Study Days at Hogwarts

  Chapter 861 Civilized debt collection

  There are more magazine offices on the south side of Diagon Alley, and the office of the new magazine "Defense Guide" is here.

At this moment, Remus Lupine, the new editor-in-chief of "Defense Guide", is checking the recent development plan. He put down the parchment, picked up the black tea and tasted it slowly, and his eyes fell on the shop diagonally opposite. The offices of the Daily News, next to it is the Whiz Harder Book Company.

  Compared with the two famous companies opposite, their newly opened magazines are very shabby, and many things are still in the initial stage.

   Opposite Lupin, Sirius was sitting on a chair with his legs crossed, reading the latest issue of the "Daily Prophet", paying no attention to the current dire situation of his magazine.

   It has been almost a month since the "Defense Guide" was launched. Although the situation is much better than Lupine expected, it is still in a loss situation, and this situation may last for a long time.

   This made Lupine very distressed. He knew that "Defense Guide" was started by Sirius in order to get a job for himself.

   At this moment, an owl flew in from the reserved window, threw the envelope into the letter box, and flapped its wings to fly away.

   "A letter from Albert?" Sirius asked without looking up.

"No, it's a letter from Mr. Jordan. I probably want to discuss with you how to ask Mr. Bagman for money." Lupine opened the mailbox, took out the letter he had just received, glanced at the sender, and placed it on Sirius on the desk in front of you.

   "That guy hasn't decided to give up yet. It seems that Bagman is really disgusted." Sirius smiled and put down the newspaper, not caring at all that Bagman owed him several thousand Galleons.

"A total of 145 copies of "Defense Guide" were sold this month." Lupine pulled out the parchment from his desk and said to himself, "Fifty of them were given away for free, so In fact, only ninety-five copies were sold, and twelve of them ordered for four months, and by the end of this month, I'm afraid it will not be able to sell two hundred copies."

It's no wonder that Lupine smiled helplessly. The price of a copy of "Defense Guide" is as high as 10 Sikes, but after deducting the printing fee, discount fee, owl mailing fee and other messy sundry expenses, this month is completely operating at a loss, and the small Sirius actually planned to offer him a good salary, but in the end Lupine refused, but the situation is still not optimistic, because the house they are using now also needs to pay rent, and it is very difficult for Lupine to continue to operate at a loss at the current rate. Doubt the Defense Guide will last a year.

"Don't worry, hasn't Albert prepared several sales plans for us? I think his idea is quite good. Operating at a loss is only temporary. In his words, we need to make our reputation first." Sirius put his legs down and comforted him: "As long as the sales of the magazine go up, we can rely on the magazine's advertisements to make money, and I suspect that Albert never expected the sales of "Defense Guide" to make him money from the beginning, that guy Very shrewd, I will definitely not trade at a loss, there should be another purpose."

   "There is another purpose." Lupine couldn't think of Albert's purpose, "Does Albert want to sell magazines to Hogwarts students?"

  Lupine didn't think Hogwarts students had the money to buy them, and 10 cents a piece wasn't cheap.

   All he sees now is losing money and wasting a lot of energy. If the "Defense Guide" fails to improve, Sirius may lose a lot of Galleons.

"You don't have to worry about these things." Sirius threw the finished letter paper on the table and said to Lupine with a smile, "I'm going out for a while, our Mr. Jordan is planning to siege Bagman for debt collection." , intending to try to get back the suppressed principal from Bagman."

   "Isn't Bagman out of money?" Lupine was well aware of Bagman's situation. After the goblin took all the gold coins of this unlucky guy to pay off his debts, it was difficult to find another Galleon in his pocket.

"Ludo Bagman is indeed out of money now, but it doesn't mean that he will have no money in the future, and everyone just wants to get back their principal." Sirius curled his lips. He suspected that this matter had something to do with AI. Bert related.

   Of course, this is just a guess.

   When Sirius went to the meeting place, he found that the number of wizards who had been tricked by Ludo Bagman was really quite a lot, and there were eleven of them.

