The goblin negotiations concluded, as goblin negotiations inevitably do, on the goblins' terms of surrender.
Tom left Gringotts and headed directly to Newt's house.
The little garden that had once been there was gone entirely, Newt had scraped the whole plot into his pocket world, soil and all. The house had accumulated a respectable layer of dust from sitting empty, so Tom gave it a quick cursory clean and retreated into the pocket world.
The little Lucys were hard at work. They were so absorbed that they didn't even notice him arrive, and it took Tom calling out before they came swarming over with their usual chatter.
"Have you been working this whole time?" Tom asked.
"Yes, yes!" Lucy Number Seven answered with the most enthusiasm, grabbing Tom by the hand with all four of hers and dragging him over to the towering pile of completed Directories, presenting the full output of their day's efforts.
"Good work. Don't push yourselves too hard." Tom reached down and ruffled Number Seven's head.
"We're not tired at all."
Alchemical creatures ran entirely on magical energy. By now the pocket world had accumulated a sizeable population of magical plants and creatures, and the ambient residual magic they produced was more than sufficient to keep the Lucys running indefinitely. In terms of raw operational capacity, they were essentially perpetual motion machines.
Tom shook his head anyway.
"Starting from now, no more than sixteen hours of work per day. The rest of the time is yours. Read books, play around, sleep, whatever you like. But no working."
"But..." Number One blinked. "Master, didn't you create us to work?"
"I did, and yes, I need a great deal of work from you." Tom explained patiently. "But that doesn't mean you can't have a life of your own. In your free time, you can do whatever you want to do."
"Once I've made more Lucys, you'll have even more rest time."
"Whatever we want to do..."
All seven of them went quiet with the same puzzled, searching expression. They had intellect and considerable skill, but their awareness had only just awakened. Things like hobbies, interests, personal preferences, these were entirely foreign concepts.
"If you don't know yet, that's fine. Think about it slowly. Books will help too. In a couple of days I'll set up a television for you as well."
The little Lucys nodded with the expressions of people who sort of understood but mostly didn't. Tom didn't press it. He shepherded them gently toward the library, told them to read whatever caught their interest or simply run around if they preferred, and reminded them that work resumed tomorrow morning at eight sharp.
In his mind, what he had created were not tools. They were the seeds of a race that might one day stand against the entire wizarding world as equals. Running them into the ground would be spectacularly counterproductive.
He needed a few of the Lucys to learn how to live first, how to be something more than just capable. Then they could teach those who came after them. A gradual path toward something real.
...
The following morning, Tom returned to Gringotts headquarters to work on upgrading the main system.
He had originally planned to wrap it up in one afternoon plus the following morning, which was precisely why he'd scheduled the meeting with Cassandra the way he had.
Nobody had accounted for the goblins wasting half a day being catastrophically tight-fisted. Today he had to move at double the pace. He couldn't even be bothered dismantling the surveillance equipment they'd quietly installed to spy on his work. He activated his transcendent mode twice mid-session, his hands moving so fast they left afterimages, leaving the assembled alchemical masters and goblins who had hidden themselves around the perimeter scratching their heads in open frustration.
They couldn't even follow what he was doing. How were they supposed to steal anything from that?
At one fifty in the afternoon, Tom finally finished. He ran a test card through several times, confirmed everything was functioning without a single error, and headed briskly downstairs to the main hall. Cassandra had been waiting for a while.
"If you'd taken any longer, I'd have started wondering whether the goblins had kidnapped you," she said, with the tone of someone who had genuinely entertained the idea.
Tom glanced at her sideways. "And if they actually had, what would you have done?"
Cassandra considered. "Set off a large quantity of magical fireworks in celebration, probably."
"The cruelest hearts come in the prettiest packages." Tom shook his head. "Come on. Let's not keep your father waiting."
Cassandra handed him a specially prepared box of Floo Powder, then stepped into the fireplace first and called out the Voray Estate with clear, sharp enunciation. Green flames swallowed her whole.
Tom followed suit, stepping through the Floo Network and arriving at the destination.
He emerged into an opulent entrance hall held aloft by four columns of white marble so polished they could have passed for jade. The entire house was done in a lavish palatial style throughout, and yet despite the obvious expense, something about it felt slightly off, the kind of grandeur that announced itself too loudly, too eagerly. It lacked the deep, settled weight of a place like Hogwarts. New money wearing old clothes.
The moment they were inside, Cassandra went noticeably tense, pressing her lips together. She led Tom to the main sitting room, where a man was already positioned in the largest armchair with the unmistakable posture of someone who had arranged himself there deliberately. The moment he saw them enter, his eyes sharpened like a blade being drawn, fixing on Tom with the direct, pressing weight of a man accustomed to intimidating people.
Cassandra had barely opened her mouth to make introductions when Tom stepped ahead of her, already moving.
He crossed the room at an unhurried pace, each footstep landing precisely, deliberately. And with every step, something in the air changed. Andrew Voray's heartbeat lurched. The atmosphere in the room seemed to harden around him, as though an invisible hand had closed around his throat, sealing off any sound before it could form.
What made it truly unsettling was that the pressure only intensified as Tom drew closer. He was a full head shorter than Andrew, a boy by any measure, and yet the closer he came, the larger he seemed to grow, until he filled the room the way a mountain fills a valley, immovable and indifferent.
A low, resonant sound seemed to roll through the air without source.
"Cassandra mentioned you were planning to teach me a lesson."
Andrew nearly fell clean off his armchair. He responded at something close to a shout.
"I never said that! I didn't! Don't go putting words in my mouth!"