"Daphne? Daphne Greengrass?"
Harry followed the young witch into the strange cottage with Griphook on his back. It was built by itself in the middle of the woods, and was probably indistinguishable from nonmagical constructions from centuries ago, except it was larger and more beautiful. The interior was not at all what he expected from his late classmate; he had thought that Crabbe had to have lived in a dungeon or a sewer or something.
"I was hoping I could light up a candle," she said. "I don't know if your family does that..."
"Oh, please, come in... everyone's been so busy we haven't... well, we haven't had time to think about how we should memorialize our son. We would prefer to start on it before the war is over, but... it just seems improbable we could get everyone together. Did you know Victor well?"
"Not exactly, but one of my friends was rather close to him. I wish she could be here herself, but..." She trailed off and looked at the floor.
"Oh, where are my manners; I should have already offered you tea."
If he had to draw a comparison, he would have said that the woman was something like Mrs. Weasley, of all people. It was jarring; it was like going up an exceedingly high hill on a roller coaster, knowing what was to come. The goblin seemed the model of patience for the moment.
"I was just at Gringotts. Did you know that those fiends have different interest rates depending on your blood quantum?"
Griphook moved, but only slightly. Harry figured it was probably not true, but he could stop himself from announcing as much.
"I do not really deal with all that, but it does not terribly surprise me," Crabbe's mother said. "In any case, their day is coming."
Daphne looked down.
"I was also limiting my involvement," she said. "I knew a lot of... well, I knew what the rhetoric meant, and I thought that I didn't really have to involve myself. To be honest, I thought it was going to be a complete shut out. I thought that I could just go through life never really declaring one way or another- it was not for any lack of confidence in the Dark Lord, just the opposite. I thought that I could live the easy life that I wanted and no one would care that I had not done anything so ordinarily foolish as stand on a table and announce my allegiances."
"I was the same at your age. I thought that marrying would be... well, it wouldn't hurt too much one way or the other, would it?" She shook her head. "The enemy had already decided that I have to die the moment I was born. They will not rest until every great house is destroyed, and they have already started by undermining our means of protecting ourselves and our interests."
"As long as we can go to a bank and not be blatantly cheated, then I shall be content with whatever Lord Voldemort has in store for us. Do we know what the new banking system will look like? I suppose we could copy the Icelandic Model."
"I personally have no idea of the specifics. I can only tell you who will and will not make the final decisions regarding finance, especially public finance."
"Did you hear about this Eleazar Higgen?" she asked. Harry was almost disappointed. He would have thought it was the perfect time to stay on that exact subject and get her to actually say that the goblins would not be running the financial system anymore, on pain of death, but he trusted that she knew what she was doing, and as he started to think about it, it made more sense. Daphne wanted Griphook to see that Crabbe's mother would readily provide the information, even when not specifically prompted.
"It's a waste of time. He might come off as a sensible option to the average wizard, but popular opinion will not be a factor going forward. I haven't looked into what he said specifically, but I know he's not one of ours if he's actually saying that the Dark Lord has returned."
"It's bizarre to me that Harry Potter is endorsing candidates. A few months ago, we were in school for magic's sake-" She shook her head. "All I really knew about him was that he was just a tool of Dumbledore's. It seems rather foolish to assume he's grown beyond that since then."
"I suppose I should mention how glad I am that you see things our way," the older witch said, finishing her cup of tea. Was that the sign that they were at the serious part of their discussion? "I hope we can start to talk about next steps."
"That was part of what I wanted to discuss, yes. I just wanted to make sure of a few things that I couldn't really distill from the rhetoric, if you don't mind my asking. What happens to the dementors?"
"That happens to be one area where we happen to agree with most other interests."
"Then I'll spare you from having to go over it. What happens to the elves?"
"Their current situation is not terribly objectionable to the Dark Lord. I wonder if he has ever thought about them."
"Mudbloods? There were countless when I was in school, certainly more than when you would have been going. The conversation always seemed to oscillate."
"Those who can be persuaded to behave will have sections of their memories erased. The rest will be slaughtered." She shrugged as she set down the cup of tea. "I suppose you want the short version?"
"That will do nicely. It's not my favorite part of the conversation. What happens to the goblins?"
"We shall offer to repatriate them with compensation, and if they refuse that, then they will have shown that they are here to destroy us, not exclusively for their own benefit, but our destruction. Those who fail to comply will be slaughtered. It is unlikely that their near-human intelligence will satisfy the cravings of the dementors."
"What about merpeople?" she asked without missing a beat. "I admit I am only curious; it hardly matters either way."
"You have the right of it, I should think. Like the centaurs, it seems they are not inclined to join in magical society, so their existence is no serious issue. I suppose, to be fair, since I did make statements about the others, that if they do decide to become problems for us, then it would probably not present too much of a challenge to corral them, teaching the others a lesson."
"They're not like werewolves, then."
