September 1993
Amelia Bones came in on the Monday morning, without an appointment, wearing an expression I’d learned by now to read as business rather than pleasure.
She wasn’t alone.
Cornelius Fudge followed a step behind her, in robes considerably finer than the occasion strictly warranted, flanked by two officials I didn’t recognize who spent the entire visit looking faintly uncomfortable about being asked to stand near enchanted merchandise they clearly didn’t understand.
“Mr.
Hale.” Amelia extended a hand, brisk and businesslike, though something in her eyes as they flicked briefly toward the monocle case suggested the personal favor hadn’t been forgotten, only set aside for the moment.
“Thank you for making time.
Minister, this is the shopkeeper I mentioned.”
“Marcus Hale.” Fudge shook my hand with the particular over-warmth of a politician meeting someone he’d already decided was useful before he’d properly met them.
“Remarkable little shop you’ve built here.
Remarkable.
I read the Prophet piece with great interest — great interest indeed.”
“Thank you, Minister.
I wasn’t expecting quite this level of attention over a Pensieve and a bit of jewelry.”
“Ah, but that’s rather the point, isn’t it.” He glanced at Amelia, who took the cue with the efficiency of someone who’d clearly stage-managed this exact handoff beforehand.
“Mr.
Hale, I’ll be direct, since I gather you appreciate directness.” Amelia folded her hands.
“The solace pendant is precisely the sort of thing the Ministry ought to have thought of itself, and didn’t.
We have several hundred students at Hogwarts currently within regular range of dementor patrols, and a Ministry workforce that increasingly is as well, given the current security posture.
A waiting list of individual customers, however impressive, doesn’t solve that problem at the scale it needs solving.”
“You’re asking for volume.”
“We’re asking whether volume is even possible,” Fudge cut in, leaning forward with the eagerness of a man who’d clearly rehearsed this part.
“Hundreds of these, Mr.
Hale.
Potentially more, depending how this term goes.
I understand from Amelia that the anchoring process is rather delicate — takes real time per piece, is that right?”
“It is.
I build each one individually.
A pendant that size, done properly, takes the better part of a day of focused work, and I’m one person.
At the rate I’m currently going I could clear my existing waiting list by December and still not touch a fraction of what Hogwarts alone would need.”
“Which is precisely why we’re here rather than simply placing an enormous order you couldn’t fill,” Amelia said.
“We’d like to discuss the design itself.
Not the finished pendants — the enchantment behind them.
If the Ministry had the design in hand, properly documented, we could have it produced at whatever scale was needed, by people whose entire job is producing enchanted items at scale rather than one careful piece at a time.”
I’d expected, walking into this conversation that they might ask exactly that, and I already knew where I stood on it.
“Before we go any further,” I said, “there’s something you both need to understand about what the pendant actually does, because I’d rather you hear it from me now than find out the hard way later.
It holds cleanly against a single dementor, and against a small group — I’ve tested it deliberately up to around ten in close proximity, and the wearer stays entirely clear the whole time.
Past that, the enchantment starts losing ground.
It wasn’t built to stand against a proper swarm, and I’m not going to oversell it to make the number sound more impressive than it is.”
Something flickered across Fudge’s face — not quite disappointment, more the visible effort of recalibrating an expectation he’d clearly arrived with.
Amelia, by contrast, looked entirely unsurprised, the particular satisfaction of someone whose read on a person had just been confirmed.
“Ten is considerably more than anything we’ve actually seen patrol together,” she said.
“Hogwarts and Ministry business don’t see dementors massing in real numbers — two or three at most, and rarely even that.
I’d rather have an honest ceiling than an inflated promise, Mr.
Hale.
“Practical, not miraculous,” Fudge said, recovering his good humor quickly enough.
“I can work with practical.”
“Then yes I’m willing to sell the design,” I said, watching Fudge’s expression brighten considerably before I finished the sentence, “on two conditions.
First, I keep the right to continue selling the finished pendant here, under my own name, at whatever price I set.
I don’t want to hand over something and then find myself undercut by my own invention six months later.
Second, whatever price we agree on reflects that I’m not simply licensing a product — I’m handing over years of theoretical groundwork I built from nothing, and I have no intention of spending the next several months of my life hand-crafting a thousand identical pendants for the Ministry when I could be running an actual shop instead.”
Fudge’s smile only widened, the particular expression of a man who’d clearly expected to have to negotiate much harder than this.
“Entirely reasonable, entirely reasonable.
Amelia, what were we thinking, figure-wise?”
