New Stipulations
Giles Morrison stared at the piece of parchment before him. The only sound in his office was the ticking of the clock on the wall. A steady and relentless tick tock that drove him bloody mental. He had tried to put a silencing spell on it multiple times, even tried removing it from the wall. The damn thing wouldn’t budge. He suspected it was some sort of goblin prank.
Tick tock was all he heard as he gaped at what was before him. He spent some time gawking at the parchment before he shakily reached over to pick up his wand. He tapped it on the parchment and whispered a spell, almost afraid he would be overheard.
The parchment, with the stark Gringotts logo on it, remained unchanged. It was real. So were its contents. Sucking in a breath, he dropped his wand and slumped back in his chair. He felt obligated to present this to his boss. But if it had ended up on his desk, in his daily paperwork, his boss must already be aware of it. The more he ruminated over it, the more he suspected he wasn’t supposed to have seen the parchment. Perhaps it had accidentally ended up on his desk? Though that did seem far-fetched, as well as an extraordinary lapse of the usual goblin fastidiousness, he did know of a few goblins who weren’t as bright as Gringotts liked to pretend. Agnel, the son of his boss, being one of them.
A sudden idea popping into his head, Morrison seized his wand and tapped the parchment again. An identical copy of the parchment appeared next to it. Morrison snorted, goblins thought they were so brilliant when it came to business. But when it came to magic. . . any idiot would know you ought to magically protect such an incriminating piece of evidence.
Morrison flicked his wand and an envelope appeared. Folding the copy of the parchment, he stuck it inside and sealed it with a tap of his wand. Another tap, and it vanished from his desk.
Hoping he’d made the right decision (though he wasn’t sure by what standard any of this could be considered ‘right’), he jumped to his feet, snatched up the original version of the parchment, and strolled out of his office.
Navigating his way through the dimly lit hallways of the back offices of Gringotts bank, Morrison wondered if Agnel, whose fault he assumed it was that the parchment landed on his desk, had potentially cost him his job out of his sheer idiocy. The possibility made his hands tremble. It was very well that goblins preferred to interact with wizardkind as little as possible these days. He understood why there had been wars in the past now. On top of being arrogant, rude and duplicitous, goblins could be damn annoying.
Morrison stepped around a goblin staggering down the hallway with an enormous bar of solid gold (or what looked like gold), and knocked on Kregmar’s door. He wasn’t even sure if his boss was in today, or if Kregmar had gone back to his home near Nottingham and informed nobody, which he was prone to do.
“Enter,” answered Morrison’s question. He turned the brass knob and stepped into the office.
Kregmar’s office was vast, much larger than Morrison’s, but cluttered with knick knacks of all kinds. Most were weapons -- goblin-made weapons at that. Scattered around the office like some sort of deadly menagerie. Anything that wasn’t a weapon was related to Gringotts, including what Morrison suspected were dragon teeth from some of the beasts kept underground. The walls were covered with framed contracts Kregmar had overseen between some of the most prestigious families and companies in the wizarding world. It was clear he took great care of these, as they shone with a proud glare upon anyone who entered. A heap of what Morrison guessed were counterfeit Galleons occupied one corner, next to a mountain of Daily Prophets, all displaying witches and wizards now serving sentences in Azkaban for the use of the counterfeit currency.
Agnel, Kregmar’s notorious son, sat on top of this heap of fake Galleons, clutching a live monkey in one gnarled hand. In the other, he held one of the phoney gold coins, which he kept trying to give the monkey to bite.
“Morrison,” droned Kregmar from behind his desk. The goblin sat on a stack of books piled onto his chair, hunched over what looked like a list of account balances. He peered up at Morrison from behind his silver-framed glasses and gave him a glare. Two complete suits of goblin-wrought armor stood on either side of the desk, making for an intimidating sight. “What do you want?”
“Come to yap no doubt,” Agnel leered, breaking into a grin when the monkey finally took the gold coin and began biting at it, chattering all the while and making an awful racket. “And interrupting how busy we are.”
“Yes, I can see you both are remarkably busy,” Morrison kept all sarcasm out of his voice, in spite of how much he wished to lay it on thick, particularly upon seeing the monkey swallow the gold coin and immediately start gagging. “I wanted to drop this off,” he held up the parchment, making sure Agnel could also see it. “I believe it accidentally ended up on my desk. . . .”
