At the Dursley family home on Privet Drive, Harry was writing and sketching in a large notebook. He was making a plan.
Money was very, very important.
Harry had already understood that thoroughly during his time in the ordinary world. His year in the Wizard World had only reinforced that view.
Harry himself was not short of money, but almost every young witch and wizard at school had empty pockets. It was not that their families were particularly badly off. Those with family financial crises like Ron's were in the minority, after all.
The main reason was that most parents would not give their children much pocket money. Especially since Hogwarts students were only eleven to seventeen years old.
Although this was not the age when children were at their most troublesome, it was definitely the peak combination of mischief and the ability to act on it. If children that age had money in their pockets, Merlin knew what would happen.
Of course, most Wizard families really were not particularly well-off either. That was also a fact.
Over the past year, Harry had lent out forty or fifty Galleons, not counting the two hundred Galleons he had lent the Twins on the last day. Most of it had gone out one or two Sickles, or three or four Sickles, at a time.
Ron, his closest friend, had not borrowed much. Instead, several girls from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw had borrowed quite a bit. Harry had not really taken the money to heart, nor did he intend to ask for it back. For one thing, those girls shared their sweets with him every time they bought some. How could he bring himself to ask the older girls for his money back?
Still, Ron's family circumstances had given Harry a tiny sense of