When he had the kids' attention he put his hands over his eyes for a moment before removing them. He gestured they should to the same, and then again when they stared at him stupidly. The kids momentarily blindfolded, Lester withdrew his emergency wand from behind his ear, and with a flick it became visible.
Extending his wand to the runes around the ceiling, he silently cast the charm he'd learned in school. The line of runes faintly glowed before settling again. With a flick he made his emergency wand invisible again and stashed it somewhere the kids would never look for it.
"Well, they're charged," he said as the kids uncovered their eyes again. "So whatever the wards do they're working. We'll just have to take Barchoke's word we won't be overheard. Now if the door opens, your mouths shut - got it?"
"What's going to happen to Hagrid?" Harry asked in lieu of agreement, though truth be told Lichfield was more worried about the ginger kid's mouth getting that kid into trouble.
"I don't know," Lichfield said truthfully. "That depends how much he knew about the breach and what his role was. What did he do?"
The same looks past between the kids he remembered giving Charlus when they were young and didn't want to tattle on a friend.
"The last thing I want to do is cause the gentle giant any more grief," Lester said. "He's had enough of it as it is."
Harry looked over to the girl again. What was the name of his cuddle-bunny? Something strange. Hermany? Hermanonie? Hermeneutics? He really should learn it now the girl was his client, even if he wasn't being paid. He pulled out the retainer agreements and looked through them. Ah! Hermione; he'd been close.
"You might as well come right out and say it," he pressed. "Because if everything goes right I'll be seeing it shortly enough, and for once I'd like to get through this before we get interrupted."
"Hagrid was the one who took the Sorcerer's Stone from vault 713 last year," Harry admitted. "But it's not his fault," the kid said. "He did it for Dumbledore."
"He'd do anything for Professor Dumbledore," Hermione agreed. "He wouldn't even ask why -"
"Exactly," the boy cut in again. "He'd never think he'd be asked to do anything illegal. He trusts him."
"And Professor McGonagall, Flitwick, and the others," the girl said panicking for her favorite teachers. "There's no way they'd do something like this knowingly."
"Then we have to hope they were being duped," Lichfield said. "This deals with issues way over my pay grade, so there's really nothing I can do if they weren't."
"What's illegal about that old stone anyway?" the Weasley kid asked. "I wish I'd gotten my hands on it."
"Ron," the girl chided. "The Stone is highly dangerous and only let out of Gringotts for very specific reasons," the girl said, surprising the hell out of Lester. "I thought they were doing research."
"Just how much do you know about the damn thing?" he asked the frizzy-haired girl.
"I read the entire Flamel Agreement last year at school," she said.
Barchoke was right; she should be chained to a desk somewhere in Legal.
"How can the Stone be dangerous?" the ginger asked. "Who wouldn't want unlimited gold and to live forever?"
"That's how it's dangerous," the girl explained.
Lester pulled out a gold coin from his pocket and held it up.
"How much is this worth?" he asked the Weasley.
"Er- a galleon," the kid replied. "Seventeen sickles?" he asked uncertainly.
"With that stone out there you wouldn't be able to buy a knut for a thousand galleons."
"But it's gold!" the kid cried.
"And gold only has value if it's rare," that girl Hermione explained. "If anyone could make as much as they wanted then gold would be worthless. But wait!" she cried. "Why would he be stealing from Harry if he could get the Stone?"
"Good question," Lichfield said. "Only the old man will be able to tell us. Maybe he couldn't get the Stone right away, or it was his way to put all the money back before Harry caught on to what he did, or maybe he just wanted a more ready supply once he drained the kid dry. And that's discounting the possibility of wanting to live forever."
Suddenly the boy looked very angry. "I should've known he never would have destroyed the Stone," Harry said. "With Voldemort after it," the Weasley kid cringed at the name, "I never thought he'd lie about it."
"Setting aside You-Know-Who-," an astonished Lichfield couldn't believe he just said that.
"Isn't You-Know-Who rather important?" the girl asked.
"I'm trying to keep myself to one panic-inducing emergency at a time," he replied, suddenly feeling the need to sit down. Why did it feel like he was juggling boulders when it came to this kid? Charlus would be laughing his ass off in whatever afterlife there might be with how much grief Harry was giving him. He supposed it was payback for being such an annoying little shit when he was younger.
Lester settled into one of the chairs with a grateful sigh. He felt like he had aged another fifty years. Just an hour ago he was happily pursuing a case of abandonment against one of the most powerful and well respected people in the country and now he was in the middle of an international incident of catastrophic proportions - two of them actually, though he hoped one of them could wait.
"The old man destroying the Stone is probably the best and worst thing he could do," he said as the others took seats. "If he did it means he could make only a limited supply of gold, but we may never be sure if it was actually destroyed. If he hadn't, then it'd be left out there somewhere for us to find and destroy ourselves so we could be sure it's gone."
"He had it so the only way to find the Stone was to not want to use it," Harry said. "What are the chances he didn't make any gold at all?"
"Then what was the point of stealing the Stone in the first place?" he asked. "Look, we're not going to find out the truth here, that's for the I.C.W. and Gringotts to do. I'm supposed to be telling you three what to expect the next time the door opens."
The lumps and bumps of the conversation behind them, Lester outlined what would hopefully be happening next and what was going to be expected of them.
"Memories?" Hermione asked. "You mentioned them before, but how do you look into someone's memories?"
"With a penseeve," the ginger kid said.
"It's pronounced 'siv,'" Lester corrected.
"I always heard 'seeve,'" he said.
"It's 'siv;' it's a pun for someone with a lot on their mind - forget it, goblins won't use them for something like this."
"Why not?" Ginger asked. "I think they're brilliant."
"They don't use them because you can't stick that many people in a memory without running out of elbow room," Lichfield explained. "What goblins prefer is - well, it's rather uncomfortable."
"More uncomfortable than having your memory pulled out?" Harry asked. "I had trouble blinking for an hour after that."
"Imagine that about half a dozen times but having to relive snippets of your life over again in between and you'll have a vague idea of what's going to happen."
"I'm never going to be able to blink again."
...
Mr. Granger looked up from his Arcane Book of Arcane Arcaneness as the balding, kinda pudgy, red-headed man and his goblin buddy approached his chair-fort.
"Halt, who goes there!" he cried, peering between the cushions.
"You're to wait here until we're through with your son," the goblin buddy said to the man before turning to leave, brazenly disrespecting the honor of his fort-o-chairs.
"Er-," the wacky wizard said in his wacky wizarding way as he gazed upon the Granger Chair-Fortress of Solitude. "Was this their doing or yours?"
Mr. Granger's frizzy head popped out of the top, still wearing his throw pillow hat as he contemplated the question.
"I get bored really easily and they left me alone," he told the man. "So if I tell you the truth you'll think I'm weird."
"Wonderfully weird," the man agreed as he began tearing apart the fort chair-by-chair. "I'm supposed to keep you from talking."
"Unlike what my daughter would tell you, I actually can guard my tongue when I need to - but good luck nonetheless," the dentist said noncommittally. "Though now they think I'm crazy there's really no need," he nodded to where the formerly-hovering goblin buddies were now standing far across the lobby at the doors themselves.
.....
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