Goblins possess a far less varied repertoire of facial expressions than witches and wizards, but nonetheless, Morrison thoroughly enjoyed the look of horror that flashed across Agnel’s face upon his presentation of the parchment. The look also told Morrison that Agnel had most likely authored what was on the parchment. While the goblin was infuriating, he certainly had tricks up his sleeve.
“And what is that?” Kregmar squinted across the room, but his son leapt into action. He dropped the retching monkey and rushed towards Morrison as the monkey landed with a choked squawk on the heap of gold coins.
“Nothing, father!” Agnel announced loudly, “it’s nothing. I’ll handle it, and I’ll make sure those fools down in internal operations are dealt with accordingly. This wouldn’t be the first time they botched some documentation. It was probably Finngard, he’s incompetent -- and going blind.” Agnel raised a hand and gestured; Morrison lowered the parchment towards the goblin but Agnel grabbed his wrist and pulled him downwards so his father couldn’t hear.
“A word of the contents of this to anyone and you’ll wish you’ve never been born, wizard.”
Releasing his wrist, Agnel snatched the parchment and quickly folded it up. “You can go, Morrison.”
He looked to Kregmar, who nodded and waved a hand, clearly no longer interested in the situation, turning instead to watch the monkey cough up the fake Galleon. Without saying anything further, Morrison turned and stepped out of the office. Once down the hall he let out a chuckle. The stupidity of Kregmar’s son would be the death of both goblins.
Abraxas Malfoy shuffled through the stack of parchment on the desk in the Malfoy Manor study. Before him were long lists of all the individual potions sellers which Triple I supplied. They stretched from Dublin to Istanbul and everywhere in between. Abraxas was especially proud of the new agreement recently reached with the major apothecaries in West Germany. Now that the Muggle war had ended, economic prospects were turning around on the mainland continent. Though he’d have to send Lestrange and Dawson on a trip to make sure West Germany would be upholding their end of the contract. If they resold their stock to East Germany and the Soviets then the stalemate Triple I had with the Russian Ministry would be pointless. Glancing up at Lestrange and Dawson, who were with him in the study, he muffled a laugh. They hated the paperwork part of their job. Right now he had them tabulating the reports from all the apothecaries in the British Isles. He knew they would much rather be on some action-packed adventure.
“Adolphus,” he called across the office and both his and Dawson’s heads perked up.
“Yeah?” they said in unison.
“And Eric,” added Abraxas with a snicker. “When do you two want to go to West Germany?”
Delight flashed across their faces. “Today?”
“Tomorrow,” he said with a shake of his head. They sometimes forgot you had to actually plan things out in advance before jumping right in. “Leave the British numbers alone and get everything we have on Germany. And whatever we have on the Eastern Bloc too.”
“Right away, boss,” crowed Lestrange and he shuffled all the parchment into a neat stack. Dawson practically skipped across the room to the shelves holding the company’s files.
Glad to have made somebody’s day, Abraxas scrawled his signature at the bottom of a piece of parchment and smiled to himself. No sooner had he laid down his quill did an envelope appear before him with a small pop. It floated in midair before falling onto the desk. Baffled, and very much intrigued, he pushed aside the parchment and picked up the envelope. It was a plain and nondescript envelope, void of all writing. There wasn’t even a name on it addressing it to himself. It had, however, appeared on his desk, right in front of him, so he took the liberty of opening it. Sliding out the folded parchment tucked inside, he eagerly read its contents.
Abraxas was so engrossed in what the letter contained he didn’t realize Dawson had been calling his name for several minutes.
“Abraxas? Abraxas?” Dawson stood before him, rapping his knuckles on the desk. Abraxas finally glanced up at him, trying to keep his face composed. “Should we review what we have on Russia itself, too?”
“Er, yeah, yes, sure,” Abraxas had barely heard the question. “One of you run and find my grandmother. Now.”
Intrigue flashed over Dawson’s face, but he nodded and turned tail, slipping out of the office. Lestrange glanced over at Abraxas.
“What is it?”
“Interesting bit of news from Gringotts.”
“Gringotts? We haven’t met with them-”
“This is from an. . . inside source, I suspect.”
Lestrange’s eyes widened. “So it’s something illegal then?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“What kind of illegal?” Lestrange had flown over to the desk. He hopped on top of it and settled himself cross-legged, looking like an overgrown hawk waiting to strike upon some juicy piece of gossip.
