[From Litha to Lammas]: More Marvellous-Cunning Than Mortal Man's Pondering, goblin Harry, 4/5
Part Three.
Part One.
Title: More Marvellous-Cunning Than Mortal Man’s Pondering (4/5)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: None, gen
Content Notes: AU (goblin-raised Harry), violence, present tense, angst, humor
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 4700
Summary: AU The second half of goblin-raised Harry’s third year and the first half of his fourth year at Hogwarts. Harry is a proud participant in the next goblin rebellion, getting justice for his godfather, freeing artifacts who shouldn’t have to be enslaved to humans, and creating alternatives to silly human traditions.
Author’s Notes: This will really make no sense unless you’ve read the three previous stories in this series: “Music Beneath the Mountains,” “In Their Own Secret Tongues He Spoke,” and “The Dragon-Headed Door.” Like those fics, this one takes its title from Tolkien, specifically the poem “The Bidding of the Minstrel”; the section titles come from that as well as other Tolkien poems. This should have five parts, and will be posted over the next five days as part of my “From Litha to Lammas” series.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
The Wonder of Hearts Is Acold
“I worry about losing my progress with the Argent Ocean when I go back to Hogwarts,” Harry tells Toothsplitter as he drifts in the little boat on the ocean and she watches him. Harry is breathing gently, letting his breath fill the sails and the voices of the Deep Ones and the Henenggrananttan fill his mind. He hasn’t managed to pierce through their desires for solitude and silence yet, but then, goblins have been working on this for centuries and have only spun out a little bit of their hatred. It would be silly to hope for more yet.
“You’ll be practicing the skills with the lessons I send you,” Toothsplitter says. Harry sways to the side as a small wave slaps the boat, and pictures the expression that will be on her face if he opens his eyes. Patient, weary, fond, understanding. “There will be more of them this year, not just the reminders to make sure that you don’t forget smithing practice or battle moves or Gobbledegook.”
“Okay,” Harry says. He knows that he’ll privilege his goblin lessons above the ones that he gets at Hogwarts if he doesn’t have the time for both. He always has. He’s a goblin, and that’s going to stay the same.
“And you will also do well in your Hogwarts classes.”
Harry sighs. A groan will get him a whole morning of beating away at a stubborn blank instead of being able to be on the Argent Ocean. “Why? Does that include Potions and Astronomy? Because Snape will never mark me fairly, and it’s still hard for me to see the stars.”
“Of course it doesn’t include Potions. I would never ask you to put effort into a class taught by a personal enemy. Astronomy is sometimes reflected by patterns of metals underground, so I will ask that you concentrate on it as much as you can, and use charms to enhance your eyesight as needed.”
Harry nods obediently. That sounds a lot better than having to abandon his lessons about the Argent Ocean and all the progress he’s making in listening.
“And for now, tell me what have learned about the difference between the hatred of the Deep Ones and the hatred of the Henenggrananttan.”
*
“So!”
Harry looks up with a small smile as the door of their compartment slides open. Luna is reading The Quibbler upside-down, and Ginny is polishing her knives. “Hi, Fred and George. What is it?”
“What? Can’t we come and visit our best stone-speaking mate?” George flings himself into a seat next to Luna.
“Accusing us of having an ulterior motive!” Fred clutches his hands to his chest. “That’s a shot to the heart, that is!”
“I can indulge you, or I can ask you to tell me why you came here. Come on, get busy. I have a few more things to think of about how I’m going to ruin this Tournament that Bartemius Crouch is going to put on.”
“That’s what we came about, actually.” Fred flops down next to Ginny.
“Crouch?”
“Sort of.” George leans forwards, his eyes glinting. “You might have heard about some small bets that were made at the Quidditch World Cup. About the Bulgarian Seeker catching the Snitch even though the Irish team still won, that kind of thing.”
“I heard about that,” Harry says, shaking his head. The goblins pulling their funding from the Quidditch World Cup ultimately didn’t cancel it. The teams still played, and people still came and watched the game. At least it meant that the team mascots couldn’t come along and the Ministry couldn’t afford to pay the Obliviators to rent Muggle land, though; the fans had to come and go home the same day.
