Harry Potter: Beyond Good and Evil in the Wizarding World-Chapter 76 - 71. Construction Begins

Griphook left the dungeon a little on edge, especially after the second exorcism session. After all, in the Lestrange vault Severus had also found another Horcrux, Hufflepuff’s cup, and it came with a small surprise: duplication charms and a flaming hand. He dispelled both without much difficulty and, after taking that fragment of Voldemort’s soul, returned the cup to its place and laid the same charms back over it.

Besides that, Severus also moved almost all his Galleons into vault number 810. While the contract was in effect, he was not worried about them, and between what he would soon receive from all those shops in Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley, plus his shares in companies that were not included in the contract, he would not need that money much anyway.

After Gringotts, Severus did not go straight home. First he visited the Ministry of Magic and, in an office there, redirected the incoming Galleons from potions to his account so he would not have to go to the bank himself every month. Then he visited Shafiq and gave him new instructions as well: redirect ninety percent of the proceeds to the bank.

An hour later he returned to the shop, where Nagini was already lying on the table and having lunch.

"You took a long time."

"The goblins delayed me, but I can make you happy: I will not even have to strain myself with the house." He looked at her with a smile and then, as if wiping dirt away, erased the flame mark on the back of his palm, and then did the same with the Galleon drawing on his chest.

After all, contracts like that might have power over ordinary wizards, but for Severus, who had mastered this back in the Magistrate, they were child’s play. In his time as an Archmage, he had once nearly become a spy’s slave, almost signing a slave contract disguised as an agreement on non-disclosure of each other’s identities. He had taken pity on her since they were not enemies who had to kill each other on sight, and only luck made him notice that certain words sounded strange in a particular context. One could say that a single word saved him, "non-disclosure," with one odd letter. In that moment, a textbook on an ancient language came to mind, a single-copy book from his teacher’s collection, where some letters looked almost ordinary but meant something completely different. One could say what betrayed her was that in one word there were six such letters, and it sounded like "sub.or.di." After quickly selecting letters with the help of the Grimoire, that strange word turned into "subordination," and the spy herself instantly turned to ash.

After that incident he devoted about two years to studying contracts, agreements, and other paperwork, learning countless subtleties. In the Magistrate there was even a person who dealt with such things, and Severus learned a lot from him. That very contract was also his work, as was the list of rules for "A Good Grimoire." In nearly seven hundred years, that old man had written a huge amount of documents. Even a single slave contract of ten thousand pages was something.

Severus, in turn, devised countermeasures against them, mostly tied to black flame, in case he still overlooked something like that someday. After all, no one is immune to inattention. Even the strongest wizard can be given a potion that dulls the mind, have his surroundings subjugated, or have a loved one taken hostage, and then be forced to sign, because in the world of magic, anything is possible.

Leaving the cherry pie alone, Nagini looked at him in confusion.

"I found someone who will handle the construction. I will just supervise it." He sat calmly at the table and took an apple. "Of course, everything could have been left to them, but I have a feeling that in this case those dwarves will definitely start cutting material costs to the absolute minimum."

"Glad to hear it. And how long?"

"Two weeks. By the end of the holidays they will finish." Stretching and leaning on his hand, Severus looked at her with a smile. "Feels like I only just rested, and I am already tired. Damn goblins."

At that very second, Nagini froze in shock.

"Do you have a fever?" she asked anxiously, pressing her tail to his forehead. "Are you really Severus?"

"Stop being ironic. Even I can get tired, and those bastards squeezed all the juice out of me. They fought for every Knut. It was awful. We spent an hour deciding just one question: how much I could withdraw from the account per month. We settled on twelve thousand three hundred twenty-five Galleons, three Sickles, and twenty-seven Knuts. They are supposed to be leaders, but they behaved like ordinary goblins."

"My poor thing. Let Auntie Nagini console you."

"I was just thinking about a dark green leather purse."

"I am joking!" she grumbled in displeasure, though through the bond he felt completely different emotions.

"All right, all right. When you become a Lamia, I will not mind if Auntie Nagini consoles me at night." Without any trouble dodging a pair of fangs, he got up from the table and headed for the stairs. "If anything, I will be upstairs, my La-mi-a."

"Now I will show you a Lamia!" Nagini slithered briskly after him. Today she was going to get revenge for all the mockery.

The very next day he stood near the Prince estate, and Nagini peeked from under his collar, watching with interest the thirty-odd goblins lined up behind them. Most of them wore dark, fairly simple clothes and helmets, except for one goblin in a suit who held the plan of the future fortress.

"No skimping on materials and no improvisation. Everything according to plan!" Severus enunciated each word.

"You are telling me this for the third time already," the chief drawled wearily.

"I will remind you every day."

"Hm!" Offended by such distrust, the goblin stuffed a plain-looking notebook deeper into his pocket and turned to the others. "Get to work!"

"I will also pay each of you a thousand Galleons when the work is finished, but for each mistake I will deduct ten from each of you as well," Severus announced with a calm smile.

After the first half of the sentence the goblins beamed, but after the second they froze, still wearing joyful expressions.

Satisfied with the reaction, he turned to the house. Taking out his wand, he began whispering something unintelligible, and with each second the temperature around them kept rising until, in a single moment, the entire house was engulfed in flames.

"Why are you doing this? There were many valuable things inside!" the foreman exclaimed in bewilderment, looking at the burning building as if it were a real tragedy.

"You do not have to worry about that. Everything that had any value, I already took. Nothing remains inside," Severus explained indifferently, watching the goblin exhale in relief and come to his senses quickly. Then, rummaging in his suitcase, the foreman pulled out a business card.

"Take it. We recently opened a small furniture shop. If you want to sell it, we will gladly buy at a good price."

"I will keep it in mind." Severus nodded and slipped it into his pocket, remembering the things from the Room of Requirement. Now he did not have to think about who to foist all that junk on.

A few minutes later the house had burned down completely, leaving only coals and ash. Severus blew it aside without much effort, using wind magic.

"You may begin." He stepped aside calmly, and the goblins did not delay.

A huge amount of different building materials appeared on the ground. Some goblins began sorting them, while others, using a magic pen and checking the plan, began marking the main points where the manor had stood, drawing directly on the ground and in the air with glowing ink. They worked very carefully, with jeweller’s precision, and handled the materials as if they were their own children.

Still, motivating them with gold was a good idea, Severus thought with a satisfied smile as he watched the artifacts the goblins were using.

He was not surprised by ordinary pens, but the hovering platforms and a stone golem three metres tall caught his attention because it had no magical core and yet it could still move. It was one thing to see the stone lions tied into Hogwarts’s magical source, but this creature had nothing of the sort, and they were almost two hundred kilometres from the bank. However, after a closer look with magic, he lost all interest.

He had expected something like a magical accumulator inside the stone giant, but it turned out to be a simple rune that absorbed magic, several times weaker than what Severus had applied to the cube.

To ward off boredom, he decided to play cards with Nagini under the goblins’ odd looks. When they realised she really could play, and even won once, their jaws nearly hit the ground.

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