NOVEL WEB Chapter 14
Disclaimer: If you recognise it, surprise, I don't own it.
Chapter 14– Onto Bigger and Better.
Strolling down Diagon Alley, I take a moment just to enjoy the atmosphere and take in the surroundings. I look around as multiple kids run around having fun and using magical toys to mess about, their parents either chasing after them or ignoring them entirely and talking to their friends. I look around at the numerous Christmas decorations decorating the alley, or maybe it would be more accurate to say Yule Tide decorations since that is what most of the magical world celebrates, not Christmas.
It has been four months since I made the decision to go and deal with all of the victims, and now it is Christmas, and I have dealt with all of it. Admittedly it took me a lot less time than I thought it would take me at first, but within the magical world, travelling around is relatively easy, and most of my time was spent searching for the wizard's location. So getting to them was pretty easy.
All I had to do was visit a magical travel agency which acquired the pro keys and provided everything I might need while staying in the country I was going to, including maps, tips and multiple places to stay. They really had a good business.
And then, once I got into the country, there were numerous means of magical travel; I particularly liked magic carpets. Still, I mostly stuck to just using apparition as it was quicker and easier, and I didn't have to pay for it.
Finding the wizards was quite challenging, but I had all the memories of Gilderoy, who had adequately interviewed them to get their stories and then obliviated them. Using those memories, I gathered a lot of information about them and knew their names, where they lived at the time and even their lineage, which is quite an essential topic in the wizarding world. Thankfully most of them still stayed in the same place, but there were some that had moved on, and so I had to follow their trail and talk to multiple people to track them down.
But I managed to find all of them and just in four months. Once I found them, I properly scanned their memories and looked at all of them and saw for myself how their stories actually unfolded and who was the possible link to Dumbledore discovering my fraudery. There were actually two of the victims that were acquainted with Dumbledore.
I made sure to properly wipe their minds, so much so that they had never even seen my face before except for maybe on a newspaper or on one of my books. I cleaned up Gilderoy's old mess, and instead of the memories just being obliviated, I filled in the spaces and fabricated some memories so that there would be no suspicious gaps.
I didn't really do any sightseeing or anything since I wasn't there for that, and I had a goal in mind, plus I wanted to get my task done as soon as possible. So the first thing I usually did when I got into a new country was to find a local without Occlumency, usually a muggle if there were any nearby. I would go into their mind and copy all their knowledge of the language.
Of course, the copying thing didn't actually mean I had learnt a language, but it did mean I had the knowledge and information knocking around in my head. The more time I spent in the country interacting and talking to people, the more of that knowledge would assimilate and become my own.
I could explain it as if I took the ability of a blacksmith. I know when to strike the metal and what heat to melt it at, but I have never done it, and therefore my technique and strength would not be sufficient enough to perform at the same level as the original blacksmith.
And now, I am home, back in England, just in time for Christmas, and I even know a few more languages. With all that dealt with, all I have to do now is enjoy my life to the fullest, living it to the max. I no longer have to worry about being found out and my new life being cut to a stop before I can even start living it.
With this, Dumbledore will have no real reason to suspect me, and even if he does, there is no evidence, and I am completely different from the old Lockhart, who would have been caught under Dumbledore's watchful eye. But I can deal with all that and worry about it next year when I go to teach at Hogwarts if I ever do go there to be a professor since I might just stay away on the whole, maybe even go to a different continent.
Right now, it is time for me to enjoy my life, spend my nights with beautiful women and learn all the magic I can get my hands on. I spent quite a few Galleons in my time abroad, picking up multiple magical books from different countries. Thankfully I made sure to pick up the reading and writing knowledge of those countries as well from some helpful bystanders, though it will take me some time to properly integrate it.
And not only that, but I can even start to flesh out who I am as a person because I don't want to stay locked in this box called Gilderoy Lockhart. So now is my chance to reinvent myself and become someone awesome, someone better, better than the loser I was in my past life and better than the fraudulent Gilderoy was in this one. I will be someone strong and stubborn, and most of all, I will actually have accomplished the things I am acclaimed for.
And that will start with getting a source of income that doesn't rely on all of the books Gilderoy stole from people. I need to be self-made, or as much as I can possibly be right now. It is not that I have a problem with how that money was gained since I don't care about the methods at all, this is a dog-eat-dog world, but I do care that original Gil earned that, not me. Book writing isn't really my thing anyway; too much effort and work that could be much more fruitful when channelled into other things.
