He sent the final owl to Gringotts on 13th August a Saturday.
The group stage positions had been lodged across the previous two weeks, through all five accounts at the three-thousand-Galleon maximum, as each round of fixtures was confirmed. The knockout positions had followed once the reclassification cleared. The final position — Ireland to win outright, maximum permitted across all five accounts — went with Mira this morning.
He watched her go. Steady in the air, the way she always was, not dramatic about it.
Standing at the window, he thought about the numbers.
The group stage positions had settled cleanly through the week — eighteen matches, five accounts, three thousand Galleons per account per event. The reclassification had gone through on Wednesday without difficulty, the desk manager having reviewed the first six settlements and found them, in his words, consistent. The knockout positions were lodged at the higher tier. What had been constrained by the new-account limits had become, after clean settlement, something considerably less constrained.
The true figure, compounding the group stage settlements alongside the five certain knockout bets, was closer to thirty-five times the starting capital. Five million, three hundred thousand Galleons, approximately, across all accounts.
He thought about his father counting five hundred from the kitchen tin. He thought about Hermione on the phone to her parents, explaining why this was sound. He thought about Fred and George, who would take three and a half thousand Galleons and build something that would be, in its own way, a small engine of joy in a world that was going to need small engines of joy more than it currently understood.
He was going to watch the match with all of them. The final, at least, and as many of the earlier rounds as the logistics allowed. He was going to watch Krum catch the Snitch in a losing cause, and watch Ireland celebrate, and watch Harry watching the best Quidditch he had ever seen prepared rather than merely arranged.
And then September.
The year that was coming. The Tournament, and everything the Tournament would bring. He had been preparing for it for two years with the full knowledge of what was at stake, and he was as ready as someone could be for something that was not fully predictable and had never been designed to be survived easily.
He was ready.
He had made sure.