(AN:) So, this is old enough where I don't remember where it was going nor do I have a solid outline for it. The only clue I have is the title I gave it: "Smoke and Mirrors". I don't know what I was thinking, but I love the Cursebreaker aspect of this enough to salvage this for really anything at all. Suggestions welcome.

The way the goblins treated thieves was utterly alien and thus completely unpredictable to anyone with a human mindset who's ignorant of goblin culture.

If a thief quietly stole a galleon or two without notice at the time, they'd find some way to quietly scam that plus interest out of the thief later on.

If a thief quietly stole anything worth more than twenty galleons, they'd quietly behead the thief and display the head just outside the doors of Gringotts.

If a thief loudly and brazenly stole anything at all successfully, they'd give the thief a job with the caveat that the thief kept quiet about whatever methods were used in robbing them. After interrogating the thief to learn how to plug those security holes, anyway.

When the theft included something as large as a priceless artifact from a well-funded account and a dragon from the bank itself, the goblins tripped over themselves to make sure such a theft never happened again.

That was how Harry Potter found himself shanghaied at spearpoint into a grueling five-year curse-breaking contract with on-going consultations after his contract was up. After a brutal crash course in runes, wards, and advanced arithmancy, he began his harrowing, but lucrative career in the cutthroat world of curse-breaking.

Surprisingly on the academic side and unsurprisingly on the practical side, he found himself excelling and enjoying his job, even if the goblins had a twisted sense of humor about paying him. When the goblins specified that he'd be paid in sickles per hour, he hadn't thought much of it until they'd handed him a heavy bag filled with his first month's paycheck of three hundred galleons…converted to sickles.

Also, he was fairly suspicious that they were trying to kill him during the entire period of time that his contract was active, but he was never too certain during the contract since everyone else assured him that they'd gone through similar, but less lethal trials.

—

Year 1, month 3

"Oi, Potter!" spat the supervising goblin, much like he would any other wizard's name. "We've broken down the wards of the tomb; go in and sweep for traps!"

Just as he'd been trained to do, Harry replied with the standard trainee phrase, "Medleckt sirick, Bradvaka!"

Lifting his lantern high and marching into the tomb, he mused that he was certain that that phrase did not mean what they'd told him it meant. The way he was trained to say it sounded more like "I live to serve, Master" instead of "As you've ordered, honored supervisor."

He sighed deeply when he stepped on a trap tile while he wasn't paying attention. The awaiting poison tipped darts shot out of the walls and impacted his body, shattered his lantern, and stained his clothes. Thankfully, he'd gotten his eyes transfigured to correct his sight or else his glasses would've broken as well.

Sniffing at the poison, he identified it as a standard one these tomb-designers loved to use: the Robber's Lament. Any wizard infected would actually spread the poison through their breath before dying painfully hours later in a pool of their own vomit and waste.

"Yep, that'll be quarantine and docked pay for me, I imagine," he grumbled, even though none of the darts had actually pierced his skin. And even if they had, poison didn't really work on him anymore.

Umbridge had proven that when she was finally put under Veritaserum and confessed to successfully poisoning him no less than two hundred times while she was at Hogwarts.

He then started to wave his wand around, checking for more traps…

—

Year 2, month 5

"White, Potter! Stop playing your pointless wizarding game of Grab Ass and get back to translating those hieroglyphs!" barked the goblin supervisor angrily, though they were already doing so.

"Think he likes you, Harry," Liam, another British curse-breaker he had been partnered with for this expedition, whispered with a grin.

"Do goblins believe in buying you dinner first though?" Harry asked absently, staring at the wall in front of them. "Hmm, scarab, forearm, bird, bird, bird?"

Liam stared down at his notes for a moment before answering, "In the context, it's definitely 'drop the sarcophagus'."

"No, no, can't be. See, there's a three-legged cat over heee-EEEEERE!" he replied, taking a step to the right and falling through a false tile.

"Shit! Heads up, everyone, we've got breakaway ground!" Liam yelled. He carefully stepped over to the tile and peered down. "Are you alright, Harry?"

"Potter!" yelled the supervisor who stepped over to the hole as well. "You better not be slacking down there!"

It took a moment, but his voice carried up back to them, "I'm fine, guys! I think I found the treasure room, but watch out for the magic immune punji sticks and the snakes! I've already told the snakes to back off, but I'm not sure how long they'll stay away!"

Liam stared down into the darkness for a moment before apparently having a moment of epiphany, "Oh! I get it now. Hey, Harry! The hieroglyphs were warning us about the fall! Watch out for that!"

"…Thanks, Liam, you're a real pip."

