![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lomonaaerenTitle: Reparations
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and her associates own all characters appearing in this work. I am writing this solely for fun and not profit.
Rating: PG.
Warnings: DEATHLY HALLOWS SPOILERS, but ignores epilogue. Language, violence, slash (obviously).
Pairings: Harry/Draco, background Ron/Hermione.
Notes: This is a one-shot for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lusiology’s request, which was H/D, build up to first kiss, wank or whatever, and possibly throw in a mysterious ancient artefact if the muse strikes. The muse did indeed strike. Also, the plot required that I fudge DH canon slightly at the end—not ignoring it so much as tweaking it.
Reparations
“This way,” Harry said, leaping lightly out of the goblin cart and holding up the lantern in front of him. He could have used his lit wand, but part of his contract with Gringotts for the year stipulated that he use as little magic as possible. “Mrs.—“ He glanced back at her as if he’d forgotten her name. It was better than embarrassing himself by mispronouncing it. He had enough embarrassment to live with on a daily basis.
“Zkladjubinoffer,” said the witch trotting behind him, who blinked in the light of the lantern as if she’d been underground the vast majority of her life. The goblin who had ridden behind her, and who had come along mostly to make sure that Harry escorted the witch to her vault without any undue tampering, folded his arms and grunted. His name was Vinharsh. Harry didn’t mind him so much. He was certainly a better supervisor than the insufferable Griphook.
“Right,” said Harry, and shone the lantern on the vault door, 615. Vinharsh came forwards and used the key, then remained at Mrs. Zkladjubinoffer’s side as she went in with a small sack to scoop Galleons into. The goblins weren’t even subtle about excluding Harry from the vaults. Harry stretched his arms above his head and looked away, trying to pretend he didn’t care.
And maybe he didn’t. He couldn’t say he’d learned the lesson the goblins wanted to teach him when they requested that the Ministry put him on this contract, but he’d learned some tolerance.
The witch came out again, and might have climbed into the cart without even noticing Harry. Vinharsh, though, said, “Thank you, Mr. Potter,” loud enough for her to hear. She jerked towards him, and then her eyes rose to his forehead, where Harry’s scar still shone, and widened.
“Harry Potter!” she breathed.
Harry gave her a small smile. His contract also specified that he had to be pleasant, but that part wasn’t so hard; it wasn’t as though the people who visited their vaults had caused his servitude to the goblins. “Yes. Quite a change from the days when I was running about and fighting Voldemort.”
Mrs. Zkladjubinoffer flinched and glanced away. “I suppose that I’m not quite used to hearing his name, even now,” she murmured, flicking gray hair from her eyes. “The Daily Prophet still won’t print it.”
Harry nodded in understanding. “Sorry, Madam. But I work in Gringotts now, at least for a short time more.” He darted a glance at Vinharsh, who looked displeased. But then, like most of the goblins, he hated it when wizards lied. He would just have liked Harry to omit the truth a little more often.
“You did make a good escort down, dear,” said Mrs. Zkladjubinoffer, and patted his hand. Then she leaned in, apparently under the impression that Vinharsh couldn’t hear or understand anything she said to Harry. “But isn’t it rather hard to be surrounded by them all the time?” she asked.
Harry smiled again and smoothly sidestepped the question. “It depends on what definition of difficulty you use,” he said. “Shall we go up again? Or was there another vault that you needed to visit?” He glanced at Vinharsh. The goblins didn’t always tell him when visitors had more than one key.
The goblin made the complex hand gesture that meant “no, and I’ll need to talk to you later.” The one piece of worthwhile practical knowledge that he’d carry out of here, Harry thought as he leaped back into the cart, were the hand signals that the Gringotts workers used among themselves. He might not ever come back here again when his term was up, except to visit his vault, but it was something no other Auror could contribute to the Ministry.
How bad does it have to be, he thought, leaning back as the cart began to accelerate but making sure that he didn’t bump into Mrs. Zkladjubinoffer, when I’m hoping I have something to contribute to the Ministry?
Of course, the Ministry wasn’t the same since Kingsley Shacklebolt had taken over. Harry knew that, even if he didn’t know exactly what else had changed, since the contract he’d agreed to to make reparations to the goblins for breaking into Gringotts confined him to bank property and forbade him to read the Daily Prophet. Harry still wasn’t sure why that last provision had been included, except that perhaps the goblins imagined it would frustrate him.
He still had his friends to visit him once a week and tell him scattered bits of news, though, and after six months, his frustration at not knowing anything else had largely ceased. Maybe it was just as well that he’d been out of the public eye for almost a year; Rita Skeeter would have made up far more compelling bits of gossip about him if he was working in the field as an Auror.
Almost a year.
There was just a day left, and Harry had obeyed all the terms of the contract: remained in Gringotts, helped to contribute to security and rebuilding the bank, not read the Daily Prophet, saw his friends only once a week, and not attempted to run away or steal anything else. The goblins had put him through the most boring and humiliating duties they could think of, and still he was there. He caught grumbles and hand-signals behind his back sometimes that indicated they weren’t happy with that.
He shrugged it off as much as possible. Would they really prefer that I act like a thief? They would get another year of service out of me if I did, but they’d also lose the public trust. Not the best situation for them.
The cart slowed down again as they neared the surface, and the witch wobbled gamely out, bidding farewell to Harry but only looking past Vinharsh, despite the fact that he was the one who’d let her access her vault. Harry folded his arms and leaned against the pillar nearby. Sometimes he could see the point of the half-wary, half-contemptuous attitude that most goblins maintained towards most wizards at all times.
Vinharsh motioned to him again, a slight flicker that Harry had nevertheless learned to watch for. If he ignored the goblins, they could claim he was being rude, and that would be time added to his contract. He followed Vinharsh into one of the carved, cave-like rooms that the Gringotts staff used as insurance against any wizard overhearing them. The roof made it hard for him to stand upright, and of course he wasn’t offered a chair, so he simply sat on the floor. Vinharsh perched on an unfinished block of stone.
“You know that you’ll go in a few days,” he said.
“Yes,” Harry said. July fifth, and it’s in one day, six hours, and thirty-two minutes, according to that permanent Tempus charm I have. But who’s counting?
Vinharsh remained silent, his gray fingers turning slowly over and over again. Harry waited for him to finish. That was another thing his year away from the sun—or at least any sun other than what fell through the bank doors—had taught him: patience when people around him were playing games. That was certain to stand him in good stead back in the Ministry, he thought wryly. Despite Kingsley’s efforts, Ron had warned him that plenty of the elements of the bad old Ministry were still in place, and still playing their games.
