He was never good with rollercoasters. At least they made it. Vault 687, his parent’s vault. The goblin took out a bronze key. "This is the spare key in case you lose your copy," he explained to Harry, "And here is an expanded coin pouch." Noggrap handed him a small brown bag.

Harry stepped into the vault, where a pile of gold coins greeted him. His parents really were successful, weren’t they? He quickly dumped all 50,000 coins in the vault into the bag. He would be spending a lot today after all.

Exiting the vault, he said "you can probably go ahead and close this vault. I don't really need it anymore since I have access to the main vault."

Then they made it to the main vault. This time, Noggrap ran a long claw like nail down the door. There was a series of cranks from within. Then he took out a golden key, and inserted it into the lock. The doors opened. Nograp then handed Harry the golden key. “This is now your copy of your vault key. The one that was lost will be summoned back to the bank.”

The room was chalk full of gold and furniture. It was all the stuff they could salvage from the wreckage of both houses. Along one wall, behind the furniture, there were shelves lined with what looked like artifacts. A line of CleanSweeps flying brooms rested against the wall, probably from his dad getting the latest Broom model and storing the old one. He even found some jewelry that was labeled. Some of them were his great grandmother Dorea's, some his grandmother Euphemia's, and then some were his mother Lily’s. Harry gently opened a tiny black box to see a set of his mum and dad's wedding rings. 'Someday.'

Looking through some of the more personal items, Harry finally found a trunk that had Lily’s school books, years 1-7, several different photo albums, and their diaries. His mom had a whole series of diaries that looked like it began when she was his age. His dad only had a single journal. From a brief skim, the entries were weeks to years apart. Harry had the same poor journal skills in his past life. Beneath everything was a ratty notebook overfilled with pages of added notes sticking out of it, It was the Marauder’s Guide to Pranks. He smiled, that would be great to go through. Sitting on top of everything, resting on a folded up Hogwarts robe, were his parents' wands.

Reverently, Harry picked up his mother's wand. 10 and 1/ 4 inch, willow. It felt warm, comforting, like his mom was right here. He picked up his father's wand. 11 inches, mahogany. There was a slight connection, but nothing so special like with his mom’s. Maybe the wand was reacting to his "A Mother’s Love" perk.

Checking his Status page holding each wand individually, Harry saw that holding his mom’s wand, there was a little note by his stats saying “Wanded” and a perk.

Your Mother’s Wand: This wand resonates deeply with you, feeling your mother's love protecting you. This wand has channeled your mother’s magic for many years, as such, it is most suitable for Potions. +10% effectiveness to the Potions class.

He switched to his father's wand. He still had the “Wanded” label but no perk. It was still a decent enough wand, but he had a feeling it would give him a similar situation as Neville’s had.

Harry pocketed his mother's wand, returned his dad's wand and closed the truck. Lifting it up on its wheels, Harry dragged it out of the vault. Noggrap was waiting just outside.

"I'm done here, let's head back up."

~~ ITW, H ~~

Harry left Gringotts, feeling much better about himself. He had the trunk sent to the beach house with a call to Tripsy. Now, it was time to spend a lot of money.

He already spent an hour at the bank, so now he had to hurry. First stop, the trunk store.

Harry entered a store called Teagan's Terrific Trunks. Inside, the walls were lined with trunks from floor to ceiling. There, he bought a nice black trunk, and he had the Potter crest emblazoned largely on the lid. It had 3 compartments, each expanded to 5x5 meters. One space was designed as a library room completely lined in bookshelves. Another was a walk in closet space, with drawers and racks to hang clothes. The Last compartment was like a garage with shelves and benches for miscellaneous items. Each compartment had a self-packing charm on them so he could safely just dump stuff into them, and sticking charms so nothing would fall off shelves when he moved the trunk. If he angled the trunk, everything inside would be angled too. So that means no brewing potions inside. It was also enchanted with anti-theft, muggle repelling, weight reducing, durability, and shrinking charms. However since it had both the shrinking charm and space expanding, two opposite charms, it tripled the price up to 34,290 galleons. It was extremely expensive, which goes to show why most wizards didn't bother with it, nevermind the extremely large spaces like Newt Scamander’s suitcase that’s large enough for several habitats, not to mention the space was isolated so the inside stayed level and balanced even with the suitcase tumbling around. It's likely those would cost millions.

Well worth it to Harry though, even if he did spend nearly all of his money at once. Having your own personal storage on hand was just too handy. He could have made a bag like Hermione had, but what would happen if it rips? Much better to get a solid metal and wood trunk that you can wear as a necklace. If only he could figure out how to place and remove things without having to enlarge and open the trunk, then it would be perfect.

Next priority was clothes. Instead of going to Madam Malkin's, he went to another clothing store he saw. Twilfitt and Tatting's. If he remembered correctly, this was the store that the Malfoy's got their clothes from, at least, when it wasn't Hogwarts uniforms. Though he didn't like the Malfoy's, he had to admit they got style.

Harry walked in, and immediately the woman at the counter, who was very beautiful and put-together, started shouting at him. “Uh uh uh! Out! No one wants your filthy mudblood hands pawing all over our clothes! OUT!” She had immediately come around the counter and was shooing him away back towards the door as if he was the most disgusting thing she’s seen.

Harry stood there, shocked at such blatant discrimination. Anger seething, he took his time looking around. It was extremely posh, and not a speck of dust. He met the woman’s eyes. “Fine, I wouldn’t wear these rags anyway.” and he walked out to her sputtering indignations.

