Shit-refining Warlock

Diagon Alley.

The last time he had come here, it had been to look for a job.

Watching the robes and pointed hats coming and going along the street, Murphy suddenly broke into a smile.

After stepping outside this narrow wizarding world, he could look at this place with ease instead. Even those shopkeepers who had once seemed hateful, stupid, and stubborn now seemed innocent and rather cute.

Sure enough, he still liked it here.

He liked magic, and by extension, he liked wizards. Most of them were pretty stupid, but wasn't that just another way of saying "simple"? A bunch of blockheads might annoy you sometimes, but it was always hard to truly dislike them.

Speaking of which, that had only been a week ago.

Yet his thinking had already undergone such a huge change.

All he could say was, money gave a man courage.

With a million pounds in his pocket, even Murphy's steps felt much lighter.

First, he came to Gringotts.

By now, he had already changed his appearance. Even he did not know what name this face belonged to; he had transformed using a hair he had casually plucked from some man on the street.

"Hello, I heard this place can exchange wizarding currency, is that right?" Murphy put on an utterly clueless act and asked a goblin who was weighing gold coins.

"Are you a Muggle?" The goblin raised its head slightly.

"Name?"

"Jim Stick." Murphy directly gave the name of his sponsor.

The goblin wrote something on a piece of parchment with a quill, then asked, "Reason?"

"Shopping?"

"Purpose?"

"Uh... what purposes can there be?" Murphy asked, somewhat unsure.

"A Muggle-born wizard enrolling in school. That can be the only purpose," the goblin replied.

Then why the hell did you ask?

The wizarding world and the Muggle world were basically isolated. Unless it was a former Muggle with no foundation in the wizarding world who had no choice but to join it, the two currencies were not allowed to circulate between each other.

"My son's enrolling," Murphy continued lying.

"Name of the young wizard?"

"David Stick."

"Liaison tutor?"

"Severus Snape."

Who told Snape to pick on him all day back when he was in school?

"Five pounds to one Galleon. How much do you want to exchange?"

"Ten thousand pounds?" Murphy said tentatively.

The goblin raised its eyes again, seeming slightly surprised, but soon lowered its head and continued with the work at hand. "The limit is forty Galleons. Do you want to exchange?"

"Forty Galleons?" Murphy was stunned. What the hell use would that be?

"Forget it. I'll think about it some more."

This path was clearly blocked. Murphy left Gringotts, found an alley, changed his appearance again, changed into a robe as well, and walked into Gringotts once more.

Seeing a goblin who was weighing gems, he walked over and said, "I have gold. Can it be exchanged into Galleons?"

"Of course!" This goblin was a little more enthusiastic. "Gold, silver, gems—we handle exchanges for all of them."

"What's the limit?"

"Limit?" The goblin seemed a little puzzled, then immediately understood. "There is no exchange limit for gold and silver. As for gems, we will purchase them in Galleons."

No limit?

Murphy's spirits lifted.

Gold and silver were still precious metals in the wizarding world, and as the materials used to mint wizarding currency, it was only natural that Gringotts had a purchasing business for them. But the lack of a limit was a pleasant surprise.

This might be the simplest way to convert pounds into Galleons.

"May I ask your name?" the goblin asked.

"Patrick Duncan." Murphy kept making things up.

"What is your vault number?"

"Hm?" Murphy froze for a moment. "Why ask that?"

"To avoid unnecessary trouble, this service is usually only open to families that have had long-term cooperation with Gringotts. Therefore, we need to verify your identity and vault number."

"..."

Patrick had a vault, my ass.

"Anything else?"

"No, that's all. It's just that you'll also need to provide the source of the precious metals."

"I'll think about it."

Walking out of Gringotts for the second time, Murphy Apparated to the entrance of a Muggle gold shop, bought up every bit of gold in the store, used Transfiguration to turn it into gold bars whose origin could not be identified, then Apparated back to Gringotts again.

This time, he removed his disguise and walked through the doors in his original appearance.

Choosing another goblin, Murphy took two gold bars from his pocket, which had an Undetectable Extension Charm cast on it. "I want to exchange these for Galleons."

