Soon after, an old bland secretarial witch entered without leave to do so. All of Cornelius's secretaries were old, bland, fat, or ugly. The man seemed to think it would convince his wife he wasn't sleeping with any of them.
"Minister Fudge, the Senior Undersecretary is outside and is quite insistent on meeting with you," the witch Lucius had never bothered to learn the name of said. "Should I tell her you're in a meeting or…?"
"Oh, she's not going to be happy about that Gronntripper goblin this morning still," the Minister said, bemoaning his lot in life.
"Minister," Lucius smiled, an idea occurring to him. "While I appreciate her stalwart support of your positions, perhaps the Wizengamot is not the place for her at the moment," he said meaningfully. "I'm sure her prejudices could be used to much greater effect a little further from home tomorrow."
To the gray-haired, boring, frumpy witch he said, "Send her in."
...
With each step Barchoke took away from the Minister's door he cursed the moronic ineptitude all too commonplace in this "wizarding" world. As the lift which would take him back to the Goblin Liaison Office came into sight he saw Madam Umbridge walking back the way he'd come, still wearing her affront for all to see like it were her ugly pink cardigan.
He smiled pleasantly at her as she passed him by, imagining he had just eaten her cat without her knowing, and he swore he saw her eye twitch. The lift ride was short and while he successfully avoided having a laugh at the woman's expense, the smile he wore when he entered the Liaison Office was genuine. The Office itself started buzzing with activity as soon as he arrived; no longer the pointed questions or critiques they had when he first entered, now everyone was running around like they actually had work to do; it all for show of course.
Unlike the rest of the Ministry, many of these people had been interns at Gringotts of one sort or another before taking their position here. Though they may have forgotten their place, that time would have taught them enough about goblin hierarchy to know some sort of realignment was underway there. The possibility of failure still frightened him, but Barchoke certainly liked the reaction he got from other people as he passed by.
With a swirling, topsy-turvy motion which put the fliplift to shame and somehow banging his elbow while in the middle of all the nothingness, Barchoke flew through the floo and shot out the other end to land hard on his behind. As glad as he was to be back at Gringotts he was even more glad that hadn't happened when he had taken the trip there in the first place.
He dusted himself off as best he could from where he sat and looked up to see a gaggle of curious Overseers watching him, only Overseer Marsh was absent.
"I hate the floo," he groused as Bankor extended a hand to help him up.
"How did it go?" the Little Minister asked.
"Harder to get through than commissions on a dead account," he replied, drawing a few chuckles from those who were former tellers and account managers by describing a long and tediously painful process which ultimately gained you nothing. "Where's Marsh?"
"Doing his investigation, or so he claims," Gutripper sneered.
The head of Security had never liked a non-goblin having such a position with them and he was starting to see his point. Marsh was an old hereditary account, not nearly as flush with cash as others he could name, but well situated in the bigoted society to hobnob with others.
He didn't like what his absence implied any more than how his entire department went home at the end of the day to a place that wasn't within the halls of Gringotts. It was a security concern too long ignored because it had existed for so long. Anyone from his department could have found out about their concerns, investigations, and plans and spread the information faster than a fire in a mining tunnel. But with his position only informally recognized and his own investigation already targeting the Hogwarts Accounting Department, how could he justify sidelining someone of supposedly-equal status?
"Good," he said, thinking on his feet. "Keep him at it until he has something to report. The I.C.W. will want every scrap he can come up with."
'Gah!' Barchoke thought suddenly, remembering back to the confrontation in the Pit last night.
He had been so eager to poke Marsh with hot barbs he had actually told the human he was looking to invalidate transfers. If he put it together with how closely they've been working with the boy - which any idiot could do - they could put together their entire case, and if there was one person who'd most like to see him fail it'd be him. Lester will simply have to get a move on with it now.
"Did-did you have to be making the concessions?" weird little Alkrat asked.
Suddenly paranoid, Barchoke put a finger to his lips, then to his ear, then spun it around to point to the walls of the room they were in to communicate the walls have ears. Though - wait, hadn't Supervisor Braglast been here just a second ago? The dodgy goblin could be anywhere. But where could he take them where they wouldn't be overheard? He didn't want to be anywhere near a torture chamber with Gutripper.
"Ah!" Bankor said, gesturing for everyone to gather around him; Gutripper stayed back where he was. The Little Minister then pulled out a small orb that could easily fit into the palm of his hand and tapped it with one finger to make a little rushing river appear.
'Good Gotts!' he thought 'They come in tiny sizes!'
Faced with not being able to hear, even Gutripper had to join their huddle.
"How bad were the concessions?" the half-blind Overseer asked.
"There were no concessions," Barchoke replied, "he made no demands at all, which means whoever tells him what to think hasn't told him what to do yet-"
"-So we should expect demands to come in the next hour or so," Bankor finished for him. "You seem to imply though he knew why you were there before you arrived but not exactly what you would say when you got there."
"Some of his questions at the beginning sounded rehearsed and only half remembered, and then the usual wizard stupidity kicked in and I had to explain everything under the sun," he informed them. "And he was much too calm about the whole affair, and though he denied it, I know there was someone else in the room with us."
"And you didn't gut them?" Gutripper asked, looking for a moment like he was going to do that very thing.
"You can't gut someone in front of the Minister of Magic," Bankor chided. "It's very bad form. Plus, it would have to be a human, and he'd be sure to take it amiss."
"And that's not even considering the fact we're smuggling in a small army of foreign wizards, plus the ones who work for us," the portly Slaggran wheezed.
Barchoke had to agree, saying it that way made it seem like they were trying to overthrow the Ministry, and things were bad enough as it was. They didn't need to add killing humans into the mix.
.....
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