“We have one more task for you before you leave,” Vinharsh said, though from the sound of his voice, he was giving in with bad grace.
“One task that’ll take the entire day?” Harry asked suspiciously. He hadn’t had anything like that before. What he had was boring hours of waiting when he was on security duty, and long, queasy rides back and forth to the surface when the goblins wanted to show him off to visiting wizards.
“Yes.” And Vinharsh fell silent again, and motionless, save for the turning, turning, turning of his fingers.
Contrary to what he knew the goblins thought of him, Harry had learned to read individuals. In someone like Griphook, that turning would have meant he was pleased with himself and slyly plotting. In Vinharsh, it meant he was worried about what came next, or at least didn’t think it was the best plan.
“Can you tell me what I’ll be doing?” Harry asked finally, and was surprised at how gently his voice had emerged. Well, there’s no point in being rude, when I’ll be leaving in one day, six hours, and twenty minutes.
Vinharsh started. Harry felt his eyes narrow. Goblins never forgot a wizard was sitting in front of them; they never went that deeply into thought, except the mathematicians, who remained in the lowest levels of the banks and constantly went through magical counters representing piles of Galleons to make sure that the money in all the vaults was as it should be.
Probably realizing that he had made a mistake, Vinharsh cleared his throat and tried to talk in an absolutely normal tone. “The wizarding world is due to make its final reparations to us on the day of your release. An artifact is arriving, escorted by an Auror from the Ministry—an old piece of artwork that your kind stole long ago and has only recently released to us.” He paused, but Harry had learned not to react to accusations of theft after the first week he was in Gringotts. Reluctantly, tasting the words for a long time before he let them out of his mouth, Vinharsh went on. “It’s a painting of a goblin victory, The Battle of Ar-jash-arsh-ra. There is—suspicion that the pure-blood family who held the painting for a century may try to steal it back during its transfer to the bank. You are to make sure it reaches the vault designated for it without any undue incident.”
“Once it passes the doors of Gringotts,” Harry said.
“Yes. Of course.” Vinharsh looked down at his fingers again.
“May I know the name of the pure-blood family who held the painting?” Harry asked. “And which vault I’ll be escorting the painting to?”
“Twyller,” said Vinharsh. “And it’s Vault 1000.”
Harry caught his breath. He’d never been deeper than Vault 900, where the security was so tight that he had to have five goblins with him before they’d admit him. But he knew the rumors of traps deeper in the bank. They’d strike if they sensed the merest intention on the part of a wizard to steal an object, the least covetous desire.
“I’ve never heard of the Twyllers,” he said, because he couldn’t voice the suspicion that Vinharsh’s words had started growing in him.
“They’re a very old and very reclusive family,” Vinharsh said, jumping to his feet. “Never even sent their children to Hogwarts during the last fifty years. And they kept well out of your war with the Dark Thief.” Harry had to appreciate the name they’d tagged on Voldemort after his death. “Of course you wouldn’t have heard of them, with as little appreciation of history as you have.”
Harry let the words slide off him. “Do you think they might have agents in the bank?” he asked, standing so that he could duck out of the door behind Vinharsh.
“I don’t know.” The goblin was walking briskly away from him towards the corner of the upper room where people waited to be escorted to the vaults. “The rumors that we have about them are vague and undefined. For now, Potter, familiarize yourself with the security precautions that you’ll have to undertake, and the limits of your duties. There are books about the painting and the battle it depicts in your rooms.” He paused after he said that and gave Harry a significant look.
Harry bit his tongue to stop himself from complaining that books about the painting wouldn’t help him much if he were to protect it. He just nodded and ducked around the pillars, heading towards the far inner wall of Gringotts.
The wall was honeycombed with pentagonal doors which blocked the entrances to private goblin rooms. One reached them by climbing up ladders or series of steps that stretched from the floor up the sheer blank face and stopped at the ledges outside the doors, then continued on until they halted at doors easily a hundred feet up. Harry, of course, had been assigned rooms on the very top story. More than once, he’d been grateful for his good head for heights from broom-flying.
Flying. Will I still know how to do that, I wonder?
Harry shook his head as he stretched the protesting muscles in his calves out and then unlocked his door with the one key the goblins did trust him with. He’d stopped whinging on and on about injustice a few months after he arrived. He’d just have to trust that he would find out all the things he wondered in a few days, since he’d be free and could do them.
He groaned when he saw the large pile of books waiting on the edge of his single table. Wearily, he sat down and began sorting through them, laying aside the ones filled with runes instead of ordinary words. Despite a year of practice, he still didn’t read them easily.
*
“I trust that I don’t need to remind you how important this is, Malfoy,” Kingsley said in the rumble that he only adopted when he was serious—or maybe just when he was talking to Draco. He’d never been sure of that. “If you deliver the painting to its rightful owners—“
Who are no goblins, Draco thought, but he kept his eyes straight ahead and only nodded slightly to show he was listening.
“—then you stand a good chance of convincing those who still distrust you that you aren’t a poor wizard’s Auror any longer.”
Draco smoothed out his grimace. He had better self-control than his father had, after a year of insults and reminders like this that he still wasn’t fully trusted and never would be. “Poor wizard’s Auror” was what they called everyone, Weasley and Granger included, who had been admitted to the Auror ranks out of desperate need, without the full three years of training, but most of the people tagged with that name had proven themselves. Only Draco still heard it regularly muttered at him, along with insinuations that the Ministry should never have admitted him at all if they didn’t like knives poised at their backs.
Draco had done what he could to prove them wrong. It never seemed to be enough. They looked at his hair and his face and saw his father. Draco would have liked to tell them about his mother, who had considered the survival of her family before service to any snake-faced idiot, but of course that was too private for him to share.
“Why this specific painting?” he asked. It was the first time Kingsley had paused and let him ask questions since he’d summoned Draco to the office to explain his mission.
“Because it’s rumored to be the most powerful expression of goblin art in the world.” Kingsley shrugged, not seeming interested as he leafed through a thick pile of parchment. Of course, Draco seethed to himself, he had had the advantage of reading all about the picture before he summoned Draco. “It’s changed possession so many times that that makes it important in and of itself. The goblins attach more importance to those works of art they fought for, I understand.”
“And I only have to escort it from the doors of the Ministry to the doors of Gringotts?” Draco asked. “Or down inside the bank itself?”
