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Saturday, early afternoon, inside Gringotts Bank.


Aileen's patience was wearing thin as the goblins squabbled in hushed voices behind the counters. They'd spent enough time flooing from Hogsmeade to Diagon Alley, and now they had to wait in the main hall of the bank. Students grew restless behind her, and if there was anything she wanted to avoid, it was Sellaphix getting bored to the point of troublemaking this Saturday afternoon. Some of the teenagers were genuinely interested in learning more about Gringotts and cursebreaking in particular, but others, she suspected, would have preferred the usual class on Friday and skipped the trip on Saturday. Of course, she hadn't given them a choice.

But perhaps it would open some eyes, spark some ambition. That was Aileen's goal. Not torture. She promised.

Finally, the doors to the back rooms opened, and two goblins led them in, flanking the group on either side. Aileen ignored the suspicious stares, the sudden trailing off of conversations around them, and willed her students to do the same. They had every right to be here. She'd arranged it with the goblins, the Hogwarts Headmaster, and other connections she had at the bank well in advance. Still, they'd checked five different forms of ID from both herself and Professor Maras, and double-checked the student's wands before letting them beyond the extravagant marble entrance hall.

Professor Maras left the group to find Raizel Cohen and arrange the tour of the counterfeit room. Aileen and the students followed the goblins through wooden doors and around stone corridors. The ceilings were lower here, as if originally built for smaller sized beings, and even the uniforms began to change the further they went - guards wore gold and scarlet, with gleaming buttons on the front, while the employees inside wore suits or more casual vests.

They stopped in a wide corridor with a curved glass window. The glass looked murky, spotted with dips and flaws, and thick enough that she imagined a tap (or a spell) would bounce right off. Inside the windowed room, goblins and a few humans scurried around long tables, passing along artifacts for inspection. It looked as though each room's section had a clearly defined purpose. Aileen's gaze lingered on the scribes with amusement. They hunched over scrolls of parchment that seemed to go on indefinitely, piling into large boxes on the floor. A goblin sat in one of the boxes, fact checking, while the scowling scribe closest to him gestured with his quill and left droplets of ink on his head.

"Don't you feel lucky that your essays are short and sweet in comparison?" Aileen murmured to whoever happened to be listening.

Aileen looked at the two goblin guards. They looked back at her. She'd signed up for a tour, not a trip to a menagerie. This room had to be where they checked the lesser artifacts. She opened her mouth, when a familiar redhead turned the corner and strode toward them.

"Miss St. Just," she greeted the cursebreaker with relief in her voice, using her last name for the students' benefit.

They weren't exactly friends, but friendly acquaintances, and had attended Hogwarts at the same time. Aileen had a healthy respect for her, and of course, a bit of rivalry, based on the differences of their work habits.

"I'm told this is the only artifact room?" Aileen raised her eyebrows at the woman, not caring if the goblins had a problem with that statement. 

Josephine had murky reasons for volunteering to do this.  She certainly had things to attend to that would be much more beneficial to her career than walking a bunch of children around with an old school acquaintance.  But, Aileen Reid, despite hr falling out with some of society, was an upstanding witch, and a prestigious one at that - professorship and all.  Josephine could not waste a connection where she had one.  She did not know what was going to come of what happened to Gomfrey, but she wanted as many people on her side as possible. 

Aileen was one of the women who could be potentially helpful in that case.  She'd even offered Cohen's name as a help.  Of course, this was twofold to put blame off of them and torture the woman in the same breath.  Naturally, Josephine could not imagine that woman interested in any way with children.  Josephine had a similar feeling, but she was better at masking her emotions than the Israeli witch was. 

So, when she entered the main artifacts chamber from the back, Josephine put on a small smile, her boots click against the polished floor.  When she was in London she had no reason to dress like an explorer, and she made sure to accentuate that. Striding more quickly, she reached out her hand with the antique Egyptian ring gracing it, smirking.  Aileen was very much into the Egypt side of things.  Josephine, herself, had spent much more time in Western Africa, but everyone had their prizes from wherever they'd been. 

"Professor Reid," she greeted smoothly, a smirk, almost smile on her painted lips.  A bubble of a chuckle erupted in her chest as Aileen remarked this was the only artifact room. 

"Do you believe everything you're told?" she raised an eyebrow, "These are Goblins, not saints."  It wasn't a direct answer, of course, but it was enough to say that Josephine wouldn't disappoint.  As long as she could make sure the monsters kept their paws off things and didn't slip anything into their robes, she'd take them on a rather interesting tour of the place.  "But it's as good of a place to start as any," she informed her, then looked to the litany of youths behind her.

