To Live is the Rarest Thing

Chapter 16

That caught Harry’s attention, seeing as he was working on his Potions mastery just then. “I’ll happily help with that.”

Tom gave him a grateful smile in response right before Harry turned off the lights.

The next morning, after an excellent breakfast of Swedish pancakes with strawberry jam, with a fried egg and some crispy bacon on the side, Harry wrote to the Guild of Potioneers to inform them that he’d passed both his Potions OWL and NEWT, and that they could now officially consider him for a Mastery when they deemed it appropriate. Pluto had taken care of himself without any problems during their holiday, and the owl seemed happy enough to have some mail to deliver again.

Over the next few days they kept themselves busy with some post-holiday cleaning and organizing, while Harry also took some time to put the finishing touches on the Pensieve that he’d been making. Once completed it got a place of honour in their upstairs office, where Harry happily shared his memory of the Order Meeting of Chaos with Tom, who laughed outright at seeing Harry play the whole order like a cheap fiddle.

Tom, in the meantime, wrote out a franchise agreement for their new business, which he decided to name ‘The Magical Spark’. Then he placed an advertisement in the Daily Prophet, calling on all wizards and witches with knowledge of Muggles to contact him for a most profitable business opportunity with free training that offered young entrepreneurs the chance to become their own boss within a few short months.

“It sounds like you’re shilling a MLM,” Harry pointed out with a chuckle. “You’re the magical equivalent of a Hun.”

Tom’s answering glare was utterly hilarious to Harry, especially because it took Tom a few moments to even come up with a reply. “I’m not trying to run a pyramid scheme, darling. I’m trying to create a genuine franchise opportunity.”

“As you say,” Harry said while grinning like a fool. He did so love to rile Tom up every now and again, even though accusing Tom of running a MLM might go a little too far. MLM stood for Multi-Level Marketing, and it referred to predatory businesses that were barely one step above an illegal pyramid scheme. While Harry and Tom had mostly avoided being sucked into those cult-like groups and losing hundreds, if not thousands of pounds, unfortunately they’d had plenty of family members and friends over their many lives who’d fallen victims to those kind of schemes and who’d lost far too much, even including their homes.

And once, when Tom’s sister in one particular life lost thousands and thousands while trying to shill essential oils, their life. Tom’s sister ended up with major depression while she was forced to file for personal bankruptcy and ultimately committed suicide.

When the first reply to the advertisement came, it was a letter from a muggleborn who asked if the business was anything like Tupperware, because if that was the case she wasn’t interested.

“Fine,” Tom conceded with an incredibly sour look on his face while Harry cackled in the background. “I’ll change the wording for the next advertisement.”

On Tuesday they had tea with Cindy after they’d all walked their dogs together in the afternoon.

“We’ll see you at choir practice tonight, right?” Cindy asked a slightly contrite Harry, who’d already forgotten he was the pianist for the Little Hangleton Mixed Choir after having enjoyed a four week holiday hiatus that the choir had every December.