The Necromancer

Chapter 24

Voldemort threw his head back and laughed for a few long moments, his cup of tea almost spilling in his lap. “I would pay good money to see the looks on the Black brothers’ faces when they realize they are penniless.”

Chuckling, Harry got out his wand. “I’m happy to give you that for free.” And then he cast his Patronus and a silvery barok shot out of Harry’s wand. “Tell Sirius that he’d better get his arse here right now because Gringotts is giving all his gold away.” With a nod the barok turned around and disappeared through the wall.

“Of course your Patronus would be one of those terrifying beasts,” Voldemort said, though he didn’t sound particularly frightened, even with Keket, the flesh and bone barok, sleeping twenty feet away.

“What’s yours?” Harry asked, wondering what sort of animal would represent the inner workings of a Dark Lord.

“I never bothered to learn that spell,” Voldemort said, waving his hand around in a dismissive gesture before going back to sipping his tea.

Harry tucked his wand away and picked up his own cup. “Why not? They’re dead useful to send quick messages.”

“Hmm.” Voldemort smiled in a way that made it seem he was hiding a secret that amused him a great deal. “I have other ways to quickly communicate with my followers.”

Ah, yeah, Harry remembered his family telling him that Lord Voldemort magically marked his followers. That must be what he was referring to. And while Harry would love to hear more about that kind of magic, he had more urgent matters to consider at that moment. “So I was planning to invite you to visit a fruit tree nursery this afternoon, to start on our orchards. But now it seems that I’ll be visiting Gringotts instead.”

“One does not have to exclude the other,” Voldemort pointed out.

“That’s true,” Harry said with a small frown. “I have been considering inviting the goblins to live in Magica and I won’t mind hearing your opinion on this. I have no experience with goblins, save for that one time I visited my vault after I’d just arrived here.”

Voldemort inhaled a deep breath, held it for a few moments and then exhaled slowly. “Now that is a unpredictable bag of kneazles you just opened.”

“How so?”

“You must understand, Harry, that goblins and wizards have been at war with each other for centuries, if not millennia. Yes, in between the wars there were truces and peace negotiations and moratoriums and cease-fires before inevitably a new conflict arose and both sides went back to fighting.” Voldemort chuckled at Harry’s wide-eyed look. “Everyone always complains about Professor Binns and his endless lectures about numerous goblin wars, but at least knowing something of our history does come in handy in situations like this.”

“If wizards are constantly fighting goblins then why on earth are you letting them control your money?” Harry asked in sheer astonishment.

“Because that is the one thing we agreed to let them keep, the monopoly on banking in the British wizarding world, while we stripped them of almost all their other rights.” Voldemort placed his empty cup on the table and seemed to really enjoy lecturing an eager listener like Harry. “There are plenty of other countries that also use goblins for banking, but there are also plenty who do not. They use gnomes, like Germany, Austria and Switzerland, or they have a wizard-run bank like Russia and most of South-America.”