Ethan was nervously waiting before the room of requirements for Amy. Compared to the exams, where he knew exactly what he needed to do, this was far more difficult because he felt that if he handled it wrong, it might destroy his friendship with Amy and possibly even Leona.
After waiting five nerve-wracking minutes, Amy appeared with a smile on her face. She wore the typical Ravenclaw school uniform, but without the usual tie that came with it.
“Leona said you wanted to talk with me?” asked Amy, not knowing why she was there.
“Yes, I …uhm I wanted to talk to you. Can we go in the room first? I think it's better if we don’t get interrupted.”
Said Ethan and opened the door to the room of requirements while Amy looked at him curiously.
"Wow, that is amazing. I didn’t know the room could do something like that.” Said Amy and ran around on the seemingly endless beach before she turned back to Ethan. “So what did you want to talk about, or did you just want to show me that the room can do even that?”
“Well, while I think that the room is quite amazing and a beach and a sunset are always nice to see, I wanted to talk about something else. To be honest, I have no experience with this, and I don’t want it to turn any more awkward than it has to be, so I will be honest, even if it might be a bit blunt. You Leona, and me are friends, and …”
“Best friends,” interrupted Amy with a grin, obviously happy.
"Right, best friends, but the thing is that while I might be a bit dense at times, it’s not to the point that I didn’t notice that you like me. I mean, not like, like a friend, but more like a crush or something like that.” Said Ethan, causing Amy’s smile to turn into a blush, and she looked tensed listening to every word he said, “And while I realized that quite early, I didn’t know how to react to that. At first, I thought it was just a phase, so I didn’t give it much thought. But then, after some time, I realized that you were serious, and I began to think about it more seriously too. I realized that I like you too, but I’m also worried. Before you and Leona, I never had any real friends. So our friendship is really important to me, and I honestly don’t know if I’m ready to risk losing that friendship. So if we start a relationship, I want to be absolutely sure that it will work out. Does that make any sense to you?” explained Ethan, trying to be honest with Amy.
Amy’s emotions were written on her face. The moment he said he liked her she was practically glowing, but that quickly changed as he continued. She didn’t look sad, but at the same time, she wasn’t glowing like before. “I understand, Ethan. At least, I think I do. I’m glad you know. I began to think you didn’t even see me that way at all, but knowing that you do is really nice. I also don’t want our friendship to be affected by it, but I think our friendship shouldn’t be the reason that we can’t be together.”
“I know Amy, and I didn’t say it was. I just said that I want to be absolutely sure. Maybe I just need a little more time,” clarified Ethan.
Amy looked a little upset. “Fine, but I get at least one friend-date a month, and I can hug you whenever I want.”
"Amy, be reasonable, how would that be different…” tried Ethan to explain, but Amy stared at him with an expression that told him that she would cry if he said no. “Fine, but it can’t always be a Quidditch-date.”
“Yesss!” answered Amy, and almost tackled him to the ground with her excited hug.
Ethan realized that he might have fallen into a trap but returned the hug with a smile.
---
The next day, on their way home with the Hogwarts Express, Leona stared at them.
“So do you want to tell me or not?”
“Tell you what? We are just friends, right?” said Amy and hugged Ethan from the side.
"Fine, then keep your secrets.” said Leona, annoyed but happy that the awkwardness that had followed them the last few months had lessened quite a bit.
---
“We will pick you up on the 27th for the Quidditch game; don’t forget that.” Reminded Amy Ethan.
“It was my present, so how could I forget?” answered Ethan, and said goodbye to Leona and her grandparents and Amy and her mother before taking the bus home together with his grandma.
“What lovely girls they are. I’m so happy for you.” said Grandma Brown in the bus.
“They are great, yes. But I’m more interested in how you have been. Is everything okey?” asked Ethan.
“You don’t have to worry, Ethan. I’m fine. Better than fine. I even got my old job at the restaurant back,” told Grandma Brown.
“Oh Grandma, I told you in my letters that you don’t need to worry about money. I can take care of you. I have a potion that sold quite well in Hogwarts, and one of the teachers wants to help me sell them in a few shops. As soon as that happens, we could think about buying your old house back instead of you starting to work again,” said Ethan with worry for his grandma but also with a little pride.
“That sounds great Ethan, but it’s not only because of the money. It’s because I don’t know what else to do Ethan. Every day I sit at home and have no one to talk to and you can only do so many crossword puzzles. All my old friends are dead Ethan. Besides you, I have no one. So instead of sitting at home and going crazy I work at the restaurant where I can at least talk to people. It makes me feel alive.” Explained his grandma in an energetic tone.
