Chapter Twenty-Six of 'Made of Common Clay'- In Mine
Chapter Twenty-Five.
Title: Made of Common Clay (26/48)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Minor mentions of Ron/Hermione, Molly/Arthur, Neville/Hannah, Luna/Rolf, and past Harry/Ginny; otherwise, this fic is gen and will remain so.
Content Notes: Angst, violence, torture, politics, present tense, cynical Harry
Rating: R (for violence)
Summary: Harry has reached a very bitter and jaded thirty. His efforts to reform the Ministry haven’t lessened the corruption or pure-blood bigotry one bit. That’s when he finds out that he’s apparently a part of a pure-blood nobility he’s never heard of before; he’s Lord Potter and Lord Black. Unfortunately, that revelation’s come too late for him to be a reformer. All Harry wants to do is tear the system down and salt the earth. And with a double Lordship, he just might have the power to do that.
Author’s Notes: This fic is partially a parody of some of the tropes common in Lord Potter/Lord Black fics. The title and most of the chapter titles come from one of Oscar Wilde’s poems: “Sweet I blame you not for mine the fault was, had I not been made of common clay/I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.” I don’t yet know how long this fic will be, but it will get pretty dark.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Six-In Mine
Harry strolls through the doors of Gringotts, merrily ignoring the goblins that turn to stare at him. He’s wearing a thick glamour that makes his feature seem to shift every five minutes and will confuse wizards, but it does less than nothing against goblin magic or goblin eyes.
Harry is kind of counting on that, actually.
By the time Harry makes his way to the counters at the back of the bank’s entrance, he has a large, silent crowd of goblins following him. A few other wizards glance over, but none pay enough attention to realize that what’s happening is actually unusual instead of “some creature thing.” Harry wants to sigh, but he’s smiling too widely for that.
“How dare you come here?” hisses the goblin Harry stands in front of. He’s a tall member of his species with iron-grey eyes and a hand that keeps flickering down to something under the counter, probably an axe. “You are to conduct all business from a distance and never enter the bank unless accompanied by other Aurors on official business, Mr. Potter. That was the deal.”
“It was the deal when I was a proper law-abiding member of the Ministry, and the Ministry also wasn’t passing bills that would limit the rights of people other than humans. I have information for you. Do you want it or not?”
The goblin in front keeps glaring, but the crowd behind him starts to shift. Harry can tell that someone is making their way to the front of it. He keeps paying attention to the grey-eyed goblin, and he keeps beaming.
“This matter should not be handled here,” says a goblin with a brilliant scarlet cap who appears next to Harry’s left arm. “Let us invite Mr. Potter into the back of our business.”
Harry notices their smiles. They all assume that he’ll never emerge again if they invite him back there, or only after he’s agreed to turn all his gold over to the bank as reparations, which is something they’ve demanded and Harry has never granted.
Harry smiles back and strolls away with a smaller crowd around him this time, about nine goblins. The one with the scarlet cap leads, now and then glancing back at him as if to make sure that he doesn’t run away. Harry hears the scrape of steel and whetstones from behind him.
It doesn’t matter. The goblins haven’t turned him in right away to the Ministry, and that means that Harry was right to assume they aren’t really on the Ministry’s side. They’re on their own, and they have their own methods of gaining vengeance and waiting for it.
That’s a trait Harry intends to use now.
The goblin with the scarlet cap unlocks the door to a room that, when he steps inside it, Harry can see is made entirely of iron. Iron works to neutralize a lot of magic; it’s more resistant than it should be to melting under the pressure of fire curses, for example. From lines in the walls, Harry also assumes that the iron plates that make up the walls can shift out into weapons.
It would do absolutely nothing to stop his magic. But Harry appreciates the thought.
The goblins separate, five of them, including the leader with the scarlet cap, forming up in front of him, four behind. Harry already has his magic watching out for threats, and he’ll know in an instant, without looking, if any of the goblins behind him lift an axe or start to make the iron plates move. For now, he concentrates on the goblin with the scarlet cap, who has her arms folded.