“So.” Fred crosses his right leg over his left. “If there was someone who wagered against us, and who didn’t pay up-”
“Who owes a lot of gambling debts,” George interjects.
“And some of those to goblins.” Fred nods.
“What would you do? Would you make it your mission to destroy them as well? If they also happened to be involved in the organization of this Tournament?”
Harry grins. “Would this hypothetical person’s name be Ludo Bagman?”
George gazes at him worshipfully. “Wow, little Harrikins is incredibly smart, Gred.”
“A veritable gen-yus, Forge,” Fred agrees, his grin glittering like newly-minted Sickles. “Would you do it?”
“I could do that, since he owes gambling debts to the goblins, but not as part of the blood feud against Crouch. I might call on you to help, mind.”
George bows extravagantly. “We live to serve, Master Goblin Genius sir.”
Rotten the Fire
“Are you excited about the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Harry?”
That’s Cho Chang, an older girl in Ravenclaw who seems to be making an effort lately to be friendly. Harry gives her a reserved smile. He suspects that she used to be involved in bullying Luna, or at least laughing at it, and he isn’t ready to let her back into his good graces quite yet.
“I’m excited about the ways I can destroy it.”
Cho’s mouth falls open. Then she covers it and coughs. “What? I mean, why?” She glances around the library. For the moment, they’re by themselves, since Fred and George have Herbology, Luna has gone to find a book that talks about ants, and Ginny is in Potions. Cho lowers her voice anyway. “I mean, you’re joking, I know, but you shouldn’t joke about that kind of thing where someone might take it seriously.”
Harry blinks at her. “I was serious. I’m going to destroy the Tournament because Crouch threw my godfather into prison without a trial, and I have a blood feud with him.”
Cho taps her fingers on the table, then sits down across from him. Harry gives her a faintly puzzled smile. Cho’s never been mean to him, but she has to Luna, and she’s stopped listening to objects the way some of Harry’s yearmates do. Right now, she gives no sign that she hears the sighs of the table over being tapped on, for example.
“I think you should reconsider that,” she tells Harry, what seems to be earnestly. “You shouldn’t wreck the Tournament.”
“Why not?”
“It’s for international and inter-school unity. That has to be more important than what one man organizing it did.”
Harry shrugs. He’s encountered this attitude in human society before, and it never ceases to puzzle him. Hurt a person and pretend it doesn’t matter. It would make sense if they were just the absolute opposite of goblin society, which values the individual, and always did what was the best for the collective good. But instead, they hurt people and think it doesn’t matter, unless the person is them. Then they wail.
Harry thinks it’s just annoying hypocrisy, not a cultural tenet.
“That attitude let Crouch get away with throwing my godfather in prison for twelve years. He spent twelve years around the Dementors. That has to be compensated. The Ministry was going to give him a bunch of Galleons, but the Wizengamot voted it down.”
Cho shakes her head. “Can’t you let it go? It’s in the past. Your godfather is free now. Just let him enjoy that.”
“What’s to keep Crouch from doing it again, or retaliating? I offered to let him duel me, and he didn’t want to. This is the best way to hurt him.”
“But there are other ways to get satisfaction.”
“Like what?”
“Legal means.”
Harry snorts. “Blood feuds are legal in both human and goblin society, though. The Malfoys and the Weasleys still have a feud that’s been ongoing for generations.” Harry just nods to Draco Malfoy or ignores him when he sees him, because the blood feud is Ginny’s and not his, but if he ever has to jump in, he knows what side he’s on, which is all he wants.
“I think that the Malfoys and the Weasleys don’t really fight each other, though.”
“Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy got into a fight with each other in a bookshop a few years ago. That’s what Ginny says.”
Cho gives him a look of frustration and stands up with a little huff. “It would mean a lot to me if you didn’t ruin the Tournament. A boy I know is going to enter his name, and we could have a Ravenclaw Champion. Wouldn’t that matter to you? Don’t you care about your House at all?”
Harry blinks. “But the person who’s selected would probably die. The Tournament killed a lot of people in the past. Why would I want to send someone to their death? Why would that show I cared about my House?”
