The next day, at dusk, six people were standing in front of the hotel entrance. Five of them were following a woman; the woman was none other than Olivia, "come on, let's go in" said Olivia; her eyes sparkling with excitement as she made her way inside, and everyone quietly followed.
A woman in the group said while looking around the hotel, "Are you sure about this Olivia? I don't think you should put your faith in someone you barely know. " She was Ava, also a muggle-born wizard who knew Olivia since her days at Hogwarts. After graduating she also joined the ministry with her.
"You are thinking too much Ava, It's just a meeting. Just meet the kid and listen to what he has to say okay?." Olivia pointed to the couch as she walked away while telling "Just wait here while I talk to the reception."
"um, if you say so," Ava walked to the couch and sat down. The rest soon followed her. No one talked, everyone had their guard up. It was natural because they had never heard about a muggle hiring wizards, especially for a job in the muggle world.
After a few minutes, Olivia joined them and led them to the restaurant. There was a private seating room here that was booked for this meeting. Everyone was nervous and vigilant. As they walked in, they saw a circular table and a young boy sitting. They were relieved to find that he was just a muggle boy and that there were no wards in the room.
Olivia was the first to greet Rohan and take a seat. Everyone followed after her and sat down. Soon all of them were looking at the young boy with different emotions waiting for someone to break the ice.
[Rohan POV]
I was waiting for them to arrive. I had prepared myself by going through all the notes I had made. I wanted to be seen as confident and well-prepared. The first impression was very important after all.
After they saw me, everyone had a different look of emotions; clearly, they were underestimating me because of my age. I could only sigh at that. I looked at Olivia and asked, "have you brought the thing I told you about?" Olivia's eyes widened in surprise. "Oh! how can I forget that." She brought out a document and gave it to me. It was a magical contract that was an NDA. I want everything that would happen here to be a secret so I asked her to bring some copies.
I held the document up and showed it to everyone and said "everyone must know what this is. " Everyone was surprised, they didn't know what kind of meeting this was where you would have to sign a magical contract. After all, a magical contract was only used for very important matters. It was even more unexpected as it came from a muggle boy of all people.
I continued to speak "No need to worry, this is only to keep the contents of this meeting a secret. This will allow me to speak freely and it will also protect others present here. " I handed the document to them. They read the contracts and discussed them among themselves. After about an hour, everyone present had signed the contract.
Olivia was the first one to start. She was oddly cheerful today; "now everyone, let's start with the introductions."
The first one to be introduced was a muggle-born man named Jacob; he was 27 years old. He was an expert in Herbologist and worked at The Apothecary alongside Olivia. His job was to look after magic ingredients in the shop. He was very talented in Herbology, but being a muggle-born, he could not find good work. He was now reduced to a simple shopkeeper. He was a senior of Olivia during Hogwarts, and he was also the one who helped Olivia find a new job. He was a thin man, with an average build. He had brown eyes and dark hair. He had slight facial hair neatly shaved; what was noticeable about him was the distinct jawline. He came here today because he wanted to get a better job than what he was doing now and he didn't mind moving to the outside world as his family was there as well.
The second one was a Half-blood called Oscar, he was 25 years old, he studied in the same batch as Olivia, he was good with Charms, he worked in the Department of Magical Transportation in the ministry. His parents were also killed by death eaters back in the day. He did not have any special lineage, so he was also in the same situation as Olivia. He was a handsome man. He had blond hair and blue eyes. He was a little skinny, but was not frail by any means. He was also facing similar problems as Olivia as there were many women after him for marriage. Luckily this created a deadlock so he did not face any problems during his job.
The third one was a muggle-born man called Henry; he was the oldest of the bunch at 31 yet didn't look a day older, than 21; he was a Magizoologist, and he worked at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Unlike others, he had a good job, enough to live a good life. It was because he had married a squib girl from a pureblood family. He had a tanned skin tone, with brown hair and green eyes. He was shorter than average but had a muscular build with broad shoulders and arms. He came here today because he wanted to settle in the outside world with his wife as he does not like the discrimination that they both have to face every day in the wizarding world.
The fourth one is a half-blood man called Charlie. He is 22 years old and works in Diagon Alley. His work is making flying brooms. he is a thin-looking man with glasses. His skin is pale. His hair and eyes are dark in color. He came today to check out this job as his current job is very monotonous as all he does is make flying brooms every day.
The fifth one is a muggle-born girl called Ava. She is 25 and from the same batch as Olivia. Both of them were best friends in school and had similar interests. She was also a Potioneer like Olivia. She worked in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. She had blond hair and brown eyes. She was really short and looked around my current age(15). She came today because she was worried about Olivia and was suspicious about what this meeting was about.
After their introductions, it was my turn to speak
"Hello everyone, my name is Rohan Williams. My brother enrolled at Hogwarts this year. From the time I got to know about magic, I was fascinated by it, so I started to study it. You might have guessed that it was difficult for me to do that as I cannot use magic. So I am thinking about starting my own research lab and for it, I will be needing witches and wizards. Now, knowing how muggle-born wizards are treated, I decided to hire them as most of the work will need a certain level of muggle knowledge.
