Dear Hermione,

The Harpies are having a press conference this Saturday, and I'd really really like you to come. I think you'll enjoy it. If my owl hasn't lost them, there are two passes enclosed. Bring your new boyfriend!

Hugs!

Ginny

Hermione tucked the passes into a cubbyhole in her desk. Whatever the Harpies were going to announce, she hoped it involved some egg on Holyhead's face for their demands. Oh well, she'd have to think about it later. The Institute had recommended a solicitor to translate Greyback's contract, and she needed to get to the appointment.

She stepped into her office Floo and a few seconds later, stepped out into the offices of Mason and Burr solicitors. Mr. Burr enthusiastically introduced himself and ushered her into his office.

"I understand you have a rather complex contract you want translated," he said, gesturing for her to take a seat and doing so himself behind the desk.

"That's right." She pulled the tri-fold parchment out of her purse and handed it across the desk. "It's for my research. I think this is a contract that one of the Death Eaters wanted Lord Vol—" She caught herself as Mr. Burr stiffened. "Er, You-Know-Who to sign."

"An Oborot," he said appreciatively, unfolding it. "That's the most powerful contract parchment in the world. I couldn't have recommended better. And goblin-written as well; that was a wise choice if trying to negotiate with You-Know-Who." He looked over it and frowned, his forehead wrinkling heavily.

"Can you translate it?"

He sighed and set the parchment on the desk. "Let me be honest. I can certainly give you a good idea of what it says in layman's terms, but it's so densely written, I'm afraid I would miss some nuance. If this were not just for research, if you were asked to sign it yourself, I would recommend you speak to one of my associates."

"I want to be as accurate as possible. Can I speak to them anyway?"

"Of course, but I must warn you, he'll charge an additional fee on top of the firm's."

Surely Tritonis would approve the extra fee. Her research documents needed to be as accurate as possible, after all. "I think that'll be all right. I'd like to see him."

"All right, follow me." Mr. Burr returned the parchment to her and led Hermione down the hall to another office door. He knocked and opened it. "Mr. Kornoc?"

"Yes, Mr. Burr?"

"I have a client who'd like to have a contract translated."

Hermione looked over Mr. Burr's shoulder. As she had expected from the name, behind the desk inside sat the goblin she had met at Sniffers. He looked up and smiled. "Ah, Professor Granger, an honor to see you again. Please come in; let's see what I can do for you."

Mr. Burr closed the door behind her as she crossed the room and sat in front of the desk. Kornoc took the parchment and put on a pair of glasses, the frames balancing precariously on his inhuman features. "This is the contract you want translated?"

"That's right."

He looked over it, and a slight grin passed over his lips. "This is not for you."

"No, it's for research purposes. It was Fenrir Greyback's, and I'm studying him. Can you translate it?"

"Certainly. But of course, you were warned there would be an additional fee?"

"I realize that."

"Excellent. I think we can come to an agreement." He took a half-sheet of parchment out of a drawer and started writing. "This is an oboric parchment, made by a human rather than a werewolf. It is not as strong as what you wish me to translate, but it is still quite binding. I assure you this is standard procedure; all our contracts are written on them."

"I won't need someone else to translate this, will I?"

Kornoc chuckled. "No. It will be written by a goblin, but it will not be goblin-written." He finished, signed it with a flourish, and handed it to her. "There you are, in the vernacular. As soon as you sign it, I will begin the work."

Hermione read over it and found it easy enough to understand. He would provide a written translation and a verbal explanation, and in return she would pay the firm's usual fee, plus… Plus reveal any goblin who had helped her, Harry, and Ron break into Gringotts.

"I'm not signing this," she said.

"Is there a problem?"

She sighed hotly. "Why does everyone assume we had goblin help?"

Kornoc smiled, a mix of indulgence and patronization coloring his expression. "I mean no disrespect, but humans alone could not do what you did."

"I'll have you know I studied goblin magic for months to pull that off."

If anything, Kornoc's smirk worsened. "No human source has the information you needed to study." Suddenly, his face brightened. "Ah, I see. If you would be so kind as to erase that parchment with your magic, I will rewrite it. You will name the goblin who gave you the information you used."

"I'm not naming anyone."

Kornoc's mouth twisted as he mulled over the situation. "I think I understand. You are already under a contract."

"No, I—" Hermione sighed. "Well, I suppose you could call it a verbal contract."

Kornoc waved his hand dismissively. "A verbal contract is only worth the parchment it is written on."

"Mr. Kornoc, I will not reveal any goblin who helped us during the war, and that is final."

"Then I'm afraid I cannot translate this contract for you," he said, holding the parchment out to her.

