Harry Potter gets smart and takes control - The Goblet

Chapter 14 Books and Etiquette

Winky met him with a steaming bowl of porridge and fresh fruit, which Harry tucked into with gusto while flipping through a NEWT spellbook for the Disillusionment Charm. The theory was easy enough to understand now Harry had read the introduction theory books. The charm itself thought, was challenging. It required using the spell to manipulate his magic to make him blend into his surroundings.

Concentrating hard, and whispering the incantation, Harry twirled his wand around him as if he was wrapping himself in a rope. It felt off, like a raw egg. He looked down at his body, or rather, what had been his body, for it didn't look anything like his anymore. It was not invisible; it had merely taken on the exact colour and texture of the wall behind him. He seemed to have become a human chameleon. He grinned, but as soon as he did, it started to flicker, and it died.

He let out an irritated huff but kept practising. It was a challenging spell and even when he did manage to consistently get it to cover all of him, not merely in patches or flicking in and out, he found it very difficult to maintain. Something just felt wrong, the book said he would have to focus on making sure his magic was covering all of him, but he couldn't exactly feel his own magic at all, so it was hard to know if he was doing it right. It had said that once he had gotten the feel of the spell, and had cast it correctly and directed his magic to cover and hide him. It should click into place and be rather stable. But Harry was having trouble maintaining it.

After a good hour of working on the disillusionment charm. The best Harry could manage was getting it to last a couple of minutes. It was very frustrating as he couldn't feel what he was doing wrong.

Exhausted, he cracked open the Gringotts book again instead. He spent most of the morning with he is head emerged in it. It was a massive brick of a tome but not at all as dry as he had expected. It was very informative. Once he'd started reading it, he'd noticed a subtle sassiness and sarcasm in the way that the goblins had written it. They clearly didn't think much of wizards or their intelligence. Instead of being offended by this, Harry thought it was hilarious. They were right, wizards could be rather stupid. He was rather enjoying reading it, he hoped the Author, Master Scribe Ripquill had written more books.

It was quite an informative read as well as an entertaining one. It started with a long list of the services the bank provided, going into great detail about each of them. It went over what they coast, as well as what a customer could expect from the bank for those services and what the bank than expected from the customer.

He was amazed by all the things Gringotts did. It wasn't just banking, loans, investment, financial management and accounting. They also did Warding (personal and location-based), curse breaking, spell checking and spell-breaking services as well as Magiarchaeology. Then there was also Inheritance matters and Heritage testing as well as ability testing. They offered healing and ritual services, as well as Stonework (walls, houses, tunnelling etc.,) Architecture and construction as well as Metallurgy (jewellery, swords, gates etc.) If Gringotts was so useful why on earth did wizards treat the goblins with such disdain and disrespect? At the very least, Harry thought it was just plain stupid to piss off people who managed your money.

The more he read and started to understand the part that the bank played in the Wizarding World, the more uncomfortable Harry became. It was growing more evident to him by the hour, that much had been kept from him. Too much to let slide. Possibly as an oversight but most probably maliciously to keep him stupid and ignorant, to use him. He just wasn't sure who or whom and why. How many people were trying to play him like a puppet?

He was now uncomfortably aware that he, at the very least, should have been given his key by the bank, not Hagrid on Dumbledore's behalf (and where had he gotten it from?) Harry should have received quarterly statements from his 11th birthday, as well as the first and introductory statement, on his 11th birthday along with his key. The fact that no-one had explained his vault, the conditions and rules in regards to it when he had first entered the bank was also odd. And If Gringotts handled wills, what had happened to his parent's? Did they even have one? If not, why not?