Bear's Beauties: Existential Crisis 14 (Patreon)

[center]<<Arthur Weasley>>[/center]

At any other time, I’d be fascinated by the metal ship we were being toured through. I’d be asking about what each and every flickering light or button did, how they worked, and a myriad of countless other questions. But… the view from the shuttle of the Earth, at once so massive and yet for the first time realizing just how small it was, wouldn’t leave my mind.

I don’t know who it was that the speech came from, but whomever they were, they possessed more wisdom than I would have previously imagined muggles were capable of. It was only now, reflecting on something that I was amongst the first wizard to have ever seen, that I realized that for all my disdain for Malfoy and the Death Eaters, I had possessed just as much prejudice against muggles as them.

For all my curiosity into their workings, I only ever saw muggle technology as an interesting toy, a childish attempt at making do without the wonders of magic. Never in my wildest dreams had I ever imagined that they’d be able to surpass what wizardkind had done, so sure in the superiority of magic I was. But, while not from this Earth, it was technology, not magic, that brought us from the world that gave birth to us to the void beyond.

“Mr. Weasley?”

Shaking my head, I turned to look at Hyacinth, “Yes Harry?”

“We’ve reached the cafeteria.”

Blinking, I looked up and realized she was right. My only saving grace was the fact that I wasn’t the only one who needed to be pulled out of their own head. I followed Hyacinth towards where Kara was standing next to a short woman I hadn’t met yet with a flat expression on her face.

“Ah, Mr. Weasley, this is Cameron,” Kara introduced us.

“Pleasure,” I greeted, shaking her hand.

Cameron gave a slight nod, before explaining how to get ourselves something to eat. There were over a dozen different technical words that flew over my head, but I soon was sitting at a table with a plate of steak and mixed vegetables. But, all I could do was poke at the food on my plate.

Idly, my mind went to Damien. I hadn’t spoken to him in years, not since Rhonda was born. I… I hadn’t even thought about him in nearly a decade. When we get back, I should see about getting in touch. Squib or not, he was family, and after the revelation I’d had today his lacking magic didn’t seem to matter as much. The sound of plates hitting the table pulled me from my thoughts, looking up to see Professor Dumbledore and Tonks both sitting down at the same table.

“Professor Dumbledore?” I asked, worried by the haunted expression on his face. Turning to face me, he adopted his standard grandfatherly look, but for the first time it felt like I was looking at a person, rather than a figure larger than life.

“Yes Arthur?” he asked, and had I not seen the earlier vulnerability I would have believed he was unphased by where we were.

“Are you alright?” I asked, concerned.

“In time… the view earlier… well, it will take some time to comprehend.”

“No kidding, I thought I knew what to expect, being raised in the muggle world and all, but there was no preparing for that,” Tonks said, staring blankly at her bowl of some sort of soup.

The three of us sat quietly, lost in our thoughts about how much smaller the world seemed than it had this morning.

[center]<<Taylor Hebert>>[/center]

Bear and Lana had returned from somewhere about two hours ago, and if it weren’t for some of my new bugs picking up the scent of sex off them I wouldn’t have realized what they’d been doing. I considered going up to them, getting hugs to breathe in the smell of them with my own nose. I didn’t, I wasn’t forward enough like Harley to do that. Regardless, I hoped next time they did it somewhere I could watch through my bugs.

I was pulled from my thoughts about myself, Lana, and Bear when the fireplace flared green and a blonde woman came out that I didn’t recognize. I admit, I’m starting to think I have a thing for blondes. Harley, Lisa, Lana, and now this new woman…

“Taytay?” Harley’s voice snapped me out of the daze the new woman had put me into.

“Sorry, a new person just came through the fireplace,” I said, hoping I wasn’t blushing too much.

“Musta been a hawtie,” Harley said with an amused grin as she reached over and wiped at my lip.

Blushing up a storm, I hastily wiped away any drool there might have been and hit Harley in the face with an end pillow from the couch we’d been sitting on. Not that it stopped Harley’s laughter. Eventually, I stormed out and made my way downstairs, where I could tell that Bear, the new woman, and Sirius were all situated around the main table.