—

Year 3, month 10

"How surprising. Potter is in my medical bay again. What happened this time?" the goblin medic growled.

"Uuh, I think I was cursed? I haven't noticed anything different, really, but everyone else says that something hit me," Harry explained hesitantly.

The medic snatched up a diagnostic tool and waved it over this foolish wizard's body before he burst out laughing nastily.

As usual when dealing with a laughing goblin, he was required to wait for the amusement to fade.

Eventually, the laughter died down into snickers and the medic finally said, "Technically, it's considered a curse to us goblins, but you lazy humans certainly wouldn't think it is. It's the Curse of…" here the goblin snarled out a long string of Gobbledegook.

Harry translated it in his head and said, "The Curse of 'But I Wanted to Learn That on My Own'?"

"Hmph, close enough, Potter. Yes, for the next week, anything you set out to learn will have you granted instant knowledge of the subject matter at the cost of a nearby expert of the same species forgetting," the medic explained. And it looked like one of their language experts would need to be retaught Gobbledegook since this stupid wizard didn't even realize he'd already activated the curse to learn it!

"…That's a curse?"

"Not only do we savor our learning experiences, Potter, but we respect our elders' knowledge and experience," replied the medic. "Even if stabbing an elder is the best way to be promoted, we still do it respectfully."

"How can you be respectful when stabbing someone?!" he asked incredulously.

"Keep wasting my time and I'll show you how it's done disrespectfully. Now get out and into quarantine, Potter," the medic spat, shaking a dagger in his direction. He neglected to mention that trying to learn too much all at once would irrevocably break both the minds involved. But that wasn't his problem; it was Potter's.

Unless, of course, one of the parties wasn't alive, but there weren't ghosts in Gringotts where Potter would be staying until the curse ran its course.

—

Year 4, month 4

"Potter! Get your semi-worthless arse in my office now!" yelled a voice over the intercom inside the cafeteria.

"Only semi-worthless, huh, Harry?" Bill Weasley said with a wry grin that stretched the scars on his face. "Sounds like you're impressing the right goblins. I'm still called mostly-worthless half the time."

"I think I'm only semi-worthless because I'm a good meat shield," Harry said as he stood up to leave. "Nice catching up with you two again, Bill, Fleur. Give the rest of the Weasleys my love as always."

"Don't be a stranger, 'arry!" Fleur said, smiling and waving jovially.

A short, but winding walk found him outside the office of his direct superior, Chainstrike. As he'd been taught to not waste time, he opened the door without any useless dilly-dallying and said, "You bellowed, sir?"

"Shut it, Potter. You're on loan to Gringotts in Greece for the next three months. There's a tomb there with Parseltongue passwords and if you do well, you'll get to keep any writings you find on the subject as a bonus," Chainstrike said, throwing a scroll with the details at his slave—worker. "Dismissed and don't get another trainee killed. Last week was your fourth. Six more and I'll have to start docking your pay."

—

Year 5, final month of the contract

"Congratulations, Potter, you've survived. Your severance pay is standard and the contract regarding consultations is being drawn up as we speak," Chainstrike said, his tone not betraying the magnitudes of surprise that this stupid, thieving, accident-prone wizard had survived the most grueling curse-breaking contract they had.

"Thank you, sir. It was a tremendous learning experience for me," Harry replied, smiling beatifically.

The goblin cleared his throat and spoke as politely as he could to a wizard, which was just barely below scathing, "If you don't mind indulging an old goblin, Potter, how the bloody hell did you survive a contract that had a one hundred percent fatality rate before you came along?!"

He nodded to acknowledge the question and his smile grew wider as he replied in Gobbledegook, "With all due respect, Honored Senior Chainstrike, I suggest you go and get sodomized by a hippogriff!"

The shock on the goblin's face was something he'd remember forever before the little bastard began to laugh uproariously, spittle flying out while he replied in turn, "And that is the best reply you could've given me for such an impertinent question, Junior Meatshield! You've learned your lessons well!"

Chainstrike was chuckling while he reached underneath his desk to produce a dragon hide trench coat. He threw it at the wizard with a toothy smile, "Your bonus with my respect, Junior Meatshield. I believe you're familiar with the Hungarian Horntail that this came from."

Knowing it would quite literally be his head if he denied the gift, Harry quickly slipped it on, marveling that it was precisely his size. He grinned toothily and said, "You honor me, Senior Chainstrike. Know that my dagger will be in your chest and not your back should we ever disagree."

—

Not long after he'd signed the consultation contract, Harry took the opportunity to have his first day off in five years. He found himself in the Granger-Weasley sitting room, dying of boredom from Ron's tales of being an auror.

