HP: For a better world

"Change business?" Draco asked.

"Are you saying that I should just buy out their rights to engrave the crystal ball?" Draco had seen his father do this before. It was like when a newspaper published an article that was unfavorable to the Malfoy family, they would buy the article and not publish it - which was equivalent to paying the author hush money - to maintain public opinion in favor of the Malfoy family.

Winster answered in the affirmative.

"Oh——" Draco made a sound of enlightenment and accepted it very smoothly. Things that could be solved with money were nothing to the Malfoy family - as long as they were not deliberately made into suckers.

But he then raised a question: "Then how can I convince Weasley and the others to sit down and talk to me?"

Draco said anxiously, "I don't think it will be easy..."

"So I said we should destroy the master copy they burned first..." Winster lowered his voice and looked around.

"Do you have any idea?"

Draco also lowered his voice and asked quietly. He was surprised that someone was willing to help Winston do something in Gryffindor.

"Maybe there is some hope - wait for me, I'll go find the key person in this plan." Winster slipped out of the lounge.

Draco was amazed and began to think about who among the people who joined Winster's small club could do this... Longbottom? Impossible, Draco had never even thought of this.

After a while, Winster came back stealthily, holding a soft, furry thing in his arms - was it a cat?

It's Hermione's cat.

Winster was lucky enough to find Crookshanks wandering around the Potions Office not far from it. Last time when rats were rampant, the Potions Office was remembered by it as a place that produced a lot of rats and had high-quality rewards. From then on, this clever cat learned to sneak down from time to time to spy on things in Snape's office. Unfortunately, Snape did not always have dried catnip in his office.

Winster respectfully placed Crookshanks on the table.

"Emm..." Draco made a puzzled sound: "What can a cat do? Can it understand what we say?"

Winster glanced at him. "Crookshanks is different—he's a Kneazle."

Crookshanks gave Draco a disdainful shout with his persimmon-shaped face.

Since Black could let Crookshanks steal the note where Neville had written the password, it would be easy for Crookshanks to find someone.

Winster didn't say any of this. He shrugged indifferently and said, "Okay, if you don't believe it, you'll have to figure it out yourself." He stretched out a hand and scratched Crookshanks' ear.

Crookshanks purred comfortably.

Draco hesitated for a moment, then looked at Crookshanks who was squinting comfortably and glancing at him out of the corner of his eye.

"how should I do?"

"Just ask directly and learn from me - Respected Crookshanks..." Winster said to Crookshanks with his hands clasped together in a serious manner.

Draco followed suit half-doubtfully: "Dear Mr. Cat..."

"—and then you just tell it what you want, and whatever it can give will be fine."

"I'd like you to get me the Weasley twins' crystal ball--"

Winster interrupted him speechlessly: "Are you asking too much of a little kitten? How can it help you bring the crystal ball back? Push the crystal ball all the way from Gryffindor to Slytherin? You can imagine it."

Draco looked at Winster aggrievedly, thinking, "Didn't you ask me to make a wish to the cat?" He changed his words and said, "I hope you can help me break the crystal ball that the Weasley twins value most."

"Ahem." Winster reminded, "What are you going to give it?"

Crookshanks looked at Draco scrutinizingly, while still receiving Winston's ear scratching service.

Draco hesitated for a moment, then stuttered, "One, one month's worth of dried fish?"

Crookshanks meowed, flicked his tail, left Winston's arms, jumped to the ground, and ran out without looking back.

"?"

Draco looked at Crookshanks running away in confusion and asked, "Did it agree?"

"--I don't know." Winster shrugged readily.

"????" Draco's mind froze: "Are you kidding me?"

"How can you say that?" Winster said confidently, "I can't understand cats talking, so of course I can't be sure."

Draco couldn't take it anymore: "You want me to say that to a cat?!"

"I'm just saying that there might be some certainty." Winster said, then added: "But Crookshanks is really smart and can basically understand human language. It depends on whether the reward you give him can convince him."

......

Crookshanks jumped onto the windowsill. With his big tail wagging, he casually walked into Fred, George and Lee's dormitory. The dormitory was a mess, and Crookshanks swung his tail over the parcels, snacks and smelly socks piled up by Fred and George - those were probably Lee's or Fred's smelly socks.

The crystal ball was carefully placed on the bookshelf and the top of the cabinet. Crookshanks easily jumped up using the bed curtain and the step of the bookcase.

A push of the claws -

"Click." A crisp sound.

Crookshanks jumped off the bookcase easily and stepped on the edge of the windowsill to retreat successfully.

After a while, loud laughter came from outside the door. Fred pushed the door open and saw that the bright crystal ball on the bookcase had disappeared inexplicably. He hurried over to take a look and let out a miserable scream:

"No! My crystal ball!!!"

......

Fred was still wailing with a sad face. George was leaning on the side with a headache, and Lee was squatting on the ground holding a piece of crystal ball and looking back and forth to try to find out what caused the crystal ball to fall.

