[From Litha to Lammas]: More Marvellous-Cunning Than Mortal Man's Pondering, goblin Harry, 1/5
Title: More Marvellous-Cunning Than Mortal Man’s Pondering
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 5500
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.
More Marvellous-Cunning Than Mortal Man’s Pondering
“Sing us yet more of Eärendel the wandering,
chant us a lay of his white-oared ship,
more marvellous-cunning than mortal man's pondering,
foamily musical out of the deep.”
-J. R. R. Tolkien, “The Bidding of the Ministrel.”
A Burning Wonder
“But there was not even a pretense of human justice.”
Harry winces a little as he watches Blackeye examine Sirius. His godfather had to be persuaded to turn back from a dog first, once they were inside the Healer’s cavern, but now he seems to have relaxed. The soft silver glow from the walls does that, Harry knows. He wonders if Sirius can hear the chant of the rocks who are happy to have been chosen to help Blackeye, who listened to them and gave them pleasing forms.
Maybe not. Sirius is still human. But he does spend a lot of time as a dog.
“No, I don’t think so,” Harry says quietly, when Blackeye looks at him. Sirius, his back and feet cradled by some of the carved rocks covered with woven blankets of dreaming cotton, isn’t answering. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but from what he says, the humans just assumed he was guilty because he was upset about Pettigrew. They put him in Azkaban.”
“That place,” Blackeye says, her head bowed as she moves her hands above Sirius, shaping the song-vibrations of the rocks to turn his skin transparent and show her his bones and organs. “I will see that place destroyed.”
Harry nods. He doesn’t doubt the power of the vow. Of course, no one in his right mind would ever accuse Blackeye of lying, either, but one might privately doubt the power another goblin has to keep his or her word. Blackeye, though, has muscles more dense than quartz and a will stronger than a Deep One’s tentacles. She will achieve it.
Blackeye lets her hands drift back and frowns at Sirius for a moment. Then she walks into a corner of the cavern and retrieves a vial made of singing glass and capped with bone. When she brings it back, she shows it to Harry. “Do you know what this is, young amaraczh?”
Harry examines the vial carefully, but has to shake his head. The glass and the bone don’t speak of each other as most objects with another object placed in them do. They speak against each other instead, and Harry’s ear is confused by the competing stories. “I’m sorry, Healer, no.”
“Then learn.” Blackeye takes the vial back and opens it. There’s a slight tremor in the air above it, and Harry hears a voice speaking of the darkness between the stars, the movement of frost, the brown trees with sere and withered leaves.
He gasps. “That’s a winter wind!”
Blackeye nods, not looking surprised that Harry knows. That makes Harry’s heart swell with pride. When you have your competency assumed by an adult goblin on Blackeye’s level, then you’re coming closer to adulthood. “He has been frozen so long by Dementors that we must use the winter wind to cleanse his soul.”
“What are you doing?” Sirius asks hoarsely. It’s the first set of words he’s spoken since Harry brought him into Blackeye’s cavern. He turns his head and frowns at the vial. “Why would you use something cold on me? I’m already cold.”
“The winter wind will cleanse your soul,” Blackeye repeats. It’s her “no tolerance for fools” tone, which Harry last heard when she was removing the Horcrux from his scar.
Harry moves closer to Sirius’s bed and squeezes his hand. “It’s all right, Sirius, I promise,” he adds as Sirius gives him a dubious look. “This is goblin healing.”
He turns to Blackeye and dips his head a little, a private apology for Sirius’s doubt. Just like your competence is assumed at Blackeye’s level, questioning it is assumed to be asking for a duel. “I’m sorry, Blackeye,” he says in Gobbledegook. “He’s human.”
Blackeye pauses, then snorts and nods. Harry relaxes. Not that he was all that worried about her challenging Sirius to a duel; he’s only seen her do it with her patients once they’re healthy again. But he’d just as soon not lose his godfather after finding him.
“That’s true,” Blackeye says, and then leans close to Sirius and releases the winter wind from its vial.
Sirius gasps and shivers as the wind courses over him, swirling over his chilled muscles and driving the greater cold before it. Blackeye is already getting out the vial of elemental fire that she’ll need to use next, to balance the winter wind. Sirius clutches hard at Harry’s hand and whispers, “You’re sure this is necessary?”
“Yes, Sirius, it is.” Harry strokes Sirius’s arm and shakes his head a little. He’s said it a lot. Sirius has reason to distrust humans, after the disgusting things they did to him, but why does he keep distrusting goblins? “Look, it’s already getting warmer in here,” he adds soothingly, because Blackeye is pointing the vial of fire at Sirius.
The fire’s voice speaks of burning trees and new growth and the summer sun, and Sirius’s face visibly relaxes as he listens. Or maybe as he feels, because he mumbles something about his muscles warming up.
“He’ll sleep now,” Blackeye says shortly as she rearranges the stones so that they cradle Sirius better, and then arranges several flat blue stones around Sirius that Harry remembers from his own healing with the Horcrux. “Leave.”
Harry bows with his hands at his sides, and then leaves, thoughtful. He hopes Sirius will recover soon, and begin trusting Blackeye. Otherwise, she might challenge him to that duel after all.
But for right now, he can’t do anything. He goes back to his room to meditate and sing and listen, and plan the war that the goblins are going to have to fight against the Ministry and Voldemort and maybe Dumbledore. Harry almost thinks that he’s changed the old man’s mind with his song about the Realm, but he can’t be sure.
Sing Us Yet More
Harry is carefully studying the plan for a new kind of blade that Toothsplitter is trusting him to forge when he hears the shrill alarms ringing through the caverns. Harry jerks his head up so fast that his daggers rattle in his belt. He knows that sound, but he’s never heard more than one of the Horns of Eren blow at the same time.
This time, the echoes bounce and roll over the rocks, and goblins begin pouring out of their caves. Harry immediately turns and runs up the path to the bank. When he whispers a question, the path alters for him, becoming steeper but shorter, and Harry emerges into the private offices and then keeps running straight for the front.
“Harry.”
Harry nods to Ripclaw, the goblin who found him all those years ago and gave him his first knife. Ripclaw is standing with a short sword in his hands right in front of a heavy vault door. “Ripclaw. What is it?” The Horns are still singing, exquisitely turned vessels of the most alert silver from the oldest mines, made to voice their warning whenever some great enemy approaches the bank. “Is the Ministry attacking?” The humans might have brought the war to them before the goblins could go get it.
“No.” Ripclaw glances at Harry, his eyes white with fury. “Dementors.”
Harry’s eyes widen, and he wishes they could turn white, but he’s human in body, so they can’t. He understands at once. The Dementors are here because Sirius is here. “What’s the best way to fight them?”
