Chapter 9
Harry was shaken into wakefulness much too early in the morning. He woke up with a start, grabbing his wand from the nightstand, only to find Dobby standing by his bed and smiling much too brightly for that hour of the day. Harry groaned and tried to hide from the coming day under his thick comforter, only to find that the comforter disappeared from his bed as soon as he managed to cover his head from the light. Not only that, but Dobby went on to open the heavy drapes over his room's large windows, inviting the bright sunlight in.
Curiously, his room's French-windows opened onto a small balcony with an oceanfront view, complete with nice oceanfront breeze and seagulls' cries. It was probably the only way for a family of purebloods to survive city life among the Muggles. Most of the wizarding homes that Harry knew about were in the country. It was quite unusual for a traditionalist wizarding family to choose to live in the city. Maybe, Harry thought, the city had caught up with the Blacks. All this was of very little interest to Harry at the time, since he just wanted to go back to sleep. He had been up late last night, exhausting himself with reading and learning new magic, and he just wanted the day to wait for a little while longer.
"Harry Potter sir needs to wake up. People is coming soon," said the ever-excited elf. "Here is Harry Potter sir's clothing."
With a heavy sigh, Harry got out of his bed. At this side of the day, the notion of performing extensive physical activities seemed almost immoral. He took a short shower, to fully wake up, and put on his training clothes. He walked downstairs and asked Winky for a cup of coffee to help chase the sleep away. Down in the hall, Hermione and Emma were already present and were talking much too animatedly for his taste. Other people drifted in, mainly through the fireplace. This morning they were wearing proper training clothes, courtesy of Hermione and Dudley's help. Most went for the shorts and T-shirt look. Some, like Susan and, curiously enough, Neville, chose the tights look. Last to arrive were Ginny and Ron, who Flooed in seconds after Tonks walked through the front door, yawning, and fell over the troll-leg umbrella stand.
"Of all the rotten furnishings in this house, you just had to save this damn umbrella stand?"
Harry was laughing so hard that he fell over the stand too. "Of all the horrible things in this place, that umbrella stand was the most 'innocent' evil item I could keep, to remind myself of the good old days," he said, wiping his eyes.
He almost broke down in laughter again when he saw the mock-evil look Tonks sent his way.
"Are we ready to go, or we are waiting for someone else?"
"We can go, Mum," said Hermione, watching Dudley enter the hall while rubbing his eyes.
"Is this a regular time of the day for your kind?"
"Do you think we're some kind of freaks?" asked Ron, earning an angry look from Harry and an apologetic one from Dudley himself.
"Cheers, mate." Harry took a look at Ron, then at Dudley, who looked even more apologetic, and turned to talk with Su Li, trying to lift his mood.
"What did I say?" Ron asked Hermione in a whisper, earning himself a mere shake of her head as a response.
"We're mostly sane people," Bill said in an effort to defuse the situation that Ron had absentmindedly created. "This ludicrous hour was chosen by that pink-haired monster in the corner by the hearth."
"Thank you very much, dear, now can we go running? Otherwise you'll all be training until midnight tonight."
"Off to the park, then!"
"Are we running in the same park we used yesterday?"
"Sure, Susan, why not? It's got excellent facilities."
"Actually, Emma, I'm not sure it's wise to go running in the same place every day."
Harry considered it, but Ron was the first to respond. "That's right, you know. When you repeat an action, you become predictable to the adversary." He looked around, noting that everyone was looking at him. "What?" he protested. "It's just like chess. You'll never catch me using the same opening twice in a row."
"Ron is absolutely right. We should use a different place for training every day."
"Finding new facilities is not a problem," said Emma. "The park near our place..." She trailed off for a moment. "Near the place where our house used to be," she went on, "has a decent running track and I'm sure there are many more like it. I just don't know how to get there without wasting time."
Harry looked around, took one of the hearth tools, and tried to concentrate. He saw in his mind the living room at 4 Privet Drive; he thought about the number of people in their group, then tapped it with his wand, watching it glow blue. "Right, guys—touch this," he said. He took special care to meet neither Hermione's glare nor Tonks's questioning look. He tapped the tool with his wand and—nothing happened. "Just a moment," he said. "I just want the damn poker to take us to Surrey!" Once again it glowed blue, then he found himself sitting on the floor in the Dursleys' living room, looking up at Hermione.
