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Disclaimer: This story is based on characters, ideas, and situations created by JK Rowling and owned by her and her publishers. I own the original elements & characters. No money is being made by me, and no trademark or copyright infringement is intended.



Chapter XXVII

"Voldemort did capture some of the life-force from both Pettigrew and the snake. He then re-split his soul into three parts. Most in his body, and then two weaker Horcruxes. I'd say each held roughly half the amount of his soul as the emerald Horcrux. It shouldn't have worked, but he somehow made it work, using the life-force from Pettigrew and the snake, since they had so much in common with his body."

"As interesting as this is, Lord Potter," Ringchain, one of the goblins, spoke up, "what has it have to do with us?" Harry knew he was second in command at the London Gringotts. He didn't know the other two goblins.

Harry nodded. "First, why do I need you? Voldemort plans on staying there for a week or so, to rest and to gather up as much treasure as he can. I doubt if we could organize a wizarding strike in central Asia in that amount of time. On top of that, I'm sure it couldn't be done without causing lots of problems afterwards. As you are probably even more aware than I am, there is a whole tangle of disputed national authorities there these days, and a web of local ones. The goblins are international. If you accept my proposal, we can move on time. I would say in less than three days, if possible."

"As to why should you be interested in helping us," Harry went on, "in addition to the fact that Voldemort threatens all of us? I saw in his mind rooms full of old-fashioned polished gems. He believes there is more than enough to fuel his plans for several thousand years."

That got the goblins' full attention, although they tried to pretend otherwise.

"So," Harry continued, "here's the deal. Voldemort is alone but extremely dangerous. We invade the site together. It's your job to locate him, then it's my job to capture him or to destroy his current body, or at least drive him off, hopefully without his new Horcruxes. Here are their descriptions." Harry held up a sheet of parchment where he had sketched two objects. "Briefly, one is an uncut diamond a bit larger than the size of my fist. It wasn't the largest one --" now the goblins dropped their pose of semi-interest -- "but it had the most perfect structure. The other is a large silver bell inscribed with symbols." The goblins nodded.

"Obviously, we get anything associated with Voldemort. I get five percent of the jewels by weight and five percent of any other disposable treasure. You get the rest. Any artifacts and knowledge are your possessions, but you will allow magical scholars access to them after ten years, except for myself, Remus Lupin, Hermione Granger-Potter, Padma Patil-Potter, Luna Lovegood-Potter, and one person designated by the Headmaster. We may have full access at any time."

"Also, this discovery may lead you to other sites. The same terms apply, except I get one percent of the treasures." Harry smiled. "And yes, I trust you to be fair in the selections. As for the jewels, keep in mind I will have them cut to adorn my beautiful spouses."

"Give us a moment to confer," Ringchain said, and the three goblins went into a huddle.

"Are we to accompany you, my lord?" Hermione asked through gritted teeth. She knew she had to play her part with outsiders present, but did not like it one bit.

"Yes and no," Harry answered. "You won't be in on the assault. It would be distracting while I am dealing with Riddle. You should be there for the rest of it, during and especially after." Harry turned to Dumbledore. "You can arrange for some members of the Order to come with us, I hope?"

Dumbledore nodded, while Remus growled, "You can't keep us away."

The full moon wasn't until the Twenty-eighth, so Harry merely nodded.

The goblins stopped talking, and Ringchain approached. "We have the authority to make the deal. We have one alteration."

"And that is?" Harry asked.

"That you agree to take the standard finder's fee of ten percent of the jewels by weight from the site, not five."

Everyone seemed surprised at that except for Harry and Luna, the goblins noted. Harry looked as if the goblins were acting as he had hoped. Harry bowed and said in heavily-accented gobbledegook, "It is an honor to deal with the People. I accept your condition."

The three goblins bowed in return. One of the other goblins spoke up. "I am known to you by my office. I am Goldchain, secretary of the High Council of the Clans." Dumbledore looked surprised, for the secretary was actually the number three official in goblin society. The goblin bowed. "It is an honor to deal with a wizard as wise, as powerful, and as unbiased as you."

Harry bowed again, as the three goblins bowed as well.

The deal was struck.



After the goblins left, before anyone could ask anything else, Sirius asked, "Why did the goblins ask that you take more than you asked for?"

"I asked for less than their standard fee to outsiders, to show that I looked upon them as friends," Harry said. "On a deal like this, a goblin would expect five percent, although first pick of the jewels. I asked for five percent and the Horcruxes. They asked that I take ten percent of jewels as a gesture that they understood my offer. That I get five percent of any other treasures is a sign that they accept me as an ally. The one percent for related sites is also the standard goblin reward. For outsiders, it's three."

"We'd best move quickly to get organized," Dumbledore said.

