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The one who spoke was a woman with extraordinary presence.
Her long hair fell like a waterfall over her milk-white shoulders. Her body traced a seductive S-curve, and above all, those two "great terrors" on her chest were the sort of sight that made anyone who happened to glance at them remember them for a long time.
If one had to sum her up in a single phrase, it would be this:
She still had plenty of charm left.
Madam Rosmerta.
The owner of the Three Broomsticks.
She carried a particular kind of charm called maturity, something fatally attractive to many seventeen- or eighteen-year-old boys.
Carrow, for example.
Dudley had noticed more than once that he kept sneaking glances at her. His eyes looked casual, but they kept drifting across the woman's low neckline, while his Adam's apple bobbed from time to time.
An obvious swallowing motion.
The guy was repressed as hell.
It was clear that he was attracted to Madam Rosmerta's charm.
But among the people present, he was the only one.
Hermione was a girl.
Harry was still too young.
As for Dudley...
Dudley was not all that interested in Madam Rosmerta. She looked young, but she had to be at least over forty. Based on the information Dudley had, she had already been running the Three Broomsticks back in the 1970s, and that had been more than twenty years ago.
He was not into mature women.
He preferred them younger.
Like... eighteen?
"Two Butterbeers, two cherry juices, and one soda, please."
Seeing that Carrow had been staring at her for too long without saying anything, Dudley had no choice but to speak up first.
"There are only four of you. Why order five drinks?"
Madam Rosmerta asked casually.
"Because I'm drinking two."
One Butterbeer for him and one for Carrow. After all, it was still worth trying one of the wizarding world's signature drinks. If he ended up not liking it, he could still share the cherry juice with Hermione. As for the soda, that was for Harry.
The soda came with a little umbrella, and Harry wanted it.
Men stay boys until the day they die.
And Harry was still an actual boy.
In truth, even if Dudley had ordered three Butterbeers, Madam Rosmerta probably would not have agreed.
She did sell Butterbeer to younger wizards, but first-years were clearly not included in that.
Dudley's build was simply too misleading.
If he did not say anything, no one would think he was only a first-year too.
After Madam Rosmerta walked away, Carrow returned to his usual gentlemanly manner.
In truth, all he had done was satisfy his eyes by sneaking a few glances. No matter how much he liked her, he would never actually try to pursue her. Leaving the age issue aside, the Carrow family would never allow it anyway.
He started higher than most people.
So naturally, he also had to give up certain things in return.
Like love.
Or the right to choose his own marriage.
...
It did not take long for the five drinks to arrive.
The Butterbeer tasted surprisingly refreshing.
The cherry juice, on the other hand, was far too sweet.
Because of that, Dudley secretly shared some of his Butterbeer with Hermione.
Under the warm yellow light, the four of them sat around a small round table, drinking and chatting, until Dudley and Carrow soon moved on to the real subject of the meeting.
A new money-making plan.
A simple game.
Or rather, a board game.
But a board game unlike any other.
Dudley pulled the plan he had already prepared from the pouch at his waist and handed it to Carrow. The more he listened to the explanation, the brighter his eyes became.
Dudley's genius idea, combined with the influence of the Carrow family...
Carrow was fully confident that this thing called a "board game" would spread across the entire wizarding world.
And as for Galleons, there was no need to say anything.
It would make an absolute fortune.
At the end of the day, talking face-to-face really was better.
Exchanging letters by owl meant that, if the other person did not have a good memory, they had to stop and think back on what had been said before.
Not to mention the lack of privacy.
'As expected of Mr. Dursley. Whether in ability or ideas, he's on a level ordinary people could never reach.'
They soon began discussing more detailed matters.
How to put it into practice.
How to split the profits.
Since they had worked together once before, it did not take long for them to reach an agreement.
The result was:
A fifty-fifty split of the profits.
In truth, Carrow could have taken more.
Dudley's bottom line had actually been a thirty-seventy split.
Thirty for him.
Seventy for Carrow.
After all, Dudley had only provided the idea and the plan. Everything else, operations and production, would be handled by Carrow. The time investment on the two sides was obviously unequal.
And yet Dudley would still be taking half.
That was already too much...
'Just how highly does this guy think of me?'
With Dudley's intelligence, there was no way he could fail to notice that Carrow was once again trying to curry favor with him.
Dudley gave Carrow a long look.
Carrow simply raised his glass toward him.
The two glasses clinked together, and both of them drained the golden liquid inside in one gulp.
No one turned down money that came knocking at the door on its own.
Especially not when it was clean money.
All that remained now was signing the contract.
That would happen a week later.
Looking at Carrow, who seemed even more eager than he was to finalize it as soon as possible, Dudley let out another inward sigh.
Ambitious, perceptive, intelligent, honor-conscious, and able to judge the situation clearly.
He fit everything Slytherin stood for almost perfectly.
And no one should think this sort of thing only existed among Muggles.
In truth, it was the same everywhere.
Only the name changed.
In this case, it was called investment.
Carrow's goodwill was itself a kind of investment.
It did not take long for him to excuse himself and head to the counter to pay the bill.
He still had plenty to deal with afterward. When it came to making money, the sooner you started, the better.
Even so, before leaving, the man spent quite a while staring at Madam Rosmerta's back.
More specifically, her backside.
Only then did he finally leave.
Dudley looked at his watch and saw that it was already getting late.
Then, as if remembering something, he looked at Harry.
"Harry..."
"Want to go to your house?"
"?"
Harry did not understand.
"Are we going back to Privet Drive?"
"No. I mean the old Potter family house."
...
Godric's Hollow.
That was where the old Potter family home was located.
It was also the hometown of many wizarding families.
Headmaster Dumbledore himself, for example, had lived there when he was a child.
The village was similar to Hogsmeade, yet different at the same time.
It was not made up only of wizards.
It was a village where wizards and ordinary people lived side by side in roughly equal numbers.
Of course, the Muggles had no idea that the "ordinary residents" living beside them were actually wizards.
Hogsmeade was not all that far from Godric's Hollow.
At the very least, it was much closer than Privet Drive was to Hogsmeade.
This time, the three of them used Floo Powder, traveling through the fireplace in the Three Broomsticks.
Though it was not the same dizzying experience as the Knight Bus, it was nowhere near comfortable either.
By the time they came out, they were covered in soot from the fireplace, blackened and filthy from head to toe.
Dudley brought his hands together.
The next instant, all three of their clothes became clean and spotless again.
That only strengthened Dudley's feeling that he really needed to create a more suitable means of transportation for the wizarding world.
The three of them stepped out of a fireplace in a little shop nearby and walked to the monument in the middle of the square in Godric's Hollow.
After a brief shimmer, the stone obelisk turned into three statues.
A man with messy hair and glasses.
A woman with long hair and a beautiful, gentle face.
And a baby in his mother's arms.
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