"We have training to do," he said, and hurried to his feet and led them to the park nearby.
The physical training went faster that day. They all knew the drill and, with Tonks there breathing down their necks, they put better effort into it. Emma used her time to go around and improve their performance. Forty-five minutes later they were all walking briskly back to Privet Drive for their Portkey back to Grimmauld Place. Tonks left directly for the Ministry building, but not before giving Harry a look that clearly said, "You'd better have a good explanation for me about these Portkeys tomorrow." It took Harry four tries to create a functioning Portkey, then they were all home.
"Grab a bite and some tea in the kitchen, then start your day's training," he called after the retreating backs of his friends. Then he was left alone in the entry hall, with only Hermione staring at him with her special look that meant there was no escape for him from giving her a very good explanation.
"Er, aren't you hungry?" he asked with a guilty grin.
"Stop stalling and tell me where—sorry, when did you learn to make a Portkey?"
"So much for learning the thing; I'm obviously not good at it at all..."
"Harry!"
He was clearly in the danger zone, so Harry decided to start with the truth. "Yesterday evening. Actually, late night is more accurate."
"Who taught you?" Hermione was very interested regarding the identity of his instructor and the look in her eyes didn't pledge well for said teacher.
"No one," Harry quickly reassured her. "I learned it by myself. That's probably the reason I can't do it right."
"Where did you find the instructions?" she asked. "I've been looking for a book with instructions about Portkey charming for three years now. Ever since the Triwizard Cup was turned into one. Think about it—it could have been so simple to charm a Portkey into Sirius's room and give him one to escape with before returning to the hospital ward at the end of third year, without the danger of using the Time-Turner."
"Yes," Harry said solemnly. "Dumbledore could have made it for us just as easily."
"That's totally beside the point. Where did you find the information?"
"In my mother's notebook."
"And you learned how to charm Portkeys, yesterday, without me?"
Hermione was now in the mood that usually led her to use a very obscure and uncomfortable jinx on the person who was irritating her, and Harry was becoming more and more concerned for his well-being. "Hermione! It wasn't like that at all. Firstly, you weren't here. You went to Luna's to put her place under the Fidelius. By the way, how did it go?"
"Don't change the subject!"
"Then there's much more in it than just Portkey creation. I knew that if I called you, you wouldn't have left the notebook before reading through it all, and then we wouldn't have had enough time left to actually learn anything."
That wasn't the safe thing to say. "So you hid it from me?"
"Hermione, this is not you talking," Harry said softly. "I went to Godric's Hollow to read my mother's notebook. You weren't there, I didn't know what was in it, and I wanted to read it by myself for the first time. Then, well, it was already late and I just wanted to try something practical, to feel that I'd had a productive evening..."
That made Hermione feel uncomfortable, and she relented. "I'm sorry, Harry," she said. "It's just that I feel lonely lately, and it made me feel like I was unnecessary. I can't even explain it to myself. I had no reason to be angry with you. I'm so sorry. I'll let you be."
She turned around to go up the stairs but was stopped by Harry's hand on her shoulder. "You have nothing to be sorry about. We're all under pressure and you got upset. It's going to happen a lot to us all. Let's meet after the morning's training and read it over together. Right?"
She gave him a small smile as they climbed the stairs together to the training room.
Training day was more of the same. Marks were improving all across. They were moving from sparks to small jinxes as instructed. Harry noticed no difference at all but the change from the red colour of his sparks to the light blue of the jelly-leg jinx he was using. To his great satisfaction, his left-hand numbers were improving, slowly but steadily. He decided to put more emphasis on accuracy. After an hour and a half of that drill, he managed a 42/23, which was better, in his eyes, than the consistent low 30s he'd managed the day before.
Around eleven in the morning they stopped for a short break. Over sandwiches and juice, Harry was surprised to find some of his friends a bit spent from the morning drills. What surprised Harry the most was the diversity—while he Hermione and Neville were almost as fresh as when they'd started, Ron, Su, and the twins, on the other hand, were quite winded. Half an hour later they went on for the more physical part of their morning training.
