Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, Hogwarts, Gringotts, the Leaky Cauldron or anything else in JKR's wonderful world. Except for the little pebble just in front of the front doors of Hogwarts. I put that there. I might own that. Maybe. But probably not.
Goblins Are Such Nice, Polite People (Heh! Heh!)
As she walked into the bank, she was pleased to see there were very few other customers in the lobby. As she walked down the line of tellers she reached out with her magic and placed compulsions on them to want to be anyplace other than here. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the disgruntled looks of tellers as their customers suddenly, and without reason, turned and walked away, to exit the bank.
Stepping up to a counter window she spoke. "I would like to go to my vault."
The goblin on the other side of the counter didn't even look up from the stacks of coins he was counting. "Key." He said gruffly.
"My vault doesn't require a key." She stated.
The goblin gave her an annoyed look as he finally raised his eyes to her. "All vaults require a key, witch."
"Mine doesn't." She smiled at him.
"If you have no key, then you can't get into a vault, so I have nothing more to sa…"
He slammed his forehead down onto the marble countertop before him.
With a pained cry he rebounded upwards and backwards, hands going to his head…even as he overbalanced and did a backflip off the stool he was sitting on, to crash to the floor.
She didn't need to look around to know she had the attention of every goblin in the room as she leaned over the counter to look at the goblin behind it climbing back to his feet. "That looked like that hurt." She said sympathetically. "Do you do that every time you have a disagreement with a customer?"
She could hear angry growling closing in on her as her target glared up at her and snarled "I'll have your head on a pike outside for using magic on me, witch!"
She shook her head in a disappointed way. "I thought I'd disposed of Idiot the Stupid before he could spawn." She said with a pained sigh. "I guess I'll have to backtrack the line and eliminate his descendants." She smiled again. "Just to improve the IQ of the entire race you understand."
It had gotten deathly silent in the room. The eyes of the goblin, Grimbite according to the nameplate on the counter, widened considerably at her statement. "How do you know that name?" he asked, his tone considerably less antagonistic than before, almost sounding fearful.
"Why wouldn't I know it?" she replied. "I gave it to him." She once again smiled at him. "My vault, please?"
"Ye…Yes, Lady. If you will follow me, please?"
She almost smiled at his fear, then shook off the desire. She was trying to change, but thousands of years of habits weren't easy to break. She'd have to work on it though if she wanted to get with Harry.
She ignored the armed and armored warriors as she followed the now overly helpful Grimbite. They were backing away, so they weren't a threat anyway.
The cart ride to her vault wasn't nearly as long as she was used to. The family vault was at least three times deeper than where the fearful Grimbite directed them. It just showed how deep you could get with a thousand years of tunneling time.
He was going to stay with the cart, but she insisted he accompany her into the ten-foot-high hole in the wall of the cavern. It was pitch black, but she simply raised her hand and a simple Lumos burst into brilliant life from it. She had to admit, there were times when the new magic was simply better for the task at hand than her Fae magic.
The dust on the floor was ankle deep and totally undisturbed as she reached the end of the tunnel, a seemingly blank wall. Standing before it she reached out in the Olde way and felt the rock around her, its solidity, its strength, its unyielding presence. Her magic caressed it, stroked it, and it responded, melting back into the sides of the tunnel and giving access to the void within.
The vault revealed wasn't as impressive as some vaults she had seen, like her families'. Only about twenty feet deep, it had nothing on the floor save for a staff which stood upright in the center of the room. About five feet in length, it held a raw ruby the size of her fisted hands in the curled roots at the tip. She smiled fondly at it and flicked a finger, causing the ruby to burst into a bright flash of red light.
((((((OOOOO))))))
Grimbite stared at the sight revealed. The vaults of Gringotts were merely hollowed out cavities with doors rented to wizards and witches. Any storage required, shelves, cabinets, chests, was supplied by the vault renters.
Not so with this vault. Around the walls were three tiers of sets of wide doors, obviously closing off niches in the walls he realized as she approached one and pressed a fingertip to it. The doors opened but he couldn't see within, so he stepped sideways in order to glimpse what may be inside…and kicked something laying on the floor. He jumped back, afraid he had damaged something of the witches'…then jumped again as he saw what he had kicked was in reality the remains of a goblin, one obviously trapped in the chamber when last anyone had been here. "Who is that?" he asked, fearfully, afraid of what the question might cause the witch to do if she were offended by it.
She merely glanced his way as she closed the doors on the first niche and moved to a second. "Oh. That would be Idiot the Stupid." She nonchalantly replied, returning to the next set of doors.
