“Why in Merlin’s name have you closed my vault?” Hannah demanded as she stared down the goblin sat atop an elevated stool in order for him to be able to peer down his warty hooked nose at her. He didn’t appear to care in the least for her situation and Hannah was stood in disbelief.

“It’s overdrawn, Miss Bombay.” The goblin responded and Hannah’s brow furrowed. What the hell was he talking about? She knew she’d been running low but she had money in it!

“What are you talking about? There’s at least 100 galleons in it!”

“No, you owe Gringott’s 100 galleons.”

“I certainly do not!” Now Hannah’s expression began to reveal a worry as she comprehended the situation. This was certainly not true, she’d been to the bank but two weeks ago to put her wages in her vault. That had been 320 galleons straight into the account. But 100 had gone towards one of the final payments on her fine and another 100 towards bills for the lawyer her and Knox had had during the appeal. Money certainly wasn’t stretching like it used to but Hannah knew she’d had some money in the account. It must have been stolen. Or the bank had made a mistake.

The goblin looked unhappy at having to deal with this situation. He sat, continuing to scowl at the witch inches below him. Bombay realised that was certainly going to be no help.

“Well I demand you look into this.” She pushed, refusing to move. The goblin gave a long arduous sigh before ringing a bell and another goblin arrived. They spoke for a moment in gobbledook and the second goblin vanished out of site once more. The first warty nosed goblin gave Hannah a creepy, strained smile and told her to take a seat.

So Hannah pocketed her wand and went to sit on a stone bench.

She had been in the middle of translating an atypically stubborn scroll when the call had come.  "You're needed up top," Gropgruk had ordered.

Raizel had glared at the goblin, intent on staring him down.  But he had been ready for her this time; he bared his teeth and met her glare with a steely gaze.  Whatever had happened in the past, both the goblins and Raizel knew that when she worked here, she was on her own.

"Argull gave the order," he had informed her nastily.  "Do you want me to tell him that you declined?"

And so here she was, lugging the file that the annoying little monster had foisted off on her, scowling at every goblin she passed as she made her way back to the surface.  Raizel hated the goblins; she hated this place, and if this particular task was getting foisted off on her, then it was surely going to be either especially annoying or unpleasant.  She didn't understand why it had been dumped on her, after all.  Under normal circumstances, the goblins seemed to take great pleasure in telling a wand-bearer that they had overdrawn their account.  Passing on the privilege to a mere mage seemed considerably out of character.

She reached the main hallway, holding her head high, and then began to walk to the benches where Gropgruk had told her that the client would be waiting.  The witch sitting there looked entirely too young, and none too happy. Raizel found herself feeling decidedly not happy herself for having to help her.  She wasn't a clerk.  Wasn't this what Arithmancers were supposed to be for? She checked the parchment for the woman's name, and then cleared her throat.

"Madam Bombay?"  Raizel gave a tight-lipped smile, which didn't do much to hide the flash of irritation that she was feeling.  "Gropgruk asked me to speak with you," she informed her, each word uncomfortable and stiff.  "If you come with me, then we'll look over the scroll for your account."

"Madam Bombay?"

Hannah’s gaze, which had been on the marble floor shot up to the owner of the voice. Foreign and certainly not a goblin. Of course, they wouldn’t deal with something so menial as a mistaken vault closure and debt. That was legwork for witches and wizards. And as Hannah’s eyes quickly analysed this witch before her, she knew this wasn’t going to be overly pleasant. The Gringott’s employee looked about as happy to be dealing with this as Hannah was to have found out about the situation.

“I don’t need to witness the scroll to know that there’s been a mistake made at the fault of this bank.” She responded harshly, irritated. This was the little saving she had they were talking about! The money she was supposed to live on until she got paid at the end of the month. How in Merlin’s name had this happened?

The healer stood and began to follow the witch through the lobby, the heel of her high shoes clicking in the marble and her robes swishing behind her as they walked quickly. They would sort it. She would guide this witch through the activity on the account and get her money back. She had to.

The Cursebreaker's eyebrows shot up, and she eyed the witch distastefully.  "Gringotts doesn't make mistakes," she said in a haughty voice, as she turned and started down the hallway.