“…ths, oh hello Taylor,” Bear greeted me as I entered the main room.

“Hi Bear,” I returned with a small smile, before turning to the gorgeous blonde. “Who’re you?”

“Fleur Delacour,” she said with a melodious voice as she stood and walked over. Before pulling me into a hug and kissing both my cheeks. If I wasn’t already, I knew that I now looked like a tomato, and her next words didn’t help, “I love your ‘air.”

“Th-thanks… it’s my mother’s.”

My hand clapped over my mouth as soon as the words left it. Bear had the decency not to laugh, Sirius practically fell out of his chair, and Fleur just giggled. Please someone kill me now.

Bear, Scion bless him, drew the attention away from me, “We were talking about our plans for getting the second to last horcrux. Or maybe the last one, we don’t know if he’s turned Nagini into one yet. Anyway, it’s in the bank of Gringotts. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to meet with someone and talk them into giving it up, but from the sounds of it that’s not likely to happen.”

“Why?” I asked. “They’re a bank, won’t they have to if the government orders it?”

“You’re thinking Gringotts is a muggle bank. It’s not, it’s closer to a sovereign nation than a financial institution,” Sirius explained. “The goblins don’t answer to the Ministry, not after the last Goblin Rebellion. It’s how they were able to secure themselves as the sole banking institution in the British Isles.”

“Which means we can’t go over their heads to make them give us the horcrux, and since we don’t know how they feel about them we have no way of knowing how they’ll react if we tell them there’s one in a vault,” Bear continued.

“Bear mentioned how it was obtained in the story he was familiar with, and that’s not going to work. Sure, some goblins might want to be treated like wizards and witches or be grateful for someone remembering their name, but most goblins aren’t like that. Despite what most muggleborns think, they aren’t just short humans that look weird. That’s something that a lot of muggle-raised have trouble grasping.”

“What do you mean?” I asked as Sirius finished, and it was Fleur who answered.

“Even the most ‘uman looking magical creatures aren’t ‘uman. Their thoughts and minds don’t work the same way. Talking to my grandmothers on both sides of my family is very different. The same is true for goblins, they have an entirely different set of ethics and principles than any human. For them, it is highly unlikely that anything we can offer them would let us get the ‘orcrux without stealing it.

“The only thing I could think of that would work would be,” Fleur paused to think for a moment. “Perhaps a dozen goblin-forged items. Maybe.”

“Of which I know the location of one,” Bear finished. “We’re still going to try, but this is mostly a brainstorming session to try to come up with a basic plan that we can flesh out once the others get back from their trip to the Yamato.”

Thinking on it, they sounded vaguely familiar to something from Dad’s old space shows, “Are they like the Ferengi?”

Bear blinked before pausing to think on it and chuckling, “I think that’s an accurate summation. Anyway, care to join in on the brainstorming?”

Nodding, I joined them as Bear went over what they’d already come up with. The biggest hurdle seemed to be not knowing the layout of the tunnels under the bank, but that was something I could help with. Not right this moment, but given enough time to gather a swarm and direct it down into the tunnels and I’d have it mapped better than the goblins did. From the amused chuckling, I think I ended up saying that last part out loud.

[center]<<Bear Sandosen>>[/center]

I stood in front of the desk of the highest official Dumbledore was able to arrange a meeting with, named Kragnus, with Dumbledore, Nikhol, and Cameron. Kragnus himself was seated behind the desk with the entirety of his attention on some paperwork. He was also in the room’s only chair, the rest of us being forced to stand.

We’d been forewarned that sitting on the floor was an offense punishable by decapitation. Speaking before Kragnus was punishable by decapitation. Drawing a wand or other weapon was punishable by decapitation. Leaving before he declared the meeting over was, you guessed it, punishable by decapitation.

We’d been admitted into his office over fifteen minutes ago, and he still had yet to look up. I knew it was a power play, a blatantly obvious one meant to both show that we weren’t worth his notice as well as make us tired and frustrated, and thus more prone to make mistakes. Taylor was wrong, they weren’t like Ferengi. Ferengi wouldn’t waste time that could be spent making money on gestures like this. Finally, Kragnus set his quill in its ink well and handed off the parchment he’d been writing on to an assistant before turning to face us.