Three hours later Harry saw very little progress. He tried to use his left hand with some of the drills with moving targets, which made his scores even lower. By the end of the morning's training he was as winded as he had been the day before, and he still had some of the best scores in the group. Ron and the twins barely made it through the more physical drills. They would have to ask Tonks about it the next day.
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"Do you have plans for the afternoon?"
"Probably go to the castle, or study here—why?"
"I was thinking I could go over the notebook with you and Neville; maybe Ron too, since it contains tactical information. We can do some studying too."
"So, study group?"
As expected, Hermione insisted on going through the whole notebook before she would agree to concentrate on any specifics.
"With every page I read I get more and more impressed with Lily and Frank. They always tell us how wonderful your father was," she said, turning to Harry, "but your mother was just amazing!"
Harry gave a very sad smile. "So I've heard lately."
The notebook was nothing if not thorough and to the point. It covered a calculated range of knowledge needed to fight and win. There was no theory there, just know-how with footnoted references to a short list of textbooks for further understanding, all of which, as Harry could testify, were located on a small shelf in the gatehouse library. Explanations were clear and linear, together with the necessary illustrations where needed. It was quite clear to Harry and Hermione that whoever written it had access to Muggle guides, since it contained nothing of the chaos and confusion often found in magical guides.
The list contained three types of shields. One was a strengthened version of the regular Protego; the second was a localized conjured metallic shield, intended to stop both very potent curses and physical attacks. "I think I've seen Voldemort use this shield in the Ministry, while fighting Dumbledore," Harry said, ignoring Neville's gasp of horror. "The git could have killed him back then, but instead he was trying to catch him alive," he added darkly. The third shield was a wide-area shield. It was a bit stronger than the first one and was intended to be used to protect a location or a small group of people. It had few variations to be used ether in open space, between walls, or as a sphere around one person. It looked to be very potent, but the guide indicated that it took a lot of raw power to be used properly, and very few witches or wizards were capable of that level of power.
The transportation section contained explanations about Apparation and Portkey creation. Then it mentioned "special equipment" stored in Gringotts vault No. 007. "Certainly Muggle-born," remarked Hermione dryly, snickering silently.
"Without a doubt—Granger."
"Hermione Granger," she added, smiling broadly.
"Hein?" was all Neville was capable of.
"Hey, Harry, when I went out with Ron the other night, I saw that there was a new Bond out. Why don't we all go together tonight?"
"New Bond! Who's playing?"
"I don't know, I think he's a new one."
"Shame, I liked Roger Moore."
"Roger Moore?! It's a well known fact that the best Bond is one Sir Sean Connery."
"Yes, sure he's a better actor—a much better actor—I'll give you that, but Bond is such a shallow character. I still prefer Roger Moore. He drinks his martini better."
All this while Neville was watching them and trying to understand what they were talking about and what was so funny.
"You want to take seven to nine pureblood wizards to the cinema, for the first time, all at once?"
"Why not? We'll take my parents and Dudley with us and be sure to explain everything to them in advance."
"Sure, why not. Now can we go back to the notebook, luv?"
The notebook stated that the said vault contained ten work-class brooms and three flying carpets to be used as transportation and for air support. Neville had no idea what "air support" was.
The contents of the vault were another nice surprise. Other than the brooms and the carpets, it contained four dragon-hide amour suits, three Invisibility Cloaks, a Master grade potion lab, and two pairs of charmed glasses. "They're probably like Moody's eye," remarked Neville. Hermione nodded and continued to read. Ten hit-wizard grade concealment and amour suits, a variety of daggers, and two priceless Time-Turners.
"Wow!" remarked Neville. "This is like Auror paradise."
"Sure sounds like it. We'll need to check it out when we visit Gringotts later this week."
And Hermione read on. The ward page held the description of anti-Apparation and Portkey wards together with basic perimeter and proximity wards and a few locking charms of various complexities.
The medical chapter contained instructions for several basic healing charms to heal wounds, mend bones, stop bleeding, put people under medical stasis, and the like. The end of that chapter referred them to the potion chapter for further reference.
"It gives instructions on being a field medic, not a Healer."
"What's a 'field medic'?"
