Previously:

"Director I started this by saying I would accept whatever consequences you felt were appropriate. I stand by that. Even though I have been judged in a court of law over my actions and choices I truly feel that if it's my fault that a child is being abused then my consequences should increase to match the crimes. Whatever you decide, I will submit to your decision." Bloodshank bowed his head respectfully to the director as he waited for judgment.

Ragnok tiredly rubbed his hands over his face as he contemplated the last few days. After Bloodshank's confession it felt like the damn world imploded. Nothing outside of the bank seems to have changed but the bank itself felt like a natural disaster in the making. Like standing in the center of a hurricane, watching all the water flee the shore before a tsunami, feeling the air go still while the tornado sirens scream. The director felt like the bank had been holding its breath. Like the smallest shift would lead to disaster.

In the hours after Bloodshank's confession many things had been dragged into the light. Files and transcripts from secret trials, the testimonies of loyal guards and loyal workers, the payment records for dozens of healers and curse breakers, all of it pulled and displayed in Ragnok's meeting room to form a picture of a conspiracy a dozen years in the making. And all of it done right under the director's nose. All these secrets creeping around the stone halls that he was supposed to rule, secrets that could only be held at the behest of one person. Only one person had more power than him when it came to the bank, and if the state of things was any indication, Ragnok may be going from the frying pan and into the fire if even his own father didn't trust him enough to tell him about this.

In Ragnok's more than slightly hysterical mind directly after the confession he had wondered if this was all some elaborate coup to seize power using the upheaval of the war ending as a smokescreen for these crimes. After seeing all the paperwork, different thoughts came to mind. First was a slight awe at exactly how much work went into covering up all the guard changes, the resources needed, and the special accommodations needed for healers, wardbreakers, lawyers, and even the junior managers that apparently oversee the Potter Accounts. Second was horror that it worked, that someone did actually manage to cover all of this up for so long with so many people being not only aware and involved in the secret but peripherally involved as well, at some point he should have fucking known. The third, and last, thought Ragnok had about the entire affair was how devastated he was that his father hadn't trusted him with this, not once in any of the years that had passed had his father even hinted about the disaster that was brewing within his bank.

Ragnok didn't half wonder if this was the final consequence of his ill spent youth coming to haunt him. If his father really hadn't been defending him all those years ago and had just been biding his time until one of his younger siblings came of an age to be named successor ahead of him. Even after the many conversations he had had with his father over the last few days he still wasn't sure. Surely if Ragnok still had the trust of the crown, the love of his parents, then they would have told him about this? Instead every single bit of the situation had been hidden from him. All trials were performed at the goblin nation instead of in the bank, all guards assigned the case were either related to the king's high guards or the king's high council making them more loyal than the average bank guard, the healers and wardbreakers swore oaths of secrecy that bound them even more than their normal oaths did, and anyone else even slightly aware of the situation signed contracts to keep them quiet. It felt as though half the bank had been aware of this situation, and even more on the island.

Even with the king's assurance that he had chosen this path to protect his son, to save him from the consequences of the king's decisions, it still felt like a betrayal. But maybe that was a son's loyalty to his father more than a prince's loyalty to his king speaking. From a princely point of view Ragnok understands. In the bylaws written into law after the last war the goblin nation was given the charge to secure the lines, fortunes, and properties of the highest nobility in the wizarding world. In exchange the goblin nation was given authority over the same. There was and is no higher authority over the future of a wizard's line than the goblin nation. If the goblin's declared a wizard to be banned from doing business with the bank then it was really over for that wizard. If you were banned then anything you owned connected to the bank was automatically seized by the bank; property, money, bonds, debts, businesses, the lot now belonged to the goblin nation.

While it is the nation at large's charge in truth it is the king's utmost responsibility, especially during times of war, famine, or illness. Of which the wizarding world had been suffering two when the Potter heir had been stolen. Ragnok as both prince and son could not understand his father's decision regarding this issue. Truthfully when it had been reported that the heir had never passed through the hands of the nation before being squirreled away much time had passed, too much for the nation to really do anything. Anything that is besides reporting it to someone who could do something. While the nation was no longer allowed to go and seek the child, the wizarding child protection department has and had no such limit upon them. They could have easily gone and retrieved the toddler, brought him to the bank, and then helped to place the little boy with the family he was supposed to go to in the event of his parents death. Yes there would have been consequences, to both the nation and the individuals involved, but none so much as what they all faced now.

Ragnok's father's, no, the king's choice to sweep this under the rug in an attempt to avoid those consequences now lead them to far worse ones. Where before the manager would have faced jail time and lost his position, now he and his junior managers faced the death penalty or life in jail. Where the bank and nation has faced fines and reparations to the Potter accounts and family for losing their son, they now faced the bank owing almost half of the Potter's wealth to be doubled in fines, all debts and co-owning of businesses to be forgiven or signed over in reparations, and the bank could say good-bye to making any money off the Potter accounts for the rest of the child's lifetime, and maybe longer if the Wizengamont and the king's council couldn't come to an agreement. The king himself would have to step down after this, and may face prison time of his own depending on exactly how the child reacted to the knowledge of the king's involvement in his abuse. On top of that Ragnok would have to prove as bank director and crown prince that he had no idea of any of this was happening right under his nose, and if the conclusion that his ignorance isn't enough of an excuse he could still face consequences all his own because of his king's decision to make them all complacent in this child's abuse.