Cho stalks away. Luna comes out from between the bookshelves at once and sits down in front of Harry, looking at him earnestly. “You know, a few people were talking about you and Cho.”
“How? I’ve never talked to her before today. Except, maybe once? I think she was complaining about some of the things I did to make sure people didn’t bully you.”
Luna leans forwards after giving him a sad little smile. “People were saying that your mum was pretty, and that you might want to date a pretty girl like Cho. They thought she was the prettiest girl in Ravenclaw.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “Well, that’s nonsense.”
“Why?”
“First of all, you are a lot more beautiful,” Harry says firmly. “You listen and you’re fair and open-minded and generous with your time, and you’re intelligent and you have honor. What does a pretty face matter next to that? Not that I think I know for sure what humans think is pretty anyway.”
Luna beams at him. “Thank you for saying so. But you said first. What’s the second reason?”
“I don’t have any bad words for goblins who marry humans. I’m sure it works out fine most of the time. Look at Professor Flitwick. But I’m a goblin who’s going to marry a goblin.” Harry shrugs and picks up his detailed plan to ruin Crouch. “That’s just the way it is.”
*
“Harry.” Professor Dumbledore is staring at him again. Harry raises an eyebrow. The Headmaster is seeing him alone, the way he did last year when he wanted to talk about the goblin war. Maybe he’s finally learned that having the Heads of House there doesn’t do much, or maybe Professor McGonagall was open about the distrust Harry sensed in her a while ago.
“Yes, sir?”
Professor Dumbledore slaps some letters on the desk, and Harry looks at them politely. They seem to be thick, with slanting writing across them, but Harry can’t read the writing from this distance. And he doesn’t see any seals or names that would tell him who they were from.
“Do you know what these are?”
“People who are trying to educate you about the goblin wars?”
Professor Dumbledore takes a breath so deep it makes his beard swell out. “No. They are from Headmaster Igor Karkaroff of Durmstrang and Madame Olympe Maxime of Beauxbatons. They both say that you told them their schools shouldn’t compete in the Tri-Wizard Tournament.”
“Yes,” Harry says, although he wonders why they wrote to the Headmaster and not him. He’s the one who sent the initial owls, after all.
This time, Dumbledore pinches his nose hard enough that he’ll probably leave dents. Harry frowns. He thinks he has another letter to write after this meeting.
“You cannot threaten them like that, Harry. The Tri-Wizard Tournament is an attempt at international and inter-school cooperation-”
“I didn’t threaten them. I just told them that since I was going to ruin the tournament, they wouldn’t want to waste that time coming all this way, so they would save money if they stayed home.”
“Why are you going to ruin the tournament?”
Harry shrugs. “You probably heard that I declared a blood feud with Mr. Crouch because he threw Sirius in prison without a trial. I’m going to make sure that I ruin the tournament because he’s relying on it to make him popular, and he’s one of the judges. He should lose something that he loves.” It’s not a perfect solution, because Harry knows Crouch can’t care for the tournament as much as Harry cares for Sirius, but at least it should cause the requisite amount of frustration.
“Harry, you cannot ruin the tournament.”
“Don’t worry, Headmaster. I have a whole list of ways to do it. But I don’t think you need to worry about it. I’m not going to do anything that injures anyone else.”
“Harry, I mean that you cannot because I will not permit it.”
Harry sighs. “Sir, please don’t take this the wrong way, because you did a few things right and made sure that we could give you back the money taken from your vault, but what makes you think you can stop me?”
“You’re a student at this castle. I could have you expelled.”
“All right.”
Dumbledore clenches one hand to his heart, as if his nails are going to drill through his chest. Harry frowns. He must send that letter after this conversation, right away. “I thought you wanted to continue being schooled here at Hogwarts.”
“There are people and classes I would miss if I wasn’t here anymore,” Harry admits. “But I can write owls to most of them, and some of them can come visit me. And Professor Flitwick would go with me, sir, you have to know that. I know he had a conversation with you about that last term. So you would get rid of your Charms professor as well as me.”