“Down inside the bank itself,” Kingsley said, and looked up at him with a stern expression. That made Draco burn with quiet resentment inside, but by now, that was almost a banked fire. If he got the chance, he would take vengeance on Shacklebolt along with all the rest of them—but he had come to accept that the best vengeance was remaining in the Auror ranks and doing what they didn’t want him to do. “You’ll have help once you pass the doors and start on your way to Vault 1000, of course. Harry Potter has been working for Gringotts the past year in order to make reparations for the break-in during the war. He’ll join you as part of the on-site security team.”
Draco was glad he hadn’t had anything in his mouth but air, or he would have started coughing, and he couldn’t afford the loss of dignity in front of Kingsley.
Potter.
He’d almost forgotten about the git, truth be told. When Potter wasn’t in front of him every day to brag about his defeat of the Dark Lord and remind Draco of everything he couldn’t have again—security, prestige, an unquestioned good name—it was easier to bow his head over his paperwork, do it better and faster than anyone else in the Ministry, and then go home and make plans to do even better tomorrow.
On the other hand, the thought of Potter forced to join him in escorting the goblin painting back to its place on the wall of a Gringotts vault was ridiculously amusing.
“Of course, sir,” he said, when he realized Kingsley was still watching him. He knew some of the murmurs behind his back were envy; he was the only Auror who received his assignments directly from the Minister himself. Of course, the wiser Aurors knew that Draco got them that way because Kingsley still didn’t trust him, and they sniggered about that. Draco fed the gossip and rumor mills of the Ministry kilograms of grist all by himself. “Will that be all?”
“Review these files,” said Kingsley, and floated them towards Draco with a swish of his wand. “You’ll pick up the painting in the Atrium of the Ministry at noon tomorrow to escort it to Gringotts.”
Draco nodded, and caught the files expertly. It didn’t take him long to make his way back to his office—shared with no partner, and warded so heavily that no one else but the Minister himself or the Head of the Auror office could enter—and settle down with them. He promptly began to read them with the productive skimming method he’d developed: look for subheadings, for long paragraphs, for important ideas, and note them. If something was boring, skip on to the next subsection. The people who wrote the reports and filed the majority of the parchment at the Ministry all learned to write in basically the same way. That meant important nuggets of information were unlikely to be scattered in subsections that dealt with other knowledge in turgid, unfathomable prose.
Draco smiled slightly to himself when his wards hissed and cracked like embers with sand poured over them. There was at least one test, every day, from someone like Weasley, who thought Draco would have to lower his guard sometime.
He never had. He never would. Even the unremarkable photographs on the walls of his office, which looked to be pictures of suspects from the cases he’d worked, were disguised with heavy glamours. Revealed, they would be images of the Manor, of Draco himself as a child, of his parents, of the Malfoy wealth undiminished and gleaming as it had been before they’d been ordered to pay war reparations in turn.
But Draco wasn’t foolish enough to leave such images visible to any naked eye that wanted to see them. It would get him no end of teasing from the other Aurors.
He protected his life. He was cautious. He was cunning. He flourished in the dragon’s mouth, in the very territory of the enemy.
Despite the difficulties of the last two years, one as a seventh-year Hogwarts students and one as a poor wizard’s Auror, Draco had arrived at the age of twenty with a drive and experience that would do credit to many older wizards. And sometimes he enjoyed the challenge.
He would have given much for a friend, or even someone he could trust the way he had been able to trust Professor Snape, to give him guarded praise in between handing out insults and false information. But he had done all right without one. He’d even learned to keep his tongue in check, and let his sarcasm flourish in the middle of his brain.
He wrote the best bits down, of course, and then burned them. It wouldn’t do to leave them either without an appreciative audience—of one—or lying around for an unappreciative one.
*
“But that’s not fair.” Harry could hear the dull, leaden tone in his own voice that meant he’d already given up. He’d sounded like that in his head after he saw Snape’s memories, and realized there was no way around his own death. He looked down at his hands, spread open on his lap, and sighed.
“It may not be fair, but it’s what the goblins demand.” Kingsley shuffled the parchments on the desk in front of him with a soft hissing sound. He was too embarrassed to look Harry in the eye as he explained the arrangements Gringotts had asked for, which was something, Harry supposed. “Your attack and escape did enormous damage to the bank, and also damaged goblin prestige in the eyes of wizards. They’ve mostly rebuilt the vaults and their security systems, but even so, some of their old clients won’t trust them. This is political, Harry, more than it’s fair or just. The goblins see how the whole wizarding world honors you, and they’ve concluded that your working in the bank, saying by your very presence that you believe in making amends for the injustice you did, would restore the trust of customers.”
Harry closed his eyes. He’d already mustered every argument against Kingsley that he could think of.
This wasn’t how he’d envisioned spending his first year as an Auror.
On the other hand, he reminded himself, in normal times he would have spent his first year in training, and the two after that, as well. The ranks of the Aurors had been so depleted during the war, and the trials that followed it and revealed several important Ministry officials to be Death Eaters, that Kingsley had promoted raw recruits into the full positions usually left to more experienced wizards. They were supposed to receive training on the way. But in the meantime, they were left up to the usual fate of exceptions everywhere and had to do whatever they were told to do.
And Kingsley had explained why this was so important. The goblins might shut down the bank altogether if they didn’t get their way. And that would be a disaster for the wizarding economy—already fragile and struggling to recover from a war that had preyed on its resources and killed or exiled many of its best workers. There didn’t need to be distrust between the species and the threat of another goblin rebellion on top of everything else.
Harry nodded, and looked up. “What do I have to do?”
Harry snapped his eyes open, gasping, just as Kingsley handed him the contract. He shook his head and stood, stretching his arms wearily over his head. He’d Transfigured the cramped little bed that came with the room into one nearer human size, but his back still seemed unconvinced that he had room to stretch out now. Harry bent double at the waist and swiveled from side to side to loosen the knots.
He had to do it carefully. The arched ceiling and the absolutely flat walls and floor gave him room for the bed, the table, a chair behind the table, and the door that led to the loo. Harry had put the new broomstick he’d bought for his seventh year at Hogwarts and the trunk that contained his clothes in the corner, and brushed up on his household charms until he didn’t need a house-elf. And that was all. Even the books on The Battle of Ar-jash-arsh-ra made the place appear more crowded.
Harry went to the loo for a quick shower, musing on the dream. He tended to dream about whatever was stressing him most at the moment; when he’d been assigned to guard the Lestrange vault, his nightmares were full of the moments when it seemed as if they’d never find the Hufflepuff cup. Now, he knew he was dreaming about the contract because of his fear that something would happen in the next day to nullify it, or change it so that he’d have to spend another year cooped up among the goblins.