“I’d proposed twenty-five thousand Galleons as an opening position,” Amelia said, with the flat honesty of someone who’d rather negotiate cleanly than waste both their time pretending otherwise.
“I suspect Mr.
Hale’s about to tell me that’s low.”
“It’s low,” I agreed, “though not unreasonably so.
I’d counter at thirty-five, given the scope — Hogwarts and Ministry staff both, which is considerably more than the Hogsmeade-and-Alley scale I originally built this for.”
There was a brief, business like silence, Fudge glancing at Amelia in the manner of a man who wanted very badly to look decisive in front of witnesses without actually understanding the specifics well enough to argue the number himself.
“Thirty,” Amelia said eventually.
“Thirty thousand Galleons, full design rights transferred for Ministry and Hogwarts production, your continued right to sell the finished item independently preserved in writing.
I think that’s fair to both sides, and I’d rather we settle this properly than haggle over the last few thousand while children are walking past dementors in the meantime.”
I thought about the number for exactly as long as it took to do the arithmetic — considerably more than I’d have made hand-building pendants at my current pace for the rest of the year, with none of the exhaustion that would have come with it, and every incentive to keep improving my own shop’s version instead of grinding out identical copies.
“Thirty thousand.
Agreed, provisionally — I’d like the terms properly drawn up and read through before either of us actually signs anything.
I don’t do business on a handshake alone, however much I trust the two of you specifically.”
“Sensible,” Amelia said, with something that looked almost like approval.
“I’d have thought less of you if you hadn’t insisted on it.” She glanced toward the door, and one of the two uncomfortable-looking officials stepped forward at last, clearly having been waiting for exactly this cue.
“This is Mr.
Aldous Pratt, from the Department’s contracts office.
He’ll draft the agreement properly and talk you through every line of it before anyone signs.
I find negotiations go rather more smoothly when both sides actually understand what they’ve agreed to, rather than discovering it later.”
Pratt turned out to be a small, precise man with the particular unhurried thoroughness of someone who had clearly seen a great many enthusiastic verbal agreements collapse under the weight of poorly worded paperwork, and had made it his life’s work to prevent that happening again.
He produced a fresh sheet of parchment, dipped his quill, and began drafting the actual terms right there at my counter, murmuring each clause aloud as he wrote it, apparently as much for his own satisfaction as for ours.
“Design and full theoretical documentation for the solace pendant, transferred to the Ministry of Magic for production and distribution to Hogwarts students and Ministry personnel,” he read out, “in exchange for thirty thousand Galleons, paid in full upon signing.
Mr.
Hale retains unrestricted rights to continue manufacturing and selling the finished pendant under his own name, at his own shop, at whatever price he sets, in perpetuity.” He paused, glancing up at me over his spectacles.
“I’d add a clause here, if you’ll permit me, Mr.
Hale, protecting you specifically — a non-disparagement term preventing either party from later claiming the other’s version is inferior or counterfeit.
I’ve seen licensing deals sour badly over exactly that kind of public sniping once both versions are on shelves competing with each other.”
“I’d appreciate that, yes.”
“And here,” he continued, adding a further line with the same unhurried care, “a confidentiality clause specifically excluding your enchanting methodology from any future Ministry disclosure requirement, freedom of information request, or parliamentary inquiry.
I understand you’d rather your working methods stayed yours, regardless of who’s bought the finished design.”
“That’s more thorough than I expected the Ministry to offer unprompted.”
“The Ministry doesn’t always think to offer it unprompted,” Pratt said, dryly, in a tone that told me rather more about his general opinion of his own employer than he’d probably intended to reveal.
“I make a habit of thinking of it anyway.
Fewer headaches for everyone, later.”
He read the whole document through twice more, once quickly and once with real deliberate slowness, inviting questions at the end of every clause, and I found myself grateful for the care of it in a way I hadn’t expected to be — not because I distrusted Amelia, whom I liked and respected, but because a handshake and a friendly conversation were precisely the sort of thing that could unravel badly months later if neither side had bothered writing down exactly what they’d meant by it.
I read my own copy alongside him, slowly, asking him to clarify two phrases I found ambiguous, both of which he adjusted without complaint or defensiveness, the particular professional grace of a man who considered a client’s caution a compliment to his own drafting rather than an insult to it.
We signed together at the counter, Fudge watching the whole procedural exercise with the visible impatience of a man who’d have preferred it settled in half the time, and Amelia watching it with what I suspected was quiet satisfaction at having brought along someone thorough enough to make the whole arrangement bulletproof.
I asked for a photograph, nodding at the framed Prophet clipping already on the workshop wall.