Because that's what the king has done. When King Ragnarok had decided to hide that the bank had lost the Potter heir and not fully fulfilled the Potter's wills, all because of one goblin's personal tragedy he was signing them all, every goblin in the nation and every goblin in the bank, unwilling he was signing them all up as accomplices in the Potter child's abuse and kidnapping. If the king had done his duty and told the ministry then maybe they wouldn't be in this situation now. Instead all enquiries about the heir were simply brushed off by the king. It seemed that while the heir's account manager and his team had disobeyed the king by quietly asking those listed in the wills if they had Harry, and wrote several letters to people in power explaining that Gringotts while working on the child's behalf was unable to get in contact with him, the king himself outright lied while claiming that the nation had placed the child in accordance with his parent's wishes and simply couldn't contact him due to his guardian's preferences.

Several ministry officials and departments, as well as friends and family of the Potter's, had been in contact with the bank over the years. Their letters, collected by house elves on the king's orders, had all been redirected immediately to the king so that he could reply in an effort to stop the Potter's accounting team from trying to alert others to the child's status. Lady Walburga Black had notably sent a weekly howler about the whereabout of Harry Potter up until the very week she died, a month before Mr. Potter had turned seven. The consequences of the bank hiding his location when he is both heir Potter and nominally heir Black, though unfulfilled until found and named, made Ragnok wince. With Sirius Black imprisoned and Regulus Black still declared missing after the war, and both of them having sired no children of their own, the line of Black fell instead to either Harry Potter grandson of Dorea Potter nee Black, and godson of Sirius Black or to Draco Malfoy son of Narcissa Malfoy nee Black godson of Regulus Black. While Draco notable has the stronger blood tie, having two direct doses of Black blood in the form of his mother and the added blood of his godfather's blood adoption ritual, Harry has the stronger traditional ties, his godfather being the elder son and direct heir to the lordship and his grandmother being the eldest daughter of the previous lord Arcturus, Sirius's grandfather. To hold back the child's location from the Black Lady to the extent that she passed away before a new heir could be named was the equivalent of holding the entire line of Black hostage. This act alone could be enough to declare war, the other crimes being involved feels like overkill.

Any action taken now or in the past could now be turned against the bank because of his father's lies. Any and everything would be looked at through a magnifying glass and from every angle. To outsiders it would seem as though the nation was planning on or helping someone else rob the Potter accounts dry by racking them up as high as possible and disposing of the heir before he was even old enough to have control of his vaults or know what a will is.

The nation knowingly loses one of the richest and influential families in the wizarding world's only heir? Then locks down his accounts and businesses and properties? Then starts giving him an unheard of and frankly obscene thirty percent interest on each vault every year? They lock people down into contracts drafted and approved by the bank in the Potter's favor for any rental properties, debts, or jobs unlike the usually more neutral contracts or even the old contracts drafted by the Potter's themselves? His stocks were being completely controlled by his manager for free, a service that usually cost a small fortune to maintain and one usually only done for the families that were at risk of going bankrupt with iron-clad debt repayment even if they did go bankrupt? Even the Potter elves were making the accounts a large profit, being rented out to Hogwarts, the bank, the ministry, and anywhere else that needed the elves but didn't want to pay to have one permanently.

It looks as though the nation planned to rob the poor child blind the first chance that they got. And even if they weren't, they were certainly not rushing to find the child and stop all the profit they were making through this 'restitution' with the five percent Gringotts received from each account. Ragnok himself, while not doubting the good intentions of Bloodshank and his juniors, doubts if the road to hell doesn't lead directly to the king's intentions. After all, all of this had to be approved by someone, and if it wasn't Ragnok the next highest authority is the king. And if his father was covering up the child's abduction, then did it not also make sense that he could have been planning to allow his death all in the name of profit?

Ragnok mourned his father's ruling, just as he mourned the man as well. The goblin wearing his father's face and crown wasn't the one he remembered growing up. The father of his memories felt no greed or kept any secrets. Ragnok feared the man the king had become, just as he feared the man he himself may become in the future. Two generations in a row becoming mad with greed didn't bode well for him. Even though Ragnarok's stepmother, the queen regent after his father's murder, had put in place more King's Laws in an attempt to purify their line of the madness that had befallen the previous king it seemed greed had once more won out. When the last king had been on his deathbed, killed by his youngest bride in a mad attempt for his love and attention, the king had begged his first wife queen Opal to remake the bridal laws. He said his lack of love had led to madness and greed, and had produced weak or joyless children. He had loved his last bride, it is why he married her, but he had five other brides he had married for greed taking up his time and attention, and he had grown cold in the years he waited for love. In the end they had had a single child, Ragnarok, who the king named his heir, but the years of neglect had driven his love to kill him. He begged his wife to save his son the grief and misery that had driven him to tyranny and apathy. In the years after his death the queen had done so; each king was only allowed four brides at most, and the first must be from love. She said a ruler without love is not a king, only a dictator, and so each heir must have love before they could become king. She hoped that limiting the power a king could gain from marriage, and forcing them to have an equal in both power and heart before they could ascend the throne would be enough.