   Sirius also found Arthur's son in the crowd.

"Okay everyone, let me tell you about our situation and the next goal." Mr. Jordan, as the initiator of the debt collection group, took the lead to stand up: "As we all know, Mr. Bagman's Garen was snatched by the goblin , we don’t even have a gallon on us, so... we can’t expect Mr. Bagman to return us the principal now. However, just because he has no money now doesn’t mean he won’t have money in the future. We can wait five years, or even ten years Anyway, Mr. Bagman can't let our principal go away."

   "That guy is the director of the Department of Magical Sports and Sports, and his salary is quite a lot every month. Use his salary to pay off the debt." Someone shouted.

  Everyone thought it was a good idea.

   "That's right, we don't expect Mr. Bagman to pay back the money in one go, but it's not bad to take some Galleons from his salary to pay back the money." Mr. Jordan is very satisfied with this.

   "Will this be too lenient to him?" A fat witch said angrily.

   "Besides, we don't have that much time to stare at him." Percy reminded, frowning. "Five years? Ten years? We can't waste time on Bagman just because of this."

   "Maybe, we should report Bagman's actions to the Ministry of Magic." A semi-bald wizard suggested.

   "This is a private gamble and is not protected by the Ministry of Magic's laws." Percy shook his head and said, if he could really get money this way, he would have done that a long time ago, so how could he waste time discussing countermeasures with everyone here.

   "Also, there is another question, how are you going to make sure that **** is willing to pay back the money?" Sirius, who had been silent until now, also raised his own question.

   No matter how nicely they say it now, it's meaningless if they can't make sure that Bagman pays back the money.

   "I naturally thought of this, we can use this thing!" Mr. Jordan took out a piece of parchment that was already written on from the pocket of his robe.

   "Magic contract." He excitedly introduced to everyone, "Within ten years, as long as Bagman repays the money as agreed, the magic contract will be automatically terminated, and we will let him go."

   "It's impossible!" the fat woman screamed. "Bagman defrauded little Agatha Timms of half of the stocks in the eel farm. How could he have no money? If not, we will use violence to take all valuables directly from him as compensation."

   "It's illegal to do that," Mr. Jordan reminded.

   "Isn't the thing in your hand illegal?" Sirius couldn't help laughing.

   "This is a settlement agreement." Mr. Jordan shrugged and explained, and he didn't know how thick his skin was to say such a thing with confidence.

   "Everyone, I must remind you that Bagman owes us money, but he can't pay it back, and he doesn't want to pay it back, so what we should do now is to stop the loss in time, instead of getting nothing at that time."

   "What if Bagman reneges on his account?" Someone continued to ask.

"If Bagman really dares to renege on his debt, then he will probably become the most unlucky wizard in the world." Mr. Jordan cracked his mouth and showed a malicious smile: "Besides, as long as we sign a settlement agreement, we can pass this agreement." A contract to locate Mr. Bagman's specific location at any time. If Mr. Bagman dares to run away, we will sell his position to the goblin who can't find him, and we can earn some Galleons from the goblin to make up for it. Everyone’s loss, and as the price of default, Mr. Bagman will always be entangled by goblins. At least for ten years, he will never want to get rid of those goblins’ debt collection.”

   "Very well, I have no objection, just follow your plan, that **** must pay for what he did."

   Having said that, Bagman really owed a lot of people to Garen.

   There are seventeen people in the settlement agreement, but some people are owed a limited number of galleons.

  The first place is the fat woman, the second is Blake, and the third is Jordan. The sum of zeros and zeros behind is about 3,000 Galleons.

  If you count Garen who won the bet, it would probably be multiplied several times.

   "I have a question. According to your magic contract, you can only recover a maximum of 2400 Galleons within ten years. What about the insufficient part?" The fat woman asked Mr. Jordan.

   "The few of us who are owed the most can get less." Mr. Jordan said without thinking, "Or deducted according to the ratio."

"I have no opinion."

"No comment."

   The fat woman seemed to want to say something, but was interrupted by Mr. Jordan, "Get Garon from Mr. Bagman first."

