Novel Full Chapter 320: Big People, Small People [bonus]
Chapter 320: Chapter 320: Big People, Small People [bonus]
This one was thinner. He turned it over to look at the crest in the wax. A bird with its wings spread, talons clutching a sprig of herb.
Bobbins’ Herb and Potion Shop. He knew this one.
North end of Diagon Alley, a small front, open four or five decades, an old name, herbs and basic potions mostly, high volume and low price, the clientele students and ordinary families.
He’d bought raw materials there, and once tried asking whether they’d take his own potions on consignment.
The owner was a witch in her fifties, surname Bobbins.
She’d looked over the samples he brought, her face showing a flicker of surprise, but in the end she’d shaken her head.
"You’re still in school, child. Come try me when you’ve finished. I’ll have need of a potioneer."
That was the first time a proper commercial channel had turned him down, but the reason given had been his age, not his ability.
She’d seen his level. She’d left a line for the future. She just wouldn’t take his goods.
And now this shop had written to him too.
He opened it. The contents ran parallel in structure, cooperation options again, but the terms were plainly different.
Option One, Independent Supply:
You provide finished potions on your own. Our shop provides shelf display and sales channel. Raw materials are procured by you. Pricing of finished goods is set by our shop according to market conditions. The shop takes twenty-five percent of sales as shelf and channel fee. Quality standards are set by the shop’s inspection; goods that fail are returned and charged an inspection fee of two Knuts per instance.
Option Two, Long-Term Profit-Sharing:
The two parties establish a relationship. Our shop issues purchase orders quarterly. Raw materials are procured by you. Once goods are sold, revenue is split sixty percent to the shop and forty percent to you, the term running by the quarter, settled at the end of each quarter.
No commissioned-brewing clause. Bobbins offered no materials, so every cost fell on Snape. No material advance meant he had to lay out his own coin to buy the raw stock.
The shelf fee, twenty-five percent, ran ten points above Silvermoon’s fifteen.
The split, sixty to forty, came five points under Silvermoon’s fifty-five to forty-five.
Failed goods returned with an inspection fee on top, where Silvermoon charged none.
Harsher terms, worse treatment. All of it ordinary enough.
Bobbins ran her own shop, no great family behind her, a different cost structure, so naturally the terms she offered fell short of what a Black-owned holding could afford.
But the two letters had come at the same moment. Plain enough that both were Black’s doing.
And Bobbins, who’d turned him down flat last time, told him to come back after he’d graduated, why the sudden change of mind?
Someone had had a word.
Snape laid the two letters side by side and understood what Black meant.
Two choices. Choose Silvermoon, and that was playing his hand face up.
That was a Black holding. Hang his potions there, his shoulder runes, his personal mark, and everyone who came through that shop would see it.
A third-year half-blood, his potions on a Black family shelf, and the meaning of that, once it got around, he understood clearly.
He could picture certain faces. Some would laugh at him.
Snape, that pauper, brewing for the Blacks now.
But others would see something else.
To make potions of commercial grade at this age was not a thing any student could do, and most grown wizards couldn’t either.
Potioneer was no title hung on just anyone in the wizarding world. To stock a proper shop meant his craft had passed the test of the market, with a price, a quality standard, returning custom.
The name would build slowly. The recognition would come. The standing would follow.
But choose Silvermoon, and it announced to everyone that he’d picked a side, hung the Black label on himself.
Lina Costa and Samuel Vance had it better than before.
Since those two half-bloods had taken Black’s protection, their lot had plainly improved, no longer shoved around at Hogwarts, people stepping aside for them, people coming up to talk to them.
And the cost?
The cost had already been dealt with.
The only harm done had fallen on him instead. His hospital stay, the potions he’d drunk himself, the whole thing carried on his own back.
His face darkened.
The other choice. Bobbins.
Worse terms, higher fees, a smaller cut, everything left to him.
But no open tie to the Black family.
His potions on Bobbins’ shelf, that he could explain to anyone. I found the channel myself, I got on the shelf on my own merit, it has nothing to do with anyone.
Black’s meaning was clear. The return had been given, and how he chose was his own affair.
Choose Black, and there was protection, resources, better terms, the price being the label stuck on him.
Choose Bobbins, independent and clean, but harsh terms, everything on himself.
Either was open to him. The only difference was whether he was willing to let people know he had any connection to Black.
Black, arranging it this way, giving two choices, looked like he was thinking of him. You don’t want to be bound, so I leave you a way out.
But turn it round and look again.
The terms lay bare. Silvermoon’s far better, Bobbins’ far worse.
The two letters arriving together meant the moment he opened them he could compare, and one comparison told him which paid.
That brooding mind of his turned it over. Was Black just waiting to watch him fret over this little gain?
To Black, these things might be nothing at all, a careless arrangement, have the family shop send a cooperation letter, have someone drop a word with Bobbins, then post the two together.
Black had likely forgotten it the moment it was done and turned his mind to something else.
But he would lie awake over it, weigh it this way and that.
A big man’s idle arrangement, a small man’s entire Christmas.
The corner of Snape’s mouth twisted.
He wanted to choose the one on the right. But he knew well enough that the one on the right had come to him at all was no doing of his own.
Then another thing came to him. Lestrange.
If he chose Silvermoon now, hung his name on a Black family shelf, his connection to Black would be out in the open.
If Lestrange’s people went digging, if Rabastan came round to it and traced the thread back here, he could be exposed.
So for now he couldn’t choose it.
Not until he understood how things stood with Lestrange could he show his tie to Black.
And Bobbins?
No hurry there either.
Snape laid the two letters face down on the desk, pressed them flat with his palm, and stared out the window a while, lost.
The two owls still crouched on the sill. The gray Barn Owl cocked its head, its yellow eyes fixed on him.
They were waiting for food.
He glanced at the half cup of cold water and the bread crumbs on the table. I can’t even feed myself.
A flush of humiliation shot down from his chest, a sting in it, pricking once, turning to a sour shame.
He waved a hand, the motion stiff, like shooing a fly.
"Off."
The Barn Owl gave a low note and flapped down off the sill, its cry short and sharp, like a jeer.
The long-eared owl hopped after it, flew out the other side, called once, the note drawn long and hoarse, bending at the end, as though saying something unkind.
The two of them squeezed out through the gap in the window one behind the other, wings scraping the frame, and flapped away into the distance.
Snape stood behind the glass and watched the two owls shrink to white specks and vanish into the gray sky low over Spinner’s End.
He raised his head and looked at the two letters on the desk.
The lily swayed once more in its bottle.
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