And here's the forty second chapter of "A Year Too Soon"! Enjoy!
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mrhunterjdavis, JRW123, JPElles, mwinter1, mizzrazz72, DarkRavie, TheGreatBubbaJ, magitech, Uday Sra, Urgazhi, BMS, Blue Luver5000, Majerus, Yaw6113, onewolf 83, zippydip, setokayba2n, Oghenevwogaga, Blueowl, Guest, Smokeing, TimothyB, major wallace, KariAnn, dragonfox123, thank you for your reviews, folks!
AnimeA55Kicker, you're definitely wrong. The Burrow was born out of the primordial chaos.
Jostanos, Luiz4200 (guest), fixed.
The Shadows Mistress, Harry might be a bit too young to legally hire someone from the Muggle world - and a bit too incompetent at Charms to pass himself as an adult. So he'll have to find someone in the Magical world.
Greatazuredragon, probably will be an OC that pops up a couple of times throughout the next year and then disappears from the story completely once the Potter manor is rebuilt.
Wulfkin17, well, he can't live in a rented room in The Leaky Cauldron forever, can he?
tsun, Harry will soon find himself in a situation (no further spoilers) that would make him realize he really needs to train up. And so he will. I'm still not going to make him super OP, but he will be able to hold his own in a Magical fight.
* AN: As always, great thanks to my friend Skelekitty for his help in polishing this chapter.
Disclaimer: I DO NOT own "Harry Potter" franchise. No profit is being made. Same goes for any books, video games, anime or manga I may or may not use for ideas.
"speaking"
"parseltongue"
'thinking'
written text
spells
A Year Too Soon
Chapter XLII: July 31st
With a quiet pop, Dumbledore appeared in the middle of a narrow and rarely-used dirt road bordered by high, tangled hedgerows. A few moments later he was joined by Croaker, who used whatever special Magics that were known only to the Unspeakables to seemingly materialize out of thin air.
"I know that the Gaunts lived somewhere around here." Croaker began. "And I agree that it wouldn't be out of character for the Dark Lord to hide one of his horcruxes in the home of his only Magical blood, but this backwater certainly makes you think that nothing important can ever happen here." He said while nodding towards an old and rickety wooden signpost reading 'Little Hangleton, 1 mile.' that was almost entirely hidden by overgrown brambles. "Then again, places like this often hide the darkest of secrets."
"Indeed." Dumbledore agreed simply.
The two wizards then began walking towards the village. For a short while, all they could see were those same tangled hedgerows, but then the road made a turn to the left and sloped down a hillside steeply, allowing a glimpse of Little Hangleton. It was a small, dying-out village nestled between two hills. An old, neglected graveyard next to an unused church and an abandoned manor on the far side of the valley completed the image of desolation.
Little Hangleton, however, wasn't their destination - not the current one at least. Instead the two wizards followed the route Dumbledore had learned from the memories of Bob Ogden and forced their way through the hedgerow at the road's next turn. There, they found another, even more overgrown path. The dirt track - or whatever remained of it - was crooked, rocky and almost completely overgrown by wild bushes. It too sloped downhill, quickly disappearing into the dark woods.
"According to Mr. Ogden's memories, the Gaunt's shack should be located at the end of this trail." Dumbledore said as he studied the path ahead for any signs of Magical traps. "Back then, the place didn't have any notable wards, but we can be sure that Tom has left a few to ensure safety of his horcrux." The Unspeakable was in a silent agreement with him and too was silently casting detection spells on their surroundings.
The walk down the trail was a slow one. Not only the path was narrow, rocky and often blocked by overgrown bushes and, in one case, a fallen tree, but the two wizards also had to make more than a few stops to make sure there wasn't a nasty Magical trap waiting for them ahead. Eventually, they did arrive at the foot of the hill, and that was where they encountered the first set of wards Voldemort had erected to ensure his horcrux's safety. Surprisingly, these wards themselves were rather benign: a strong muggle-repelling ward, a ward to make the Gaunt shack and its immediate surroundings unplottable, and a curious little ward that made people inside throw caution to the winds.
Once that particular ward was down, Dumbledore and Croaker continued towards the Gaunt's shack.