Ripclaw motions to Harry’s face. No, his mouth. “There’s a particular song that we can use against them, although it’s only been prepared and not used. We never thought they would dare to come here.” He bares his teeth, which grow naturally into serrated points that some goblins, like Harry, envy. “You don’t know it. Follow along.”
Harry nods, and walks beside Ripclaw up into the main front space of the bank. There are only a few humans there now, since it’s their New Year. They’re standing, dazed and cold-faced, against the far wall.
Harry raises his daggers and signals to the tall guard-goblins near the doors that he’ll be joining the song. They nod and push the doors open.
A huge mass of Dementors is hovering outside. Harry shivers. The ones on the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of the year that he convinced the train doors and windows to shut on suddenly look small in retrospect.
“This is our place,” says Toothsplitter, Harry’s mentor and a Master Smith, stepping up to face the Dementors. The medallions on her belt that proclaim her skill jingle and ring. She is shifting slightly from side to side, beginning the tempo of the protective song without the Dementors realizing what she’s doing. “You will depart.”
The Dementors might not understand Gobbledegook, although Harry thinks it’s likelier that they do and don’t care. They press closer to the open front doors of the bank.
The command rolls through the walls and the floor, making the marble tremble. “Sing!”
And everyone sings.
Harry finds the rhythm of it easily enough, because Toothsplitter isn’t the only swaying goblin, and the huge blocks of marble that make up Gringotts are trembling in their places, enough to drive the waves of the dance through anyone who isn’t dead. But he doesn’t know the words at first, so he tunes his voice to the ones that echo through the veins of gold in the marble. Gold’s song is the easiest to follow, making it one of the first metals that was ever mined by goblins.
And then he comes roaring in on the words once the first chorus has been repeated, and now the words can be stacked atop each other like iron bands, reaching out and spiraling around each other, adding more strength as they repeat.
“Golgonannaiz, ixarushacz thuliumon eranehemmanez,
Amaraxiz amairnx amtupieh, tupieranehemmanez,
Fangignan! Amair airatiz ssulion ssadher ssamhio,
Golgonannaiz, ixarushacz thuliumon eranehemmanez…”
The Dementors slide closer and closer to the bank, but by now the waves of sound have built high enough to turn on them. If he squints, Harry can just see them, iron-colored and gold-colored and built as rings, but rings with spikes. The Dementors may not be able to see them at all. Harry doesn’t know if they actually have eyes.
But when they run into the spikes, they know.
The Dementors shriek in high, thin voices that Harry disapproves of, they run so counter to the song. They try to press forwards anyway-they must really want to eat Sirius’s soul-but their hands dissolve when they come closer to the bank. And then the notes of the music strike them and start stripping their robes off.
The Dementors back away and flood, wailing, into the sky.
Harry can feel the few wizards in the bank starting to stir, but he doesn’t turn his head or stop singing until the stones cease to vibrate. Voices come down one by one, replacing the notes and the strength they took, making the final chorus one Harry knows, a whisper of thanks to the objects that sang with them. Toothsplitter, as the first singer, is also the last, clearing her throat when the magic ebbs.
“We have another cause for our war,” she says.
Harry looks at her and smiles. Sirius might be human, but the goblins know that Harry wants to keep Sirius with him, and Harry is a goblin. That matters a lot. “Yeah,” he says.
Golden Imaginings
“I demand to be told why you prevented the Dementors from entering the bank.”
Harry rubs his thumb down the hilt of his dagger that’s made of a basilisk fang. He wanted to be included in this meeting because he knew it would be about Sirius, when the Minister for Magic demanded to meet with Ripclaw and Gorgeslitter and the rest, but it’s hard for him to control his temper.
Since entering the room, the Minister has committed so many insults it’s a wonder he’s still alive. He’s yawned, he’s asked for hot tea when no one else was drinking it, he sat down first, and he’s raised his voice to make the walls ring with it.
Harry does take his hands away from the daggers when he sees Toothsplitter frowning at him, though. He’s been insulted, of course, but he’s not the only one, and it would be crass of him to claim sole insult and sole right to duel the Minister. He’d have to fight a series of duels when that one was finished against the goblins who have prior claims.
Harry has no illusions about his own abilities when facing a well-trained goblin warrior. He only looks impressive to the humans at Hogwarts because most of them have no idea what a real fighter looks like.
“Why?” Fudge demands, and slaps his closed fist on the table.
The shock travels around the room. When someone makes a gesture like that, he’s saying that he doesn’t need weapons to take on the best warriors in the Realm of Song. Someone has to duel him now.
Unless…
Harry draws the dagger that’s not made of a basilisk fang and gently stabs the Minister in the shoulder with it. Fudge gasps and grabs the wound, blood running between his fingers. The two wizards who came with him, in the scarlet robes of Aurors, sit there for a long moment before they spring up and point their wands at Harry.
Harry sighs. He doesn’t think much of their reflexes. He turns to Toothsplitter and bows his head in her direction, since she’s his smithing master and thus the goblin who can claim the most direct power over him in the room. “Toothsplitter, I apologize for my hasty and ill-considered action. However, as you can see, the Minister has a weak arm, and it would be dishonorable to fight him.”
Toothsplitter nods, her face wrinkled in the way that means amusement. “I can see that, Harry. We shall discuss your upswelling of rage later, and appropriate means to control it.”
“What are you talking about?” one of the Aurors blurts. The other is conjuring bandages to wrap the Minister’s shoulder. Apparently they don’t know healing charms. Harry is wondering more and more why these were the ones chosen to accompany someone the humans respect. “He stabbed the Minister! He has to be arrested!”
“Do you make a habit of arresting thirteen-year-old wizards then, Auror?” asks Ripclaw, one of the goblins who spends the most time around humans and knows their laws best. Of course, goblin laws don’t take account of an arbitrary number of years, but whether someone can act and think in a competent manner. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
“I mean-he stabbed the Minister!”
“I’m sorry,” Harry says, letting his head droop and a false sobbing note creep into his voice. “I was so angry! I couldn’t control myself.”
“What did you have to be angry about, for fuck’s sake?” the Auror demands, but the one who’s finished wrapping the Minister’s arm stands up and shakes his head. The Minister is still moaning to himself and doesn’t seem inclined to say anything any time soon.
“We didn’t come here to listen to insults from children. We came here to find out why you wouldn’t let the Dementors inside the bank.”
“Why should we?” Ripclaw asks. “This is our sovereign territory, and certainly we wouldn’t submit to getting our souls sucked out.” At the word submit, there’s a shift of axes and knives around the room.
