Dark Lord Dumbledore - Volume 1 Chapter 25

Saving money was always desirable when it was spent so easily, land and property was not exactly cheap, and there was a lot of it if Chad wanted to have a monopoly. After repeating the initiation process into indentured servitude with the other two wenches and draining their funds, he modified his plans a little.

Chad was about to start looking for a hotel to buy, but with this incident, he changed his mind. It reminded him that he needed a team of ruthless individuals that could protect him from future occurrences of backstabbing or legal shenanigans. It was time to bring the unholy scourge of society to his side, or as they were more commonly known, lawyers.

Since he was already going for the surrounded by women scenario, he would scout out disgruntled and passed over women solicitors and barristers. There was bound to be quite a few in the late eighties as it was still somewhat of a man’s world. Making partner or being promoted up the ladder was generally male-dominated, as men would prefer someone they could relate to and joke around with. That’s not to say that women didn’t reach higher positions, just that it was a man’s club. Men didn’t like having to restrain their casual behaviour or banter because the ‘ducks were on the pond.’

Plus, a lot of career women chose work over family and would not have many familial ties. As far as Chad was concerned, it was the perfect pool of recruits. There were bound to be some that he would deem not innocent by his guidelines, and warrant a personality change. As it turned out, surprisingly, there were not that many.

After a week of searching, he could only find one female barrister and four solicitors that barely met the criteria to be enslaved. The barrister knew that her clients were guilty and hid incriminating evidence, and the solicitors took bribes, overcharged, and were stealing money from their vulnerable clients.

Not really deserving of being enslaved, but live by the sword, die by the sword. If they were going to take advantage of others using their position and power, then so was Chad. Not that he was trying to be a hero or anything, it just soothed his conscience by not destroying honest lives. With the necessary personality wipe, dedication and loyalty programming, and the added knowledge of the law he picked up from veteran lawyers in his search, he was ready for the next step. Set them up close to the Temple area. The Temple refers to the area in the vicinity of Temple Church and is one of the central legal districts in London, an important centre for English law.

It was about two kilometres west of the Elfin Inc HQ, but the competition was harsh with the already old and established firms thoroughly in control. Instead, Chad chose to take a bit of a hit to their ‘prestige’ and had Crystal buy the building adjacent to the NatWest bank. With a building selected and renovated, he outlined what he wanted to achieve with the firm. They would be allowed to handle other clients as long as Chad’s empire got priority, and no drama would affect his business.

After talking about the future of his new law firm with the old biddy brigade, they touched on the subject of the stock market. The five women that made up his new law team were all around forty and had reached the plateau before any significant position in their companies. Another thing they all had in common was that they all had a stock portfolio. Chad, of course, new about the stock market but had never had anything to do with it.

With perfect recall of his past life thanks to Occlumency, he was sitting on a gold mine of profitable companies to invest in. With the idea of setting up a stockbroking firm in the same building as his lawyers, his new building on Fleet Street was ideally placed in between the Temple area and the London Stock Exchange. Walking distance within both regions would compensate for the loss of reputation for not being located in the premier law district.

Insider Trading and Stock Manipulation was just as prevalent in women as in men, and so was failed stockbrokers. Chad didn’t really care about their skills, just that they had a license to trade and that they were women. He had already ‘touched’ up the signs of age on his lawyers and did the same on the three guilty female stockbrokers he shanghaied. It was nothing drastic and could be easily explained away, he was still trying to stay under the radar after all. But gradual changes over time would have his old cougar workforce looking very shaggable, and only add benefits in their professions.

Thanks to his lawyers, all titles and deeds of his Elfin Inc properties would now be ironclad after they were processed, and any of his more dubious schemes could be screened by them for flaws. They also totally rewrote his magical contracts to be even more unassuming and inescapable, definitely a good investment. His stockbrokers started buying up shares in companies that he remembered being successful.

Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Home Depot, Walmart, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, IBM, Sony, Nintendo and Sega were the main ones he remembered. But basically and company he found that was still going strong in 2019 was scrutinised by his stock ladies. They were all long term investments, but like his gold in storage, would pay off very well.