“Who told you that you could come here?” she says, and champs her pointed teeth together.
“The Ministry’s desperate tactics that are going to backfire on them soon. And which would affect the smooth running of your bank.”
“The Ministry would not dare interfere with us.”
“Then why did you tell Bill Weasley that this proposed law would?”
The goblins pause. Harry waits. Perhaps they didn’t know that Bill would pass that information on to him, or perhaps there are divisions among the goblins themselves on the best way to respond to the Ministry.
The one with the scarlet cap says finally, stiffly, “It’s not certain.”
“Can you afford to wait until it’s certain? I know goblin history has primarily been reactive, but this once, I thought you might like to be proactive.”
There’s a rush of angry muttering and shifting and more scraping from behind him. Harry ignores it, eyes still fixed on the goblin with the scarlet cap. She raises a clawed hand, and the sounds stop.
“You have little to offer us, Potter. Even your gold would be forfeit if we lived under laws more understanding of those without human blood.”
Harry tips his head, an acknowledgement instead of an agreement. “I can offer you enough information to ride out the coming storm. If you aid me in causing enough of a distraction that the Ministry can’t pass this law right away, then I’ll promise to spare you as much as possible in the changes that are coming.”
The goblins stare again. Harry waits. He finds it no more intimidating than he does when confronting a pack of werewolves.
“You threaten us, again,” says the leader at last. Her voice is thick with what Harry regretfully thinks is anger instead of astonishment. “You expect us to be-to be your servants. The same arrogance exhibited by the Ministry. Why would we make a pact with you?”
“You don’t have to,” Harry says. “But you know as well as I do that this bill is going to make life more difficult for you.”
“We already aren’t citizens of Britain. We already can’t carry wands.”
“But until now, there was a silent agreement that there were still some things you could do and some things the Ministry would look the other way on. That isn’t going to apply anymore. The Ministry is going to put into law that it can’t look the other way. Do you imagine that’s going to make things easier for you? Instead of harder?”
The goblins exchange glances. They’re muttering to each other in Gobbledygook. Harry waits. He can’t do anything more to influence them unless they come up with some actual argument that he can respond to. He’s said what he came to say.
Finally, the goblin with the scarlet cap turns to him. “We will ally with you if you will give all your gold to the bank.”
“No.”
“You are the one who wants our help, human!”
Harry nods. “But not enough to sacrifice everything I own.”
There’s a longer series of waving arms and yelling this time, although none of it in English. Harry waits in the center of the room, his magic watching over his shoulder so that the goblins behind him can’t surprise him. It seems like a long time before the one in the scarlet cap says, “We demand another price.”
“You can ask for it. That doesn’t mean I’ll grant it.”
“You are a fugitive from the Ministry,” the goblin says, fast and precise. “But you still have access to some of the inner rooms of the Ministry until they change the wards and update the security procedures.”
Harry nods, wondering if they want wands, like the werewolves. But it turns out to be both simpler and more complicated than that.
“The Department of Mysteries stole artifacts from us. We will provide you with their descriptions and their names. You will go into that Department and fetch them for us. You have a week.”
Harry can’t help smiling. “Agreed.”
The goblin with the scarlet cap eyes him suspiciously all the time that the other goblins are preparing a list of artifacts and what they know about the Unspeakables who took them. But Harry remains silent. He doubts they’ll be able to figure out that he’s hated the Department of Mysteries ever since Sirius died there.
And there’s always been a sort of (un)professional rivalry between Aurors and Unspeakables. This is going to be a positive pleasure.
*
Harry walks into the Ministry under the same shifting glamour that he used to enter the bank. As he thought, they don’t have wards up against that kind of thing. Too expensive, requiring too powerful a wizard to cast.