“If you think so, I won’t stop you, but don’t work yourself to the bone again.”
“I won’t and now stop talking about it and think about what I should cook you.”
With a smile, Ethan began to think about what he wanted to eat and realized that he really didn’t have that many money concerns anymore, so he decided that he and his grandma should eat out. There was an old fancy restaurant she had always visited with her husband on their wedding anniversary, and he thought it might be nice to make it a tradition to eat there on the day he came back from Hogwarts.
It took a bit of effort to convince his grandma to eat out because she wanted to use up the ingredients she bought, but after pestering her a little, she finally agreed, without knowing which restaurant Ethan planned to go to.
When they arrived, his grandma began to cry. She hadn’t been there since her husband had died, not only because she had no anniversary to celebrate anymore but also because the restaurant was on the expensive side.
They were lucky that the restaurant had one free table because a couple had cancelled their reservation one hour prior, reminding Ethan that in the future he had to make a reservation to not have a disappointing evening.
They ate their fill with the finest steaks and potatoes the restaurant had to offer and even ordered a dessert afterwards.
The smile his grandma made when she scraped out the dessert made Ethan happy.
Ethan spent the next few days with his grandma, and they did several activities they previously were unable to do due to their money problems. They visited the Zoo in London, where Ethan saw that the section with the snakes was closed. They also visited a museum and went to a movie theater to watch Back to the Future III. On the fourth day, Ethan received a letter from Snape. He would pick him up the next day to meet a few shop owners. His grandma was a little nervous when she heard that a professor would visit them. She made Ethan wear the best clothes he had and also bought the best tea she could get, as well as baked a pie and cookies, even though Ethan tried to tell her it wasn’t necessary.
The next day, Snape arrived at an inopportune moment, and his grandma opened the door. She invited the perplexed-looking potion master in and told him how happy she was that a teacher was taking so much care of her little boy. To Ethan’s surprise, Snape played along and even accepted the tea, even though he didn’t touch the cookies or the pie. It was even weirder that Snape actually seemed to enjoy the occasion.
“So, where are we going first, Professor?” asked Ethan after the uncomfortable visit was over and they left the house.
“Diagon Alley. No matter what you sell, if you want to get rich, you need to sell there.” said Snape and offered his left arm.
The moment Ethan took the arm, they appeared in front of the leaking cauldron.
“Ah, Professor, the usual?” asked Tom the bartender as they went through the pub.
“Not today, Tom.” answered Snape, and Ethan realized that Snape, outside of Hogwarts, might just be a normal person. He looked far less menacing, and it seemed that people were able to usually have a casual chat with him. Something that was unimaginable when one only knew him from Hogwarts.
In the Diagon alley, they entered Mr. Mulpepper’s apothecary. An old-looking store with a sign that said Mr. Mulpepper apothecary, Potions and Remedies for All Diseases since 1106.
"Ah, Severus, long time no see; what can I do for you?” said Mr. Mulpepper, a short old white man with barely any white hair left and far too large glasses.
“We are here to sell and maybe make a more permanent deal if you are interested.” Said Snape.
“Wonderful, wonderful. I’m sure something brewed by you would be unable to gather dust on my shelves. So what new potion have you come up with?” said Mr. Mulpepper visibly excited to make a deal with Snape.
“It’s not me who you are making a deal with. It's Mr. Brown here who you will be dealing with. He brewed the most potent memory potion known to me. I’m just here to guarantee the quality and to help Mr. Brown get a fair deal. We wouldn’t want another talented potioneer to slave away just to fill your stock of pepper up potions, wouldn’t we?” said Snape and sent Mr. Mulpepper a challenging glare.
“Oh, a student gets your recommendation. The potion must be fabulus. Do you have any samples?” asked Mr. Mulpepper, ignoring Snape’s accusation.
Ethan gave Mr. Mulpepper a vial with his memory potion, which he keenly observed and even smelled before looking confused at Snape.
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“This is just a normal memory potion, Snape.”
“That’s what I thought at first too. You need to drink it to feel the difference,” answered Snape, already expecting this reaction.
Mr. Mulpepper carefully sipped at the potion before his eyes widened and a crocked smile formed on his face.
“Wonderful, truly exceptional. You have a great future ahead of you, Mr. Brown,” said the excited shopkeeper. “What did you change to get such an effect, and how much does a potion cost?”
