Chapter 09: Knowledge Management: Goblin Style

"Good morning, everyone! I hope you are well rested because today is going to be very tiring." Griphook greeted them with a feral smile on his face the next day. "I was very surprised when I felt your bonds settle well so fast. I expected that it would take at least a couple of weeks. Congratulations to you!" Griphook bowed to the wizard and his four bond-mates.

"Today's lessons and exercises will be spread over 8 hours. In the first few hours, we will work on visualizing your magic cores and your soul-bonds. We will achieve that by attaining a meditative state and once you identify your core, you will literally build a room in the center of your core which will store your magics, memories and knowledge." Griphook explained. "This is the Goblin equivalent of wizards Occlumency. If you use this method, wizards will not be able to read any of your memories or thoughts using wizards' leglimency."

"The Elves protect their memories by creating a ward that is anchored into their magic. These wards are created when an Elf swears to keep his masters secrets. Never try to do leglimency on an Elf. I assure you that the experience is not pleasant." Griphook shook his head as if he was remembering a painful memory. "Before we begin, do you have any questions?"

Hermione excitedly raised her hand earning a roll of the eyes from all humans in the room. "Can Goblins and Elves perform leglimency? Are we going to learn it?"

"Mrs. Granger-Potter..." Hermione interrupted Griphook before he could continue. "Hermione, please! I speak for others that they would prefer to be called by their first names." The other witches nodded their consent.

"Thank you for the honor, Hermione. Elves cannot do leglimency as that would clash with the nature of their magic. Goblins have a different technique, we call 'soul-reading' that we use. Ever wondered how Goblins know your name before you introduce yourself?" Griphook sniggered. "Unfortunately, I cannot teach you the technique. It requires many years of using Goblin magic to acquire the skill. Among all magical beings, I would say that the Goblins have the best Occlumency, where as Vampires have the best leglimency."

"Alright, if there are no more questions, please drink these two potions and get comfortable on the ground in this yoga technique called 'Padmasana'." Griphook demonstrated the Indian-squatting on the carpet. "One of the potions is an energy drink and another calming draught. We may proceed well past lunch, so the energy potion will be needed."

The five students took the potions and soon relaxed in the Padmasana posture. Griphook started chanting in a barely audible volume. Very soon, Harry and the witches forgot about everything except Griphook's voice. After what felt like a few hours, Hermione gave out a gasp as she visualized her magical core. Griphook continued chanting but kept his sight on the expressions on various face and was please to see a surprised expression on all of them.

Not wanting to startle the students, he spoke in a gentle soothing voice, "If all of you can visualize your magic cores, nod your head." He was pleased to note that all of them nodded their head. "Each of you will see it as a different representation. Can you describe what you see? Harry?"

"I see it as a huge lake. There seem to be several tributaries that feed into or out of the lake.", Harry replied in an expression less voice.

"How about you Hermione?"

"I see it as a tree with a huge trunk and a few branches. Some of the branches are of different colors." Hermione replied.

"What about you Luna?"

"I see it as a white cloud. It is much thicker than a fog. So must be a cloud."

"How about you Susan?"

"I see it as a river but the water is flowing in both directions. There is also some turbulance at some spots." Susan replied.

"And Daphne?"

"I see it as a simmering cauldron which occasionally overflows. I see a few broken ropes next to the cauldron. There also seems to be a couple of tubes going out of the cauldron." Daphne replied in the same emotionless voice as Harry.

"Now, I want you to have fun. Jump into the magic core, immerse yourselves and get used to the feeling of your magic. I will let you know what to do next." Griphook watched as the students had a happy expression on their face. Each of them was now surrounded by a visual aura. Harry's aura was almost blindingly brightest, followed by that of Hermione, Luna, Daphne and Susan. "You may see several colors in your core. Make sure you bask in those colors too." Soon the colors of the students aura began to change from white to red, pink, yellow, purple, green, brown etc. At one point of time, Harry had a multicolored swirling colored aura and Griphook was pleasantly surprised to note that.

After about an hour of watching their auras, Griphook decided to move to the next step. "Alright! Now, I want you to imagine a moderately large room that has at least 8 doors and many windows."

Harry visualized his room and he realized that his room was very similar to the Headmasters office at Hogwarts. He willed there to be a table and 8 chairs in the center of the room and they appeared. Harry was very pleased with creating his mental construct. Now 'WILL' one door to open into a large hall that would store your memories. Harry followed the instruction and willed his magic to create a room from one of the two doors that was behind the head of the table.