Before Abraxas could reply, Domitia stepped into the office, Dawson right behind her.
“Eric didn’t explain what this was about,” said Domitia in an irritated voice. “I’m having tea with the Rosiers at the moment.”
Abraxas held out the letter that had appeared on his desks moments ago. Lestrange craned his neck, trying to glimpse its contents.
Narrowing her eyes, Domitia slowly approached and took it. Scanning it over, her forehead creased. She showed no other reaction to the contents of the letter.
“Where did this come from?”
“It just appeared on my desk-”
“You don’t know who sent it?”
“I’ve my suspicions.”
“Don’t trust everything that crosses your desk, Abraxas,” said Domitia. She glanced it over once more and handed it back to her grandson. “Read it again.”
Abraxas blinked, but obeyed. He looked back up, still puzzled. The contents had remained the same.
“Have you got it memorized?” she asked harshly.
“Yes-”
“Good. Burn it. Tell your father about it before August, if a situation arises where it may be. . . useful.”
Abraxas faltered, clutching the mysterious letter tighter. “Burn it?”
“Yes,” Domitia held her hand back out and Abraxas returned the letter to her. Lestrange and Dawson watched with intense curiosity as she crossed the room and dropped the letter in the empty fireplace. Retrieving her wand, she flicked it, and a fire roared to life, burning the letter to ashes.
“Crockett,” Reginald Harlowe greeted the scarred redhead as he apparated at the entrance to the English team’s Quidditch stadium. Dressed in black robes with a leather portfolio tucked under one arm, the agent looked all business.
“Harlowe,” Winky Crockett gave him a nod. “She still here?”
Harlowe snorted as he drew an “X” through the air with his wand to slice a cutout in the magical shield around the stadium. “They all are. It’s like they live here now. They’ve installed beds and have house-elves serving them a meal every hour. It’s ridiculous.”
“Bet you love it,” said Crockett as he stepped through the glowing green rectangle and into the stadium’s boundaries.
“Bloody bollocks. It means I’ve got to stay here all day and night too. Bertram and I have barely been home to see our wives since December. Guarding this bloody team is now the Ministry’s top priority.”
Crockett gave the Auror a thin smile. “Are they at least making it worth your while?”
Reginald Harlowe pulled something from his pocket and flashed it under the agent’s nose. Crockett recognized it instantly. It was the latest widely-circulated photo of Natalie Malfoy, taken just as she snatched up the Snitch during their victory over China back in December.
“That should pull a pretty sum,” said Crockett. He’d last seen that particular photograph going for three hundred Galleons. And that was without the autograph. “Did she actually sign it?” Malfoy’s autograph looked different each time she signed it. Crockett kept having to tell her to cut the shit; it made it easy for blokes to forge her signature and try to pawn them off as authentic autographs.
“Yes,” Harlowe sounded offended. “I watched her do it myself. I’ve got the whole team’s autographs.”
“Good,” said Crockett. “Mind telling me where she can be found?”
“Locker room, no doubt,” said Harlowe. “Whole team is there too.”
“Thanks,” Crockett slid past the Auror and tapped his wand in a certain pattern on the brick wall adjacent to the tunnel leading out to the stands. The wall melted away and revealed a heavy wooden door with a large brass doorknob. Crockett turned the knob and pushed; the door squeaked open and a rush of cool air blew out to greet him.
He stepped into the well-lit corridor and closed the door behind him, the brick wall rearranging itself back together over the door. He briskly walked down the hallway, enjoying the Quidditch lore that filled the corridor. The walls were covered with the history of the English national team, stretching back to the 1600s. As he approached the team’s dressing room, the history morphed into current events. Newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and an assortment of roving photographs were pasted onto the walls, displaying everything from the latest sighting of the team in Diagon Alley, to their upcoming match against Portugal. He understood another reason why the Ministry was insisting on the tight security. The walls had a fortune casually magicked onto them by the players who were on track to become the most wealthy inhabitants of the wizarding world.
The door to the team’s room stood ajar, low murmuring drifted out into the hallway. It was the quietest Crockett had ever heard the team. He assumed they must have finished an intense practice.
