HP: A Sociopath Gamer In Magic World [ Chapter 63: Student Store?! ] (Patreon)

"That's brilliant," Pansy said, impressed. The others seemed to agree as they began to talk to each other excitedly, showing once again how utterly childish they actually were.

Leaning on her chair, Daphne suppressed a smile as she watched the room devolve into similar discussions. The craftier and smarter ones in the room seemed to have figured out her true intent as they would occasionally give her a brief nod in her direction.

'Fools, the lot of them,' she thought to herself as she remembered her time in the train compartment.

"You want me to do what?" Daphne asked incredulously.

"You heard me Princess, if you want my help in the future you have to show me that you can do what you say you can," Charles said with that confident smile of his that somehow made her feel all jittery inside.

"You're asking me to sneak band goods inside of Hogwarts and start a black-market!? You can't be serious!" she whispered harshly, keeping an eye on the door.

"What are you afraid of, getting caught?" he said mockingly, "You were talking about a big game just a second ago."

"…" she had nothing to say to that.

"I'll put it this way, this will serve as practice for the future. If you can't sneak in a few harmless goods inside of Hogwarts then how do you plan to get past more secure places in the future."

Grinding her teeth in frustration, Daphne knew he had a point. If she was caught the most they could do to her was expelling her, but that hardly mattered with her family's backing, she could just go abroad, perhaps even increase her level of influence by going to Beauxbaton. Either way she would mostly escape with a slap on the wrist.

"Fine…" she said after weighing the pros and cons.

"Good," he said leaning back on his seat, "Now to set up rules for our little game."

"Rules?"

"Well I don't want to drag it out, so there is a time limit. You have exactly one year from today to make… let's say 200 Galleons."

"200 Galleons! Are you mental!" she shouted in indignation, "I doubt there's even 50 Galleons total in the entire school."

Waving an index finger in the air, Charles gave another smile, "There you go again, thinking with a thieves mentality, only thinking of what you can get at the moment. What you need is to start thinking like a different criminal, a businessman. If there's not enough money to take, then all you need to do is increase it first. The amount of spending money that the average student has should be anywhere between 3 to 20 Sickles. If you want to meet the goal, your first step will be to increase the amount they carry with them."

"And how am I supposed to do that?"

"Tell me princess, have you ever heard of a Student Store?"

Daphne could already see money being taken out of pockets, as students took check of their financial situation and found it lacking.

The blonde didn't have to worry about it being declined as the Prefects she had explained her plan to, had confirmed that there was nothing that prohibited them from doing so. 

Though she supposed that was unnecessary as she doubted Charles would have proposed something that was bound to fail.

All she needed now was to get all of the other houses to agree and she would be one step closer to her goal. Charles said he would take care of the Ravenclaws, which left only the Hufflepuffs and the Gryffindors.

'Looks like I'll have to resort to some old fashion blackmail if I want to get their signatures,' she thought as a frightening grin grazed her lips causing those around her to look cautious.

Her mind went to a certain charming Ravenclaw wondering exactly what other dastardly plan he was concocting at the moment.

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Ravenclaw Tower:-

"Come on Charles you got this," Terry said as he massaged my shoulders encouragingly from behind.

"If you lose this, you're dead to me Robert," an unknown boy whispered into the Ravenclaw Quidditch Captain.

Robert said nothing, silent like a grave, as he clutched two playing cards, a queen of hearts and a two of spades from what [Observe] told me.

I looked down at my eight and six of spades and looked around the circle at the others.

As to the reason why we were all having a high-stakes poker match in the middle of the night, well that's an interesting story.

Apparently, our roughhousing earlier had been loud enough to force a prefect to come down and investigate. As one could imagine, the scene of three pre-teens fighting over posters of scantily clad models next to a mountain of stuff wasn't exactly what he had in mind.

Thankfully, I knew he found the scene too amusing to report us to Flitwick, on the promise of keeping some of the pile.

That would have been it too if Robert hadn't walked in just then to discuss Quittich training and seen the exchange.

Same deal was offered which he accepted unashamedly.

The problem unfortunately didn't stop there as the two upperclassmen had both eyed the same jacket, resulting in an arguing match, which as one would expect forced another perfect to come investigate.

Seeing as things were going nowhere fast one of the prefects suggested we settle things once and for all with a poker match.

Apparently, this wasn't the first time something like this happened as they all went back to their rooms to collect their stash of hidden items.

In the middle of the floor was a small mound of goods.

"I raise three bottles of butterbeer," the fifth-year prefect said, placing three bottles of that sugary abomination into the pile.

I picked up a swimsuit poster and threw it on the pile, "Call."

Robert threw four unopened chocolate frogs, "Call."

I looked toward the Headboy who looked to be having an internal struggle. Finally, he sighed and placed his cards down, "Fold."