"Wish I could come," Moody grumbled.

"You are, if you want to," Harry said. "I need you."

Moody grimaced. "Not much good for combat any more, Potter."

Harry gestured with his hand. "How about as my watch guard, protecting the five most beautiful women alive?"

Moody drew himself to attention. "I would be honored, Lord Potter."



The next morning, a different goblin showed up to brief Harry and Dumbledore. He did not introduce himself. "We have scouted the area, and will be moving in tomorrow morning at Four of your clock. That will be late morning there, and Voldemort is not a creature of the daylight."

Harry and Dumbledore nodded.

"We shall, of course, put up anti-apparation wards."

"What about anti-portkey wards?" Harry asked. He raised his hand to forestall objections. "Yes, I know those have to be established with runes carved and placed on the spot. However, it will likely take several days if not weeks to clean the place out. With anti-portkey wards added, it should prevent many counter-measures."

The goblin thought about that, and bowed. "You are correct, Lord Potter. I shall pass on your recommendation. In any event, Voldemort has not established such wards, although there are proximity wards in the area of the site he is working on. We do have tracers set up, in case he makes any moves outside that area."

"What's the basic plan?" Harry asked.

"Basic?" Dumbledore asked.

"Plans rarely last long in actual battle," the goblin reminded Dumbledore, with an approving look directed at Harry. "We shall have three hundred goblins ready to attack, along with two dozen human guards. You two and your forces will be directed to Voldemort, while a fifth of our forces back you up. The others will be securing the rest of the site and blocking any physical escape routes. The second wave with bring in a team of goblin and human curse breakers and a few goblin scholars, once we have a secure perimeter. Your consorts will be there as well."

"Sounds like a sound enough plan," Harry said.

The goblin shrugged. "We shall see.



The goblins and others 'achieved site penetration', as one of the more pompous wizards had put it, apparently without setting off any alarms. That lasted for about twenty seconds, which was actually time enough to get under some cover.

When nothing happened for more thirty seconds, a newly-recruited member of the Order made the error of sticking his head up to look around. Harry wasn't certain what the silent hex was that hit the tyro, but it moved faster than the eye and roasted the man's head in under two seconds.

That also allowed everyone else to aim where the hex had come from, the cave entrance already pinpointed as Voldemort's main area of interest. Obviously, he had not yet gone to sleep, was up early, or else the alarms were silent and keyed to Voldemort himself.

With the cover fire provided, plus some powerful shields put up by Harry and Dumbledore, the assault group of goblins and wizards cautiously made their way to the cave. They would later be told that Voldemort made three attempts to apparate out. Finally, less than five minutes after the alarm had been tripped, the word came that a portkey had been used.

Despite that, no one broke ranks. When the cave mouth was secured, a group of guards and curse breakers were left to slowly make their way in. The group divided into five other groups, and the second wave portkeyed into provide support.

Harry made his way over to the support crew, as Moody and his five betrothed would be there. He took the chance to look around a bit. They were at the north end of a desolate valley, which he knew from the intelligence reports was six miles long and two across at the widest point. Here, it was less than a third that distance, and the mountains were at least three to four times higher above the valley floor than the mountains around Hogwarts were (he knew they were at a much higher elevation to begin with as well).

The ancient inhabitants had burrowed into the mountains, but had also built numerous small stone houses and buildings over the area within two miles of the northern mountain. All these buildings were now roofless, and most walls had at least partially collapsed.

Each of the caves had also had a stone entryway built in front of it, supported by rows of plain columns but beginning with a tall statue in front of each row. Most were males, but not all, and all were nudes. Many of the pillars and statues had collapsed as well.

That had been true of the cave Voldemort had been interested in. The broken columns and the remains of the stone slabs which had formed the roof had been moved off to the side.

In less than an hour, one large house had been checked and proclaimed 'clean' of any magic. Magical tents were set up inside to provide shelter and a headquarters. (They were set up inside the walls, as the walls gave some added protection against both wind and attack.)

The team which had been exploring Voldemort's cave reported in the next morning. This had been the cave system where jewels had been stored, and where the ceremony had been held.

It appeared at first as if Voldemort had gotten away with about 10% of the precious jewels, amounting to about a third of the rubies which seemed to have been there. Voldemort also cleared about a quarter of the clear quartz which had been stored together. In fact, it looked as if there was a good chance that instead of taking a large diamond as he had thought, Voldemort had seized a large rock crystal.

There were diamonds -- thousands of them -- but the dust in their storage areas were untouched. Instead, Voldemort had taken about a thousand pounds of polished quartz and about a twentieth of that amount in rubies. The diamonds and remaining rubies would give everyone who was getting a share (like Harry) a considerable fortune. On the down side, there was no immediate sign of either of the Horcruxes, but there were at least three other areas which needed to be searched.

