Chapter 63: Chapter 63
"No, a thousand gold pieces. Galleons are quite a lot wider and thicker than your standard gp," Milo explained. "There's closer to six and a third gold pieces per galleon."
"So..." Harry said blankly.
"158 galleons, 12 sickles, and 12 knuts. Per week, that is."
Harry choked.
"Half that much again every day and I can make magic items, too."
"You know what? I don't even want to know," said Harry. Milo's hopes deflated. It looked like he'd be stuck here without any spells or magic items after all. "I'll write to Gringotts," Harry said, however. "I dunno exactly what the procedure is for transporting great heaps of gold halfway across Britain, but I'm sure the goblins will think of something."
Milo grinned.
"Thank you. I mean it. We're talking direct money-to-power translation, here. I'll pay you back in a few levels."
Milo climbed into his four-poster bed feeling like he was on top of the world.
o—o—o—o
"We have to kill Milo," Draco announced to Crabbe and Goyle Tuesday morning.
"Yeah boss, kill him!" said Crabbe.
"Sure boss, uh..." faltered Goyle.
"Try murder," Malfoy suggested wearily, "or dispatch."
"Sure boss, murder him!" said Goyle, who had never used the word dispatch before and was frightened to try.
o—o
"We have to kill Malfoy," Milo announced to his party Tuesday morning.
"Hear, hear!" Ron voiced his agreement. "S'what I've been saying for ages."
"Wait," said Harry slowly. "When you say kill..."
"What'd he do this time?" Hermione asked with a yawn.
o—o
"Thus summer, he broke into my father's summer home," said Malfoy imperiously, "and made off with the prototype Nimbus Two Thousand and One that Father had. It can't have been a random act of burglary because it was all done up like a regular Two Thousand—he'd have to have known it was there. I mean, how unlikely would it be that he just so happened to grab the one test Nimbus Two Thousand and One in all of England? There is only one possible conclusion," Malfoy paused dramatically.
o—o
"This Hallowe'en," Milo said theatrically, "he boasted about the Cuddly Cannons defeating the Wigtown Whatevers at that big game thing" (adventurers are notoriously bad about getting long names right) "admitting he was behind it. Now, I thought, 'what could a Quidditch match possibly have anything to do with anything?' when it hit me: the Nimbus Two Thousand. I grabbed one off a Death Eater once, and Harry got one in the mail, and thus it is on our list and therefore of relevance to the plot. The Cannons were all riding Nimbuses donated by Lucius Malfoy, who has connections to the Nimbus corporation. There is only one possible conclusion," Milo paused dramatically.
o—o
"Milo is working for Firebolt."
o—o
"Malfoy is working for the Dark Lord."
o—o
"What's Firebolt?" Crabbe asked, his forehead wrinkled in a gruesome imitation of human thought.
Malfoy sighed.
"A wreck of a broomstick manufacturer; everything they make is a total disaster. Remember? The guys who made the brooms the Wanderers were testing?"
Crabbe stared at Malfoy blankly.
"You're hopeless, Goyle," Malfoy muttered to Crabbe.
"Yeah, you're hopeless, Goyle," Goyle said to Crabbe.
"Yeah, I'm helpless, Crabbe," Crabbe said to Goyle.
"Anyways. The guys working for my father at Nimbus are the best in the world. The Two Thousand is only a few months old but it's already a hopeless antique compared to what they've got planned for the next one. Firebolt would kill to get their hands on it and learn its secrets. We can't let that happen."
o—o
"Seems a bit of a stretch, don't it?" Ron asked.
With a showy gesture, a massive chart appeared in the air behind Milo (in actuality, it was a Silent Image that Milo had cast several minutes prior and had been concentrating on it the whole time while his partymembers woke up. Yes, it would have been easier to just cast it then (or simply used a chart) but he felt this was more impressive).
There was a brief pause.
"Blimey," Ron said, though Milo had yet to figure out, exactly, what that word meant.
"What are we looking at?" Harry asked. Milo's hovering chart had a variety of names and events (such as Lucius Malfoy, Snape, the Stone, You-Know-Who, Poisoning and the Troll) written neatly, connected by lines and arrows of various colours.
"This," Milo explained, "is the plot. On the right are the villains in order of ascending level: Draco, who is Lucius' son and is working with his head of house, Snape; Snape, who is secretly the minion of Lucius Malfoy; Lucius who is an ex-Death Eater and loyal minion of You-Know-Who."
"Er," Hermione said cautiously. "What, exactly, do you mean by level?"
"Uh," Milo faltered. "Power. Importance. You know, the order in which we'll face them. Further left are the suspicious camps of unsorted villainy: the elves and their goblin servants, the Death Eaters, the Cuddly Cannons, and Fudge"
Ron and Harry were silent. Hermione simply sighed, shaking her head and muttering quietly to herself.
o—o
"So... what's Milo doing at Hogwarts, then?" Goyle asked. Malfoy shuddered inwardly at the amount of effort that sentence must have cost him.
"Isn't it obvious? Milo's here to secretly befriend Potter" (Malfoy said the last word with a contemptuous sneer) "who just so happened to get a Nimbus Two Thousand in the mail shortly after arriving here."
Crabbe and Goyle both blankly blinked back in unison.
"It's the prototype!" Malfoy shrieked at them. "Someone recently handed a perfectly ordinary-looking Two Thousand over to the DMLE in September and then days later Potter gets one in the mail and, with it, stunning new flying talents despite never having ridden a broomstick before. They've switched them! What else could explain Potter's little stunt with the Remembrall?"
"Maybe he's just really good at flying?" Crabbe suggested.
"Yeah boss, maybe he's just, despite his young age, so unbelievably talented at—"
"Shut up!" Malfoy commanded. "And then he just so happens to be allowed onto the Quidditch team despite being too young? It's all a conspiracy! McGonagall or someone somehow managed to get Milo's stolen broom from him and gave it to Potter so Gryffindor would have a chance at the cup. Then she went out and bought a Nimbus—I checked, they have it on record at Diagon Alley—and turned that in to the Ministry hoping nobody would notice."
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