"The tales say you tortured him to an agonizing death." He said, obviously believing starvation, or more likely thirst, was not an agonizing way to die.
She turned to him. "Do you know why I named him that?" she asked.
He only shook his head, afraid to antagonize her.
"When I sealed him in here, because he told me he was tired and needed to rest from his labors for me, I told him the way to freedom was sealed in here with him." She looked at him expectantly.
He pondered her words for a few seconds and then his eyes darted to the staff glowing in the center of the room, growing wide at what the other goblin hadn't done.
She grinned at him. "I guess you're not related to him after all." She said, turning back to the open niche.
"But…to touch your staff!" He blurted out. No goblin in his right mind would have dared touch the Dread One's staff!
"Did I not say it was the way to freedom?" She inquired as she pulled a scroll from the shelf before her.
He inhaled a breath to rebut her, held it for a second as he thought, then released it as he scowled down at the dead goblin. "You gave permission." He exclaimed. "Truly stupid."
She chuckled. "Sorry about the headache."
He gave her a confused look, wondering what she was talking about. His jaw dropped open in surprise. "You apologize, Lady? To me?"
She glanced at him from a third set of doors. "Yes. I was intentionally being obtuse because I needed to attract enough attention that the Director himself came to see if I was who I was making myself out to be." She looked at him full on this time. "I need to speak with him most urgently."
Grimbite rubbed his forehead, which was still sore. "Couldn't you have just asked for an appointment?" he growled at her, then gasped in fear of her wrath at his impudence in speaking in such a way and what she might do.
She just grinned at him, though. "The teenaged daughter of the Lord of a minor house?" she asked. "How long do you think it would have taken before I even met with some under goblin asking what I wanted?"
The goblin had to agree with that. Very few humans, and only then some of the largest account holders, ever met with the Gringotts director and Horde Leader. Portraying herself as the Dread Lady and then proving it by entering that Beings' vault would get her an appointment…if it didn't get her dead first.
He decided to take a chance. "Lady," he stated in his most deferential tone of voice, "the tales do not speak of you as such a…pleasant…being." He gulped. A goblin never showed fear, but the ground he trod was awash with the blood of goblins who didn't show it. "Might I ask why you are?"
"Times have changed, Grimbite." She replied. "A time of great upheaval is approaching and if our world is to survive wizard and goblin must stand side by side." Again, she looked at him, this time the corner of her mouth curling up in a wry smile. "More for the wizard's sake, I believe."
She went on. "I am not who I was, Grimbite, and who I was is not what I am. I have changed. In many ways I resemble that me, but in many ways, I am a total stranger to that person. Who I will be is what I must choose."
With that, she closed the doors to the niche she was standing by and walked back to the first one. "Come here, Grimbite. I will need your blood." She suddenly stopped, then turned to him and smiled, "Please."
He hid the trembling he felt, hoping only that she make his death painless. The tales told of those who had taken months to die at her hands, in agony the entire time. "Lady." He addressed her as he stepped to her side. What she said next was totally unexpected and shocking.
"I need a vault keeper, Grimbite. Do you want the job?"
((((((OOOOO))))))
She looked down at the goblin with a grin. He stood frozen in shock, eyes wide and slack jawed, at what she had asked of him. It was obvious that was not what he had expected after her earlier statement. She waited for him to speak.
"Vault keeper, Lady?" He asked when he had regained some of his senses.
"Yes." She replied. "Unlike regular vaults, this one is warded such that house elves cannot enter here. If I need something from here, I will have to come and get it myself, which might be impractical. But I can give you access, send an elf to you and you can get it. So, do you want the job?"
She could see the calculating look in his eyes. Vault keeper to the Lady Morgana? Trusted to actually enter her vault when she wasn't there? To be raised to an incalculable social status amongst his peers? "I would be honored, Lady." He spoke, with a bow of respect.
She handed him a pointed blade. "A drop per door will do." She told him. As he pricked the end of his thumb, she pressed her hand to the doors and imprinted her magic on it. "Where my hand was." She stepped back and he pressed his thumb into the center of her palmprint. They did the same to all the doors before she took her staff, and they left the chamber. Outside she turned and once again reached out to the surrounding rock. It flowed across the floor and sealed the chamber off.
"Palm this time, Grimbite." She told the goblin as she pressed her hand to the wall, feeding her magic into it. "We need a lot more for this."
Understanding the ways of blood sealing, the goblin sliced his palm. "Yes, Lady."
"There." She pointed to where her hand had been. As he pressed his hand to the stone where she indicated she spoke again. "Push your magic into it. Feel my magic. Let them mix." A few seconds later, she said, "Step away." Grimbite did. She took his hand, concentrated, and healed it. "Now, place your hand there and think 'Open'." She instructed.
