A/N: I think Helena Bonham Carter stole my sanity. Anyway, crack/bashing fic with a mild, rather twisted purpose. I don't own anything you see here.
Seriously Black, It's a Bank!
Every heir, daughter, second son and so on of every Noble and Ancient House speaks gobbledygook. It was elementary business sense: speak the language and know the culture of they who control your money. As messed up and backwards as the magical nobility system was, they were incredibly good at looking out for their own securities as well as past, current and future profits. And so every head of house, every human bargaining chip, every trophy wife, every mistress, and every child spoke gobbledygook and knew enough about goblin society to know to never, ever, ever clear one's throat around a goblin. They had legends of a dark, mystic, dangerous creature, referred too only by that dark, eerie sound…
You see, this is why there's a common half-blood and muggleborn misconception about goblins. They're a surprisingly weak race during the artificial peace time they were magically forced into every one thousand, six hundred and three years. The magical nobility knew better than to trust their cumulated wealth in anything less than predictable. And, as an uprising occurs every one thousand, six hundred and three years, five months, two weeks, and three days, they were easier to predict than the arthimantic formula of deriving the square root of abstract numbers. Another misconception from half-bloods and muggleborns who haven't taken arthimancy: it's not math; it's magical, just like everything. They know the last digit in pi.
Every heir, daughter, second son and so on of every Noble and Ancient House is taught how to handle certain social situations with grace and fluency and propriety. Sirius Black was the first born son, the heir of the Noble and Ancient House of Black. Sirius Black was taught gobbledygook and customs and knew all about the familiar vaults and the treasures buried deep inside. Sirius Black was exposed to certain aspects of goblin culture in an effort to safeguard the House's future. The thing is, you see, Sirius Black was also an idiot.
Hhrm. Yes. Excuse me. Note that this is, well, the muggles get it right when they say not to speak ill of the dead. Speaking ill of the dead offers them free passage back as a ghost, with only the intent to haunt and bemoan you until you get so fed up with living so with such a horrible, annoying ghost that you get someone ten times more powerful than you to keep the ghost away or you kill yourself. Both work: the latter better, if you don't have easy access to that wizard, ya' know? If you don't believe me, ask Olive Hornby and Amelia Riven. Never heard of Riven? Well, it's not unexpected. After Hornby got that incessant crier – you know, from that third floor lavatory – to stop haunting her, that ghost latched onto Riven and Riven couldn't take it. She lasted six weeks. And so know we get stuck with that annoying, weeping, pubescent ghost, all because Hornby and Riven spoke ill of the dead. They should be hated for such a horrid crime.
But, back to the story about how Sirius Black is an idiot. Hhrm… And I suppose I should note that I'm going to remain derogatory because I don't trust that narcissistic, figurative bastard to understand how to come back from the grave and haunt me. Right, so, it's some Wednesday when Sirius Black leaves his second – and more glorified – prison to go convince all the Gringotts goblins to fight for and with him… as equals… It's so frustrating, sometimes, to come up with original words to describe that man. I keep coming back to idiot. And arsehole. And others. So, according to the very few, very not talkative witnesses, Black strode into the bank and demanded – in English, to speak to Ragnok.
Ragnok, seriously Black? That goblin wasn't Black's vault manager, nor did he have any control over Black's vault manager, nor did he have any say in the going-ons at the London branch of Gringotts other than: "that old severe head is looking a bit peaky. Snapcrackle, take it down and put up the bones from that dragon that died yesteryear. We could use a change in decoration." In truth. I've overheard him say so. In gobbledygook, but need I remind you that pretty much everyone worth anything understands that language?