Although I’ll bet they hire them done after this, Harry thinks with a chuckle as he steps into the lift that’s waiting for him and hits the number nine. It’s late at night, and most of the Ministry workers have gone home, but there’s always someone working in the Department of Mysteries.
The lift lets him off into a blank black corridor. Harry shrugs. They’ve probably changed the setup of this department more times in the last few years than the rest of the Ministry combined has.
He makes sure that his wand is ready and loose in his hand, but doesn’t immediately lift it. He walks forwards instead, and comes to a single blue door set into a black wall. Harry knocks. He hears a grumble and someone swearing behind the door before footsteps start towards him.
“What do you want?” the apprentice in robes of pale silver snaps as she opens the door. “If you have any business that requires the personal attention of an Unspeakable, then you’ve come to the wr-”
Harry Stuns her wordlessly and lowers her gently to the ground. The Unspeakables have wards up that tell them whenever a spell like that is cast within the Department, but Harry cast it beyond the threshold, and allowed the ambient aura of the Stunner to knock her unconscious more than the magic itself.
That means that it won’t last as long, though. Harry moves quickly to her desk and sweeps drawers open, looking for notes on the latest department redesign.
There they are. They’re in a red ledger, like the ones that Harry remembers some Unspeakables bringing to trials years ago. Harry flips through them and quickly finds the notation he’s looking for. Unspeakables might alter the arrangement of the individual rooms in the department a lot, but they always group artifacts the same way, by the race they were stolen, excuse him, borrowed from.
Harry hears footsteps coming down a corridor from further back in the department. Harry flicks a Disillusionment Charm at the Stunned apprentice and walks towards the corridor. The Unspeakable who’s waiting there peers at him in a way that suggests nearsightedness to Harry, even though their face is covered with a cloak. He ought to know the signs.
“Eh? You’re not Rosalina. Where is she?”
“She got a blast in the face from an artifact she was studying,” Harry says, something he knows happens all the time. “Listen, there’s not a lot of time before I have to be out of here, and they’re very hot on the artifacts being there on the dot of midnight. Can we move?”
As often happens, an air of authority works better than most spells. The Unspeakable turns and walks alongside him, but does ask, “Who is they? What artifacts?”
Harry gives the Unspeakable an incredulous stare. As he thought would probably be the case, this one’s grey robe is pale, although not silver. He’s a full-fledged member of the Department of Mysteries, but not a high-ranking one. They don’t stay at night. “Do you think I can tell you? I’m deep grey, man.”
For a moment, he gets peered at again, and then the Unspeakable says, “But I can see your face.”
“Which just changed,” Harry says, which is the truth. “See? I’m so deep grey that I don’t get a cloak.”
That impresses the wizard in a way it wouldn’t if more of them had an ounce of logic, as Hermione would say. He nods and trots alongside Harry as he makes his way to the room where they’ve collected goblin artifacts. Harry’s memorization of the route through turning doors and rooms and spinning staircases seems to impress him.
“Goblins? Why them in particular?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“These artifacts are the key to stopping a goblin rebellion.” Harry lowers his voice so that the Unspeakable leans towards him as they pass under an arch that promptly spins like a Muggle revolving door, and opens a whole new corridor on the other side. “The goblins need to look at them and be hypnotized into believing that they’ll get them back, or they’ll cut off all access to the bank on Monday.”
“They can’t do that!” the Unspeakable cries, clutching at what’s probably hair.
Harry sighs dramatically and draws the list of artifacts the goblins gave him out of his pocket. “Hence why I need these.”
“Yes, yes, of course, Deep Grey,” the Unspeakable says, and bows humbly to him, then runs ahead of Harry down a corridor, stepping only on certain tiles. Harry follows in the exact same pattern, only to find a clock facing him where a door should be. The Unspeakable reaches up and spins its hands, babbling all the time. “You’ll tell them I was helpful? That they should promote me past Pale Grey as soon as they can?”
