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Sapphirine and Argent
"Are people putting pressure on the Ministry, or are they just blaming us?"
Gorgeslitter glances at Harry for a moment. They're sitting in Gorgeslitter's office, which is one of the smaller ones in the bank, but decorated richly with weapons on the walls. Gorgeslitter has moved up in the clan since Harry first met him. "They are blaming us."
Harry leans back with his legs crossed and sighs. The first step of a rebellion is always cutting off humans' access to their money. In about half the rebellions Harry has learned about, that was such a successful first step that they never had to do anything else. Enough pressure made the Ministry or the humans in general cave and apologize for their behavior.
"It's going to open warfare?"
Gorgeslitter raps the desk with his claws in a complicated pattern. "It may. It may not. We do have a meeting with Minister Fudge today, in order to see what he has to say for himself and the propaganda he's been putting out blaming us."
Harry hesitates. It feels like a stupid question to ask, but the situation has got a lot more complicated than it was three years ago, and so he still has to ask it. "Do you want me to remove the curse I put on Fudge that makes him speak the truth?"
Gorgeslitter looks at him with a long, disappointed stare. Harry lowers his eyes.
"You honored him, by showing him that he needed to behave like a goblin," Gorgeslitter says softly. "No, Harry. He was given a gift, and that he is still Minister three years later and resisting all the time only shows how unworthy of it he is, not that you made a mistake. If anything, it shows up human behavior nicely, how much he still tries to lie and how much they want to ignore that and keep electing him Minister."
Harry nods. Fudge weathered another election a few months ago. People really don't seem to care if the Minister is stupid and in fact can't speak most of the time. "What happens if Fudge dies in the rebellion? Do they call another election?"
"I believe that the Wizengamot chooses the next Minister."
Harry curls his lip. The Wizengamot is also full of bastards who are prejudiced against goblins and never want to look beyond the ends of their noses.
Gorgeslitter sighs softly. "Of course, we can make it clear that they could end the rebellion early by making overtures of good faith. That might mean choosing Madam Amelia Bones as Minister."
Harry nods. He hasn't talked to Madam Bones often, but he remembers her good sense in situations where any other human would have insisted on standing up for "human rights" and not listening to goblins at all. "That would be acceptable."
"You think that we should have the power to decide on human politicians now?"
Harry shrugs. "I think we claim that power as much as we can or look forward to having to rebel again in another few years."
"This from the amaracazh who claims that he doesn't pay attention to the Ministry."
"I think Dumbledore would probably run if people got desperate enough. If he got desperate enough. He decided not to expel me after the incident with the poisoned mead, but he still wanted to get rid of the Creature Culture and Goblin Dueling classes." Harry shakes his head in exasperation. "It's as though he can't tolerate the idea of power slipping away from him."
"And yet, you do not think him malevolent?"
"No." Harry knows there's been talk in the clan about challenging Dumbledore to a duel in such a way that it would cause him shame in the eyes of even the humans if he backed down, and severely limiting his political power. "I think he's…desperate. As though he's held onto power so long that he can no longer believe that anyone else could wield it the right way."
"There is much to what you say." Gorgeslitter taps his claws on the desk again. "Well, we will keep it in mind when we are deciding what to do about Dumbledore."
Harry smiles. "I would appreciate that, Gorgeslitter."
Who?
The question slips into Harry's mind as he drifts in a boat on the Argent Ocean, seeking for the songs that will allow him to forge their enemies back into life without bringing those enemies' hatred along with them.
Harry pauses for a long moment, catching himself in the drifting. He has to maintain the focused attention to separate their enemies' hatred from the argent, their enemies' hatred from their battle prowess and other pieces of them in the ocean, and their voices from all and either. This is the first time that the Argent Ocean, or someone or something that lives in the argent, has ever spoken to him.
The heavy waves curl slowly against the ivory side of his boat. Harry doesn't open his eyes, but keeps his mind flexed and patient, open.