“So why does a… politician along with three unknowns seek out an urgent meeting with me? Simply going through the proper channels to arrange a meeting with a lower ranked goblin would be enough to satisfy any business you have with Gringotts,” Kragnus asked, his voice as smooth as a rockslide.

“May your coffers be ever full,” Dumbledore greeted with a slight bow of his head. “A lower ranked goblin wouldn’t be able to make the decisions we are hoping for. We have reason to believe that there is something of a rather…”

Kragnus interrupted Dumbledore, “Explain in simple terms, or I will have you escorted out. I am in no mood for your word games, wizard.”

“We believe that there’s a horcrux in one of your vaults,” I stated plainly. That got the gaze of every goblin in the room on me. The hard stares of the guard-goblins as well as the nearly feral gaze of Kragnus.

“Repeat that. Carefully, lest your tongue decorate my wall.”

“We believe that Tom Riddle, the self proclaimed ‘Lord’ Voldemort, tasked one of his followers to keep a relic in their vault. We believe this relic to be a horcrux. As the machinations and goals of Riddle pose a danger, not just to humans but goblins as well, we were hopeful that you would permit us limited access to the relic in question so that our expert could remove the soul fragment from it. We have no interest in taking the relic for ourselves, it need not even leave the vault in question. All we want is to ensure that Riddle becomes as mortal as the rest of us.”

From talking with Bill Weasley, we determined that particular argument to be the most likely one to convince them. He warned us that it still wasn’t likely, but out of every argument and reason we’d been able to think of, it had the least chance of us making an enemy of Gringotts.

Kragnus stared at me, and remembering what Bill told us, I kept my gaze locked on his chin. Amongst goblins eye contact was seen as a challenge, and while those that worked with humans were trained to ignore it, in a tense situation it was better not to push any more buttons than necessary.

“You are brave to come to Gringotts and ask us to open one of our vaults to those it does not belong to. Brave, but very, very stupid. Be grateful I am letting you leave with your lives. But for this insult, Dumbledore,” Kragnus turned to face the only wizard in our group. “Consider half the contents of your vaults now the property of Gringotts. You will receive an updated accounting of your assets once the seizure is complete. Now all of you, get out. This meeting is over.”

With defeated sighs, we exited the office and followed our goblin guide through the labyrinthine tunnels to the main lobby. The glowers from the guards encouraged us to exit the building, and as we stepped into the August daylight, Nikhol turned back to look at the poem warning away potential thieves.

“Kovothis amgavsi,” she snarled before turning to face me. “Are you sure we can’t kill them all?”

“That would cause more problems than it would solve,” I pointed out as we made our way over to Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor where Taylor and Kara sat, a stack of paper on the table between them as Taylor drew map after map after map.

“Fine, what about just that disgusting piece of hutt refuse?”

“Calm yourself, Miss Diomedes,” Dumbledore tried to placate Nikhol, only for her to lock eyes with him and snarl.

“Don’t tell me to calm down. I was reading his mind the whole time, the only reason he didn’t have the lot of us executed was because of the trouble that you disappearing would cause. He was even wondering which of us would taste best and how he’d cook us.”

Dumbledore leaned back in surprise before blinking in confusion and asking, “How were you able to pierce his Occlumency barriers? Kragnus has among the best barriers in Gringotts.”

“Don’t tell your pet bat, but whatever you’re doing to keep magical probes out is the worst way to keep a Force adept out. For example, you’re currently thinking about the Treaty of Wales in 1437 after the Third Goblin Rebellion which is when goblins were banned from consuming human flesh. But what do you think happens to those witches and wizards that default on their fees and won’t be missed? Kragnus was wondering if Cameron’s thighs would be as good as the ones from a witch he had two months ago.”

“I gather from your discussion that Plan B is a go?” Taylor sarcastically asked as she continued to draw maps.

“Yes, we’ll need to talk to Snuffles to make sure we get the number right, but Plan B is a go.”