The one Auror is still glaring at them, but the wiser one winces and seems to try to take a hidden glance around. “There are rumors that the Dementors sensed Sirius Black near the bank.”
Ripclaw sighs harshly. “The way they sensed him on the Hogwarts Express, and at Hogwarts, and several other places in the magical world, and yet haven’t caught him yet?”
“I mean-that is to say.”
Ripclaw waits, and then sighs again. It’s the great one with a sound like gravel bouncing around his throat that Harry still hasn’t learned to imitate. “Is that all you have to say?”
“You don’t have any right to keep the Dementors out,” the Minister croaks. Harry is disappointed in himself. He obviously didn’t stab the man hard enough if he can still speak through his shock. He’ll have to work on sharpening his daggers and his eye.
“Yes, we do.” Ripclaw looks bored now. “By the treaties that you reaffirmed when you took office and that we negotiated with the wizards centuries ago. If you want to send the Dementors into the bank, then you’ll need to do it while they’re chasing Sirius Black, or whatever other criminal you’ve condemned to a soulless existence.”
Harry shudders, and doesn’t care about the way the Aurors are staring at him, as if they think he ought to be on their side. The Dementors are worse than the Deep Ones, which at least are defeated enemies. Dementors just want to devour souls because someone told them to.
“You destroyed two Dementors.”
Harry grins. No one told him that. He feels proud to have been part of a defense that not only drove Dementors away from the bank but did a great deal of damage.
“We’re owed a weregild for that,” the Minister continues in a voice that is not full of gravel and is never going to be full of gravel when it’s grown up, either. “It’s in the treaties. When you kill Ministry employees-”
“What were you paying the Dementors, Minister Fudge?”
It’s Blackeye, who just walked into the room. The goblins, including Harry, bow their heads to her in a wave that goes around the edges of the room. She has a circle of blue stones hovering around her. Harry doesn’t think it’s the same circle that she used to treat Sirius, because he probably still needs those, but all that means is that she can do more damage with them.
“What?” Fudge gapes at her. Harry sighs. Humans just have such bad manners. Why wouldn’t you bow your head to someone that you’d seen other people bow their heads to, whether or not you know who they are?
“How much were you paying them? That determines the amount of the weregild.” The blue stones are revolving harder around Blackeye’s head now. Harry thinks they might surge out and strike someone at any moment. He just hopes that it’s Fudge and the other humans. Sometimes healers don’t discriminate when they’re angry. Real goblins are expected to have the speed to get out of the way.
“We weren’t paying them anything! Why would we pay creatures anything?”
There’s more loosening of axes all around them. Harry conceals a second sigh. Among the other skills humans lack are looking around a room.
“Because if you weren’t paying them anything, then their deaths simply freed slaves,” Blackeye says. “And that means that you don’t have the right to demand a weregild.”
Harry nods. That’s common sense. He didn’t think the Dementors were being paid anything, but he could have been wrong. He glances at Fudge and sees the man’s face turning as red as an apprentice’s who’s slipped up in front of his master.
“You will regret this defiance,” Fudge says, and then staggers out of the bank, still holding his bandaged arm. The Aurors back out after him, their wands still pointed at the goblins, which is the first sign of good sense that Harry’s seen from them.
Toothsplitter taps him on the shoulder with a closed fist as the door shuts. “That was impulsive, Harry. Others had the right to duel him first.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry says, and bows his head so that she can see his throat and the depths of his regret. “I just didn’t want the whole room to explode in blood. We don’t want to start the war with the death of the Minister.”
“True enough,” Ripclaw says. “There are better targets. And we have a list of them upcoming.”
“We do?” Harry can’t help blurting. He hasn’t heard much about the progress of the goblin rebellion, even though some of his actions have played into it happening. Then again, he’s away at Hogwarts a lot of the time, and also just a journeyman smith. His elders don’t technically have to tell him much.
It seems they’ve relaxed that restriction, because Ripclaw smiles at him with all his fangs on display. “Yes. The first one is going to be Azkaban.”
“Because of the Dementors last night?”
“Yes.” Ripclaw glances around the room, where everyone is nodding heads and beating fists on their weapons. He’s just the first one to announce what’s going on, not the only one who agrees with the plan. “We want to make sure that the Ministry doesn’t think they can send soul-eating beings against us again.”
Harry smiles. “Can I go along?”
“You can be in the second wave,” Toothsplitter says. As his master, it’s her right to make that decision.
“What about Sirius?”
“Black is still under my care, and will obey me if he wants to live,” Blackeye points out.
Harry nods again. He supposes he can always show memories to Sirius later if he can get hold of a Pensieve. Or maybe Sirius will just be happy to know that Azkaban was destroyed and won’t even want to watch a memory of it. Harry isn’t sure he would want to, if people destroyed a prison he’d been confined in.
Islets Forlorn
Harry stands in the boat formed of leather stretched over a light wooden frame, and squints. Ahead of him, the island of Azkaban is low and stony in the sea. It’s surrounded by a swirling mass of darkness. When he tries to listen, he can only pick up the distant, shrill shrieks that the Dementors gave outside Gringotts.
“How are they fighting them?” he asks Gravensword, Toothsplitter’s other apprentice, who is standing next to him.
Gravensword smiles. “With songs that are more offensive, and with Changers.”
Harry catches his breath. The Changers are serious weapons, which can only be made of agreeable stone and metal. Usually it’s obsidian and bronze, which are respectively grateful to get out of volcanoes and to be forged into existence. They seek out the greatest advantage that the enemy has and destroy it. With the Dementors, they would either make the Dementors warm or make them unable to fly.
Or maybe unable to eat souls. Harry stares at the swirling darkness ahead and shivers in excitement.
“Be ready!”
Harry grips his daggers. The boat, which has been sliding through the waves while complaining in a grunting voice about how both the leather and the wood would rather be at home, bumps to a stop on the shore of Azkaban. Harry leaps out. He performed some Warming Charms to keep himself from getting cold in the winter ocean and the snow falling around them. He doesn’t have a goblin’s thick skin, more’s the pity.
“Strike Dementors!”
Harry leads with his basilisk-fang dagger, because it’s the weapon that he thinks might have the best chance to actually hurt a Dementor. He hears a scream from right in front of him and ducks, and then his dagger cleaves through a black robe and pins something to the ground. The thing is cold and reaches out and grips his ankle with fingers like daggers themselves.
Harry stomps down, hard, and hears the Dementor scream and something crunch. Harry grins. He’s wearing boots that Fangsmore, the best weaver in the clean, made for him out of the defeated basilisk’s hide.