Who?
This time, the voice is a little longer, enough for Harry to be sure that it is a voice. He reminds himself that he doesn't know if it's a voice of the Deep Ones, the creatures that still lurk in the depths of the Realm of Song and eat goblins if they can catch them, or the Henenggrananttan, the ones who sleep behind the dragon-headed door, and simply replies with a soft song that showcases a little bit of himself, his names, repeated over and over.
You?
The voice might be a question. It might be his imagination. But Harry, caught in the strong, focused discipline like the inside of a sapphire that demands the ability to listen and be aware that you might be tricking yourself into hearing something, doesn't think so.
Me, he sings, and his voice winds down into the argent and around the questing thread that he can feel reaching out for his mind. Harry waits, modulating his breathing carefully, hardly daring to hope that he'll get a positive answer when all the Master Smiths working together for generations have only forged some drops of hatred out of the argent.
You!
There's an enormous yank on Harry's mind, and he nearly falls out of the boat, which means the argent will consume him. But Harry grabs the sides of the boat with his hands and manages to stay in, while winding back the thread that he extended in the direction of the voice.
You, the voice whispers, and falls silent.
Harry sits back with a thoughtful frown. He's not sure what to make of that. It could mean that the remnants of their enemies drifting in the Ocean viewed him as a goblin, and reacted with predictable hostility. It could also mean that they recognized him specifically, somehow, and wanted to kill him.
But the questions that came before it remain with Harry as he steers the boat towards shore. They sang of curiosity, faceted with sapphirine tones of fascination. Harry at least has a hopeful feeling about them, and Toothsplitter will want to hear of this.
In Glory Down
"There's a human in Gringotts who says that he has a duel with you."
Harry trots right up through the caverns when he hears that, because it isn't often that a human is this honorable. He has a momentary hope, as he steps into the main entrance, that the person is Dumbledore, who has come to see the sense of letting himself be quietly replaced and just used the duel excuse to talk to Harry. That would be lying, sure, but since humans seem addicted to lying anyway, a more honorable use than they often put it to.
Instead, it's Malfoy, standing near one of the tellers called Basaltclaws with a green look to his face. Harry grins and strides towards him.
"You decided to come before I could send a dueling challenge," he says, and half-bows. "Thank you. You're more honorable than I thought you were."
Malfoy closes his eyes in what looks like humiliation. That's all right. Most humans will be humiliated when they duel goblin warriors, and starting with that realization can be the beginning of wisdom.
"Can we—" Malfoy clears his throat. "Can we have the duel in private?"
"Of course." Harry beckons him towards the back of Gringotts, towards rooms that are often used to train young accountants. The one he enters has a large table in it, but Harry can make it hover near the ceiling for the duration of the duel if he has to. He raises his wand to do that.
"W-wait."
Harry obligingly turns to Malfoy. Honestly, he will do lots of things for a human who exhibits this much honor when he didn't have to, except for deliberately throwing the duel.
"I need to talk to you." Malfoy closes his eyes and swallows. "I know you talk to objects a lot."
"Yes," Harry says encouragingly, beaming even harder. It's wonderful to think that Malfoy might be reconsidering his stance on objects and goblin magic as well as goblins themselves.
"Could you remove the Dark Mark?" Malfoy whispers, and holds out his arm.
Harry paces curiously over and lifts Malfoy's left sleeve. Malfoy stiffens, as if he thinks that Harry's going to make fun of him or something. Harry just ignores that. Malfoy asked for help. Goblins who aren't Healers have to respect that, too.
The Mark stirs with angry magic at the sight of him. Harry's not sure how much of that comes from Voldemort's possession recognizing an enemy and how much, if any, comes from it recognizing Harry.
"Maybe," Harry murmurs. "Let me try something." He drops Malfoy's sleeve—Malfoy clutches it so it doesn't cover the Mark, at least—and draws both the Elder Wand and the holly wand.