He did as instructed and the wall once again flowed away…before closing again.
"Do it again." She told him. This time when the door opened, she stepped through. "In." She said, and he followed. "Again." The goblin pressed his hand to the inside of the door, and it parted, allowing them to exit.
"And that's all there is to it." She said with a smile. "Let's head back up." Grimbite led her back to the cart, and they made the short ascent back to the lobby floor of the bank.
As they approached to door to the lobby proper, she extended her senses, probing before her and grinned at what she found. This should be fun.
Grimbite opened the door and as she passed through, she remarked, "I would like an inventory of the entire vault by next Monday, Vault Keeper, and remember, anyone other than yourself entering it will die. Oh, and please remove Stupid's remains."
There was no reply from her companion as he stared at what awaited them in the lobby: goblins; lots of goblins. At least a hundred and not an ax or spear, sword or knife in sight. What they did have were muggle weapons. She didn't know what they were called but many of them were held by single soldiers, standing or kneeling about the room, pointed at her. There were even goblins standing up on the teller counter. To the front of their line were five much larger weapons, each sitting upon a tri-legged base with a goblin sitting behind it holding a pair of handles while a second goblin knelt beside it, holding belts of what she knew was ammunition to be fed into as it fired. She had seen such weapons while scrying and knew what they could do, if not quite certain how they worked.
They were all clad in full body army and her senses told her it was all heavily enchanted, stronger and more magic resistant than normal, almost as if they had expected her and wanted to be ready to fight her. She grinned as she reached out to the very rock beneath them.
Front and center of their formation was a large goblin, fully five feet tall, armored as they all were, if with even stronger enchantments. "Dark One!" he called out, anger in his voice. "The Horde is free! We will not act like your dogs, to be commanded and ordered, beaten or killed, ever again! We will destroy you or die trying!"
Her grin widened. "Should have started trying already, then."
She was glad they were so close together as her Fae senses felt the force of the stone of the building, the very Earth beneath it, and gathered it where it was directly beneath those before her, in metaphysical hands. She had known this force in her previous life but had never known what it was for, what it actually did, even as it connected to everything that existed. I need to get Hermione to explain physics to me in more detail, she thought as she yanked downward, sharply, on the gathered force.
Every goblin in front of her, and all of their equipment, save the leader, crashed to the floor or countertop in a cacophony of noise, crashing metal, squawks of surprise and cries of unexpected pain. Some of the weapons discharged, loudly, causing more pained cries and her to flinch involuntarily, including a large tube held by one of the goblins on the counter as it crashed to the surface. Something whooshed by her with a tail of smoke and flame before it smashed into the door to the tunnels and exploded, blowing a decent sized hole in the thick wood door.
She turned away from the scene behind her to look at the stunned goblins, even as they were trying to regain their feet in their restrictive armor. "Well, what do you know? Gravity works!"
She walked over to the standing warrior. "Director Ragnok, we need to talk. Is there any place we can do so privately?"
The wide-eyed goblin, obviously stunned and shocked at the ease with which he'd been defeated, visibly shook himself. "My office." He said gruffly, then turned and walked to a side door.
She followed him through a virtual maze of corridors before they arrived at an office with a large, iron bound wooden door. Ragnok opened it and went in, ahead of her. She smirked at his little display of defiance. He walked around the large desk in the impressively sized room, walls decorated with battle trophies and suits of armor, and sat down, glaring at her.
She wandlessly transfigured one of the chairs in front of the desk into a large comfortable upholstered armchair. She had always been able to do transfiguration, but it hadn't been easy, taking much concentration. Now, knowing the rules and laws of it, understanding the underlying theory she had learned in school, she did it with barely a thought. There was much to be said for modern magic. She sat down.
"What do you want?" Ragnok growled, obviously not worried about upsetting her, or caring.
"I need your help." She told him.
His lip pulled back in a sneer. "Why don't you just command us, torture and kill a few of us as examples, make us do your bidding?" he demanded angrily. "You showed out there that you were more than capable of doing it."
She waved her hand as if to brush aside the comment. "Yes, and if you had known I could do that an archer a hundred paces away could have shot me with an arrow. Been there, done that, don't want to do it again."
"Two thousand."
She froze at the implications, eyes wide in surprise. "What?"
Ragnok smiled grimly. "Those large weapons on the tripods? Muggles have used them as a template for a weapon one person can use. Muggle marksmen can kill with it at two thousand paces…human paces."