She took it from him and stood. "I'm sorry to have wasted your time."

She made it to the door before Kornoc called after her, but she glanced back over her shoulder anyway. He waved her back to the chair she had just vacated.

"I apologize, Professor Granger; I fear I've negotiated too firmly and insulted you. Obviously, this translation is not so important to you. But please, tell me what is. I know you were offered a good deal of money for that name, and you were not interested in it. What is it you want in exchange for it?"

"I don't want anything for it."

"You haven't been giving it for free."

"I mean it's not for sale."

"But why is that? You aren't getting money out of it; certainly not as much as Gringotts could pay. You have no goblin friends, so it isn't personal affection. Why do you continue to protect them?"

"Why do you continue to ask? You don't seem to have a stake in it."

"To the contrary. We do not treat property the way you do. Gringotts belongs to all goblins, not just the ones who operate it. To jeopardize its security is to jeopardize the livelihood of every goblin, and we all take that very seriously."

"I wouldn't say your security was jeopardized. This was for one very special, very unique case."

"Special to you, perhaps, but not to us. We are concerned about what else he may consider a 'special case.'"

"Surely you realize You-Know-Who was a danger to you, too."

"Of course we do. But Gringotts is a business, and good businesses manage risk. Tell me, what do you think would have happened to us goblins if, after you took that bauble, your side had lost? If You-Know-Who ruled now?"

Hermione considered. "I see your point, and I think I understand where you're coming from."

"But from the look on your face, you are still not willing to negotiate."

"I'm sorry, but I'm not. I understand he did something wrong by your standards. But by mine, what he did was right. I don't know that mine are any better than yours; they may be worse. But they're the ones I have to live by, so I won't give you that name."

Kornoc studied her. "I see why Madam Darcy likes you. Because we have a mutual friend, let me give you some advice, and I hope you will take it in that spirit. Eventually, one of you three will desire something more than you desire to protect that name, and we will learn what it is. I sincerely hope that is a good transaction, but it could be an unpleasant one."

"I hope it never comes to that," Hermione said. "If it does, perhaps our ally will see it coming and handle things on their own."

"Perhaps. This contract of yours. My usual fee is 15 Galleons an hour, rounded to the next higher hour. I think the translation will take me about an hour and a half, so 30 Galleons. If you stay close, I will warn you if I am going to go over two. And of course, this is in addition to the firm's fee."

"That sounds fair."

"If you would erase this for me," he said, gesturing to the oboric parchment. She vanished the ink from the page, and he rewrote and signed the new terms and handed them to her. Once she confirmed they matched Kornoc's verbal offer, she signed it and handed it back. "Very well. You're welcome to wait here, or come back in an hour and a half."

"I'll wait, if you don't mind."

With a nod, Kornoc set to translating the contract as Hermione took a book from her bag and started reading. For more than an hour, the only sounds were the scratching of Kornoc's quill and the flipping of pages in Hermione's book. At last, Kornoc read over his translation and set down his quill.

"All right, I have it," he announced. Hermione tucked her book back into her bag and eagerly leaned forward. "I'll warn you, it is not a truly precise translation. There were a lot of, shall we say, legal gymnastics to close loopholes. Translating them directly would have been confusing, so instead, I only noted their presence and purpose."

"That's fine. What did it say?"

"It was to be a contract between Fenrir Greyback and You-Know-Who. Mr. Greyback was offering the services of 50 or more werewolves as Death Eaters. Some of those gymnastics were to assure they would not be put into excessive danger compared to the human Death Eaters, but that their unique abilities could still be used. In exchange, You-Know-Who was to eliminate all werewolf legislation as he gained power that made it possible. Mr. Greyback lists out his highest priorities—you can read that list yourself—but also included more gymnastics to cover anything he did not mention or that might be passed in the future. It's very well crafted; if I knew which goblin had written it, I would congratulate them."

"May I?" Hermione asked, reaching for the translation.

"Of course. It will give you an opportunity to ask questions while you're still here."

As Hermione looked it over, her eye caught the list of laws to be overturned. "This was in order of priority, right?"

"Order of preference, perhaps I should say, but yes."

"I should have guessed," Hermione said. The first three items had been burned into her memory five years earlier: destruction of the Werewolf Registry, elimination of the Werewolf Capture Unit, and lifting the employment ban.

"Hi, Roma," Hermione said, pushing open Sniffers's door. "Guess what I learned—"

She stopped short on seeing three strangers inside and was about to apologize for barging in on clients, but something seemed wrong. Roma was sitting stiffly at the front desk with her hands awkwardly placed flat on its top. A young man and woman leaned against the wall behind her with their wands in their hands, and a middle-aged woman in a black leather jacket was sitting with her feet up on the desk, spinning a wand around her thumb. In the pause between spins, Hermione realized it was Roma's wand.