The Elder Wand sings in triumph, then notices that Harry has his holly wand out and starts fighting with it. The holly wand maintains serene ignorance for about three seconds before it begins to snap back about how Harry's had it longer, and it channels his magic. The Elder Wand argues that Harry uses his daggers most of the time, not that he would need to if he had a proper wand—
"Shut up, both of you," Harry tells them. There's such a thing as too much listening to objects, and when you give them power over you is where he draws the line.
"Who are you talking to?" Malfoy's eyes dart around as if he thinks Blackeye has walked into the room.
"The wands, of course." Harry holds them out. "Can you hear them, Malfoy?" He ought to be able to. The wands only listened for a scant moment before their voices started right up again.
Malfoy leans forwards and wrinkles his brow, concentrating. Harry waits patiently. Someone's first time listening is always hard. He had trouble with it himself when he came to the Realm of Song, and so did the people he taught to listen to objects in first year. Luna is great at it, but she's the only "natural listener" he's ever found, and it's still harder for her to talk to objects than it is to animals.
"I think I hear something," Malfoy whispers. "But not much. Something about how that wand—" he nods to the Elder Wand "—doesn't like the other ones and wants you to use it instead?"
Harry grins. "That's really good for a first try," he praises.
Inexplicably, Malfoy blushes. Harry wouldn't have expected him to care about praise from a goblin. Then again, humans have a problem with consistency.
"They don't like each other," Harry says. "But I think I need to use both of them at once to take care of your Mark, if I can even manage it, so they're just going to have to cooperate." He holds the wands, the Elder Wand in his left hand and the holly in his right, over Malfoy's Mark and closes his eyes.
"I—I expected to duel you for the privilege," Malfoy stutters.
Harry opens one eye. "Can you be quiet about nonsense while I'm trying to do something this delicate that might not even work?"
"Right. Shutting up now." Malfoy keeps his arm extended, but the rest of him seems to shrink into himself, and Harry sighs. He wonders if he should be doing this at all, when Malfoy was the one who unleashed a whole bunch of Death Eaters on the rest of the school, but then again, Malfoy got excused for it by Dumbledore. Legally, in human ideas, he's not responsible for it.
And if he was forced to take the Mark by fears for his family's safety, then Harry can be a little more understanding. Now sympathetic, because the best way to deal with fear is to kill your enemy. But understanding.
The Mark stirs again with violence when Harry holds the wands over it. The Elder Wand laughs and starts telling a story about how it's seen battlefields and wars and this is nothing much. Harry tells it sweetly that if that's the case, then it shouldn't have any trouble working with the holly wand to remove the Mark, which makes Malfoy twitch.
But the Elder Wand does shut up, and bend its attention to the Mark. The holly wand joins it at the same time, and there's a long moment of silence during which Harry can feel magic building like the oncoming cold before a storm. He holds still and lets his wands and the Mark study each other for now.
Then the Elder Wand snaps.
It doesn't break; it doesn't speak. Instead, shadowy jaws form in front of it, joined by something that looks like soft silvery mist from the direction of the holly wand. They both shudder, and it's all Harry can do to keep hold of them as they jerk down towards Malfoy's arm.
Malfoy yelps, but he can't move. Harry thinks the Mark is actually keeping his forearm in place, and making it a target for the wands. The Mark seems as furious as they do, as willing to engage in battle.
Harry thinks a little better of Voldemort. At least his Marks are warriors even if the people he Marks generally aren't.
The shadows and the mist clash down on something that Harry can't see, but hurts his eyes anyway. It seems to be dark green and flashing with light like embers and rolling and coiling like a great snake. Something bites back at the shadows the Elder Wand is extending, but the Resurrection Stone rattles in Harry's pocket, and a hint of the shadow-people appears abruptly on the wall, dancing menacingly around Malfoy.
"What are those?" Malfoy's voice is shrill with panic.
"Things from the Resurrection Stone." Harry is concentrating too hard to reassure him.
