The Quicklime College Summer School was held in a beautiful old apartment block right in the heart of Manhattan. Until the day before there had been a lot of extremely rich families living in the beautiful spacious apartments, but they had all decided very suddenly that they wanted to live in other places and every one of them had sold their apartments to the same property company who, by an amazing coincidence, just happened to have set up office on the ground floor of the building. They paid each owner quite a lot more than they had ever imagined their apartments were worth and found them all new places to live at bargain basement prices and even moved their furniture for them with their own fleet of removal vans. So everyone was happy. That night a firm of Transylvania Waters interior decorators had completely remodelled the entire building, fitting it out with all the things a wizard summer school could ever need, from soundproof rooms to a five-star cafeteria. The penthouse suite on the top floor, which had wonderful views out across the city, was converted into one huge room where all the staff and students could meet.

When the students, staff and teachers had arrived from their various homes around the world, the Headmaster, Professor Throat, gathered them all together in the penthouse.

‘Look out there, boys and girls,’ he said, pointing to the streets below. ‘That is the biggest bag of money in the world.’

Many of the staff and teachers from Quicklime College had come to the school too. The Cook was particularly excited at the opportunity to play with all the new hi-tech cooking gadgets that had been installed. Back at the school in Patagonia the latest cooking implement was a wooden spoon that had once been used by King Henry VIII of England to dig the wax out of his ears. Sure, it gave the soup a unique flavour, but now the Cook could play with microwaves – she never lost the thrill of watching a hen’s egg explode as she turned the power up to maximum.10 She even had one of the latest steam ovens at her disposal, which proved wonderful for shrinking baggy knickers.

‘Excuse me, Headmaster,’ said Aubergine Wealth, the economics teacher, ‘but I think you’ll find that New York is only the second biggest bag. The biggest bag of money is called Switzerland.’¹¹

‘Oh dear,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Do you think we should have set up Summer School there then? After all, as we pointed out in the Summer School brochure, our reason for being here is to screw up the banking systems and make as much money as we possibly can.’

‘Absolutely not, Headmaster,’ said the Cook. ‘The food in Switzerland is really boring.’

Aubergine Wealth most certainly didn’t want the school to be in Switzerland. That was where he had more of his immense fortune hidden away. The last thing he wanted was a bunch of junior wizards poking around in all those lovely Swiss banks.

‘Zee people are really boring too, sir,’ said a small boy called Valter Varnish, the last of a very rare breed – Swiss Wizards. ‘Zis I know because I live zere.’

‘Fair enough,’ said the Headmaster. ‘We’ll start in New York, then.’

‘So what are we going to do, exactly?’ said Betty. ‘I mean, Summer School usually involves all sorts of healthy activities like hiking and learning to tie useless knots.’

‘Both of which will be very useful here,’ said the Headmaster. ‘We’ll be hiking over the road to the Stock Exchange and tying the whole thing up in knots while we quietly take over. This may all seem new to you, but I’ll hand over to Professor Wealth, who will explain that this is actually something we have been working on for quite some time.’

‘Indeed and thank you, Headmaster,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘I’m sure most of you know that the world’s financial markets are in a terrible state and it appeared to happen almost overnight. Well, of course, it didn’t.’12

‘The Summer School Project,’ Aubergine continued, ‘is for every student to make as much money as they possibly can. Students can work in groups or individually and pretty well anything is fair game – buy and sell, wheel and deal, and try to stay within the law though it’s not essential. I think we all agree it sounds a lot more exciting than hiking through mud and weaving grass into comfortable bedding.’

‘When Mr Wealth says there are no rules,’ said the Headmaster, ‘he only means as far as making money is concerned. All the standard Quicklime Rules, such as taking flying broomsticks home at weekends, apply here the same as they do at school. Though you are not encouraged to rob little old ladies.’

‘Unless they are nasty little old ladies, then you can take them for everything they’ve got,’ said Aubergine.

‘Absolutely,’ agreed the Headmaster.

‘And remember, children,’ said Quicklime’s Matron, ‘that I am here to treat you in case the old ladies hit back. Some of them are pretty dangerous. They can take your eyes out with a well-aimed handbag.’

The first thing the students had to do was disguise themselves, because the Stock Exchange wouldn’t let anyone younger than eighteen inside. Once again Winchflat came to the rescue with some wonderful I-May-Look-Too-Young-But-Here-Is-My-Driving-Licence-Which-Tells-You-I-Am-Twenty-One-Hats. Whoever wore one, even if they were eight or eighty-eight years old, instantly made any human believe they were twenty-three and old enough for anything.

