Chapter- 22 : Manipulation Part -2

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Bella's face had contorted into a scowl of barely controlled fury. "May I be permitted to deal with him, my lord?"

"Ah, Bella," Harry modulated his Voldemort voice so it was softer, almost in fond (if evil) tones. "In return for your long term of unbroken loyal service, I grant you this boon - you may kill him, but only by means which do not imperil your disguise, even if he should return as a ghost."

"Thank you, my lord," Bellatrix abased herself, proud as she could feel her lord's amusement over her request.

In truth, Harry was amused, because Snape was as loyal to the Dark Lord as it was possible to get. Harry had Riddle's own memory of ORDERING Snape to approach Dumbledore to spy for the Light, and murders of Order members skyrocketed once Snape began supplying Tom information on them. That Albus had allowed this proved that bastard was every bit as ruthless as the man he'd claimed to oppose.

Really, all Dumbledore and Voldemort had been was rivals fighting for control of the same world. They were not so different as many supposed.

But setting one Death Eater on another, granting one permission to kill the other, truly tickled Harry's funny bone. Would that he could arrange for all of his enemies to dispose of each other!

Brrr! Suddenly he had an idea of how Albus had become the sort of creature he was. Harry quickly gave final instructions to the lady he'd duped. "Watch over this body, which shall soon be mine, that it comes to no harm. I give you this charge, Bella, trusting you above all other Death Eaters. Do not fail me."

"It shall be done as you command, my lord!" Bellatrix sang from where she groveled in the mud, face down on her knees.

Harry relaxed the muscles of his face and withdrew the magic making his eyes go red, then went off to the stables as if he could not see Bellatrix, and put his hippogriff away as Hagrid had tasked him to.

Faking possession was actually easier than he'd thought.

When he came back from stabling the hippogriff, Bella was gone. Harry went back to the class area, where Hagrid was talking with Hermione. A quick and subtle mind scan revealed that neither had overheard, or knew anything concerning his giving instructions to an escaped Death Eater.

Good.

Filch had already been tasked by Dumbledore to keep a closer eye on Harry. So this was a gain for him in every department, replacing one of his enemy's agents with a bodyguard of his own, and Dumbledore would simply accept the attention Filch was paying to him as carrying out his own commands.

Excellent.

The actual caretaker could even make regular reports when she released him to go cleaning, and if Bella had been thorough in her memory and Confundus charms (which he felt certain she would be), then Filch would believe he'd been on diligent watch over Harry, and seen nothing out of the ordinary.

The best way to blind a spy was to not let it know it wasn't seeing anything. And creating a blind spot in Dumbledore's web granted Harry some freedom. Not much, not yet, but the rest was coming.

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'Aha! So that's where it is,' Harry thought smugly to himself.

There were vaults beneath Hogwarts, as Gringott's bank hadn't existed back then, and wizards wouldn't have trusted goblins to hold their money even if it had. They'd fought too many wars against each other.

The wizards of today wouldn't trust goblins to do their banking if the wizards had even a lick of sense between them. Goblins lived on cruelty just as house elves lived on service. And you could either be cruel to someone by pillaging their homes, torturing their children, ripping their eyeballs out and dancing on their graves, or you could do it by charging interest rates and ruinous fees.

But the interest rates were less fun, so at some point it was inevitable that a few children were going to go missing. Goblins were like junky addicts who needed their fix, and the more potent the suffering they caused the better. So it was, as it always had been, simply a matter of time before they broke the treaties restraining their actions and went kidnapping innocents again.

The wizards of long ago would have gone to war over such a gross offense. The sheep of today?

Maybe they would, and maybe they wouldn't.

Even Hagrid, who cherished everything deadly, dangerous, dark or nasty had admitted that goblins were not the most friendly folk. Which, coming from a man who'd name a giant three headed dog Fluffy, kept an acromantula as a pet while still at school, kept a baby dragon in a wooden hut and loved every dangerous beast on the books, was the single most ringing denunciation of any magical creature he'd ever heard from the Groundskeeper!

Actually, Harry'd only ever heard Hagrid condemn three things: Voldemort, goblins, and speaking ill of Albus Dumbledore, who'd given him a career when he'd been thrown out of school.

If even Hagrid couldn't love them, it made sense why wizards of the past hadn't trusted the goblins.

Hogwarts was actually packed with odd storerooms, some more secure than others, where odds and ends and magical treasures got kept, things like the Mirror of Erised (when it wasn't being used by manipulative old Headmasters to bait traps), since they couldn't all be stored in the Headmaster's office.

However, it had actually taken some degree of searching to find the Goblet of Fire. Like most ancient and potent magical treasures, the artifact had many powers. However, most such things tended to wind up on display in a museum-like atmosphere, where nobody tended to use them, or they got put to use for only a fraction of their original functions.

The Goblet of Fire was actually a prime example of such. Its only official use remaining in this age was to serve as a neutral judge to select participants in a tournament that wasn't held anymore. But it actually had a small catalog of wonderful powers. Albus, Harry felt sure, had already made use of several of the goblet's properties for himself.

Harry intended to do the same, but it would take time and preparations.

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