They were gawky, awkward teenage things.  Josephine almost felt bad for them.  Adolescence was something to be pitied.  "Do any of you have a clue as to what they are doing," she flicked her unique, African made wand in the direction of the tables where the objects were being identified, sorted, and cataloged. 

It was, of course, impolite to stare and Sasha was putting considerable effort into not doing so.  The results were that his gaze flickered quickly between each of the individual little goblins. 

The short, large-eared, wrinkly-headed beings were still somewhat of a novelty to the Ravenclaw.  He had yet to open an account at Gringott's; his experience with the wizarding bank was limited to his quick annual pre-term exchange of sterling pounds and, on those occasions when Sasha returned straight from Germany to Diagon, Euros into galleons and sickles.  Since most of the family's trust was still under the supervision of the lawyers, it wouldn't be until after Sasha came of age - by muggle standards - that he'd even be able to consider switching banks. 

Even then, he still wasn't sure if he would.  He knew far less about the wizarding world's banking system than he did the muggle world's.  He'd learned a fair bit about muggle banking through Gerhard.  And, everytime he pondered moving their accounts to Gringotts, he could hear Gerhard in the back of his head demanding to know the interest rates and investment potential and returns.  Did goblins even offer interest rates?  How did they compare to muggle banks?  And, somehow, moving his step-father's money and abandoning his current investments to a goblin run bank seemed too much like one big, final insult. 

But, his money wasn't going anywhere until he was eighteen.  He had time to figure that all out.  For now the goblins remained a curious, fascinating oddity. 

Sasha followed the group, his gaze continuously wandering over their surroundings, giving very much the impression of a six-year-old gazing at monstrous dinosaur skeletons during his first trip to the natural history museum.  His gaze flittered over the rolls of parchment and he overheard Professor Reid's comment. 

"You're wanting my essays to be longer?" he asked, glancing briefly at her.  Sure, they weren't curl-in-a-box long but ... well, he could make them longer if she did think they were insufficient. 

They met with their non-goblin helper and Sasha followed with the rest of the students into the so-called artifact room.  Whether or not there were additional rooms seemed, for the time being, a moot point.  The room they were in seemed to hold enough artifacts to keep Sasha occupied for ... quite some time. 

When Ms St. Just posed her question, Sasha dutifully turned his attention towards the table.  "It ... well, it looks a lot like what a museum curator does," Sasha commented.  It was only after he spoke that he realized, indeed, in the muggle world most artifacts like that would have been housed and displayed in a museum. 

"I assume they're new acquisitions.  So, it makes sense they're being analyzed and identified."  And, if the artifacts here were at all like the ones they came across in Egypt, "-possibly checked for contaminate...magical contaminates as well."  He took a step forward but hesitated, unsure whether the same rules applied here as in a museum.  "Where do they come from?  Are those ... from people's private collections?  And are they just going to be hidden away here?"

Heinrich's hand dropped to his right hip, for the fifteenth time.  The knife was missing.  He'd decided to leave it at Hogwart's, not entirely certain as to whether it would be welcome at Gringott's.  Still, it felt wrong not to be carrying it.
He brushed a crease out of his red uniform and turned his attention back to the artifact room.  He had to admit, their guide was quite stunning but she seemed less than impressed with the visiting students.  She didn't seem to think their had much to offer, if her question was any indication.

"Likely they are also checking new acquisitions against a list of lost and stolen artifacts, to make certain that Gringott's has a valid claim to the artifacts."  He said.  "The British Empire of the Victorian Age was notorious for stealing the national treasures of any country they conquered and shipping them back to England.  Many of those countries have petitioned to have them returned.  Claims get more tangled when you add in the Goblin concept of ownership.  Goblins believe that the creator of an item has more of a claim to it than the commissioner and when the original commissioner dies, ownership reverts to the creator."

Figaro had to campaign fervently with both Sandusky and Reid to be allowed to come.  He was in serious hot water over being a significant reagent in the Great Hall's recent eruption and was paying for it duly.   But he'd been permitted under harsh threat that he keep his hands to himself.  The other bit, the concern that he hadn't learned his lesson about thinking before he spoke, had been handled in another way.  Professor Sandusky had found it fit to cast a week=long silencing charm upon him.  If he tried to make a sound, his mouth just opened silently.   He was frustratingly, completely and utterly muzzled.