Though I am going to use the capital from those books to make my own money, you have to spend money to make money after all, and I don't much care about the methods, so I know exactly what I am going to do. So, walking down Diagon Alley with a goal in mind, I ignore all the weird, wonderful things happening in the alley, with kids pulling over-the-top magical pranks and the decorations themselves that are bright, colourful distractions, but none of it dissuades me from my destination.
I dispel my magical disguise just before the entrance, and then I walk through the magic door and into the foyer of Gringotts. I watch as multiple witches and wizards go about their day sorting out their financial needs, more often than not, with a frown on their faces. No doubt their frowns are caused by the little foul-mouthed sharp-clawed beings that stand behind podiums and look down on the wizards that are waiting in line, no doubt some kind of ego boost.
I quickly walk up and join one of the short queues, not wanting to spend all day here. All of my interactions with the goblins that I have had so far have been entirely unpleasant, mainly because, first, they ignore you for however long they want while working behind their podiums, forcing you to call out for them. And even then, the most spiteful ones will ignore you more often than not. Finally, it is only when you are about to leave that they will turn to look at you.
They are condescending with insidious forked tongues and speak down to you and take advantage of you in ten different ways before you even realise one, and most of all, they act like we are the disgusting creatures. These goblins that apparently lost to the wizards in all the little wars they have had are now running the only magical bank in Britain with a monopoly on all the money in the land. So it certainly doesn't seem like they are the ones who lost.
If I were to ever be put in a leadership position in Britain one day, I would take drastic action. Aside from taking care of the urgent problems such as Death Eaters and Voldemort, I would be putting most of my resources forward to cutting these things down to size and lessening the hold they have on our community. Not only are Goblins untrustworthy, but they are greedy as well, a bad combination, especially when they are practically in control of all the finance in Britain.
Perhaps I would do away with them entirely, maybe make a kind of magical virus that only targets Goblins or something. Do a complete genocide on the species and get rid of them as a whole since I really don't see what they contribute to this world, except maybe their forging and their goblin silver. But, on the other hand, I suppose I could keep a couple of them around and mess around with their brains and biology to make them loyal and better-looking workers. Anything is possible with magic, after all.
"Yes, what do you need?" A grating voice breaks me from my daydreams and illusions of grandeur, bringing me into the here and now, where I have apparently moved to the front of the line, and a Goblin is looking down on me apathetically and waiting for me to speak my reason for being here.
"Ah, yes. I would like to enquire about all possible business opportunities and investments that Gringotts currently offers since I have recently had a windfall of Galleons. I would also like to know if you have any involvement with business and investments on the muggle side of things and if you have any connections there that you can offer me." I speak my intentions clearly and concisely.
Getting everything out in one go to waste the least time possible since Goblins do not like wasting time when they could be making money. I even mentioned having a lot of Galleons as an enticement to respond positively to my query, even if the Goblin does so, just to try and dupe me out of it.
"Hmph." The Goblin snorts derisively, giving me the inkling that this conversation will not turn out as I hoped. "Gringotts Bank does not offer any other service than providing a safe, secure location to store any and all of your wealth. Though if you are willing to pay the proper amount, we do offer other services though none to do with the business of investment. We can, however, give you a loan to help you start a business. As for your other request, Gringotts Bank has not interacted with the muggles or any of their companies since 1817."
Alright, well, shit. To be honest, I didn't have much information about Gringotts as a whole other than it was a bank that stored the money of the wizarding world. And that they did expeditions to tombs and other lands with human curse breakers, and that was all the old Gilderoy knew about it as well.
For some reason, I let the fanfiction and stuff cloud my brain and actually bought into it a bit. I don't claim to be the best knowledge-wise on the Potter-verse before I came here, but Gringotts being much more than a bank was so prevalent in the fanfiction that I kind of just believed it and took it as fact, something I will not be doing again.
"...1817?" I ask after a moment, surprised that they did actually have some business involvement with the muggle side of things, at least nearly two centuries ago, but for some reason, they stopped it. I am curious why, if there is some reason that magical people can't do business on the muggle side, maybe the Queen/Monarchy prevents wizards from doing business and taking advantage of people or something like that.
"In 1817, the stupid muggles stopped using gold as a currency and switched to inferior forms of money. They started to use lesser minerals and metals for their coins, and just recently, they have even idiotically begun to use paper, something that has no value at all. Good solid hard gold is the best currency and the only currency we will deal in. We no longer do business with those brain-dead things, and you should also stay away from their idiotic tendencies." The Goblin starts to go on a bit of a tirade, clearly angry about it.
