June 27th, Sunday, a little over two weeks after the holiday started.
This was the day Ted and the others had planned to go shopping in Diagon Alley and accompany Neville and Ron to buy their new wands.
Hermione arrived very early.
It was almost as if she had eaten breakfast in a frantic rush and then immediately urged her father to drive her into London.
She had been cooped up in the Muggle world for over half a month without being allowed to use any magic, and she looked like she was about to burst from the restriction.
Mr. Granger, looking slightly amused and resigned, had no choice but to drive his eager daughter straight to the Leaky Cauldron.
Anzu the raven had flown back earlier that morning and told Ted to wait at the pub's entrance to receive them.
Ted greeted the father and daughter warmly, and of course, he couldn't just let Mr. Granger leave immediately like a mere taxi driver.
That was Hermione's dad, after all, not a chauffeur.
Ted politely invited Mr. Granger into the Leaky Cauldron for a drink.
Because Mr. Granger was driving, the three of them ordered non-alcoholic, warm Butterbeers.
Ted also took out a carefully wrapped gift for Mr. Granger to take back home, so that Hermione's mother could have a taste of wizarding hospitality.
Two days ago had been the Dragon Boat Festival.
Ted had completed a small, seasonal system task and was rewarded with a one-time cooking recipe card—a mixed fruit-filled zongzi (sticky rice dumpling).
There is a popular British dessert called a mixed fruit pie, so Ted had used his Culinary Magic to create a fusion of East and West.
These culturally "heretical" rice dumplings actually tasted quite spectacular, and thanks to the magic infused in them, they had special psychological effects.
Eating them could actively relieve negative emotions and help keep people in a good, stable mood and promote mental health.
Mr. Granger, intrigued by the strange presentation, decided to try one immediately.
He untied the securing rope, peeled back the fragrant bamboo leaves, and took a small bite.
The aroma of steamed glutinous rice and warm brown sugar filled the air, and he bit into the hot, sweet fruit filling.
The variety of fillings Ted had prepared was quite extensive, ranging from traditional apple and pear to more exotic tomato and mango, allowing for free and creative combination.
This meant each bite or flavor profile might be entirely different, which was quite a pleasant, evolving surprise!
After taking a proper bite, Mr. Granger exclaimed how amazing it was.
"Oh, Ted! This... zongzi is absolutely fantastic! Even as a practicing dentist, I simply can't resist it! No, I'll definitely have to recommend it to all my clients!"
Then he eagerly asked Ted which bakery in Diagon Alley he had bought it from.
Ted simply smiled, told him the basic preparation method, and jokingly advised him to promote the sugary treat to his clients so that his dental business could improve even further.
Thanks to Ted's polite hospitality and the small, thoughtful gifts, Mr. Granger left the pub happily this time, completely without the usual disappointment of feeling disliked or pushed away by his newly magical daughter.
'Ted is such a good, polite boy!' Mr. Granger thought.
As soon as her father's car pulled away, Hermione hurriedly grabbed Ted by the sleeve and practically dragged him down into the rented basement room—she desperately needed to cast a spell!
She had been really, truly bored lately.
As a dedicated young witch, she felt she could no longer live comfortably without magic.
During her vacation at home, she had to actively restrain the overwhelming urge to pick up her wand every single day, and even had to lock it away in her trunk to avoid making a mistake and triggering the Trace.
Now, she could finally have some fun and practice.
Moreover, she also desperately wanted to see what Ted had been doing all this time while she was stuck in the suburbs.
She had heard through owl post that Ted had officially reached an agreement with Neville, Harley, and Ron's families to formally set up the Arcane Exchange.
But in his last letter, Ted casually mentioned he had been busy collecting rare materials to hatch an egg.
"Where is it? The egg you're supposed to be hatching!" Hermione demanded, glancing rapidly around the expanded basement room.
There were shelves and bookshelves lining all the walls, and heavy oak desks and potion lab benches set up on either side of the center aisle.
There was even a low, blue fire burning steadily under an automatic stirring crucible in the corner.
Ted pretended to pull something out of a small, spatially extended bag—in reality, he accessed his system inventory and used a specific Item Card.
With a heavy thud, a giant, dark red egg appeared on the central table!
