"That's just stupid," she spat and then she put her thoughtful face back on and tried to decide whether it was a worthy business. "What'll we call it?" she inquired after ten minutes of thought. After all it was her dream to be the owner of a book store, though she never would have thought to add a tea shop with it. It was brilliant.
"Well, I'd call it The Tea Cozy, but I'm horrible at picking names. So you can call it whatever you want. It's your business," Hydrus answered, with a bright smile.
"I think something more along the lines of The Book Nook," Sarah said, her eyes roaming the store front already going over designs.
A week later The Book Nook was opened to the public, oh the wonders of magic. Bookcases lined the walls, while thirteen tables that sat four were in the middle. A small kitchen in the back baked pastries and made little sandwiches, along with tea. There was a small glass display to show what could be ordered along the back wall. There was a wire stand for the Frostwell Book-readers, to the right of the checkout counter that was in the front of the store. Those readers had an anti-theft charm on them and were rented out to the customers by the hour. If they wanted to purchase one they had to go to Wondrous Gizmos. There was a second floor that had more bookshelves and a few couches, tea wasn't served there. All the books in the shop had a time limit charm of ten minutes to browse them, after that they would disappear back to the shelf unless the book was put in a basket to be purchased or rented.
They didn't sell textbooks or older tomes, so they were of little competition to Flourish and Blotts. Mostly they encouraged people to buy and read fictional works, there were even non-magical mystery, fantasy, sci-fi and romance novels thrown in. This shop mostly catered to the young adult crowd. They did sell the Chocolate Frog Book, and many opinions were changing. Large portions of the younger public stopped affiliating any House with good or evil and were teaching their children the same.
The newspaper was going well, when they had first run an editorial on Tom Riddle, the subscriptions went through the roof. The commentary on Umbridge also upped sales. They kept printing articles on famous people and what they had really done in the past, which in turn made the Chocolate Frog Book a bestseller. Their government section did interviews with the politicians making sure to double-check the laws they voted on and talk to their coworkers, family and friends.
The back page annotations on Harry Potter did a lot to help keep the rumors down about the Boy Who Lived. Their section on non-magical news was well received by most of the Muggle-raised, who had little news of their former homes unless they had the time to go to London and get the papers there, which most didn't. The articles also brought reality to many Magical-raised; they were, for the first time, seeing everything they believed about Muggles was wrong. At this point in time, no one was sure if that was a good thing or not.
Sirius came under fire in the paper when he was almost caught trying to bribe someone into voting against a particularly nasty half-breed law against Veelas. Sirius got away with the attempted bribe with a bit of lying and turning of phrase, like any good politician. Since no money had actually changed hands, it was relegated to the back page, but he was now under watch and needed to be more careful.
"I can't believe you almost got caught," laughed Hydrus the night that article was printed.
"I can't believe it either," Sirius said chuckling.
"This is not funny, you two. It could seriously damage our plans," Remus snapped.
"Oh, leave off, Remus, this is a good thing," the dogman said.
"How is it a good thing?"
"It means that no one is exempt, which gives the public more reason to believe what we print."
"I'm just impressed with the way they had no problem running it. They know Sirius is one of the owners of the paper," the immortal said, sobering up a little.
....
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