Oh, and I guess I haven't mentioned that Black is a known fugitive at this point. I could hardly care less if Dumbledore and Potter say he's innocent; locking Black up is a benefit to everyone in society! Still, the goblins don't particularly care about such things, so it was the terrified, slightly observant bookstore owner that saw Black in the bank, panicked, and still had the right of mind to alert the Ministry of Magic: Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Oh, and by the way, those guys are actually funny to watch, if you enjoy those comedies that show the constant, repetitious nonsense of officers of the law and other folk bumbling about and making complete and utter fools of themselves. I'm not quite sure if they learned it from Black or not, because while he was just the same before he went into law enforcement, I don't have any pre-Black experience to judge the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Most of me thinks they learned it from him.
The witnesses to the DMLE chaos were a lot more talkative when I approached them. Well, the mostly unbiased observers – a group of kids from Beauxbatons doing this project on law enforcement in different countries – were talkative. Mention such an embarrassing incident to an auror and be sure and duck, because he very might well try and blow off your head. According to the French kids, a low level auror got the floo call and panicked first. He started screaming about books, banks, and Bangkok. The French kids didn't know his name, but I did. His seventh year, Sirius tricked a bunch of innocent first year kids into believing for over a whole day that they'd been transplanted into the streets of Bangkok and they needed to fight each other to survive. As far as I know, most of them are still in therapy for the trauma and stress Black heaped upon their shoulders. Of those kids, only Zachary Gensmith went into law enforcement.
'course, Gensmith became completely incoherent with fright, so a junior auror supposedly went to see what happened. But, thing is, this junior auror was involved in an illegal vigilante group – but hey, I was too, so don't judge – and actually believed Black deserved to be allowed to go free. She was his cousin, you know. Good girl, if a bit flighty and prone to some strange obsessions like the moon and old books. I completely understand her ever growing dependency on chocolate. But, sorry, I'm getting off topic. This girl calmed Gensmith down enough to learn that Black's been spotted. And so "I-Will-Kill-You-If-My-Name-Goes-Here" Tonks started swearing up a storm. And that freaks Gensmith out the more.
And it took over ten minutes before a more senior auror – according to the French kids – got sick of the swearing and panicked whimpers and came over to see what was wrong. And then he freaked out. Thing was, Eugene Fitzherbert-Nott was actually a rather respectable dude – ehm, auror, whatever – and so having him drop into the armadillo position and scream for his mummy supposedly attracted quite a bit of attention. And so the news spread from panicked auror and hitwizard to panicked auror and hitwizard, through secretaries, up a staircase to the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department, back down several levels into the Department of Mysteries, through Rufus Scrimgeour, who pretty much ran all of the DMLE, and into Amelia Bones' out-of-the-way office before someone finally said "so? What's being done about it?"
I always did like Amelia. Still, it took over an hour for vice-head of the DMLE to mobilize a force from the not-so-much panicky remaining aurors and hitwizards and move them all to Gringotts. Which gave Sirius Black plenty of time to make a fool of himself around the goblins. Okay, so where was I? Right. Black asked for Ragnok, in English, and was utterly denied. He asked again, in broken, childish gobbledygook – acting all the while like he was the only near fluent speaker to ever step into those hallowed halls. The goblin teller sent him to Ragnok, knowing that Black would be interrupting a meeting discussing the necessary changes to Gringott's carpeting scheme and would not like to be disturbed.
That takes us to Ragnok's outer office, which was tastefully decorated with a bunch of dragon scales hanging on vertical wires and a plush carpet as vibrantly red as re'em blood mixed with oxygen before it's lit on fire, allowed to burn for three minutes, and then covered with a serving of liquid nitrogen. Once that hardened, you cracked open the dullish brown crust and the re'em blood had crystalized into the reddest red jewel you've ever seen. And who said Potions was no fun? Re'em blood jeweled necklaces are priceless if they've been made correctly. But of course, Sirius Black just walks over the carpet and goes "oh, it's red. Gryffindor colors are red and… um… red. Yay. Ragnok must like Gryffindors." Well, that's if he had five minutes to form that coherent of a thought. But I can give him enough credit to have put red and Gryffindor together and put himself in a good mood.