Before Ethan could answer, Snape interrupted. “Trying to trick a student, Mulpepper? The cost will be the same as a regular potion at first. After 500 bottles, we sell the potions for 10% more than the standard potion. So the starting price is eight sickles. You can use my name to advertise the potion, but you must credit Mr. Brown. You can reorder the potions through me or directly through Mr. Brown. You can sell the potion in this store or the store in Knockturn Alley, but you are not allowed to resell the potion to other stores. Just write a letter. You will pay for the transport,” said Snape.
Ethan just watched the potion master. He had already told him that the cost didn’t really vary from the original recipe, but it still surprised him that Snape took care of the bartering.
In the end, Mr. Mulpepper haggled a little, but Snape only gave him a hundred more bottles for the standard prize.
They then walked into the apothecary right next to this one. The Slugs & Jiggers Apothecary, which is Mr. Mulpepper’s greatest competitor.
They also managed to get a deal with him, but because Snape could leverage the fact that his competitor already made a deal and that they would fall behind if they didn’t make a deal with them, he only needed to offer a hundred potions for the regular price. They then apparated to Hogsmeade and sold the potions to Pippin’s potion shop, and then they apparated to a few other wizard villages.
At the end of the day, Ethan didn’t know exactly where he had been. The only thing he knew was that he sold 3550 potions for 28400 sickles, or 1670 galleons, with several long-term deals that would give him just as much over the next few months. It wasn’t enough to call him rich, but it was more than three times what a middle-class family earned in a month. So he didn’t need to worry about money anymore, even if Snape got 5% and Amy and Leona had gotten their share of the profit. And that was just with the first type of potion he sold. Theoretically, he could sell any potion and capture the whole market. He thought he had a specialized memory potion skill, but so far only the brewing process has been accelerated. The increase in potency—the reason he is able to sell his potion—came from his general skill. So all he had to do now was look up which potion had the greatest revenue, and he would go from having a decent income to filthy rich within a month or two.
Despite selling his potions, Snape also helped him order a special expanded suitcase with a decent size. As Snape was paying for half of it, Ethan was willing to go deep into his own pockets to get the most out of his deal with Snape. So despite having earned over a thousand galleons that day, he had less money than before. He had barely enough left to finish his vacation in a decent manner with his grandma, buy new school supplies, and order a few potion supplies. The money his parents had saved up, which should have been able to pay for his whole time at school, was spent. But in Ethen’s eyes, it had been worth it. Now he could not only brew his potions anywhere he wanted, he could also grow his supplies in his suitcase, enabling him to grind his skills even during his vacation.
The next few weeks were spent building up his new garden as well as holding on to his side of the deal with several apothecaries and preparing the second potion he intended to sell. The wiggenweld potion. Not because he was particularly expensive, but because he realized that this potion could actually help a lot of people who were too poor to afford real health care. He even contacted Mr. Mulpepper to test his potion and make him an acceptable offer. This “acceptable” offer was far beyond anything Ethan had expected. While the normal wiggenweld potion was only going for five sickles per potion, Mr. Mulpepper was offering him 17 sickles or a galleon per potion. Ethan had underestimated how big of a deal it was to offer a “cheap” healing potion with twice the effectiveness of the wiggenweld potion. Mr. Mulpepper even offered him six hundred thousand galleons for the right to the recipe. It was something Ethan had to decline, as he didn’t have any innovative recipes and just his system. Otherwise, he would have accepted the deal and just brewed another potion.
This went until the 27th of July, when Amy and her mother were ready to take him to the Quidditch game as well as stay over for three days. Despite Amy protesting that he should stay longer, Ethan argued that he is able to see his grandma only for a few weeks a year, while he was able to see her for practically the whole year. The truth was, his grandma said he should stay as long as he wanted, as long as he called once a day. The main problem was that the 31st of July was Harry’s birthday and the day he would visit Diagon Alley with Hagrid. It was also the day when Quirrell was in the Diagon Alley to steal the philosophers stone from Gringotts.
Compared to this, the Quidditch game he had to spectate was only mildly interesting, but Ethan did his best to appear as engaged as possible to make Amy happy.
The days after the Quidditch game were quite relaxed, and Ethan realized that Leona was right in her assessment that Amy might be shyer than she pretended to be. She didn’t even abuse her hugging privilege as much as Ethan had guessed, and she only hugged him before he went to sleep in the guest room of their fairly big villa. She also didn’t do it in front of her mother, but that might just be because her mother seemed to love teasing her daughter, and Amy didn’t want to give her mother more ammunition to tease her. She was embarrassed enough after her mother asked him openly during breakfast if he sneaked over to Amy’s room, which he didn’t.