"It's a Muggle term for a soldier whose task is to keep the wounded among his fellow soldiers alive and give them basic medical treatment until a real Healer can be reached." Neville nodded in understanding.
The potion part contained recipes and instructions for the preparation of basic healing concoctions like blood-replenishing, pain-relieving, Skele-Gro, and sleeping draughts, together with instructions regarding the use of these potions and remarks about their side effects. The non-healing potions contained an assortment of recipes for the likes of two truth potions, including Veritaserum; Felix Felicis, Polyjuice, et cetera.
"This is so complicated," remarked Neville as he skimmed the Polyjuice recipe and instructions. "This is way over NEWT level. We'll never be able to make it, look—it takes a full month to brew!"
Hermione and Harry did their best not to laugh. They were doing a good job of it, letting only mute snickering sounds out. Then they made the mistake of looking at each other and broke down.
"What?"
"You should always pay attention and make sure you put a hair from Pansy in the potion instead of Pansy's cat..."
This was very little in the way of explanation, from Neville's point of view, but Hermione went on and did her best imitation of a Weasley blush.
"Do you remember the week Hermione spent in the hospital wing during our second year? Well, apart from the month she spent there Petrified later that year..."
Neville nodded, though not finding this much of an explanation at all.
"Well, Hermione here decided that Draco knew who the heir of Slytherin was and that we needed to get that information out of him. So Saint Granger, dear, broke almost every school rule and brewed Polyjuice for us to use—in Myrtle's broken bathroom on the second floor, mind you. We used it to impersonate Crabbe and Goyle and discovered that Draco knew nothing about the subject. Hermione used it, to great effect, to impersonate Pansy's cat..."
This was almost too much of an explanation for Neville. "You brewed this—thing," he said, at a loss for other words, "during your second year?"
Hermione nodded and bowed her head both in embarrassment and pride.
"Blimey!"
"Back to work," remarked Hermione, and went back to the notebook. They were up to what was apparently the most important part of it: curses and spells. To their surprise, this part was quite short and focused. There was the Reducto curse, which was the basic curse in Lily and Frank's fighting doctrine. "If you can hit your enemy with a well placed Reducto, you've done your job," it said. The full list included two fire curses: the regular Incendio and one that sent balls of fire in various sizes. There were two types of cutting curses, one of which was very effective since it was colourless, a piercing curse, an interesting curse that disintegrated stone and sent it around as sharp shrapnel, and one that conjured metal arrows and banished them toward the opponent. This was the grand total of the attack spells. The notebook elaborated and said that most wizards tend to be over-crafty with their Spellwork. It was probably nice in an official duel, but in a real fight one should hit his opponent with a straight destructive curse, hit him again to make sure he didn't rejoin the fight, and move on. A few well-chosen curses would be enough to do so.
The auxiliary spells included a smoke spell, Disillusionment Charm, a couple of binding charms, including one Auror-grade charm which conjured a full set of hand- and foot-cuffs which were password protected and prevented the bound person from performing any type of magic, memory charms, silencing charms, a few detection spells, and that was it.
"This actually looks to be workable after just a short period of training."
Neville looked at Harry and nodded. "We should probably schedule a couple of hours every afternoon to start learning these," he suggested.
"One hour of physical training, six or seven hours of magical training. Two to three hours of learning, study and research, meals and transportation, not to mention an occasional fight with Death Eaters and such—we won't have time to breathe, never mind doing something proactive like sleeping."
"We can always make more time."
Hermione looked very sceptically at them. "I don't think it's such a good idea," she said. "I tried to do this myself during our third year, and for once Ron was right about me being 'mental'. Even I couldn't study effectively, as vain as it sounds. Then, especially during a war, there's always the risk of doing something stupid and creating a timeline paradox."
"Back then, what did you do wrong?"
"I don't really know. I used the Time-Turner to the best of my ability, but even using it just to get to classes was putting too much pressure on me. I was always anxious and so tired, and then I was so afraid. I was afraid of making a mistake, of letting someone see me, of you and Ron finding out..."
"I remember you that year. I was almost afraid to come near you. Then again, back then I was afraid of my own shadow, too."
"You weren't as afraid as Malfoy, though."
"Is this another of your private jokes?" Neville asked, looking at Hermione who was hiding her face with her hands and fighting her laughter without much success.
