Sympathetic Properties

by Mr Norrell

Having been treated as a servant his entire life, Harry is more sympathetic when Dobby arrives, avoiding Vernon's wrath and gaining a bit of freedom. That freedom changes his summer, his life, and the world forever. A very long character-driven story that likes to play with canon.

33. Just To Be Safe

.o0O0o.

Saturday, August twenty-second, nineteen ninety-two was a day the whole world was going to change, or at least it would for Hugh Hobson, which meant he hadn't been able to get any sleep at all. Pacing back and forth in front of the Leaky Cauldron, he had to wonder if everything that led him here had been one great big gigantic colossal mistake. Being so much shorter than everyone else had always thrown off his sense of scale though so it might've been an even bigger mistake than he thought, which wasn't comforting at all.

Sure, spending your days working nights at the Ministry alone had never been exciting, nor would it ever lead anywhere as a career, but it paid the bills and you didn't have to worry about having a boss constantly looking over your shoulder. So when you really looked at it, being buried by boring and bigoted bureaucracy in the Goblin Liaison Office wasn't so bad, which was a scary thought too. He hadn't realized just how big the humany wizardy part of him was until he'd stupidly thrown it all away, and that was unsettling in a completely different way.

All during the last week his humany side had been hounding him non-stop.

'Why'd you do it?' it would ask when he woke up every morning with nothing to do.

'Why'd you stamp the form?' it demanded when he ate his cold frosted cereal.

'They played you for a fool,' it berated him as he filled his day with television while thinking that part of him might be right.

'They've forgotten about you and now you've got no friends, no prospects, and can't go back,' it told him when he brushed his teeth at the end of the day with nothing to look forward to but the same empty day tomorrow. After a few days he had to start thinking about what he was going to do with the rest of his life, because whether he'd been used or not he certainly couldn't sit around his dank little basement apartment all day.

'Maybe I should go into computers,' he thought later in the week when he was checking job listings as he ate at the diner down the street. 'Everything says they're going well and I've always been a quick study. I could always bamboozle the people there into thinking that I know what I'm doing until I figure out what I'm supposed to know,' Hugh mused while wondering why wizards went with Confunding rather than bamboozling when bamboozling had a much more wizarding sound to it. 'Do they even know the word bamboozle?'

The peace of his pancakes was interrupted by a high-pitched electronic beeping ring. Hugh looked up only to roll his eyes as the suit in the next booth pulled out a brick-sized object and seemed to think everyone in the world simply had to hear his half-of-a-conversation and he spoke loudly into it when they weren't interested in the first place.

'Blah blah Berlin,' the suit bragged. 'Blah blah New York. Blah blah look at me, I'm on an overgrown walkie-talkie the size of a car battery that'll only stay charged for an hour. Aren't I so special and important?'

'NO!' Hugh wanted to yell at the man while cramming the phone down his throat. 'Can you do magic? Do you have goblin blood in your veins? Are you even aware there are real fire-breathing dragons? What makes you so special when you're too blind to see the pint-sized pissed-off pancake-eating wizard right behind you?'

Unable to eat, he threw some money on the table and left – only to be greeted at the curb by the sight of a flashy foreign car which no doubt belonged to the suit.

'Maybe I should be an executive,' Hugh thought sourly as he walked away, as if getting such a job would teach someone some sort of lesson. 'It'd be a boring and empty life if I bamboozle my way into being high paid do-nothing but no one would make fun of me if they thought I was rich and important. They might be respectful for once.'

Stars exploded behind his eyes and he hit the sidewalk as something hard and fluffy slammed into the back of his head and started shrieking.

"What the bloody hell–?" he asked as he blinked his eyes clear in time to see the flapping shrieking owl finally wriggle free from its burden and fly away again. 'Just my luck if someone sent me a brick in the mail,' Hugh grumbled as he picked up the package and hurried to the nearest alley.

Using his apartment key he cut the package's bindings to see what he'd been sent. What he saw inside almost made him drop it but instead he hid behind a dumpster before getting a better look. The vicious-looking dagger's handle felt rough in his hand but he supposed a thinner and tougher goblin hand might've felt right holding it. Then again, he'd never felt that comfortable with a wand either and the note that came with it didn't give any comfort either.

'Still pushing for you,' it said and was signed simply 'Bankor.'

His mind seemed stuck in a horrifying loop.

'All of them are real. All of them are real. All of them are real,' he thought as he slid down the brick wall behind him and sat with his head between his knees. The hard pommel of the dagger pressed into his forehead as the walls between all the different worlds he came from came crashing down and pressed in on him. The stink of the dumpster filled every panicked gasp so much he could taste it but he couldn't seem to get any air.

The goblin world, the wizarding world, and the muggle world were all one and the same. He'd known this but it'd never felt that way until now. It'd always been so easy to think of them as completely separate worlds that didn't have anything to do with each other. The muggle world was just this horribly overcrowded and gritty place he lived, the wizarding world was this far off Imagination Land where nothing really mattered because it didn't effect anything in the real world – the Ministry might as well have been the moon for all it influenced anything – and the goblin stuff was all even further off, like on Mars or Venus or something.

It'd been so easy at the end of the day – or night as the case may be – to come home and sit in front of the telly for an hour or two, blissfully sure that whatever happened on the moon that day hadn't really happened and didn't really mean anything. Sure, it felt real at the time but that didn't make it really real, did it? It was like some deeply engaging movie that gets your heart pounding and makes you tear up at the end but once the credits roll you shrug it off and go home; only this wasn't a movie, it was real and the credits only came for you when you were dead.

He spent a lot of time during the next couple of days hiding under his bed. One conclusion he reached – between bouts of worrying some gestapo squad from the Ministry was about to break down his door every time he heard a noise – was that the old ugly grandpa who tricked him into doing this had been right, without the goblins taking him in he was a dead man. Wizarding stupidity and blind bigotry may guide what they do but no one could be stupid forever… well, not without a lot of effort at least, and wizards were notoriously lazy.

That's why when it's-still-odd-to-think-of-him-as-an-Overseer Bankor sent him another note telling him to come to the bank the next day he hadn't hesitated to bamboozle the nearest tailor into making him something respectable. He was hesitating now though, cowering in the cloak he wore over the suit he'd gotten because he didn't want to chance being seen in Diagon Alley. What would wizards think if they saw him in a suit? What would goblins think if he wore robes? The whole thing was a minefield!

'Come on, Hugh,' he thought bracingly as he dawdled by the door to the Leaky Cauldron. 'You can do this.'

With another soothing breath he pulled his hood down to hide his face and kept the cloak tight around him as he entered the pub hoping not to attract any notice. He didn't know if the sound inside was muffled from the hood but from what he could see from under the low-hanging cowl interest in Leaky Cauldron appeared to be dead. He hadn't had much call to come to Diagon Alley after he had graduated Hogwarts but when he had the pub was always lively, even this early in the morning.

He was just beginning to think he'd be able to get through this unseen when someone called him out before he'd even left the door.

"Morning, Mr. Flitwick," a man somewhere to his left said cheerily, obviously confused by his short height. "Breakfast?"

'Ah crap. What does Flitwick sound like?' he panicked, feeling rooted to the floor as he tried to remember. 'And which Flitwick does he mean? There's like a dozen of them. Forget it, just move and say something!'

"No, no, no time today," Hugh said as he quickly made his way through the bar and towards Diagon Alley proper. "I've got an emergency... choir practice... to get to," he finished feebly before scurrying out the back.

Berating himself for saying something so incredibly stupid he whipped out his wand and tapped the wall behind the pub. The door to the alley opened only for him to come practically face-to-groin with an auror.

'Ah crap!' he thought as he couldn't help but look up at them. 'Crap again!' Hugh thought as the brim of his cowl threatened to slip back and reveal his face. 'Go-go-go-go-go-go-go!'

Skirting around the one-eyed lady he went down the alley as fast as he could walk, hoping not to hear the auror coming after him. Eyes darting, Hugh couldn't help but think times were more tense than he thought to make everyone stay away on a weekend, and it wasn't just the other wandering auror down the way which told him so. The shops should've been open but most stood dark, without even an attendant inside, which made the dead feeling of the Leaky Cauldron understandable.

Hiding himself in the doorway to Quality Quidditch Supplies, he checked his wristwatch and wrung his hands apprehensively. His nerves had made him a bit early, but he hadn't thought he'd be so early the bank would be locked up tight. Strange thing about it though was there were no guards by the doors while two other aurors hung around nearby.

'Were things really as bad as that old grandpa said? Had something happened to make the goblins retreat inside? And how the heck am I supposed to get in there?' Hugh thought, glancing at the aurors stationed to the left and right of the building. 'I'm sure going up and knocking wouldn't look suspicious at all,' he thought derisively. 'I might as well carry a sign saying "Goblin Collaborator, Arrest Me Please."'

Standing there trying to look through the upper windows of the bank wasn't getting him anywhere so he supposed he really didn't have a choice. As if on cue, one of the bank's large doors opened slightly and a goblin's head poked out to survey what was going on. Was this it? Were they looking for him? Should he make a run for it?

Hugh eyed the aurors ahead of him and glanced behind to see the aurors there still milling about. One of them was meandering his way so though he had to do something soon or him standing here not doing anything would end up getting him in trouble. When he looked back to the bank the goblin was hesitantly inching his way down the stairs carrying one of their big ledger books and shooting glances at the aurors himself. Once he got to a funny semicircular stage ringing the stairs the goblin stamped his foot and a small plinth shot up for him to set it on.

With no other choice available he tugged his cloak around him and walked right up to the teller. Hugh caught a fleeting glimpse of disdain, as if the goblin had just stepped in something squishy, and though it was quickly suppressed it made him have doubts. Maybe he couldn't go through with this. He could still bamboozle his way into a new life somewhere, right? If he was lucky it might take the Ministry a year to find him once they started looking.

"Name?" the goblin above him asked tersely, making his mind go blank. What was his name?

"H–Hobson. Hugh Hobson," he answered before immediately wanting to kick himself.

'That's great, Hugh,' he groused to himself as he fought the urge to look at the aurors again. 'Go and tell them your real name why don't you? What's the worst that can happen? It's not like the aurors could be listening. It's not like Supersensory Charms exist or anything. Geez, and I call wizards stupid, it must be in the blood. Just ask this guy how to get inside already.'

"I'm here to–"

"Yes, I see you right here, Mister Hobson," the teller cut in. "What are you depositing today?"

"Er– what?" Hugh asked curiously. "No, I need to–"

"–Transfer funds to a different account?" the goblin quickly cut in again.