"I told you not to put the crystal ball so high - my heirloom..." Fred was still covering his face and mourning the loss of his crystal ball. This was one of the only two crystal balls without restrictions on reproduction. Fred and George had originally intended to keep it and pass it down as Malfoy's dark history.

"I told you to hide things under the bed," George said with a headache. "It must have been a crow or a cat. It's a good thing we put the original crystal ball under the bed."

He pushed aside the pile of prank props that looked like snacks but were actually carefully sorted, bent over, reached in and pulled out a dusty crystal ball from under the bed.

"Fortunately, we asked the house-elves not to clean our dormitories, otherwise some things would be lost." George said with relief, "Otherwise, this crystal ball would have been destroyed."

"My heirloom..." Fred was still wailing.

George kicked him with amusement: "Stop howling, brother. There are people outside waiting for us to make a replica of the crystal ball to buy it. Do you still want to make money and open a joke shop?"

"Wow..." Fred was still pretending to cry.

Knock, knock! There was a knock on the dormitory door.

"Come in!" George called out, raising his eyebrows.

"Excuse me, is this George and Fred's dormitory?" Hermione pushed open the door and asked politely. She saw the messy boys' dormitory, George and Fred.

"Hermione???"

Fred jumped up from the ground with an "ow" and awkwardly pushed and shoved with Lee to stand in front of the socks.

George turned around and coughed awkwardly, then asked, "Why are you here? I mean, this is the boys' dormitory."

"George? Fred?" Hermione saw the two of them: "I was looking for you." Her eyes slid across their messy dormitory, and she turned away at a loss, "Ahem, it's Winster." She said: "Winster asked me to look for you... He said that Malfoy wanted to talk to you about the crystal ball, he wanted to buy the replica crystal ball in your hands, and asked if you could meet - Winster asked me to tell you secretly that Malfoy's psychological bottom line is 500 Galleons..."

Fred and George looked at each other and cried out in unison:

"Where did this rich dog owner come from?!"

They looked at each other again and realized that it was the Malfoy family, and they cursed together.

"Four hundred gold Galleons? You are robbing me!" Draco was so angry that he almost overturned the table in front of him. "Three hundred at most, or I will tell my father to block your access to the crystal ball."

He threatened, "I haven't told my father yet. If he finds out, it won't be something you can just sell the crystal ball for. You also want to open a shop in Diagon Alley. My family also has an investment in the Hopping and Playing Magic Joke Shop. Even if you gather the money together, as long as my father agrees to give them or Zuko more investment, you know - at most three hundred!"

Fred and George exchanged a look.

Fred shrugged and said, "But our business is so prosperous now, and we can sell it outside Hogwarts in the future. If you want to buy it out in one go, I'm afraid this amount of money..."

"Sell it outside?" Draco chuckled, interrupting him and raising his chin as a matter of course: "Are you kidding? Apart from the school, who else is interested in this crystal ball? That is, in the school. If you can make money outside, someone would have secretly recorded it and pirated it. How are you going to make money?" He sneered: "With this little profit, I'm afraid you can't even make ten Galleons."

Draco had underestimated. Fred and his friends got a discount on the crystal balls, but it was still less than a hundred Galleons. Bagman lost the bet with them, but all he gave them were leprechaun gold coins, and after one night, all the money disappeared!

Now they were planning to write a letter telling him that they had made a mistake and asking Bagman to return the money, but they didn't know if it would work.

What Draco said was actually true. Fred and George only made money by taking advantage of the popularity, and most students had no intention of starting a business.

Even Fred and George suspected that the timing of the crystal ball breaking was a little too good.

"Then three hundred Galleons," George compromised.

Draco took out the money.

George handed over the crystal ball reluctantly after exchanging the money for the goods.

"Can we keep one that can't be reproduced as a souvenir?" Draco had spent money to buy most of the crystal balls in the school before coming. He couldn't force it too much. Draco still had some doubts about the reliability of the cat. If Weasley and the others didn't do the job after taking the money, Draco would have no choice.

"Okay," Draco said reluctantly, "You have to keep it for yourselves. If I find another recording from you out there, we'll be in trouble."

Winster leaned against the door and waited for them to finish talking, then walked in with Draco on his back.

The Weasleys were packing up, counting gold coins and chatting, but they all stopped when they saw Winster walk in.

Fred said sternly, "White? Thank you for the news. What are you doing here?"

With Malfoy's bottom line, their offers were basically aimed at making Draco most uncomfortable. Although it was still a bit far from the best result, they still felt very satisfied - after all, not everyone was as rich as Malfoy.

Winster was very interested in their prank props, and the Weasley twins' talent in magic tools was amazing. Although he had no intention of conquering them (they might not be willing to do so because of Ginny's memory), he still hoped to get involved - it would be even better if there were some inventions that were useful to Winster but that Weasley and the others didn't care about.