Malaga's Challenge #1 (Inspired by Dark Magic in the 'Great Mental Images' Thread)

Summary:
When Sirius goes after Peter Pettigrew, rather than Peter just running when he causes the explosion, he aims it at Sirius' feet, killing him instantly, along with the muggles.

This causes Harry to inherit the entire Black fortune from Sirius, as well as the Potter fortune. The goblins send a letter to the Dursleys, requesting Harry's appearance at Gringotts to collect the Black vault.

The Dursleys ignore the letter, meaning goblins send a representative of the bank. He sees the conditions Harry lives in, and when he takes him to the Black vault, recommends that a lawyer looks into removing the boy.

As Harry has no living relatives, and his godparents are either dead or insane, noone is quite sure what to do with the boy. The goblin's representative gets given the task, as he has shown himself to have the boy's best interests at heart.

This results in a Harry who has spent his entire childhood at Gringotts and who is very money savvy, impatient, rude, and a good gambler. He also speaks fluent Gobbledegook, and doesn't especially like humans, or poor people. This could result in Voldemort being taken down like Al Capone, or something quite different.

Rules:

~ Griphook must not be a main character
~ The representative of Gringotts can be human or goblin, but a human is more likely to have been given the child.
~ Dumbledore must want Harry to go to a light family, someone must want him to go to a dark.
~ Harry must win a lot of money off other students, especially Draco Malfoy
~ No Pairings

Happy Writing! And remember, rules are made to be broken.

 

Harry being raised by Goblins = super cool.
The way you got there = makes no sense at all.

Why would goblins try to contact a 15 month old baby? What's the point? Wouldn't Dumbledore find out about their visit and intervene? Wouldn't wizards be PISSED when they realized their savior was kidnapped by filthy beasts and raised to hate the proper folk?

Can't think of exact alternative ATM, but it would probably involve a power-hungry goblins exchanging with Potters the secret of Fidelius for the guardianship of the prophecy child... something like that.

 

Actually IP, it could work the way she put it with only a little modification. If the letter were sent to the Dursley's, which would mean discarding the fanon idea that Dumbledore stashed Harry there and didn't tell anyone, as Harry's legal guardian's. When they fail to give any sort of response, a representative would be sent. This representative would have to be human, it would be cliche for it to be Bill (and he would probably still be at Hogwart's I think) but it could be someone from a pureblood family.

That being the case, if you follow what was put by the OP with Harry being removed from No 4, I don't see why guardianship wouldn't be assigned to the representative, whomsoever that may be. If they were of a reasonable well off, quite influential, pureblooded family then the likes of the Malfoy's couldn't really protest, and Dumbledore would have difficulty causing problems so long as the pureblood family in question wasn't suspected of being overly Dark. I actually reckon it would be quite cool if, rather than the representative being Lord of Random Cool Sounding Name Number 1 or being the Heir to Random Cool Sounding Name Number 2, he were a rather distant relative of said Lord or Heir. If he were on a secondary, or even tertiary, branch of the family he would carry the name and thus the status, but he wouldn't necessarily have the assurred passage through life, leaving with the realistic opening to show him as a skilled and knowledgable wizard. Perhaps he realised that he wouldn't be able to get above a mid-level post in the Ministry, despite his skills and abilities, so he works for the Goblins, having gained their trust and respect.

By thus positioning the representative, you have a good set up for Harry being raised outside of Wizarding Politics, whilst still having a working knowledge of them. How he acted in public would reflect on the pureblood family, whoever they are, so the Head of the Family would no doubt insist that Harry be taught proper Etiquette and so forth.

By growing up around the Goblins...I can see him being very very money savvy as the OP said. Efficient gamblers, hmmmm. Not totally sure on that score. An 11 year old simply doesn't have the necessary emotional control to become a super-league gambler. Have him be very good at reading people's body language and expression, which is realistic, if he grew up learning to do such things around the Goblins, whom I view as not being overly physically expressive.

Impatient and rude...I reckon it would be better if he were the ultimate gentleman politician. He knows how to go about getting what he wants, he might have a great many contacts amongst the Goblins, who obviously hold the keys to the wizarding economy. He might even have become close friends with various shop keepers and so forth, due to close association. This would lend him an air of superiority certainly. He might not have been raised as the metaphorical nobility of the Wizarding World like Malfoy has, but he's bloody well been raised as the Merchant Prince instead.

Fluent Gobbledigook...fine, could make for a few humerous situations and jokes, so long as the author doesn't go over board.

Disliking humans in general...he could perhaps dislike folk who simply waste their time and don't try to better themselves (which I reckon would be the ultimate sin amongst the goblins). He doesn't want to associate with someone who doesn't have an idea of how they're going to make their mark on the wizarding world one day.

Despising poor people...absolutely. He's been raised in a culture which is based around money, so he won't appreciate people who have none. You could possibly introduce a theme of how various codes of dress and appearance say a lot about you in wizarding society. Make Harry ultra aware of this, not in that he spends 4 hours in front of a mirror every morning to get his appearance correct, but in the way that when he meets someone he takes a strong and lasting impression of them before they open their mouths to speak.