Harry had apologized to the goblins for not recognizing that most of what he had been seeing had been quartz.

"That many diamonds would have depressed the price in any event," had been the answer. "Plus we love decorating with rock crystal."



"Are there any magical uses for quartz?" Harry asked Dumbledore when these facts had been verified.

"There are, in many rituals," Dumbledore replied. "However, I know of none where it is not better to have other types of crystal, especially diamonds, than plain clear rock crystal."

"The diamonds and rubies aren't cut, just polished," Padma mused. "Lots of the quartz has a more obvious resemblance to a roughly cut gemstone. Voldemort might have simply made a mistake."

"Possible, perhaps even likely, but we can't count on that," Dumbledore reminded her.

"Clear quartz does transfer electricity very well," Hermione pointed out. "Could it transmit magic?"

"That's right, natural crystals were used to both send and receive radio signals," Harry said, remembering a long-distant science class, where there had been a guest demonstrator. "It also conducts light better than glass."

"Either Voldemort made an error and took the wrong stones, or else he took them for some purpose we can't guess at," Dumbledore said finally. "We will have to investigate the latter premise when we return to Hogwarts."



Harry and his betrothed had their own suite in one of the tents. They stayed until the late afternoon of August 28. Everyone was pleased when the ancient bell Voldemort had used for a Horcrux was found. Harry managed to break the Horcrux without doing more than minor damage to it.

Beyond that, Harry, was rather bored. All the others knew Runes and Symbols (Susan decided to drop Herbology for Runes, just because this site was so fascinating). He rather wished that he had had some sort of counseling, from McGonagall or some staff member (other than Snape or Lockhart of course -- he could imagine what their advice would have been) at the end of his Second year. He would have been much better off with Runes as well.

He had picked up Gobbledegook over the years of the previous time stream, and therefore spent a fair amount of his free time with any off-duty goblins. Harry appreciated their straight-forward approach to most situations. Few of the goblins had had much contact with a wizard, and found that in Harry, at least, they had a wizard totally unlike their prejudices would have predicted.

Of course, the goblins did learn not to play poker with a wizard who knew Occlumency, as he did not have any 'tells' or 'give-aways'. It was during one of the earliest poker parties that one of the youngest goblins on the trip asked Harry the question most of the goblins had wanted to.

"Why do you seem to trust us, Lord Harry?" While Harry's proper title was 'Lord Potter', he had asked everyone to call him Harry. The goblins had compromised by calling him 'Lord Harry'.

"I don't know why I didn't have any sort of reaction against you at first," Harry answered. "I had certainly never seen anyone like a goblin before, and the lobby of Gringotts is pretty impressive." They all smiled, lips tight, which meant they were amused.

Harry returned the smile. "Maybe it was in part, in the beginning, because the cart ride was so much fun."

The goblins chortled, and one said, "There are few humans who would agree with that."

"True, but there are some of us," Harry retorted. "Then, over the next four years, I learned what passes for history at Hogwarts. Half of what old Binns teaches is goblin rebellions. But I noticed that while he, and the texts, kept on trying to put all the blame on the goblins, never once did I see you as being totally in the wrong."

"'Totally'?"

Harry nodded. "Sometimes, it seemed like you over-reacted, or were being purposefully obstructive, but then I wondered, since they were trying to put all the blame on you, if some of that might not be exaggerated as well."

"'Some'?"

Harry looked the questioning goblin straight in the eye. "Don't you think your sources might have their biases as well?"

The goblin squirmed. "Maybe."

Harry nodded. "So I knew that these rebellions were not only not all your fault, but probably not even mostly your fault. And that the mistrust humans have for you might be misplaced as well." He looked at them all in turn. "I decided to think for my self. I decided to trust you with more than just my money. So far, it seems to be working."

"That's because you win more often than you lose," a goblin complained, throwing in his hand.

"Well, I wouldn't keep playing just to get to know you better," Harry retorted. "Shall we keep playing?"

In the end, Harry learned that he could, in general, trust the goblins. The goblins learned that there was at least one human who might be worthy of some real trust as well.

Of Harry's women, Luna and Hermione spent the most time with the goblins. Hermione spent the time because she wanted to learn more about them. The goblins, finally tiring of her polite questioning, started teasing her that she would be starting the next rebellion on her own.

Luna spent most of her free time with a goblin seer. The elderly female goblin tried to coax Luna into her full Gift, but failed. This lead to several conversations with Harry.



When the group returned to Britain, they made a quick tour through Diagon Alley and then Muggle London for supplies. Luna was a bit worried, as her lovers seemed to have something planned, but would not let her in on the secret.