Harry had never been a messy child (and he would never know if it was because of Aunt Petunia's demanding demand for tidiness or his own tendencies) but his bedroom had become somewhat… cluttered lately. The first thing he did after Hagrid dropped him back at Privet Drive was to clean it up. While incredibly eager to unpack and pour over everything he had purchased today, it just felt wrong to do so among the mess. He started with the bed, placing his magical items in the middle of the duvet, satisfied with having them in that clean space. He worked in a somewhat more haphazard pattern after that, attacking whichever area struck his fancy, and by the time everything looked to his satisfaction, he was incredibly hungry, the ice cream having been hours ago.
Luckily, this coincided with the timing of Aunt Petunia having dinner ready. Meals at the Dursleys were pleasant enough these days. The three Dursleys would talk, with Harry rarely feeling compelled to say much. He had always heard the expression, "Money can't buy happiness," but it sure seemed to be the case with the four of them. Aunt Petunia had started out clearly faking politeness to Harry when he started to win them money, but somewhere along the way it seemed to have stuck. Her new attitude towards him was contagious, it seemed, as his uncle and cousin now also just treated Harry like… a person.
"I thought we'd try something new," Uncle Vernon announced, picking up the paper as he usually did during dessert. "I can't argue with your keen eye, but if you'll be going off to your school next year, I'll have to carry on without your… particular insight."
Harry wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin, and listened. They had switched a while ago from betting at the tracks, to Harry choosing stock market decisions after a crash course in it by Uncle Vernon. At first, it had been more difficult than with horses and dogs, but eventually Harry could look at the stock market page in the newspaper and… just know which way certain prices were going to go. Harry had suspected this was coming, as he could feel Uncle Vernon's resentfulness at his ten-year-old nephew showing more apparent business savvy than he. It did not bother Harry that he felt that way, as Harry really had very little idea of how the stock prices rose and fell, only that they would.
"I'm looking at trends," Uncle Vernon went on. "We certainly don't need any quick gains, so I want to find something of a more long-term investment." He was scanning the paper, apparently having not yet made up his mind. "So I'll pick something, and then we'll just have you give your opinion on it, and go from there."
He continued to look through the stocks for a while, which Harry found frustrating. He was finally ready to examine everything he had gotten today, and now he was having to sit here to serve as some kind of magic eight ball. Harry already knew the stock his uncle should buy now if he wanted this kind of investment. He could have just told him—he would have to, eventually, unless Uncle Vernon just happened to pick it, which Harry had a feeling he was not going to do. Striving to show patience, Harry internally chanted the three letters he knew Uncle Vernon should choose, repeating them in his mind while staring at his uncle. After a long period of quiet, interrupted only by a belch from Dudley and during which Harry suspected that Uncle Vernon had lost all concentration, based on the look on his face, he finally spoke.
"Right. I think it's IBM, then. What do you say to that, hm?"
Harry tried to squash the look of astonishment he knew must have flashed across his face, shifting to a thoughtful expression that he hoped mirrored what he usually looked like when… seeing these kinds of things.
"Erm… yes, actually. That's a good choice."
Aunt Petunia and Dudley made identical faces of appreciation for Vernon's skill.
"Well done, Vernon. You always did have a keen eye for these sorts of things," Aunt Petunia gushed.
"Just good old-fashioned business sense," Uncle Vernon said as if it were nothing, but clearly feeling proud of himself.
Harry just worked to maintain his neutral face. IBM had been the very stock he had been nearly wishing upon his uncle. It might have been a coincidence that he chose it, but Harry knew it could also have been connected to magic. He was more eager than ever to get upstairs and start learning more, having to stop himself from sprinting up the staircase when he was finally excused.
Back in his bedroom, the door securely locked, Harry sat on his bed. In front of him were the two wands that Mr. Ollivander had told Harry had "chosen him." He picked up the first one that had flown into his hand quite to Harry's surprise. Eleven inches long, made of holly, with a phoenix feather as a core, Ollivander had told him.
"Do they kill the phoenixes to get the feathers?" Harry had asked.
"No!" Hagrid had answered from behind Harry before Mr. Ollivander could respond. "The animal has to willingly give the part o' themselves, or it won't work!"
Ollivander had raised his eyebrows at Hagrid's interjection, but nodded appreciatively.