"No, certainly not. Their ability to blend in with wizards makes them entirely too dangerous. It would certainly be nice if we could free them from their curse, but we cannot allow their numbers to grow while waiting around for someone to come up with a potion or spell that would make them human again. Fenrir Greyback has a short leash on his own group, and they have agreed to behave themselves in exchange for their survival while we purge all others of their kind."
"I think we've covered everything that should realistically come up. As you might expect, I have not made friends of the creatures of near human intelligence, but I wished to judge how reasonable I should find your cause." She extended a hand. "Perhaps we are in no position to form an Unbreakable Vow at the moment, but perhaps it is time I abandoned the world of the sensible."
"The sane have abandoned me," Crabbe's mother said. "I neglected to mention this, but I have an appointment with the Dark Lord. I confess my nervousness; it is, after all, my first real meeting with him."
"How can I recognize you?" she asked. "I was told that the masks were all slightly different."
"Oh, you would never notice from a range. The masks are only for Inner Circle members anyway, and even my husband has not attained that distinction."
"I see. I shall not keep you."
Harry made his way toward the back with Griphook rather than staying, risking being in their way, but she turned toward the inside of the house and he realized that she had a hole in the anti-apparation defenses, as was the case with some private homes- it was hard for an outsider to imagine exactly where the point would be, and easier for an insider to get out without being noticed from outside. Daphne was polite enough to show herself out along with him and they warped back to the bank, where he set down the payload.
"Well?" he asked, removing the invisibility cloak. "Was that enough?"
"I suppose it would be hard for you to arrange someone to pretend to be that witch," the goblin said. "When next we meet I have only to ask if a certain Greengrass had visited her. One way or another, I would know from her answer, honest or otherwise."
"We didn't fake this," Harry said. "We were actually on the fence about which target we should use, because some people related to Death Eaters wouldn't be as exposed. Some of them would have had most of the details kept from them in case they were ever tortured."
It was strange to think of how similar of a position it was to the summer before his fifth year. Dumbledore and the rest of the Order considered him exceptionally valuable to the war effort, and for that reason, not despite it, they told him nothing, and it was not a treatment he enjoyed. Even with the benefit of hindsight, there was no way he could go back to it.
"As much as I would like to take your word for it, Mr. Potter, I doubt that it will be necessary. In the first place, your actions only confirmed something we already suspected. What is this minimal intervention on our behalf that you expect? What is it that you say is so small we could pass it off as an accident?"
"We need to get into some of their vaults," Daphne said. Griphook raised an eyebrow. "Very well. Almost certainly, the object that we need is in the Lestrange family vault."
"Can you tell us what it is?"
"No," Harry said, thinking of the diary. "It will have some historical significance, though. I doubt it would be goblin-made."
"I should hope so. When we trade things with wizards, it is with the explicit understanding that our works will be returned to us after the deaths of the original buyers."
He found himself grateful that Ron and Hermione were not there to add a level of bickering about how explicit the understanding was.
"In any event, we would prefer to search through the vaults ourselves," Daphne said with a sidelong look at him. "Telling you too much about what we seek would put you in danger of the Dark Lord's displeasure. We would need only to be allowed in after hours, when we would not be seen."
"Mr. Potter appears to have a cloak that could help with that. Would that not be sufficient?"
"We don't know how long it's going to take us to search."
"I suggest you get started, then. There are things that I cannot tell you about the operation of Gringotts. I can open what might be called a service entrance that will get you past much of the security, but you will still need someone to open the door. To minimize the bank's responsibility, I must insist that you place a staff member under the Imperius Curse." He lighted from his chair in the private meeting room and walked over to a wooden panel on the wall, which he removed easily. "This passage will get you to the appropriate level, but you will have to find the vault on your own."
"That's fine by me," Harry said. "Stupefy."
"I thought he said we needed-"
"We don't have time to go and get Ginny. Besides, I've seen them do this; they only need to run a finger down the door and it opens."
"What's he going to think about this when he wakes back up?"
"It doesn't really matter. The other goblins are going to hold him accountable if they find out."
"That makes sense. The idea of this was to get him to sign off on something without the approval of the rest, and even if he told them his reasoning, they still might not have accepted it. In the end, unless he is the most vengeful, spiteful cretin on the planet, we should be okay." She frowned. "We have some reason to know that he's not the most-"
"Not really, but even if he does tell on us, they probably won't let it get to the Death Eaters. The absolute last thing they want is anyone knowing that they're letting people into the vaults. Mobilicorpus."
She remembered of course, as they went down the hatch, magically closing the panel behind them, that the reason for their secrecy had less to do with the credit of the bank and more to do with keeping Voldemort from figuring out their strategy. Harry and his close friends had not intended to allow the others to know about Horcruces, but after Ron's adventure to Hogwarts and his subsequent report, the strategy evolved. If they were ever tracked down and killed, any surviving member could carry on the struggle and search for what remained.
