Hogwarts: From Selling White Peppers to Becoming a God

Chapter 15 We're Going Bankrupt

"Your job mainly consists of two things. First, you need to concoct beauty potions. Make as many as you can, and I'll pay you based on the amount of each potion you make."

"Although your fixed monthly salary is 60 Gallons, you can earn far more than that."

As a competent boss, Murphy is now extremely adept at making empty promises.

This job sounds fantastic! Alex nodded vigorously. "I'll do my best!"

"Very good, the second task. This bag is full of medicinal herbs, some of which are Dictamnus dasycarpus, and some are other herbs. You need to crush and mix all the herbs in this bag together, crushing them into powder so that no one can tell the raw materials at all."

"After mixing, put everything into cloth bags, pack them up and pile them in this barn. Someone will haul away the mixed powder every Monday."

"Once these materials are taken away, you should go and purchase potion ingredients. The most important is White Pepper, followed by the raw materials for the Beauty Potion. I'll make a list of the other potion ingredients for you later. Buy as many of these materials as Diagon Alley has."

"Someone will bring over some other herbs on Monday afternoon. You need to mix the white peony root you bought with those herbs and then crush them."

"Crush, mix, pack, wait for them to be picked up, then buy more materials, crush, mix, pack... and keep repeating the cycle. This is your most important job. Do you understand?"

Alex nodded blankly.

"What's wrong? Is there a problem?"

Alex hesitated for a moment, "The money for the potion..."

"I will give you a gallon every week, so you won't have to pay out of pocket."

Alex breathed a sigh of relief, seemingly having learned his lesson in this area before.

"One more thing, Mr. Peter Parker, is there a fireplace here?"

"fireplace?"

"Well... I need to use the Floo Network to get to Diagon Alley..."

Murphy paused, taken aback. "You can't Apparate?"

"I haven't gotten my license yet," Alex said, sounding a little embarrassed. "I'm afraid I'll get dismembered..."

"Useless..." Murphy sighed.

Alex looked aggrieved. "I... I can take the Knight Bus to work here..."

"...Alright, I forgot to mention earlier that the work I asked you to do needs to be kept secret. My identity, this barn, what you're going to do with the materials you bought—all of that needs to be kept secret. You can't tell any wizard, understand?"

"A bus rider... tsk, never mind, I'll make you a door key later."

"Ugh, my head hurts."

Murphy sighed; wizards were truly useless.

But thinking about it, it's actually quite normal; not everyone in Muggle society can drive a car or fly a plane.

With Floo Networks being so prevalent in the magical world, ordinary wizards have no need to use risky travel methods like Apparition.

It is actually used more by dark wizards, or by Aurors who fight against dark wizards.

"Oh, right." Thinking of the dark wizard, Murphy felt he needed to remind him, "Be careful when you buy potions."

The first two times he went to buy materials, he had a vague feeling that someone was watching him.

However, it's normal to attract attention when you're buying tens of thousands of gallons at once.

"Showing off your wealth might attract attention, so be careful. It's best to buy the ingredients under a different identity. Do you know how to make compound decoctions? Keep some on hand. In short, don't wander around after you buy anything; come back quickly."

Alex was already feeling uneasy.

"Mr. Parker, I... can I think about it some more..."

"Monthly salary: 80 Galleons"

Alex is fine.

"Then let's start working today. There's quite a lot of material in this bag..." Murphy said, suddenly feeling a vibration in his waist, followed by a ringing sound like an alarm clock.

He paused for a moment before taking out the mobile phone from another seamless stretch pocket at his waist.

This thing doesn't have caller ID, but Murphy guesses it was Patrick calling.

Sure enough, after the call connected, Patrick's voice came through, "Hello, hello, boss? Can you hear me?"

"I can hear you, what's wrong?"

"It's hard to explain over the phone, why don't you come over first?"

"Okay, I'll be right there."

"Wait, you're not planning to come to my house, are you?" Patrick said. "Come to my office. We just rented an entire floor in Lloyd's Building. The address is..."

Murphy was somewhat embarrassed. As the founder and boss, he hadn't even found out his company's address until the move was completely finished.

After hanging up the phone, Murphy prepared to leave. He thought for a moment, then took out a pen, wrote down his mobile phone number, and handed it to Alex. "You know how to use a public phone, right? Call me if you need anything. The owl is just too slow."

Alex stared blankly as Murphy spoke to someone through a black blob, took the note blankly, and watched Murphy leave blankly. He felt as if he had encountered too many things today, and his brain was not enough to process them all.

However, thinking about his monthly salary of 80 Galleons, Alex became happy again.

Mr. Peter Parker is a good man!

We need to work hard!

He opened the bag Murphy had given him and began to pour out the medicinal herbs inside.

Various kinds of herbs kept gushing out of the bag. At first, Alex remained calm, after all, the other party had hired him to handle the herbs, so there must be a lot of them.

But a few minutes later, Alex became somewhat unsettled.

That doesn't make sense, it must weigh several thousand pounds, right?

Murphy didn't just buy magical materials; he also bought a large quantity of Muggle herbs to make up the difference. Compared to the former, the latter was the main component of the herbs.

When the bag was finally emptied, Alex looked at the mountain of medicinal herbs and felt his vision go black.

He felt he had never seen so many medicinal herbs in his life!

How long will it take to process this?

A monthly salary of 80 Galleons is indeed not so easy to earn.

Mr. Peter Parker might be a devil!

……

Meanwhile, Murphy Phantom teleported to central London and then took a taxi to Lloyd's Building.

Murphy was stunned when he saw the metal building in front of him.

This is not a skyscraper, it is less than 100 meters tall, but its exterior is entirely wrapped in steel, huge pipes run through the entire building, metal open-air staircases and large glass curtain walls make this building look as if it should have appeared in 2187 rather than 1987.

"cool!"

That's fucking cool!

After taking the elevator to the 10th floor, Murphy saw Patrick and gave him a thumbs up.

"Alright, you've got good taste!"

Patrick was both amused and exasperated. "Even though you're the boss, my son is almost as old as you, you know."

"If you're referring to this building, I think it aligns well with the technological vision you're aiming for. However, we can only afford to rent this one floor right now. After deducting expenses for staff, office equipment, and so on, we're out of money and even owe the bank some money."

"What's there to be afraid of?" Murphy waved his hand dismissively. "Everyone has their own talents, and even if you spend all your money, it will come back. Go ahead and spend! If you go bankrupt, then you're something else."

With a bunch of magical potions that can completely overwhelm Muggles, how could I possibly be short of money?

At worst, the speed of monetization in the early stages won't be fast enough, but that doesn't matter. We can always find another blind rich person to beg for alms.

Murphy had absolutely no qualms about taking capitalists' money to develop productivity.

Patrick gave a wry smile, "No need to build any more, we're almost bankrupt."

"Um?"

(End of this chapter)