Now 'will' your magic to create another door to open into an adjacent room that would store your knowledge. Harry followed the instruction and created his knowledge room behind the other door at the head of the table.

Now 'will' your magic to create windows or panels anywhere in your room and link it to each of the colors you found in your core. Harry willed to create panels around the doors leading to his memory and knowledge rooms. There were 10 different panels, 5 on each side of the doors. One of the panels was multi-colored and Harry wondered what that might be.

Now if you haven't already done so, create a center table with 7-8 chairs around it. This would be your meeting room. Harry was pleased that he had already anticipated it and done so. Now will each of the doors to connect to the meeting room in each of your bond-mates magic core. It might be easiest to connect for all the witches to Harry first. With Griphook naming each of the witches, Harry willed to connect the door to that witch and the witch willed to create a connection with Harry. Soon, Harry had a formal mental connection to each of his witches. He willed to create name tags on each of the doors.

Now Harry, try to will a door to connect to me and another to Dobby. Harry did that and was pleased by the result.

I see that the witches have taken a loyalty pledge. we can use that bond to connect the other doors in your rooms. Pretty soon, all the witches had a door connecting to each other and to Harry. In the meantime, Harry willed the ceiling of the room to show various sceneries. He also created long tubes to denote the magic levels and health of each of his bond mates. These tubes were similar to the house-point tubes in the great hall at Hogwarts. He created a perch in the corner of the room where Fawkes perch would be situated and willed Hedwig to come there.

While Griphook was busy with the witches, he was interrupted by flapping of wings and was surprised to see Hedwig perch on Harry's shoulder and a brief flare of magic indicated that they had formed a much stronger familiar bond. Griphook chuckled at the display of power Harry did unknowingly.

With the connections done, Griphook explained that they need to will all their memories to come into the memory room. He explained that they would have to sort each memory and strip the knowledge from it and store it in the knowledge room. He explained that you may store the memories and knowledge which ever way they wanted, but it should be organized for fast retrieval. Harry decided that he would store his memories as photo-albums and store them in various trunks. Trunks with sensitive information would be stored in secure rooms in the memory room. He also created multiple rooms within the memory room to separate the memories he had downloaded from his bond mates. Harry also created another room in which he would store unsorted memories in.

Harry decided to store his knowledge in a pensieve. He figured that if he could will the knowledge pieces to merge with each other to create a knowledge map or ontology, he would be able to find information faster. Harry was almost halfway through the pile when Griphook interrupted and told all of them to take a break in Harry's meeting room. Harry was pleasantly surprised to see each of the witches bathed in a semi transparent glow. He gave each of them a hug and a kiss on the cheek and invited them. He had fun showing off his creation and the witches decided to steal some of his ideas.

Griphook entered the room through his door and congratulated everyone on a job well done. He then asked each of them to will themselves out of the room and each disappeared with a very faint pop.

"Welcome back all of you! An excellent job Mr. Potter. Did you realize that you willed to create a familiar bond with Hedwig and now you can communicate with her mentally?" Seeing the awed expression on their faces, Griphook chuckled. "I have not had this much fun in a long time!" He exclaimed. "Anyway, I suggest that each of you sort your memories and knowledge either tonight or tomorrow. For now, do you have any other questions for me? I remember hearing about some wish-lists being created?"

"Oh yeah! Griphook, we wish to ruin death eater finances. Are there areas from which they make their most money?" Harry enquired.

"I am not supposed to give out such details. But as you have been named a Goblin-friend and your witches have sworn not to divulge such information, I can freely speak of it. Almost every business that is making money is owned by death eaters. Potion supplies, real-estate, quills and parchments, broomstick companies, portkey royalties, enchanted objects royalties, royalties on many specialized charms, etc. The major industries that are not owned by death eaters are healthcare, news (Daily prophet and WWN) which are subsidized by the Ministry and hence controlled through political methods. Other industries such as clothing and food are too diverse to be controlled. But firewhiskey and butterbeer are exceptions. So all in all, about 65 percent of the economy is controlled by death eaters."

Harry whistled on hearing the number. "Portkey royalties?" Harry was surprised.