Soon enough they reached a small clearing, covered by deep, cool shadows cast by the centuries-old trees surrounding it. And half-hidden among the tangle of trunks of these there was a rather small building with collapsed roof and moss-covered walls. To complete the image, there was an old and rotten snake nailed to the door. Despite that, a large number of snakes appeared to be drawn towards the house and the two wizards could see at least a dozen large serpents watching them intently.
Reaching into a pocket of robes, Dumbledore took out one of his portable horcrux-detection ward-stones and activated it. Immediately, the stone began buzzing, alerting the old warlock to the presence of a horcrux nearby.
"It is indeed here." The Hogwarts Headmaster said. Croaker, who busied himself with studying the wards around the Gaunt house merely nodded in response. About a minute later the man finished casting detection spells and announced his findings:
"Interesting. I can detect only four wards at this range. One will weaken spells for anyone not keyed into it, one is a simple perimeter ward that will trigger something when crossed. Unfortunately, I can't tell what exactly that will be. Beyond that, there are only standard anti-apparition and anti-portkey wards." He said. "That's a rather underwhelming amount of protection for a piece of the Dark Lord's soul. I suspect that trying to disable them will spring some kind of a trap upon us." Dumbledore nodded in agreement.
"Please take those wards down, Saul." The old warlock said.
"Alright, give me some time and I'll bring them down." The Unspeakable said as he began dismantling the wards, starting with the anti-apparition one. It wasn't anything special, so it took Croaker only about fifteen minutes to dismantle it. And once that happened, his guess about Voldemort leaving some traps behind was proven spot on as a dozen large globs of purplish murky liquid were launched in a wide arc at him and Dumbledore.
Reacting quickly, the Hogwarts Headmaster raised his wand and summoned a stone wall, protecting himself and Croaker from the incoming barrage. The globs hit the wall, and it immediately began melting, revealing that the liquid had been a rather deadly acid or maybe some sort of corroding Magical poison. He then vanished the half-melted stone and small puddles of simmering liquid to be sure it won't give them any more nasty surprises.
"Woah! That was some nasty stuff." Croaker commented as he observed plants start dying around the spots where the mysterious liquid had splashed on the ground. "Wonder what it was made from. There aren't many substances with the right properties, and I doubt it was based on basilisk venom - the Dark Lord wouldn't risk bringing that so close to his precious horcrux."
"You're probably right." Dumbledore agreed as he too was curious about the concoction Voldemort had used in his trap. Still, right now wasn't the right time to think about that. "But let's deal with the horcrux first." Croaked nodded and went back to dismantling the wards around the Gaunt house.
The next ward to go down did something more interesting than summoning a few fireballs. It caused all those snakes around the hovel to suddenly grow several times in size and begin attacking the intruders. Croaker's first reaction when a fifteen feet long poisonous snake attacked him was to throw a powerful cutting curse at it. Unfortunately, that was not the best idea as the curse rebounded from its hide, causing the Unspeakable to hastily summon a Magical shield lest his own head get cut off.
Seeing how the snakes appeared to be heavily-resistant to spells, Dumbledore opted to use some battle transfiguration to throw them away with a rolling wave of dirt, giving himself and Croaker some breathing room. He then summoned a rock pillar to elevate the two of them several feet above the ground, to a height where the snakes couldn't strike them easily.
"I am willing to bet that crossing the wards would've unleashed these beasts upon us anyway." The Unspeakable commented, the enchantments on his robes hiding a shudder he had at thought of giant, venomous and impervious to most spells snakes jumping at him from behind.
"Tom might have made these snakes spell-resistant, but hitting them with conjured or transfigured weapons should still work." The Hogwarts Headmaster said as he turned a broken tree trunk into a barbed metal spear, before launching it at one of the serpents with unbelievable speed. The spear nailed the snake to the ground through its head, killing it. Wasting no time, Croaker joined the snake-extermination effort and within a couple of minutes all of the serpents were dead.
Dumbledore waited for another minute in case the Dark Lord's trap turned the snakes into a timed bomb or something else to catch them off guard. That appeared to be not the case though, so he let the pillar they were standing on sink back into the ground.
"We should consider ourselves lucky that the Dark Lord hadn't gone beyond just making these snakes huge and resistant to Magic. Imagine dealing with them if they could also breathe fire?" Croaker said as he went back to dismantling wards around the Gaunt house. This time he focused on taking down the spell-weakening one.