For all intents and purposes, her statement was true, and this young witch would do well to learn that quickly.  Gringotts didn't make unintentional mistakes.  The goblins occasionally overlooked things -- but Raizel was convinced that all of that was by choice.  Nothing that she had encountered in the past six months had done anything to persuade her to believe otherwise.  The goblins surely knew everything that happened under their shining gold roof and in their deep underground tunnels; if they allowed something to happen, it was surely for a reason.

They started down the hallway, the witch in her clacking shoes that would have driven Raizel nearly mad.  How much had they cost?  Knowing the price of shoes here in England did not do much to endear the other woman to her.  If she could afford shoes like that, then there was no reason for her account to be overdrawn.  Surely, she had brought this folly on herself.

Small meeting rooms branched off of the main hallway as it began to slant deeper.  Raizel chose one of the first; there was no need for the high security that they would have found deeper down.  Leading the witch inside, she gestured grandly for her to sit, before stepping around to the other side of the table.

Taking her own seat, Raizel fumbled to untie the string around the scroll -- Gropgruk had surely added the double knot that nearly flummoxed her, Raizel thought sourly -- and then unrolled it partway, silently reading over the account holder profile.

"You claim that you are Madam Hannah Bombay?" she asked, her gaze shifting to the witch as she evaluated her.  "I will need to see your wand before I can discuss account information with you."

Hannah sat uncomfortably in the chair, stiff as she watched the witch on the opposite side of the table. Her arms were folded over her chest and her back pin straight, revealing just how stressed she was, how much she didn’t want to be here with an irritated witch evidently only a few years her senior.

The missing fingers failed to escape Hannah’s attention as she watched the bank’s employee start to unravel the scroll. She was a stickler for analysing every inch of a person that she could see. The skills had made her quite a healthy living until the ministry had decided it couldn’t afford her skills any longer. Now she just had to use her skills to heal the living yet she never stopped noticing things. This meant that she never stopped making people feel uncomfortable as her brown eyed gaze analysed them.

Hannah’s wand was demanded and the witch unfolded her arms, lips pursed. Ever since the accident when she’d been locked up and finally left without a wand she hated handing it to anyone. Yet she dipped her hand into the robe pocket and slowly pulled it out. This was necessary. She had to sort out the mess these incompetent beings had caused her.

“I am.” She offered the wand to the witch, glancing from her face to the missing fingers again. The edges looked clean, no sign of a pre-existing infection. It had been professionally done, not a spell or potions accident. This Gringott’s employee had earned someone’s wrath.

Raizel studied the scroll for a moment, and then set it down on the table.  Reaching for the wand with her left hand, she picked it up, holding it carefully as she examined it.  It was exceedingly long -- in her hand, it seemed much bigger than its 13 inches -- which surely meant that Hannah Bombay either thought too highly of herself, or had a comparably big personality.  The oak wood was smooth against her fingers, and she could sense the slight tingle inside: the neatly familiar tug of unicorn tail hair, although this one did not feel nearly at friendly as the core of her own wand.

"This is your new wand?"  Not waiting for an answer, she set it back down on the table with a click, halfway between them so that the witch could retrieve it.  Certainly it was; this witch had gone through all of the trouble to register it.  Wands were useful as identifying tools because they were difficult to fake.  That was why Gringotts and so many other institutions used them.

"Very well, Madam Bombay."  Raizel sat more stiffly in her chair, retrieving the scroll again.  She unrolled it flat on the table, spreading the fingers of her right hand to keep the top in place, and studied the notations.  To the untrained eye, they would have been illegible -- strange numbers and symbols, a mix of normal Western script and unusual runes, seemed to shiver across the page, flickering through a pattern in various columns.

Raizel studied it for a moment, and then raised her eyes to meet Hannah's across the table.  "This is very clear," she said matter-of-factly.  "The balance on your account currently stands at a negative 100 galleons."  She gave a sniff, tapping at the numbers on the scroll with her index finger.  "I can go over the recent transactions with you, but I am not an arithmancer.  If you intend to dispute the numerology behind it, you will have to ask the goblins to see someone who --"  She paused, but only for the briefest of seconds.  "-- is more qualified."