"What?"
Almost as if Malfoy's voice is the final, missing ingredient to get rid of the Dark Mark, there's a smoldering blast of fire, and the Mark crisps and vanishes from Malfoy's arm, peeling off like a scab. The shadow-figures dance triumphantly and vanish. The holly wand relaxes. The Elder Wand starts some story about how this wasn't as hard as the defeat of the Grey Warlock, which Harry stops by shoving it back into his pocket.
"Do you feel as if any of it was left behind?" Harry asks, staring down at Malfoy's arm. He can't see it, but that doesn't mean anything next to what Malfoy feels.
"N-no." Malfoy closes his eyes and stands there for a second, feeling at his magic, probably. Harry waits. Then his eyes snap open and Malfoy shakes his head. "No," he says. "It's gone. Thank you, Potter."
And then he kneels.
Harry peers at him. "The floor in here generally doesn't talk to people without an invitation."
"Not that." Malfoy heaves a deep breath and takes out his wand, balancing it across his palms. It's curiously silent, but then again, Harry gets the feeling that it's a lot more cowed by the Elder Wand than his holly one is. "Please, Potter. I read that you can get out of a duel with a goblin by swearing allegiance to him."
Harry scowls. "You shouldn't phrase it as getting out." He ought to have known that Malfoy didn't really mean his offer to duel.
"That's what it is, though." Malfoy smiles at him, and there's a little of the pompous prat there but not so much of the boy who let Death Eaters into the school, luckily. "I want to swear allegiance to you."
"I think your source was a little light on detail, Malfoy. You won't swear allegiance to me. You'll swear it to my clan."
"What's the difference?"
"You have to come to my aid, sure, but also the aid of any goblin from our clan who's in danger. And we're in the middle of a rebellion right now, which means you'll be on the goblin side instead of the human side. I don't think your father will like that much."
"Fuck what my father thinks."
Harry opens his mouth and stares down at Malfoy. "But you were always relying on him…"
"He made me take the Dark Mark." Malfoy swallows as he looks up at Harry. "He thought it was a favor for the Dark Lord to offer me. He'd never Marked anyone as young as me before, before their sixteenth birthdays. Father thinks that I'm here to try and kill you."
"What a lovely person your father is," Harry says reflectively, and adds Lucius Malfoy's name to his list of humans who probably can't be taught better.
"Yeah, I'm finally learning to think so, too." Malfoy insistently offers his wand in Harry's direction again. It looks like it's made of hawthorn. "Can we make the oath to your clan so we can get this over with?"
"What do you think is going to happen after you make the oath?"
"You tell me about the Resurrection Stone? And I get access to my vault?"
Harry perks up a little. Oh, good, someone he can teach this summer.
And if Malfoy looks ready to faint after he's made the oath and Harry is teaching him all about the objects goblins can hear and how he got the Resurrection Stone and why Harry is always going to best him in duels unless he starts doing better, well, this was the path that he chose.
Untrodden Spaces
Harry wakes up to find himself in darkness. The floor is soft beneath him when he taps it with one foot, though, which tells him that this is a dream. Floors are always solid in real life, Harry's found.
(Well, except for when they have trapdoors or when someone Transfigurs them to mud under you. But most of the time. And Harry's never had a dream with trapdoors or mud Transfiguration in any case).
Harry looks around, and then sits down and waits. If he can't see anything, then he can't fight. He'll wait until the person, or the objects, more likely, who brought him to this dream reveal themselves.
Something like a whir sounds from behind him. Harry glances over his shoulder, then turns to face the hovering trio of Resurrection Stone, Invisibility Cloak, and Elder Wand. They form a triangle in a pool of light that seems to come from some lantern Harry can't see. It's enough to show that the walls of this "place" are stone.
"Hullo," Harry says, and waves a little.
The Elder Wand whines a little, but the stone nudges it as if to shut it up. The cloak drifts closer to Harry, spreading it itself out to cover the other two, and all three of them seem to concentrate. Harry wonders if they want to fight him.