That ward was quite a bit trickier than the previous ones and the Unspeakable needed a little over half an hour to disable it. And when the ward finally went down, it didn't trigger any trap that either he or Dumbledore could see. They immediately took defensive stances, expecting yet another trap to be triggered. After nothing happened for a couple of minutes, however, the two wizards decided the trap - had it existed at all - had likely malfunctioned and it was safe to continue dismantling the wards.
The final ward - the perimeter one - also took Croaker quite some time to dismantle, mostly because the man was extra cautious, hoping to avoid triggering whatever trap this ward was tied to. He failed, though, and the moment the ward was taken down hundreds of whip-like vines covered in sharp, poisonous thorns burst from the ground all around the clearing. The vines twisted around blindly for a moment before shooting at the pair of wizards.
Dumbledore immediately responded by summoning a fire whip, and while it was enough to bat the vines away, it didn't actually damage them in any meaningful way.
"C'mon, Albus." The Unspeakable said. "You're smart enough to know that something simple like this isn't going to work here. You need to use true battle Magic if you truly want to best the Dark Lord's trap." And with that he unleashed a sea of cursed brightly-orange flames that swiftly incinerated everything in their path. It also made Dumbledore freeze in place as unwanted and buried memories of the horrors of war against Grindelwald assaulted his mind.
Being a man of great fortitude, however, allowed him to push those memories back into the dark corners of his mind after a couple of seconds. His moment of weakness didn't go unnoticed by Croaker, however.
"Are you alright, Albus?" He asked.
"Yes, I'm fine." The Hogwarts Headmaster replied after a brief period of silence. "Let's go, we have a horcrux to destroy." The Unspeakable nodded and the two of them began carefully approaching the Gaunt hovel across the still-smoldering clearing. When they were within a yard of the door, the old and half-rotten snake nailed to it suddenly came alive and tried to bite them while letting out angry hisses.
Croaker was not amused by that and responded with Bombarda to the undead creature's 'face'. The Exploding Charm, however, was completely negated by Voldemort's enchantments, leaving both the reanimated snake and the door completely undamaged. An overpowered piercing hex and a moderately-sized fireball similarly had no effect. Even trying to Magically open the door did nothing.
"I believe Tom wants us to open the door into the house with our own hands, and get bitten in the process." Dumbledore said. "Luckily, there are ways around this 'guardian'." With that, he conjured a metal gauntlet not unlike one a medieval knight would wear and made it indestructible before putting it on. Then, he moved to push the door open and as soon as his arm was in range the undead snake tried to bite him, but its fangs couldn't pierce the enchanted armor. The moment his gauntlet touched the door, however, it became stuck. At the same time, the snake lost all interest in trying to bite through the metal and lunged at the warlock's chest.
Not having any better idea, Dumbledore kicked the door wide open while letting his hand slide out of the gauntlet. That didn't work quite as well as he had hoped and his hand would be sore for a while, but at least he didn't get bitten - he didn't know what sort of poison Voldemort gave this undead thing, and he was in no hurry to find out.
Meanwhile, the door finished opening and once it hit the wall, the reanimated snake stopped moving and went back to hanging limply like some macabre decoration.
"Let's go." The Hogwarts Headmaster said. "The horcrux is somewhere in this house."
"Wait. We need to check for traps first." Croaker called, stopping him before he could set a step into the half-ruined hovel. Silently, the Unspeakable wondered whether the ward to make people less cautious was somehow back up. Albus should've known better than to rush in without a second thought.
Thankfully, the old warlock listened to the voice of reason and the two of them began casting various detection Charms, looking for any traps Voldemort might have left to impede their progress. And they did find some.
First, there was a perimeter ward just behind the doorstep. And, unlike the previous one, this time Croaker could actually tell what crossing it would do - it would silently bring the anti-apparition and anti-portkey wards around the house back up, thus preventing an easy escape from the house.
And then there was something in the air - the Unspeakable could feel it - but standard detection spells failed to show any reason for his gut feeling. More advanced, though still relatively common, Charms didn't do any better. It wasn't until he began using spells known only to the people of his department that he finally got a result, which came in the form of the air inside the Gaunt hovel turning purplish-blue.