"What? No," he said, wondering why the goblin wouldn't let him get a simple word in edgewise.

"I'm sorry but we're only doing deposits and transfers at this time, and only for one brief period every hour until the current situation changes," the teller said meaningfully before his eyes darted to one of the aurors. "If you're not making a deposit or transfer..."

"Yes, deposit!" he agreed quickly, catching wind of crafty going on here. "I thought you said something else."

Hugh could feel the eyes of aurors on him as he patted his pockets for anything he could find. There was the dagger Bankor sent but he was pretty sure you were supposed to hang onto that until the promise had been met or broken. Was this it? And what would the aurors make of that? It'd probably get reported back to someone at the Ministry. In the end he managed to scrape up a galleon, a handful of sickles, and a wad of muggle money; surely that'd count for something.

The teller took it and although he couldn't see what he was doing on the other side of the plinth it sounded like he opened the thing up and dropped it inside before closing it again and making a note in the ledger. Hugh looked up at the goblin expectantly and was more anticipatory than disappointed when the teller handed him a thin, narrow slip of parchment with nothing on it.

"Your new account balance should appear on the slip momentarily, once your deposit has been processed," the teller said a little stiffly. "Now please make way for the next person in line."

Looking behind him showed there was no next person in line but he took that as his cue to leave anyway.

"Anyone else with a deposit to be made?" the teller called out as Hugh made his way back down the alleyway again, glancing at the parchment every few steps. "Very well," the goblin said as the sound of the ledger closing was heard. "A new teller will arrive at the top of the hour."

As he heard the a sound of the bank's double door creaking open behind him, a crude drawing suddenly appeared on his phony receipt. It was hard to make out what it was supposed to be besides two rows of crooked, blocky teeth. One of them was even snaggletoothed, like a canine that–

Hugh looked back at the bank and, as the bank door closed, turned the receipt one quarter turn, which made what he was looking at made sense. The snaggletooth was the bank, making the whole thing a map, but to where? Looking closely at the cramped strip of paper, there was an odd circle with a dot in it.

'What the heck is that supposed to mean?' he wondered as he tried to walk in that direction like he actually knew what he was doing. 'Haven't they ever heard of "X marks the spot"?'

He tried not to grouse and just blend in but it rather difficult when you were the only one there. When he got to where the dot-circle thing was supposed to be Hugh found himself at the entryway to Knockturn Alley and he couldn't help but let out a groan. They wanted a part-goblin wearing a muggle suit to walk into the worst neighborhood in the magical world? These goblins were going to get him killed.

Hugh drew his wand as he entered the shadowy back alley and as soon as he was out of sight of the aurors he really wished to have them back. Everything was dark and dingy and there were human skulls in shop windows. How could any of this be legal? Glancing back to the strip of paper that'd led him into this freakish hellscape he found it changed.

There were different rectangular blocks for buildings but the street curved in a different way. In fact, it didn't even match up with– Turning the slip over again he saw that there was yet another dot-circle about halfway down the alley, which was almost enough to make him turn back and hide under his bed again. If there wasn't a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow then he was going to be really miffed.

Inching his way down the cramped and claustrophobic street, Hugh twitched at every noise and tried to look in every direction at once. He almost zapped a cat that showed up unexpectedly but a greasy guy came out a shop called Borgin & Burkes to shoot him a look saying he'd better get going. Taking a breath on one of the walls, he gathered his strength before facing whatever the next challenge would be.

The dot-circle he was looking for was supposed to be around the next corner, in a tiny walkway between shops, and he couldn't help but think it'd be a great place for an assassin to hide.

"Rah!" Hugh roared as he sprang around the corner brandishing his wand, only to find a giant cloaked figure waiting on him. 'Dementor!' his mind screamed as panic gripped him.

"Woah! Hey, watch it!" a high cracking voice said from under the towering hood that didn't match with what he expected at all.

He angled his head and lit his wand to cast a beam of light so he could see the stranger's face.

"C'mon, quit it," the high scratchy voice said again as a pair of small hands darted out of the cloak to block his beam.

'Well it's definitely a goblin,' Hugh thought as he cut off the spell, 'but how the heck did it get so big withou–'

Darting forward he grabbed the stranger's cloak and flung it open to see it was indeed standing on a stool. He had to dodge out of the way immediately as a small booted foot kicked at his head.

"Thanks for completely blowing my cover," the goblin groused as it hopped off the stool. "We'll never be able to do that again. I take it you're Hobson?"

"Yes," he replied. "Who are you? Do you know how to get inside?"

"My name's Nunya Business and yeah I know how to get inside," the crackly voice said. "How'd you think I got out here if I didn't know how to back get in? C'mon, and bring my stool with you," the goblin said as it ran off, its over-long cloak dragging along the ground behind it.

A bit perturbed but no longer alone, Hugh shrank the stool and put it in his cloak pocket. Whatever job Bankor had for him, he hoped this'd be the last time he had to get his hands dirty carrying around goblin stools when they didn't even tell him their real name. Pulling his hood down and huddling in his cloak, he followed after them to see how far down this rabbit hole really went.

.o0O0o.

Molly felt absolutely dreadful. Turning the Weekend Prophet over so she didn't have to see it didn't help because it was her own fault. Her family was in dire financial straits, with little-to-no hope of sending the kids to Hogwarts next year unless something changed, but to blab about Harry's home life to the Prophet just to land a job was – well, it was inexcusable, and it was worse because she didn't know what to do about it.

Should she bring it up to him and let him know there was yet another adult in his life he can't count on? Would apologizing be enough to make the feeling of betrayal any better? Could any apology ever be enough for it? And what would she tell him? She couldn't say she did it for her family – for money – because he probably would've given all the money he had just to make sure nobody ever hurt him again.

It felt like her heart was tying itself in knots and ripping itself apart. Part of her wanted to hug him for all he was worth like she would an injured son – because Merlin knows the boy deserves it – but the other part knew she wasn't fit to do anything of the sort because she'd been the one to hurt him, even if he didn't know he was hurt yet. She wished she could've spoken to Arthur about it but she'd been so ashamed she couldn't bring herself to do it.

No. No, she decided, she couldn't tell Harry what she'd done. Rita Skeeter said she'd been working on getting the information from Lichfield anyway, so her telling the woman wasn't that bad, was it? Well of course it was, but a lot of what it said in the paper hadn't come from her so she wasn't the only one to blame. She only wished more of it had come from him though so she wouldn't feel so bad.

Still, no matter how it came out it'd been her fault so it was her responsibility to make it right somehow. As much as she wanted to hide what she'd done, she knew Harry would find out sooner or later so the question was how to handle it. She couldn't let them go off to Hogwarts and be surprised with this on the train; surely everyone in the country would be talking about this soon. No, it'd be best if he found out about it sooner rather than later, and somewhere he's comfortable, so people won't pester him about it.

All that said it should happen here and now and she didn't think her conscience could handle it, not without telling him everything. The whole point was to help him feel better and that would only make matters worse. Maybe… Yes, maybe she could wait a day or two. She could hide the paper and bring it up with him on Monday, surely her conscience would've settled enough by then to talk about it.

She could make it seem like she'd only just heard and wanted to make sure he was okay and was there if he wanted to talk. That wriggled her conscience too but it wasn't exactly a lie, not really. It just wasn't telling him everything exactly the way it happened, and that was something he didn't need to worry about. When the whole truth would only hurt, what was wrong with less truth and more kindness mixed in? And if it left them with a pleasant little fiction that helped move things on to a better place, where was the harm in that?

Thunderous footsteps echoing down from above signaled the imminent arrival of the boys but as she scrambled to pick up the paper before anyone saw it, Ginny popped up first.

"Hey, Mum," her daughter said a bit more melancholy than she had been the last week.

"Morning, dear," she replied as she crossed into the kitchen and stashed the Prophet in her junk drawer. "You feel alright?" Molly asked, wondering if another case of the Sullens was about to break out since that Hermione girl was supposed to be here today.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she answered before tucking in to the breakfast Dobby had wafted over.

Talk was cut off once the boys entered and the day got started but ever since Bill had questioned her about things, Ginny had seemed to be this great unknown living in her house. Once she'd backed away a bit and let the girl run off on her own she had turned into a completely different person than what she'd been expecting. Loud, rowdy, and argumentative, she was much more like one of the boys than the little woman she'd always seen her to be.

'Than what I'd wanted her to be,' she corrected herself as she really took a look at her kids. They were boisterous and uncouth and got in trouble all the time but – but they were happy, and wasn't that the most important thing? 'I swore I'd do a better job than my mother but… when do you know when you're done?'

A small puff of green flame burst from the fireplace and before she had a chance to even wonder what it was Percy piped in to provide it.

"Mum, it's Mr. Diggory."

She peeked over to see Harry looking curiously from the table at the ruddy face with a scrubby brown beard sitting in the fire, which was looking right back at him.

"Merlin's beard," the man's head said, "you're Harry Potter."

"Amos!" she cried, coming over to distract the man with his favorite subject before he ruined everything. "How's Cedric doing?"

"Good, good!" the man said merrily as he turned his attention to her. "Hasn't started Fourth Year yet and he's already studying for O.W.L.s," he boasted. "He's got Prefect written all over him, that one, maybe even Quidditch Captain too, once we let him play. Anyway, I'm looking for Arthur."

"Did someone say Amos?" her husband asked as he came downstairs straightening his robes.

"Floo for you, dear," Molly said with a smile as she went back to guard the Prophet in the junk drawer.

"Ah, Amos, how are you?" Arthur asked as he bent over to see him better.

"Good, good," he replied, "I'm sorry to ask but they need you to come in. A muggle concern may get out of hand and they're looking for anyone with experience to help out."

"What seems to be the problem?" her husband asked and she didn't even have to see Amos's eyes shift elsewhere to know what it was about.

"Have you seen the Prophet this morning?" Amos asked instead.

"No," Arthur answered before turning to her. "Have you seen the paper, dear?"

"No," she quietly squeaked, showing her empty hands as if to say she hadn't touched it, all the while the handle to the junk drawer burned a hole in her backside.

"No worries, I–I'll just tell you when you get here," Amos said with a falsely happy tone. "No need to trouble anyone else's breakfast, eh? Have a good morning, everyone," he smiled a toothy grin before disappearing back into the flames with a pop! and she felt a wave of nausea roil her stomach. Today was not going to be an easy one.

"I guess I should be going," her husband said as he straightened up.

"Have a good day at the office, dear," she said kindly as the kids said their farewells. "And take some toast with you," she added from her safely guarded spot, "no need to go hungry."

