"The Ministry of Magic currently has seven hundred thousand Galleons I can borrow." Thompson's voice was low, but there was a dangerous excitement underneath it. "As long as I return it on time, no one will ever find out."
"With the Ministry of Magic's funds backing us, we would have enough margin to avoid being forcibly liquidated." Andrew nodded quickly, his thoughts already racing through numbers, accounts, and hidden channels. Then he and Thompson both looked at Roger, waiting for the boy at the centre of this madness to decide.
"Are you joining the game as well?" Roger asked, watching Thompson with interest.
"I…" Thompson hesitated for only a moment before his greed defeated his caution. "I can put in a few thousand Galleons of my own, just to play around. Whether you use it or not is up to you."
"If you are willing, I can handle the exchange between the Ministry and Gringotts." Thompson's courage grew as he spoke. "As for the final profit, how about a ten percent cut?"
"No problem." Roger agreed without hesitation and showed no contempt for Thompson's audacity. In this sort of game, greed was not necessarily a weakness, as long as the greedy person knew how to do his job.
"Andrew, how much margin should we keep?" Roger turned to the true professional in the room.
"Ten to twenty percent would work, but thirty percent would be best." Andrew calculated quickly in his head, and the final possible betting scale made his breathing grow heavier. This was not a normal investment anymore; this was a wager large enough to shake a lifetime.
"Then we'll keep thirty percent." Roger set the matter with a nod. "Andrew, your name will appear on the list of asset managers for the Travis family."
"Thank you, sir." Andrew straightened at once, clearly understanding what that meant. "Are there any other people on that list?"
"As far as I know, you're the only one." Roger raised his glass of juice toward Andrew in a small toast. "I'll give you a three percent commission."
"Three points?" Andrew thought for a moment before realizing that Roger meant three percent. His mind immediately combined the exchange rates between the wizarding world and the Muggle world, and the calculations spun faster and faster.
With the first round of leverage, eight times cash and five times real estate, the available capital could reach fifty-eight point seven million pounds. The second round could multiply that by ten, and an off-exchange betting structure at twenty times leverage would bring the total to eleven point seven four billion. With a thirty percent margin retained, the actual wager would still reach approximately eight point two one eight billion.
If Roger's prediction proved correct, then even a conservative estimate put the return at one and a half times the investment. It would not only solve Andrew's financial crisis instantly; it would turn him into a true financial power in the City of London.
"Mr. Roger, I think the commission is slightly low." Andrew chose his words carefully, knowing that greed could be fatal when speaking to a wizard. "Leverage at this scale is unprecedented. If you were not a wizard, I would never dare agree to this, because the operational risk is far too great."
He looked at Roger cautiously and asked, "Would a five percent commission be acceptable?"
"I can certainly accept five percent, but I have a better offer." Roger did not seem offended. Instead, his eyes showed a trace of amusement.
"Please go ahead." Andrew leaned forward, suddenly alert.
"For the first ten billion in final revenue, you receive two percent. For anything above that, your commission rises to thirty percent." Roger smiled as he laid out the variable commission plan, and the words landed like sparks on dry tinder.
"Thirty percent? You mean that?" Andrew licked his lips, and his fighting spirit ignited almost instantly.
"I am a wizard. My word is my bond." Roger's voice was light, but there was enough certainty in it to make both men believe him.
"Mr. Roger, please rest assured." Andrew's eyes shone with fierce ambition. "I will make sure this generates the greatest possible profit."
"Mr. Andrew, I have no doubt about that." Roger raised his glass again. "I wish us success."
The three glasses clinked together. Juice, whisky, and tea met in the air, sealing an agreement that would have horrified any sensible banker in London.
"Remember to hire bodyguards. It may also be wise to have a wizard supervise things from the shadows." Roger's tone turned a little more serious after the toast. "Money at this scale attracts trouble."
"London is actually quite safe. There should not be much need to…" Andrew hesitated, still thinking like a Muggle banker.
"Consider it preparation for your future wealth and safety." Roger packed the money into ordinary boxes and handed them to Andrew. "From today onward, you are going to become a financial tycoon in the City. Remember to keep an eye on everyone around you."
Andrew nodded, his eyes flashing with excitement and greed. He looked like a man who had just seen the gates of heaven open and decided he did not care whether hell stood behind them.
That afternoon, Jessica returned with her house-elf, Bubble. Bubble had short, fluffy silver-white hair and large sparkling green eyes, and compared with Sparkle and Dobby, he looked far cuter and livelier.
Most importantly, Bubble was a master of French cuisine, sparing Roger from the grim fate of endless chips and fish. A household could survive many things, but Roger firmly believed bad food should not be one of them.
Jessica instructed the elves to clean the house and prepare meals. She had no idea that, in a certain legal sense, her new home had already ceased to entirely belong to her.
In the villa's underground laboratory, Roger was brewing a potion. The liquid inside the silver cauldron emitted a deep blue glow, but just as he waved his wand and pushed the potion toward crystallisation, the mixture exploded without warning.