The hand lets go of his ankle, and he moves ahead, running beside Gravensword. Gravensword swings his blade around in front of him, and hits a shadow that flinches back. Harry joins him in a charge across the island in the direction of the prison, which is already crumbling under the pressure of the goblin war-songs.
Toothsplitter is suddenly not far from them, her fingers dancing frantically through the air. Fire and sparks of molten metal trail her. Harry ducks as one of them blazes overhead, then feels foolish. It’s not as though Toothsplitter would hit him.
The last stone of the prison breaks apart, and the dust floats away like the shadows of Dementors. Revealed are humans in tattered robes, huddling in one space and staring as though they don’t know what’s happening.
They probably don’t, Harry thinks, a little sympathetic because of Sirius. On the other hand, they don’t know that all the prisoners are innocent, and they don’t want to leave them roaming around when it’ll cause trouble and crime and more strife with the Ministry. That’s why Toothsplitter and the other Master Smiths are here.
Toothsplitter tilts her head back and begins to sing so loudly that the bones of Harry’s ears vibrate. The others join in, swirling cascades of sound that pour to the earth like water. The prisoners begin to sway back and forth, even the ones who look as if they’d like to get up and run.
As the warriors corral the last Dementors and kill them, Toothsplitter and the other smiths create helmets. The molten metal quickly cools and forms itself into obedient shapes. It always responds best to goblin voices and not goblin hands. Harry watches in envy. He’s a journeyman, but he isn’t at this level yet. It’ll take a long time for him to get there.
When the helmets are complete-they look like half-helms, but the gaps in them are filled in with strands of sparkling silver music-Toothsplitter and the other smiths run forwards and jam them over the heads of the prisoners.
The helmets sparkle and shine and then mold themselves into a perfect fit. Harry sighs as he watches the prisoners slowly slump over in place. Toothsplitter and the other Master Smiths use the rest of the molten metal flying in the air around them to build shelters that will glow with the remembered heat of the forge. They’ll keep the prisoners from freezing to death until the Ministry can come to the island and decide to do something else with them. The helmets will keep them asleep and dreaming, no threat to anyone.
Much more humane than the Dementors, Harry thinks happily, and steps back into the boat to let it bear him away from the island. The boat is more than happy to do so.
*
“What you did is an act of war!”
“Yes. It is.”
Even Fudge is smart enough to listen to Stone, Harry sees. She’s an ancient goblin who speaks for the Nelakhkhakan Clan, a Master Smith beyond all Master Smiths, and the sapphires in her ears and the steel at her neck and waist make her formidable to a human who probably has no idea what kind of honor she’s granting him by speaking to him. She lays her hand on the axe in the middle of the table between her and the Minister and looks at him serenely.
“We have begun a war. The wizarding world is without honor. They sent Dementors to attack one of our banks, itself an act of war. And they also spread lies and would not tell the truth about the deeds of one of our people.”
“Who is that?” Fudge is sweating, his eyes fixed on the axe in the center of the table. At least the wound in his shoulder is healed, Harry sees. He wonders idly whether Fudge managed to heal it himself, or if one of the Aurors did it.
“Harry Potter.”
Fudge jolts and turns to Harry. “I was never aware that anyone in the wizarding world had lied about what happened the night you defeated You-Know-Who,” he says.
“Oh, not that,” Harry says. He smiles at the Minister. He hasn’t been foolish enough to say that Harry isn’t a goblin, which wins him some points in Harry’s ledger. “What happened at Hogwarts at the end of my first year. I protected the Philosopher’s Stone there from a man who was possessed by the spirit of Voldemort. But Headmaster Dumbledore said that we couldn’t tell the truth because it would damage Professor Quirrell’s reputation.”
Fudge leaps back in his chair and splutters, “What are you talking about? You-Know-Who is dead! It was entirely responsible for the Headmaster not to spread the lie that he’s alive around!” His eyes dart back and forth, as if the spirit of Voldemort is about to fly through the wall.
Harry shakes his head a little. “No, he’s alive. Or, well, what passes for alive. He was possessing Professor Quirrell, and he also has artifacts that he can inhabit. I think we need to hunt them all down and destroy them. You’re a wizard, so you would probably know more about magic like that-”
“You are a liar!”
Stone’s medallions jingle, and Harry’s daggers ring as he draws them. He stands up. “What did you say?” he asks quietly.
“You’re lying,” Fudge says. “You have to be! You-Know-Who is dead!”
“You question my honor as a goblin,” Harry says. He manages to keep the appropriate amount of anger in his voice, but it’s hard. “That means that I have no choice but to duel you until one of us is dead.”
“What?” Fudge stares at him. “You’re being ridiculous. You’re thirteen years old, and I certainly won’t duel you.”
Harry sighs. “Then I have to take my satisfaction in other ways.” This time, no one but the humans in the room appears surprised when he stabs Fudge-again, with the non-fang dagger-in the shoulder, and gathers up the blood that flows to run down his blade. Stone is the one who begins humming, but the others take it up so quickly that in seconds Harry is simply a goblin with a united wall of sound behind him.
“What are you doing?” cries one of the Aurors, drawing his wand.
Harry only gives him a contemptuous glance. It won’t work here. “I curse you, Cornelius Fudge,” he says. “I curse the tongue you use to dishonor goblins, to do nothing but stay still henceforth, unless you speak the truth. I curse the hands that you use to insult us to be unable to cast magic, unless you perform neutral acts. I curse the body that you use to add to your dishonor to always turn around and walk out of the bank, until you are ready to accept honor as a goblin understands it.”
He shrugs a little when he sees Stone’s judging gaze on him. Honestly, the curse might be too merciful, but Harry thinks it’s always kind to add that bit of escape for a human. They’re so unused to honorable behavior and acting like real people, after all.
“Confringo!” yells the Auror, but the spell simply fizzles and dies on his wand.
Harry sighs. “Honestly, I’m still a student and young in the ways of the goblins, and I know better than that. You can’t simply cast a curse at a goblin acting honorably in a place of power for his people, not when you’re serving a dishonorable person.”
He would have said more, but Fudge gets up then and marches out of Gringotts. Not because he wants to, Harry knows, but because Harry’s curse is acting on him, and his body is taking him out of the place that he’s dishonored by refusing to accept a duel.
“You’ll pay for this,” the Auror tosses over his shoulder at Harry before he chases the Minister.
“Why do humans have such ineffective threats?” Harry asks Toothsplitter as the goblins begin talking quietly about the next phase of the war. “I used to think it was just because they were human, but I used to be and I learned better.”
Toothsplitter pats his shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise, which makes Harry beam, because it shows how seriously she takes his opinion. “Honestly, most of them are poor listeners.”
