Barchoke stopped what he was doing as his mind went back to review this monumental day. That snow white owl had turned his reasonably comfortable world on its head and set him on a collision course with some of the most powerful people in the country; but he wasn't afraid. He had Lichfield, and he had the boy, and he had the chance for the revenge he had shaven his head to swear to more than a decade ago when his enemy had been nothing more than some theoretical someone.
Now he had a name for the one who wronged him: Dumbledore.
He looked over at his father and he knew what happened all those years ago. It wasn't the loss of the Potter family and all the work he'd spent his life dedicated to that had warped Hammerhand's mind, it was magic. Long ago Lichfield had suggested that a simple Confundus charm could've done this much damage, if performed by someone who didn't know any better.
A goblin's mind was built for gain, obsessed with it, it couldn't be made to confuse loss with gain of any kind. It simply couldn't be done. The goblin mind would rebel. When it happened during an attack though, the goblin mind would remember. A goblin always remembers those who've wronged them, those who've taken from them, those who've made them lose. They remembered, and they couldn't stop remembering.
His eyes swept the room his father had been confined to. Snakes, very crafty and deadly creatures to those who live underground. Snakes with long white beards could prove all the more so, but Barchoke would be ready. He might not be a warrior of old but he had other weapons with which to seek his revenge if Lester's theory proved true.
Neither of them had the funds to afford the type of mental healing Hammerhand required, and the isolated goblins of Britain had no skill in it. When it was simple grief, Gringotts Bank had written him off as a bad investment and refused to pay for it. If it had been an attack though. An attack meant a victim, and a victim means damages. Damages meant money to be gained, money that included every knut spent housing Hammerhand for eleven long years, every knut spent making him well again too. If it were an attack, then victim could become witness.
Hammerhand's heavy hand landed on his desk with a bang!
"You have to help me, Barchoke," the old goblin said tersely. "Stop dawdling or we'll never get this audit done for Charlus. He doesn't have much time left, you know."
"Not to worry, sir," Barchoke said. "We'll work through the night if we have to. We'll get it done."
Hammerhand nodded and went back to his drawing as Barchoke returned to his. It wasn't an old stag, mournfully drawn, like the one he had drawn yesterday had been, this one was a young stag full of pride. This would be his weapon of choice. His father might be partial to his portraits of snakes with beards, but to Barchoke, it always came back to stags.
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