“I cannot-I cannot allow you to disrupt the Tri-Wizard Tournament. It’s the biggest event in Hogwarts history for two hundred years!”
“The fact that it’s bigger than my godfather’s lack of a trial is precisely part of the problem, sir.”
“Sirius’s trial or a lack of it has nothing to do with Hogwarts. The Tournament is being held here!”
“So? I’d think you’d be relieved that I’m going to destroy it. This way, none of your students will die during it.”
Dumbledore outright glares at him. Harry shakes his head. There’s good in the Headmaster; just look at the way he reacted to the description of the Realm of Song that Harry sang for him last year. But like too many humans, he assumes his own concerns are the only ones that matter.
“You will not be allowed to do this,” Dumbledore says. “I will put the Forbidding Charm on you myself if I have to.”
“Goblins are immune to Forbidding Charms, sir. I thought you knew that.”
“Physically, you are a human and not a goblin. I thought you knew that.” Dumbledore draws his wand.
Harry grips his daggers, just in case, but he’s already sure he knows what will happen. And he does. The spell passes over him like a delicate spring breeze, and Dumbledore’s wand, which has always been silent, gives a buzz of curiosity. Harry opens his mouth to answer, but Dumbledore interrupts, again. He’s staring between Harry and his wand with a face so pale that he must be having heart palpitations.
“I’m a goblin,” Harry says. “I thought you accepted that, sir, after last year. But you didn’t.” He shakes his head and walks to the door of the office.
Dumbledore doesn’t say anything or come after him. That gives Harry more time to go to the owlery, of course. He does it at once, frowning all the way.
It might cause the tournament to be canceled if Dumbledore hurts himself, but Harry doesn’t want that. He wants to do it himself. And he does have a dollop of concern for the man. Harry’s not human. He can think of more than one thing at once.
Unsleeping
Harry watches in resignation as the students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons march into Hogwarts. Honestly, their Heads did them a disservice. They’re either going to die, or get hurt, or be embarrassed when they find out that they came all this way for nothing.
But his attention snaps out of his gloom when they announce how they’re going to choose the Champions. They’re brought out a goblet and lit it on fire.
The goblet is shrieking in pain.
Harry stands up at his seat and shouts, “Why are you hurting that poor thing? Are you just all a bunch of sadists?”
Everyone stares at him, but Harry doesn’t care. He stomps away from the Ravenclaw table and up to the Goblet of Fire and conjures the strongest water he can. It pours over the flames and doesn’t do them any harm.
Harry scowls. Of course they would make sure that their torture of the poor thing wouldn’t easily be reversed. The wizarding world does like to protect its right to torture. The Dementors and Azkaban are a prime example.
He takes the goblet gently from the table and turns around. He’s going to go dunk it in Hogwarts’s lake and see what happens. If that doesn’t work, then he’ll take it into the tunnels of fire and earth through which Toothsplitter sends him his lessons and try the effect of a greater fire.
Hands snatch the goblet away from him, though. Harry wheels around and sees Crouch sneering down at him, with the man the twins complained about-Ludo Bagman-behind him. Harry gives Bagman a long glance. Bagman pales, as if only now remembering that he owes the goblins as well as the Weasley twins money.
“Mr. Potter!” Crouch is shouting. “This is unacceptable interference in the procedures of the Tournament, absolutely unacceptable!”
“What is he talking about?” demands a voice with a French accent that Harry supposes is Madam Maxime. From what he’s heard, she’s half-giant. It’s shameful that she’s retreated so far from her heritage that she can’t hear the goblet. Giants can hear all the elements, including fire. “Why would he be upset that the Goblet of Fire is being used to select the Champions? Does he want to cheat?”
“I can hear it screaming in pain,” Harry tells her, glaring at her and letting the full force of his disapproval come through. She pales, and Harry tries to take the goblet back from Crouch, unsuccessfully. Harry’s hands fall to his daggers. Crouch gasps and takes a step back.
“That’s ridiculous. You’re not a goblin.”