Harry appraised the wand in his fingers, evaluating its balance, trying out the different hold-types he had read about already, seeing if he could find one more comfortable than the rest, which indeed he did. He could see what Ollivander meant about the wand choosing him. It felt incredibly comfortable—familiar, even. He was very excited to try it out. Even the sparks he had made happen in the wand shop had been thrilling. Harry tempered himself, however, putting the holly wand back down. Ollivander had also told him something somewhat disturbing about it. The phoenix who had donated its core had also given one other feather, which just so happened to have been in the wand used by the wizard named Voldemort, responsible for the murder of Harry's parents, among many others, not to mention his own destruction when Voldemort had tried to kill harry, the dark wizard disappearing from the face of the Earth and leaving Harry with only a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead.
He picked up the second wand. It was longer—fifteen inches, made of elder wood, with a Thestral tail core.
"This one… is unusual," Ollivander had started, and Harry had begun to wonder if Mr. Ollivander enjoyed a little too much spinning mysterious and dark tales. Harry had looked into Ollivander's eyes, only half-listening as the man told Harry how the wand had been sold to him by someone who had found it several years ago, hoping to make a couple of Galleons. It had sat in the shop since then, never appealing to any witch or wizard.
Harry handled it now. It too felt comfortable and warm… but he preferred the other. He had some ideas about that, but decided to let those simmer for now.
An hour later, Harry was feeling rather proud of himself. While he had always been an outstanding student, he had shied away from assuming that his learning of magic would come as easily as everything else. But, as it turned out, that is exactly what had been the case. Using the holly wand, Harry had revisited the textbooks for first-year students at Hogwarts, finally able to put into practice that which he had felt he understood and just needed to try. Each movement of his wand, and the subsequent responses of magic, felt like the predictable, redundant responses Harry got from the video games Dudley had eventually let Harry play. Once he learned which right buttons to push at the right times, he knew exactly what would happen. So it was, somehow, with magic, even as he tried it for the first time. It was as if, as he was trying a spell, his brain would remind him of precisely what needed to be done in order to be successful.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" Harry intoned, pointing his wand at a Super Boy comic book on his nightstand, which at once rose into the air and hovered wherever he pointed his wand. "Finite!" he said after making the book soar around the room, causing it to plop back down with a slap.
Harry picked the book up and felt it, expecting perhaps for it to feel odd… but it did not. He placed it back where it had fallen. "Well all right then," Harry said to the room at large. Then he laughed out loud from sheer giddiness. He was performing magic. He repeated the levitation spell with several more objects around the room, finding it interesting that the heavier the object, the more determination it took. That made him wonder about the physics of magic, but he placed this inquiry into the little section of his mind labeled: things to learn later. He spent the rest of the day working his way through his Charms textbook, pushing himself to learn as much as he could on his own, until he eventually fell asleep face-first into the last chapter.
This trend continued for the next week, with each achievement in learning magic giving Harry a burst of pride and accomplishment, which would be almost immediately replaced with a compulsion to learn more as soon as possible. He spared a couple of seconds mid-week to wonder if this was what drug addicts felt like, but quickly dismissed any concern seeing as the results here were purely positive.
There were some limitations to his learning. Potions and Herbology, for example, required equipment, supplies, and magical plants, so while he read the textbooks, there was little he could do in the way of practice. Charms, he liked. These spells were what most Muggles pictured when thinking about magic, and performing the spells taught in the first-year textbook made him feel like a real wizard. The History of Magic textbook was interesting, to a degree. Learning about what was essentially an alternate timeline was fun, but Harry wished it had covered events more recent than hundreds of years ago. Harry had always enjoyed stargazing whenever the conditions were right for it, but the information in his Astronomy textbook had him rethinking everything he thought he knew about the solar system and beyond. He added "telescope" to the growing list of things he was going to need to purchase soon. Transfiguration was the most challenging subject for him. Even though he could understand the theory and directions as well as he could with Charms, it was just harder to perform Transfiguration, for some reason. Not used to having challenges with learning, this led to more than one outburst of accidental magic from Harry when failing to get something just right, leading him to quickly read ahead in his Charms textbooks to later years where they taught repair and cleaning spells, before Aunt Petunia could find the scorches and holes he had unintentionally produced. Then there was Defense Against the Dark Arts. Harry had opened this book almost reverently. It had not been one of the titles among his parents' old things, so it would be all new knowledge. After hearing the truth about how his parents had died, and seeing and feeling the way others in the magical community regarded Voldemort, Harry had a suspicion that learning to defend himself in magic would be important in his life. By the middle of the second chapter, Harry was speed-reading, still absorbing all of the information, but finding it far less impactful than he had envisioned. By the end of the book, he had decided that it should have been titled, Some Spooky Creatures You Might Find, rather than Defense Against the Dark Arts.