It had been excruciating and his face had taken on a nearly constant look of discomfort as he kept his mouth shut.  It was too unsettling to open his mouth to speak (out of raw instinct learned over nearly 17 years) and have nothing come out. 

Be that as it may...

The journey out of the castle was a welcome one, and Figaro was just as excited to see the back end of Gringots as anyone else.  Figaro had only been to his family's vault a couple of times, and rarely had cause to enter Gringotts at all, so suddenly being surrounded by the eerie goblin bankers and heading into back rooms was a strange thrill.  They were going on a special tour of Gringotts after all, and were free for a short while of the endless translation and back-hunched work that Ancient Runes often promised.

Figaro was both disappointed and pleased that the person who'd be leading them around wasn't a goblin, but a very good-looking witch.  Figaro edged closer to get a better view of what she was showing them.  Long tables covered in all kinds of different things.  Some of them looked normal enough - clocks and jewlery.  Others, he couldn't tell the true purpose of. 

He edged even closer to a table, his fingers itching to touch what looked like a many-chambered pensieve.  He stuck his hands in his pockets. 

Again, without thinking, he opened his mouth to ask what it was and no sound came out.  At least being muted meant he could swear all he wanted.  He pursed his lips and shook his head.

(OOC Note: I am just making stuff up based on what I know from canon. Please feel free to PM me if anything sounds too wacky! It would make sense for a professor to know about Gringotts, so any errors are totally mine)


She nodded at Mr. Schlagenweit and Mr. Faust, pleased but unsurprised that they were the first to participate.

"These artifacts are being analyzed, identified, and checked for magical contaminates, yes. They come from many places - mostly archaeological digs, but sometimes wizarding government collections or museums lease them out. Remember, Gringotts is the only wizarding bank in the world. What's stored here, and in the bank's branches, can come from anywhere. There isn't a sense of ownership by country."

The squabbles and concerns of muggle museums had not quite touched their world. There were no Rutelli campaigns, no cultural property laws for magical artifacts. Gringotts reigned supreme as an odd mixture of bank, archive center, and museum.

"There is an exhibition, of sorts, every fifty years or so[1]. A long and complicated Ministry contract makes that possible. Even so, they only display human-created objects. Goblin-made artifacts remain hidden."

The Quibbler, and even the Daily Prophet, had printed several amusing conspiracy theories about where exactly the goblin-made artifacts were stored, why they were shrouded in such mystery, and the attempts made every few years to amend the contract and be allowed to see them.

"Mr. Sellaphix," Aileen warned, noticing his movement. Though she whole-heartedly approved of Professor Sandusky's silencing of him, she hoped it wouldn't cause him to express himself in troublesome ways this field trip.

"Is that a pensieve?" She looked at Miss St. Just, aiming to strike up some dialogue about it and use it as an example of the bank's process.

1.	Like a wizarding world fair, perhaps?

Ever since Abby's birthday party Xavier had become even more attentive and participatory in Runes. Whenever Professor Reid looked to him, or called upon him his smile was wide but his eyes held a hint of guilt as if something had happened at the party that he didn't want the elder Reid to find out about. The trip to Gringotts was just another opportunity for him to express his new found good nature to the blonde witch and he had taken it upon himself to 'look after' Figaro.

It was actually a shame that the Hufflepuff had been silenced. Their friendship was finally working it's way back to a comfortable normality and now he couldn't even talk to his friend. Regardless of his mute state, Xavier was keeping by the other boy's side. Honestly he didn't think he could keep Figaro from causing any trouble and his presence by his side probably wasn't all that promising to someone like Reid who had known the duo for years but it was the thought that counted.

This wasn't the first time Xavier had come to Gringotts but certainly the first time he had been in the back rooms. Ever since accepting his heritage Xavier had been to the goblin run back more times than he had since starting at Hogwarts. Arathorn had shown him his own personal vault (one of the collection Arathorn had obtained for each and every one of his grandchildren) as well as the Wentworth family vault which he would get the key to once he was finished Hogwarts. Arathorn had also arranged to have the galleons he had in his 'Tawse' vault to be transferred to his new 'Wentworth' vault. Which meant the sight of the goblins was now a lot less unnerving than it had been in the past.

"Wha' 'appens when they find a cursed object?"

It appeared the group of students wasn't quite as dense as they might have looked.  That was, at the very least, comforting to the woman who had dreaded doing this - and only agreed to it because of the connections it restored and reinforced.  She vaguely recognized one of them from the papers - but couldn't have remembered his name even if she had read a paper with his picture in it that very morning. Too much work, really. 