Nothing will happen, he thought as he ran foamy fingers through his hair and grimaced at the grainy feeling of the water—pumped through stone, it seemed to retain a mineral texture when he used it—and then ducked his head to let the spray have its turn at the shampoo. I’ve been so careful so far. Why would I be less careful at the last moment, when I finally have a chance to go free?
It was true that the books he’d read about the painting didn’t reassure him much, he thought as he stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel. The room was so small, and so caged-in with all the stone, that Harry had enchanted the wall immediately in front of him to a mirror-like sheen. He moved carefully, to avoid bumping his elbows or knees, as he dried himself.
The painting had been stolen so often that there were rumors it actually moved itself about, rather like the Sword of Gryffindor—but The Battle of Ar-jash-arsh-ra had no particular affinity for any one kind of person, from what Harry had read. It went wherever it was most desired. One page had shown a replica of it. It was an impressively ugly painting, with a wild sweep of grays and purples and browns and muddy reds in the best goblin tradition. It didn’t show the flailing and dying wizards and goblins so much as it showed the artist’s impression of their pain. The division between sky and land was barely clear, or else the replica Harry had looked at was bad.
Harry didn’t think anyone would have bothered about it if not for its immense age—over a thousand years old, surviving thanks to multiple preservation charms—and the fact that some of the paints were mixed with chimera and manticore blood.
Of course, I’m not an art critic, he thought, as he made his way out to his meager dinner of lightly toasted bread, gray cheese, and heavy goblin ale, sitting on a precariously balanced tray next to the books. Some goblin magic landed the meals in Harry’s room overnight or while he was bathing, and nobody Harry knew at Gringotts would explain how.
Probably something embarrassing, like goblin-sized rats running it up in their mouths, he thought, and then managed to sit down and enjoy the dinner anyway, while he did his best to absorb a book that would have made Hermione tired.
*
It really was quite the most disturbing picture Draco had ever seen.
But that didn’t matter, because it belonged to wizards, not goblins. Draco knew the Twyllers only by reputation. That didn’t matter, either. They were pure-bloods, and whatever means had been used to make them give up this painting, Draco was sure they had been nothing less than coercive.
The gilt frame carved with swords and wands was the most eye-catching thing about the painting at first. Then one realized that the image was full of dying figures—people being stabbed, cursed, hexed, and trampled by the elephant-like beasts the goblins were riding—and human eyes didn’t know where to go first.
An enormous swirl of blood-purple occupied the center of the painting, and splashed out to dim the impressions of other struggling wizards. Draco didn’t understand the point of that. A goblin might.
It didn’t matter. Wizards had stolen it long enough ago that might should have made right and the painting should have stayed with the Twyllers. But back The Battle of Ar-jash-arsh-ra would go to the deepest Gringotts vault, and Draco supposed it might stay there this time. The bank had installed new security spells that made the ones it had used before look pitiful, from the rumors Draco had heard.
He tapped the bottlecap, a modified Portkey, that would get him past the wards around the painting and give him complete control of it. A wobble, and it rose into the air, floated over the restored Fountain of the Magical Brethren, and then settled in front of him. Draco nodded and turned away.
A cloaked figure stood in front of him. Draco clenched his hands together behind his back, around his wand. If someone interfered with his mission at this point, it was likely that he would never gain the respect of anyone in the Department. “Who are you?” he asked, and shuffled his body in between the stranger and the painting when the wizard responded by staring past his shoulder.
The man—Draco thought it was a man from the lines of the body—snapped himself free as from a trance and looked back at Draco. “Beware, young master,” he whispered, and leaned close. His breath smelled of rotting meat and made Draco nauseated. “That painting has the ability to take itself away from where it’s not wanted or desired to a place that it is wanted or desired.”
Draco stiffened, but managed to produce a smile. “Well, the goblins want it, so it’s going to them,” he said aloud, while in his head he critiqued the implied threat. Not quite as impressive as Knossos’s hints about what my mother’s fate should have been, but more impressive than Weasley’s attempt to trip me down the stairs. I give it three Galleons and nine Sickles.
“Not as badly as other people want it,” the cloaked wizard said, and shuffled closer. “What can they know of the blood shed at the real battle of Ar-jash-arsh-ra, the sacrifices wizards made to have their history and the truth preserved? Nothing. And yet you take it to them, as if you did not care about history yourself.”
Draco raised an eyebrow and made a subtle gesture towards his own white-blond hair in answer, which everyone who was worth knowing would realize was an emblem of the Malfoys. Let this old man look to his own deficiencies before he accuses me of not caring about history.
“Traitor,” the wizard said, and his tongue flickered out like a worm from the mouth of a corpse. “I name you traitor to your own kind, and the more likely to die horribly because of it.”
A bit more impressive. A four-Galleon threat, that. Draco showed another thin smirk. “Tell me who stood by my family,” he said, barely moving his lips. “Tell me where the Twyllers were when the Malfoys and the Lestranges and other families were stripped of their monies and their pride to become martyrs to the war reparations, if you care so much about pure-blood history.”
The wizard hissed, as though Draco had said something forbidden. “This is larger than a single family,” he said. “This is about the history of all pure-blood wizarding kind. Have you looked at this picture, Draco Malfoy? Do you know what it depicts?”
Draco felt a brief tug of curiosity, an emotion he’d usually had to surpass outside his cases since he came to the Ministry. If he listened too closely to everyone around him, after all, he was only likely to find them insulting or laughing or sneering at him. He lifted his head and lifted his eyebrows with it, then said, “I know that it depicts a goblin rebellion,” and stepped past the wizard.
“More than that!” the man shouted after him, his voice cracking. “More than that! It shows something that you would have to travel miles and years and abysses of the soul to see otherwise, the truth of where pure-bloods came from, the real source of the division between our kind and the Muggleborns! If the secret of this painting were ever to be unleashed, it would cause chaos in the wizarding world! That is why they want you to take it away to an underground vault where no one will ever see it again, because without it, we have less proof of our grand position!”
Draco bit his lips, and didn’t turn around. The old man was probably crazy, and Draco had been warned that the Twyllers could try to seize the painting. Besides, he didn’t see what this had to do with him. He’d chosen his side, and it happened to be the side with Muggleborns on it.
He secured the spells that would tie the painting to him for the Apparition to Gringotts—it was too big to simply carry in a Side-Along—and then passed beyond the Ministry’s wards and vanished.