Madam Malkin’s it is.

Upon entering, he was greeted with a pleasant harp strumming. Then a short plump woman wearing all purple clothes and short gray hair came around the counter and gave a warm smile. “Welcome, deary! Aren’t you a cute little thing?” She cooed, “How can I help you?”

Harry smiled. Now this was customer service. He gestured at his overly large clothes. “I’m in dire need of a wardrobe makeover. I’ll be needing sets of everything today.”

Madam Malkin tutted. “Yes, I see. Those simply won’t do, now would they? Don’t you worry, dear. We’ll sort you out. Come, let’s get you measured.” She guided him to a small round pedestal. 

With a wave of her wand, a measuring tape came floating over. It began taking measurements while a quill in the corner wrote it down. In the meantime, Madam Malkin was pulling out some bolts of cloth, eyeing it, then eyeing him, tutting and putting it back, then pulling out different colors.

By the time the tape was finished recording his measurements, Madam Malkin had a variety of different bolts waiting on a table. There was a variety of greens; such as olive, sage, mossy green, and purples; a rich royal purple, plum, and a misty lavender. Then neutral colors like navy blue, a warm coffee brown, and black, all in different fabrics.

"I think any of these colors would look very handsome on you. A nice green or purple will really bring out your beautiful eyes, and then your neutral colors just go good with everything." Madam Malkin started going on and on about different colors that she could bring in to highlight these main colors like burgundy and different reds for the purples. Harry really didn't know much about color theory for clothes, so he just decided to trust her.

And so on it went. As they went through a catalog of different styles and picked out a wardrobe for him, it felt more like he was shopping with his grandma than a salesperson. She even quickly transfigured his clothes so they could see how the different cuts laid on him. Together they picked out 7 pre-set outfits using the different colors she picked out. Then he picked out necessities like underwear, socks, some ties, 7 different dress shoes to match different colors, 7 different belts to match the shoes, then 3 different suits at Harry's insistence, matching the same color schemes. Then several sweaters for comfort, 2 casual jackets, a raincoat, some workout clothes and sneakers. Then several nice wizard cloaks that he can throw over his clothes. All items were enchanted with self-repair, self-ironing, size self-adjustments that work until +/- 2 sizes, self-cleaning, water repelling and temperature regulation.

He had spent 500 galleons on clothes alone, 2,500 pounds. Most of the cost came from the charms on them, and even then he had a feeling that she gave him a huge discount. She was even kind enough to cast a hair cutting and dressing spell for him. His hair was still messy, but now it was trimmed up nicely.

He took advantage of the changing rooms to dress up in one of his new outfits, feeling like a new man. He had a nice moss green dress shirt, with a casual maroon jacket and pants on. His mother's wand tucked into the inside jacket pocket. He dumped the hand me downs into the garbage, and the new clothes into his trunk.

He only had 30 minutes left before he had to meet back with Mrs. Figgs, so he said goodbye to Madam Malkin. "I'll be back to get some winter clothes later! Thank you for the help!"

"Take care, sweety!"

He hightailed it to Flourish and Blotts, the bookstore. He perused the shelves quickly, and simply grabbed every book that caught his eyes. He grabbed several that were about the travels of wizards to foreign countries, one about house elves, one called Living with Legilimency, several different charms books that didn't look like it might be on the Hogwarts list, one about dueling, one about daily hygiene and personal maintenance spells, and finally a book on handy spells for librarians to take care of and interact with books. He brought the full stack to the counter.

"Merlin! Boy, don't you think you're getting too many? Will you be able to read all of these?"

Harry just shrugged, "I'm sure I'll find the time somewhere."

The man seemed unsure, but still rang him up. "That'll be 5 galleons, 1 Sickle, and 6 Knuts."

He paid and placed the books in the second compartment of his trunk. Then he hightailed it back outside Diagon Alley to find Mrs. Figgs at the Cafe.

As he passed through the leaky cauldron, waving at Tom as he passed. 

Back in muggle London, he took a deep breath, this trip to Diagon Alley was extremely productive. Not only did he get started with investments early, but he found his parents wand and diaries, a house elf, and an entirely new set of clothes!

In terms of immediate usefulness, getting a house elf and a wand would allow him to do so much more. Now he didn't have to beg Mrs. Figgs to take him to the Alley, which obviously caused her stress, he could just ask Tripsy to pop him over.

The wand would let him practice actual spells rather than throwing things across the room.

Now he could actually put a point into Legilimency if he wanted to. Thoughts to be had later.

He would definitely need to return later for legal stuff. He wanted to see what he could do for Sirius as soon as possible. He didn't want to condemn his godfather to 6 more years of Azkaban just to conform to the plot. This wasn't a game afterall, Sirius was a real person. The problem was he didn't know where to start.

He entered the Cafe and spotted Mrs. Figgs in the corner reading a book and sipping at a cup of tea. She looked up and smiled. "Well, aren't you a handsome young boy? I take it everything went well?"

Harry grinned, "Yep! It went much better than I could have imagined! I found my parents' diaries! I can't wait to read them!"

"Oh, that's just wonderful!"

"Let's go back home?" Just then, Harry's stomach growled, making him realize that in all his shopping, he forgot to grab lunch.

"Why do we get something for you to eat first, then we can go?"

Blushing in embarrassment, Harry agreed.