Mouth full of buttered toast, the best man in the world left the house with a smile that made her think the world would turn out right after all. Almost immediately though the back door flew open again grabbing everyone's attention. Harry's little girlfriend had arrived with a fist full of newspaper. Where had she gotten that?!

Blood pounded in Molly's ears and she felt weak in the knees. Rooted to the spot, she couldn't hear a thing anyone was saying but saw Hermione go to Harry with the newspaper and all of the others curiously looking on. She had to do something, she had to. She had to find some way of burying the guilt she felt. She had to–to–to… As if pulled along by magic she took the pan of eggs Dobby was cooking off the stove and hurried towards the table.

"Hermione, dear," she said with a panicked smile as she spooned Harry's plate full. "You're just in time for breakfast."

.o0O0o.

The purging light of the Greater Good was an all-consuming flame which spread its tendrils into your most secret places to reveal your hidden faults and sear away the corruption it found. It was a very painful process indeed for it did so even to the faults you didn't know were faults, for there was nothing that light couldn't find. All the secrets you kept held close and all the lies you told yourself in order to maintain your own personal truth amounted to less than nothing to that which ordered everything.

Albus thought he knew just how painful a process it could be when it began and had dedicated himself to embracing this blessed torment so he might learn the hard truths the Greater Good was striving to carve into his very soul. It was this humble devotion that kept him mostly cloistered away in the last week, with his eyes piously downcast, a signal to others that he saw and acknowledged the great disappointment in their eyes as he worked to internalize the pain behind the shame they wanted to bestow.

Little did he know that the Greater Good was scarcely getting started. The first rays of light brought with it a notice from the Board of Governors informing Hogwarts of the imminent arrival of a Ministry delegation to accompany investigators from the I.C.W. as they conduct a thorough search and inquiry regarding any role they may have played regarding his purported involvement with the Sorcerer's Stone. The staff was likewise ordered to give their full and complete compliance with the investigation or face not only the loss of their position but risk criminal charges being levied against them by the Ministry.

With a sigh Albus knew it was too much. If there was one way to mend the rift which had grown between himself and the other staff it would be this, but he simply couldn't allow his friends to put themselves in jeopardy on his account. It'd be too much to ask to have them to leap to his defense and proclaim the rightness of his actions, as of course they would want to do, since doing so would put Hogwarts and the next school year at risk.

'No, this is a burden I must take upon myself,' he decided before scratching out a short message with a bedraggled quill. Through pleasantly humble Bobopsy the pious old steward of the wizarding world sent the notice off to Professor McGonagall with a note that read, 'Under the circumstances, I will leave this in your capable hands. I know the staff will do whatever they can to be helpful and accommodating to our guests.'

As soon as it was gone though doubts bubbled up in his mind and, as much as he resisted the urge to think them, they popped forth nonetheless. Would the staff be too helpful? Would they reveal too much? What part of the Greater Good's grand design would be hampered or delayed if this were to happen?

When an unanticipated twist of fate brought forth closer ties between the Ministry and the I.C.W. – something he'd been working towards for a decade with no success – Albus couldn't deny the Greater Good was indeed at work here, but did that mean the Greater Good truly wanted everyone to know everything about what had happened and why? A truthful account of the Stone, the protections, and possibly Quirrell would no doubt be required – as well as a search to give them the possibility to confirm the tale – but what of Voldemort?

'And so comes the choice between what's right and what is easy,' Albus mused. 'A single word of that, when taken with the truth about the Stone, would see this whole misunderstanding disappear, thrust me back into a position of power, reveal the truth of Harry's destiny, and array the wizarding world behind us so we could go forth with determination to permanently prevent any chance the man might have to ever return. But what of Harry and those poor misguided souls who deserved their Second Chance?'

With former Death Eaters amongst the population, telling the world of Voldemort's survival may cause the unforgiving in their society to attempt to rip away the Second Chance they'd been given after the war and might tempt the less repentant into taking up their old cause once again. Albus couldn't do that to them; though they differed in political persuasions and policy proposals, they still deserved the lives they've built in peace and happiness.

Revealing Harry's destiny to the world now would be the worst thing that could happen to all of them. And though the abandonment allegations against him would be tossed aside once the reasons for his actions came to light, it was not the sort of thing a child like Harry would understand or accept. Doubtlessly, by now the young boy would've had his mind so firmly set against him that only a climactic clash in court could create the catharsis the child craved.

Albus well remembered when he was a young boy and the issue had been his own father's trial. There was a crystal clarity and sureness that came from attending the proceedings, reading the transcripts, and studying trial notes that Harry was sure to cling to. And after all, if the Greater Good was arranging events to have Harry return to him with an open heart and a readiness to learn then he had to know that everything he'd done had been for the best, and preventing this misunderstanding from proceeding to trial would keep that from happening.

Had that catharsis not happened for him, when he was younger than Harry was now, then who knows what he might have become? His childish rage at what those muggles had done to his sister may have seen him grow up to become another Tom or Gellert. Seeking to inflict the same harm on others he'd felt himself was not the way to heal anything; a truth his father's silence acknowledged when he was sentenced for his crime.

'And worse,' Albus thought to himself as he brought his considerable mind back to the matter at hand. 'Revealing Harry's destiny this early, and stifling the supposed abandonment, would put Harry at risk. Not only would the danger come from Tom's former followers who may secretly wish to take up their master's cause once again but an equal danger would come from the boy himself and those who'd destroy his entire childhood.'

Harry was a young boy with a dark future looming ahead of him and if there was anyone in the world who deserved the happy time of a normal childhood before he had to face the grim realities of life as an adult, it would be him. Knowing about this destiny before he was ready to know, and before he was ready to be guided to do what must be done, could cause him to run from it… and that could doom the world. Worse still, perhaps, would be the Ministry or the I.C.W. taking him in hand to raise him and train him to be a weapon tasked with but a single purpose rather than letting him grow to be a young man who was willing to give his all for a cause.

'No,' Albus thought humbly as a quieting sense of calm settled over him like a cloak. 'I promised the Greater Good I'd only to reveal his destiny to him at the proper time, and I will keep my promise. I learned my lesson about pursuing personal power, conspiring for control, and sacrificing other people's happiness in order to gain my own and I will not discard it now. This is my burden to bear.'

This burden was something he didn't fully bear alone though for he had already shared part of it with someone else. Minerva may have hardened her heart towards him in recent weeks for what she thought his actions would do to the school and its children but once the truth of things were revealed and Harry was returned to him, then perhaps it would be time to trust her with this deeper truth as well. It was with a pang of sadness though that Albus scratched out a note he knew would pain the most secretly sensitive man he knew.

With a gentle rustle of wings Fawkes flew to him from across the all but empty office to land on the old wooden crate he now used as a desk. Just as he finished his friend sang a short song which brought an image of the Owlery and a sense of flying off to points unknown to his mind.

"Ah, yes. If you would please, Fawkes," Albus said with a jovial smile as he positioned the note for him to clasp in his talons. "Severus should be in his room still."

In an envelope of flame which consumed neither bird nor note and left no scarred trace on the crate's rough surface Fawkes disappeared.

'Such a pure soul Fawkes has,' he thought as he flexed his knee and made to stand, thinking to make his way to the large open balcony area of the office to better contemplate the rising sun. 'Indeed it's times like these he seems less like an animal companion and more like the Greater Good's comforting hand given form and substance. Surely that must mean there's hope for me still.'

Albus had just reached his feet when Bobopsy reappeared carrying a tray with this morning's breakfast, an aromatic vegetable soup. As appetizing as the soup smelled though there was something else on the tray that caught his attention, a Daily Prophet. As odd as it was for them to run a weekend edition, running them two weekends in a row was something that may well have never happened before.

"Thank you, Bobopsy," the kindly old Headmaster said as he took the tray with a smile and set it on his crate-desk. "You are too kind."

Beaming with joy from the well-deserved praise the little elf took his leave again. Albus left the soup to cool and took the newspaper in hand as he hobbled towards the morning's light. Surely something momentous must have happened to cause the Prophet to trip over themselves to rush out another issue so quickly. Peace declared with the goblins? The release of their hostages? With the Greater Good at work whatever it was it sure to be for the good but what Albus found didn't seem good at all.

That the Ministry and the goblins had decided to continue their petty bickering was unfortunate but perhaps it had been too much to expect it to change any time soon. The Greater Good often acted at almost a glacial pace for it was only with an innumerable amount of tiny changes that an unalterable great change could occur. And if the Greater Good was indeed orchestrating events in order to bring about a fundamental shift in wizarding relations with their goblin counterparts – as he now believed to be the case – then it may well take a decade to puzzle out the Ultimate Purpose the Greater Good had in mind and another hundred years to help bring it about.

As murky as those issues were though the story about Harry's aunt and uncle was even more troubling. The Prophet was sure to be showing things with an anti-muggle bias just as it'd shown an anti-Ministry bias to things before, so them portraying the Dursleys in an overly-negative light was to be expected.

'But still,' Albus thought as he paced back and forth in thought and hummed to himself, the dull grinding ache in his wounded knee helping to focus his thoughts. 'Going so far as to call them "muggle monsters" is doing them a great disservice.'

Thinking of Harry's family negatively only displayed one's own ignorance, for even a passing familiarity with the alchemical arts would tell you what a vital function they served in Harry's life, above and beyond what they did to ensure his safety and security. Since none of them knew the reason why Harry had to be placed with them in the first place though all of this was yet another misunderstanding. The most troubling part was how they knew of them at all and how they had gotten close enough to take their picture.

The privacy protections he'd given to the Dursleys had been cunningly and cleverly designed, and even his most humble opinion now could do nothing to diminish the simple sophistication involved in their construction. Indeed it was something very close to what he had employed in those protections he had gone on to use again, ten years later, when it came to hiding the Stone from Voldemort, for only someone who wanted to find Harry or the Dursleys – find them, but not harm them – would be able to get to their home.

Briefly Albus stopped his pacing to ponder if some sympathetic properties within those elements had arranged themselves in such a way that it gathered them all together to lead Harry not only to find the Mirror of Erised but to pursue Quirrell as well.

'Hm,' he hummed as he stroked his mustache and ran his fingers through his beard, 'the Greater Good does indeed work in mysterious ways. But why would young Harry think of his family this way, much less tell such things to the Prophet?' Albus wondered as he began pacing again.

From his observations of the boy last year, Harry had seemed to be a very private person. It wouldn't be like him to talk about his life to the likes of Rita Skeeter just to gain a bit of notoriety; someone else must have told them. But with any letters to Harry being redirected to the back room Bathilda used for her publishing, unless the boy knew of the sender himself, Harry would have had to tell them where to find his home and Harry was too private a person to do that.