Instead, they speak, in a voice that Harry suspects they can only have when they're all three together, and only here. The Elder Wand he can hear fine, but it mostly spends its time fighting with the holly wand, and the stone still can only communicate with him in small flashes, and the cloak seems to use memories.
You are the Master of Death because you have command of all three of us—
"No, I don't."
There's a pause. Harry has the distinct sensation that they've prepared a grand speech and now he's spoiled it. He's a little sorry about that, but not enough to let them just get on with it, not when he wanted to let them know right away that they were wrong.
"I don't have command of you," he explains. "I can hear you, and I'm grateful for the Elder Wand's help with Malfoy's Dark Mark and the Invisibility Cloak's help in Dumbledore's office and the Resurrection Stone's help when I was fighting Death Eaters. But I don't control you. We have an alliance." Harry would be hesitant to claim friendship with them when so much of the time, he's not doing what they want.
There's a longer pause. The stone seems to whisper something, or at least Harry can hear a buzzing sort of like that on the edge of his senses. There's a long whine from the wand again, and the cloak rustles.
Being the Master of Death means you have command of us.
"Then I'm not the Master of Death," Harry says peaceably.
More silent consultation, or that's what Harry assumes they're doing. He looks around the space they imagined for the dream while he waits. It really does seem to be nothing but blank stone walls and darkness. He shakes his head. He gets the feeling that the Deathly Hallows aren't very imaginative.
You are the Master of Death. You can use us.
"Yes," Harry explains. "But I don't want to use you. I want you to spend time with your friends. And if you decide that you would rather spend time away from me, then you could do that. You could spend your time here in the Realm of Song, or you could do it in a vault. Or maybe Hogwarts, but I'd be a little careful about that, because a lot of people there are human and might try to gain control of you."
Utter silence. Harry sits and listens carefully, but he's sure he's not missing something. The stone's not even buzzing.
You do not want us?
"Sometimes your company is useful or amusing," Harry says, and he's only telling the truth, but he thinks the cloak droops. He smiles at it. "And I like it when you can give me memories of my father. But I don't want to own you. I think that's what you're saying the Master of Death does. I'm a goblin. I don't just use objects like that without talking to them. Most of the time," he adds, thinking of the way that he does use his daggers in battle. But part of the reason he does is because he trusts them absolutely, and has spent a long time communicating with them and asking them to work with him. He has no such trust with the Hallows.
But the Master of Death uses us!
"Then I'm not the Master of Death," Harry repeats. Honestly, for immortal and incredibly powerful objects, they're a little dense.
The stone vibrates. There's a soft, frustrated scream from the direction of the wand. The cloak spreads itself out and covers the light completely, and Harry's not surprised to drift away from that dream into another place.
He hopes that he gave them some peace, at least, and imaginations of a different fate they could have, if they only gave up their focus on being owned. It's not just humans who need their horizons broadened sometimes.
Harry wakes abruptly when the horns sound. The noise rings through the Realm of Song, as loud, he knows, close to the underground lakes of silver and gold as it is in his bedroom relatively near the surface.
Harry rolls smoothly to his feet and smoothly checks that he has his daggers and his holly wand. He does. The Elder Wand is gone, along with the other Hallows, at least when he looks around for them.
Harry hopes that they're enjoying their freedom, maybe thinking about how they don't need a Master of Death to act on their own. And anyway, this isn't their fight.
He runs in the direction of the upsloping tunnels, and other goblins are joining him, all moving the same direction. Harry nods to Toothsplitter and Blackeye and Ripclaw and Gravensword, and keeps moving.
When they arrive in the empty room that connects directly to Gringotts, Gorgeslitter is waiting to make the announcement. His teeth flash as he smiles.
"The Ministry's Aurors are outside. As are some of the known Death Eaters from the last war."
Harry grins. It appears their rebellion has provoked an open response at last.