The Cook, who was fifty-seven, put one on and went downstairs to the nearest bar where seven twenty-two-year-old yuppies fell in love with her.

As well as the magic hats, everyone was given a disguise. All the girls were turned blonde, with big, powerful hairstyles because it is against regulations for women to enter the New York Stock Exchange if they are not blonde. There is actually a special doorman whose sole job is to check female blondeness. If there is a hint of any other colour in their hair or the style is not big enough, they are banned. One of the most successful shops in New York is a hairdressers opposite the Exchange that specialises in blonding and plumping up. It’s called ‘Who Wants To Have A Million Hairs?’13

Capes, pointed hats and all the other lovely clothes witches and wizards wear were replaced with boring business suits, flashy waistcoats and clipboards.

‘Excellent,’ said Aubergine Wealth as he inspected his students. ‘Let’s go to work.’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Betty, ‘but what exactly are we going to do?’

‘We are going to take over the world.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Betty. ‘How?’

‘We are going to buy everything,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘Or rather, everything that’s valuable.’

‘All of the sticks?’ said Satanella. ‘Wow, and can we buy all the red rubber balls too?’

‘Sticks, what sticks?’ said Aubergine Wealth.

‘On the Stick Exchange,’ said Satanella.

‘It’s the Stock Exchange,’ said Aubergine Wealth.

‘Now that’s where I come in,’ said the Cook. ‘If there’s one thing I know a lot about it’s stock – chicken stock, beef stock, lizard stock, you name it. I’ve got recipes for them all.’

Aubergine Wealth sat down and buried his head in his hands.

‘Well, I do,’ said the Cook.

‘No doubt, dear lady,’ said Aubergine Wealth. ‘But they’re not that sort of stocks.’

‘Don’t worry, dear,’ said the Cook. ‘I’ve used them all, even Tasmanian tiger and dodo and cabbage. If a stock exists, I’ve made it.’

Aubergine Wealth groaned. This sort of thing is a common problem for anyone who is an expert on something that might look a bit complicated, such as building a nuclear-powered spaceship or making soy products actually taste half-decent. Experts who can perform advanced quadratic equations14 in their sleep whilst reciting π to nineteen million places simply can’t get their heads round the fact that there are people for whom adding one and one is a foreign country they will never visit.

So it was that, after Aubergine Wealth had recovered from explaining stocks to the Cook and finished describing Naked Short Selling,¹⁵ most of them thought it meant taking your trousers off and selling them. Of course, Winchflat and the three-legged Maranzio triplets from the Isle of Man¹⁶ understood straightaway. So it was decided that the four of them would go to the Stock Exchange and start wheeling and dealing while the other children would do the things they were best at.

‘So, at the end of each day, we will all meet back here,’ said the Headmaster, ‘and whoever has made the most money at the end of Summer School will get a prize.’

‘But, aren’t there more important things in life than money?’ said Betty.

The room fell silent. Everyone, including Ffiona, was speechless.

‘Wow,’ said Merlinmary finally. ‘Our little sister has turned into a hippy.’

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10 WARNING: Do NOT try this at home, or outdoors or in anyone else’s home, and NEVER try it while the egg is still inside the chicken – which the Cook was tempted to, but DIDN’T.

¹¹ What Aubergine Wealth didn’t say was that Wall Street was probably the third biggest bag of money because his own bag of money, which he kept under his bed, was actually bigger. Yes, he had a VERY BIG bed and ‘under his bed’ was actually seven stories of his house, which were all packed to their ceilings with cash, jewellery, bonds, and metals and diamonds.

¹² We have a problem here and it’s this: most intelligent people fall asleep when someone starts talking about stocks and shares and accounts and sub-prime mortgages. I know I do. And why? Because it’s REALLY, REALLY BORING. After all, there is only one thing you need to know – always try to get more money than you are spending. The trouble is that this story is all about sub-pr . . .

Oops, sorry, fell asleep there.

¹³ One of the most popular souvenirs you can buy in New York is the special New York Stock Exchange Barbie Doll, which has twice as much blonde hair as any other Barbie.

¹⁴ I don’t know what they are, but they sound really complicated and BORING.

¹⁵ I don’t know what that is either, but I do know that it’s illegal. Probably better if you look this up on Google.

¹⁶ Which I believe is about to be re-named the Isle of Non-Specific-Gender Persons because of a European Commission on Equality regulation.