And that, Harry thinks as he goes to drop the blood that he used to curse Fudge with in the deepest pit in the Realm of Song, is the truest answer he’s likely to get.
Part Two.
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 5500
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.
More Marvellous-Cunning Than Mortal Man’s Pondering
“Sing us yet more of Eärendel the wandering,
chant us a lay of his white-oared ship,
more marvellous-cunning than mortal man's pondering,
foamily musical out of the deep.”
-J. R. R. Tolkien, “The Bidding of the Ministrel.”
A Burning Wonder
“But there was not even a pretense of human justice.”
Harry winces a little as he watches Blackeye examine Sirius. His godfather had to be persuaded to turn back from a dog first, once they were inside the Healer’s cavern, but now he seems to have relaxed. The soft silver glow from the walls does that, Harry knows. He wonders if Sirius can hear the chant of the rocks who are happy to have been chosen to help Blackeye, who listened to them and gave them pleasing forms.
Maybe not. Sirius is still human. But he does spend a lot of time as a dog.
“No, I don’t think so,” Harry says quietly, when Blackeye looks at him. Sirius, his back and feet cradled by some of the carved rocks covered with woven blankets of dreaming cotton, isn’t answering. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but from what he says, the humans just assumed he was guilty because he was upset about Pettigrew. They put him in Azkaban.”
“That place,” Blackeye says, her head bowed as she moves her hands above Sirius, shaping the song-vibrations of the rocks to turn his skin transparent and show her his bones and organs. “I will see that place destroyed.”
Harry nods. He doesn’t doubt the power of the vow. Of course, no one in his right mind would ever accuse Blackeye of lying, either, but one might privately doubt the power another goblin has to keep his or her word. Blackeye, though, has muscles more dense than quartz and a will stronger than a Deep One’s tentacles. She will achieve it.
Blackeye lets her hands drift back and frowns at Sirius for a moment. Then she walks into a corner of the cavern and retrieves a vial made of singing glass and capped with bone. When she brings it back, she shows it to Harry. “Do you know what this is, young amaraczh?”
Harry examines the vial carefully, but has to shake his head. The glass and the bone don’t speak of each other as most objects with another object placed in them do. They speak against each other instead, and Harry’s ear is confused by the competing stories. “I’m sorry, Healer, no.”
“Then learn.” Blackeye takes the vial back and opens it. There’s a slight tremor in the air above it, and Harry hears a voice speaking of the darkness between the stars, the movement of frost, the brown trees with sere and withered leaves.
He gasps. “That’s a winter wind!”
Blackeye nods, not looking surprised that Harry knows. That makes Harry’s heart swell with pride. When you have your competency assumed by an adult goblin on Blackeye’s level, then you’re coming closer to adulthood. “He has been frozen so long by Dementors that we must use the winter wind to cleanse his soul.”
“What are you doing?” Sirius asks hoarsely. It’s the first set of words he’s spoken since Harry brought him into Blackeye’s cavern. He turns his head and frowns at the vial. “Why would you use something cold on me? I’m already cold.”
“The winter wind will cleanse your soul,” Blackeye repeats. It’s her “no tolerance for fools” tone, which Harry last heard when she was removing the Horcrux from his scar.
Harry moves closer to Sirius’s bed and squeezes his hand. “It’s all right, Sirius, I promise,” he adds as Sirius gives him a dubious look. “This is goblin healing.”
He turns to Blackeye and dips his head a little, a private apology for Sirius’s doubt. Just like your competence is assumed at Blackeye’s level, questioning it is assumed to be asking for a duel. “I’m sorry, Blackeye,” he says in Gobbledegook. “He’s human.”
Blackeye pauses, then snorts and nods. Harry relaxes. Not that he was all that worried about her challenging Sirius to a duel; he’s only seen her do it with her patients once they’re healthy again. But he’d just as soon not lose his godfather after finding him.
“That’s true,” Blackeye says, and then leans close to Sirius and releases the winter wind from its vial.
Sirius gasps and shivers as the wind courses over him, swirling over his chilled muscles and driving the greater cold before it. Blackeye is already getting out the vial of elemental fire that she’ll need to use next, to balance the winter wind. Sirius clutches hard at Harry’s hand and whispers, “You’re sure this is necessary?”
“Yes, Sirius, it is.” Harry strokes Sirius’s arm and shakes his head a little. He’s said it a lot. Sirius has reason to distrust humans, after the disgusting things they did to him, but why does he keep distrusting goblins? “Look, it’s already getting warmer in here,” he adds soothingly, because Blackeye is pointing the vial of fire at Sirius.
The fire’s voice speaks of burning trees and new growth and the summer sun, and Sirius’s face visibly relaxes as he listens. Or maybe as he feels, because he mumbles something about his muscles warming up.
“He’ll sleep now,” Blackeye says shortly as she rearranges the stones so that they cradle Sirius better, and then arranges several flat blue stones around Sirius that Harry remembers from his own healing with the Horcrux. “Leave.”
Harry bows with his hands at his sides, and then leaves, thoughtful. He hopes Sirius will recover soon, and begin trusting Blackeye. Otherwise, she might challenge him to that duel after all.
But for right now, he can’t do anything. He goes back to his room to meditate and sing and listen, and plan the war that the goblins are going to have to fight against the Ministry and Voldemort and maybe Dumbledore. Harry almost thinks that he’s changed the old man’s mind with his song about the Realm, but he can’t be sure.
Sing Us Yet More
Harry is carefully studying the plan for a new kind of blade that Toothsplitter is trusting him to forge when he hears the shrill alarms ringing through the caverns. Harry jerks his head up so fast that his daggers rattle in his belt. He knows that sound, but he’s never heard more than one of the Horns of Eren blow at the same time.
This time, the echoes bounce and roll over the rocks, and goblins begin pouring out of their caves. Harry immediately turns and runs up the path to the bank. When he whispers a question, the path alters for him, becoming steeper but shorter, and Harry emerges into the private offices and then keeps running straight for the front.
“Harry.”
Harry nods to Ripclaw, the goblin who found him all those years ago and gave him his first knife. Ripclaw is standing with a short sword in his hands right in front of a heavy vault door. “Ripclaw. What is it?” The Horns are still singing, exquisitely turned vessels of the most alert silver from the oldest mines, made to voice their warning whenever some great enemy approaches the bank. “Is the Ministry attacking?” The humans might have brought the war to them before the goblins could go get it.
“No.” Ripclaw glances at Harry, his eyes white with fury. “Dementors.”
Harry’s eyes widen, and he wishes they could turn white, but he’s human in body, so they can’t. He understands at once. The Dementors are here because Sirius is here. “What’s the best way to fight them?”