I have spoken to Ragnok about the conversation that followed. I had to duck and cover and then pay with three pints of blood for even mentioning that idiot's name in the hallowed Goblin halls. After giving the required blood, Ragnok told me of the conversation he had with Black – in English, because even if he was the heir to a Noble and Ancient Family, any eight-year-old would have proceeded more fluently. Apparently, without any opening greetings, Black asked to place a Will in the hands of the goblins.
A Will, seriously Black? There are so many options of ridicule here that I don't even know how to start. Since Sirius has never even opened an Encyclopedia, he must have never even learned what a bank was. And Ragnok gleefully informed of the fact that he was an uneducated idiot – in gobbledygook, so Black somehow managed to believe he'd been given the okay and started rambling on and on and on about what he wanted his Will to say. Well, it was more of a personal "TAKE NOTICE" note than an actual Will. It was a "hey Potter, sorry I'm gone, but you've gotta learn this and learn that and I don't got the balls to teach you myself, so here's some books and whatnot. Use the gold for profit and fun, but mostly fun, okay? Get drunk, get a hooker, and whatever you do, don't start a family." Stuff like that. Ragnok took out a few papers and just started working on something completely unrelated to his not-clients rambles. Black – who didn't have the brain cells to figure this out – was being charged a galleon a minute for that meeting.
According to Ragnok – you decide whether to trust his accuracy or not – Black stopped after nearly forty-five minutes and asked if everyone would be place in order. In gobbledygook, Ragnok said "Of course not, we're a bank." To which, Black seemed to take as a yes. He then proceeded to ramble about the potential – and unlikely – profits the goblins would make if – the next time one H.J. Potter came to his vault, they were to subject him to an inheritance ritual and see to it that he received his inheritance, not realizing – again – that he was inside a bank, not a legal form. To this day, his lack of mental capabilities astounds me. It's common ignorance of muggleborns and sometimes halfbloods to believe that the submission goblins are the be-all and end-all and the outside-of-strictly-legal-guardian-mentors of the heroic quest. The government is corrupt as it is and people just don't think of going to the Department of History and Records for their inheritance tests, or to a law firm to establish a Will, or to the Department of Magical Agriculture, Magical Beasts, Herbologists, Beast Masters, and Potioneers for information on how to get Severus Snape out of Hogwarts.
O-o-oh, believe me, nearly everyone has tried, but no one has ever gone to the DMAMBHBMP and so they've never succeeded. Nor has anyone ever succeeded in single handling claiming eighteen seats in Wizengamots, ousting the Chief Warlock, and changing half a dozen laws before breakfast on Saturday. No, seriously Black, the wizarding populace is a lot smarter than you – we do have safeguards against someone gaining a single majority control over our parliamentary governmental system! Anyway, back on Black, he'd just finished babbling on about the profit in training Harry Potter – which he didn't want to undertake himself – when Amelia Bones and the DMLE showed up and asked if Sirius Black was still at the bank. The goblins, gladly, I should add, informed her that he was. The goblins messaged Ragnok and told him they could the nuisance arrested and that they'd already learned some 69 galleons off of that ignorant sod.
So Ragnok escorted a mildly protesting Black to the main atrium, where Bones stunned him, cuffed him, and handed him to her (again panicked) aurors to escort back to the ministry. As he was being escorted away, Ragnok screamed – in gobbledygook, of course, but it's already been established that that's a fairly common second language: "Seriously Black! It's a bank!"
But as Sirius had ever even touched a set of Encyclopedia Britannia… or even a dictionary… he wouldn't knew what Ragnok had been trying to say even if he'd understood it. Part of me wants to think that he believed Ragnok yelled some sort of confirmation, and so he was exposed to the dementors kiss as a content man, believing the goblins would help out Potter and his godson would swiftly and easily end the Second Voldemort War and everything would end happily ever after.
Yeah right.
I hate you, Sirius Black. I'm glad you're pretty much dead right now. I hate you for taking my heart and never returning it, even after twelve years in Azkaban and far too many moments of pure idiocy on your part. I hate you Black, and I'm never, ever going to forgive you.