He was brooding about this, late one night, sitting on his bed with his back to the wall and his knees drawn, illuminating and extinguishing the tip of his wand over and over again, glad to have found that thinking the incantation with enough concentration worked just as well as speaking it. As he did this, another part of his mind was going through the Charms and Transfiguration spells he had learned so far, categorizing which of them might be useful in a dangerous situation, since the Defense text offered little in that regard. What if someone broke into their house? Would Harry be able to help stop them using what he had learned? He was picturing this scenario in his mind when there was a clattering at his window, making him jump.
His heart now racing, Harry extinguished his wand, but kept it in front of him, sliding off of the bed and staying low, watching the window, and listening. He started again when the noise repeated itself, except this time there was a distinct scratching, as well as other rustling sounds. Thinking that it sounded like an animal, Harry crept to the curtains, using his wand tip to ever-so-slightly move them aside to peer sideways out the window. It took him a moment to make sense of what he was seeing, the nearly full moon luckily helping to illuminate the scene. He stood erect, and parted the curtains.
Outside his window was a beautiful little snowy owl, working to stay balanced on the window ledge outside. Attached to its leg was an envelope. Relieved, Harry worked to open the window, having learned that owl delivery was the most common form of communication amongst wizardkind. The owl swooped in with a flapping of its wings, landing on Harry's desk. It seemed to survey the room, then looked at Harry, who just looked back into its eyes. When it gave a soft, short hoot, Harry could not help but to grin. He sat down at the desk.
"Hello," he said. "Erm, I'm Harry."
The owl cocked its head and nipped gently at Harry's hand on the desk, taking a step towards him. Harry reached out and stroked the bird's neck, which seemed to be appreciated.
"Is this for me, then?" Harry asked. It was a needless question, as he could see his name on the envelope, but Harry did not want to just detach it without asking. The owl playfully stomped its feet one after another on the desk in response, making Harry laugh. "Well all right then," Harry said, carefully starting to detach the envelope, worried about accidentally hurting the tiny owl. "I have to tell you, this is every exciting. This is my first time getting a letter, not to mention my first time getting something from someone in the magical community, so it's kind of a big deal." The owl hooted again. While at The Magical Menagerie in Diagon Alley, Harry had learned that magical creatures could understand humans far better than their Muggle counterparts, and this owl seemed no exception… at least Harry hoped, otherwise he was basically just talking to himself. He opened the letter, seeing at once that it was from Hagrid.
Dear Harry,
Happy birthday! I'd have stopped by in person, but we've got a Fairy Nargle infestation that needs some tending to. I did want to send you your gift, though. Been thinking about it ever since we went to Diagon Alley, and while I know you've got quite enough gold to buy yourself whatever you like, I thought I could get you something I knew a lot about. She's a right smart, young owl. Stood out above all the rest the moment I saw her. I included a list of supplies you might want to write away for, but she'll be perfectly happy for now as long as you let her out to hunt at night. Trust your instincts with her. The way you think she's feeling is probably spot on. Happy birthday again, and I'll see you next week.
-Hagrid
So many emotions flooded Harry. He looked at the time, blinking back the moisture in his eyes. 12:02 a.m. It was the 31st of July—Harry's tenth birthday. He had completely forgotten about it, having been so busy with learning magic this week. He looked up at the little owl, who stepped closer again towards Harry, looking at him searchingly.
Harry waved the letter vaguely. "Is this all right with you?" he asked her. "Do you want to be my… do you want me to be your… can we be…" He was not sure how to put it. The owl answered by hopping onto Harry's shoulder with a small flap of her wings, nestling against his head. He laughed, and stood up, going to the mirror on the back of his door, reveling in the image and feeling like a real wizard more now than ever. "What do you think of the name, Hedwig?" Harry asked the reflection. The owl did her little stomping dance and gave two hoots, which Harry knew at once was an appreciative response.
