A-New-War-On-Horizon? (I) [Chapter 289]

~~Minister’s Office~~

Amelia groaned as she rubbed her temple in annoyance… It was already 3 past midnight, but she knew she would be in this office for at least a few more hours. Amelia once again picked up the report on her table and groaned again. This was a fucking nightmare… A nightmare she was hoping to wake up from, but no luck.

“Motherfucker!! Son of a raging whore!! Morgana’s soaping twat!!-” With that Amelia started to curse like a sailor and Connie sweatdropped. Sometimes she wondered why Amelia didn’t become a sailor… After all, she at least had them beat on cursing. After cursing for a couple of minutes straight, Amelia finally started to calm down.

“Are you done?” Connie asked with a sweatdrop, hoping her friend was done.

Amelia glared at the woman but gave her a curt nod before slumping back in her chair. This was going to be a long fucking night- day- or however long she needed to stay in this fucking office to sort all this fucking mess. “Yeah, I am done for now” Amelia sighed as she once again started to rub her temple in annoyance.

She really wanted to pop a bottle and chug it down in one go, but she knew that she needed to stay sober if she wanted to deal with this whole shitshow. “Now, how the fuck am I supposed to deal with this?” Amelia asked herself with a groan.

“Yeah…” Connie agreed lamely. “How much do we even have in the reserves?” Connie asked.

“Not enough. At least not enough to cover all this shite” Amelia finished tiredly. “If Cornelius wasn’t dead then I would have gutted him like a pig” Amelia gripped unhappily.

After she became the interim Minister, she began to investigate the whole Ministry, which was a slow and steady process, but it didn’t take her long to discover that there was something wrong with the repository…

Well, it didn’t come as a surprise when they discovered that the Minister and his Undersecretary were stealing the Ministry funds to fill their own pockets. Haha! The Minister and his pet toad were funneling Ministry gold into some offshore Gringott accounts. Who could have thunk, right?

“Where are we at recovering that gold?” Connie asked curiously. They had managed to track the gold they stole to some offshore Gringott accounts. Their deaths obviously made that part easy for them since there was no one to oppose them or protest, but dealing with Goblins could be hard even on good days.

“The Goblins aren’t willing to play ball” Amelia growled in frustration. “Those little shits are refusing to let go of that gold since according to them gold is gold. They don’t care if the gold is stolen or not” Amelia finished unhappily. “Greedy little bastards!” She spat out wondering who had the wonderful idea to let the Goblins handle all of their liquid assets.

“Loans?” Connie asked with a grimace, already aware of how bad of an idea that was.

“Those little buggers are probably salivating at that prospect” Amelia mused unhappily. “They are going to impose impossible rates. Hazards of giving them the monopoly over all of our gold, I suppose” Amelia smiled mirthlessly.

“Then what are we going to do? Pay for the damage from our own pockets? I know you don’t have that kind of gold, neither do I” Connie asked with a huff as she slumped back in her chair with a look of defeat on her face.

“Honestly… I don’t know” Amelia sighed in defeat as she banged her head on the table and groaned in frustration. Then someone knocked on the door, but Amelia refused to get up. “Who is it?” Amelia called out loudly, her voice was a bit muffled with her lying face down on the table.

Instead of answering, Saul simply unlocked the door and entered her office. “Wow… Long night, eh?” Saul asked, trying to lighten the mood, already knowing how dire their situation was.

“Don’t start, Saul… I am not in the mood” Amelia groaned as she pulled up her head. “Have you heard anything from the Muggle side, yet?” Amelia asked.

“Not yet” Saul answered simply before he plopped down in an empty seat. “Good thing we don’t deal with the Muggles, right?” Saul asked, once again, trying to lighten the mood.

Thanks to the Statute they weren’t worried about the Muggle Government, but they still wanted to know how they were planning to deal with the whole London incident. After all, thanks to Harry, now they knew that Muggles were aware of their society all along and they didn’t want to be blindsided, just in case some zealous Muggle decided to reveal their existence on live television or something.

“Thank Merlin for small mercies, I guess” Amelia sighed, feeling somewhat glad that they won’t need to pay reparations to the Muggles, especially with them already hurting for gold.

“Hey, what if we increase the taxes?” Connie perked up. It wasn’t a good idea, but it was still better than taking a loan from the Goblins.

“Bad idea, Connie. Really bad idea… A lot of people are already buggering out of the country. If we increase the taxes right now then we are simply motivating more people to bugger out of the country” Amelia shook her head as she shot down the idea. Connie slumped back in her seat, looking defeated.

“...Amelia, do you want to deal with the Goblins once and for all?” Saul asked thoughtfully. He knew that the monopoly the Goblins had on their gold was a huge problem.

“How?” Amelia asked as she narrowed her eyes at him. Even Connie turned toward Saul and stared at him owlishly. Was there even a way to deal with the Goblins once and for all?

“I may have an idea-” Saul began to speak nervously “-but, a war with them would be unavoidable, but if we do this then by the time it ends, they are no longer going to be an issue” Saul finished. Connie looked horrified at the idea of starting a war with the Goblins, especially when they were already in a War and they were barely scraping by.

However, Amelia didn’t dismiss the idea… The Goblins no longer had the numbers for open warfare, at least if they weren’t breeding an army in secret, which was not out of the realm of possibility since Goblins loved their caves. Still, open warfare was going to be a bad idea for them since they lacked the means to fight Magic with Magic.

So, they could only barricade themselves inside their precious banks with the aim of collapsing their economy or until the Ministry decided to surrender…

“Tell me more, I am listening” Amelia perked up as she leaned on her table with her elbows, looking really interested in his idea…