Percy hit the ground hard; floo travel certainly wasn't for someone in too much of a rush.
"Mother?" he cried, picking himself off the kitchen floor before catching sight of her already close at hand.
"Where have you been? The rest of us have been back for hours. Did your father find you?" she asked, momentarily pausing in her dinner preparations.
"No, I'd only just heard," he said anxiously, "How're-"
"Not to worry, dear," his mother reassured him. "I just got a call from your father; everyone's fine. They're just staying until Harry's back with them. Though I must admit they had me worried for a while. I still don't know what all the fuss was about," she said as she returned to her work. "And Merlin knows where they got the idea to charge people to use their floo. They'll be doing the same for owls next. No common decency at all. You set the table and tell me how your day with Penelope went," she instructed him.
"Oh - um - it-it went fine," Percy said uncomfortably as he opened the drawer for the cutlery. "We're seeing each other tomorrow at the Hopef-" he stopped suddenly as all the silverware vanished, only to reappear on the table. "Um, mother?"
"Merlin!" she cried as the dinner pans flew out of her hands and started cooking themselves.
There was a slight pop! behind them and they whirled back around to the table, where a little house-elf wearing a clean white - if somewhat frazzled at the edges - pillowcase had just finished setting the table.
"Hello," the creature with small bags under his large eyes said. "You must be Harry Potter's family!" it beamed.
...
The polite smile on Barchoke's face lasted only as long as it took for the door at the far end of the Pit to close, then he rounded on Lognot and Marsh.
"There can be no doubt anymore that both of your departments were involved," he snapped. "Vault seven-one-three is a Hogwarts vault, not one registered to Confidential. How did the Stone get in there without your collusion?"
Rather than hunted, Barnabas Marsh stood resolved.
"I assure you, the Hogwarts Accounting Department had no knowledge of this," he reiterated. "With any cart operator able to open those doors, who's to say who put the Stone in there? Rest assured I'll be launching a full investigation on the matter."
"Be-being born with the Stone," Alkrat stammered excitedly to anyone who happened to be close by, "does-does this make him magical?"
"This is only one of several irregularities in your department-," Barchoke said stubbornly.
"Of course he's magical, he's a wizard," the pudgy Slaggran wheezed to Alkrat.
"And I will investigate it," Marsh shot back. "You keep your nose out of it unless you want more complaints against you than you know what to do with."
"No-no-no, I mean magical magical," the foreign goblin said as giddy as a child that's earned its first knut.
"My issues with your department go far beyond the Stone," Barchoke pressed. "Gringotts will be demanding full repayment once those transfers are rendered fraudulent, you can be sure of that."
"The entirety of Confidential should be put to the question," Gutripper said, looking at Lognot with a gleam in his eye. "That will get to the bottom of this breach."
"That's yet another item on the list of things I intend to get to the bottom of, I assure you," Marsh said with a dismissive wave to Barchoke.
"There's still no evidence there actually was a breach," Lognot interjected, looking tense. "It still could've been a fake."
"Do you think the I.C.W. or the Ministry will care?" Barchoke said, breaking into the conversation since he was getting nowhere with Marsh. "We can't keep this quiet. Every child at Hogwarts knows about this, the entire world's been after that Stonemaker for centuries, and the Ministry's always hated us for going behind their backs," he said, repeatedly poking Lognot in the chest with his finger.
"It was a rather scandalous event at the time," the ever diplomatic Bankor added with his soothing tone, "and though the People rejected and deposed that king afterwards we've nonetheless been bound to honor it."
Barchoke thought "scandalous" was an understatement since it was the reason they hadn't had a king since and had been repeatedly trounced upon by the Ministry.
"It was a bad deal from the start and it never should've been made," Barchoke cut in decisively. "We should take the opportunity to cut our losses and hand Flamel over to them. Let them deal with the Stone while we clear the rubble from this cave-in and get back to business as soon as possible."
The other Overseers seemed to agree with this since they all started talking at once.
"You realize they'll make us check every galleon, every scrap of gold we have?" Slaggran wheezed.
"The coin makers will be working overtime for years to check for the signature impurities," Fillast said. "Can't we speed up the process?"
"Oh! We must recall everything from the overseas as well," Alkrat moaned. "What-what-what will I pay my people with if you take away the galleon?"
"Don't you pay them in local currencies?" Slaggran said in a confused wheeze.
"No-no-no! I pay them in galleon," Alkrat explained. "Salary calculated for the area they're in - then they must convert when we pay them and we make the money for converting currency."
There was a pause as everyone halted to look at the foreigner.
"That's a really good idea," Barchoke mused, breaking the stillness as the clump of Overseers went back to talking over each other.
"We should ask the Ministry to keep the value of the galleon in place for the time being."
"We should demand they keep it in place," Barchoke countered Bankor's timidity; this was not a time for tepidness. "All contracts too. This can't be allowed to devolve into a panicked run on the bank."
"The testing, who-who will we get to do this?"
"A joint strike team of Enforcers and Curse-Breakers could overwhelm the island," Gutripper said. "Lognot's people won't stand a chance."
"I must protest-!" Lognot protested.
"I would suggest we include an I.C.W. task force instead of Curse-Breakers," Barchoke said with polite deference to Gutripper's suggestion. "They'll have to be involved anyway and it would lend legitimacy to our claim of a transparent and joint investigation - because you'll know they'll demand full access to everything unless we seem to be compliant already."
"The Curse-Breakers know more about on-the-fly arithmantic spell-dissection than anyone else we have," Marsh said, brainstorming out loud. "Couldn't they use that to make something to help with testing?"
"We should lock down all the vaults until this whole issue is resolved," Fillast said tersely. "It would be a good opportunity to check them for contraband as well."
.....
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