Her whole behaviour made him wonder if it was expected that wizards and witches their age made their first experiences or if his mother was really just joking.
On his way home he checked his status in a final preparation for his more important business.
Name:
Ethan Brown
Age:
12
Health
100%
Mana
100%
Stamina
100%
Tier 1 Skills:
Level
Thinking
92
Sleeping (in bed)
52
Harvesting (Magical plants in a greenhouse)
106
Experimenting
76
Spellcasting (With a wand and an incantation)
104
Brewing (Memory Potion)
57
Potion Making
41
Spellcasting (Protego)
113
Spellcasting (Petrificus Totalus)
93
Herbology (Magical plants in a greenhouse)
154
Tier 1 Skillpoints:
385
Tier 1 Skills (Stagnant)
Level
Breathing
122
Walking
121
Reading
200
Talking
138
Calculating
104
Studying
179
Writing
106
Memorize
100
Teaching
100
Punching
80
Headstart
201
Tier 2 Skills
Level
Collaborative Learning
68
Pleasing Voice
107
Jab
112
Sensory Memory
72
Marathon
81
Precise Calculation
71
Elaborate Writing
36
Enduring Respiration
97
Contextual Perception
109
Empty
-
Tier 2 Skillpoints
454
Tier 2 Skills (Stagnant)
Headstart II
201
Tier 3 Skills (Locked)
Level (Locked)
Headstart III
5
…
…
Tier 3 Skillpoints
5
Tier 4 Skills (Locked)
Level (Locked)
Requirements to Unlock
Collect 50 Tier 3 Skillpoints
The first thing he did was invest all his T3 skill points into the Headstart III skill. He hadn’t done it until then in the hopes of getting one or two more free levels, and investing the points wouldn’t have increased his speed of growth as he didn’t have any skills below the headstart skill. But now the important part wasn’t the increased growth opportunity but the new side effect. If he pushed the headstart skill past level ten, his protego skill would start at level 2. Normally this wouldn’t do much, but in his eagerness to level his skills as high as possible, he forgot that he would be unable to train his magical skills outside of Hogwarts. While one level more would normally not do much, the difference in a 5% or 10% increase in whatever his protego skill would amplify wasn’t to be underestimated. But in the end, he was convinced that he wouldn’t even need the spell, as all he had planned to do was push Harry on Quirrell, and in case it didn’t work on this day, he had a whole year to do it, even though he would have to endure Quirrell’s subpar lessons till then.
With a few thoughts, he confirmed his choices, and a window popped up.
Spellcasting II (Protego)
Tier
2
Skill Level:
unavailable
Level up requirements:
Cast protego 75 times
Description:
Increase the shields durability
Baselevel + Skill Level * 5%
He didn’t immediately fill up the now open T1 skillslot, as he had many ideas he wanted to pursue. One idea was to use healing potions to not only heal but potentially prolong life too. He was a bit unsure of the real potential, as he didn’t know what T3 or even T4 skills were capable of. The other option would be to try to go for a planting skill and go for a fusion skill. A super basic skill like thinking would also be a possibility. The thinking skill, while almost unnoticeable at the lower levels, was starting to show its potential by now. His accelerated thoughts made it so that his whole perception seemed to slow down a little. In this regard, it was actually good that the skill only gave these abysmal boosts once in a while, as he would have needed quite some time to adapt if each level had given him 5% of his thought speed. Even listening to other people might have become difficult if the skill grew too fast. On the other hand, the skill worked multiplicatively with all other skills that required his mind, so maybe his learning skill would have helped with getting used to the skill. He just wasn’t sure which to pick: the skill “movement”, which worked for every movement or action he did, or the skill “magic”, which was the broadest magical option he could pick. Another option he considered attractive was taking a skill that would further reduce his bodily needs. So far, he only had the breathing skill at a level that enabled it to work in that direction, but his sleeping skill would surely be able to make sleep optional in the future. But even then, he enjoyed every level up from the sleeping skill, as he always woke up as if he had visited a spar prior to sleeping. But taking another skill in that direction would push him into the role of a workaholic, which he wanted to avoid now that he was sure that he could change the world through magic instead of money from a big company. The survival aspect of these skills also wasn’t really worth it, as he didn’t expect any real situation where he would be unable to eat, sleep, breathe, or something like that. He jokingly discarded the idea, thinking that he would entertain the idea again if he ever wanted to travel in space.
With his skills in order, he made his way towards the leaking cauldron after giving his grandma a short visit.