The witch that had still failed to introduce herself but had shown more of her personality and troubles through her right hand had examined the wand fairly quickly and placed it on the table to recollection by it’s owner. Hannah’s slim, five fingered hand reached out and took it back, slipping the wand into her robe pocket once more as the employee went on to study the scroll once more.

Hannah’s gaze dropped to the numbers and runes, upside down to her but they wouldn’t have been any easier to understand the correct way up. She hadn’t studied Ancient Runes since her OWL years and they were now as unknown to her as a foreign language. Yet it didn’t stop her looking down, trying to make sense of the document that held all of the information about her personal vault.

“It’s not possible. I deposited 320 galleons two weeks ago. 100 galleons will have gone out a couple of days ago but I haven’t been to make a withdrawal since I made that deposit.” The healer was evidently getting agitated. Why in Merlin’s name had happened to her money? What was she supposed to live on for the next two weeks until she got paid again?

“You’ve lost my money. How the…” Hannah swore, the expletive leaving her mouth before she could even consider censoring it. “How in Merlin’s name did you lose my money?”

Raizel had been running a finger down one of the columns, her brows knitting as she read over the numbers.  Hannah Bombay had a regular salary: that much was clear.  Most of the activity on the account was as one would expect, a few withdrawals here and there, though more recently, payments had been going out in bigger amounts.

She was only half listening as the woman began to snap.  This witch would not be the first to fail at properly keeping track of her money.  Ten galleons here, another dozen there -- it was easy to lose them too quickly, especially when one had a fondness for nice things, as Hannah Bombay's shoes clearly showed that she did.  Three hundred and twenty galleons was a lot of money to Raizel's mind, but to someone who felt able to spend freely, it was a mere drop in the hat.

She would have continued to ignore Bombay, but then the words turned too personal.  At the 'you' -- "You've lost them!" -- Raizel looked up sharply at her, her eyes flashing.

"I did not lose anything of yours," she said in a hard voice, each word cutting and crisp.  The accusations of theft were still too recent; she was not giving anyone reason to raise that point again. "I am not responsible for your finances.  I am trying to decipher the information on your account, but if you are going to accuse me of your financial mismanagement, then you can go back to talking to the goblins."

She lifted her chin, glowering, letting the challenge hang in the air between them.  Let Argull do whatever he liked to her; if this witch was going to accuse her of stealing, then she'd have nothing more to do with this business.

Had Hannah been of a more sensible mood she would have become curious about this witch’s reaction to her words. The flashing eyes, the stern tone. Yet now Hannah just felt it further aggravate her along with the possibility she was completely broke with absolutely nothing to stand her up until the end of the month. And now she was dealing with a witch’s denial that she had anything to do with it.

“You work for the bank, Madam. The establishment you work for has lost my money. Ergo, you lost my money.” The threat to deal with the goblins did indeed hang in the air but the usually clear headed witch wasn’t thinking quite as capably as usual. She was beginning to panic.

The healer may well have taken the document from Cohen  to look for herself at what had happened but she couldn’t read runes. Hannah’s grasp at any sort of language of alphabet other than English and Latin was non-existent. She was in this witch’s hands.

“The last time I came it was the 2nd January to deposit my salary. Where in Merlin’s name has that gone?” She stared forwards, regarding Raizel with an irate look. “I’m a charge healer, I don’t mismanage.”

If she had been anywhere but at Gringotts, Raizel would have had her wand out and aimed at the other woman's face.  She clenched her teeth, visibly furious as she shot Hannah Bombay a deathly glare. 

With a huff, she redirected her glare to the scroll.  The faster she got through this, the faster she could get away from this horrible witch.  Raizel scanned quickly over the columns, tracing a finger along the numbers.  Yes...there was the 320 galleon deposit from two weeks ago, which Bombay had made in person.  But then...

"Well, you mismanaged this," she announced smugly, gesturing at the bank record.  Without waiting for a response -- or even acknowledgement that the collections of shifting digits and symbols was legible to the witch -- she spun the parchment around, jabbing an exultant finger at the last line on the page.

"Two days ago," she said triumphantly.  "You made an international transfer, and then that evening, a pre-approved charge went through for one hundred galleons."  She lifted her eyes to meet Bombay's, doing little to disguise her self-satisfied smirk.  There was no better feeling than winning against someone she couldn't stand, and the end result of this battle was clear.  She was right and the British witch was wrong. "No one lost your money, Madam Bombay.  You overdrew it yourself."