Albus knew he was grasping at straws when the truly preposterous crossed his mind. They had thrown him from their house just for seeming to go against the boy; the Weasleys would never betray Harry's confidence like that, even if he had told them, and if there was one person who'd be most likely to take to the child like an adoptive mother it'd be Molly. The only way such a thing could be even be remotely possible would be if they saw each other not as adoptive family but as distant friends, or even acquaintances.

Surely the Greater Good wouldn't work that way. What better Ultimate End could there be than for Harry to become a part of one big happy Weasley family? Surely staying in their home would have him yearn for what he'd never had and awaken the loving core that makes him so different than Voldemort. And in the event the Greater Good found a way for Harry to survive, then who better for him to marry than one of the Weasleys? He and his friend Ron were close, if he went in that direction, and if he didn't there was always the sister.

'Who better for Harry to end up with than someone who looks so much like his mother?' Albus smiled at the thought. 'If the Greater Good did indeed see fit to bestow such a loving life to our young hero then it would be a well-deserved reward for all his hardship.'

A soft trilling song sang out behind him, rousing Albus from his thoughts and he turned to see a recently-returned Fawkes take delicate sips from his soup. His feathered friend was right of course, if he spent all his time wondering about things the Greater Good had taken out of his hands when they had guests on their way then he'd be left to meet them on an empty stomach. Still, as he hobbled his way up the steps to his bedchamber it was hard to keep his mind away from his charge.

Long before his life was changed by The Tale of the Three Brothers he had been drawn to children's stories, both magical and muggle alike, for they revealed essential truths about what makes us all human. One of his muggle favorites had been that of Cinderella, and though it sounded like some terrible disease it showed how purity of heart could be gained from living with a family others would say were cruel, and that message had always seemed to console his sister. For Harry to think so ill of his family though made as much sense as Cinderella asking the Prince to behead her stepmother and stepsisters or pluck out their eyes at the end. Something very different had to be going on here.

He pondered the situation deeply as he carefully tore out the newspaper articles, neatly licked the corners, and massaged the pulpy paper edges into the rough crevices between the stone bricks so they would stay on his bedchamber wall. Though he usually took time to reflect on the stories showing his failings, all the missed opportunities he could have had to work for the Greater Good, and to take in the loss and sorrow into himself, today it would have to wait. As he turned to go he saw Harry's large uncle's muggle weapon explode in smoke again and a curious thought occurred to him that changed everything.

'Ah!' Albus thought as his mind made connections between things he hadn't thought possible before, the reasons within reasons and the wheels within wheels of the Greater Good's Grand Design appeared in his head. 'Perhaps it's not only Harry who are being spiritually purified,' he thought, full of awe at the majesty and wonder he beheld. 'Perhaps it's also the Dursleys themselves!'

He put his hands together in front of his lips and thanked the Greater Good for showing him this truth, for now the real reasons for why so many things have been happening had been revealed. The Greater Good not only wanted Harry to be changed by his experiences with the Dursleys but for them to be changed by this. This story was sure to draw the ire of the wizarding world, many of whom would want to give the Dursleys 'a good talking to,' though his protections would prevent the most severe of those from ever finding them.

The Dursleys, though, could hide no more for the Greater Good had found them and exposed them to the purging fires of the public, just as it had him. Their deeds would be exposed, the harsh treatments and unfairness they'd shown to young Harry would be known to all, and the wizarding world would at last learn the importance of good and caring parents for the last thing they'd want to be would be anything like the Dursleys. Yes, Harry was indeed so central to the well-being of the wizarding world that the Greater Good was pulling all the disparate threads of his life together in order to change the world in truly remarkable ways.

And there's no doubt the Dursleys would be changed by this. They'd finally get a good hard look at the unfeeling monsters they had become and fall to their knees begging for Harry's forgiveness, and, once he saw the truth behind things, he'd be happy to give it. This, of course, spoke volumes of the Greater Good's intentions for Harry to be returned to him in friendship, returned to his family's warm embrace, and for Harry to live beyond his ordeal with Voldemort – though that last was still only the heartfelt hopes of a caring old man.

'Surely the Greater Good would want Harry to live,' he thought sorrowfully as he gazed at the bottom corner of the Prophet's picture of Lockhart's public embarrassment; the only picture he had of Harry. 'Having him die after making the world safe, after changing the world so he might finally find love and friendship… that would cause heartache the likes of which the wizarding world has never known.'

In his own aching heart though Albus knew just how much that sorrow could affect someone. If the Greater Good did indeed intend to change their world through the life of Harry Potter then it stood to reason the boy's very heroic death could make that change bone deep and irreversible. It would be a sad thing to have happen, but it was something he would have to make peace with, just in case that time ever came.

.o0O0o.

The stone hallway was dark, its rough cave-like walls only dimly lit by torches. It wasn't what he expected a bank to be like though truth be told he'd only been in this one's lobby, and even then only when he had to. He'd heard tales of people "going down to their vaults," and occasionally complaints about the carts they had to ride in to get there but he never put much stock in them before. He certainly hadn't thought they'd have money locked away in actual jail cells somewhere.

His long-cloaked goblin guide motioned for him to stay back and stay quiet before going ahead to peer around the next turn. Not nearly goblin enough to stand there and wait in the dark Hugh decided to go up and join it.

"Do you know where you're going?" he asked the no-named goblin.

"Of course I know where I'm going," his goblin guide's voice said as it cracked. "I wish I didn't but believe me, there's no other way."

"What do you mean?" Hugh asked, images of tight-rope walking over a precipice flashing through his head.

"I'm not even remotely authorized to use the faster way to get there," the goblin said like it supposed to mean anything, "and that means we've got to go through the lobby."

"So? What's the big deal with that?" he asked. "I've been in the lobby before."

The goblin gave a cackle-like chuckle, "Not like this, you haven't. You're gonna want to take off your cloak," it said as it worked to take off its ridiculously over-sized garment.

"Why?" he asked as he did the same.

"You really have to ask?" the high-pitched voice batted back at him. "What country are you from that you don't know what's going on?" the goblin's voice cracked again as they finally got a good look at each other.

The goblin's leather boots were worn, tough-looking, but roughly made and the same went for its pants. Hugh didn't know what this goblin did here but it was far cry from the suit-wearing tellers he'd seen. Its arms full of bundled cloak he couldn't see what the shirt was like but from the sleeves it looked like rough-spun cloth.

It was the face and hair that struck him as odd though. Its features were sharper than his but still less like any other goblin's face he'd seen before; somehow it looked more humany than most. Its hair was swept over to one side in an almost stylized way that didn't match with anything he'd been expecting. Was this another part-goblin?

"What's your job title anyway?" the goblin asked, taking a long look at his suit.

"I don't have one," Hugh confessed. "I'm here for a job interview… I think."

The goblin looked at him more curiously than ever, its head tilted slightly to one side.

"But that's impossible," its voice cracked. "That's not the way things work here!"

"It has to be," he said more out of hope than certainty. "Bankor even gave me this," he said, drawing the knife which had been poking at him.

"Knut-nabbing nifflers!" the cracking voice of the goblin exclaimed as everything about it kind of shifted in his head. "That's not possible!"

The part-goblin hypothesis was bounced out of his head by something else so quickly it couldn't help but escape his mouth as soon as he thought it.

"You're a girl goblin," Hugh said wonderingly. 'She has to be. The female Flitwicks always looked more human than the others, I just didn't notice.'

The girl snatched his cloak from his other hand and looked at him with a hard expression.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked with gritted, pointed teeth making him feel very vulnerable despite the fact he was the one with the weapon.

"N–nothing," he said quickly. "I've just never seen one before."

Again the girl tilted her head to one side as if unsure what he was saying.

"Did they teach you to be this stupid?" she asked.

"I'm starting to think so," Hugh replied, wondering if it was too late to go to Hogwarts and demand a refund.

"Hang on," she said, dropping the cloaks before she grabbed him, whirled around, and slammed him against the wall almost directly under a torch.

"Ow," he groused and wondered just how many times he's going to get hit in the back of the head this week.

"Quit whining," the girl said as she held his head back and got up close to examine him.

Having a girl this close to him was uncomfortable. Her getting so close as to give him a good sniff and look like she was thinking about licking him just to see what he tasted like was just... he–he didn't even have a word for it. And why? Was there something wrong with his deodorant? Being this close to her showed how strange she was too. She didn't smell like a girl at all, she was all leather, wood smoke, and clean sweat rather than the heavy soap, powder, and perfume mixture human girls smelled like.

What really shocked him was what she did next. She grabbed him by the–!

"Hey!" he cried as he moved to guard himself. "That's not appropriate."

"You're telling me," the goblin girl agreed as she backed away. "You're prettier than I am!" her voice creaked out in protest.

Hugh was caught off guard. He didn't know what to expect today but being called pretty, and that other thing, weren't something he'd considered even remotely possible.

"What the heck are you anyway?" she asked.

"I happen to be a wizard," he replied quickly as he fumbled with the dagger and taking out his wand to fend her off. "You–you just keep your hands to yourself if you know what's good for you."

"You're a – And that's a – Then you're a–," little miss no-name said quickly, though thankfully she kept her groping to the words she needed to put everything together. "Huh," she said finally as she picked up the cloaks again. "They always said you guys are ugly."

Hugh didn't know what to say to that so he didn't dignify it with a response.

"What kind of name is that for one of you anyway?" the girl asked with her head tilted to the side again, probably thinking 'one of you' was somehow better than calling him the name everyone else would use in her position. "Hewn Hobson? How'd that happen?"

"What?" he asked, his mind obviously not making the leaps she took.

"What what?" she asked with a shrug. "You get that from your dad cutting down the son of a guy named Hob or what?"

"What?" he asked again this time out of the shock of sheer strangeness. "Oh! No," Hugh said as what she was talking about came together. "Hugh. Hugh. Not hewn, Hugh. It's a muggle name, I don't know what it means – or even if it means anything – but Hobson might have something to do with a guy named Hob somewhere down the line but damned if I know."

"Oh," she said looking a bit disappointed. "That's not that interesting at all." She shoved the cloaks back at him and said, "Follow me," before darting around the corner.

Grumbling and with the dagger in one hand, a wand in the other, and the bundle of cloaks held awkwardly in between Hugh followed as he could. There was a large square doorway standing open maybe twenty feet away and with each step he took to it the whole area seemed to get brighter, warmer, and smell worse. Looking out he could see nothing but what must've been the business side of the teller's stations but there was this a clinking of metal and a deep in-and-out breezy sound as if a giant was lurking out of sight.