He seemed to at least get the basics of what was going on right - the idea of curating and checked - analyzed for their properties.  He asked questions though, and those were not quite the questions Josephine wanted to answer - not yet, anyhow.  She nodded firmly at the tall blonde before turning her attention to the student who spoke with a discernible accent. 

He must have been one of Hendurabi's.  He made another important, valid point, about the check tables.  Ownership was a sticky thing, particularly across international lines and with the added luxury of Goblins in the magical world, it was an even trickier web to disentangle.  She looked at Reid as she interjected and Josephine smirked.  One student, another young man with a strong accent inquired about cursed objects and she smiled. "If the items are found to have magical contaminants, they are sent to wizards and witches like myself.  We will examine whatever the trace is - whether it's runic, based on a charm, hex, or curse, or some kind of residue. Many of us have our own specialties.  Egypt is one of the largest divisions, but there are also specialists of Eastern European, Scandinavian, Asia, and even West Africa, like myself.  We will get to that later."

Reid's comment about the exhibition though, was admittedly a good one, but not one likely to be seen agan.  "There has not been one in nearly seventy-five years," she added, "because of the complications with security and inquiries made during the war times.  There hasn't been talk of such an exhibition recently, either." 

That seemed enough of an answer to that.  "As for ownership," she shot the well-groomed young man a look, "There are several avenues for items to arrive here.  Vault owners store valuables, Goblins claim their goods, and they're also used as collateral against loans or insurance.  Private and public collections keep their items here."  It was enough to keep it there. 

Goblins always seemed to want what wasn't theirs.  Glancing around, she saw one of the boys - so many it appeared in this class - though, it shouldn't have surprised her with Aileen as a professor, "Don't touch," she  asserted with a sharp look around the entire group, lingering on the one with the blonde hair who just looked like he might snatch something off a table - and that would be a terrible bloody mess. 

Looking at the pensieve in the middle of the room, she nodded.  "Yes, it is."  It was an integral part of identification and ownership.  They were able to keep memories, logs of those that knew the item, things that would impact its value and chain of ownership, when they could - and even more importantly, where they got information about how, when, and if the object was stolen.  Naturally, this usually required a willing participant... but... everyone had their ways.

"For those of you that may not know," she looked around the room, "A pensieve is used to view the memories of others, extracted from the recesses of the mind and put on display for the workers here."  She motioned in the room of hunched goblins and persons.  "Based on what they are doing," she posed another question, "What do you surmise is the purpose of using such a device in a place like Gringotts?"

"I'm only guessing but I can see one possibility,"  Heinrich said.  "Since it might  not always be the same goblin dealing with any particular object, it is a way of maintaining continuity.  Each new goblin would review the work of the previous goblins, so that nothing important is missed.  It is a far more practical system than tracking it on paper because the memory would include the image of the object, which would help prevent any chance of a counterfeit being substituted.  If the pensieve record goes back far enough, there might even be a historical record of the entire existence of the object, from creation to the present."

Heinrich found the entire concept of the pensieve to be fascinating.  To actually see through the memories of another.  It would grant a perspective that no amount of conversation would convey.  Properly prepared, there might even be some emotions that could be experienced.  It was something he would need to discuss with his father at some point.  There were a few pensieve samples from his family's past that were off limits to almost everyone in the family and Heinrich thought he knew why.

It was a pensieve.  But Figaro could only listen, and luckily for everyone Heinrich from Durmstrang was quick and wordy with a response for the Gringotts witch.  Figaro watched to see if she'd be impressed. 

Having been told again not to touch, Figaro resigned to folding his arms over his chest, and tucking his fingers into his armpits.  He'd been literally biting his tongue all morning, trying to keep from opening his mouth in an embarrassing moment when he forgot his punitive hex.  It was kind of killing him not to be able to ask questions, make comments, vy for attention and approval, although that's not how he would say it was.  He would just say that he was bored.

He shifted so, boredly, from foot to foot.  The room they were in was so interesting, and he could only stare at the goblins.  Such strange creatures with perpetually dirty looks on their faces.   One of them, a little down the row, was leering at them.  Without much calculation, Figaro pulled a face right back.  A deep scowl with crossed eyes and hunched shoulders.

Immediately, the goblin pushed away from the table.  He was very short, but his stature was still imposing and he pounded a fist on the table.

"St. Just! Your guests have no semblance of manners! I was against this from the start!  Pasty blighters...! Check their pockets!"

Figaro opened his mouth to protest - he hadn't done anything! (Had anyone seen?)