In touch enough with her giant heritage to realize what he must be, then. Or maybe she’s just heard the rumors. Harry gives her an icy smile. “I was raised by them. I consider myself more goblin than human.” He faces Crouch. “Let the goblet go or we’ll have that duel you denied me right here and now.”
“It’s a cup.”
“And you’re an idiot. You’ve hurt the world more than it has.”
“That is enough, Harry.” Dumbledore is pressing forwards now. He frowns chidingly at Harry. “I warned you that you wouldn’t be allowed to interfere with the Tournament. You are going to let Mr. Crouch do as he needs to do. In any case, the fire will go out tomorrow. The Goblet will not be in pain long.”
Harry stares at him. “Why is twenty-four hours an acceptable amount of torture?”
Dumbledore’s smile tightens. “If you will excuse us, Igor, Maxime, Ludo, Bartemius?” he murmurs. “It seems that Mr. Potter and I have some things to talk about.” He motions Harry quickly towards a small room off to the side of the Great Hall.
Harry goes with him, but he’s not going to let this go, and he’s going to help the Goblet tonight. When Dumbledore shuts the door behind him, though, he doesn’t immediately talk about the Goblet or the Tournament.
“Why did you set a goblin healer on me?” he demands.
Harry frowns. “Because I was concerned about you. The way you were hurting yourself when we had that talk in your office worried me. That usually means that you’re psychologically unhealthy, you know. So I told Blackeye, and if all she’s done is send you owls, then she hasn’t done as much as she could have.”
“You will tell her to desist with the letters at once, Mr. Potter.”
“You think Blackeye does what I tell her to do?” Harry asks in amazement. “Wow, you really know nothing about goblin healers at all.”
Dumbledore stares at him with an expression that Harry is becoming kind of familiar with. It looks like helpless frustration. It could be a lot different, Harry thinks, but Dumbledore won’t listen.
“You don’t know how many people are depending on this Tournament to spread good will and to entertain the public,” Dumbledore says softly. “It’s a confusing, uncertain time. People are upset about the destruction of Azkaban and the Dementors-”
“Why? I’d think it would be a relief to know that there’s nothing around that can eat your soul anymore.”
Dumbledore stares at the ceiling for a minute. Harry looks up, but there’s nothing there except some flecks of mica that he makes a note to come back and look at later. Fancy Dumbledore noticing it.
“Because the prison and the Dementors were a means of keeping criminals safe and secure,” Dumbledore says, through teeth that definitely are clenched. Harry is just lucky there are no warriors around who might take Dumbledore’s locked jaw as a threat. “People who are insane or Dark wizards and might hurt them.”
“And all the people in Azkaban are like that?”
At least Dumbledore is smart enough to realize what he means. “Not everyone is innocent like Sirius, Harry.”
“But how do we know that? Mr. Crouch put a lot of people in prison without trials. Some of them could be innocent, too. He did that even though he gave some Death Eaters trials, like his son,” Harry adds, turned onto a side-path. “Why?”
Dumbledore closes his eyes and shakes his head. “We have wandered from the topic. The point is, there are many people in the wizarding world who are confused and uncertain-”
“And cowards.”
“What?”
“I would have received more offers to duel me if they weren’t also cowards.”
Dumbledore massages his forehead for a second. Harry shakes his head. He will have to write another letter to Blackeye about Dumbledore’s headaches. He supposes it shouldn’t surprise him, since Dumbledore is an old human, and they have more health problems, but it’s still a little concerning that apparently the man wasn’t taking care of himself at all before Blackeye started sending him letters.
“Anyway,” Dumbledore continues, “we need the Tournament to-give people something else to think about.”
“To distract them from the goblin rebellion?” Harry nods. “Well, I suppose you would need it, since you don’t have Minister Fudge making speeches anymore that can do that. But you can’t really think I would happily work against my own people, sir. I have even more reason to destroy the Tournament right now.”
Something seems to break behind Dumbledore’s eyes. He bends down and hisses, like he’s been studying the language of snakes, “Fine. You go ahead and try. You won’t be able to put the fire in the Goblet out.”
He sweeps out of the room, while Harry trails after him, wondering if there’s a disease that makes people emphasize the last words of sentences. He’ll have to ask Blackeye. He’s sure that she’ll know how to treat it.
