"You know who he is," Lichfield said. "You know who has the Key." He hadn't said it like a question.
"I want to see what happened to the last Account Manager," the Harry who was Harold said. "The one before Gropegold." He looked Lichfield in the eye and didn't say it like a request.
Lichfield looked him in the eye for a long moment after that, as if seeing him for the first time. The stump-like face betrayed nothing - but if he was looking for him to blink, Harry was stubbornly resolved not to give it to him. If they were asking him to believe what they're telling him to believe, to put his very first friend in a position to be betrayed by the same guardian who had betrayed him or be torn apart by the goblins if the gentle giant didn't believe them, then Harry had to know what they were saying was real. He had to help Hagrid as much as he could, and that demanded he take something from them first.
The old wizard turned and looked at the Overseer, the goblin now oddly silent, subdued. The goblin tersely nodded, as if agreeing to a deal that'd leave him without a knut to his name.
"You want me to go with you?" the warlock asked, a genuine look of concern on his harsh face.
"No," the Overseer said gruffly with a shake of his head. "I'll take him. You - you go-." Words seem to fail him and Harry wondered exactly what it was he had asked for.
"I'll go see to these forms, shall I?" Lichfield said rising and collecting the forms Harry had signed. "It'd give me a chance to find these Weasleys and look to other things," he said with a glance to Harry.
"Yes, yes. Good," the goblin said. "You can find us when you're done."
Lichfield glanced at him again, gnarled finger gesturing to the bulging hand-me-downs Harry had smuggled into the building, silently asking if he wanted the warlock to take them. Harry nodded and handed them over, glad to see the last of them.
It was in silence the Litigator left them, and it was a silence that lingered.
The goblin rearranged his files with his eyes on his work, seeming to take comfort in the neatly ordered nature of a tidy desk. Settled once again, Barchoke seemed to gather himself once more.
"I think I may have to start by apologizing for Lichfield," the goblin said.
"He didn't seem to like me much at the end there," Harry replied.
"Oh, no. He liked you, he liked you," the goblin reassured him somberly. "If he hadn't, he never would have compared you to Charlus," he explained. "They were very close ever since their school days, from what he's said. Any number of things could've gotten him into that funk."
Once again the goblin's files were arranged just so. Harry spotted the nondescript shoe box Cadogan had given him to house his old peeling trainers and picked it up off the floor where it had fallen.
"What I think I should apologize for is Lichfield's business manner, or lack thereof," the Overseer said.
"It's alright," Harry replied. "I like the jokes."
"So do I, despite the fact they're always at my expense," the goblin chuckled, lightening the mood. "Usually, Lester's the type to either sit there - like the stump you so aptly named him - and look intimidating, or get in your face and roughly spout off every legal procedure and hurtle we can do to you unless you comply. You wouldn't believe how fast he can make people cave under pressure."
Having seen his gruff face up close, not to mention the sharpness of the litigator's mind, Harry was glad to have him looking out for his interests rather than arrayed against him.
"He was brought into this because of his past familiarity with the Potters and the Potter Account," the goblin explained. "He would've been on the war path if he hadn't been, and that's exactly the kind of litigator you need. Get him around a Potter though-," Barchoke made a dismissive gesture, "and apparently that 'professional wall,' as he calls it, disappears entirely. Definitely not the impression I was hoping to give by bringing you to an Overseer's office," he finished self-deprecatingly.
The appraising look entered his eye again.
"You seemed to get him there at the end though, Mr. Potter," the Overseer said, emphasizing that last part. "Maybe his case won't be so hard to make with you. Got a bit of a spine to you, don't you?"
Harry gave an embarrassed shrug.
"Well don't let it go to your head," the Overseer warned quickly. "We may be bankers more than warriors nowadays, but our guards practice the old ways, and they don't have a sense of humor at all."
Harry was reminded of the panic in Gropegold's eyes as they dragged him away screaming, and wondered what was happening to the treacherous goblin now. He probably didn't want to know.
"You try out there-," Barchoke waved towards the door, "-what Lichfield did in here and you're liable to get yourself killed, and that would make everything we've done here-"
"-Irrelevant," Harry said. "Yeah, he told me."
"There was a lot of legal talk too," Barchoke fingered his files again, as if looking for a way to stall. "He and I have been dealing with this kind of stuff for years. You might be lost. Anything you didn't understand?"
"I think I got the basics," Harry said. "I was born in the magical world, to magical parents, and never should've been placed with the Dursleys. The fact that I was," Harry felt his anger rise, "tells you the Ministry appointed a guardian to watch out for me. That guardian is the one who left me with my aunt and uncle and has been in control of my account since my parents died."
Barchoke nodded. "What else?"
"Something funny happened to the last Account Manager and Gropegold took over," Harry recited. "This guardian has been using him to steal money from my account. We've Sealed the account, which stops him from doing anything more-," Harry stopped. "But you still haven't said how Gropegold was stealing and where all the money went," he told the Overseer.
"Oh, we didn't?" Barchoke perked up. "Personally, I find it fascinating ."
Having picked up on the goblin's love of procedures and files, anything he found fascinating would probably have him stuck in this office for what felt like another week.
"Just the basics will be fine," Harry said quickly.
.....
Want to read ahead. Then Join my Pa*treon 60+ exclusive chapters that are waiting for you.
Even Free members can enjoy 2+ advanced chapters FOR FREE.
Link: pa*treon.com/Lotus_Lover (Remove the *)
Join Right Now