Written for the QLFC Season 6, Round 2
Team: Wigtown Wanderers
Position: Seeker
Position Prompt: Your story must only focus on characters who attended Hogwarts before Harry Potter. Write about the invention of a magical object, potion, or other creation.
Word Count:
Beta(s): DinoDina, CUtopia, Aya
Chapter 20: A Masterpiece
"You ask a very great deal, Wizard."
Nodding gravely, the man regarded the goblin across the squat table. He could barely see him through the darkness of the room. It couldn't be called a shop, for it's griminess and pits of shadows silhouetting dark shapes that could have been furniture, but just as likely weren't. He didn't let himself be concerned by those shadows, or at least didn't allow himself to appear so. To venture into a goblin's workshop, however… it was a dance of puzzles and trickery. If he didn't play his hand right, he would walk out an arm and a leg less and think himself lucky.
"Will you do it?" he asked.
The goblin, one of the finest silversmiths in the known world, stroked at his chin and the thin curls of his whiskers. His overlong nails scratched in a grating sound that would have set a lesser man's teeth on edge. But not this man. This man didn't let himself be disconcerted by the goblin anymore than he did the ominous shadows in the shop. Or at least he didn't let himself appear to be.
Eyes narrowing, the goblin regarded him in return. "Who are you?" he croaked, his voice more of an accusing grumble than a question.
The man shook his head. "It doesn't matter."
"It matters. To ask such a thing but to remain anonymous – it matters a great deal."
The man shook his head slightly. "Suffice it to say that I am someone who, should you fulfill my request, could make it worth your while."
The goblin grumbled again, eyes narrowing further, and regarded the man shrewdly. He seemed to contemplate for a long time before finally replying. "A sword, you say?"
The man nodded. "Yes."
"A magical sword?"
"What other kind of sword is there?"
The goblin grumbled once more, but the man fathomed it may have even held a chuckle, the edge of amusement. "What kind indeed," he murmured. Then he straightened, rising from his seat in a manner that made him shorter than sitting had. With a hobbling step, he skirted the table to the man's side, peering up at him and deterred not in the least by their marked size difference. The man looked above him, spilling out of his seat in his sheer height and muscular bulk.
"What is it that you offer me?" the goblin asked. He was the best, after all, and the wizard knew it. He knew he couldn't approach him with a request like he had, to make 'the finest sword in your capability,' without any sound payment to back it.
The man smiled slowly. He kept his voice casual as he replied. "I hold some weight in the Wizarding world. It would be of a great benefit to you and a credit to your name should I wield a sword of your making. Of course, financial recompense will be included, but the stories of your reputation…"
He trailed off indicatively, eyeing the goblin sidelong. The goblin continued to peer up at him unblinkingly, stroking his chin with quiet little snick-snick-snicks of his nails. There was just the barest gleam of hunger, an irrepressible desire, welling in his eyes that was unmistakable even through the darkness of the workshop.
The wizard waited. The goblin thought. The wizard waited some more, settling into his patience with a comfort that few considered him capable of. That characteristic was always attributed more to Helga, or to Salazar, even, but not him. Finally, his persistence proved fruitful, for the goblin ceased his quiet contemplation.
"It will cost you," he murmured, wrinkled lips pursing.
The wizard tipped his head in acknowledgement. "I know."
"Your weight in gold, at that."
"I would expect no less."
"And your word." The goblin stabbed a finger at the wizard, nail like a talon spearing fiercely. "Your word that to each and every person who asks it of you, you shall tell them that Ragnuk the First was the silversmith who crafted your sword."
The wizard's smile grew. He had him. He knew he did. With a final nod, he rose to his feet. "My word you have," he agreed, and extended his hand.
They shook upon it, and there was nothing even slightly condescending to the way the wizard dropped to his knee to do so. It was a tricky play, to bargain with a goblin, but he'd managed it. He was smart enough to do that much, at least. Oh, how Rowena would crow with delight to know that her dextrous teachings hadn't gone astray.
When he rose to his feet, he followed the goblin through the darkness of the workshop with the promise of victory already thrumming through him.
The hammer pounded. The anvil hummed and rung with each strike. The bellows heaved, pumped by their magical hand that persisted where a man's would have long since failed with exhaustion. The workshop sizzled with heat, the air visibly dripping with it.
But the goblin never stopped. He never paused in his work, and for that, the wizard could only admire him.
The hammer pounded. The anvil rung. The bellows heaved. And for three days straight the goblin worked, and worked, and worked, with the feverish attention to detail of a worker-bee buzzing crazily about its hive. He didn't even pause for a sip of water or a bite of bread. Not to close his eyes for a moment of respite, to sleep away the exhaustion and the aches that poured into the work of art he seemed to form from nowhere.
For it was. A long, silver, glowing work of art that the wizard could hardly turn away from. Sweat lathered his brow, dripping down his cheeks and into his beard, but he didn't step from the workshop to give himself reprieve of the heat. He didn't lower himself by casting a Cooling Charm over himself, nor belittle the goblin by offering to do so in turn. He watched and he waited, a hunger not unlike that which the goblin had worn at the moment of their bargain welling within him.
He watched as the steel was heated to white hot once more.
He watched as the goblin dipped it into a barrel of water, steam bursting like that from a spitting dragon at the moment of contact.
He stared keenly as the goblin fiddled and fumbled, hammered and twisted and welded, and finally retreated from his pounding work to affix the hilt in place. The wizard could only stare in rapture as the goblin inset a robin's egg-sized ruby in the very centre of that hilt. Hunger had never been so great.
When the goblin paused and, for the first time, wiped his own sweaty brow with the back of his hand, the wizard forced himself to retreat into composure. He nodded solemnly as the goblin turned towards him, though the goblin himself didn't seem to notice. He had eyes only for the creation held aloft and glowing in his hand. To the wizard, he felt the magic that pulsed from it as though it were a living being.
"It is done," the goblin whispered, pride enriching his voice with almost visual colour.
The wizard nodded. He accepted the completed treasure. And, when the time was right, he wordlessly offered the goblin his gold in a pouch that, to the unwitting eye, seemed far too small to hold the price of such a glorious weapon.
"It will be known," the wizard said, "to all who ask, it will be known that Ragnuk the First was the craftsman behind the masterpiece of this sword."
The goblin hummed flatly. He hadn't taken his eyes from the sword since he'd finished it. Not even when the wizard, drawing his wand in the goblin's presence for the first time, bedecked it in a simple sheath that seemed far too minimalistic for such a creation.
He left swiftly. That was the only way he could. In long strides, without looking back, he hastened from the workshop, slipping the sword into the folds of his robes. He could feel the watchful eyes of the goblin drilling into his back as he did so, and that feeling only sped him faster.
He knew what that stare meant. He could see that hunger, of a different kind to his own, so thickly pouring from his eyes that the goblin may as well have blurted out his intentions the moment he'd handed the sword to the wizard.
He may have given it to me, but I will be a fool to think he won't try to take it back.
But Godric Gryffindor didn't turn back, and he wasn't scared. With his prize in hand, in the turn of a heel and a whisper of magic, he Disapparated from the creeping fingers of the goblin Ragnuk.