Part 2.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and her associates own all characters appearing in this work. I am writing this solely for fun and not profit.
Rating: PG.
Warnings: DEATHLY HALLOWS SPOILERS, but ignores epilogue. Language, violence, slash (obviously).
Pairings: Harry/Draco, background Ron/Hermione.
Notes: This is a one-shot for
lusiology’s request, which was H/D, build up to first kiss, wank or whatever, and possibly throw in a mysterious ancient artefact if the muse strikes. The muse did indeed strike. Also, the plot required that I fudge DH canon slightly at the end—not ignoring it so much as tweaking it.Reparations
“This way,” Harry said, leaping lightly out of the goblin cart and holding up the lantern in front of him. He could have used his lit wand, but part of his contract with Gringotts for the year stipulated that he use as little magic as possible. “Mrs.—“ He glanced back at her as if he’d forgotten her name. It was better than embarrassing himself by mispronouncing it. He had enough embarrassment to live with on a daily basis.
“Zkladjubinoffer,” said the witch trotting behind him, who blinked in the light of the lantern as if she’d been underground the vast majority of her life. The goblin who had ridden behind her, and who had come along mostly to make sure that Harry escorted the witch to her vault without any undue tampering, folded his arms and grunted. His name was Vinharsh. Harry didn’t mind him so much. He was certainly a better supervisor than the insufferable Griphook.
“Right,” said Harry, and shone the lantern on the vault door, 615. Vinharsh came forwards and used the key, then remained at Mrs. Zkladjubinoffer’s side as she went in with a small sack to scoop Galleons into. The goblins weren’t even subtle about excluding Harry from the vaults. Harry stretched his arms above his head and looked away, trying to pretend he didn’t care.
And maybe he didn’t. He couldn’t say he’d learned the lesson the goblins wanted to teach him when they requested that the Ministry put him on this contract, but he’d learned some tolerance.
The witch came out again, and might have climbed into the cart without even noticing Harry. Vinharsh, though, said, “Thank you, Mr. Potter,” loud enough for her to hear. She jerked towards him, and then her eyes rose to his forehead, where Harry’s scar still shone, and widened.
“Harry Potter!” she breathed.
Harry gave her a small smile. His contract also specified that he had to be pleasant, but that part wasn’t so hard; it wasn’t as though the people who visited their vaults had caused his servitude to the goblins. “Yes. Quite a change from the days when I was running about and fighting Voldemort.”
Mrs. Zkladjubinoffer flinched and glanced away. “I suppose that I’m not quite used to hearing his name, even now,” she murmured, flicking gray hair from her eyes. “The Daily Prophet still won’t print it.”
Harry nodded in understanding. “Sorry, Madam. But I work in Gringotts now, at least for a short time more.” He darted a glance at Vinharsh, who looked displeased. But then, like most of the goblins, he hated it when wizards lied. He would just have liked Harry to omit the truth a little more often.
“You did make a good escort down, dear,” said Mrs. Zkladjubinoffer, and patted his hand. Then she leaned in, apparently under the impression that Vinharsh couldn’t hear or understand anything she said to Harry. “But isn’t it rather hard to be surrounded by them all the time?” she asked.
Harry smiled again and smoothly sidestepped the question. “It depends on what definition of difficulty you use,” he said. “Shall we go up again? Or was there another vault that you needed to visit?” He glanced at Vinharsh. The goblins didn’t always tell him when visitors had more than one key.
The goblin made the complex hand gesture that meant “no, and I’ll need to talk to you later.” The one piece of worthwhile practical knowledge that he’d carry out of here, Harry thought as he leaped back into the cart, were the hand signals that the Gringotts workers used among themselves. He might not ever come back here again when his term was up, except to visit his vault, but it was something no other Auror could contribute to the Ministry.
How bad does it have to be, he thought, leaning back as the cart began to accelerate but making sure that he didn’t bump into Mrs. Zkladjubinoffer, when I’m hoping I have something to contribute to the Ministry?
Of course, the Ministry wasn’t the same since Kingsley Shacklebolt had taken over. Harry knew that, even if he didn’t know exactly what else had changed, since the contract he’d agreed to to make reparations to the goblins for breaking into Gringotts confined him to bank property and forbade him to read the Daily Prophet. Harry still wasn’t sure why that last provision had been included, except that perhaps the goblins imagined it would frustrate him.
He still had his friends to visit him once a week and tell him scattered bits of news, though, and after six months, his frustration at not knowing anything else had largely ceased. Maybe it was just as well that he’d been out of the public eye for almost a year; Rita Skeeter would have made up far more compelling bits of gossip about him if he was working in the field as an Auror.
Almost a year.
There was just a day left, and Harry had obeyed all the terms of the contract: remained in Gringotts, helped to contribute to security and rebuilding the bank, not read the Daily Prophet, saw his friends only once a week, and not attempted to run away or steal anything else. The goblins had put him through the most boring and humiliating duties they could think of, and still he was there. He caught grumbles and hand-signals behind his back sometimes that indicated they weren’t happy with that.
He shrugged it off as much as possible. Would they really prefer that I act like a thief? They would get another year of service out of me if I did, but they’d also lose the public trust. Not the best situation for them.
The cart slowed down again as they neared the surface, and the witch wobbled gamely out, bidding farewell to Harry but only looking past Vinharsh, despite the fact that he was the one who’d let her access her vault. Harry folded his arms and leaned against the pillar nearby. Sometimes he could see the point of the half-wary, half-contemptuous attitude that most goblins maintained towards most wizards at all times.
Vinharsh motioned to him again, a slight flicker that Harry had nevertheless learned to watch for. If he ignored the goblins, they could claim he was being rude, and that would be time added to his contract. He followed Vinharsh into one of the carved, cave-like rooms that the Gringotts staff used as insurance against any wizard overhearing them. The roof made it hard for him to stand upright, and of course he wasn’t offered a chair, so he simply sat on the floor. Vinharsh perched on an unfinished block of stone.
“You know that you’ll go in a few days,” he said.
“Yes,” Harry said. July fifth, and it’s in one day, six hours, and thirty-two minutes, according to that permanent Tempus charm I have. But who’s counting?
Vinharsh remained silent, his gray fingers turning slowly over and over again. Harry waited for him to finish. That was another thing his year away from the sun—or at least any sun other than what fell through the bank doors—had taught him: patience when people around him were playing games. That was certain to stand him in good stead back in the Ministry, he thought wryly. Despite Kingsley’s efforts, Ron had warned him that plenty of the elements of the bad old Ministry were still in place, and still playing their games.