Hermione took a step backwards and bumped into someone behind her, someone big.

"Go inside," a man's voice ordered. Roma nodded tightly, and Hermione stepped inside, shuddering as the door closed.

"What's going on?" Hermione asked.

"Would you like to introduce us, Ro?" the older woman asked.

Roma gritted her teeth. "These are some of Fenrir's old business associates."

"I like it. Very diplomatic."

A cold lump formed in the pit of Hermione's stomach as she realized she'd never actually asked how Fenrir made money while a fugitive.

"I told you I would handle this, Celeste," Roma said.

"Yes, and how did it work out last time you told me you would handle something?"

Roma's hands lifted off the desk. In an instant, both of the people behind her pointed their wands at her, Celeste caught the wand she was spinning and gripped it for casting, and the massive man behind Hermione grabbed her wand arm and said, "Don't even think about it."

"You keep those hands flat where I can see them, Roma," Celeste said. Roma flattened them again, and the massive man let go of Hermione. "I swear you're getting as bad as Jenny.—Starla."

Celeste gestured to the younger woman. Starla stepped forward, plucked a hair out of Hermione's head, and dropped it into a potion bottle, then took a drink out of it and transformed into a replica of her. "I'm going to need your cloak and your wand, Professor," she said in Hermione's voice.

"What are you going to do?" Hermione asked.

"She's going to search your office for anything incriminating," Celeste said. "You've been poking into some rather sensitive topics; we want to make sure you're respecting everyone's privacy. If you don't put up a fight, no one gets hurt, and no one else will be affected."

"Don't try to fight them, Hermione," Roma said. "They'll win. Even if they didn't, they have nine more friends to bring in, and you don't want to be on the receiving end of a gang hexing."

A gang hexing. "Goblin mafia's pack?" Hermione asked. Roma nodded once.

"Who says her reputation is overblown?" Celeste asked. "Starla needs your cloak and wand, Professor."

Hermione glanced at each of the three strangers in front of her and was painfully aware of the enormous man at her back. With a stiff nod, she handed over her wand, then shrugged off her winter cloak and gave it to her double, too. Starla put it on and walked out, and the man behind Hermione stepped in front of the door to block it. For the first time in her life, on getting a look at him, she really understood the expression, "built like a brick shithouse."

"Mac's going to look in your bag now, Professor Granger, and you're going to let him," Celeste said.

The large man held out his hand, and Hermione was definitely not going to argue with 250 lbs of solid muscle without her wand. She handed him her bag. He dug through it, muttering with increasing surprise for a few seconds, and cursed. "Celeste, you got to see this."

He tossed it to her, and she opened it. "What in the… Morgan's tail-feathers!" She pushed her hand through the contents a few times, then shook her head. "Honestly, do you keep your entire life in here?"

"Not my entire life," Hermione said.

"This is insane. If you're going to do this nonsense, you need to steal Roma's Thief's—" Celeste stopped short and made the most exasperated expression Hermione had ever seen on a face that wasn't Snape's. She pulled out the pouch Hermione had taken from Chris and tossed it on the desk. "Thief's Pouch. Empty it."

"It is empty."

"Celeste, wait," Roma said as Celeste gripped the wand. "Hermione, put your hand in there and act like you're going to pull something out."

"She can't be that naïve," Celeste said.

"I assure you she can. Hermione, please."

Hermione put her hand inside the pouch, and cold glass met her fingers. "What the?" She pulled out a partially filled bottle of Essence of Dittany.

"Never leave a Thief's Pouch empty after it's been stolen," Roma said. "It'll get bored and cause mischief. You need to keep at least three Knuts in there."

"I wish I'd known that two days ago." Hermione pulled out a necklace her parents had brought her from Sierra Leone, then followed it with her watch and the Ever-Ink quill she'd spent half the previous day looking for. "Oh no," she said, pulling out a mug and setting it on Roma's desk. "I think that's Meg's."

"Might be," Roma said.

Hermione reached into the pouch one more time, felt around, and found a tube of lipstick. "Ooh, and I think that's Stibbons's." Who else in her circle wore 'blood of my enemies red' lipstick?

"I'd probably just vanish that one if I were you," Celeste said.

"Nah, wear it in front of her," the younger man said. "Assert dominance."

Celeste laughed and jerked her head towards him. "This one will be gunning for Mac's job in a few years." Mac cracked his knuckles without a word.

"Can I have a few Knuts out of there to put in here?" Hermione asked with a gesture to her bag.

