The ledger Iris had made was beautiful. The charmed columns glowed faintly as he wrote, the numbers rearranging themselves into neat totals as each entry landed. Rowan sat cross-legged on the bed with the notebook on his lap, his journal open beside him, and worked through the mathematics of his entire financial position.
He started from the beginning.
Ninety-three pounds sterling, converted to one hundred and fifty-one Galleons, fifteen Sickles, and nine Knuts on the day Professor Weasley took him to Gringotts. Five Galleons deducted for the vault. Fifty Galleons kept liquid, ninety-six invested through Gringotts at a conservative rate.
First-year expenses. Seven Galleons for the wand. Fifteen Galleons and eight Sickles for textbooks. Three Galleons for the owl. Roughly ten Galleons for robes, trunk, telescope, scales, and supplies. Thirty-five Galleons total from his liquid funds, leaving him with approximately one hundred and sixteen Galleons in the vault and five in his pocket after shopping.
The year itself had been modest. Hogwarts covered room and board. Owl treats ran two Sickles per week, roughly five Galleons over the school year. His Daily Prophet subscription added another Galleon. Replacement quills, extra parchment, miscellaneous purchases added perhaps another five. The annual vault fee took five more. His investments returned roughly three Galleons on the ninety-six at Gringotts' conservative rate.
Then the tournament. Silver medal at the International Youth Dueling Championship. Five hundred Galleons in prize money, deposited directly into his vault.
He'd spent the summer with the Flamels at no cost. Generous of them. Impossibly generous, if he allowed himself to think about it honestly.
Second year. Twelve Galleons in annual stipend. Fifteen Galleons for new textbooks and ingredients. The same running costs for owl upkeep, Prophet subscription, supplies, and incidentals. Another five-Galleon vault fee. His investments had grown modestly, the returns compounding on a base that now included the tournament winnings.
No tournament winnings this year. He'd given his spot to Sebastian.
Rowan wrote the final figure at the bottom of the column and stared at it.
Six hundred and fifteen Galleons.
His entire fortune. Everything he'd earned across two years of work, one tournament victory, and careful saving. More than most Muggleborn students accumulated in their entire time at Hogwarts, and not nearly enough for what he was attempting.
He started a second column. Projected expenses.
Shop purchase in Diagon Alley. Location mattered enormously. A well-positioned storefront would cost anywhere from six hundred to a thousand Galleons depending on size, condition, and the seller's willingness to deal with a Muggleborn buyer. He wrote seven hundred as a working estimate, knowing it might be optimistic for anything worth having.
Raw materials. Lead for the transmutation process, copper plate for prototypes, runic inscription supplies, packaging materials. Twenty Galleons to start, with ongoing costs as production scaled.
Employee wages. This was the number that compounded the problem. He needed someone to manage the shop year-round. A fair wage for a full-time shopkeeper was eight Galleons per month. Over a twelve-month period, that was ninety-six Galleons on top of a shop that already consumed most of his capital.
Room and board. The Three Broomsticks was five Sickles per night. Two weeks of searching for a property would cost three Galleons and change. Once he had a shop with living space above it, the expense would drop to nothing.
Ministry registration fees. Two Galleons, based on Weasley's estimate.
Working capital. Emergency funds, unexpected costs, the inevitable surprises that came with any new venture. He should keep twenty Galleons in reserve at minimum.
The ledger's charmed columns calculated the total before he finished writing.
Eight hundred and forty-one Galleons.
Two hundred and twenty-six more than he had.
Rowan sat with the number for a long time. The shop alone consumed more than his entire fortune. Even if he found a bargain property at the low end of the range, the remaining expenses would drain him dry with nothing left for the unexpected. No price gouging from suppliers who spotted a Muggleborn customer. No equipment failures or slow opening weeks with no revenue. The budget assumed perfection, and perfection was a fantasy.
The Flamels' letter sat in his trunk. Their equipment shipment would save him an enormous sum. Athanors, alembics, distillation apparatus, reagent sets worth more than his entire operating budget. That generosity had already transformed the plan from impossible to merely difficult. Without it, he wouldn't have bothered trying.
But equipment wasn't liquid capital. He couldn't pay wages with an alembic.
The obvious solution was the Flamels themselves. One letter, one request, and they would send gold from the Philosopher's Stone without hesitation. Nicholas would probably be thrilled. He'd pace his laboratory and talk about investing in young innovators until Perenelle made him sit down, and the money would arrive by owl within a week.
Rowan's quill hovered over the parchment.
He set it down.
The thought of asking sat wrong in his chest, in the place where the boy from the Foundling Hospital still lived. The boy who'd learned that depending on others meant giving them power over you. That every gift came with strings, and every kindness had a price, and the only person you could truly rely on was yourself.
It was a flaw. He recognised it clearly enough. The Flamels had given freely and asked nothing in return. He knew that. Knowing didn't dissolve the feeling. It just meant he could see it for what it was.
So he picked up the quill anyway.