No-name turned to him when he joined her and whispered, "Stay quiet, move fast, and try not to draw attention."

Nodding, Hugh followed along behind her quickly, not really knowing why. To the left they went and down the teller area; he didn't know if they were going towards the front of the bank or the back but he supposed as long as Miss Grabby-Hands knew where to go it didn't matter. At the end of the row they turned right and he finally got to see the source of the smell and noise as they were exposed to the common area of the lobby.

Large, scarred, and chained right there for all to see was something in the lobby alright but it wasn't a giant – it was giant albino dragon! Dropping everything but his wand to clatter to the floor Hugh grabbed Grabby-Hands and pulled her back as the animal strained against its restraints at the noise. There were sounds of goblins coming out to do something but he had other concerns.

"What's your problem?" the girl said in a whispered hiss as she yanked her arm free from him.

"There's a dragon in there!" he whispered back.

"Yeah, who doesn't know we have dragons?" she asked quietly.

"But that's just an urban legend," Hugh said as he glanced back at the beast as if saying it would make it disappear.

"What's an urban?" the girl asked curiously.

"It's nothing, nothing," he replied as he put a hand across his face, wondering how he allowed himself to get into this mess as the dragon quieted down. Why on Earth was he doing this for a clerical position? He had to be insane.

"Well then shut up and come on," she told him before creeping quickly out again, though thankfully more away from the scaly beast than before.

Steeling himself while he picked up his stuff from the floor he followed along behind her but went nowhere near as quickly as she did. Inching along the behind the dragon, he tried to remember anything he could about dragons and any spell that could help but he was coming up blank. Instead he focused on all the bindings the dragon had on it and how strong they looked.

'Yep,' he thought as he made his way along, 'those are some strong bindings there. The ones pinning the tail and wings? They're not about to break. Nope, not at all. Not in a million years,' he hoped.

Something hard bumped into him from behind causing him to jump. It turned out it was a wall, his course seemed to have taken him further from the dragon than expected, not that he was complaining. Judging from the beckoning gestures of Noname McGroper though she was obviously unhappy. Then again, she was the one nuts enough to stand near two goblins who were shoveling dragon dung into a cart near the dragon's backside so their views of what's tolerable were worlds apart.

Rather than go back her way – which must've been faster – Hugh stuck to the distant wall instead, finally coming to another large door that was standing open. Dressed in scarlet and gold, the goblins in this hallway were all seated and at their ease, at least until he showed up. The first one to notice him popped up from his chair, followed quickly by several others, and it was partway through a salute before it stopped and gave him an odd look as if it didn't know what to make of him.

There was a tug on his elbow and he turned to see the no-named girl there to harass him again.

"Not the vaults. This way," she said as she took a hold of his arm pulled him out of the hallway, leaving the guards with their confusion.

An iron grip on his arm, she steered him back out to the lobby, to the left again, and didn't let go until they were behind the line of teller stations on that side of the room. The girl looked back around the corner to check where they'd been as Hugh rubbed his arm and contemplated wondering off to find his own way. All the different doors and the chance of running into other dragons kept him from doing it.

"You have any idea how fast rumors spread here if you're not careful?" the girl asked, drawing his attention back to her again.

"Say what now?" he asked in return before remembering there was only a desk between him and a dragon and lowered his volume. "What are you talking about?"

"You really don't know anything about goblins, do you?"

"I know a little," he said defensively.

"Well a little's not enough," she remarked with another look saying he was an idiot. "Those guys could make your career a short one just for looking at them wrong," she explained, "and a suit's only going to give them pause if you're a litigator or something."

He briefly thought of asking what Chief Record Keeper would do for him but thought it'd be too depressing to find out for sure. Why'd he ever think taking a job here would be a step up rather than ten steps down?

"I'll keep that in mind," he said finally, "but I don't see why you care."

"Because I was the one seen with you," her crackly voice said. "And soon rumors are gonna be all over the place that one of you are here. Now come on before you earn me more than mockery," she said as she walked off again.

All the way down the long series of desks they went and through the last door on the left, which lead them to a tiny corridor with a steep set of stairs. What grabbed their attention though was the suited goblin in front of another smaller door who was putting something small and silver into its pocket.

"Nunya?" Bankor exclaimed curiously.

"What are you doing here?" the girl brazenly asked the Overseer, her voice cracking as Hugh's eyes ping-ponged back and forth.

"I came to see what's taking Mr. Hobson so long," Bankor replied. "What are you doing here?"

"They said you wanted to honor this guy," the goblin-potentially-named-Nunya said. "So yeah, they got me to do it."

"You were the–?!" the older goblin broke off quickly seemingly perturbed in a way Hugh had never thought possible. "You're not supposed to be Outside. It's not your place to do such dangerous work," the Overseer said with a finality the back of Hugh's head disagreed with.

"I'm not afraid of the Outside," the girl argued, "and I can do anything just as–"

"We'll discuss it later," Bankor said firmly, holding up a hand to cut her off. "Later!" he reiterated when she opened her mouth to argue again.

The girl grit her teeth with a stubborn set face and looked for a moment like she was going to be scrappy enough to contradict the goblin yet again. Instead she snatched the cloaks out of his hands and stalked back through the door they'd come from. In the awkward silence which followed Hugh asked Bankor the first question that popped into his mind.

"Is her name really Nunya Business?"

Rather than settled by the break in tension, Bankor looked even more ruffled.

"Her mother used to work for Confidential," the Overseer said by way of explanation as he needlessly smoothed his suit. Rather than ask him to explain what his explanation meant, Hugh just let the subject drop.

"I wanted to thank you for this opportunity, uh, Overseer," he said, uncertain how exactly he was supposed to refer to the goblin.

"Considering the hardship you were placed under at the Ministry," Bankor said back in his polished manner, "this seemed a reasonable recompense. In terms of human law though it's important to note–"

"–Any job I get here is completely unconnected to me stamping that form," Hugh said for him. "The old man you sent made that point very clear. I suppose it means I can give you this back now though," he said, offering him back the dagger.

Bankor held up a hand to tell him to hold off.

"Technically you should keep it until the promise has been fulfilled," he told him, gesturing for him to put it away, which he did. "Normally someone in your position would be taking the stairs to the upper levels," the goblin said with an eye for the feature in question. "Under the circumstances though a quick jump to the top would work just as well," the Overseer said as he took what appeared to be a tiny silver key from his pocket and turned to the door behind him.

'Whoever designed that lift should be shot,' Hugh thought a few moments later as his stomach jumped and dived and looped like a drunken Quidditch player as he steadied himself on the guacamole-colored wall. "This lift goes way too fast," he said aloud instead.

"That's always been my opinion as well," Bankor said from somewhere nearby. "Overseer Fillast has never seen the need to slow it down, but at least it doesn't flip you anymore," the goblin said in a way that seemed honest but could've been a lie to make him feel better. "Come," he said from the hallway, "we're here."

It was not the kind of room Hugh had been expecting. Large stone blocks made up the walls rising up to a dark ceiling above and there was a chill to the air, which made him feel sad and alone for some reason. All-in-all it felt more like they'd gone down into some dank dungeon rather than up to the heights of the building and he couldn't figure out why the leaders of the bank would want something so dull and depressing; if this were a human bank it probably would've been luxurious.

A sonorous ringing made him look to the left where he saw Bankor returning a mallet to a hook next to a silver gong set in a niche. The Overseer hurried to the center of the room and beckoned him to join him. From the center of the room everything seemed different – yet entirely the same.

Everything was dominated by the huge double doors in front of him which made the small areas to the left and right seem like antechamber waiting rooms. There was an odd familiarity about the place too. It was almost as if his mind was telling him there should be stairs nearby and if he turned around he'd see another set of large doors instead of the gong.

'Merlin's Beard!' he thought as everything crashed into place. 'They made it look like–!'

The double doors split, held open by a pair of guards in scarlet and gold, and a group of goblins filed in from a larger room beyond. Hugh didn't know what he was looking at but whatever it was didn't feel like a job interview so he tried to piece it all together from what he knew.

There were six goblins facing him, not counting the two guards, and of those six only two didn't have suits. Bankor added to them made seven, which was still two less than the nine people the Ministry thought the Gringott's Overseers' Council currently had, though who they were and what they did weren't exactly known. And there wasn't a human with them, he noted, there was always supposed to be a human, so unless what he knew was out of date this couldn't be all of them.

"Who brings this one to us?" a bald-headed goblin near the middle of the group demanded.

"I do," Bankor said, taking a step forward. "Bankor, Overseer of Ministerial Matters."

"He's a Brownblood," an unsuited goblin with a short-cropped buzz cut and a wicked scar over one eye snarled. "He doesn't belong here," he said with an eye red with hate boring into him.

"He's the best candidate for the job," Bankor said defensively. "He has all the relevant knowledge and skills we need and has already shown a great commitment to the Goblin People."

"And what has he ever done for us?"

Hugh didn't know if he deserved Bankor's determined response. He was just Hugh, little Hugh Hobson, the night guy from the Goblin Liaison Office who liked to think of himself as an idea guy; he wasn't the great problem solver he was being made out to be. He couldn't think of a single thing he'd ever done that had actually solved anything. Even stamping the form that got him here had only made things worse from what he could see.

It was obvious that possible-Overseer Buzzcut wasn't moved by Bankor's statement, and the others looked dubious at best. The bald suit at the center looked to the others and didn't seem to like what he saw either. The short fat one was preoccupied with its stomach, as if wondering how long it'd be until he had to buy a bigger size suit, while another, who was thin and buttoned-down, made a gesture saying he needed more time to think. The only bright spot was an odd little goblin with a silly mustache and a big grin who looked around as if he was just excited to be there.

He was just wondering where the last one was when he got poked in the back. Turning, he saw the other unsuited goblin walk out from behind him and give him a good once-over. Dressed in drab dark colors and not making a sound, it felt like a ninja giving you a prostate exam. He didn't even want to guess what that guy did for them; professional assassin, most likely.

"The Ministry," Mr. Buttondown said as if he disliked how the word tasted. "We had to deal with this problem yesterday. Why are we inviting it in again?"

"It will not be the same with him," Bankor said swiftly. "The position that's been set aside is–"

"Fah!" Buzzcut butted in. "It will be the same. Dress him up however you want, he'll always be a wizard. Wizard born and wizard raised; why would he choose to be a goblin now?"