It was slightly smaller than a standard soccer ball, with peculiar, rocky bumps and glowing, vein-like patterns crisscrossing its leathery surface!
That's right, it was the egg of a Red Dragon from the world of Azeroth!
Hermione wasn't the kind of wizard who was naturally, instinctually sensitive to ambient magic; she was the academic type who was meticulous and highly skilled at manipulating structured spellwork.
But even she could vividly sense the raw, pulsing magical fluctuations emanating from the enormous, warm egg.
It was a very peculiar, almost oppressive feeling!
"Where did this... this thing come from?" she asked, stepping back. She instinctively felt it was highly unusual, even for the wizarding world.
Sure enough, the egg that Ted was going to hatch couldn't possibly be an ordinary thing!
"I obtained it by chance, and I think it might be a very high-level magical creature," Ted said vaguely.
He didn't intend to go into any details about the specific origin of the Red Dragon egg.
After all, telling one lie requires inventing countless other lies to cover it up later.
The world has changed so much recently due to the conjunctions, so what was really so strange about finding a displaced dragon egg from another world?
'I've stepped on countless of these dragon eggs on the upper levels of Blackrock Spire back in the game!' Ted thought.
'My old guildmates used to call me the Harmony Express King! That title was several times more prestigious than being the server's Leeroy Jenkins! Because I used engineering rocket boots to purposefully step on the eggs to trigger the whelps!'
'Also, in grinding maps like Dustwallow Marsh, I killed absolutely countless numbers of whelps and adult dragonkin, skinning them beyond recognition for leatherworking. I even got a rare Black Dragon Whelp vanity pet as a loot drop once!'
Hermione, thankfully, didn't pursue the egg's specific origin any further, but instead asked quietly, "How do you plan to hatch it safely? By the way, what exactly is this species? Have you found out from your books?"
Ted leaned close to the girl's ear and whispered dramatically, "It's a dragon egg!"
"Ah! A dragon egg?!" Hermione's eyes widened in horror. "What breed of dragon?"
She immediately looked around the room and began to seriously worry about how much longer the pub's basement could last before it was incinerated.
She hadn't forgotten Hagrid's illegal Norwegian Ridgeback, Norbert, from when they were in their first year.
That little monster had almost torn down Hagrid's wooden house in less than a month of growth.
That's a creature that even a half-giant like Hagrid couldn't safely handle!
Even a destructive Muggle dog like a Husky only wreaks superficial havoc on furniture; there's always a new interior renovation plan you can buy.
But a fire dragon actively tears down structural load-bearing walls and melts stone!
Even hundreds of millions of Muggle pounds wouldn't be nearly enough to cover the massive property damages a dragon could cause in central London!
Ted continued in a low, conspiratorial voice, "It's not an ordinary fire dragon..."
Hermione felt a sudden tickle in her ear from his breath, blushed slightly, and tilted her head away.
Then she heard Ted say clearly, "I strongly suspect this is a dragon egg from another world entirely."
"...Other worlds? What other worlds?" Hermione asked, not reacting to the implication for a moment.
This delayed reaction is actually the standard mindset of most ordinary people when faced with paradigm-shifting news.
Huge, fundamental changes have clearly occurred globally, but because they haven't yet had a massive, undeniable impact on their daily, accustomed lives, many people remain completely unaware of the turbulent undercurrents swirling beneath the calm surface of society.
Or, out of fear, they simply choose to ignore the signs!
Everyone is usually trapped safely in their own little personal world, dealing with daily work, school, and family affairs, passively and insensitively accepting the slow changes in the broader world.
For example, if a brutal war breaks out between two distant countries on another continent, ordinary people might be surprised by the news but won't think much of it affecting their day.
However, after a month or two passes, local prices suddenly begin to rise sharply, the domestic economy declines, the international trade situation changes drastically, and the local news begins to take a heavily biased, propagandistic stance.
It is exactly at this delayed time that most ordinary people truly feel the harsh impact of the war and finally realize that the global conflict has already begun to touch them.
Just like the dedicated members of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures at the Ministry of Magic.
Their daily bureaucratic work involves handling matters related to non-human magical beings and demi-humans.