It happened the day before Hagrid was set to come escort Harry back to Diagon Alley to meet with Ragnok. By now, Harry and Hedwig had settled into a pleasant relationship, Harry hesitant at first to overwork her, but finding that she took pride and pleasure in delivering letters and items to and from him, the first bundle of which were premium versions of the owl-care supplies Hagrid had suggested, shrunken for shipment. He had also sent a letter of gushing thanks to Hagrid, and had purchased a subscription to the most popular wizarding newspaper—The Daily Prophet. Most of the articles were boring, but he was mainly interested in the adverts, which Harry had used to contact a financial consultant in the magical community. After agreeing on a fee (which Harry could have used a second financial consultant to help him evaluate the fairness of), he arranged to meet with the witch before he went back to Gringotts. He got a good feeling from her correspondence, and was hoping she was as impressive in person as well, in which case he would ask her to accompany him to the meeting.
Feeling bolstered by having that taken care of, Harry decided to try something he had been thinking about ever since he had gotten his two wands. He felt he had become rather efficient at casting with the holly wand the spells he had worked to learn thus far, and wanted to see what luck he would have with the other wand, curious as to whether it would make any kind of difference.
Harry placed his palm on the top of his trunk, which was charmed to activate only to his touch, or someone to whom he added permission. A dial appeared at the right side of the lid, with eight markers at which the indicator on the dial could be positioned. Currently at the locked position, Harry rotated the dial right to the first marker, prompting clicking and scraping noises, then opened it to reveal what looked like the normal, everyday interior of a trunk. When deciding what to use each section for, Harry had decided that the first should likely be his most used items, or items he might want to get to in a hurry, and this is where he kept the elder wood wand. He brought the box to his bed and opened it, refamiliarizing himself with the feel of this wand. He felt like it was heavier than the holly wand, and so, wanting to compare them, he switched the elder wand into his left hand, and picked up his holly wand with his right.
Harry immediately felt his body slingshot backwards, spinning head over heels. He knew the back of his head must have been about to slam into the wall, but instead he somehow ended up in a standing position, stumbling a bit. His eyes took in the scene around him. It was night, and he was standing outdoors in the dark. He made to light his wand, only to find that he now held neither, searching the ground he somehow now found himself, for where he might have dropped them. They were nowhere to be seen. He was about to uselessly ask out loud what in the world was going on when he caught movement ahead of him. Two figures were walking from right to left, into a cluttered garden ahead. As Harry's eyes adjusted, he could see more details, realizing unenthusiastically that he was standing at the edge of a graveyard. If only he could find one of his wands, maybe he could undo whatever he had done to get here, or could at least be able to see properly. That thought framed his perception of the two figures, one of whom Harry could swear was holding a lit wand himself… yes, it was. It was a wizard! Somehow, that made Harry feel less afraid, and he decided to go up to them to ask for help. They would likely know who he was, after all, and from what he had seen so far in the magical community, should be eager to help out a lost Harry Potter.
Just before he began to step forward, he saw movement from somewhere ahead of the pair Harry had first seen, which he could now tell appeared to be two teenage boys. Closing in on them was a dark figure, whom Harry eventually reckoned seemed to be carrying something, or maybe a baby? It stopped walking, and for a few seconds the two boys and the short figure just looked at each other.
And then, without warning, Harry's forehead exploded with pain, his whole body tightening up with the agony, sending him to his knees. He barely had the mental awareness enough to wonder if he had been shot in the head, or hit with something sharp and hot. He rubbed at it, but all he could feel was the lightning bolt-shaped scar, which was throbbing, clearly the source of his pain.
"Kill the spare!" he heard a high, cold voice cry from the graveyard.
"Avada Kedavra!" another voice shouted.
Somehow, Harry managed to open his eyes enough to watch a jet of green light emanate from the short figure and propel across the graves, highlights and shadows dancing around it, until it hit the taller of the two boys, who collapsed onto the ground. Harry felt the world stand still. Cedric.
