LONDON -- "Weasley's Wizards Wheezes: They'll leave you wheezing every time!"
This, the alliterative slogan of the popular joke shops here and in Hogsmeade, might not be familiar to you now. But it probably will be soon. And so will the voice pitching it.
Harry Potter has agreed to serve as Weasley's Wizards Wheezes' spokesman for the upcoming summer advertising campaign, the company announced Monday. It was a major coup for the emerging power in the British joke industry and, the Daily Prophet has learned, a rare self-interested act by the young national hero.
Until Monday's announcement, the Boy Who Lived had avoided entering into the lucrative advertising market. He is reported to have turned down big-money offers from such corporate fixtures as Gladrags, Nimbus and Bertie Bott's, but he apparently had special motivation for changing his stance for this opportunity.
According to a source wishing to remain anonymous in the Ministry of Magic's records office, Potter is a 10-percent owner of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. The chief executive wizards of the innovative prank retailer would neither confirm nor deny that their new spokesman is a partner.
"Our investors do not want to be identified and we respect their wishes," said George Weasley, who runs the company along with his twin brother, Fred.
The source could not specify how the Boy Who Lived came to hold his stake in the business but did say the dates on the company paperwork rule out the possibility that the shares could have been part of the advertisement deal.
Potter did not return owls requesting comment, but the Weasley brothers -- who double as the new Puddlemere Seeker's Quidditch agents -- were quick to deny greed was a motivation in his decision.
"For Harry, gold had nothing whatsoever to do with this decision," Fred Weasley said. "He'd be insulted to know you even suspected that!"
"The new ads were a condition of our serving as his agents," George Weasley explained.
"And we had to pull some strings to get him to agree even then," added Fred Weasley.
But regardless of his motivations, the Boy Who Lived stands to benefit from his own endorsement. With Potter on board and the start of the profitable summer sales period less than a fortnight away, Weasley's Wizards Wheezes is likely to shatter all joke-shop sales records in the coming months. That could mean tens of thousands of Galleons for the wizarding nation's biggest celebrity.
The exact value of Potter's current fortune is a secret closely guarded by the Gringotts goblins, but it is rumoured to be well into seven figures.
In line for an even greater benefit are the business juggernauts Fred and George Weasley. For them, the new advertising campaign -- set to debut on the Wizard Wireless Network and in the Daily Prophet next week -- is just the latest in a long string of triumphs since they opened the first Weasley's Wizard Wheezes in 1996.
They started out with just a tiny Diagon Alley shop, a few innovative ideas and enthusiasm to match their fiery red hair. But spurred by a steady line of original products like the now legendary Canary Creams and Skiving Snackboxes, business grew steadily even during the height of the recent war.
Wheezes became a major industry player two years ago when it followed up He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's defeat with the opening of its Scottish headquarters in Hogsmeade. The new base of operations includes production facilities and an owl-order distribution centre, as well as Britain's largest joke shop. The Weasley twins say they have seen business increase by 206 percent since the launch of the Hogsmeade plant.
"We're really excited about how well our business has done," George Weasley said.
"It just proves what we've been telling our mum since we were about eight years old; people just want to have fun," Fred Weasley added.
With Weasley's Wizard Wheezes now accounting for an estimated 60 percent of all joke sales in Great Britain, the only people not smiling are the competition. Gambol and Japes, Wizarding London's biggest joke shop for almost three centuries, conceded defeat last year and sold its property, product designs and inventory to the Weasleys. Zonko Zimmerman VII, the fourth-generation owner of Hogsmeade landmark Zonko's, fears his store might be the next to go.
"They are savvy businessmen," Zimmerman said of the Weasley twins. "They've been eating away at my business on their own for two years now. Now that they have Harry Potter on their side, I don't see how I can possibly compete."
The Weasleys, 22, did express sympathy at the fate of their rivals.
Said George Weasley, "We really don't want to see places like Zonko's disappear."
"Yeah, we practically lived there when we were at Hogwarts," Fred Weasley noted. "We have a lot of fond memories of that place."
"But we respect the right of customers to make their own choices, and it seems ours are the products they are most interested in these days," George Weasley concluded.
Many of the teenage wizards who account for the majority of Britain's joke sales were beginning their exams at Hogwarts on Monday, and Headmaster Albus Dumbledore denied the Daily Prophet access to the school to gauge their reaction to the Boy Who Lived's endorsement. When they return home at the end of next week, these young men will have two months to decide with their moneybags just how big a coup Harry Potter's influence is for Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.
The fate of Zonko's, and the bottom lines of the Weasley brothers and the Boy Who Lived will rest largely on their decision.