Feeling that the conversation had come to an end, I immediately got out of line and started to move to leave the building, so I could figure out my next move. I thought perhaps there was some danger behind the reason Goblins stopped interacting with the muggle world when they were such greedy and money-grubbing beings. But it was purely because they stopped using gold, and Goblins care more about actual value than a value that has been assigned, so of course, they are not going to deal with paper.
They probably only do the money exchange things because it is legally required by the ministry to let muggle-borns buy and afford things in the magical world, and they probably exchange way more per Galleon than each Galleon is worth in its weight in gold.
Anyway, now that I know I can't use the goblins or Gringotts as the middleman for doing business in the muggle world, I will have to go and do it myself, manually.
So if it wasn't already obvious, my plan is to start investing in all the companies and businesses now that are just starting up or haven't even been created yet, and then I will just watch the money roll in. Wanting to do some research to see which companies exist right now, which have existed for a while and which have not yet been created. Right now, I have my eyes on investing heavily in two particular companies, with a lot more to come in the future.
The first is Five Guys, the gourmet burger restaurant which was actually founded in 1986 by a group of 'five guys' in Arlington County, Virginia. At this moment in time, Five Guys are still just an American chain with a few stores in a few states. I am going to invest to the point of being a significant shareholder and begin franchising its business model and investing a lot of money to have it become international, way ahead of its time. Mcdonalds, by this point, is already established and profitable, so I will make my own better franchise.
Next is Vodafone. The British mobile telecoms firm just came into being this year following the demerger of Racal Electronics. I remember that Vodafone was quite a giant in my time and was one of the planet's leading mobile phone companies, expanding to a number of countries worldwide. But I won't just be investing in these two; I will be investing in many more.
With the use of mind magic on my side, I will find it easy to go out there and use my abilities to influence the minds of a few people and make them agreeable to selling me some of their shares and percentages for a fair price, of course. I only plan to take a small part of each shareholder's share, enough so that I have quite the amount but not enough that I will actually have any input in the company, and I can just watch the money roll in.
The sorts of companies that I plan to use this method with are Coca-Cola, Sony, H&M, 20th Century Fox Television, Mcdonald's, McCain, Walmart, Nike, Intel, Starbucks, Microsoft and Apple. These companies will stay around and at the pinnacle of their market for decades to come, and I will be quietly collecting some of the profits as the years go by.
And as the years go by, I will continue to invest in these companies if needed and keep maintaining the same position I have in these companies. Aside from that, I will invest when other famous companies start up, such as Amazon, eBay, Netflix, Google and any other companies that pop up that I know for a fact will do well in the future.
But for me to do this, I need a muggle identity, and luckily for me, I actually technically grew up in the muggle world since Gilderoy lived with his witch mother, his muggle father and his two squib sisters. He went to a muggle primary school, and then after that, he went to Hogwarts, so I have all the documentation and papers for my muggle identity, except it just stops at eleven years old.
Thankfully Britain isn't that bothered about keeping its records neat and orderly in this decade, so it isn't hard to just come back and resume the identity. But, of course, I do have to go around and add some new documents, such as a driver's license, some qualifications and degrees, and all of that shouldn't be too hard to do with my mind magic at my disposal.
So now is the time to go out and do all those things, sort out my papers and start investing in those companies.
Well, that was easy. I just went out in a magical disguise that was basically just myself with a few differences here, and they're just so no one from the magical world would recognise me, but so that my features would match what I had as a child, blonde hair, blue eyes and fair skin. So I got myself all the documentation I needed, went and found some people who would have been in my year and altered their memories to include me, as well as the teachers.
I went out and took a severe amount of Galleons out of my vault. I only paid the Goblins for the vault, and they had no clue what was inside, so I took a hefty amount and left with it. I then disguised myself as a muggle-born and went to exchange the Galleons for British Pounds, and I obviously got scammed.
The conversation of Pounds to Galleons is way more than the conversion from Galleons to pounds, the Goblins obviously being crafty bastards and making money hand over fist. I didn't care because even if the amount was lowered, it was still a significant amount. It also helped that I changed my disguise every time and exchanged my funds in several different transactions, and I wasn't caught out since I was doing it at the Gringotts money exchange building and not at the actual bank.
Then I went and did my little mind magic trick and opened a bank account and invested in the companies I mentioned earlier, having to search out some of the big wigs in those companies and use my magic on them. Then, of course, there were a few more things that needed to be done and a few complications, but it was all sorted with some help from a few experts.