"Do you remember Buckbeak, the Hippogriff that Harry rode our third year? Well, to heal his wounded pride, Draco arranged for Buckbeak to be executed. When the executioner came to Hogwarts, Draco was so smug and full of himself and I was quite tense, tired, and anxious. So when he bragged about how he'd got Buckbeak's execution arranged, I stopped thinking and just hit him in the face."
"You didn't!"
"She sure did. Draco didn't dare go anywhere near her for the rest of that year."
"My hero!"
Hermione put her hand to her chest and bowed deeply with a flourishing gesture of her other hand.
"Did you take enough time to sleep?" came Luna's voice from the door.
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This is going to be very awkward, Kleio Rickard thought to herself. I need to find Kingsley.
All this time, the "cleanup" operation was continuing in the Ministry. There were no more high-profile arrests. The first week of investigations "took care" of all the highly positioned Death Eaters and Voldemort supporters. As they moved down the ranks of the Ministry, fewer and fewer arrests were made, though some Ministry employees decided to quit or just went on an extended lunch break, away from the Ministry building, and never returned. The three marked Aurors infuriated Kleio the most. One of them was even on her own team. She'd trained Ted from the day he left Hogwarts and entered the Auror academy. He'd been under her command for almost ten years now, and she truly trusted him. Hell, the sod was in charge of the security on Amelia's house. Sometimes she just hated being on the side of the law. Since the way the investigations had been carried out was quite illegal, any evidence derived therefrom was inadmissible. All they could do was to arrest marked Death Eaters for the relatively minor offence of being marked Death Eaters, and flush out active sympathizers. She herself had to send actual murderers back to the streets and could only try to keep an eye on them for further offences that would justify their arrest. The other side, she knew, didn't pay any attention to the "due process of the law". They just killed whoever stood in their way. Well, right now she was just a little bit jealous. At least they could follow the Minister's orders to the letter—they took care to be well backed up while making arrests, and gave the target every opportunity to 'resist'.
"A moment?" she asked, knocking softly on Kingsley's open door.
He waved her in and watched wearily as she closed and sealed the door behind her and then placed a silencing charm on the room. With most other people he would have already taken out his wand and sent a few curses her way. It wasn't that he didn't like or trust his colleague; it was just that sometimes old Moody was right—one could never knew who his enemies might be, and you couldn't be too careful. They all had very clear orders to avoid any suspicious acts, and clearer orders regarding the action to be taken in case someone broke the former orders.
Kleio was another story, since she had taken the oath with him and would lose her magic before being able to betray it, ether willingly or not. Magical oaths were dangerous, but safe. And they provided protection even from means like the Imperius curse, since the oath would break the curse, albeit causing a lot of pain in doing so, before harming one's magic.
"I was investigating the staff of the Minister's office today and came up with two problems."
Kingsley nodded to her to go on.
"One 'problem' is a certain Mrs. Umbridge. She isn't marked as a Death Eater but is supporting many activities and initiatives that she knows were initiated by You-Know-Who. The other problem is with young Mr. Weasley. He's neither a Death Eater nor a supporter, but he has developed such a hatred toward Mr. Potter that he's become a security risk. More than a few of our arrests testify that he is a very good and easily manipulated source of information."
"And the problem?"
"Well, Umbridge might be an effective tool to feed disinformation to You-Know-Who, if treated right. There are two main problems with it: the first is that it's not my decision to make. The other is that the woman has many sources of information of her own. It won't be that easy to manipulate the information she holds, and she'll pose a security risk the whole time."
"And young Weasley?"
"Well, his father is a Ministry employee, and though not the most brilliant or ambitious of them, I'm quite fond of the man. I understand that you're friendly with him. Would you like to talk with him before we throw his kid out of the building?"
"Is he an immediate risk?"
"I don't think so, but now that we've dried up You-know-Who's sources in the Ministry, I'm afraid he'll be approached very soon."
"Let me think about the Weasley boy for a couple of days. For now, let's talk with Gawain and the Minister regarding the Umbridge issue."
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"It was hilarious!"
Harry had never heard Ron so enthusiastic that early in the morning. Actually, until two days ago, he hadn't see his friend awake that early ever. Not even on Christmas Day.