At this point, Ava interrupted me and yelled at me with disbelief "Hold on for a second, Just why are you researching magic? it is highly dangerous and your being a muggle makes it even more dangerous. Do you not know about the stature of secrecy? muggles should not be studying magic. this can cause disaster and more importantly, how old are you? 15? 16? you haven't even finished school yet. How are you so sure that you can do research and even hire a team at that? Magic is no joke and you should not treat it as a toy." She finished talking and was huffing as she was short of breath.
I kept my composure; of course, she would be saying this; after all, she was from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes; I looked at her and said slowly, with a smile, "I do know what you are concerned about miss Ava. But you are misunderstanding something, the research I am talking about is different from what you all are thinking about. " I put my hands under the table and pulled out two thick books and slammed them in the middle of the table for everyone to see. One was a book with the basics of computers, and the second book was about databases. The books drew everyone's attention. I soon started to speak "These are books about computers that you will be working on. You will be using them for research." I then proceeded to explain to everyone about computers and what they can do. It was easier for me as they at least had some idea of what computers were.
After explaining to them about computers, I came to the main topic " What I want you all to do will be to use the computers to make a record called databases. I will be telling you what they are in the future. But simply put, your job will be to look through as many books as you can to find the information, then verify it yourself and save the records in the computers in a database."
I then turned to Ava and said "and as for me being too young to start something like this, let me say that I have the money to back it up, and my family also runs a big business in this field so I am not some going in it blind. "
Ava was quietly looking at me; she was relieved to find that the type of research I was doing was not much related to magic, and she was not much bothered by what computers were and what I would be getting from these 'databases?'. It was probably some rich boy playing around she thought.
I then looked at everyone and said "That leads to the next problem, I think that the ministry will not be too keen on knowing that a bunch of muggle-born and half-blood wizards is doing research among themselves outside the wizarding world, so I want to keep it a secret. " Everyone nodded their head; they knew exactly what would happen. The people in the ministry would stop it at any cost. I continued " so I will start another business as a cover which will be what the ministry sees on the outside. "
This time, Henry asked, "And what will be this business?"
"Well, for phase one, the business will be a place where muggle-born students from Hogwarts or any other magic school can come and practice magic. As you know that only the students from the wizarding families can practice magic at home during break. It means that the muggle-born wizards are left with no choice but to wait for the break to end or go to any magical family's household to practice. So I decided to make a place in the city where they can come and practice magic freely, of course with a membership fee, like a gym. "
Ava was impressed, the plan was easy to set up but the ministry could cause some problems. she asked " I don't think it will be easy. You will need the ministry's permission to operate something like this. "
I looked at her, Ava seems to become the leader of the group for some reason. well, she is assertive. I smiled and replied "You are right Miss Ava, I have thought about it and it seems we will be needing a recommendation from a reputable Witch or Wizard for things to go smoothly."
I continued "As for the location, I have already talked with the goblins today, it will be a hefty sum but nothing I cannot manage. The place will be ready in a few weeks, if things go as planned, we will open during the summer break."
After I was finished talking, they were discussing it among themselves. I then clapped, which drew their attention; I then said "Now back to the matter at hand. I would like to know who all are interested in working with me. Don't worry about your current jobs, you can just work part-time after work if you like, then again you will be paid accordingly. Just work for a month and see how you like it."
There was silence in the room; everyone was thinking about what they were going to do. The first one to speak was Olivia "I have decided, I will be working full time, I don't have a job anyway." Slowly, everyone started to tell their decisions. everyone wanted to do part-time work until they knew if the job suited them or not.
The last one left was Ava; she was, unlike Olivia, happy at the ministry; the reason being that she was already engaged to a man who was from a pureblood family. So she had a bright future ahead of her; she was even promoted not long ago; unlike Olivia, she was happy with her life. She only came here today for Olivia's sake, and now that she knows that Olivia will be safe, she has no more worries. she thought to herself, 'Why would I leave my perfectly good job and work for some kid to do whatever he wants to do with those 'computers' things? This was just a waste of time. Probably a rich kid, who wants to live his magical dreams. But as long as Olivia is able to get paid, I have no problem. I will do something to get her job back after I get to a higher rank in the ministry. '
" Sorry. I already have a job at the ministry and my marriage is in a few weeks so I don't think I will be able to work for you," said Ava politely.
Olivia was disappointed to hear this. I then turned to Ava and said "It's alright, I have no problem with that. But do remember about the contract you signed. This meeting did not happen. "
"I know. I will not share anything from this meeting. "
"Well then, it's getting late, so shall we have our dinner? it's on me "
After that, we talked a lot over dinner, like about salary and payment. I just told them that I would set up a workplace in about a week. After dinner, I handed them all, except Ava, a bag that had study material related to computers. I told them that they should study it by the end of this week. Oscar and Charlie were the most excited among them. we said our goodbyes and I went to my room. I had a grin on my face. I had the first workers and could start my work soon. I had originally planned to recruit 12 members for my business. The ones today were the ones who would be doing the database work. I still needed to find 7 more. Some will be responsible for knowledge gathering from all over the world, while some will have to work on managing the computer side of things. I lay on my bed and stare blankly at the ceiling while thinking. From tomorrow I will have to find some capable people.
'One thing I did not say to them was how the database will be used. Firstly, database creation is just phase one of the plans, It contains the accumulation of magical knowledge from a large number of books. In phase two we will start researching new potions and spells. How do you ask? well, using the AI in my phone of course! I think it will take some time but it will be worth it. For at least this year i will need to dump a lot of money into this business. But I am sure that soon it will start returning many times over.