And now, here I am in my muggle Gilderoy disguise, having a drink at a local muggle bar after a hard day of work. Man, does alcohol have a serious kick, and yet it is so addicting. I am glad I already have Lockhart's resistance and familiarity with the drink since this is my first time drinking, and I am enjoying it heavily.
I am here to celebrate my first successful day of being a businessman, and everybody knows that being a businessman consists of being a piece of shit that takes advantage and cons people out of their money by any means necessary. And you know what, the perfect thing to go with this drink would be some friendly female company.
I quickly turn around from where I am sitting at the bar and promptly take a glance around the room, scoping the room and looking around for any women that catch my eye. And I quickly zoom in on a pair of girls in the corner of the bar, sitting at a booth quietly enjoying themselves in the corner. Then, noticing that their drinks are empty and they are still sitting there, I pick up my drink and start walking over, planning to pay for their next drink.
Admittedly my eye is only on one of the girls over there, that is a buxom blonde with a curvy waist and a beautiful face. In comparison, her friend is a chubby brunette girl that's presence is really diminished in the shine of her friend's radiance. Neither of them seems to notice my approach since they are lost in conversation, and they only look up when I finally reach their booth and start to talk, drink still in hand.
"Hello, how are you two lovely ladies this fine evening?" I open my mouth and say, smiling charmingly at them both, the line having naturally left my mouth, having memories of Gilderoy saying the same thing to countless fetching witches. I make sure to address both of them since the blonde seems to be very good friends with the chubby girl, and she most likely wouldn't give me the time of day if I completely ignored her friend.
"Ah, we are good, thank you. Is there something that you wanted?" The confident blonde replied after a moment, the brunette noticeably quieting down and becoming timid when she noticed me. Again, I look at the blonde, and again I flash my smile, having used it numerous times in the past to charm many witches.
"Ah, well, you see, I was just sitting at the bar, and I couldn't help but notice you over here, and so I was wondering if I could buy you both a drink and get to know you better." I say, completely expecting her to accept and for my night to unfold perfectly and wake up the following day with the blonde in my arms, which is why I am completely flabbergasted that the exact opposite happens.
"Oh, sorry, but we are having a girl's night out tonight, away from our boyfriends. We are actually about to go and meet our other friends now, but thanks for the offer." Saying so, she moves to stand up, grabbing her purse, and her friend quickly follows her lead and gets up as well. Shocked since I have countless memories of that working, I blank out for a second, but when I see the gorgeous blonde walking past me, I quickly do a quick mind scan, not wanting to lose the chance that was before me.
Getting a quick read of her surface thoughts, I am barraged by feelings of anger, annoyance and disgust that are directed at me. Confused as to why she would have these emotions, I quickly delve in deeper into her mind, and she has no protection to stop me being just a muggle.
And I quickly learn that she sees me as some sleaze that is trying to get into her pants on account of my crappy line and wandering eyes. She thinks I am just pretending to be nice to her friend, faking it. She was angry and annoyed because I had just interrupted her time with her friend, and she knew I would continue to hound them if they stayed here, so she lied about having a girl's night out and went to leave.
I let them go, quickly taking a seat at the now evacuated booth and having a revelation, an epiphany.
I was just a sixteen-year-old loser that had never really talked to a girl and certainly didn't have any experience flirting or dating. I was completely clueless and was not at all suave, but I thought since I came here and took over Lockhart and took his memories that, I had become a ladies' man, and the proof was there when I had continuously slept with loads of witches.
Except, now I realise that is entirely untrue. I wasn't suave. I wasn't a ladies' man though I did have confidence, a fool's confidence. All those witches I slept with and all the ones in Gilderoy's memory are his fans. They slept with him because of his fame and money, and that was all. Fame and money that was all based on lies and fraud, and they ate it all up like stupid sheep. So I have been fucking sheep.
Well, no more. I am actually going to start going after women with some substance, women with personalities and traits that I like. But to do that, I will have to become more confident and experienced when it comes to women, and I can't do that in the wizarding world where I am famous.
Starting now, I am going to begin prowling the streets of London and going to various places to start meeting with women and gaining more experience. And I am sure my Legilimency will help me to know what they want, just to aid me in my endeavours.
Starting now, Gilderoy Lockhart is starting his crusade as a womaniser, with a goal to bed all the hottest women in the wizarding world. Whether they are married or not, whether they are batshit crazy and locked up in Azkaban and even if they are dead at the current moment.
I will find a way to live out my fantasies. Otherwise, what is the point of this second chance?