It had been ten months since he had been revealed as a wizard. There were problems, but Leo loved his new life. He had noticed how he had become much more used to making things happen instead of waiting for someone else to help him. There was one problem. Owls had been arriving at Purbeck Square in increasing numbers, dozens, and then hundreds. The letters were from people Leo had never met. They contained business proposals, marriage proposals, business and marriage proposals. Leo needed help, quickly.
“Harry! How do I stop all these letters? My muggle mail is intercepted by the solicitors. They tell me that there are some interesting ideas in them. They are arranging a meeting with one entrepreneur. That’s not a problem. The wizards and witches are the problems. How do I deal with all this stuff coming directly to me?”
The old alcove at The Leaky Cauldron was a favourite meeting place. “I got this at first, the owls found me everywhere. Then I found about the owl intercepts. The Ministry can intercept owls under certain circumstances. You can submit a list of names of people you are happy to get owls from. Any other owls will go to an approved collection place. You can arrange for a staff member to pick them up and work through them on your behalf. What I suggest is to set up your own personal services company with an office in Diagon Alley. Owls won’t be noticed going there. You can also arrange to have a muggle street front to the same building. Your offices can be half muggle and half magical with a secure gateway between them. You can direct Pimlico Security to share your new building, I’ve seen the office they use now, it’s dank and grim.”
“That sounds like a solution.” Leo was obviously relieved. “I know what to call the company ‘Blake HRD Services’.”
“That isn’t something to do with motorcycles is it?”
“It sure is.” Leo was grinning happily. “HRD was the name of the company that Philip Vincent bought to make his motorcycles. These days it also means Human Resource Director, which is purely coincidental.”
“Have you heard from Daphne Greengrass?”
“That was quite a subject change! No! I haven’t. She went off on her investigation and nothing since then. Not that I’m expecting anything.” Leo didn’t want to be reminded. He was getting ready to ask Daphne out again when she just took off with almost no notice. It hadn’t been four weeks; it had been three months. Her columns still appeared in The Daily Prophet, but there were no answers to his owls, and she refused to take calls on her mirror-phone.
“Do you know how the investigation turned out? Do you want to know?”
“No! and Yes!” Leo was obviously not happy at being kept in the dark.
Harry paused for two seconds. “Daphne found the snatcher who killed her father.”
“Great! Is there anything left of him?”
“Yes, he is at present on trial for murder in the USA. If he escapes the death sentence, which is still active over there, and after a long jail term, he can be extradited back to the UK to be tried and sent to Azkaban.”
“So, how is Daphne now?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t seen her either. I got all the information and the evidence needed to get a conviction from MACUSA. Daphne captured the snatcher herself together with another criminal he was associated with.”
Leo considered this in a despondent way. “I won’t kid you about this, I’m quite attracted to her. I don’t think she finds me that repulsive either. I’ve had plenty of that while I was under the Black family curse.”
There was a long silence, finally Harry spoke up. “Daphne knows that there are deep divisions in the wizarding world. There is none deeper than the division between the Malfoys and the Weasleys. In the old days in the USA it would be like the Hatfields and the McCoys, look that up in a history book.”
“I can’t believe that this is happening, but what does it have to do with me?”
“I’m married to a Weasley, you are my brother by adoption. So, by no choice of your own, you are in the Weasley clan. Daphne has a sister, Astoria. Astoria has been seen in public with Draco Malfoy. The suspicion is that a match has been made, either by old fashioned match-making or voluntarily, it doesn’t matter, Daphne could be a member of the Malfoy clan pretty soon.”
“Is that why she’s staying away?”
“It could be, I’m not the greatest expert on such matters. Ginny will have great fun telling you what a hopeless case I was before we finally got together. The best thing you can do is track her down and tell her that you like her a lot. It’s a start.”
What contacts did Leo have with the Greengrass family? Leo had the answer, “Mrs Greengrass, of course.”
Kenworthy, Le Blanc and Gomes arranged a meeting within minutes of the call from Leo. Greengrass Potions was taking an entirely different path from its previous life. Instead of a cramped building in a lane off Diagon Alley, the business was now housed in a new muggle office and warehouse in an industrial estate near York. Only a third of the goods traded went to wizards and witches, the rest were sold to muggles.
The floo fireplace in the magical section of the offices came to life. Leo stepped out and brushed off his coat. “Mrs Greengrass, it’s good to meet you.”
“It’s good to meet you, Lord Pimlico.”
“Please, Mrs Greengrass, I’m Leo.”
“Well then, I’m Olivia. Please come into the boardroom.”
Leo settled into the padded chair and took in the view over the warehouse floor. “That’s not something you normally see from the boardroom, the day to day life of the business.”
“I had the boardroom moved here to help me keep the talk in here focused on the business, which is, moving boxes out of the warehouse.
“I didn’t come here to talk about Greengrass Potions or your marvellous muggle business development, Greengrass Botanicals. I really need some advice about dealing with old wizarding families.”
“Like the Greengrass family.”
“Yes, the Greengrass family, and the Malfoy family and all the other ‘Sacred 28’. Old feuds are getting in the way. Is there any way to get ‘Sacred 28’ families to ‘bury the hatchet’, and not in each other?”
“Ha! I wish there were. It’s the history that’s the problem. Muggles rewrite their history books all the time, and then ignore the whole lot if it’s not convenient. Not wizards! Ancient grievances are as fresh as the day they were made. Wizard contract law doesn’t help. Ancient contracts which we couldn’t escape made life hard for us before we were ruined. Now, with your help, we can leave that behind. All our supply contracts are short term. We have to renegotiate of course but that’s better by far.”
There was a brief silence. “For you personally, if you really want to change any issue, you have to dig out all the history, go back as far as you can, then see if you can fix the original problem. Muggles are able to say things like ‘Let it go’ and ‘Don’t dwell on the past’ but wizards won’t do that. The original problem has to be fixed.”
Olivia gave Leo the grand tour of the offices, the production facilities, and the warehouse. Leo met the staff who seemed to be most of the original Greengrass staff who were happy to come back. Leo was careful not to mention Daphne.
“There is something bothering you that you haven’t asked me about, my daughter Daphne.”
“Yes, Olivia, there is no keeping anything from you.”
“I didn’t use Legilimency. Daphne has talked about you a lot. She says things like ‘He’s like a Golden Retriever puppy, just so eager to please and harmless.’ You have impressed her like no other man has. Of course, she’s concerned about the Weasleys and the Malfoys. I have to tell you that the Astoria and Draco thing is going to happen. She knows how the Weasleys will react to a marriage. The Greengrass family will be ‘persona non grata’, only more than before. She doesn’t want to deal with that aspect of a relationship with you. It will drive a wedge between you and Harry, and have you cast out of the Weasley clan.”
Heavy cold feelings settled on Leo. “I’m sure you are being too pessimistic about that. You are not the first to talk about an ancient grievance being the cause of this. There seem to be a lot of records of historical wizarding events, is there any way of digging up what happened?”
Olivia paused before replying. “Each family keeps their own journals. Usually they are confidential. The old families keep their dirty work out of sight. They will be charmed to stop them from decaying and preserve the magical domain that gives the old curses their long life. The Malfoy family and the Weasley family have journals. Only the present head of each family will be able to read them. The Greengrass family has its journals. I will search them myself to see what I can turn up. It may take a while; they go back many centuries.”
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