Ripclaw motions to Harry’s face. No, his mouth. “There’s a particular song that we can use against them, although it’s only been prepared and not used. We never thought they would dare to come here.” He bares his teeth, which grow naturally into serrated points that some goblins, like Harry, envy. “You don’t know it. Follow along.”
Harry nods, and walks beside Ripclaw up into the main front space of the bank. There are only a few humans there now, since it’s their New Year. They’re standing, dazed and cold-faced, against the far wall.
Harry raises his daggers and signals to the tall guard-goblins near the doors that he’ll be joining the song. They nod and push the doors open.
A huge mass of Dementors is hovering outside. Harry shivers. The ones on the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of the year that he convinced the train doors and windows to shut on suddenly look small in retrospect.
“This is our place,” says Toothsplitter, Harry’s mentor and a Master Smith, stepping up to face the Dementors. The medallions on her belt that proclaim her skill jingle and ring. She is shifting slightly from side to side, beginning the tempo of the protective song without the Dementors realizing what she’s doing. “You will depart.”
The Dementors might not understand Gobbledegook, although Harry thinks it’s likelier that they do and don’t care. They press closer to the open front doors of the bank.
The command rolls through the walls and the floor, making the marble tremble. “Sing!”
And everyone sings.
Harry finds the rhythm of it easily enough, because Toothsplitter isn’t the only swaying goblin, and the huge blocks of marble that make up Gringotts are trembling in their places, enough to drive the waves of the dance through anyone who isn’t dead. But he doesn’t know the words at first, so he tunes his voice to the ones that echo through the veins of gold in the marble. Gold’s song is the easiest to follow, making it one of the first metals that was ever mined by goblins.
And then he comes roaring in on the words once the first chorus has been repeated, and now the words can be stacked atop each other like iron bands, reaching out and spiraling around each other, adding more strength as they repeat.
“Golgonannaiz, ixarushacz thuliumon eranehemmanez,
Amaraxiz amairnx amtupieh, tupieranehemmanez,
Fangignan! Amair airatiz ssulion ssadher ssamhio,
Golgonannaiz, ixarushacz thuliumon eranehemmanez…”
The Dementors slide closer and closer to the bank, but by now the waves of sound have built high enough to turn on them. If he squints, Harry can just see them, iron-colored and gold-colored and built as rings, but rings with spikes. The Dementors may not be able to see them at all. Harry doesn’t know if they actually have eyes.
But when they run into the spikes, they know.
The Dementors shriek in high, thin voices that Harry disapproves of, they run so counter to the song. They try to press forwards anyway-they must really want to eat Sirius’s soul-but their hands dissolve when they come closer to the bank. And then the notes of the music strike them and start stripping their robes off.
The Dementors back away and flood, wailing, into the sky.
Harry can feel the few wizards in the bank starting to stir, but he doesn’t turn his head or stop singing until the stones cease to vibrate. Voices come down one by one, replacing the notes and the strength they took, making the final chorus one Harry knows, a whisper of thanks to the objects that sang with them. Toothsplitter, as the first singer, is also the last, clearing her throat when the magic ebbs.
“We have another cause for our war,” she says.
Harry looks at her and smiles. Sirius might be human, but the goblins know that Harry wants to keep Sirius with him, and Harry is a goblin. That matters a lot. “Yeah,” he says.
Golden Imaginings
“I demand to be told why you prevented the Dementors from entering the bank.”
Harry rubs his thumb down the hilt of his dagger that’s made of a basilisk fang. He wanted to be included in this meeting because he knew it would be about Sirius, when the Minister for Magic demanded to meet with Ripclaw and Gorgeslitter and the rest, but it’s hard for him to control his temper.
Since entering the room, the Minister has committed so many insults it’s a wonder he’s still alive. He’s yawned, he’s asked for hot tea when no one else was drinking it, he sat down first, and he’s raised his voice to make the walls ring with it.
Harry does take his hands away from the daggers when he sees Toothsplitter frowning at him, though. He’s been insulted, of course, but he’s not the only one, and it would be crass of him to claim sole insult and sole right to duel the Minister. He’d have to fight a series of duels when that one was finished against the goblins who have prior claims.
Harry has no illusions about his own abilities when facing a well-trained goblin warrior. He only looks impressive to the humans at Hogwarts because most of them have no idea what a real fighter looks like.
“Why?” Fudge demands, and slaps his closed fist on the table.
The shock travels around the room. When someone makes a gesture like that, he’s saying that he doesn’t need weapons to take on the best warriors in the Realm of Song. Someone has to duel him now.
Unless…
Harry draws the dagger that’s not made of a basilisk fang and gently stabs the Minister in the shoulder with it. Fudge gasps and grabs the wound, blood running between his fingers. The two wizards who came with him, in the scarlet robes of Aurors, sit there for a long moment before they spring up and point their wands at Harry.
Harry sighs. He doesn’t think much of their reflexes. He turns to Toothsplitter and bows his head in her direction, since she’s his smithing master and thus the goblin who can claim the most direct power over him in the room. “Toothsplitter, I apologize for my hasty and ill-considered action. However, as you can see, the Minister has a weak arm, and it would be dishonorable to fight him.”
Toothsplitter nods, her face wrinkled in the way that means amusement. “I can see that, Harry. We shall discuss your upswelling of rage later, and appropriate means to control it.”
“What are you talking about?” one of the Aurors blurts. The other is conjuring bandages to wrap the Minister’s shoulder. Apparently they don’t know healing charms. Harry is wondering more and more why these were the ones chosen to accompany someone the humans respect. “He stabbed the Minister! He has to be arrested!”
“Do you make a habit of arresting thirteen-year-old wizards then, Auror?” asks Ripclaw, one of the goblins who spends the most time around humans and knows their laws best. Of course, goblin laws don’t take account of an arbitrary number of years, but whether someone can act and think in a competent manner. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
“I mean-he stabbed the Minister!”
“I’m sorry,” Harry says, letting his head droop and a false sobbing note creep into his voice. “I was so angry! I couldn’t control myself.”
“What did you have to be angry about, for fuck’s sake?” the Auror demands, but the one who’s finished wrapping the Minister’s arm stands up and shakes his head. The Minister is still moaning to himself and doesn’t seem inclined to say anything any time soon.
“We didn’t come here to listen to insults from children. We came here to find out why you wouldn’t let the Dementors inside the bank.”
“Why should we?” Ripclaw asks. “This is our sovereign territory, and certainly we wouldn’t submit to getting our souls sucked out.” At the word submit, there’s a shift of axes and knives around the room.
The one Auror is still glaring at them, but the wiser one winces and seems to try to take a hidden glance around. “There are rumors that the Dementors sensed Sirius Black near the bank.”