"A nebulized potion, colorless and odorless." Croaker said as he used a wind spell to clear the air. "Doesn't appear to be a poison but has an effect on one's mind and the strength of one's will. Were I a betting man, I'd say that the primary defenses for the horcrux likely rely on strong compulsions to make you kill yourself through some stupid and careless action. Probably some other things as well, but mostly compulsions." He paused for a moment, before adding with a hint of smugness: "I knew that one ward I disabled earlier did have a trap it triggered when taken down." Dumbledore didn't say anything in response. Croaker shrugged and went to work on dismantling the perimeter ward in front of them.
Having encountered an almost-identical ward earlier, the Unspeakable needed only a few minutes to bring it down. And just like with the wards from before, doing that triggered a trap. Surprisingly enough, though, it wasn't really Magical in its nature - just a number of dart-launchers cleverly hidden on the opposing wall and loaded with undoubtedly-poisoned darts.
Darts, even enchanted ones, however, weren't good at penetrating hard materials, so a wooden wall that Dumbledore quickly transfigured out of a loose and rotten floorboard easily stopped the projectiles.
With all of the traps dealt with for the moment, the two men finally stepped into the house. Seventy years ago, when the last of Gaunts still lived there, this place was already in a terrible state of disrepair according to Mr. Ogden's memories. And in the years this house stood abandoned, it only got worse. Most of the roof had collapsed, most of the floorboards were gone and there was grass and even young trees growing in their places while the few that remained were badly rotten and could barely support a grown man. The walls were rickety and too showed great signs of decay - Magic might be the only thing keeping them from collapsing. A few rotten pieces of furniture could still be seen along the walls and an old and cracked cauldron lay in the middle of what might have been a kitchen long ago.
Neither Dumbledore nor Croaker paid much attention to all this desolation, though. Their attention was focused on an otherwise-inconspicuous spot near the far corner of the house's biggest room. Having spent their entire lives around Magics most potent and arcane, however, they could tell that something was hidden there.
"It is here." The Hogwarts Headmaster stated matter-of-factly, as he activated his horcrux-detector to confirm what his gut feeling was telling him. And, indeed, the wardstone was buzzing fervently, screaming at him that a soul anchor was just a couple of meters away.
"Let's do it." The Unspeakable replied.
With a couple of useful Charms, the two of them quickly unearthed a small wooden box. They then carefully opened it, immediately getting his with an overpowered compulsion to pick the ring that was inside and put it on. Having been prepared for a mental attack, they were able to ignore it.
"Stand back, Albus. I'm going to summon Fiendfire." Croaker said.
"Wait." Dumbledore called suddenly. "This ring… It has Magics too potent for it to be just a horcrux." The Unspeakable let out a small sigh before casting a number of diagnostic Charms. The results made him pause and then cast a few more that were known only to people from his department. The results he got left him quite shocked.
"That's… You're right, Albus, this ring is something else, something well beyond a horcrux. I haven't seen Magics like that even in the department's archives." He finally said. "Simply destroying it here would be a terrible waste." He then conjured a holding bag, lined with silk on the inside, to safely carry the horcrux with him. Then he began carefully levitating the ring - which, surprisingly, wasn't enchanted against that - out of the box.
Everything was going well for a bit, but as the ring got closer to his bag, Croaker noticed a hand reaching out to grab it. Turning his head, he saw Dumbledore eyeing the ring with glazed over eyes, indicating that he had fallen under the compulsion. Acting quickly, he hit the man with a wandless stinging hex powerful enough to break the mind-altering spell's hold over him.
"What got into you, Albus?" He asked once the other man wasn't dazed anymore.
"I… I lost focus for a moment and got overwhelmed by the compulsion." The Hogwarts Headmaster admitted. "The ring is calling to me, it wants me to put it on." The Unspeakable narrowed his eyes.
"Whatever enchantments are on this ring, they are affecting you badly, Albus." He said as he finally brought the ring into his bag. "I don't think you should be allowed near it until I have the compulsions removed from it." Dumbledore reluctantly nodded, feeling like he had just lost something unbelievable, something that he would never have another chance to have again. "Alright." Croaker continued meanwhile. "We have the horcrux, now let's get the hell out of here. I've had enough of this shack for a lifetime." And without waiting for a response, he Magically disappeared from the shack. Letting out a deep sigh, Dumbledore followed his example and apparated away as well...
~/ *** \~
While Dumbledore was busy hunting for a horcrux in the middle of England's Nowhere, Harry's morning of July 31st was decidedly less perilous.