"Did you see how he drove in that big car and broke the whole city? These Muggles are mental!"
Harry and Hermione exchanged amused looks with each other.
"It wasn't a car. It was a tank. It's a battlefield vehicle."
"You could have enjoyed your evening with Hermione as much, probably much more, if only you'd listened to her instructions instead of going bonkers on her," his sister said reproachfully, cooling his enthusiasm down.
It was two nights after their outing into the Muggle world, and Ron was still as exited as he had been at the time. In effect, it was as much an effort as it was fun, and fun it had been. The first effort was to persuade the whole bunch to join in the expedition. Obviously, Ron was very reluctant. His last experience with the Muggle world had not been encouraging, to say the least. Some of the others just couldn't understand what it was all about. Then they had to go through clothes control.
This morning they took a Portkey to Hermione's old neighbourhood to do their morning training. Their little late-night study group was quite effective, and by now all four of them were capable of charming a Portkey whenever they needed one. Today's afternoon lesson would be teaching it to their friends; Apparation would follow. Training was getting both easier and more difficult from morning to morning. Harry felt like his body was growing accustomed to the physical effort, but then he was required to put forth more and more effort every session. While making his laps around the track he let his mind loose again.
Every time he was confronted with what magical folks regarded as Muggle clothing, he was concerned for their mental stability. Than again, he thought, most wizards he knew were a little round the twist. That, and the fact that he was starting to believe that most wizards were colour-blind, too.
"Do you truly believe these clothes are something a sane person would wear?" he asked, conjuring a large mirror in front of Ron and Neville. Happily, the twins did a lot better, but they tended to err on the colourful side, a fact that would make them feel at home at some gay bars, at least clothes-wise.
Neville just shrugged at the question. "This is my best Muggle suit. Gran bought it for me a year ago."
"And you think it looks reasonable to wear these?"
"What do I know about Muggles?"
"Well, I thought you knew about common sense." Harry shook his head in desperation.
A short Portkey trip to Privet Drive and a visit to a local shop equipped them with suitable outfits.
At least the girls have better fashion sense, he thought as he held Ron's feet while his friend did his sit-ups. The "behavioural" part was much more complicated. Learning from her previous experience, Hermione instructed her friends to save their remarks for themselves, at least until such time as no Muggle would be able to hear them, and if they just had to ask something, address Harry, Dudley, or herself—quietly.
"Thanks for the other day," Ron whispered to Harry as they swapped places. Mindful of Hermione's recent "speech", Harry dragged his friend to the side.
"I want us all to have fun tonight. Please just give it a chance."
Ron nodded his head, but Harry wasn't so sure yet.
"Ron," he said, "just stick with me and keep your remarks in a low tone." Ron nodded again, and Harry went on. "You should keep an open mind. The Muggle world is very different, but as far as recreation goes they're doing much better than wizards do."
"You're welcome," he said now.
Actually, it went quite well—no, make that very well—for a large bunch of pureblood wizards, cavorting in the regular world, in public, for the first time in their life. The movie was perfect for the occasion. It had enough action to attract the guys, was funny enough to please the girls, and had enough gadgets to amaze all wizards.
"You guys can do that without magic?" he heard an amazed Fred asking Dudley during one of the more impressive action scenes. Dudley looked embarrassed.
"Maybe a few people can do these things with the proper equipment, but it's a movie—it's mostly special effects." This wasn't much of an explanation for George and Fred. "Equipment? Special effects?"
"Later," Hermione hissed from the row behind them to shush them.
A short while later they headed back to Grimmauld Place for their magical training of the day. The last two days expanded the gaps between their capabilities. Harry, Hermione, and Neville took the move into small jinxes in stride and were making progress all the time. The friendly competition between Luna and Ginny did wonders for the two of them after a very short while. The progress Neville had shown during these few training sessions was nothing short of amazing. On the other hand, Ron and the twins were still struggling. Their aim was gradually getting better, and their general endurance was improving, but they just couldn't sustain the flow of magic for as long as the others. Ron especially was getting quite frustrated by that. They asked Tonks for advice, but all she said was that it was too early for any kind of concern.
Today was a short day, since Susan, Neville, and Harry were expected at Gringotts at one in the afternoon.
