Cornelius blinked at him dumbfoundedly for a moment, his mouth still hanging open from the latest agreement he was about to give.
"A child? What-what child?" the confused Minister asked. "Dumbledore doesn't have children; he's that - you know - that other way," he said in an uncomfortable whisper, bringing up a subject most respectable people liked to politely ignore. "They can't have children, can they?"
"There's more than one way for a child to be involved," he said, purposely letting the fear of unspeakably underhanded things linger for a moment before continuing. "But we won't know precisely what the issue behind it is until they have a chance to make their case," Lucius said nebulously, taking a letter from his pocket.
"Now when I heard about the bank's concerns regarding Flamel just last night," he continued in a dramatic tone, "I thought nothing could shock me more. How wrong I was when this arrived this morning," Lucius said as he passed the Minister the parchment.
The Minister's lips seemed to move on their own as he read the letter; it wasn't long before Fudge's eyes bulged incredulously.
"Merlin's beard!" the man cried. "Abandonment, usurpation, fraud, and it's-"
"My thoughts precisely, Minister," Lucius said supportively. "Just when we think Dumbledore could sink no lower it's revealed he'd done so years ago. I, for one, will be pressing hard to have him removed as Headmaster, but there is so much love for the man though that even with this it will be a struggle," he exaggerated.
Truth was the man was not well liked at all except by the public who didn't know him better; not by the I.C.W., if rumblings he had heard over the years were anything to go by, and certainly not by the Board of Governors, the pleasant façade they gave him was all for show. With so many Board members also sharing duties in the Wizengamot, it was convenient for them to have Dumbledore continued to be burdened with the running of the school.
Forced to split his time between Hogwarts, the Ministry, and the international arena the man could never focus all his efforts on any one area for long, leaving the rest of them room to maneuver and get things done without him whenever possible. Undoubtedly it was what led the I.C.W. to jump at the chance to be rid of the man's leadership, only to fumble their way into this ill-conceived goblin raid. Well, they would learn in time; nothing happened in Britain without his own personal approval.
"I expect you'll get one of these soon, if you haven't already," he said meaningfully.
"And what will the Board of Governors do?" Cornelius asked stupidly.
"We'll be complying, of course," Lucius said smoothly, "and I suggest you do the same. With allegations like these, not to mention the issue with Flamel, the Board cannot sit idly by and allow him to sit proxy until the truth is discovered."
And if he had any say that discovery wouldn't be made for quite some time. Slow-walking the child's case through court so every minute detail becomes its own tawdry headline would deepen Dumbledore's fall from grace and turn the boy his insolent son had been so obsessed with into a cute and cuddly child no one need fear at all - or perhaps damaged goods where you never knew when the cauldron would explode would be better. He mentally shrugged, whichever worked would be fine.
With the child's custody case as their fig leaf to hide behind, and it languishing in court, it would give the goblins ample time to work diligently against their own interests. With Flamel out of the picture and Dumbledore needed here for relevant legal procedures, the only thing to keep the I.C.W. interested was the possibility of created gold. This meant that most of their agents would have to be removed and the rest could be confined to the bank itself.
This would keep the goblins checking their gold stockpiles in private so that even before the child's case was decided the I.C.W. would have already left - with Ministry assurance that justice would be done. Then, with the international community no longer looking over their shoulder, Lucius could do whatever he wanted with Dumbledore. In time he would have everything right back to how it was - only without Dumbledore to make a mess of his plans. It had been a long time coming but he was going to enjoy this.
"Absolutely," the Minister agreed. "The Wizengamot cannot allow a proxy to sit in such a distinguished seat while it owes more allegiance to a possible usurper than to the family it belongs to. That should be one of the first orders of business."
With a huff Cornelius began scribbling notes on his bit of parchment as Lucius glanced at the one the goblin had left. Many of the suggestions were going to be necessary, though some were overly cautious while others were either attempts to expand their influence or bald-faced attempts to repeal justified restrictions which had been in place for a century, if not longer.
The insistence that everyone use cheques was sure to rouse peoples' ire eventually, especially if a hefty tax on each transaction was applied, leaving the populace looking forward to the day when hard currency was issued again. The Ministry couldn't allow these goblins to believe temporary changes could become the permanent new reality.
"This would also be a good time to address precisely how to bring these issues up to the Wizengamot in order to maximize the other opportunities this-," Lucius started to say before he was rudely interrupted by a knock on the door.
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.
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