Indeed, his morning began with opening his birthday presents and writing 'thank you' cards for Hedwig to deliver later. Done with that, the green-eyed teen descended to the pub for a meal. And Tom the bartender was happy to provide him with a full English breakfast - on the house for the occasion.
Once he finished with his meal, Harry thanked Tom for the food and headed into Diagon Alley. He still had nearly half an hour before his appointment with the Potter Account Manager at Gringotts so decided to occupy his time with some window-shopping. Sure, there likely wasn't anything new on display, but it was still better than simply waiting in the bank's lobby.
Finally, at ten to noon, Harry stepped into the Gringotts bank. He made sure to arrive with enough spare time in case all of the tellers were busy but, thankfully, the queues this morning weren't all that bad and just a couple of minutes later, he was presenting a notice of his appointment to the teller. The said Goblin quickly scanned the piece of parchment.
"Account Manager Silverclaw is waiting for you, Mr. Potter." He said. "Assistant Gnawroot will escort you to his office." As soon as those words left his mouth, a younger goblin appeared by his counter seemingly out of thin air. "Do you have any further business here?" The teller asked then.
"Not at the moment." Harry replied.
"Then, please follow me, Mr. Potter." Gnawroot said and without waiting for any response from the teen, headed out of the bank's main hall. Harry quickly followed him.
After navigating the corridors for a couple of minutes, they arrived to Silverclaw's office. The young goblin politely knocked on the door to inform the account manager that his client has arrived, and once a gruff 'Enter' was heard, he made himself scarce.
"Greetings, Master Silverclaw. May gold flow into your vaults like a river." Harry greeted as he stepped into the goblin's office.
"And may your blade strike rightful fear into the hearts of your enemies, Mr. Potter." Silverclaw greeted back. After a brief moment of silence, he continued: "I take it, you wish to proceed with your emancipation." The green-eyed teen merely nodded in response. "Good." The goblin said as he reached into a drawer of his table to produce four identical scrolls of parchment. "Please sign these first." He said as he passed the scrolls and a Blood Quill to Harry.
"What are these?" The young Potter asked.
"These are letters of attorney saying that you consent with Gringotts submitting your emancipation parchmentwork to the Ministry for Magic. One copy will be yours, one will be stored at Gringotts, one is for the liaison office and the final one will go to whatever department in the Ministry that will handle your emancipation." Silverclaw explained.
Nodding, Harry picked the quill and began signing the parchments, wincing slightly as the quill drew his blood. That didn't go unnoticed by the goblin, who let out a toothy, blood-thirsty grin.
"I sincerely hope this is not the most you can handle, Mr. Potter. There are quite a few documents for you to sign, so don't think about quitting already." He said. "I will be most disappointed if you made me waste my time preparing all the documents necessary to push for your emancipation, and your vaults will feel my displeasure." Gritting his teeth, Harry finished signing the letters of attorney and handed them back to his account manager. The goblin quickly scanned them to make sure everything was in order, before producing the next set of parchment scrolls from the drawer of his table. They were much thicker than the ones Harry had signed right now, and the teen couldn't help what those were. Surely, a letter saying that he wanted an emancipation shouldn't be several feet long?
Picking the thickest scroll, Harry opened it and saw that it contained a list of things that he, as an emancipated minor, would now be allowed to do, as well as the list of things that he could only do after he reached majority. Putting down his signature in a box at the very bottom of the parchment to show that he had read this list, Harry reached for the next scroll.
This one contained a sanitized list of Potters' monies, investments in businesses and properties. It also showed the amounts of Galleons that have been added and withdrawn from the vaults he owned each year over the past three years.
"You will never be granted emancipation if you can't prove that you have financial means to survive on your own." Silverclaw explained, seeing his confusion. "Now, if you believe that this listing is accurate, put your signature on the parchment." The last Potter nodded and scanned the document for anything that didn't look right to him. Finding everything to be in order, he signed the document and reached for the next roll of parchment.
It too contained lots of boring legal language that could basically be summed up as 'Mr. Potter is responsible enough to live on his own'. Quickly scanning the document to make sure that everything looked alright, Harry signed it as well.
The next parchment turned out to be empty, prompting the green-eyed teen to ask what he was supposed to do with it.