"NOOOOOOOO!" Not again! Not ever again! Harry screamed and raged, still holding his head in his hands, sure it would split in two if he dared to let it go. He heard scuffling and felt arms trying to pry them away, shouts and pulls, but he could not stop screaming. Only when he drew in a breath and happened to hear who it was that was shouting his name was he able to finally pull his fingers from his scar and open his stinging eyes.
"Harry! It's just a nightmare! You've just had a nightmare!" Aunt Petunia's shaking voice was crying desperately. She and Uncle Vernon were both at his bedside, having clearly been woken by his screams, his uncle looking disturbed, with Aunt Petunia white and fearful.
Harry scrambled back on the bed, hitting against the wall, searching around the room to make sure he was in fact here, and not in the graveyard. He tried to speak but his throat was raw. After a coughing fit, he finally managed it.
"Was I here, the whole time?" he asked.
"What the devil does that mean?" Uncle Vernon asked after a moment when the both of them just stared at Harry.
"When you came in… into the room, was I here?"
"Of course you were!" Uncle Vernon answered.
"You were thrashing about in your bed, yelling," Aunt Petunia explained.
"We thought maybe the owl had attacked you," Uncle Vernon added.
"No we didn't," Aunt Petunia said dismissively.
"Well, it's possible. It's a mean-looking thing," Vernon argued, causing Hedwig to ruffle her feathers.
"Okay. Okay, I'm fine. Sorry to have disturbed everyone," Harry said, wanting desperately for them to leave.
Uncle Vernon shrugged and did just that, and Aunt Petunia rose from where she had been sitting on the bed, slower to leave. "I'll just bring you some water for your throat," he said matter-of-factly. Harry almost told her she did not need to do that, but something told him not to.
"Thanks," he croaked.
She came back with a glass and jug later, placing them on his bedside table, Harry remaining where he was against the wall. Aunt Petunia began walking out, stopped and turned to him, opened her mouth to say something, then seemed to change her mind and simply left, closing Harry's door behind her. Harry drank some water gratefully, and sat, staring at the opposite wall, willing his mind to be a blank, not wanting to think in any way of any thing.
After a long while, knowing he had to do it, he refocused his gaze, finding his two wands on the bed, and beginning to contemplate what had happened. He… had not really been in a graveyard tonight. He realized that now. Allowing himself to review the memories in his mind, giving a rare rebuke to his ability to remember in detail that which he saw, he recognized now that what he had experienced had been more of a dream than reality… except he knew that it was not a dream, absolutely knew that what he had seen had occurred—no, had not yet occurred, but… would occur? Could occur? He pressed his palms to his eyes, rubbing hard, grateful to observe the swirling patterns rather than the images still bouncing around in his clear mind's eye. Especially when Cedric—
Harry stopped rubbing his eyes, his hands hovering in front of him as he sat still, in shock. He knew his name—that boy's name. It was Cedric. Cedric… Diggory. He… he and Harry… the other boy… the other boy was him—Harry. Yes, it was… A swarm of clarity surged forward, ready to burst into complete understanding… and then it was gone. Harry could still remember the scene from the graveyard, and could remember realizing that he was about to understand its meaning fully, but the notion that he might actually ever really do it was simply gone. His hands flopped unceremoniously to the bed. After thinking for a few seconds, he got to his trunk and opened the second compartment.
Harry was cursing himself the next morning, struggling to get dressed and look presentable before Hagrid would arrive, while also fighting against the exhaustion of a nearly sleepless night. Not quite ready to dress the part of a wizard, Harry at least wanted to look like he was taking his banking situation seriously, having purchased what he felt were some nice clothes from a department store, now wearing a pair of designer jeans, white button-up shirt, and a blue blazer. He had set his heart on wearing a tie as well, but gave it up as a bad job after only a couple of minutes. Surveying himself in the mirror, he considered that it would have been a bit much anyway. In fact, he put his new trainers on rather than the oxfords he had been planning, again glad for his decision when he checked his look.
"I'm off then," Harry called over his shoulder to the house at large, having arranged to meet Hagrid at Mrs. Figg's house after learning that the Floo network connected to her home in case she ever needed to contact anyone about Harry. Floo travel utilized magically connected fireplaces to transport wizardkind across regional distances which, while weird, sounded better to Harry than repeating the travel by Portkey he had endured two weeks ago.