The true tell of the attempt having failed was the fact that none of the four queens had been aware of the Potter situation until Ragnok himself had told them. Not Alexandrite, the king's queen of love. Not Garnet, the king's queen of office. Not Painite, the king's queen of duty. Nor Sapphire, the king's queen of beauty. The king's council had also not known, indeed they had been so unaware of any problems forming in the nation that they had since the end of the war only a single yearly meeting to reassess the king's children to be sure the crown passed to the correct heir. Ragnok presenting the evidence and his father's confession to him had been the first they had all heard of the situation. It was the largest red flag one could wave over the situation.

The king taking a last bride after the war, and especially naming her only the queen of beauty had been a hint to greed that they had all carelessly ignored, other hints at greed had been in the queens' rise in pregnancies, in the multiple vacations the king suddenly required, in the number of feast and parties at the palace. All seemingly little things that when compared against the king's secret actions suddenly seem much more important. The council had thought it was the king subtly hinting that he was getting ready to retire, which is why they had spent more time reassessing Ragnok and his running of the bank than with the king in recent years. The queens, even the king's least liked bride, had all been overrun by a small boom of their and their sister-wives pregnancies and the resulting children, especially with an additional bride to provide even more children. They had been so overworked that even Garnet, the queen appointed by the council to help his father rule when Alexandrite his queen of love had shown no interest in law making or ruling in general, had not been aware of his father's blatant waving of laws.

The king had confided in no one, and none of them knew if it was out of love, wishing to spare his friends, wives, and children the full fallout of his choices or if it was out of distrust, fearing what the people he was closest to would choose to do in turn. If he did do it in distrust, then perhaps he was right to do so. Within hours of Ragnok calling a council the king himself had been deposed. Locked in his rooms the king now awaited judgment, first from a healer to assess his mental state, and then from the queens and council in the aftermath of whatever the wizarding world decided was an appropriate reaction to the king's betrayal.

In the last three days since receiving the letter from the Potter heir everything had rapidly gone downhill, like an out of control rail cart the nation had been spiraling into a dark and dangerous path with an unstoppable speed. On the first day Ragnok had heard the confession of a decades long conspiracy the likes of which he had never seen before, he had been up all night and into the next morning tracking down records, evidence, and confessions from all those involved only to come to the heart wrenching conclusion that he has missed one. While not the mastermind of the overall scheme one of the biggest players had been Ragnok's own father, who had confessed to him his hand in the entire affair, though not his true intentions behind it.

On the second day Ragnok had broken heartedly confronted his father, and then after his father's confession, broken his mothers' hearts in turn when he had revealed his father's crimes to them. At the same time he had inadvertently ended his father's rule by calling a meeting between the queens and the king's council to decide what steps should be taken.

On the third day his father's crimes had been displayed before all. By the third day the council and queens had reached a decision, the king would be deposed, and Garnet with the backing of the other queens would assume his father's rule until the whole matter was settled and then Ragnok would complete his training to ascend the throne. In the meantime the king's crimes would be explained to the whole nation. Since the king's crimes could lead to a war that could affect the whole nation, then the whole nation needed to be aware of the situation should negotiations devolve to all out war. The queen regent, her fellow queens, and the king's council made one last decision.

Since Ragnok and Griphook had both the power to help, and had been completely uninvolved in the scheme they would be the ones deciding on how to proceed with helping the Potter heir henceforth, and whatever they decided they would have the full backing of the nation behind them. So it was also on the third day that Ragnok sent out letters of his own. In the end, after Griphook and Ragnok had reread Harry's letter they had decided to put their trust in whoever the boy's familiar had. Animal familiars, especially magical ones, have a magic of their own to help them connect and bond with their human counterparts. So if Harry had cast a spell on Hedwig to help her deliver the letters to those from Harry's memory who have the right intentions or power to help him, then they too would trust her.

While Gringotts was now limited in physically helping the Potter heir they were not limited in helping others. So Ragnok gathered together nine of the Potter house elves and asked that they track the magic used on the letter to deliver notes to anyone that has a matching letter. Griphook wrote out nine notes asking each person to attend a meeting at Gringotts the next day in regards to the letters they received, any help Gringotts could offer to the Potter heir would be given, regardless of difficulty or price. Then Griphook set up the meeting room, Ragnok moved the evidence of the crimes against Mr. Potter to the room and into a locked filing cabinet, and then they waited. Tomorrow would hopefully be the first step in righting the many wrongs their king and countrymen had performed both personally or second hand against a child who had saved them from the hands of a mad man intent on destroying them all.