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"What are we doing here?"
"We're not so sure. When Harry and I visited Gringotts last week, the trust manager—Ironblaze—asked us to schedule this meeting with him and to bring you over in order to receive more information from him. He insisted that this information was to be given only to the three of us together. By the way, Harry, how did you know that Neville was the third party of this meeting?"
"I made an educated guess. In my parents' cottage I found a letter from my mother addressed to me. In the letter there was a list of people I can trust completely. Apparently they were working behind Dumbledore's back. Since I inherited the Black fortune, the only names on the list with any relevance to Gringotts were the Boneses and Longbottoms."
Once again, they sat in the waiting room until Ironblaze was ready to meet with them. The tea was wonderful and the scones soft and warm. The whole place gave them the feeling of being preferred customers. They were going over their respective account summary together, trying to guess what this meeting was all about, when the wide doors were opened and two Goblins walked in accompanied by a tall young man who looked as if he'd come right out of London's business district. He was wearing a dark pinstriped suit with a dark blue shirt and a quality tie, and carried a leather briefcase.
"He looks different from the man in the moo-vee," whispered Neville in Harry's ear, while Susan looked at the man in a very appreciative way. Harry looked between the foreign man and his friends with a very confused expression, while the young man raised an eyebrow and then smiled back at Susan, who blushed lightly.
"Oh!" Harry exclaimed finally as understanding dawned. "Not every man in a suit carrying a briefcase is a secret agent, you know, though they do call this kind of bag a 'James Bond case'. We took them to the cinema for the first time a couple of days ago," he explained to the man. "We went to the new Bond movie."
The man smiled brightly. "Well, I'm Howard," he said. "Bradley Howard," he added amusingly, á la James Bond, and handed his card to Susan, who blushed even more and tried to hide behind Harry's back. "Sadly, I'm no secret agent, just an investment banker," he added, still smiling.
"And this is the head of Gringotts' investment department, Hardark. I'm sure their relevance will be clear to you in a few moments. Until then—time is gold," he said, guiding the group of people and Goblins to the large conference table at the back of the room.
"Fifteen years ago, a young Muggle-born woman entered this branch of our bank and requested to meet the president of the bank. Obviously her request was not granted, and she met with me instead. Back than, I was a newly appointed deputy director of the trust department, eager to make my mark on the bank's policy, and, naturally, earn a lot of gold."
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It was a lovely London day, and Uma was sitting out in the sun, enjoying her morning tea. People all around her were quite indifferent to her existence at the place, which was exactly the way she wanted it. Every now and then someone, usually a young man, noticed the young woman in the crowd of men and women and gazed at her, mesmerized, for a long moment, as if trying to understand the co-existence of her and the common world. These days, this was almost all the attention she received or needed in order to live her quiet and simple life. There were other days, of course, but these had been buried deep in her past and abandoned, though never forgotten. She was quite content to sit in the sun and enjoy her time, consuming culture and science. Science was actually a very interesting thing. It was the power of understanding, as opposed to the personal power most people seemed to seek. For her amusement she meddled, from time to time, with the lives of her few acquaintances, mostly regarding their love lives. She tried a few boxing shows, but they just weren't to her taste. These men were fighting politely, risking too little for too big a prize. Motorcycle races were quite fun, though.
On this particular morning Uma was to meet with one of her very few friends, here in London. She could still remember the first time she'd met with young Dora Tonks. The girl—she was only seventeen back then—was sitting at the bar in a very popular London pub and was virtually waving men away. Her manga blue hair and cheerful exposition were irresistible. Uma couldn't remember meeting anyone so alive for a very long time. Nymphadora was the girl's name. It took Uma three long hours and a lot of alcohol to find that out, not that she could blame the girl for hiding it. What was it with parents and mythological names? Most of these names were quite ridiculous even back in the days when they were freshly coined. Now they were just obsolete. Take poor Artemis, for example—Uma would have been glad to turn from active goddess into myth with a name like that. Now, the Egypt goddesses had cool names. What most people didn't realise, though, was that there was no reason to fight one's name. One could replace it just as easily.
"Blonde? What happened to acid green or shocking pink?"
"Oh hush, you—and blondes do have more fun, mind you."