Fudge lit up at the idea; Amelia agreed with quieter amusement. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Instead of a bulky Wizarding camera, I produced a small black Leica M6 — a Muggle rangefinder I’d picked up on one of my London trips, compact enough to fit in a coat pocket, which I’d quietly enchanted myself to capture a moving image rather than a still one, the film developing itself in the back of the camera within minutes rather than needing another process.
It got a small reaction of its own: Fudge peering at the little machine with open confusion, Pratt recognizing the make and being genuinely impressed a Muggle object could be adapted this cleanly, and me explaining briefly, half-truthfully, that I’d always preferred how understated Muggle engineering could be compared to the usual Wizarding equivalent.
Pratt ended up holding it for the actual shot, framing the three of us together at the counter — Fudge front and center, Amelia rolling her eyes at him fondly — before handing it back so I could watch the little print develop itself right there on the counter, already moving, already a keeper for the wall.
●●
“Splendid,” Fudge said, the moment the ink had properly dried, all business apparently concluded to his satisfaction.
“Simply splendid.
I must say, Mr.
Hale, it’s heartening to see this kind of ingenuity coming out of Diagon Alley rather than — well.
Rather than the sorts of headlines we’ve been having lately.” He said it lightly, but something briefly flickered across his face that told me he was thinking, at least for a moment, about exactly whose escape had made all of this necessary in the first place.
“The Ministry doesn’t forget this sort of cooperation, you know.
I’d be very glad to see more of it.”
Business apparently concluded, Fudge’s attention drifted, for the first time since he’d walked in, toward the rest of the shop rather than the negotiation, and landed on the storage ring display with the frank curiosity of a man who’d clearly been wanting to ask about it since he’d arrived and had simply been too busy being Minister to say so.
“Now, these — I’ve heard about these.
My wife’s been positively badgering me since the Prophet piece ran.
Weightless, you said?
Properly weightless, whatever’s inside?”
“Properly weightless, yes.
The one-cubic-meter tier would suit most personal use — more than enough for robes, correspondence, that sort of thing, without needing to justify the larger tiers to anyone asking questions about why you’re carrying it.”
“Give me one, then.
And — ” he glanced at me, faintly sheepish in a way I suspected didn’t come naturally to him, “— one for my wife as well, if you’d do the band in something a touch finer for hers.
She’d never forgive me if I came home with a Ministry contract signed and no present to show for the trip.”
I fitted him for the sturdier of the pair myself, plain silver banding sized to his hand, and set aside a slimmer, more delicate design for his wife that I promised would be ready by the end of the week.
He paid for both without so much as glancing at the price, the particular unbothered ease of a man for whom thirty thousand Galleons had just made the cost of two rings feel like rounding error, and left considerably more pleased with the whole visit than I suspected the Ministry contract alone would have made him.
“Do send my compliments to whoever’s been advising you on the enchantment theory, incidentally,” he added on his way out, glancing round the shop with genuine curiosity now that the negotiation and his shopping were both settled.
“Extraordinary, for someone your age, working entirely alone.
Truly extraordinary.”
“I’ve had good teachers, in my own way,” I said, which was true enough not to feel like lying, and let the ambiguity sit exactly where it landed.
Pratt lingered a half-step behind the others, gathering his copies of the contract into a neat folder, and paused at the door long enough to offer me a small, dry nod of professional approval.
“Well handled, Mr.
Hale.
Most people your age sign whatever’s put in front of them the moment a large enough number’s mentioned.
Read everything twice, always.
Saves a great deal of trouble later.” He tipped his hat and was gone before I’d properly thanked him.
Amelia lingered a moment longer still, glancing once more toward the monocle case with something that looked almost like a private smile.
“The monocle’s working beautifully, by the way.
I should have written properly to thank you rather than letting it wait for a Ministry visit to say so.”
“I’m glad it’s holding up.”
“It’s holding up very well.” She paused at the door, professional demeanor softening just slightly.
“For what it’s worth, Mr.
Hale — the pendant matters more than the Galleons.
I’ve a niece who walks past dementor patrols on her way to Hogsmeade on certain weekends now.
I’d rather she never needs it and have it anyway, than the reverse.”
“That’s rather the whole point of building it,” I said, and meant it more than the easy tone let on.
She nodded once, satisfied, and left me alone in a shop suddenly thirty thousand Galleons richer and considerably more thoughtful than the morning’s business had any right to make me.
I sat down at the counter, poured myself tea I’d let go cold an hour ago, and thought, not for the first time, that Death’s idea of restitution had turned out considerably stranger and more interesting than either of us had probably expected on that first grey, formless morning.
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