“We have one more task for you before you leave,” Vinharsh said, though from the sound of his voice, he was giving in with bad grace.
“One task that’ll take the entire day?” Harry asked suspiciously. He hadn’t had anything like that before. What he had was boring hours of waiting when he was on security duty, and long, queasy rides back and forth to the surface when the goblins wanted to show him off to visiting wizards.
“Yes.” And Vinharsh fell silent again, and motionless, save for the turning, turning, turning of his fingers.
Contrary to what he knew the goblins thought of him, Harry had learned to read individuals. In someone like Griphook, that turning would have meant he was pleased with himself and slyly plotting. In Vinharsh, it meant he was worried about what came next, or at least didn’t think it was the best plan.
“Can you tell me what I’ll be doing?” Harry asked finally, and was surprised at how gently his voice had emerged. Well, there’s no point in being rude, when I’ll be leaving in one day, six hours, and twenty minutes.
Vinharsh started. Harry felt his eyes narrow. Goblins never forgot a wizard was sitting in front of them; they never went that deeply into thought, except the mathematicians, who remained in the lowest levels of the banks and constantly went through magical counters representing piles of Galleons to make sure that the money in all the vaults was as it should be.
Probably realizing that he had made a mistake, Vinharsh cleared his throat and tried to talk in an absolutely normal tone. “The wizarding world is due to make its final reparations to us on the day of your release. An artifact is arriving, escorted by an Auror from the Ministry—an old piece of artwork that your kind stole long ago and has only recently released to us.” He paused, but Harry had learned not to react to accusations of theft after the first week he was in Gringotts. Reluctantly, tasting the words for a long time before he let them out of his mouth, Vinharsh went on. “It’s a painting of a goblin victory, The Battle of Ar-jash-arsh-ra. There is—suspicion that the pure-blood family who held the painting for a century may try to steal it back during its transfer to the bank. You are to make sure it reaches the vault designated for it without any undue incident.”
“Once it passes the doors of Gringotts,” Harry said.
“Yes. Of course.” Vinharsh looked down at his fingers again.
“May I know the name of the pure-blood family who held the painting?” Harry asked. “And which vault I’ll be escorting the painting to?”
“Twyller,” said Vinharsh. “And it’s Vault 1000.”
Harry caught his breath. He’d never been deeper than Vault 900, where the security was so tight that he had to have five goblins with him before they’d admit him. But he knew the rumors of traps deeper in the bank. They’d strike if they sensed the merest intention on the part of a wizard to steal an object, the least covetous desire.
“I’ve never heard of the Twyllers,” he said, because he couldn’t voice the suspicion that Vinharsh’s words had started growing in him.
“They’re a very old and very reclusive family,” Vinharsh said, jumping to his feet. “Never even sent their children to Hogwarts during the last fifty years. And they kept well out of your war with the Dark Thief.” Harry had to appreciate the name they’d tagged on Voldemort after his death. “Of course you wouldn’t have heard of them, with as little appreciation of history as you have.”
Harry let the words slide off him. “Do you think they might have agents in the bank?” he asked, standing so that he could duck out of the door behind Vinharsh.
“I don’t know.” The goblin was walking briskly away from him towards the corner of the upper room where people waited to be escorted to the vaults. “The rumors that we have about them are vague and undefined. For now, Potter, familiarize yourself with the security precautions that you’ll have to undertake, and the limits of your duties. There are books about the painting and the battle it depicts in your rooms.” He paused after he said that and gave Harry a significant look.
Harry bit his tongue to stop himself from complaining that books about the painting wouldn’t help him much if he were to protect it. He just nodded and ducked around the pillars, heading towards the far inner wall of Gringotts.
The wall was honeycombed with pentagonal doors which blocked the entrances to private goblin rooms. One reached them by climbing up ladders or series of steps that stretched from the floor up the sheer blank face and stopped at the ledges outside the doors, then continued on until they halted at doors easily a hundred feet up. Harry, of course, had been assigned rooms on the very top story. More than once, he’d been grateful for his good head for heights from broom-flying.
Flying. Will I still know how to do that, I wonder?
Harry shook his head as he stretched the protesting muscles in his calves out and then unlocked his door with the one key the goblins did trust him with. He’d stopped whinging on and on about injustice a few months after he arrived. He’d just have to trust that he would find out all the things he wondered in a few days, since he’d be free and could do them.
He groaned when he saw the large pile of books waiting on the edge of his single table. Wearily, he sat down and began sorting through them, laying aside the ones filled with runes instead of ordinary words. Despite a year of practice, he still didn’t read them easily.
*
“I trust that I don’t need to remind you how important this is, Malfoy,” Kingsley said in the rumble that he only adopted when he was serious—or maybe just when he was talking to Draco. He’d never been sure of that. “If you deliver the painting to its rightful owners—“
Who are no goblins, Draco thought, but he kept his eyes straight ahead and only nodded slightly to show he was listening.
“—then you stand a good chance of convincing those who still distrust you that you aren’t a poor wizard’s Auror any longer.”
Draco smoothed out his grimace. He had better self-control than his father had, after a year of insults and reminders like this that he still wasn’t fully trusted and never would be. “Poor wizard’s Auror” was what they called everyone, Weasley and Granger included, who had been admitted to the Auror ranks out of desperate need, without the full three years of training, but most of the people tagged with that name had proven themselves. Only Draco still heard it regularly muttered at him, along with insinuations that the Ministry should never have admitted him at all if they didn’t like knives poised at their backs.
Draco had done what he could to prove them wrong. It never seemed to be enough. They looked at his hair and his face and saw his father. Draco would have liked to tell them about his mother, who had considered the survival of her family before service to any snake-faced idiot, but of course that was too private for him to share.
“Why this specific painting?” he asked. It was the first time Kingsley had paused and let him ask questions since he’d summoned Draco to the office to explain his mission.
“Because it’s rumored to be the most powerful expression of goblin art in the world.” Kingsley shrugged, not seeming interested as he leafed through a thick pile of parchment. Of course, Draco seethed to himself, he had had the advantage of reading all about the picture before he summoned Draco. “It’s changed possession so many times that that makes it important in and of itself. The goblins attach more importance to those works of art they fought for, I understand.”
“And I only have to escort it from the doors of the Ministry to the doors of Gringotts?” Draco asked. “Or down inside the bank itself?”