Approaching the door, he peeked into the locker room and quickly scanned it. He could barely tell it was the team’s dressing room. It had been completely transformed to resemble a lavishly furnished type of common room. Wall-to-wall carpet with the team logo at the very center of the room covered the floor. The walls themselves were draped with elaborate tapestries, and wherever there was a bare space, more newspaper clippings and photographs of the team. Crockett had a suspicion a large portion of one of the walls was taken up by love letters written to Ricky Webster. Navy blue couches with lumpy cushions were scattered around the room, though it seemed only Eugene Dent actually bothered sitting properly on them. The captain had settled himself on one of these couches, and pored over a piece of parchment that had what looked like the team’s next game plan on it. Whereas, Ricky Webster and Leonard Cadwallader sat on top of the wide table beside the team logo at the center of the room. This table boasted a variety of food and drink and Ricky appeared to be throwing grapes into Cadwallader’s mouth, to little success (Crockett supposed it was a very good thing neither of them were Chasers). The Pottinger triplets sprawled out on the floor nearby, a vicious game of Exploding Snaps occurring between them. Finally, the player he was looking for sat on the floor with her back against the couch opposing Dent, a book in hand. She was already staring at him, as if she’d heard him coming down the hallway.
Crockett took a second to hold in his laughter over the fact that all of them were sporting blue pajama-style bathrobes that were identical to their new uniforms for matches. Complete with their names and numbers on the back. Another Bulstrode production, he suspected.
“Knock, knock,” he formally announced his presence at the door.
Only Dent bothered glancing over, while Natalie just laughed. Crockett realized yet another reason why Aurors were needed for security. The Pottingers, Webster, and Cadwallader would probably allow Grindelwald to walk right into their locker room and not notice until he started flinging spells at them.z
“Crockett,” Dent greeted him with a nod.
He returned the nod. “Dent. Mind if I borrow the team princess for a moment?”
“Sure,” he waved a hand and returned to poring over his parchment.
“Depends on what it’s about,” said Natalie, peering over the top of her book at him with narrowed silver eyes.
Crockett held up the portfolio he had brought along. “Contract stuff.”
“Oh,” she pursed her lips but tossed the book aside and rolled up to her feet. He had seen her just last week but Crockett did a double take at her appearance now. She had cut off half of her hair so that it just brushed the tops of her shoulders. She almost looked like an entirely different person. “Sure. Let’s go outside.”
“Uh, like that?” he gestured to her robe. She was barefoot as well.
“Yeah,” she replied tonelessly. “This is my home. I live here.”
Dent let out a snort at this while Crockett muttered, “clearly” under his breath, but he quietly followed Natalie back out into the hallway without another remark.
They strolled in silence down the corridor, this time heading towards the back entrance of the stadium. The walls here were plastered with photographs of the team from their travels around the globe over the past year.
“So. . . contract stuff?” Natalie finally asked once they reached the brick wall leading to the back of the stadium. She stepped through the wall and vanished without waiting for his reply.
Crockett sighed in exasperation, hurrying to keep up with her. He ducked through the wall and found her greeting the Auror guarding this entrance.
“Hey, Tarold.”
“Malfoy,” Bertram Tarold gave her a winning smile. He was clearly much happier with his assignment than Harlowe. He ran a hand through his brown curls and winked. “Looking ravishing today.”
“Don’t let your wife hear you say that,” she warned him.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Gesturing Crockett after her, Natalie prowled down the tunnel to the stadium entrance. The pitch was dark at this hour, only slightly illuminated by magical blue lights floating along the goalposts on either end. They threw eerie and distorted shadows all over the stadium. Crockett felt a chill run down his spine as though in the presence of a ghost. Natalie was evidently much more at ease with the creepy atmosphere of the stadium; she stuck her hands into the pockets of her bathrobe and had a slight spring in her step.
“So, what, are you all living here full time now?” he asked as they stepped onto the field. “Was that Dent’s idea?”
“We’ve stayed overnight in the past, just finally reckoned we could at least do it comfortably. And no, it was mine.”
“I hear Domitia isn’t too pleased with you staying here, now that you’re not traveling as much for the team-”
“She can mind her own business, I’m an adult, not some poor orphan she still needs to coddle!” snapped Natalie, making Crockett raise an eyebrow at her sudden outburst. Her entire demeanor had changed in an instant, the chill along his spine was now for an entirely different reason.
“Touchy subject, I take it,” he said casually.