Although their daily work directly involves dealing with these new, strange visitors from other worlds, many people in the Ministry are still completely unaware of the true, terrifying scale of the celestial convergence and the ongoing otherworldly invasion.
This is because the first large-scale appearance of these otherworldly races actually occurred ten years ago, and people simply got used to it.
New, potent magical herbs from another world... new, dangerous magical creatures from another world... new, reality-bending magical items from another world...
All of this integration happened slowly, exactly like the proverbial frog being slowly boiled alive in a pot of water, appearing and normalizing without most ordinary wizards even noticing the rising temperature.
So, in that context, Ted having an extra, unidentifiable dragon egg from another world actually makes a twisted sort of sense.
What? Did the Ministry want to take it away and study it in the Department of Mysteries?
'First,' Ted thought, 'I'll ask my Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, if he agrees with that seizure. Then I'll ask my business partners, the Ancient Houses of Black and Longbottom, what they think about the Ministry stealing my property. And then I'll look at this immensely powerful otherworldly dragon that has magically recognized me as its sole master—does it agree to be taken away?'
Hermione was still staring blankly at the massive red dragon egg, lost in thought, when Ted started organizing the required incubation materials on the bench.
The specific magical conditions required for hatching this particular dragon egg are not simple or cheap.
Of the forty specific types of alchemical and magical materials needed for the ritual, Ted had slowly acquired six of them over the course of last year.
These were all relatively common, or rare but not practically useful materials for modern potion-making, and he didn't have to spend too much money on them at the apothecary.
In the first two weeks of this current summer holiday, he had managed to collect six more required items through the Arcane Exchange network and his growing personal connections.
The materials were significantly more expensive this time; these six specific materials cost him approximately 80 Galleons in total.
There are ten more necessary materials currently available on the open magical market, but tracking them down and negotiating will take some time.
Ted has already officially asked Sirius Black to use his family's vast influence to help him arrange the purchases.
Because many of the truly rare magical materials in the wizarding world are strictly hoarded and controlled by the ancient pure-blood families, it's not something that ordinary, unconnected people can easily obtain, even if they have the Galleons to pay for them.
The remaining ten market-available items, if priced strictly according to the inflated public market rates, might cost a staggering 2000 Galleons!
Fortunately for Ted, that was just the public market price for outsiders; the "internal" pure-blood network price was less than 900 Galleons—which is about the same as the purchase price of his small Diagon Alley shop.
These pure-blood families are so ruthless in their business dealings!
The profit margins they enforce are absolutely outrageous!
They cut a massive swathe of profit from strangers and Muggle-borns, but give a huge, discounted cut to their own established acquaintances!
By using artificially high prices to completely control the high-end magical materials market in the wizarding world, this is a highly effective, disguised form of an economic monopoly!
If it weren't for the massive, unpredictable new changes brought about by the ongoing convergence of celestial bodies, and the sudden entry of more unknown, unmonopolized materials into this world, the British magical world might still be trapped in the exact same stagnant economic state decades later!
The remaining eighteen required materials are incredibly rare, legendary items.
Some of them only have a recorded name in ancient texts, and it's completely unknown which, if any, family currently owns them in their vaults.
Others are simply known by scholars to exist in theory, but haven't been seen on the open market for at least ten years or more.
Some are even only vaguely mentioned in children's stories or myths—rare items from decades or even centuries ago, materials that have been completely eliminated from the modern, streamlined magic system.
There are also several specific types of materials on the list that Ted has never even heard of in this universe.
He guessed those specific items don't even naturally exist in the Harry Potter world, so he will have to use his Alchemy knowledge to find a viable, local magical replacement.
Ted carefully packed up the acquired materials into his expanded bag, including the heavy Terra Magic Silver Ore, the High-Strength Magical Creature Fossils, the vial of Heavenly Fireball Dragon Heart Blood, the Ancient Dragon Eye Fossils, the preserved Dragon Blood Orchids, and the dried Dragon Blood Tree Roots.
He would probably be going to visit Jerry's place in the Muggle world in the next few days, and he was deeply worried about not having these priceless materials securely with him.
'Don't let yourself have a great, relaxing time on vacation while your hometown or base gets wiped out or robbed!' Ted thought. 'Take everything valuable with you, make absolutely sure you bring it all with you.'
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Word count: 2484
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