“Down inside the bank itself,” Kingsley said, and looked up at him with a stern expression. That made Draco burn with quiet resentment inside, but by now, that was almost a banked fire. If he got the chance, he would take vengeance on Shacklebolt along with all the rest of them—but he had come to accept that the best vengeance was remaining in the Auror ranks and doing what they didn’t want him to do. “You’ll have help once you pass the doors and start on your way to Vault 1000, of course. Harry Potter has been working for Gringotts the past year in order to make reparations for the break-in during the war. He’ll join you as part of the on-site security team.”
Draco was glad he hadn’t had anything in his mouth but air, or he would have started coughing, and he couldn’t afford the loss of dignity in front of Kingsley.
Potter.
He’d almost forgotten about the git, truth be told. When Potter wasn’t in front of him every day to brag about his defeat of the Dark Lord and remind Draco of everything he couldn’t have again—security, prestige, an unquestioned good name—it was easier to bow his head over his paperwork, do it better and faster than anyone else in the Ministry, and then go home and make plans to do even better tomorrow.
On the other hand, the thought of Potter forced to join him in escorting the goblin painting back to its place on the wall of a Gringotts vault was ridiculously amusing.
“Of course, sir,” he said, when he realized Kingsley was still watching him. He knew some of the murmurs behind his back were envy; he was the only Auror who received his assignments directly from the Minister himself. Of course, the wiser Aurors knew that Draco got them that way because Kingsley still didn’t trust him, and they sniggered about that. Draco fed the gossip and rumor mills of the Ministry kilograms of grist all by himself. “Will that be all?”
“Review these files,” said Kingsley, and floated them towards Draco with a swish of his wand. “You’ll pick up the painting in the Atrium of the Ministry at noon tomorrow to escort it to Gringotts.”
Draco nodded, and caught the files expertly. It didn’t take him long to make his way back to his office—shared with no partner, and warded so heavily that no one else but the Minister himself or the Head of the Auror office could enter—and settle down with them. He promptly began to read them with the productive skimming method he’d developed: look for subheadings, for long paragraphs, for important ideas, and note them. If something was boring, skip on to the next subsection. The people who wrote the reports and filed the majority of the parchment at the Ministry all learned to write in basically the same way. That meant important nuggets of information were unlikely to be scattered in subsections that dealt with other knowledge in turgid, unfathomable prose.
Draco smiled slightly to himself when his wards hissed and cracked like embers with sand poured over them. There was at least one test, every day, from someone like Weasley, who thought Draco would have to lower his guard sometime.
He never had. He never would. Even the unremarkable photographs on the walls of his office, which looked to be pictures of suspects from the cases he’d worked, were disguised with heavy glamours. Revealed, they would be images of the Manor, of Draco himself as a child, of his parents, of the Malfoy wealth undiminished and gleaming as it had been before they’d been ordered to pay war reparations in turn.
But Draco wasn’t foolish enough to leave such images visible to any naked eye that wanted to see them. It would get him no end of teasing from the other Aurors.
He protected his life. He was cautious. He was cunning. He flourished in the dragon’s mouth, in the very territory of the enemy.
Despite the difficulties of the last two years, one as a seventh-year Hogwarts students and one as a poor wizard’s Auror, Draco had arrived at the age of twenty with a drive and experience that would do credit to many older wizards. And sometimes he enjoyed the challenge.
He would have given much for a friend, or even someone he could trust the way he had been able to trust Professor Snape, to give him guarded praise in between handing out insults and false information. But he had done all right without one. He’d even learned to keep his tongue in check, and let his sarcasm flourish in the middle of his brain.
He wrote the best bits down, of course, and then burned them. It wouldn’t do to leave them either without an appreciative audience—of one—or lying around for an unappreciative one.
*
“But that’s not fair.” Harry could hear the dull, leaden tone in his own voice that meant he’d already given up. He’d sounded like that in his head after he saw Snape’s memories, and realized there was no way around his own death. He looked down at his hands, spread open on his lap, and sighed.
“It may not be fair, but it’s what the goblins demand.” Kingsley shuffled the parchments on the desk in front of him with a soft hissing sound. He was too embarrassed to look Harry in the eye as he explained the arrangements Gringotts had asked for, which was something, Harry supposed. “Your attack and escape did enormous damage to the bank, and also damaged goblin prestige in the eyes of wizards. They’ve mostly rebuilt the vaults and their security systems, but even so, some of their old clients won’t trust them. This is political, Harry, more than it’s fair or just. The goblins see how the whole wizarding world honors you, and they’ve concluded that your working in the bank, saying by your very presence that you believe in making amends for the injustice you did, would restore the trust of customers.”
Harry closed his eyes. He’d already mustered every argument against Kingsley that he could think of.
This wasn’t how he’d envisioned spending his first year as an Auror.
On the other hand, he reminded himself, in normal times he would have spent his first year in training, and the two after that, as well. The ranks of the Aurors had been so depleted during the war, and the trials that followed it and revealed several important Ministry officials to be Death Eaters, that Kingsley had promoted raw recruits into the full positions usually left to more experienced wizards. They were supposed to receive training on the way. But in the meantime, they were left up to the usual fate of exceptions everywhere and had to do whatever they were told to do.
And Kingsley had explained why this was so important. The goblins might shut down the bank altogether if they didn’t get their way. And that would be a disaster for the wizarding economy—already fragile and struggling to recover from a war that had preyed on its resources and killed or exiled many of its best workers. There didn’t need to be distrust between the species and the threat of another goblin rebellion on top of everything else.
Harry nodded, and looked up. “What do I have to do?”
Harry snapped his eyes open, gasping, just as Kingsley handed him the contract. He shook his head and stood, stretching his arms wearily over his head. He’d Transfigured the cramped little bed that came with the room into one nearer human size, but his back still seemed unconvinced that he had room to stretch out now. Harry bent double at the waist and swiveled from side to side to loosen the knots.
He had to do it carefully. The arched ceiling and the absolutely flat walls and floor gave him room for the bed, the table, a chair behind the table, and the door that led to the loo. Harry had put the new broomstick he’d bought for his seventh year at Hogwarts and the trunk that contained his clothes in the corner, and brushed up on his household charms until he didn’t need a house-elf. And that was all. Even the books on The Battle of Ar-jash-arsh-ra made the place appear more crowded.
Harry went to the loo for a quick shower, musing on the dream. He tended to dream about whatever was stressing him most at the moment; when he’d been assigned to guard the Lestrange vault, his nightmares were full of the moments when it seemed as if they’d never find the Hufflepuff cup. Now, he knew he was dreaming about the contract because of his fear that something would happen in the next day to nullify it, or change it so that he’d have to spend another year cooped up among the goblins.