Uma took a long look at her friend, noticing her subdued posture and shadowed face. She hadn't seen her friend so down since the days when Dora discovered just how hard the military-like training was that she'd chosen to take, right out of school.
"What happened, dear?"
"It's been a couple of very bad weeks," Dora answered quietly. "I've lost a few people I held dear, and my old school headmaster was killed too."
They paid the tab and went for a stroll in the nearby park.
"Ever since my cousin died last year, things have just become worse and worse. War has started, and almost everyone involved is dear to me. I help to train a group of volunteers, and just the other day I received a promotion; now I have a squad of new recruits that I need to train for this war, and all I see in my sleep is these people dying because I didn't do my work well and they weren't ready. Then, in the morning, I look in the mirror and know that I'm not ready either..."
Uma listened silently. Often, she knew, people just needed a friend to talk to, not one to give advice.
"Then there's this guy I know; he's supposed to lead us in this war, and he's only seventeen. He isn't ready to be a leader—and worse, old England isn't ready to let him lead."
Tonks stopped walking and looked around at the playground. "I shouldn't be telling you all this."
"You sound like you like the boy."
"I do. I love him, like most everyone who truly knows him."
"Then he has a good fighting chance. Love is a strong source of power, you know."
"So said my old headmaster."
"He was a wise man, then. Did you know that back in the early days the most powerful gods of war were also gods of love?"
Tonks looked sceptical. "I'm talking about real war, not old mythology."
"Mostly goddesses," Uma smiled, ignoring the last statement. It was a long moment before she spoke again. "Dora," she said softly, "what war are you talking about? England hasn't been a part of a major conflict since the Gulf. Are you talking about northern Ireland?"
"Not any war that the public knows about, though I'm very much afraid that this war isn't going to be hidden for much longer."
Tonks took a shortish stick out of her pocket and looked at her friend pensively, almost sorrowfully. Then she pointed the stick at her friend and said "Obliviate," in a whisper. She watched as her friend's eyes lost their focus for a short moment. "Uma," she said, "I think I'm in need of some alcohol."
"Me too, dear. I feel like I've been daydreaming for the last half-hour. There's a very nice bar with young, rich customers near the southern gate. Lead the way."
She watched her friend affectionately before starting after her. "Tell me," she added, "how are you and your old wolf-man coming?"
For the first time that day, a wide, genuine smile came to Tonks's face. "Do I have news for you!"
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"Apparently, this young Muggle-born had the money of three respectable families, one of which was extremely wealthy, to back her up. That was sure to catch my attention. Even more surprising was the fact that this young woman had refreshing ideas about wizard-Goblin relations, fighting wars against evil Dark Lords, and, most importantly, making huge profits.
"You see, wizarding money is old money—very, very old. Most of it is gold, gathered over thousands of years of digging and harvesting, then concentrated into the hands of a few old and traditionalist families. In reality, a wizarding family can live with almost no money at all. Other than pure luxuries, all other necessities can be easily supplied by magical means. The wizarding economy is very slow, too. With only about 35,000 magical beings in the whole of England, only a little more than half of them wizards and witches, commerce is very limited. Food, clothing, some books, and potion supplies—in that respect, money in a magical bank is just that—safe. It earns very little in terms of interest. Well, Ms. Evans had some very interesting ideas about investments; bold ideas, and the money to carry these ideas out. In addition, she had very interesting ideas regarding the way Goblins should handle their relations with wizards.
"Ever since non-human races went into hiding, we've mostly been tolerated by human wizards, who treat us as a necessary evil at best. Contempt and alienation have led to fear. If you'll follow the history of wizard-Goblin relations—the real history, not what you're taught at Hogwarts—you'll notice that almost every wizard-Goblin war was preceded by internal wizarding conflict. The fact that Goblins are trusted with wizards' money made us necessary and helped postpone the next conflict. The main reason we didn't have to fight wizards during the early '40s was that wizards had hard enough work to keep hidden from non-magical humans without the complication of openly fighting a nonhuman race. You, Harry, were the only one who prevented the fight on 1981.
"Your mother gave me a wonderful idea, a way to make our banking even more desirable and necessary for wizards, while gaining leverage over certain unfavourable wizarding families."