"M–muggle," Hugh said, finally finding a voice buried somewhere in his dry and scratchy throat. The six who faced them looked at him appraisingly so he felt it wise to go on. "I was muggle raised, not wizard, and I live that way still," he explained, thinking that if they were going to turn him away for being what he was then at least they should know what it meant.

"Even more of an outsider," Buttondown with a shake of his head. "What does he know of being a goblin?"

"You think I don't know what it's like?" he answered, taking a step forward. "Anyone who's ever read magical history knows what you've been through. You've been stomped on and pushed around for centuries and you don't think I know what that's like? Look at me!" Hugh said, pointing to his misshapen face as the feeling of sorrow and loss in the room blended with his own and he fought from letting it show. "Do I look human? Do you think they've ever once treated me like a human being?

"The muggles I was raised with called me dwarf and elf and other things even worse," he continued, though he wasn't about to say the 'even worse' he'd been called was 'little goblin' because he'd been forbidden from ever telling anyone it was true. "Do you think that stopped when I went to school? Human children can be the cruelest creatures you can imagine to anyone who's even the tiniest bit different and I was more than a little bit different.

"And do you think that stopped when I went to Hogwarts?" Hugh asked rhetorically, "If anything it got worse. Jinxes in the back, all my things 'mysteriously disappearing,' tripping down the stairs every other day – You have any idea how many stairs there are in the castle? You used to be able to count how many there were from the bruises I had on me, and do you think the teachers were any help? No, they blamed me for being 'too goblin' when all I did was defend myself.

"If you don't want to hire me because I don't know what you're like behind closed doors, that's fine," he said to the six of them as he finally began to wind down. "One trip through your building let me know just how different you are from everything I've known so if you want to chuck me out for it then fine, I'm used to it. But don't you dare say I don't know how it feels to be a goblin because I've been living with it every day of my life," he finished, blinking away the tears before they had a chance to really form.

Hugh knew he'd just blown the best job opportunity he'd ever have but he didn't care. If he was going to be chucked out for telling them the truth then so be it. What he said had to be said and it wasn't like any other part-goblin would ever get the chance to say it right to the Overseers' faces, so even if they threw him out directly into the waiting arms of the Ministry it'd be worth it for that alone.

Buzzcut rolled its eyes contemptuously, and some of the others looked thoughtful, while the fat one looked down right embarrassed. It was the bald one at the center he looked to though, to the one that was looking him as if he'd never seen the like before, which he may well haven't.

'This one has to be the Barchoke the Ministry was talking about, the one they think is Grand Overseer,' he thought as he waited for the hammer to come down. 'They say Barchoke is bald for some reason so this has to be him, so at least I'll be chucked out by the best.'

"What would it take?" the maybe-Barchoke one asked finally. "What could you do? What would be enough to make this feeling of yours go away?"

Hugh didn't know if it was money or power or fame he was talking about but the answer to it all was the same.

"Nothing," he said almost immediately. "Nothing will ever be enough."

The bald goblin turned to Buzzcut but that one looked closer to murdering him than agreeing with anything. The fat one shrugged when the bald suit looked at him and wheezed, "Well, someone's got to do it." That plain statement got an uncaring gesture from Mr. Buttondown as well, which prompted short Mr. Grinsalot to clap quickly as if something had actually happened while the ninja stood silently and said nothing.

The one who had to be Barchoke looked to Buzzcut again but all he got was a harsh dismissive wave as if he was taking his ball and going home. Of course he then proceeded to do precisely that by turning and stalking from the room looking like he wanted to flay the first person to cross his path. The main guy gave Bankor a nod and turned to go back into the room behind them as all the others started to break up, the ninja prying up one of the floor stones to disappear beneath it.

"Oh! This is very exciting," the short little mustachioed goblin said when he and the fat one came over to shake his hand. "I send to Beel, he help."

"How many things is he assigned to?" the fat one wheezed curiously.

"Oh. No worries," the happy one said quickly. "He's good. Besides, he need," he said gesturing to Hugh. "Dragons very fierce, rawr!" he pantomimed with tiny clawed hands.

Bankor briefly introduced him to Overseers Alkrat and Slaggran only to then take their leave citing the need to get him up to speed. As the Overseers left in the other direction, Bankor took him back the way they came in. At the door to the lift-from-Hell the goblin took out a tiny silver key and held out an empty hand as if waiting for something.

"Oh, right," Hugh said as his brain caught up and he fished Bankor's dagger back out again to hand it over. How he'd managed to pass the job interview was anyone's guess but it seemed to have worked.

"This key will be yours," the Overseer explained as they swapped what they had. "As you've seen, the lift is rather self-explanatory, though I doubt you'll be using it much," Bankor said and Hugh had to keep himself from agreeing with that assessment. "From now on, common protocol is for you to be referred to by your title, Taskmaster Hobson."

"Taskmaster?" he asked curiously. "I hadn't heard Gringotts had a rank called Taskmaster, er, Overseer."

"'Sir' will do," Bankor said as he fiddled with his dagger, hesitating on putting it away for some reason. "It's actually a new rank and you're the second person to have it. Taskmasters are – well, tasked – with heading up areas of special interest. The other Taskmaster is Taskmaster Marsh, who oversees the Hogwarts Accounting Department.

"Because of the… importance of your particular charge – especially in relation to non-banking interests–," Bankor equivocated, "you'll be given less latitude than would otherwise be afforded to someone in your position and you'll be reporting to the Council directly. You'll still be in one of the highest ranking positions we have though."

For the first time since he and Bankor had started exchanging notes and letters the goblin wasn't making any sense.

"So exactly what task am I being charged with mastering?" Hugh asked curiously. "I was under the impression it'd be record keeping."

"That was the original idea, yes," Bankor nodded. "The somewhat fluid nature of recent events has led us to focus more on other areas and it is this other area that we're putting you in charge of. I take it you've seen the Weekend Prophet?"

"No," he replied. "Working nights, it's always seemed more of a bother than anything else."

"Ah, then there's a lot to catch up on," the goblin dithered. "The task you've been set is to plan and oversee all aspects involving the first all-goblin settlement on the Isle of Gringotts. Seeing as you're rather well versed in above-ground life, Grand Overseer Barchoke thought it'd be a suitable job for your talents."

"He wants me to build a city?" Hugh asked, feeling as if his brain had turned to mush.

"Well, he's never said how big he wants it but you'll have the entire island to use," Bankor said with a smile. "I suppose design will be the first step in the process, once the issue with the Hebridean Blacks is resolved of course."

"B–Blacks?" he stuttered. "There are dragons on this island?"

"A very recent development," the goblin explained. "Once the original protections keeping the local dragon population away were destroyed when we took the island it was only a matter of time before an amorous couple took an interest. I'm sure you and Mr. Weasley will have it sorted soon enough, the man really is quite diligent."

"Well," Hugh said, at a loss for any other words. "I look forward to meeting him."

Bankor fiddled with the dagger again and seemed to finally find what he wanted to say.

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to apologize in advance for what I must say next but goblin sensibilities require something of me that human standards of civility find rather distasteful."

"Um… okay," he said, wondering how it could get any more distasteful than what's already been heaped on his lap.

"After what was said in there today," his Overseer acquaintance said as he placed his dagger into his front suit pocket. "If you ever betray us, then I will be honor bound to kill you myself – and I'd very much like to avoid that."

.o0O0o.

Pushing the collective bad news aside she stood and walked to the window, trying to find the soothing comfort which had thus far been denied her. Summers at Hogwarts had to be some of the best in the world, or so she'd always thought. Peace permeated the castle during the bright, warm days in ways that were simply impossible during the rest of the year when howling rain and winter storms lashed the walls from without and storming hormones and howling youths lashed them from within. Summer was the quiet respite that made the entire rest of the year possible… at least it was usually.

This summer had started just the same as all the others, with a good bit of energetic travel to inform families of newly eleven year old muggleborns about the school and what was involved in attending. It always worked out better for her to do it that way than to sporadically approach them throughout the year. Not only was it easier to get away from the school when there was nothing else going on – unlike in September when school's just started or in April and May when it's so close to O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s – but the families themselves were always much more open to the prospect of sending their child to a magical school they would never get to see when it was presented to them in a relaxed environment.

But while those trips to the muggle world had given her a wealth of research ideas, she hadn't been able to follow up on a single one of them, like she had in years past, because of the workings of Albus Dumbledore. She had always looked up to the man as a mentor, a personal hero, and mental giant but now she had to admit he was anything but that. Indeed, at times she wondered if Albus had gone insane and they had all been too blind to notice.

Unfortunately that cheerful possibility wasn't available to her either for the duplicity involved in keeping his deeds secret pointed to a mechanical mind that planned out everything from the beginning and coldly examined every possible outcome of his actions. She'd been made an unwitting accomplice in this conspiracy, of course, as had all the others, but in the end she didn't know who she was infuriated with more: Albus for so brutally and repeatedly misusing their trust or with herself for being too naive to notice.

All this left her with a growing persistent ache in her stomach, a burning sensation in her chest, and the weight of the world on her shoulders. She would've felt more at ease trying to walk from here to London carrying the Knight Bus on her back. She'd say if things got any worse she'd have to pay Poppy a call in the hospital wing to see if there was anything she could do but as things were that visit was going to be a surety.

Looking down from her office window she saw an oncoming storm bearing down on them which had nothing to do with the weather. Reflexively straightening her tartan robes as if wishing they were armor, she tried to imagine herself garbed in every scrap of dignity their historic school ever had. Whatever dignity they may once have had lay in tatters though which left her with nothing but the weighted feeling of all the responsibility instead.

'It may be an uncomfortable and unwelcome weight,' Minerva thought to herself as she left her office and walked briskly through the castle, 'but as Deputy Headmistress it's my duty to keep calm and soldier on. At least Albus saw fit to stay away today.'

As she reached the meeting of two hallways and a stairway leading down she cast a spell that caused a trio of wisp-like cats to shoot from her wand to dart off in different directions. Albus had created the spell, a variation on the Patronus Charm, he said, though she didn't know if it still worked the same against dementors once it'd been altered to relay messages. It was the first time she'd actually had cause to use it so in a way it seemed fitting to thus inform the other Heads of House of the beginning of what may be – hopefully – the last day Dumbledore spent at Hogwarts.

The more she thought about it, the more the man's insidious plan she'd been able to piece together. One private meeting with him had sent the Longbottoms and the Potters into hiding, and though they'd been tight-lipped about the reason why, it hadn't been hard to puzzle out. It'd been a climate thick with fear, where more disappearances and deaths were reported by the day, and it didn't take a great wealth of knowledge to see You-Know-Who was trimming branches off of some very fruitful family trees in order to benefit key supporters and gain more sway in the Ministry.

