I looked down at the slip of parchment in my hands and tried not to jump in joy. Almost a thousand galleons! That was about five thousand pounds! And for the current time period I was living in, that was a lot. It could cover a down payment of a loan for my business! Or ease the burden of tuition for college!
But then a crazy – and risky – thought struck me. I knew things. Things about the past from my world that might apply to this one's future.
Who'd won the European Football (or Soccer) Cup in 1992? Denmark, that's who. At a score of 2 to 0 against Germany. Though that was only because Yugoslavia was disqualified due to no longer being a country anymore, or some other issues on the international stage.
I knew this somewhat useless fact because 1992 was the year I'd been born in my last world, and I'd looked up a bunch of random factoids about the year of my birth just because I could. The 25th Olympics opened in Barcelona in 1992. Also, it was the year the Cartoon Cable Network – or the channel more commonly known as Cartoon Network – first premiered.
Would that be the same in this world I was in? Could I… could I bet on what was going to happen?
I'd already made plans to take advantage of the late 1990's tech bubble in America, but that was some years away. I needed money now, and if things followed through the same here as they did there…
"Edward, I know that look on your face," my mother scolded me, snapping me out of my thoughts.
"What? I was just thinking about business opportunities!" I protested.
"I know," she said with a smirk. "Now's not the time for that, though. Today's your birthday. So put those thoughts away. It's time for dinner."
I huffed but nodded, tucking the bank draft into my pocket and focusing on the dinner that Inky was bringing out for us.
When dinner was over, Inky returned me to my bedroom, where I quickly got ready for bed. But I found wasn't able to sleep, despite needing to rest for school tomorrow. Instead, my thoughts whirled. I couldn't stop thinking about the money I'd received from mother.
Thinking about my sudden windfall had also gotten me thinking about economics in general. And from there, I began to dredge through my mind using Occlumency for what I may have learned in school back in my old life to try and help me with finding a way to invest my newfound wealth.
Looking through my memories of the 'past,' I stumbled across something from one of my college classes that made me very nervous.
Black Wednesday. A day in September of 1992 where the value of the British Pound Sterling crashed violently due to its exchange rate doing poorly. The government lost over three billion pounds and the value of its money dropped badly, causing terrible inflation and a housing market crash.
'Damn it,' I thought to myself as I rolled out of bed and fetched some pen and paper. 'I'm going to be tired in the morning!'
It had been a long time since I'd had the urge to write down any of my knowledge. Not since my Occlumency training had progressed to the point my memory recall worked on command, at least.
But the thought of an economic depression scared me enough to want to jot some feverish notes down, just to clear my head. Black Wednesday was, from what I recalled, the beginning of a slow spiral for the pound and British economy that it never really recovered from, even several decades later in my timeline.
Yet, it also excited me!
So many possibilities! So many chances to exploit my future knowledge for my own benefit!
But I would need help. Lots of it. What I was able to recall was limited. My finance classes in college had been for the credits, not because I'd been interested in the world of business or money at the time, so I had to dig very dig into memories to get what little I had.
I'd not yet reached the point in my Occlumency training where I could delve into my own memories and view them as if they were a movie or still photo. To do that required what was called a Mind Palace, and that took even talented mental masters decades to properly construct.
Right now, all I could do was perfectly recall the information I'd read or heard, which was still a boon, but was more temporary and I couldn't hold onto my information for long before it faded back into the depths of my mind and I had to use Occlumency to recall it again. Hence the note taking.
But, what little I knew and remembered about Black Wednesday was bleak. It started when Sir John Major, the Prime Minister, pegged the pound to the German Mark in the European Monetary System in the hopes of controlling Britain's inflation. The EMS was basically a system for deciding the exchange rate between European currencies, a precusor to the Economic Monetary Union which birthed the euro.
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