Sorry for the wait. I had exams and was on holidays afterward. And sorry if it's still a little bit unclear about who is who. I know some of you have guessed – and a lot of you are on the right path. I promise to make it clear in the near future, just don't expect me to come out and say 'those persons are those' right out. Another truth in this story is: there are NO OOCs. Every brother of Petunia belongs to Rowling's world.
Ebenbild
Disclaimer: I'm too young to be Rowling, so Harry Potter sadly cannot be mine…
OoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooseriouslyooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooseriouslyooooooooooooooooooooooooooO
THE REACTION TO THE FIRST LETTER
sSs
Gringotts lobby
A short time after Harry's first letter home
The reaction to the first letter
The goblin Grimlock had a good day today. He had been able to snarl at some stupid customers, had thrown two idiot-wizards out of Gringotts and had made a lot of money. A perfect day for a goblin.
Regrettably it did not last.
The next customer he had was a woman with cool, grey eyes and flaming red hair – hidden under a glamour of a plain, long-necked woman with brown hair and blue eyes.
Grimlock snarled inwardly.
Goblins hated people who tried to deceive them – and people under glamours normally tried to do just that.
So he was pleasant surprised when the woman bowed to him and said: "I am sorry for being glamoured, honoured goblin, but I am a squib and my brother was not available to remove the glamour before I came. If you wish I do not mind an identity-test so that you truly know who you deal with."
Grimlock contemplated that. A freely offered identity test…?! That was something every goblin dreamed of. Of course they had the ability to see through glamour – but there was always polyjuice and other potions they could not identify. The only way to be absolutely sure who they were dealing with was an identity test. To the goblins' regret the most of wizarding kind did not like the idea of spending some blood to be identified at all…
"We will do that," Grimlock said and stood. Identity tests never were done in the lobby. He led the woman to a room at the right side of the lobby and closed the doors behind them. Then he took out the special quill and paper that would identify her.
"Write down your name," he said.
And the woman did.
The quill was a blood quill, charmed to just write the truth – guided by the blood it was receiving from the writer. If the woman tried to write something false on the paper, the writing was immediately corrected to spell out the truth.
If you wanted or not – you would write the truth down with this paper and quill.
When the woman had written the name, Grimlock turned the sheet of paper.
His eyebrows rose.
"Care to explain this?" he asked and the woman smiled.
"It's not an easy thing to explain, honoured goblin," she said sincerely. "My father was a squib and he was adopted by a Muggle family after he was cast out of the wizarding world when he was ten and a half years old. He met my mother in his twenties. She was the heir of her line so they had to keep her name – at least in the wizarding world. In the Muggle world I carried my father's adopted name until I married. To be truthful: this is the first time I ever wrote down my true name."
"There are lords to both lines you are from – so why do you come to us and not to one of your relatives? Even as a squib the right way would be through the lord of your families if you want something from Gringotts – except money, but you do not have a vault so that's ruled out," Grimlock said.
The woman smiled and pulled out two written statements.
"The lords are my younger twin-brothers," she said. "They gave me permission to act in their stets as my business has more to do with me than them."
The goblin stared at her and then took the written statements and verified them. No forgery.
"So… why are you here today, Madam?"
The woman's expression darkened.
"The guardianship and vault-key of my nephew. It seems that someone gave magical guardianship of my nephew unlawfully to someone else. My nephew is a wizard, taken. But by law and right I and my brothers have had his guardianship since my sister perished. And now I had to find out that someone at your bank broke the law and gave over my nephew's vault-key to someone who has nothing to do with him!"
Grimlock frowned.
"May I see the guardianship papers?"
The woman passed them over and Grimlock verified them. Then he swore. They were the real deal – Muggle and magical alike.
"We will deal with the perpetrator," he said.
Today heads would roll for what had happened. And Grimlock would be in the middle of it – and he definitely would be the one to take action.
Grimlock hated to go against his own kind – even if it was a traitor to their laws.
And then the accounts he had to check because they had to make sure that everything was like it should be… the paperwork to fill… the search for a new account manager…
No, his good day definitely had ended!
And all because someone had dared to mess with the guardians of one Harry James Potter, Heir of the Potter Estate.
"I definitely will make sure that the perpetrator for that will suffer," Grimlock grumbled. "He will never have the best service of Gringotts ever again – and when I'm through with him he will wish he would have never dared to mess with us goblins…"
Yes. Whoever the wizard was – as soon as Grimlock knew this wastrel would find his own account definitely hard to reach!
"Do what you have to do," the woman said in that moment and Grimlock looked up. Eyes icy as a snow storm at the North Pole looked at him. "I don't mind if you seize their accounts or crush their confidence. Just understand that the final blow will be the right of my family. We were the wronged ones, we will be the ones to utterly destroy them."
'Do not cross this family. Ever.'
Yes, Grimlock would make sure to write that in red capital letters on the family files.
Better safe than sorry, after all.
Ccccc
That's it for today. 'Till next time.