Several nearby goblins all looked over, and the goblin in charge of receiving him was far warmer than the previous ones. "Of course, of course. May I have your name?"

"Murphy Darkholme."

"Vault number?"

"1745."

The Darkholme family could not compare with pure-blood families like the Blacks or the Potters, so their vault number was relatively far back.

The goblin flipped through a thick book for a while, then looked at Murphy in some puzzlement. "This vault hasn't had any deposits in nearly twenty years, and it also owes Gringotts sixteen Galleons in management fees..."

"May I ask where your gold came from?"

This question was not beyond Murphy's expectations. "Dug up from under the old house. Gold buried by my ancestors."

"Please wait a moment." The goblin seemed somewhat unsure. He muttered a few words with several goblins around him, and in the end, a goblin who looked like a supervisor took over and asked, "How much gold do you have?"

"Around thirty-five pounds, sixteen kilograms or so," Murphy said.

The goblin supervisor was a little surprised. The goblins muttered among themselves for a while longer before the supervisor said, "Because of your vault's credit issues, you can only exchange five pounds of gold."

"Merlin's stinking dogshit! This is real gold and silver! Why the hell can't I exchange it?"

Murphy refused to accept that and argued with the goblin supervisor for a good long while. In the end, after agreeing to pay a penalty of one hundred Galleons, he raised the exchange limit to ten pounds.

After that, following a long process of inspection, weighing, calculation, and verification, a goblin handed Murphy a cloth bag. "Here are 6,572 gold Galleons. Please verify them."

The corner of Murphy's mouth twitched.

He gave the other party an internationally friendly gesture.

Ten pounds of gold, calculated at the current gold price, was worth close to forty-five thousand pounds. If converted at the ordinary Galleon-to-pound exchange rate, he should have received nearly nine thousand Galleons.

But after being turned around like this, he had only ended up with a little over six thousand!

Nearly a third of the profit had been swallowed by Gringotts just like that.

And yet he had no way to argue, because Gringotts' gold-to-Galleon exchange rate really was that low. As for the fact that it did not match the exchange rate for pounds?

What did the Muggle gold price have to do with Gringotts?

Murphy walked out of Gringotts feeling somewhat depressed.

That bunch of goblins were fucking vampires.

Just how many intelligence-lowering spells had been cast on wizards' brains for them to let those things control their currency system?

But forget it. It had been free money to begin with, so if some of it got skimmed, so be it. What was left was still enough to use.

Weighing the gold coin bag with the Undetectable Extension Charm in his hand, Murphy arrived at Slug & Jiggers Apothecary.

When he entered, he saw a young wizard about Murphy's age brewing a potion with a cauldron.

He watched for a while, then suddenly said, "I'd suggest grinding the dried caterpillars into powder. Slices don't mix easily, and the final effect won't be good."

The young wizard turned back, looking a little lost. "But the book says to slice them."

"You're brewing a Shrinking Solution, right? The method in the textbook is actually rather rigid. It works better if you use live caterpillars and squeeze out the juice."

The young wizard had a face full of freckles and a slightly chubby round face. He looked at Murphy in confusion. "Who are you?"

"Just a customer. By the way, your flame is too high. The cauldron's about to burn."

"Ah, oh! God!" The round-faced wizard flailed around and added some water, only just managing to finish boiling the potion.

Murphy looked at the finished yellow liquid and curled his lip. "You've brewed a pot of shit, brother."

The round-faced wizard's face flushed scarlet, making his freckles stand out even more. "I—you—sigh, all right. The boss is going to dock my pay again."

Murphy smiled. This guy was pretty amusing. He held out a hand. "Peter Parker. Nice to meet you."

The round-faced wizard pulled a long face. "Alex Wood."

Murphy patted him on the shoulder. "You know, a few days ago, I applied for the position you have now."

Alex looked at him in surprise. "Then why didn't they hire you? You look like you know what you're doing."

Murphy smiled. "They were blind. But I have to thank them. Thanks to them, I can stand here now as their client from hell."

"Now, Wood, go call your boss out and tell him I want to buy all the dittany you have in stock."