And he is going to put the fire out.
*
Except it turns out to be impossible.
Harry sits by the Goblet of Fire later that night, after a bunch of people have come and dropped their names in it, deaf to the Goblet’s wailing in pain.
He took it to the Lake. He fetched some of the water from the Realm of Song that he keeps with him to remind himself of home and dropped it on the flames. He cast all the flame-resistance charms he knows. He tried sticking his basilisk-fang dagger in the fire, on the theory that something that can destroy an enchanted soul-receptacle should be able to destroy these flames.
Nothing has helped. When Harry tried to kidnap the Goblet to freedom beyond the bounds of the school and send it through the fire-tunnels to the Realm, where goblins smarter than him would be able to figure out how to save it, a spell he hadn’t noticed snapped into being and tugged the Goblet back to the Great Hall.
Harry stands up, finally. For some reason, most of the people who have been coming into the Hall to drop their names have frowned at him. They don’t seem to think he should be able to get inside the Age Line that Dumbledore drew about the Goblet.
That Age Line focuses on whether the humans approaching it are above seventeen, though. Harry steps easily past it because he’s a journeyman smith and he’s fought in a war and the goblins acknowledge his competence, so as far as his people are concerned, he’s an adult.
He stands close to the Goblet and touches it gently. It moans at him.
“I’m so sorry,” Harry whispers, blinking away tears. “At least the fire should go out tomorrow and you won’t suffer any longer. But I should have been able to do something to stop them hurting you. I’m sorry.”
He swallows and reaches into his pocket for the twist of parchment that’s there, proclaiming his name and that he’s a resident of the Realm of Song. He can’t help the Goblet, but he can avenge it.
He throws his parchment into the flames, and for a moment, they spark and wave back and forth, so brilliant a white and blue that Harry knows the Goblet has heard him. He rests his hand gently against the base of it. Then he turns and walks back to Ravenclaw Tower, so he can get some sleep.
His bed won’t be satisfied unless he sleeps in it some, and the last thing Harry wants is to make an object angry when he failed the Goblet so badly.
Unlooked For
“The Champion for Durmstrang is Viktor Krum!”
There’s clapping and hooting as the stern boy with the dark eyes, who the twins told him caught the Snitch at the World Cup, stands up from the Slytherin table and walks to the front of the Great Hall. Dumbledore directs him into the little room where he spoke with Harry yesterday.
“The Champion for Beauxbatons is Fleur Delacour!”
The girl who’s probably part Veela stands up from a few seats down from Harry. Harry nods politely to her, but she rakes him with her eyes and goes past. Harry sighs. The Veela never have got over their loss to the goblins of the Kerinnike Clan in that wager centuries ago, but they shouldn’t have picked arm-wrestling.
“The Champion for Hogwarts is Cedric Diggory!”
The boy who stands up from the Hufflepuff table worries Harry. He’s been nice sometimes, and was one of the few upper-year students who wanted to learn to listen to objects when Harry first came to Hogwarts. Harry gnaws his lip even as the Hufflepuffs explode into cheers. He didn’t see Cedric come to put his name into the Goblet, or they would have had Words. He must have done it after Harry went to bed.
Dumbledore opens his mouth to make some sort of grand announcement, but the Goblet’s flames spark and leap again, and Harry’s parchment pops out. Harry smiles. He enjoys the puzzled frown on Dumbledore’s face second only to the sigh of relief the Goblet gives as the fire goes out at last.
The Headmaster unfolds the parchment. “And the Champion for the Realm of Song is…Harry Potter.”
Harry stands up and waves. “Hi,” he says, and then he walks towards the little room where the rest of the Champions have gone. “Don’t bother,” he adds, as Dumbledore walks down rapidly towards him. “I know the way.”
The school is roaring in disapproval behind him, but the Goblet laughed before it went out. That’s the only thing Harry cares about right now.
Besides, now that he’s in the Tournament as a contestant, he can ruin it much more efficiently. Toothsplitter will be proud when he tells her. She always wants him to be efficient.
Part Five.