She hadn't been the only one to make the connection either. The able auror, Alastor Moody, had warned the traitor, Sirius Black, he'd likely be targeted as well. The boy had laughed it off saying he had more to fear from his mother than he did from You-Know-Who. They should have seen the warning signs then, but perhaps Albus had.

The Potters and the Longbottoms were both wealthy, prominent families with long lineages commanding respect in their community. It made a grotesque sort of sense for You-Know-Who to hack away those who disagreed with him in order to slant society to his side and give those who supported him more room to thrive… and if he could benefit by using death, why couldn't Dumbledore? With Sirius as the Potter's Secret Keeper, it was only a matter of time before something happened.

Despite what Severus may think, she couldn't believe Albus had directly planned for James and Lily to die, or for Frank and Alice to be tortured so; it was a step too far for her to take. The boys' mysterious survival though could well have been something he had a hand in, so it was possible he planned to take advantage of deaths he knew would happen and did nothing to stop. Why else would he have sent ever-loyal Hagrid to collect and care for young Mister Potter if it weren't to keep anyone else from looking too closely at the situation?

How he managed to get his hands on the boy's money through shadowy dealings was troubling, but had Neville not had an extended family to take care of him, would Albus have done the same to him? The thought made the tight knot in her stomach churn and roil as if she had eaten sharp stones.

As betrayed and troubled as she was though Minerva couldn't imagine how Hagrid was taking things. He had yet to come back into the castle after the night Albus had told them what he'd done to the boy. She doubted he stuck his head out of his hut anymore, and wondered if he'd be in any state to escort the first years from the station this year, not that she'd blame him if he wasn't.

How else was the man supposed to take it though, being used against the boy not once but twice? The sudden change away from approaching muggleborn families during the summer, foregoing a single mass mailing, and enlisting the gentle giant to escort Harry to Diagon Alley all looked innocent when you took them on their own but when you put them all together the reason for it was clear. Albus had orchestrated the whole thing, not as an excuse to reintroduce Hagrid to the boy but to keep the boy ignorant of his wider wrongdoing.

Indeed, it seemed Albus had planned for the ignorance all the way back to the moment the Potters died. Why else would he place the boy with those muggles if he hadn't wanted him to be completely uninformed about the wizarding world? Those muggles wouldn't have known the first thing about how their world worked, what his position in it would be, or any of the appropriate questions to ask concerning what the boy had in store for him, so leaving him with them made sense in that regard.

It would've put him in the same boat as the other muggleborns, and she'd seen enough to know that simply seeing the magical world for the first time – not to mention being escorted there by a giant of a man – would've guaranteed that none of those bigger questions would have occurred to Harry at all. Hagrid was a remarkably caring person but what the boy had needed was a knowledgeable and experienced person there to introduce him to the magical world and inform him of what it meant, which was something Hagrid wasn't equipped to do.

Minerva twitched her tartan robes around her once again as she reached the ground floor and headed for the front doors. She could've given him the proper introduction, she was sure of it. Perhaps not to every tiny little detail the boy would need to know but at least she knew enough to know what questions to ask, which would have led to that information eventually, which was better than nothing. Appropriate questions at Gringotts would've led to Lichfield and then everything would've been done with by now, which was no doubt why Albus had rearranged things to keep it from happening.

The fact it was all happening now only went to show that even the great Albus Dumbledore couldn't control everything for if there was one thing no one could contain it was the sheer amount of chaos children churned up. Seeing as the same boy was the one who led his friends into danger to find the Sorcerer's Stone, and may be the reason that issue exploded on them as well, it was almost enough for her to say Albus had met his match.

It was strange to think a twelve year old could be Dumbledore's downfall – or at least be the one to expose his flaws – but she couldn't say it came a moment too soon; if anything it may have come too late. Fiddling with the boy's finances was exposing Hogwarts to the goblins' grubby grasp and how they've been handling the Ministry didn't give her any hopes their dealings with them would go any more smoothly. And worse, their trust in him about the Stone had been so completely misplaced they allowed him to put them on the wrong side of the Ministry, the I.C.W., and the Board of Governors themselves.

It was hard to think of herself as a professional of any stripe when she allowed the headmaster to steer them so far wrong but resigning in outrage and allowing the entire school to collapse around him was simply off the table. Perhaps she could look at herself in the mirror again if she managed to right their listing ship and see it safely to harbor, and the first step was to batten down and start bailing. The first thing she wanted to throw overboard though was Dumbledore himself, for only then could Hogwarts even begin to recover.

"Ah, Professor McGonagall!" a voice behind her called just as she hit the large double doors and she turned to see the second thing she wanted to throw over the side strut towards her. Gilderoy Lockhart was draped from head to toe in powdery blue robes he must've thought matched his eyes and made his blond hair seem all the more striking. The man had been a chore to deal with as a child and in the day since he'd come to the castle Minerva hadn't seen anything to say the man was anything but the boy writ large.

"You're just the person I was looking for, Minerva – Do you mind if I call you Minerva?" he asked with a smile too large not to be condescending.

Rather than speak she simply turned and walked out the door; she had much more important things to attend to than to babysit a self-aggrandizing, incompetent fool. Unfortunately, he was right by her side a moment later yammering on like he'd been the masterful teacher and she the student who couldn't muster enough ability to crawl their way up to an Acceptable without a good bit of groveling rather than the other way around.

'What had Albus been thinking when he hired this man?' she wondered as they walked and he talked.

After she'd given that responsible anomaly, Percy Weasley, the go-ahead to form a Defense study group she'd felt a niggling sense of doubt. Perhaps Gilderoy had turned his life around, learned some hard lessons, and really dug in to accomplish the things he wrote about in his books – people did change after all and some required practical teaching methods if they were to have any chance of overcoming great adversity, and he could've been one of those. Nothing she'd seen thus far indicated any change from the pompous preening pansy he'd been before so now she had no doubts about the rightness of that decision at all.

"–So that took me to cheerful little Filius's office where he insisted on hearing about every one of my adventures," he said with a look saying he got that all the time as she lengthened her stride, measuring how much longer she had to be with him. "Naturally, I said I'd be happy to provide him with a full set of my written work, complete with my new autobiography, Magical Me, for a nominal fee, but between you and me I think the old dog wanted to see the little tricks I've picked up along the way," the man winked in a way that made it hard to bite her tongue.

"I will say this for the man though," Gilderoy continued on in his inane and rapid way. "As soon as your message came in, he knew I was just the person for the job and said that no others would do, and he's quite right. I've dealt with people from all over the world and if there's one thing we need right now is to put our best foot forward."

She was forcibly reminded of the supposed student newspaper, The Lockhart Ledger, the man had tried to start during his time at Hogwarts just to see his name in print. In an attempt to sway 'the public' to his cause, he'd even gone so far as to publish a first issue before seeking permission, so even if he failed he could still claim some success. Looking ahead to the mass of milling men mostly in I.C.W. blue on the other side of the gates Minerva hoped this would be more than some puffed up press event because the last thing they needed was this flashy, phony, flim-flam man flapping his gums and making them look even worse than they already did.

"Professor!" a voice called from the crowd, rousing her from her thoughts.

"Hello!" Lockhart waved in return as if the whole thing were a parade in his honor. Perhaps ignoring him would make him leave?

"Good morning, Professor McGonagall," the familiar-looking man in auror robes said as they got closer.

"Gawain Robards," she returned when she was close enough to match the face with a name and to say it without having to shout. "They let you become an auror? I thought it more likely you'd end up in prison."

"You remember everyone who's ever been in your class, don't you?" the man asked with a smile.

"Not quite everyone," Minerva replied, well aware of her shortcomings.

"There are those of us who set ourselves apart, of course," Gilderoy interjected, preening as everyone's attention momentarily shifted to him.

"These would be our international guests, I presume?" she asked as she tapped the gates to undo the locks and open them.

"Yes," the auror said gesturing to the short man with a pointed black beard next to him. "This is their leader – um…"

"Jean-Olivier Delacour, Inspecteur Général Adjoint," the man said as he shook her hand. "I 'ave to say, Madame McGonagall, I 'ave been a long admirer of your work. When I get ze chance I weel 'ave to peek your brain about ze Animagus transformation you managed."

"I wish you well with that," she said in response as she coldly refused to introduce the unwanted nuisance at her side. "But I must warn you, I have family members I've refused to discuss it with."

"Ah, I 'ave my ways to–"

"Gilderoy Lockhart," the blond buffoon beside her said, butting in to shake the Frenchman's hand like he was doing the man a favor. "Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League–," he crooned as the other man struggled and was finally able to snatch his hand away, not that Gilderoy noticed, "–and five time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award. But I don't talk about that–," the smarmy man mused with an amused grin.

"–And I do not shake 'ands with ze Dark Force Defense League, 'Onorary Member or not," the Frenchman hissed. "Zey are a racist and bigoted organization responsible for ze most 'orible miseenformation eemaginable. 'Umanoid creatures 'ave a 'ard enough time being accepted without you making eet worse."

As Gilderoy's mouth sagged open dumbly she was more relieved than ever there was no press in the crowd. She desperately wanted to smooth things over by saying such things would not be tolerated here at Hogwarts, but as things were she couldn't. While decent people didn't like it, Magical Britain was built on bigotry and run on racism against magical creatures; one of the Founders of Hogwarts was even famed for it. What could anyone say to simply sweep that under the rug?

"That certainly wasn't in any of their pamphlets," Lockhart mumbled.

"You applied by pamphlet when you didn't know who they were?" she asked astonishedly.

"Well, you didn't know either," the man said dismissively, "and who cares what they do as long as it sounds good?"

"Obviously, the people they hurt care," Minerva said with a sharp gesture she could only hope would silence the man as she finished the job of sweeping up in front of their guests. "It would seem plain to me that Mister Lockhart does not adhere to any discriminatory views–"

"Merlin, no!" he interjected. "Everyone's welcome to buy my books. I even have a few up in my office I can part with, if any of you are interested," Gilderoy smiled.

"–Nor was he hired to spread any such misinformation," she inserted quickly, though she had to mentally add 'He was hired to spread completely different misinformation,' for the sake of her conscience.

"I happen to be the most accomplished and famous adventurer in Britain," Gilderoy added, already getting started at his job. "For full details, see my published works."

Thankfully an old wizard beside Mister Delacour had gotten his attention and whispered in his ear during the little speech, so before the puffed up popinjay was finished the man was nodding in agreement.