  Sirius couldn't help curling his lips, a little looking down on the stupid woman in front of him. This group of people planned to use the advantage of numbers to force Bagman to compromise and sign the contract.

In fact, many wizards who were owed and deceived by Bagman gathered here, not all of them came to ask Bagman for money. They all knew about that guy, and they also knew that even if they found Bagman, they would not be able to get Garen back, but Bagman played them with fake Galleons and duplicate Galleons, especially Bagman's attitude towards everyone was very bad in order not to pay back the money.

   This undoubtedly **** everyone off, and they planned to make the **** who owed money suffer.

   "Okay, I'll take you to find Bagman. In order to avoid the goblin's harassment, that guy didn't dare to go home at all, so he just hid. Come with me!"

  Mr. Jordan Apparates with everyone.

Somewhere in a remote village on the coast of England, Bagman is dragging his tired body towards the house by the sea. It is a Muggle villa, most of the time no one lives in it, it is very suitable for temporary hiding, avoiding those nasty goblins harassment.

  Bagman regretted that he provoked those goblins. They followed him all day in order to get money from him, which made Bagman a little nervous.

  However, I finally got rid of them smoothly.

   When Bagman walked into the hall of the villa and tried to turn on the light switch, he was immediately stunned, because he found that the light was suddenly turned on, and there were a group of "acquaintances" sitting in the hall.

   "You, how do you..." Bagman tried to turn around and escape from here.

"Don't get excited, Mr. Bagman, we are just here to discuss with you how to pay back the money you owe everyone." Mr. Jordan appeared from behind, handed over Bagman's wand, and put his hand on his shoulder to prevent him from Apparated to escape.

   "I really have no money." The smile on Bagman's face was uglier than crying.

   "We know you have no money."

Mr. Jordan nodded to show that he understood, and when Bagman breathed a sigh of relief, he continued: "So, we just want to get back our principal, you know, we can give up the money we won from gambling, but you We can’t take our principal away together.”

"but I…"

   "Maybe, we should teach him a lesson." The fat woman gritted her teeth and waved her wand again and again, as if preparing to let the other party try the Cruciatus Curse.

   "I really have no money, not even a Galleon."

"Okay, we know that you don't have any money now, but you will definitely have money in the future. After all, you are the director of the Department of Magical Sports and Sports, and your monthly salary is quite a lot. Just take out twenty galleons to pay off the debt." Mr. Jordan Putting the parchment in front of Bagman with a smile, "We will give you ten years, and you will definitely be able to pay off this debt easily. You will need to pay about 2,400 Galleons for ten years without interest. Long, we won't ask you for it again, how about it?"

"All right."

Knowing that he had no choice, Bagman quickly glanced at the contents of the parchment, and found that all the guys he cheated on were here. No wonder those guys didn't write to him to ask for money anymore. Get up and ask him to collect debts.

  After Bagman signed his name, Mr. Jordan took the parchment with a smile and handed it to the fat woman, "You keep this, it's best to put it in the vault."

"I will."

"By the way, Mr. Bagman, I forgot to remind you just now. There is a magic spell in this contract. If you can't repay the 2400 Galleons in ten years, I don't think you will want to know the consequences." Mr. Jordan smiled He reminded, "I really don't know what will happen to a person who is too unlucky. Maybe one day he will be choked to death when drinking water."

   "I see," Bagman said dryly.

   "Then we won't disturb you. Goodbye, Mr. Bagman." Mr. Jordan returned the wand to Bagman, raised his feet and walked towards the outside of the villa, and Apparated left.

   "Damn, what a bunch of nasty guys, it seems that this place is not safe anymore." Bagman muttered softly, without hesitation, he immediately turned to this ghostly place.

   As for the magic contract, Bagman didn't care.

   "Damn ten years." He wouldn't use ten years to pay off his debts. The guy who came up with this idea is definitely a devil, an out-and-out devil.

   "No, I have to think of a new way." Bagman muttered softly.

   Revisited

  (end of this chapter)