"Well, you mismanaged this," The foreign accented witch proudly stated in a manner that caused the werewolf sat opposite her to briefly imagine ripping her teeth into her flesh and wiping the smug grin from her features. Fortunately this thought was a quick flash and it was gone before Hannah could consider a deeper meaning for the horrible vision. The witch’s lack of professionalism in such a situation did not call for having her head bitten off by a werewolf as much as the idea may have momentarily pleased Bombay.

The next words caused Hannah to stare at her counterpart in confusion as she took the words in. She had most certainly not been into Gringott’s. They’d made a mistake. She’d been at work during the day. She’d had the interview for the charge position in the afternoon. She would have remembered coming into Gringott’s.

“I did no such thing.” The healer’s response was fairly calm as her eyes shot down to the parchment, regardless of her lack of understanding. The numerals and runes littering the parchment that held personal information about herself and her entire account history meant nothing to her. She was forced to rely on the rude witch sat opposite her who looked too happy to be proving an apparent fact to her client.

“You’ve evidently gotten your accounts confused. Someone has come in with a similar vault number to mine and the goblins have made a mix up. I was most certainly not in this bank two days ago.”

She was quickly beginning to understand why the goblins seemed to enjoy these sorts of meetings so much.  There was something immensely satisfying -- some strange sense of power -- in laying things out to this disagreeable witch.  Hannah Bombay had made a mistake, and Raizel was quite happy to relay that fact to her with relish.  As much as she disliked the goblins and their methods, this seemed a perfectly fair bout of deserved consequences.

The Cursebreaker's eyebrows rose.  "You think the goblins make mistakes?" she asked, her voice somewhere between disbelieving and gleeful.  "No.  Look." 

She turned the parchment around again, scanned it, and then pointed at one of the last lines.  "You see?  13 January," she informed the other woman smugly.  "You came in and requested a transfer of the remaining funds in your account to another account in Denmark.  You passed the security check and personally approved the transaction.  You."

She leaned back in her chair, still smirking slightly.  "So if you don't remember it, maybe you should worry about why that is?  Because there are plenty of other more likely reasons than Gringotts records being wrong."  She gave a shrug, watching the Healer with cool eyes.  "Personally, I'd wonder about a memory charm, myself."

The young healer’s frown deepened as she stared at the witch before her. There was no point in looking at the parchment being eagerly pointed to by an antagonising rude Gringott’s staff member.
“Denmark?” Hannah’s voice was barely above an audible whisper. She hadn’t been in the bank. She’d been working for the entire day. It was rare for Hannah to leave the hopistal during a break, opting instead to take something from the hospital café on the top floor. She certainly hadn’t ventured down Diagon alley to Gringott’s bank to send the remainder of her money to Denmark. This smug little wench was gravely mistaken.

A darkness flashed behind Hannah’s eyes as she grew frustrated.
“I’d stop wondering about a sleeping potion and start questioning how your records are so wrong. Why in Merlin’s name would I, who has never out of the country, send money to Denmark? I didn’t even come into the bank that day. You can rid yourself of that smug expression and find out why such complete nonsense has been written into my record, find out where my money is and return it to me with some compensation for my troubles.”

“How dare you accuse me of mismanaging my own finances when you’ve quite obviously allowed someone else to transfer money from my account. This is a failing on the bank’s behalf, certainly not mine. I expect it to be resolved.”

If there had been any doubt in her mind as to whether or not she cared for this witch, it had been quickly and firmly settled.  Raizel gave a snort, her expression darkening as she eyed the other woman with a distasteful expression.

"I did not allow anything," she informed her darkly.  She'd done what she had been ordered to do: gone over the numbers for the witch's account.  There was no reason for her to stand here and listen to these accusations, and even if the goblins wanted her to, they'd have to cut off another finger before Raizel would even consider obeying that command.  With brisk movements, she began to roll up the scroll.

"If you have a complaint, then you can register it with the Complaint Desk.  They will get back to you in four to six weeks," she said crisply.  The record had been returned to its roll; Raizel tucked it under one arm, so she'd have a free hand.  "That is all that I can help you with, Madam Bombay.  Do you know the way out?"