"I suppose zese zings can 'appen," the visiting Frenchman said grudgingly. "'Ow you run your school ees none of our concern. Our concern ees ze Stone."

"Quite so," she agreed, shooting a quelling look at her irritating tagalong he couldn't fail to remember from his time in her class. "I was informed that a Ministry delegation would be with you. The letter from the Hogwarts Governors said their arrival would be imminent."

"Zis Meenistry of yours," Mister Delacour said as he withdrew a pocket watch to check the time, "zey like to make you wait." He snapped the watch shut again and added, "Ze goblins, we 'ave our deeferences, but zey are very punctual. Shall we get started with ze talk of 'ow to begin?"

"I was ordered to comply and fully intend to do so," Minerva stated, gesturing for them to enter as Gilderoy wandered to one side to try and engage some of the other wizards' attention. "I take it you'll be want to talk to Professor Dumbledore directly?"

"Een time," he said dismissively without taking a step. "Eet is always best to talk to ze principle aftair we 'ave more eenformation. All we really 'ave right now is more een line with rumor zan fact. Zis fine man 'ere," Delacour said as he gestured to Robards, "'E suggest zat we start een ze dungeons and work our way up. Are zere really dungeons 'ere?"

"Yes," she answered, feeling more than a little awkward at standing around with a crowd of people at the gates, though she couldn't imagine feeling any more comfortable with them parading along behind her. "Our potions class is taught there and they house one of the school Houses; Professor Snape would be the most knowledgeable about them and should be in the entry hall by now. You may wish to concentrate elsewhere though," she continued, "Dumbledore had several of us devise protections for one section of the third floor corridor, though I can't say for sure if the Sorcerer's Stone was ever actually there."

"You knew 'e 'ad ze Stone?" the man asked disbelievingly.

"He told some of us he had it," Minerva clarified, fighting against her dueling impulses to protect the image of the school and to be rid of Albus as soon as possible. "He said he intended to keep it safe, which is why he never showed it to us. With his positions and history with the Stone's creator, we were led to believe he'd taken all the steps required to have it and that he was doing research. We had no reason to believe he had done so illegally until we saw it in the paper."

"Zere are some 'oo would not take such zings into account and 'ave you all in chains," Mister Delacour said with a look. "Eet is fortunate for you I am not one of zem. Justice demands ze eentent be looked into. If what you say ees shown een questioning zen you 'ave – how you say, 'a bit of egg on your face'? – but zat is all. 'Ogwarts may look a beet of a fool, and extremely careless, but zere you go," he finished with a wave.

Her lips thinned at the characterization but knew under the circumstances it was the best she could hope for. Hogwarts had been around for a thousand years – give or take a few decades since no one was really sure when it had started – surely it had looked foolish before now and had successfully lived it down.

Delacour exchanged some brief words with the wizards next to him and motioned towards the castle. One man pulled out his wand and held it aloft as its tip glowed with a bright red light while the other did the same with blue. There was jostling as parts of the crowd split off and the wand-lit wizards slowly started towards the school leading ambling trails of wizards behind them.

"We weel need to talk with ze Meenistry wizards een charge of your Owlery as well," he said as parts of the crowd began to sidestep Lockhart and leave, his comment causing her to look to Mister Robards for information. The castle was a large place with so few people in it but had the Ministry been sending shifts of aurors into it she was sure to have noticed.

"Er– We didn't have anyone in the Owlery," the auror answered curiously.

"Is zis what you call security?" he asked Robards, seemingly at a loss. "'E could 'ave sent ze Stone anywhere in ze world by now. 'Ow could you give 'im access to owls?"

"I can appreciate the challenge you face in getting to the bottom of this," Minerva said again feeling torn by her conflicting sensibilities. "But I feel compelled to mention that it has yet to be definitively shown whether Professor Dumbledore ever had the Stone here in the first place."

"You just admitted 'e–"

"–That he made claims, and those claims were taken as true, without the underlying truth of the claim ever demonstrated," she said, fearing the intense little man had gotten several steps ahead of himself. "If you wish to imprison him, imprison him for what he's done, not what you think he's done. Likewise, the Headmaster has claimed the Stone itself has been destroyed.

"Which is also a claim that has not been substantiated," she continued when the Frenchman's eyes bulged. "As such, Hogwarts cannot be certain whether the Stone was ever here or if it is still here now. Any sensible inquiry would retain the possibility that this has been some sort of elaborate ruse conjured up for some ulterior purpose," she said, though for the life of her she couldn't imagine what such a purpose could be.

"But even if everything you suspect is true, if he did have the Stone here, limiting his access to owls wouldn't have done any good," she explained. "Hogwarts is home to the largest population of house-elves in the country. If he wished to send the Stone anywhere at any time, any one of them could've done it for him."

"Oh, zis is 'orible," Mister Delacour said as he put a hand across his face, seeming to catch only the last part of what she said.

"Not to worry," Gilderoy smiled warmly as he came back to them. "I was only gone a moment."

"Even without owls or house-elves it may have been impossible to keep him from doing it anyway," Robards added. "The Headmaster's got himself a phoenix and we still haven't figured out if there's anything that could keep it contained."

The Frenchman's head whipped around so quickly she wouldn't have been surprised to hear his neck snap.

"The Moutohora Macaws have a fine phoenix named Sparky," Gilderoy said with a toothy grin. "Magnificent animal. They wanted my help finding her a–"

"'E 'as a phoenix?" Delacour asked, shock written all over his face. Rather than let them answer though he held his wand to his throat and bellowed, "CLAUDE! MANUEL! STOP!"

"What on earth is the matter?" Minerva asked, hoping to get things under some semblance of control. If this was how things were going to be then it would be a very hectic experience, one she could only hope they'd be done with before the start of term.

"Ze tower of Nichola Flamel, eet was a preeson ze goblins guarded," he explained in a normal voice.

"–Ah, yes. I read all about that," Lockhart boasted.

"Some goblins died to ze other goblins, yes," Delacour continued, "but many more were seemply… blown up! Over a 'undred, including females and cheeldren, dead een great booming blasts," he said dramatically.

"Goblinnogoblining, the famous goblin-exploding spell," Gilderoy said, probably inventing the thing out of whole cloth. "I'd recognize it anywhere. A pity I wasn't there, I know just the counter-charm that could've saved them."

"And what does this have to do with us?" she asked Mister Delacour.

"Zere was a phoenix in ze tower zat disappeared as soon as we found eet," he said quickly. "With ze connection Dumblydore 'as to Flamel, and zis eenformation, we must hold him suspect."

"No matter what you think he's done, you can't honestly propose Professor Dumbledore spends his time blowing up goblins," Minerva replied dumbfoundedly. Of all the unthinkable things the man's been accused of this one was categorically impossible. "As horrible as the prospect is, what would be the point?"

"It'd certainly keep them from talking," Lockhart smiled as her stomach roiled. She couldn't believe it.

"We 'ave 'ad a deefficult time finding eenformation on zis because all ze goblins end up dead."

Robards whipped out his wand and sent several quick wisps of white smoke out in several directions. Had Albus shared the spell with the Ministry? Strange she'd be concerned with such a small thing now but for some reason the odd detail seemed important. She tried in vain to start her mind going again but it didn't seem to be working. Could it be true? Could it even be possible? How could she – how could anyone – be so completely wrong about someone they'd miss it?

"Unfortunately, I've seen it before, Professor," her good student Gawain said in a way that made her wish she'd chosen him to be a Prefect in spite of his time in detention. "The darkest criminals have been known to go for years without leaving any solid evidence behind, because all of their accomplices die when we get close. I've seen the Professor lately though and he's not the type," he said reassuringly.

"I weel be ze judge of zat," Mister Delacour said determinedly as the leaders of the ambling lines he'd called out to returned and he went to fill them in.

"Still," Robards continued as other aurors came into sight, "we can't leave anything to chance, just to be safe. The school will have to be checked just in case the Headmaster decides to take the castle down with him."

Minerva nodded numbly as he turned to the other aurors and she looked back at the castle which had been her home for close to forty years. With the Stone opening them up to Ministry critique and the Board of Governors' wrath, exposing their reputation to ridicule around the world, and not to mention the problems they had keeping their doors open and what the goblins would likely to do on the boy's behalf, perhaps Albus truly was trying to destroy Hogwarts.

But why would he do such a thing? Certainly he was getting on in years; he'd just past his one hundred and eleventh birthday not far gone, though he never made a fuss about it. Could that be it, she wondered. Was he getting to the point where the inevitable end was in sight and he simply couldn't cope? Was all the destructive behavior a mad attempt to bring down what he couldn't take with him, or were they attempts to stubbornly cling to life in an attempt to gain eternity?

"You know, when I took the job I thought it'd be frightfully dull but things have certainly gotten exciting around here, haven't they?" Gilderoy remarked as he practically bounced his way to her. "Dumbledore would have to get up pretty early in the morning to get one over on me though," he said with a toothy smile, "so there's really no need to fear. If these Nervous Nellies want to waste their time, that's all up to them, but I think I'll take a little walk into town."

That cowardly remark from the self-serving clown instantly had her snap back into focus. He was walking away his responsibility to the school just in case the unlikely event of the unthinkable happening actually occurred, and when it most likely didn't he'd be in a prime location to run to the Prophet with the suspicion and take credit for it not happening. She'd be damned if she'd let it happen on her watch.

"Not so fast, Mister Lockhart," Minerva said quickly as her hand latched onto him with a vice-like grip. "Mister Robards!" she called, practically pulling the phony professor over to them. "When you and the rest of your team go to check the castle, I insist you take Professor Lockhart in with you."

"M–m–me?" the flummoxed professor asked. "That–that wasn't a part of the job description," he said uncertainly.

"Now, Gilderoy, this is no time for jokes," she said with a hawkish look. "You wouldn't want anyone to think you don't take your responsibilities to the school seriously, do you? Surely the most accomplished and publicized adventurer in Britain would know the Defense Against the Dark Arts position extended to anything and everything involving the defense of the school and its students. And didn't you just say you knew this counter-charm?"

"I–I–I–," Lockhart stammered.

"I wouldn't want to step on any toes," Robards said, settling the issue. "After you, Professor," he said to the man, motioning for him to lead the way.

"Don't worry, Gilderoy," she said as she fought to keep a smile off her face. "Just think of what a great adventure this will be."

And with that, Little Boy Gilderoy, the one who had always wanted praise for being surprisingly mediocre, looked like he was going to be sick.

.o0O0o.

AN: As always, thanks for reading.