"…so I pulled out the warrant and the ferret looked like he wanted to piss himself. We didn't end up finding anything, but it was worth it just to see the look on his face, Harry! You're missing out, mate!" Ron said while looking far too pleased with himself.

'Good grief, this pillock wouldn't last a minute in the bloody tombs,' Harry thought, staring at the gormless smile on his best mate's face. He cleared his throat and said, "Yeah, sounds…intense. So, where's Hermione? Did she try to convince McGonagall to let her stay at Hogwarts longer?"

At this, the other man snorted in amusement, "Yeah, she would try to do that. No, no, she's out at university at the moment. Something about a muggle degree or some such nonsense."

Before he could say anything further, Harry tensed in his seat at the familiar feeling of wards being raised around them, though these were certainly much more unfriendly than the ones curse-breakers used.

"You feel that, Ron?" he tensely asked. At the blank look he received, he growled out, "Anti-apparition jinx went up."

Ron paled at this and stood up quickly, waving his wand around in a circular pattern. He gulped and said, "Well, that's another thing. Those arseholes who whined 'Imperius!' have taken up their masks again since they realized that they'll never be punished. And even if they are, the dementors are gone from Azkaban anyway."

As if to punctuate what he'd just heard from his best mate, he heard a familiar, drawling voice under a Sonorus charm call out, "Come out, Weasel! If you give up without a fight, we'll go easy on your Mudblood! She'll only be our plaything for a few hours!"

Thinking quickly, he grabbed the closest object at hand, a teacup, and began to wave his wand over it in a complicated pattern.

Ron stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "Err, mate? What are you doing? And when'd you get the Elder Wand again? I thought you put that back in Dumbledore's tomb?"

"In order, cursing this teacup and it just appeared next to me when a feral ghoul broke my holly wand in a tomb. I had a stray thought of 'It'd be great to have a spare wand right now' and poof! There it was," he explained tersely, flourishing the wand as he finished weaving his curses.

"Err, right, why are you cursing my teacup?" he asked, still confused.

Harry set the teacup down on the table and gasped dramatically, "Oh no! A cursed object! It looks like you're in the market for an experienced curse-breaker! Since you're my best mate, I can give you a fair discount for my services which scale depending on the difficulty of the job in question."

Ron finally seemed to have cottoned on to what was happening. It was a part of his auror training to know that Gringotts curse-breakers had, due to one treaty or another, nearly complete diplomatic immunity while on a job. Including their consultants. He grinned broadly and said, "Too right you are, mate. But I fear we may be attacked shortly by bandits."

"Well, we can't have that, can we? Alright, I'll take the job, but it'll have to wait until these bandits have been given what for," he said with a confident grin. "Let's see if these gits can manage a proper Anti-Apparition jinx first."

With that, he turned on his heel and forced his way through the jinx as though it weren't even there, violently shattering it to apparate to the edge of the property.

One of the six Death Eaters collapsed screaming when the backlash from the jinx breaking shot through his body. Draco Malfoy was in the middle of berating him when they heard footsteps behind them. Aside from Zabini who was still in pain, the five remaining Death Eaters turned as one and pointed their wands at the new threat, curses on their lips.

Then as one, they took a step back when they saw the broadly grinning scarred visage of the Invincible-Man-Who-Won, Harry Potter. The angry red scar starting at the bridge of his nose, curving down his left cheek, and ending just above his jawline was the last hit any Death Eater had gotten on him before he'd even come of age. And that was Dolohov who'd done it!

"So, Ferret, up to your standard tricks with your little Death Munching butt buddies again?" he asked, sounding almost casual.

Draco raised a shaking finger at the man and sounded more confident than he looked, "You can't stop us, Potter! You're not an auror and the Wizengamot passed a law to make your sort of anti-pureblood vigilantism illegal! As long as we don't attack you, you can't do anything!"

The rest of the Death Eaters seemed to catch on to the undercurrent of the order in their nominal leader's voice and so turned back to attempting to bring down Ron Weasley's wards.

"Hmm, you're right, Ferret. I can't do anything…" Harry slowly said, reveling in the smug smile he was about to wipe off Malfoy's pointed face. "Not unless…Oh, I don't know, unless I'm here to break a curse as a registered Gringotts curse-breaker."

Slowly, with his left hand, he pulled out the ID badge that all Gringotts curse-breakers received and showed the vibrant red circle next to his picture, indicating that he was near a job. When Malfoy tried to raise his wand, his own slashed the air and the blonde ponce's wand arm separated from his body.