"And here you need to write an argument, or several arguments, in favor of your emancipation as opposed to just changing your Magical Guardian." Silverclaw explained. "Only your signature at the end must be done with a blood quill. You can write the rest in normal ink."
"Thank Merlin for small mercies." Harry muttered under his breath as he swapped the blood quill for one that didn't try to scar his hand anytime he wrote something. Still, what the goblin said made him pause for a bit: did he really have a convincing argument in favor of his emancipation? Justifying why Dumbledore shouldn't be his Magical Guardian, even if only 'in loco parentis' while he was at Hogwarts, wasn't hard since - as far Harry knew - the man had only ever used his authority to either send him back to Privet Drive or to keep him from attending Yule parties. Finding a good reason why he shouldn't have a Magical Guardian at all was much harder. Still, after thinking about it for about ten minutes, Harry managed to come up with a pretty convincing argument in favor of his emancipation.
He then quickly wrote it down before it could flee from his head. And after making sure he didn't make any mistakes, the young Potter switched back to the blood quill and put his signature down.
"Any other documents I need to sign?" He asked as he handed the parchment to Silverclaw.
"Just these ones, I believe." The goblin replied, giving him three more small scrolls, each already containing his signature and the bank's seal. "These are receipts saying that you've - willingly and with full understanding of what you're doing - have entrusted Gringotts to deliver your emancipation request and all relevant parchmentwork to the Ministry for Magic as well as to forward you documents pertaining to the Ministry's decision when one is made. One copy will be yours, one will be stored here, at Gringotts, and the final one will go to the liaison office." Silverclaw said.
Nodding, Harry quickly signed the scrolls and returned them to his account manager, who quickly scanned them to make sure everything was in order. He then gave one of the scrolls back to Harry, together with one of the letters of attorney from earlier.
"Keep these safe until you receive a notification that your request has been either approved or denied." The goblin instructed. "They are your proof that you've submitted the parchmentwork at all." Harry nodded, before asking:
"And do you know how long it will take the ministry to process my request?"
"I have no idea how your Ministry for Magic works, but I don't think it should take them more than a week to make a decision." Silverclaw replied. He then fell silent for a while as he worked on bundling the scrolls together. Once finished, he continued: "Now, I believe, there is one more thing that you'd want to do today, Mr. Potter." Harry did his best to suppress a groan at the thought of more documents that needed his signature. Thankfully, that wasn't the case, though: "It is actually something most fools imagine when thinking about Magical emancipation: you will be given the Heir's ring. And while having the ring does offer some benefits and protections, for the most part it is just a symbol that you are the next in line for lordship of your House."
"I see…" The green-eyed wizard said.
"Well, then." The goblin continued. "Without further ado, I will let you have the ring." And with those words he produced a small box, sheathed in burgundy velvet and with the golden Potters' coat of arms on the lid, from yet another drawer of his table and carefully handed it over to Harry. The said teen then opened the box, revealing a golden ring inside. The ring had a miniature Potter's coat of arms, complete with red gems, engraved on its head.
"It doesn't look like it will fit." He observed.
"The ring will Magically adjust to your finger." Silverclaw explained, sounding rather annoyed. Deciding to trust the goblin, Harry took the ring out of its box and slid it onto his finger.
For a few moments nothing happened. Then the young wizard felt a weird sensation spreading from the ring. The best way to describe it that he could think of was 'like a wave of warmth rolling through his body'. This 'wave' soon reached his head and then bounced back, returning back into the ring. And then the ring began shrinking until it was of perfect size for Harry's finger.
"Congratulations, Heir Potter." Silverclaw said. Ignoring the teen's 'thank you', he continued: "While it is true that this ring is more of a status symbol than anything else in the Magical world at large, it likely does grant you some real powers over Potter's assets. For example, it might have been able to act as the master-key to the manor, had it not burned down a decade ago. But that is just my speculation. I have no actual knowledge - it is to be shared only between the members of your House. You will have to learn what the heir's ring actually lets you do once you're officially emancipated and, thus, are allowed into the primary Potter vaults." Harry nodded. "I believe this concludes our business for today." The goblin said then.
"Indeed." The Potter scion replied.
"Then let me have someone guide you back to the main lobby." Silverclaw said as he activated a rune on his table, requesting for an assistant-goblin.
That's all, folks!
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