Celeste tossed it on the desk in front of her. "Here. While you're at it, pull out everything from your research that's in there. Every. Thing."

Hermione obeyed, stacking up the contract she'd just had translated, her Mental Notebook, the notes from Clio Dragoumi's concert and the handwritten notes before that, Fenrir Grey's personnel file, and the letters between Ursula and Fenrir that she hadn't taken out yet. Thank goodness she'd already given the victims' letters to Roma.

Celeste handed the papers to the younger man. He took a pair of glasses out of his jacket pocket and put them on, then started flipping through the papers, his eyes moving back and forth in a blur.

"Is he reading those?" Hermione asked, watching him.

"Every word, so don't think you'll get anything past him," Celeste said.

He stopped and waved his wand. A trail of ink lifted off the page, gathered into a ball in the air, and dissolved into nothingness. Hermione cringed and turned away so she wouldn't have to watch. "I don't suppose those glasses are available retail?"

Celeste turned to Roma. "Did she seriously just ask that?"

"I would have been disappointed if she hadn't," Roma said with a slight chuckle in her voice. "They're Bibliolater's Glasses, Hermione. Scrivenshaft's has them behind the counter, but they'll set you back a nice Knut."

"She can use her signing bonus for it." Celeste took a folded parchment out of her jacket and put it in front of Hermione. "You're going to sign this."

"What is it?" Hermione asked, unfolding it.

"It's a non-disclosure agreement, so we don't have to visit you again.—Oh Morgan, she's actually reading it. Did I somehow give you the impression that this is negotiable?"

"I want to know what I'm agreeing to."

"It's an oboric parchment. You don't need to know; it won't let you break it. I think you'll find it very fair, though. Mr. Narshank loves the Tritonis Research Institute's true crime books. He can't wait to read yours."

"I'm not writing a true crime book." The contract was surprisingly fair, though, for a mafia contract. In exchange for 200 Galleons in cash, she couldn't explicitly tie anyone living to the goblin mafia in any tangible form, published or not, or to Law Enforcement. She could write about them outside that context, though, or about mafia activities without naming names.

"Do you know the significance of 200 Galleons?" Celeste asked as Hermione took the quill from Roma's desk and signed it.

"It's a felony amount," Hermione said.

"Oh, good, you're not that naïve. We just want to make sure some of your potion is in the cauldron. On the off chance you found a way around that contract for Law Enforcement, you would go down with us." Celeste put the contract into a Thief's Pouch of her own, then set a bag of coins on Roma's desk. "Put that in your bag so I can register receipt of payment."

"Is she always this bossy?" Hermione asked Roma while putting the money into her purse.

"She's on good behavior today," Roma said. "Usually she's worse."

"Very funny, Ro," Celeste said.

"Mac, don't you agree? Usually she's worse?"

"Do not drag me into this," Mac said.

Time inched by, punctuated by Roma and Celeste snarking at each other and the younger man pulling a line of ink from Hermione's notes now and then. Finally, he finished and gave what remained back to Hermione. She was still paging through to assess the damage when Starla returned, her hair already changing from Hermione's brown to a lighter shade as she sloughed off Hermione's winter cloak.

"Pleasure doing business with you, Professor Granger," Celeste said, standing. "If you ever want a more formal arrangement with my boss, Ro knows how to find me." She and Starla tossed Roma and Hermione their wands, all four apparating away before they caught them.

"I'm so sorry about that, Hermione," Roma said. "It never occurred to me that their boss would care about your questions when Dad's been gone so long."

"I'm the one who should apologize. I didn't know I was putting you in danger. Are you all right? Where are Greg and Sammie?"

"They'd left for St. Mungo's just before Celeste and her lot showed up. Don't worry about it. It's not my first encounter with them." She chuckled. "I'm not sure I could have warned you if I'd thought of it. You're not the only one to sign an NDA for Mr. Narshank."

"You?"

"All of Fenrir's kids when we came Of Age. For the record, I worked for Gringotts before I started Sniffers. Some of my brothers and sisters have worked for the other goblins, though. Nothing violent like Mac and Celeste; things like cardsharps, thieves, couriers."

"What did Fenrir do for them?"

"As far as I knew, he was a fence, but, well, most fences aren't on a first-name basis with Narshank the Nasty. Let's just say that anything beyond that, I didn't ask, and Dad didn't offer."

Hermione nodded numbly. They sat in uncomfortable silence, and then Roma laughed that awkward sort of laughter that releases pressure rather than because something is funny. "So, Hermione, how has your day been going?"

Hermione started laughing with her. "Let's just say it's been very educational."