Nokia, Yahoo, Google, Amazon were put on a list to be purchased as soon as they opened on the stock market. Thanks to his brokers being slaves, he didn’t need to explain why he wanted to buy shares in corporations that didn’t exist yet. There was also the massive stock market crash sometime in 1987. Thanks to his eidetic memory, he remembered it mentioned in a conversation about stock market crashes, but no specific details. As he had never invested before, his knowledge on it was severely lacking. It was not like he knew he would be sent back in time and studied up on it! But a time-turner would fix any oversights in trading.

With his lawyers and stockbrokers set up, he could now return to his original goal of being a hotel chain magnate. This was expedited by the lawyers and Crystal’s crew working together to give him a list of suitable hotels to purchase. Something in a tourist area, was cheap because of its age or disrepair and had at least five floors were the critical factors in searching for his new hotel. There were ten potentials, but Chad was sidetracked yet again after looking at the sixth hotel.

Boppy had taken a bullet for him, as tonight was a family outing to some Grunnings party, and he had taken Chad’s place for it. Since ‘Harry’ was in his cupboard dreaming of ways to not be a freak, Chad decided to investigate some of the potential hotels. It was 10pm by the time he and a ninja elf arrived at the site of the sixth hotel.

It was in Soho, an area of the City of Westminster, and was formerly a fashionable district for the aristocracy. It has been one of the leading entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century but saw a sharp decline after a cholera outbreak in 1854. By the 20th century, Soho had a reputation as a base for the s.e.x industry in addition to its nightlife.

And that was what Chad was witnessing now. The Soho area has been at the heart of London’s s.e.x industry since 1778 when the first brothel was opened. Before the Street Offences Act of 1959 became law, street p.r.o.s.t.i.t.u.t.es worked in Piccadilly Circus and the streets and alleys around Soho. By the early 1960s, almost every doorway in Soho had red-lit doorbells, or open doors with little postcards just inside advertising ‘Large Chest for Sale’ or ‘French Lessons Given’. Or so said the scantily clad woman that was definitely over fifty years old.

“The S.e.xual Offences Act of 1956, Section 33, states that it is an offence for a person to keep a brothel, manage or assist in the management of a brothel.” Listed out the painted jezebel that was well past her prime.

“But what about the red door houses? Aren’t they brothels?” He queried. Chad had been talking to this woman for the past ten minutes and was fascinated by her encyclopedic knowledge of prostitution.

“Ah, but by law, a brothel must be used by more than one person to offer s.e.x.u.a.l services. If only one girl is turning tricks, then that’s fine.” She answered with a wry smile, the laws regarding prostitution were rather absurd.

She further explained that in Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland), prostitution itself (the exchange of s.e.x.u.a.l services for money) is legal. But several related activities, including soliciting in a public place, kerb-crawling (a man in a car), owning or managing a brothel, pimping and pandering, are crimes.

“But aren’t you soliciting in a public place? How does that work?”

“Sonny, I have been doing this since I was fourteen, there is nothing I haven’t seen or done. I can spot a copper coming from a mile away and tell who is looking for a shag. Now do you want to have some fun, or do you need more for your school report?” The whore asked hopefully while leering at the illusion of Chad’s ad*lt body.

“Ah, no thanks. But what can you tell me about that hotel across the street?” He asked while handing her a 20 note for her time.

Clicking her tongue and squirrelling away the cash in her rather ample bosom, the granny-ho gave him a rundown of the hotel’s history and its current owner. It seems that the place used to be a cathouse but started losing business after the S.e.xual Offences Act in 1956 and became a regular hotel. The current owner has been trying to sell it for years after inheriting it after his father’s death, but not even with its ballroom and bar could it turn a profit. Not appreciating the local nightwalkers or it being a money sink, the owner would accept nearly any decent offer, especially if it was cash.

After thinking about it for a while, Chad came up with a plan that was so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel! Looking at the harlot that showed every bit of her forty-plus years in the profession, he noted her earlier comments about knowing everything there was to know about whoring and that she was not afraid to flout the law.

“How would you like to own a hotel?”