Ripclaw sighs harshly. “The way they sensed him on the Hogwarts Express, and at Hogwarts, and several other places in the magical world, and yet haven’t caught him yet?”
“I mean-that is to say.”
Ripclaw waits, and then sighs again. It’s the great one with a sound like gravel bouncing around his throat that Harry still hasn’t learned to imitate. “Is that all you have to say?”
“You don’t have any right to keep the Dementors out,” the Minister croaks. Harry is disappointed in himself. He obviously didn’t stab the man hard enough if he can still speak through his shock. He’ll have to work on sharpening his daggers and his eye.
“Yes, we do.” Ripclaw looks bored now. “By the treaties that you reaffirmed when you took office and that we negotiated with the wizards centuries ago. If you want to send the Dementors into the bank, then you’ll need to do it while they’re chasing Sirius Black, or whatever other criminal you’ve condemned to a soulless existence.”
Harry shudders, and doesn’t care about the way the Aurors are staring at him, as if they think he ought to be on their side. The Dementors are worse than the Deep Ones, which at least are defeated enemies. Dementors just want to devour souls because someone told them to.
“You destroyed two Dementors.”
Harry grins. No one told him that. He feels proud to have been part of a defense that not only drove Dementors away from the bank but did a great deal of damage.
“We’re owed a weregild for that,” the Minister continues in a voice that is not full of gravel and is never going to be full of gravel when it’s grown up, either. “It’s in the treaties. When you kill Ministry employees-”
“What were you paying the Dementors, Minister Fudge?”
It’s Blackeye, who just walked into the room. The goblins, including Harry, bow their heads to her in a wave that goes around the edges of the room. She has a circle of blue stones hovering around her. Harry doesn’t think it’s the same circle that she used to treat Sirius, because he probably still needs those, but all that means is that she can do more damage with them.
“What?” Fudge gapes at her. Harry sighs. Humans just have such bad manners. Why wouldn’t you bow your head to someone that you’d seen other people bow their heads to, whether or not you know who they are?
“How much were you paying them? That determines the amount of the weregild.” The blue stones are revolving harder around Blackeye’s head now. Harry thinks they might surge out and strike someone at any moment. He just hopes that it’s Fudge and the other humans. Sometimes healers don’t discriminate when they’re angry. Real goblins are expected to have the speed to get out of the way.
“We weren’t paying them anything! Why would we pay creatures anything?”
There’s more loosening of axes all around them. Harry conceals a second sigh. Among the other skills humans lack are looking around a room.
“Because if you weren’t paying them anything, then their deaths simply freed slaves,” Blackeye says. “And that means that you don’t have the right to demand a weregild.”
Harry nods. That’s common sense. He didn’t think the Dementors were being paid anything, but he could have been wrong. He glances at Fudge and sees the man’s face turning as red as an apprentice’s who’s slipped up in front of his master.
“You will regret this defiance,” Fudge says, and then staggers out of the bank, still holding his bandaged arm. The Aurors back out after him, their wands still pointed at the goblins, which is the first sign of good sense that Harry’s seen from them.
Toothsplitter taps him on the shoulder with a closed fist as the door shuts. “That was impulsive, Harry. Others had the right to duel him first.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry says, and bows his head so that she can see his throat and the depths of his regret. “I just didn’t want the whole room to explode in blood. We don’t want to start the war with the death of the Minister.”
“True enough,” Ripclaw says. “There are better targets. And we have a list of them upcoming.”
“We do?” Harry can’t help blurting. He hasn’t heard much about the progress of the goblin rebellion, even though some of his actions have played into it happening. Then again, he’s away at Hogwarts a lot of the time, and also just a journeyman smith. His elders don’t technically have to tell him much.
It seems they’ve relaxed that restriction, because Ripclaw smiles at him with all his fangs on display. “Yes. The first one is going to be Azkaban.”
“Because of the Dementors last night?”
“Yes.” Ripclaw glances around the room, where everyone is nodding heads and beating fists on their weapons. He’s just the first one to announce what’s going on, not the only one who agrees with the plan. “We want to make sure that the Ministry doesn’t think they can send soul-eating beings against us again.”
Harry smiles. “Can I go along?”
“You can be in the second wave,” Toothsplitter says. As his master, it’s her right to make that decision.
“What about Sirius?”
“Black is still under my care, and will obey me if he wants to live,” Blackeye points out.
Harry nods again. He supposes he can always show memories to Sirius later if he can get hold of a Pensieve. Or maybe Sirius will just be happy to know that Azkaban was destroyed and won’t even want to watch a memory of it. Harry isn’t sure he would want to, if people destroyed a prison he’d been confined in.
Islets Forlorn
Harry stands in the boat formed of leather stretched over a light wooden frame, and squints. Ahead of him, the island of Azkaban is low and stony in the sea. It’s surrounded by a swirling mass of darkness. When he tries to listen, he can only pick up the distant, shrill shrieks that the Dementors gave outside Gringotts.
“How are they fighting them?” he asks Gravensword, Toothsplitter’s other apprentice, who is standing next to him.
Gravensword smiles. “With songs that are more offensive, and with Changers.”
Harry catches his breath. The Changers are serious weapons, which can only be made of agreeable stone and metal. Usually it’s obsidian and bronze, which are respectively grateful to get out of volcanoes and to be forged into existence. They seek out the greatest advantage that the enemy has and destroy it. With the Dementors, they would either make the Dementors warm or make them unable to fly.
Or maybe unable to eat souls. Harry stares at the swirling darkness ahead and shivers in excitement.
“Be ready!”
Harry grips his daggers. The boat, which has been sliding through the waves while complaining in a grunting voice about how both the leather and the wood would rather be at home, bumps to a stop on the shore of Azkaban. Harry leaps out. He performed some Warming Charms to keep himself from getting cold in the winter ocean and the snow falling around them. He doesn’t have a goblin’s thick skin, more’s the pity.
“Strike Dementors!”
Harry leads with his basilisk-fang dagger, because it’s the weapon that he thinks might have the best chance to actually hurt a Dementor. He hears a scream from right in front of him and ducks, and then his dagger cleaves through a black robe and pins something to the ground. The thing is cold and reaches out and grips his ankle with fingers like daggers themselves.
Harry stomps down, hard, and hears the Dementor scream and something crunch. Harry grins. He’s wearing boots that Fangsmore, the best weaver in the clean, made for him out of the defeated basilisk’s hide.
The hand lets go of his ankle, and he moves ahead, running beside Gravensword. Gravensword swings his blade around in front of him, and hits a shadow that flinches back. Harry joins him in a charge across the island in the direction of the prison, which is already crumbling under the pressure of the goblin war-songs.