Harry blinks as the clock splits in two and the glass panels over the pendulum swing back like windows. “I’ll tell them you were helpful if I get out of here with the artifacts on time.”
“Right, right, of course!”
The Unspeakable ushers Harry into the room. It’s full of shelves that seem to lean towards the center of the circular floor, but probably really don’t; that’s the architecture of the department dizzying Harry like most of the rest of the place. The Unspeakable runs around, collecting blades and axes and small metallic spheres and what resembles nothing so much as a cup made out of a skull off the shelves with blinding speed.
“Anything else?” Harry finds the list snatched out of his hand so the Unspeakable can read it. “Oh, the Sword of Gryffindor…we don’t store that down here, you know, Deep Grey.” For the first time, a hint of suspicion creeps into his voice. “The Hogwarts Headmasters have never let it out of their possession.”
“Honestly?” Harry leans in, and the Unspeakable nods, seeming enchanted. “I think the goblins put it on the list just to fuck with us.”
The Unspeakable laughs and hands Harry the bag of the artifacts. “It was nice to work with you, Deep Grey. Please commend me to your superiors.”
Harry nods, a pleasant smile on his face, and turns back towards the clock they came in by. The Unspeakable makes a sharp noise. Harry doesn’t have to turn around to know that there’s now a drawn wand pointed at him.
“A real Deep Grey would know that you couldn’t go back through the clock.”
Harry sighs. Well, the disguise was nice while it lasted. He flexes his magic, and a shelf that leans out from the wall comes crashing down on the Unspeakable. From the groans, no one’s died. But Harry has to leave.
He scans the walls for other doors and finds one standing opposite him. He moves over and tugs on the knob without much hope. If it’s an entrance like the one with the clock, then it would require special Unspeakable knowledge to manipulate.
Instead, it opens. It even shows him a view of the lifts that take you from the regular Ministry down to the Department of Mysteries. But these look incredibly far away, down a corridor that keeps bulging and rippling and stretching back and forth.
Harry takes a deep breath and draws his wand. He doesn’t like doing this, when he’s still a little magically exhausted from escaping the house that Shafiq tried to turn into his death-trap, but he’s going to attempt it anyway. “Ignis finite!”
The Ending Fire rips out of him, and runs up and down the corridor, tearing and melting away pieces of the wall to show regular stone and a flat floor. This spell ends all magic, forcing it back into a non-magical state. Harry focuses his gaze on the lifts and runs, not daring to look down at the wildly seesawing reality under his feet.
Once his foot plunges down into nothingness. Harry hits the stone that’s just beyond that, rolls, and pulls himself immediately back upright, and runs.
He reaches the lifts and jabs his fingers into a button. For a moment, he assumes nothing is going to happen. The entire building seems to be shaking around him, and the lifts aren’t there.
But then one set of doors opens. Just as the whole world seems to shake itself sideways, Harry leaps into the lift and pushes another button. He doesn’t care which one it is, as long as it gets him away from this crazy floor.
The lift says something in a cool voice and begins to move. Harry sighs massively when he realizes it’s up, and that the shaking has stopped. He forces himself back to his knees and looks down at the bag in his hands.
He has no idea if it’s everything the goblins asked for. He has a hard time thinking it is, when they did put the Sword of Gryffindor on the list. But he wouldn’t have known what the artifacts looked like anyway, which makes it a good idea to rely on that Unspeakable’s expertise.
The lift finally stops at the Atrium level. Harry relaxes. He must have pushed that button without realizing it. It would make sense, because it was always the level he went to when he needed to leave after a long day of work.
The doors open, and Harry steps out…
To stop when he sees the dozen or more drawn wands pointed his way, all from fellow Aurors, with a severely disappointed-looking Kingsley at the front of them.
Harry smiles at them. “Hi.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven.
This entry was originally posted at https://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/993365.html. Comment wherever you like.