His smile widened at the gobsmacked look on her face, and he continued speaking. "Their camouflage while they do it is very good as well. Well outside the range of even the strongest magical, who won't know where to even look to find who's trying to kill them and wouldn't see them even if they did."
"Shite!" The word came out of her even as she slumped in her chair. "I thought only their big cannons had that kind of range."
"If you intend to try and conquer the Muggle world, you had better do your homework first." He sneered at her.
"Conquer them?" she asked with a surprised voice. "I'm trying to stop them from conquering us!"
Ragnok gave a scornful laugh. "Is the great Dark One afraid of the Muggles?" His sneer widened at the thought.
"No, I'm not afraid of them." She answered, and his sneer deepened even further in disbelief of her reply. "I'm terrified of them, of what they can do." His sneer vanished in his own surprised look at her acknowledgement. "Judging by your familiarity with those weapons out there, you know why, too. How long do you think we have?"
She saw his frown and narrowed eyes as he contemplated her question. She'd obviously shocked him with her admission, something he'd obviously not expected her to do, and was thinking things over. She had no problem with that. She was going to need their help, in many ways, and the show of firepower in the lobby was evidence they knew a hell of a lot more about the non-magical world than the wizards did. She needed that knowledge. Getting it was going to be the hard part. Ragnok's accusations hadn't been made up stories. As Morgana and Morgan, she had been a harsh and cruel mistress, and goblins had long memories.
"If we're lucky, twenty years." Ragnok grunted out at her. "Unlucky, ten. If the gods forsake us, tomorrow."
"Shite." She realized she was repeating herself and thought the word again. "You have their weapons. Do you intend to fight them when they find us?"
"Them?" the goblin laughed. "Those weapons aren't for use against them, they're for use against the damned wizards the next time they start a war with us, one they will lose. We can't match the muggles and I won't get my people killed for nothing if they move in." He cocked his head a bit. "We are an indigenous race, discriminated against and reviled by the humans we live with." He gave her a toothy grin. "The way the modern Muggles think now, we could end up owning the magical world."
She sighed heavily. "Which could end up being worse all around for everyone."
"Doesn't matter, now." He stated sourly. "You're back to take over, to use us to help you do it."
She sighed again. "I'm not here to enslave your people, Ragnok. Your people, not mine. You have earned the right to live your lives the way you want to without my interference. I no longer have any claim to you, if ever I did. But I do need your help if we're going to be ready to meet the muggles on any even footing when they do find us. You may be an indigenous race but if the wizarding society crashes, it's going to drag yours down with it. And it will crash if something isn't done. I don't know a fraction of what I need to know about them, but I know enough to realize we can't stand against them. Even if they're nice about it, they're to advanced and we're to stagnated. They'll treat us like illiterate children and there are too many pureblood idiots who won't be able to accept the changes that will be happening."
"Your power. You could just take over and force the needed changes."
"Which would be worse than having you do it." she explained. "Once it got out who I am, it would split our world in two: the followers and everyone else and the followers are not the ones I want in charge when we're found. I can't be the leader to change our society. And I don't even want to think about what the muggles might do if they find out who I was."
"Then who?"
"Harry Potter."
The goblin behind the desk actually growled in anger as his fist crashed onto the desktop. "A thief!"
"You know why he broke into the bank, what he stole, and why."
"He could have told us of it, what and where it was." Ragnok snarled, leaning over the desk. "We would have found it, destroyed it."
"How many did Voldemort kill when he found out you couldn't prevent him from stealing it?" She demanded, leaning forward in her own chair. "How many would he have killed if he found out you had done Potter's work for him? Would you have even done it, knowing the potential cost of your actions? He couldn't take that chance, and so he came here at the risk of his own life and stole the one item necessary to help destroy the man who would have slaughtered untold lives if you couldn't look him in the eye and honestly say you did not aid him in any way shape or form."
"He stole a dragon!" The snapped statement was combative.
"He released a dragon." She corrected him. "Then he merely climbed on and rode it wherever it went."
"It doesn't matter." Argued the goblin from behind his desk. "He robbed Gringotts! I cannot let him live. It would ruin the reputation of the bank as the most secure place in the entire wizarding world. That would encourage more would be thieves to attempt it."
She leaned back in her chair and waved her hand in a brushing motion. "You never made a statement whether he succeeded or not. Make an official one stating he didn't, that he stole the dragon in order to escape after an aborted attempt, fine him and his friends heavily, let him know if he ever tries anything like that again he'll end up as a steaming pile of dung on the floor of the dragon pens, then secretly help him change our world so we can meet the muggles as equals and not as a bunch of socially retarded children."
She watched him scowling at her for a few moments before he spoke again. "Would he abide by such an agreement?" he growled.