Toothsplitter is suddenly not far from them, her fingers dancing frantically through the air. Fire and sparks of molten metal trail her. Harry ducks as one of them blazes overhead, then feels foolish. It’s not as though Toothsplitter would hit him.
The last stone of the prison breaks apart, and the dust floats away like the shadows of Dementors. Revealed are humans in tattered robes, huddling in one space and staring as though they don’t know what’s happening.
They probably don’t, Harry thinks, a little sympathetic because of Sirius. On the other hand, they don’t know that all the prisoners are innocent, and they don’t want to leave them roaming around when it’ll cause trouble and crime and more strife with the Ministry. That’s why Toothsplitter and the other Master Smiths are here.
Toothsplitter tilts her head back and begins to sing so loudly that the bones of Harry’s ears vibrate. The others join in, swirling cascades of sound that pour to the earth like water. The prisoners begin to sway back and forth, even the ones who look as if they’d like to get up and run.
As the warriors corral the last Dementors and kill them, Toothsplitter and the other smiths create helmets. The molten metal quickly cools and forms itself into obedient shapes. It always responds best to goblin voices and not goblin hands. Harry watches in envy. He’s a journeyman, but he isn’t at this level yet. It’ll take a long time for him to get there.
When the helmets are complete-they look like half-helms, but the gaps in them are filled in with strands of sparkling silver music-Toothsplitter and the other smiths run forwards and jam them over the heads of the prisoners.
The helmets sparkle and shine and then mold themselves into a perfect fit. Harry sighs as he watches the prisoners slowly slump over in place. Toothsplitter and the other Master Smiths use the rest of the molten metal flying in the air around them to build shelters that will glow with the remembered heat of the forge. They’ll keep the prisoners from freezing to death until the Ministry can come to the island and decide to do something else with them. The helmets will keep them asleep and dreaming, no threat to anyone.
Much more humane than the Dementors, Harry thinks happily, and steps back into the boat to let it bear him away from the island. The boat is more than happy to do so.
*
“What you did is an act of war!”
“Yes. It is.”
Even Fudge is smart enough to listen to Stone, Harry sees. She’s an ancient goblin who speaks for the Nelakhkhakan Clan, a Master Smith beyond all Master Smiths, and the sapphires in her ears and the steel at her neck and waist make her formidable to a human who probably has no idea what kind of honor she’s granting him by speaking to him. She lays her hand on the axe in the middle of the table between her and the Minister and looks at him serenely.
“We have begun a war. The wizarding world is without honor. They sent Dementors to attack one of our banks, itself an act of war. And they also spread lies and would not tell the truth about the deeds of one of our people.”
“Who is that?” Fudge is sweating, his eyes fixed on the axe in the center of the table. At least the wound in his shoulder is healed, Harry sees. He wonders idly whether Fudge managed to heal it himself, or if one of the Aurors did it.
“Harry Potter.”
Fudge jolts and turns to Harry. “I was never aware that anyone in the wizarding world had lied about what happened the night you defeated You-Know-Who,” he says.
“Oh, not that,” Harry says. He smiles at the Minister. He hasn’t been foolish enough to say that Harry isn’t a goblin, which wins him some points in Harry’s ledger. “What happened at Hogwarts at the end of my first year. I protected the Philosopher’s Stone there from a man who was possessed by the spirit of Voldemort. But Headmaster Dumbledore said that we couldn’t tell the truth because it would damage Professor Quirrell’s reputation.”
Fudge leaps back in his chair and splutters, “What are you talking about? You-Know-Who is dead! It was entirely responsible for the Headmaster not to spread the lie that he’s alive around!” His eyes dart back and forth, as if the spirit of Voldemort is about to fly through the wall.
Harry shakes his head a little. “No, he’s alive. Or, well, what passes for alive. He was possessing Professor Quirrell, and he also has artifacts that he can inhabit. I think we need to hunt them all down and destroy them. You’re a wizard, so you would probably know more about magic like that-”
“You are a liar!”
Stone’s medallions jingle, and Harry’s daggers ring as he draws them. He stands up. “What did you say?” he asks quietly.
“You’re lying,” Fudge says. “You have to be! You-Know-Who is dead!”
“You question my honor as a goblin,” Harry says. He manages to keep the appropriate amount of anger in his voice, but it’s hard. “That means that I have no choice but to duel you until one of us is dead.”
“What?” Fudge stares at him. “You’re being ridiculous. You’re thirteen years old, and I certainly won’t duel you.”
Harry sighs. “Then I have to take my satisfaction in other ways.” This time, no one but the humans in the room appears surprised when he stabs Fudge-again, with the non-fang dagger-in the shoulder, and gathers up the blood that flows to run down his blade. Stone is the one who begins humming, but the others take it up so quickly that in seconds Harry is simply a goblin with a united wall of sound behind him.
“What are you doing?” cries one of the Aurors, drawing his wand.
Harry only gives him a contemptuous glance. It won’t work here. “I curse you, Cornelius Fudge,” he says. “I curse the tongue you use to dishonor goblins, to do nothing but stay still henceforth, unless you speak the truth. I curse the hands that you use to insult us to be unable to cast magic, unless you perform neutral acts. I curse the body that you use to add to your dishonor to always turn around and walk out of the bank, until you are ready to accept honor as a goblin understands it.”
He shrugs a little when he sees Stone’s judging gaze on him. Honestly, the curse might be too merciful, but Harry thinks it’s always kind to add that bit of escape for a human. They’re so unused to honorable behavior and acting like real people, after all.
“Confringo!” yells the Auror, but the spell simply fizzles and dies on his wand.
Harry sighs. “Honestly, I’m still a student and young in the ways of the goblins, and I know better than that. You can’t simply cast a curse at a goblin acting honorably in a place of power for his people, not when you’re serving a dishonorable person.”
He would have said more, but Fudge gets up then and marches out of Gringotts. Not because he wants to, Harry knows, but because Harry’s curse is acting on him, and his body is taking him out of the place that he’s dishonored by refusing to accept a duel.
“You’ll pay for this,” the Auror tosses over his shoulder at Harry before he chases the Minister.
“Why do humans have such ineffective threats?” Harry asks Toothsplitter as the goblins begin talking quietly about the next phase of the war. “I used to think it was just because they were human, but I used to be and I learned better.”
Toothsplitter pats his shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise, which makes Harry beam, because it shows how seriously she takes his opinion. “Honestly, most of them are poor listeners.”
And that, Harry thinks as he goes to drop the blood that he used to curse Fudge with in the deepest pit in the Realm of Song, is the truest answer he’s likely to get.
Part Two.