Nothing will happen, he thought as he ran foamy fingers through his hair and grimaced at the grainy feeling of the water—pumped through stone, it seemed to retain a mineral texture when he used it—and then ducked his head to let the spray have its turn at the shampoo. I’ve been so careful so far. Why would I be less careful at the last moment, when I finally have a chance to go free?
It was true that the books he’d read about the painting didn’t reassure him much, he thought as he stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel. The room was so small, and so caged-in with all the stone, that Harry had enchanted the wall immediately in front of him to a mirror-like sheen. He moved carefully, to avoid bumping his elbows or knees, as he dried himself.
The painting had been stolen so often that there were rumors it actually moved itself about, rather like the Sword of Gryffindor—but The Battle of Ar-jash-arsh-ra had no particular affinity for any one kind of person, from what Harry had read. It went wherever it was most desired. One page had shown a replica of it. It was an impressively ugly painting, with a wild sweep of grays and purples and browns and muddy reds in the best goblin tradition. It didn’t show the flailing and dying wizards and goblins so much as it showed the artist’s impression of their pain. The division between sky and land was barely clear, or else the replica Harry had looked at was bad.
Harry didn’t think anyone would have bothered about it if not for its immense age—over a thousand years old, surviving thanks to multiple preservation charms—and the fact that some of the paints were mixed with chimera and manticore blood.
Of course, I’m not an art critic, he thought, as he made his way out to his meager dinner of lightly toasted bread, gray cheese, and heavy goblin ale, sitting on a precariously balanced tray next to the books. Some goblin magic landed the meals in Harry’s room overnight or while he was bathing, and nobody Harry knew at Gringotts would explain how.
Probably something embarrassing, like goblin-sized rats running it up in their mouths, he thought, and then managed to sit down and enjoy the dinner anyway, while he did his best to absorb a book that would have made Hermione tired.
*
It really was quite the most disturbing picture Draco had ever seen.
But that didn’t matter, because it belonged to wizards, not goblins. Draco knew the Twyllers only by reputation. That didn’t matter, either. They were pure-bloods, and whatever means had been used to make them give up this painting, Draco was sure they had been nothing less than coercive.
The gilt frame carved with swords and wands was the most eye-catching thing about the painting at first. Then one realized that the image was full of dying figures—people being stabbed, cursed, hexed, and trampled by the elephant-like beasts the goblins were riding—and human eyes didn’t know where to go first.
An enormous swirl of blood-purple occupied the center of the painting, and splashed out to dim the impressions of other struggling wizards. Draco didn’t understand the point of that. A goblin might.
It didn’t matter. Wizards had stolen it long enough ago that might should have made right and the painting should have stayed with the Twyllers. But back The Battle of Ar-jash-arsh-ra would go to the deepest Gringotts vault, and Draco supposed it might stay there this time. The bank had installed new security spells that made the ones it had used before look pitiful, from the rumors Draco had heard.
He tapped the bottlecap, a modified Portkey, that would get him past the wards around the painting and give him complete control of it. A wobble, and it rose into the air, floated over the restored Fountain of the Magical Brethren, and then settled in front of him. Draco nodded and turned away.
A cloaked figure stood in front of him. Draco clenched his hands together behind his back, around his wand. If someone interfered with his mission at this point, it was likely that he would never gain the respect of anyone in the Department. “Who are you?” he asked, and shuffled his body in between the stranger and the painting when the wizard responded by staring past his shoulder.
The man—Draco thought it was a man from the lines of the body—snapped himself free as from a trance and looked back at Draco. “Beware, young master,” he whispered, and leaned close. His breath smelled of rotting meat and made Draco nauseated. “That painting has the ability to take itself away from where it’s not wanted or desired to a place that it is wanted or desired.”
Draco stiffened, but managed to produce a smile. “Well, the goblins want it, so it’s going to them,” he said aloud, while in his head he critiqued the implied threat. Not quite as impressive as Knossos’s hints about what my mother’s fate should have been, but more impressive than Weasley’s attempt to trip me down the stairs. I give it three Galleons and nine Sickles.
“Not as badly as other people want it,” the cloaked wizard said, and shuffled closer. “What can they know of the blood shed at the real battle of Ar-jash-arsh-ra, the sacrifices wizards made to have their history and the truth preserved? Nothing. And yet you take it to them, as if you did not care about history yourself.”
Draco raised an eyebrow and made a subtle gesture towards his own white-blond hair in answer, which everyone who was worth knowing would realize was an emblem of the Malfoys. Let this old man look to his own deficiencies before he accuses me of not caring about history.
“Traitor,” the wizard said, and his tongue flickered out like a worm from the mouth of a corpse. “I name you traitor to your own kind, and the more likely to die horribly because of it.”
A bit more impressive. A four-Galleon threat, that. Draco showed another thin smirk. “Tell me who stood by my family,” he said, barely moving his lips. “Tell me where the Twyllers were when the Malfoys and the Lestranges and other families were stripped of their monies and their pride to become martyrs to the war reparations, if you care so much about pure-blood history.”
The wizard hissed, as though Draco had said something forbidden. “This is larger than a single family,” he said. “This is about the history of all pure-blood wizarding kind. Have you looked at this picture, Draco Malfoy? Do you know what it depicts?”
Draco felt a brief tug of curiosity, an emotion he’d usually had to surpass outside his cases since he came to the Ministry. If he listened too closely to everyone around him, after all, he was only likely to find them insulting or laughing or sneering at him. He lifted his head and lifted his eyebrows with it, then said, “I know that it depicts a goblin rebellion,” and stepped past the wizard.
“More than that!” the man shouted after him, his voice cracking. “More than that! It shows something that you would have to travel miles and years and abysses of the soul to see otherwise, the truth of where pure-bloods came from, the real source of the division between our kind and the Muggleborns! If the secret of this painting were ever to be unleashed, it would cause chaos in the wizarding world! That is why they want you to take it away to an underground vault where no one will ever see it again, because without it, we have less proof of our grand position!”
Draco bit his lips, and didn’t turn around. The old man was probably crazy, and Draco had been warned that the Twyllers could try to seize the painting. Besides, he didn’t see what this had to do with him. He’d chosen his side, and it happened to be the side with Muggleborns on it.
He secured the spells that would tie the painting to him for the Apparition to Gringotts—it was too big to simply carry in a Side-Along—and then passed beyond the Ministry’s wards and vanished.
Part 2.