"Have you met the boy?" she asked. "He's the embodiment of every good quality of the round table. He risked his life to get that cup. He was in a vault of an avowed enemy, who tortured the woman he loves, filled with gold, gems and valuables and took nothing else." She suddenly gave him a little grin. "Plus, he showed you vulnerabilities in your security, letting you know where you need to make changes. Reputation may deter the purebloods, but it will just challenge Muggleborn." She shrugged. "Get the Granger girl on your payroll. She made the plan and thought of using the dragon in their escape. She's intelligent and she knows muggles. Show her your plans for when the statute finally falls, and I guarantee she'll help make them better. Let her learn about your society and I'm pretty sure she can offer suggestions and ideas you never even thought about. Just make sure you give her all the information." She added the last part as she remembered the house elf crusade.
Ragnok was no longer scowling. Instead, he looked pensive, one long talon tapping on the surface of his desk. "You don't act like the tales talk of you."
"People change, Director."
He continued staring at her, before suddenly starting to grin. It was sly, that grin; almost evil. "You want him."
She sat up straight in her chair, her Ice Queen mask falling over her features.
The grin grew wider. "It is said that after the battle, he asked her to be his mate."
"Don't even go there, goblin." She gritted out through clenched teeth.
But he broke out in full on laughter. "He rejected you! For her!" He roared out loud in uncontrolled guffaws, holding his belly over his armor, even as her magic began to flare and distort the air around her. "And they still live!"
She was about to hang him by his toes from the ceiling, but this last statement brought such a state of exuberance that he slid off the chair onto the floor, the sound of his laughter filling the room even as the sound of crashing metal came from behind the desk. She stood up and would have stomped around the end of the desk to tell him what she thought about his thoughts about her desires, but it was only two steps, not nearly far enough to be an effective indicator of her ire. However, when she glared down at him, he merely raised an arm to point at her and laughed even harder.
"AAARRRGGGHHH!" Two stomps back to her chair, which she threw herself into, did absolutely nothing to ease her exasperation. She crossed her arms and legs, lowered her head and glowered at Ragnok's chair, the padding of which she transfigured under the leather of the upholstery, into sharp, pointy spikes. Some of them would have to find an opening in that armor of his.
Finally, after several long minutes, the laughter died down and a hand appeared to grasp the edge of the desk, followed by a face as Ragnok dragged himself up off the floor.
"Are you quite finished?" She asked in a voice so icy she was surprised frost didn't form on everything in the room.
He grinned at her, which widened even farther at the sound of metal screeching on metal as he sat down on his chair. She wanted to wipe it off his face…literally. Completely remove his mouth. Or at least his lips. See how well he could laugh with just an expanse of skin under his nose.
"We are agreed." He said, still smiling.
She sat up, eyes narrowing as she wondered what the hell he was talking about. "Agreed to what?" She asked warily.
"Everything you have said." He replied. "The help, the explanation, the fine, which will be one-hundred thousand galleons by the way, hiring Miss Granger. Everything you wanted."
She was still very wary. "Why the sudden change?"
He leaned forward over the desk with a scrape of metal. "Because whoever you are, it's not the self-centered, selfish, vindictive bitch of the tales. We threatened you and you killed nobody. You didn't even torture anyone. Potter rejected you for the girl and neither is undergoing a long agonizing death. At the very least, my body should be splashed all over that wall behind me and you have not demanded, commanded, ordered or just told me what we were going to do. The fact you entered the Dread One's vault tells me you are her; your actions tell me that for some reason you have changed. Whether that is true, or a guise to use until you betray us, I don't know. But the Day of Revealing is approaching far too fast for my liking. I would have my people ready to meet the muggles on level ground, and if I get to watch the idiots above ground getting dragged along whether they like it or not, so much the better. I can work with you, as equals, to achieve that goal."
She relaxed, placing her arms on the arms of the chair. Well, if her recent behavior had helped her get what she wanted, she could certainly continue behaving that way. She knew it would certainly ease Harry's worries. She nodded at the goblin. "Thank you, Horde Leader. As equals shall it be."
He nodded back. "Good. Now, could you fix my chair? One of those spikes is poking me in the arse and I would prefer it go no further."
A/N: I know I should be working on 'House' but my muse is quite firmly stuck here for the time being. She's got at least 3 more chapters she wants me to do and just as a break she flits over to a sequel to '…That Idea?'. I quite literally have to grab her by an ear and drag her over there to get anything done. I've got the basic chapter done so it's just going back and doing rewrites and fillers. Hopefully within a few weeks. Real life isn't helping either. Till then, TA! ER