"Here we are," Daphne said as soon as they reached the level, exiting from yet another panel on the wall, which they were careful to mark before replacing. If the customers at the bank found out that there were secret passages all through it, they would probably lose a lot more confidence in it than they would if they knew that the Death Eater vaults were getting raided, but they had greater concerns.
"Accio Lestrange Aretefact." He heard a dull thunk.
"While we're here, should we steal the rest of their gold?"
"We don't really need it."
"Don't we? We could bribe several politicians. If Bellatrix knows that the Dark Lord was using her vault to hide a piece of his soul, she might not say anything to her master if her own fortune turned up missing."
"I'm pretty sure her head's not on that straight. It's not that I know she'll do the least sensible thing, it's that I don't know she'll do the most sensible thing. I've seen a memory of her going to Azkaban when there was no way of helping Voldemort and that's enough to know that her loyalty is basically suicidal."
"Our only chance, then, is if she never knows if anything is missing," Daphne said. "Would she know, though? It seems strange to imagine her going here while she's wanted for escaping from prison. She doesn't seem like the type to depend on gold in the first place."
"Yeah, that's probably about right," he said, opening the vault by dragging Griphook's finger along it. The diary could think for itself, running straight into Arthur Weasley's warning. "We still don't really need it."
"How are we going to distinguish what we need, though? If we just looked around for rare magical artefacts-" She took a moment to look at all the treasure in the vast vault.
"We'll know. It's probably not the only dangerous thing in here, but it's actively going to try to take control of us, and failing that, it'll try to kill us." He frowned. "There's another thing that I haven't mentioned. This might test your Occlumency skills, but I'm going to need you to lug it out of here. It's a piece of Voldemort's soul; I'm too much of a liability with my mental connection to him."
It was her turn to frown as she used a detection charm.
"Does he have a connection with his Horcruces?" she asked.
"He should know when they're destroyed, unless he's temporarily dead again- not bloody likely." The opulence was indescribable, and yet amid the reality that it would be spectacularly easy for the Lestranges to render gold for elven services, and the fact that there was enough gold, at least between all the Death Eaters, to bribe every politician in the entire government, assuming they all had a price, what made him so frustrated was the apparent disregard with which it had been left in the vault. It was clear to him that the family was not concerned about finding things a second time, because they had no intention of selling their treasures, or even letting others see them, else buying anything with the gold.
"I found something." He turned to look where she was pointing. It stood out for being unremarkable, reminding him strangely of the Goblet of Fire. It was gold, like everything else, and yet it was tarnished. Was that what did it, the fact that no one cared what it looked like? "It's cursed to hell and back, more so than anything else in here. I can't tell if it contains a piece of the Dark Lord's soul, but..."
"That's it," he said. "I'm thinking you were right about how Bellatrix isn't going to use any of this gold, but we can't afford to try to take it out of here."
"Do the goblins know that this specific thing is in here?" she asked. "Do they have an inventory?"
"If they do, this kind of thing would never be on it. Why do you ask?"
"Even just stealing this is going to raise an alarm, most likely. If we steal it, though, and then get out, the goblins won't know anything was taken, if we were lucky." She looked down at the unconscious Griphook. "Alternatively..."
"We're not blaming him for this." He shook his head. "He hasn't done anything to us, and even if he had, we can't just backstab him like this. The most he's done is make things slightly inconvenient for us."
"That's why I asked if there was an inventory. Throwing him under the hippogryph wasn't my first choice."
"If it wasn't your first choice, then why ask about it after I said this thing wouldn't be on the inventory?" he asked, knowing it was not a mission-relevant question. The more he cast detection charms at the badger-depicting cup, the more certain he became they were not getting it out easily. If Voldemort even heard that there was a minor incident at Gringotts, would he send someone who can show up in public to check it out? It had, after all, made the news last time.
"Well, I think we both know that people aren't entirely rational. I would think that at least that much applies to goblins as well. Even someone of an exceedingly forgiving disposition would double-cross us, if not now then down the road. Getting him in trouble with the others forces him to explain that there had been a mistake to them, and even if he thinks of some way to go against us later, he can't reveal that he lied to them. We'll make it up to him if nothing happens."
"What if they just kill him without giving him a chance to explain himself?" he asked. Harry had no clue how short their time was. He had to get out the way he came in, but he was getting a bad feeling from the results of the detection charm. "We need to focus on getting out of here, not whatever else might happen after that. If we die, we've got no way to destroy that thing."
"We're no closer to a good way of grabbing it?"
"No. I knew there would be security, but the curse on the treasure in here is as dark as it is old and forgotten. I didn't have a way of researching that in advance, even if I liked being stuck at a desk." He thought back to what he had only just recently researched and had an idea. It would not be possible where they were, but he heard the sound of rushing water before coming into the vault, and he knew from the last time he was there that the vaults were in a natural cave system. "I've just thought of something. The quiet exit's back on the menu."
"I like the sound of that," Daphne said, right as they heard footsteps just outside the door.