The wobbling cauldron let out a deafening bang, and the liquid burst into colourful fireworks. When the smoke cleared, Roger's face was blackened from forehead to chin, making him look like a small mouse that had rolled through a coal pile.
Bubble quickly fetched a towel and set to work. The lively little elf moved lightly around the laboratory, tidying the workbench and cauldron after yet another failed attempt.
Jessica rested in the garden and shook her head when she heard the explosion. That was already the fortieth blast, and by now she had almost developed the calm of a mother whose child had chosen chaos as an academic subject.
She held a stack of letters in her hands, most of them from relatives in France and a few from former classmates. Among the neat wizarding envelopes, one Muggle letter looked especially conspicuous.
"Is this another bill for some Muggle toy Roger bought?" Jessica noticed that her son was very interested in all kinds of Muggle devices, sometimes even more interested than he was in spells.
She opened the letter, glanced at the contents, and froze. It took her a long time to recover, and when she finally did, her expression had become frighteningly calm.
"Roger, how dare you mortgage our house to Muggles!" Jessica's mood became unusually energetic in an instant, and she strode angrily toward the basement.
"Roger, did you sell out our family?" Jessica marched into the laboratory, grabbed Roger by the ear without the slightest politeness, and dragged him out before he could defend himself.
"Mum, gentle, gentle!" Roger caught sight of the letter in Jessica's hand and immediately realized something had gone wrong. He had been so focused on testing potions that he had forgotten the Muggle bank would send the mortgage agreement back to the property address.
"Explain this to me." Jessica threw the letter onto the table and fixed him with a stare that allowed no escape.
Roger swallowed and began explaining the plan as carefully as he could. He avoided the parts that sounded too much like financial madness and focused on opportunity, leverage, temporary liquidity, and the absolute certainty of recovering everything soon.
"So you sold our house for a pile of worthless paper?" Jessica asked after listening, her voice so cold that even Bubble quietly hid behind the table leg.
"Not sold. Temporarily mortgaged." Roger quickly corrected her, then tried to soften the blow. "And we still have the ancestral estate."
"The manor?" Jessica gave two short laughs and glanced toward the house-elves. "Ask Bubble what the Travis family's ancestral home looks like now. It is practically a ruin. Calling it a manor is already being generous."
She described the dilapidated estate without the slightest courtesy, her tone full of disgust. "Everything that could be stolen was stolen, and everything that could be robbed was robbed. Apart from a crowd of portraits that never stop chattering, all that remains are weeds and rats."
"Mum, it was only mortgaged a couple of days ago." Roger saw Jessica's increasingly unfriendly expression and immediately changed tactics. "I'll contact Andrew at once and get the house back tomorrow."
"Your remaining allowance is cancelled." Jessica patted her son's head with a little more force than usual, then pointed toward the stairs. "Now go take a shower."
Roger looked at his dishevelled reflection in the mirror and realized that he had not left the laboratory for nearly a week. He took a shower, wrapped himself in a bathrobe, and came out feeling as though half the potion fumes had finally been washed off his skin.
"Bubble, go prepare the ingredients." Roger picked up his notebook again, already thinking about the failed reaction.
"Little master, we have run out of the materials bought last time." Bubble looked up at him obediently. "Does little master need Bubble to go to Diagon Alley and buy more?"
"How much money do we have left?" Roger asked, suddenly feeling a bad premonition.
"Little master, there are two hundred Galleons left, enough to buy ten sets of potion ingredients." Bubble touched the large bag that Roger had given him before. The bag, once full of gold coins, was now almost empty, with only a pitiful two hundred left.
"Go to Diagon Alley and buy the materials first." Roger sighed and opened his notebook. "I'll look over the formula and see where the problem is."
Among the potion books he had scavenged from that shabby shop, Roger had actually found several potions capable of increasing magical power. One was called Giant's Draught, but it had severe side effects. Another was a sprint booster that temporarily raised magical output, and there was also Devil's Nettle Juice, which could continuously increase a wizard's maximum magical power but carried a serious risk of addiction.
After tireless searching and reading, Roger finally found two recipes that seemed at least somewhat feasible. The first potion was called Phoenix Blood, and as the name suggested, it required adding a small amount of phoenix blood to the cauldron to strengthen a wizard's magic.
He had to admit that the wizard who created the recipe possessed impressive imagination. Unfortunately, he had possessed far too much imagination, to the point that the formula itself was only theoretically possible and had absolutely no practical value.
Everyone in the wizarding world knew that phoenixes were rare creatures. The only known phoenix Roger knew of was in Dumbledore's office, and Roger did not have the courage to charge in with a syringe and say, Old man, hand over your pet.
Before Dumbledore could even look surprised, Fawkes would probably breathe fire and burn Roger to ash. Compared with the absurdity of Phoenix Blood, Roger preferred another potion called Blue Moon Essence.
Its formula looked far more realistic, and the required ingredients were readily available on the market. Its effects were equally impressive, offering a combined enhancement of both mind and body.
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