“I don’t see what’s wrong with me staying here,” she said, kicking at the magically manicured grass and continuing towards the middle of the pitch, which made Crockett think she definitely had another reason for not wanting to leave the stadium. “Doesn’t everyone want us to win?”
“Of course. There’s just a lot of. . . background work that goes into keeping the national team holed up in a stadium. Like the Aurors-”
“They don’t seem to mind it, especially after we all gave them autographs.”
“Sure, but the Aurors do have other assignments.”
She remained silent, coming to a stop at the dead center of the pitch. Her platinum hair seemed to glow in the darkness, ghost-like and otherworldly. The goal posts towered over them like observant giants. Crockett studied them keenly, half-expecting to see some macabre creature flying about.
“So, contract stuff?” she repeated, drawing his attention back to her.
“Yeah,” he said, tugging some of the parchment from his portfolio. He could hardly see in the dim lighting. “Gringotts and. . . Triple I.”
“Oh, the big players,” she said.
“Exactly. And with only a few rounds left. . . they’ve got some new. . . ideas. Dependent on if you get there, of course, but worth noting.”
“Triple I was already contracted out to supply the Cup Final and most of the other companies and services involved, regardless of who plays in the Final, I heard,” he could just see the slight frown crossing her face. “Didn’t Matt Lament help secure that? He’s on the ICWQC now, right?”
“He is,” Crockett nodded.
“So. . . what else could Triple I add to my contract?”
“A. . . percentage.”
Natalie paused; studying the looming stands where the audience would be on a match day, now encircling them as though eavesdropping. Crockett watched her stare up at the opposing goal in silence for a few minutes. Shadows criss-crossed her face, lending a darkness to her pale features. When she glanced back at him, her eyes were an inky gray, almost black.
“Of the Cup Final winnings.” It wasn’t a question. “If we get there, of course.”
“Correct,” breathed Crockett. It suddenly struck him that she wanted to talk outside, in the middle of the pitch, because she was already aware of the rather. . . underhanded nature of the new contract stipulations.
“Gringotts wants the same?”
“Gringotts wants more. Triple I only wants seven percent of the Cup winnings. Gringotts wants ten. . . and-”
“And what?”
“And then ten percent of all winnings for the rest of-”
“My Quidditch career.”
Crockett paused, watching the calculations in her eyes. “Correct — if you go on to play for the Tornadoes — and win, of course.”
“What’s my part of the quid pro quo?”
“Five percent interest accrued on all gold you keep at Gringotts. . . compounded monthly. . . for life.”
“Compounded monthly for life,” she whistled, then held out a hand. Crockett placed the documentation in it. He had no idea how she could see in the murky lighting, but she ran through the stack of parchment, eyes skimming every line.
“Starting the month after I win the Cup. If I win the Cup, that is.”
“Correct,” he said again.
“I see,” she hummed and continued flipping through the parchment. “Hold on. . . . This one isn’t technically from Triple I,” she realized, looking up at him. “It’s from my cousin.”
“Yeah-”
Natalie let out a soft laugh. “This says I’d get to be godmother of his first child. But the seven percent wouldn’t go to the company, it would go directly to Abraxas’s vault.”
“Yes; the ICWQC announced last week that any sponsor could only write five percent of the Cup winnings into contracts with players. Technically, Abraxas isn’t sponsoring you. Triple I is.”
“Quill,” Natalie held a hand out in his direction. Crockett obliged, pulling a quill from the portfolio and handing it to her. She tapped the tip and Crockett glimpsed black ink on it before she scribbled her signature on the parchment from Abraxas Malfoy. “Keeps it in the family. . . and technically not illegal, but Gringotts. . . .”
“I’m assuming that’s why the interest is compounded monthly. . . for life,” Crockett knew she had to understand that Gringotts was essentially paying her to keep her mouth shut.
“Does anyone else know about these?” she stared him in the eye, and Crockett experienced a tingling feeling along his temple.
“No, besides myself.”
“I don’t need to tell you to keep it that way, then. We’re both posed to become fabulously wealthy after all this.”
Crockett tried to suppress a grin, thinking about the line in his own contract as her agent, entitling him to a certain percentage of the Cup Final winnings as well. Not to mention the dual ownership they had on her name brand and image. Both of them were already fabulously wealthy.
“No, you do not.”