The other, non-debilitated Death Eaters turned as their leader yelled out in agony, but each received a piercing curse to the forehead for their troubles. When Zabini tried to stumble away, he didn't make it far before being felled by an organ-rotting curse, a favorite amongst curse-breakers.

Harry twirled the Elder Wand between his fingers, whistling nonchalantly while he walked toward the whimpering Malfoy. His younger, more squeamish self would've been devastated at the carnage he'd just so casually dispensed, but the first time he'd tried to stun a bandit in Egypt, his superiors had chewed him out until he was nearly deaf. So he quite quickly learned that pacifism had no place on the battlefield.

"So, Ferret, you ready to join your master in Hell? I'm sure he'll be ever so happy to see you again. Maybe he'll let you kiss his dirty half-blood feet for old time's sake before you're forced to fellate a demon," he taunted with a calm smile.

Despite thinking he had the blonde ponce beaten, Harry really should've realized that just as he could attempt to pull off last-second desperate shenanigans, his enemies could too. A flash of metal was his only warning that Malfoy had pulled a dagger with his remaining hand in a last ditch effort to save himself.

Unfortunately for him, multitudes of bandits had tried the same last ditch, desperation strike, so with a practiced move, the dagger was ripped from Malfoy's grip and buried in the top of his skull. Haltingly, through great effort, he glared up briefly at his schoolyard nemesis one last time before his eyes rolled up in his skull and he keeled over.

Harry straightened up and looked around at the dead bodies, chewing his lip in thought. Idly, his left hand reached under his new coat to dig in the satchel he'd enchanted and worn throughout his entire contract. He extricated some cheap bog roll, great for one-time use Portkeys.

He waved his wand, gathering primary and spare wands of his opponents, their wallets, and other valuables into a small pile. Tearing off a square for each malcontent, he then turned each square into a portkey to his superior's office. After affixing each square to each dead body, he jotted down a quick note to explain the situation.

Chainstrike,

Trying to work. These idiots attacked me first. Give me their gold in my work vault since they started it.

Curse-Breaking Consultant Potter

With the note pinned to the leader, Harry pocketed the wands and valuables, activated the portkeys, and took down the Death Eater-laid wards to make his way back inside.

"Oi, mate! They're all gone now!" he called out before opening the door. He still found himself held at wandpoint by the auror.

"Prove it!" Ron growled distrustfully.

"What was it Hermione said our first year? 'We could have been killed or worse, expelled!'" Harry replied.

"Fair enough, mate. So, can you uncurse my teacup already? It growled at me," Ron said with a wary look at the rattling object.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll get to it. And don't bother reporting the attack. Gringotts will take care of it through the Goblin Liaison Office," Harry said, sitting back down in the chair he'd vacated previously. He picked up the teacup and stared at it for a moment, as if studying it deeply. "I see, this was cursed by a right bastard, it was.

"It'll cost you, oh, I don't know, about two galleons to uncurse. By the way," he interrupted when he saw Ron's ears turning red, "I found this wallet on your property, so it obviously must be yours, right?"

He tossed over Malfoy's coin-filled wallet with a wink. Ron stared down at it for a moment with wide eyes. It seemed to click because moments later, he said, "Uuh, yeah, right! Definitely mine. Two galleons, right?"

His jaw dropped when he fished out a handful of the gold coins, but he dutifully handed over two of them. Harry waved his wand once over the teacup, dispelling his curses easily.

"Alright, job's done, so I'm back to being here in an unofficial capacity. Enjoy Malfoy's money since that rat bastard didn't learn a damn thing from the war," he said, filling the teacup with tea and leaning back.

"You know, you've got to wonder: why did he come here with a full coin purse? Did he expect to just drop my wards, kill me, rape my wife with his mates, and then bugger off for some shopping?" Ron asked, counting up his recent treasure.

"No clue. So what time does Hermione usually get home?" he asked idly.

"Uuh, let's see. Today's Tuesday, so she's got some maths class today and I think that's it. It's actually good that you took care of Malfoy and his ilk right quick or she would've run into them. She should be home any minute now."

"RONALD BILIUS WEASLEY! WHY IS THERE A BLOODY SEVERED ARM ON OUR WALKWAY?!" shrieked a familiar voice from the front door.

"Knew I forgot something," Harry muttered angrily.

It took a couple of tries to calm down his best mate's hysterical wife, but the severed arm was soon water under the bridge. Mostly.

"Since you're done littering my lawn with 'pure' blood and body parts, what are you going to do now, Harry?" Hermione asked curiously with only a semi-scathing look.

"Well, I can give consultations with Gringotts here and there, but for now, I think I'll relax," he drawled lazily.