"The portus spell was claimed to have been invented by an ancestor of Mr. Malfoy. The details are available at either Gringotts or the Ministry Charms Patent Office. Each authorized portkey costs about 50 galleons of which about 60% goes to the inventor as royalties. The rest goes into the ministry's account. International portkey costs about 400-600 galleons based on where you wish to travel."

"That is pretty steep. How about broomsticks?"

"The death eaters are the majority owners of the Cleansweep, Nimbus and Firebolt companies. They own most of the Quidditch teams except the Harpies, Puddlemore United and the Cannons. By the way, you are a majority shareholder of those three teams. Did you know that?"

"WHAT??? I really need to look at my portfolio you gave me." Harry exclaimed.

Griphook chuckled. "So who do you think killed the magic carpet industry? You are right, the broomstick industries as they couldn't get a stake in the magic carpet industry, which incidentally is owned by you 100 percent."

"Tell me places like the Leaky Cauldron is not owned by them. What about construction and warding industries?"

Griphook laughed. "There has not been any new construction in the wizarding world in the last 50 years. Those who can afford to build something new have multiple mansions already. Others don't have the money to afford it. About warding..." Griphook sighed. "Most people do their own warding these days. Gringotts services are too expensive to afford for most of the population. Places like the Leaky Cauldron, Ollivander's and Florean's are owned by private individuals. You may own some of the shops in Diagon and a few more shops in Knockturn Alley. All the shops in Elf Alley are owned by Gringotts."

"That brings us to the next point. I wish to start a 'Warding company' and a 'construction company'. I plan to charge a modest sum of 1,000 galleons for warding a property with the best available wards. As most of the wards will be cast by my Elves, I really will not be incurring much expenditure other than usage of my magic. I want Gringotts to give loans at 5 percent interest per annum. I know the interest rate is very low, but making money is not the point. I am willing to give a 10% cut on our income to Gringotts for just allowing us to start this business as I feel we are encroaching onto your domain. I hope the Goblins see it as free money coming in from new business that you did not know existed. I plan to ward most of the muggleborn homes too. I would really appreciate it if you could let me know about any legal hassles. Also, if you could provide us your general ward-weaving schema, for a price of course, we would really appreciate it."

"That is an ingenious idea. I will discuss this with Ragnok and get back to you. How about the construction company?"

"Again, I plan to hire Elves for construction. I am not sure if we can find any dwarfs for underground work. These houses will be both magical and muggle. I might even create several colonies or even fully-magical villages like Hogsmaede. I realize that I own a lot of land. Heck, we might as well start a tourism/holiday resort company too. Gringotts will always get a 10% cut in all the companies I create. Based on the size of the houses, the cost will be anywhere between 15,000 to 35,000 galleons per house. For a 35,000 galleon home, I expect the wood for the building structure will cost about 3,500 galleons and all the furnishings and furniture in the house to cost not more than 2,000 galleons. And I don't have to pay for the labor right away." Harry grinned.

"HARRY! You can not NOT pay the Elves!" Hermione complained.

"Of course I am going to pay them Hermione. Do you think I will abuse the Elves? Elves don't understand the concept of galleons and sickles. I will pay them in terms of what they want and need the most. They like to work and they like to be able to do magic. I will provide them an excess of both. But I don't plan on overworking them and will give them all the care needed. I will also pay them in galleons but knowing them, they would ask me to put the money back into a trust or the ELF fund."

"How many Elves do you plan to own?" Griphook enquired.

"Not own Griphook! But employ as servants until we can break the curse binding their magic." Harry grinned. "I hope to employ all the Elves in the world if I can, but I will do that subtly without raising suspicions." Griphook smiled. "So will Gringotts be able to extend housing loans at 5 percent too over 15-35 years? In case of foreclosure, you can always sell those houses at a much higher rate."

"I don't know! We might have to worry about cash-flow and hire more personnel. I will let you know after I discuss these ideas with the council. I think it is time for me to leave now. I want you to have these two potions after you are done sorting your memories. These potions contain both Elven and Goblin magic knowledge. You might have to immerse yourself in the knowledge and practice to be able to do these magics. But don't try casting any spells till your magic core stops expanding. The third vial has knowledge about wizarding finances and Gringotts operational procedures."

Harry promised to do so and thanked Griphook, who disappeared with a faint pop. After a quick dinner, Harry and the witches went to the master bedroom and were out even before they hit the bed.