I would imagine that a way to get in good with the Goblins (now thinking from the perspective of the representative) would be to learn wizarding laws inside and out. Curse breaking is all well and good, but you can train any reasonably skilled wizard to do it. (Really, if a Weasley can do it then...) Law on the other hand takes a rather specific mind set. Especially tax and banking law. From what we know of the wizarding world there are no further education places (thats canon btw) so learning the laws like that would involve a lot of self-tuition, again showing his intelligence.

I imagine this would result in Harry growing up with a better than average understanding of the laws of the Wizarding World. For instance, he could perhaps practice magic over the summer whilst in Gringotts because it counts as Goblin terratory etc. You could work it in different ways.

The fic as a whole could work is a few ways. You can have Harry go to Hogwart's as the ultra-cool, gambler extrodanaire mafioso gangster type person, who's going to start a gang of "cool" people and'll talk back to Snape so as to seem cool. Personally, I wouldn't like it. It sounds like something Rorsarch's Blot would do a bad one-shot of, and his fangirls would do even worse Omakes of.

It could work that he goes to Hogwarts, and makes his alliances. I reckon he would ally with Malfoy, simply because he's a very rich, seemingly rather influential person, as is his father. He would probably ally with Hermione, because I can see her becoming a powerful rights activist when she leaves Hogwart's, the sort of person who might not get the best press, but may well hold powerful sway with a significant portion of the public. Harry wouldn't want to get on her badside because of that. He might befriend Cedric, because of his father's position in the Ministry. Same with Susan. And so on and so forth. This would turn into a rather political!Harry, which is my favourite genre, and thus I would thoroughly enjoy it.

I can also see him following a slightly similar path, but making different allies, and also concentrating on learning various things that would assist in making him the biggest influence the two Alley's have ever seen. You could bring in lesser known characters here if you wanted. For the Voldemort aspect of this sort of fic, I can see Harry undercutting the Dark Lord's financial and economic base. Making it impossible for him to get potion ingredients, get replacement wands, buy Dark Artifact's from Knockturne Alley. Leave Voldemort as a penniless beggar who'll eventually fuck up and then let the Ministry handel him.

A couple of plot bunnies that could be utilised in this fic (I am at a very very loose end just btw, which is why this post in rambling):

Harry could hate Dumbledore from the outset, quite literally hate him. Dumbledore is connected to Flamel who created the Philosopher's Stone, which allows him to create gold. This weakens the Goblin's position in the Wizarding Economy. As Flamel's close friend and research assistant Dumbledore is automatically persona non grata in Gringotts.

The Malfoy family could be nearly bankrupt and simply surviving and maintaining appearances from dodgy loan after dodgy loan, after illegal side deal after illegal side deal, kind of thing. Harry might know of this, and could thus shun Draco and cause him severe embarrassment by merely hinting at such things in conversation.

Another way to create a plausible rift between Malfoy and Harry is to have the Gringott's representative as a very minor relative, as mentioned above, of the Malfoy family. Draco could thus look down on Harry and his adoptive father as being below him. Harry obviously wouldn't appreciate this.

Something the author would have to be careful of is not to be too heavy on uber pwnageness of Goblin's, not to have Harry trained in 20 different martial arts and a dozen weapons by the time he's 11, not to have him a master of "Goblin Magic", which would obviously just be a euphemism for wandless magic, not to have him surrounding by ultra lethal Goblin hit squads at all times, etc etc etc. That sort of thing would cause me to quickly loose interest.

If anything, I reckon it would be better if the author down plays the Goblin side of it. He was raised in and around Gringotts yes, but by a human, and around other humans as well. The Goblin's may like him, but he shouldn't be the Prophesy Child come to raise them to equal status with wizards, other anything like that. Have him respect them, but don't have him trust them overly much.

 

Interesting challenge.

As for an alternative, the Potter's have never been indicated to be a filthy rich family like the Malfoy's, they only seem to have been moderately wealthy.

So perhaps it could go like, during the war James and Lily Potter ended up bankrupt, having needed to use their resources to keep themselves alive after continually being hunted down by Voldemort and his servants.

To be able to continue to survive, they had to take out a Two-hundred thousand ghalleon, using certain artifacts hidden away in Godric's Hallow as collateral. However, they were destroyed when Voldemort attacked.

Harry, inheriting the Black Family Fortune, would have enough to repay the debt, but unfortunately he is unable to inherit the bulk of it until he is seventeen years of age. Only has a Fifteen-thousand Ghalleon trust vault.

The Potters signed a agreement where if they were unable to pay the debt, the goblins could come in and reposess anything of vaule.

Unfortunately, one Harry Potter is the only thing left of the Potter family at all, other then the debt.

Utlizing a few less known laws, they gain all rights and guardianship over one Harry James Potter until the day he is able to repay the debt.

It could go something like that I imagine.

 

The Power the Dark Lord Knows Not = Knowledge and Understanding of Wizarding Britain Tax and Banking Laws.

Hmm. TaxMan!Banker!Harry... now that's a Dark!Evil!Harry fic if there ever was one.

 

ROFL! Loving it Kender, loving it!