Dudley planned to sell some lab equipment to get a bit of spending money. The Galleons he got from Carroll for the half-bought, half-given-away wand at the start of the term were pretty much all gone. You can never have too many Galleons. As the saying goes, money makes the world go 'round.
Dudley was especially a big spender, as the materials he used for his potion brewing were consumed at an incredible rate. On weekends, it was fine—Snape covered the cost of the ingredients. But from Monday to Friday, Dudley had to pay for his potion-making supplies out of his own pocket. While there were countless potion ingredients in the Forbidden Forest, Dudley didn't have the time to find each one according to a recipe. Most of the time, he just gathered whatever he saw and didn't go out of his way to find specific things. For example, you might need ingredient A, but during a trip to the Forbidden Forest, you find countless ingredients B, C, D, and E. The result is that you still don't have ingredient A. Sometimes this could happen for more than a day, and it might take a whole week to find just one plant of ingredient A.
So, most of the time, Dudley chose to simply buy what he needed to avoid wasting time. This was also why his money was disappearing so quickly. In the Muggle world, Dudley was rich, but that money couldn't be converted into Galleons through official channels. If he tried to exchange his Muggle gold for Galleons, the greedy goblins at Gringotts would probably eat him up and leave nothing behind. As for selling some of his potions to make money... are you kidding? Every single potion was a vital tool for survival, so selling them was completely out of the question.
Anyway, for Dudley, earning Galleons was a piece of cake. He was rich in the Muggle world, so he just had to use that to his advantage and convert that money into wizarding currency. The first thing that came to his mind was selling lab equipment. To sell things, the first step is to advertise—you have to get the word out.
Sending the equipment to Ron and Malfoy was to build a reputation. It was a quick way to make money. Sure enough, that very day, Dudley received at least eighty orders from Slytherin through Malfoy. After spending nearly two months with Dudley, the Slytherin students had a good sense of his character. As long as you didn't provoke him, he was easy to get along with. On top of that, Dudley had earned Slytherin nearly half of the points needed for the House Cup, putting the house far ahead of the other four. Many older students and upperclassmen even looked at him with new respect, subtly trying to get on his good side. The attitudes of the other first-years toward Dudley had also become more complex.
In Slytherin, if you are talented, you will get noticed. If you are exceptionally talented, you will get even more respect from others. As for Dudley's Muggle-born status... well, because he was Harry's cousin and his aunt Lily was a real witch, a group of people believed Dudley wasn't truly a Muggle-born. As for the others, well, you can't be a Galleon and expect everyone to love you.
The number of orders on the second day was more than triple the first. Many upperclassmen from Slytherin, and even students from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, placed orders. No one wanted to face Snape's poisonous glares. On the third day, that number doubled again. The endless flow of orders brought Dudley a tremendous amount of Galleons.
"You're really giving me this much?" Ron looked at Harry in disbelief, or rather, he was staring at the cloth bag in Harry's hand.
"Dudley said it's what you earned," Harry said with a smile, handing the bag to Ron. "He calls it a dividend."
Dudley was generous, especially when you did a good job for him. This was also why he was able to poach his editor to work for him. When it was time to pay, he paid, without any hesitation, and with a smile. It wasn't just Ron; Hermione, Harry, and Malfoy also got a share.
Ron tremblingly took the bag of coins from Harry, as if in a dream. The heavy feeling in his palm pulled him back to reality. There were at least a hundred Galleons in there. Goodness, Ron had never seen so much money, let alone owned it. Even a single Sickle could last him a long time.
"Mr. Dursley is really amazing," Ron said, genuinely impressed.
"Of course! I've never seen anything my big brother Dudley can't do, or anything he doesn't know how to do," Harry said, happy as can be to hear his best friend praise his brother. He praised Dudley so much he was practically saying, "My brother Dudley is invincible!"
What an amazing big brother. I'm so jealous. Ron thought, picturing his own brothers. The Weasley kids at the top had already graduated from Hogwarts and started working, and the youngest was still a year away from school. Ron was thinking of his two brothers closest in age, George and Fred. Those two had done nothing but pick on him since he was a kid. He still remembered when he was very young, clutching his only stuffed animal. It was a toy his mother had made him, and he loved it so much he never let it go. George and Fred wanted to play with it, but Ron wouldn't let them. So, they secretly used their dad's wand and turned the stuffed animal in Ron's arms into a giant spider.
Can you imagine that? The toy in your arms suddenly turning into an arachnid bigger than you are, with eight legs and eight eyes that glowed with a terrifying light. Ron could even feel the hairy legs on its two pincers. He remembered his body freezing up at that moment, every hair on his body standing on end, his mind completely blank. In that moment, Ron nearly went mad. After that, he never touched that stuffed animal again and gave it to his younger sister, Ginny. Afterward, George and Fred said it was just a prank, a joke, and they loved to play jokes. Ron forgave them because they were his family, but that spider became his greatest fear, a shadow that never left him.
"You know I don't need this," Malfoy said on the other side, in Slytherin, pushing the bag of Galleons back that had been offered to him. The Malfoy family was very rich, but that didn't mean Malfoy himself was. In fact, Lucius's monthly allowance was not a lot. This bag of coins was a significant sum for him.
"But you earned this," Dudley said, grabbing the bag and putting it directly into Malfoy's hand.
Malfoy stared at the money bag, biting his upper lip. He seemed to want to say something, but for some reason, he couldn't. Just as Dudley was about to leave, the words came out instinctively, "Please forgive me... I... I mean, can I call you Dudley like Potter does? I know that's a name only your friends can use..."
"Of course you can," Dudley said, winking at him. "Aren't we friends?"
Malfoy's head shot up. In that moment, he felt that the face he once feared so much was no longer terrifying. He said from the bottom of his heart, "Alright, Dudley."
Ron had his shining moments. Malfoy was essentially similar to Ron—he hadn't had any real friends since he was little.
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