Hagrid was already waiting for Harry when he arrived at Mrs. Figg's house.
"Well don't you look nice!" Hagrid bellowed the moment Harry stepped in the door.
"Thanks," Harry said, grinning. "It's really nice to see you again."
"Hedwig doin' all right?" Hagrid asked.
Harry nodded. "Yeah. She's really great. Sometimes leaves a mouse on my pillow for when I wake up…"
"Bless her little heart," Hagrid gushed. "Well, ready to be off then?"
Floo travel turned out to be not all that different from that by Portkey, leaving Harry to wonder if spinning was an integral part of magical transportation. He added that to his list of things to research. When he stepped out of the fireplace at the Leaky Cauldron, Harry wondered if his initial negative reaction had been in response to being bombarded with so much magic at once, rather than the Portkey experience itself. Regardless, he still felt the thickness of the amount of magic nearby, but was familiar enough with the feeling of magic by now that it did not overwhelm him. In fact, he found it comforting.
"327, you said?" Hagrid asked once he and Harry had crossed into Diagon Alley.
"Yes. Flubbins and Stoker Limited," Harry confirmed. "I'm meeting with Beatrice Hawkins."
"Tha's this way," Hagrid said, pointing and taking two steps in that direction, leaving Harry to scramble to keep up with him.
"Smart of yeh to hire somebody to work with them goblins," Hagrid said sagely as they walked past the shops. Harry noted that it was busier than last time, and there seemed to be more kids and families, which probably made sense as Hogwarts was starting in about a month, and families would be purchasing supplies. "It's all about gold, for them—at least the most o' them. Just in their nature, I suppose. It makes them good at what they do, but you can't let your guard down around 'em when it comes to gold."
Harry just nodded, but he wondered how true that was. Uncle Vernon had plenty of ideas about the nature of different types of people, lumping them all into categories based purely on how they looked. Was the wizarding world the same way, or were there really innate characteristics of non-human beings that were prevalent through the entire species, regardless of upbringing? This internal philosophical debate occupied Harry's thoughts for the entire walk to the building for 327, which Harry could see had a narrow doorway leading to an even narrower hallway behind it.
"Erm… I think I'll just go in on my own, yeah? Meet you here when I'm done?" Harry asked Hagrid.
"I can squeeze in if you want me to!" Hagrid protested, even as his eyes seemed to desperately search the entrance for a method to allow it.
"No—it's fine, Hagrid. She seemed harmless in her correspondence. I'll probably only be a few minutes," Harry assured him.
Hagrid looked torn, but eventually nodded. Harry opened the door and entered the building. The hallway was actually deceptively wide, but he pressed on, finding the door for Flubbins and Stoker. He tried the handle, but it did not budge. Perplexed, Harry took out his pocket watch and checked the time. He was one minute early… was the office closed until then? It was only a matter of chance that he looked up more closely at the ornate knocker on the door before turning back to consult with Hagrid. It seemed to have a little face, leading Harry to remember a passage from his Charms textbook about a charmed door knocker. He reached up and rapped it.
"Good morning!" the bronze face said in a friendly tone, looking down at Harry. "Do you have an appointment?"
"Yes. Harry Potter to see Beatrice Hawkins," Harry said, trying to act as if this kind of thing happened to him all the time.
"Ah, yes. Please do come in and have a seat, Mr. Potter. Ms. Hawkins will be with you shortly."
Harry heard the lock in the door click, and he opened the door, finding himself in a nicely decorated sitting room. He had barely sat down before a young witch appeared from the around the corner, clearly hurrying, but composing herself the moment she came into view.
"Mr. Potter?" she asked.
"Yes. Hello," Harry said, standing.
"I'm Beatrice Hawkins," she said, smiling then gesturing down the hallway. "Shall we go to my office?" Harry followed her.
During the next twenty minutes, Beatrice smoothly led Harry through the procedures and risks involved with financing in the wizarding world. He appreciated that she started off simple, and continued to increase the complexity of her explanation each time she noticed how quickly Harry was cottoning on. And complex it was. While Harry was glad to now have a basic understanding of how banking worked, he knew it would be best to hire Beatrice to accompany him to today's meeting at Gringotts, which she agreed to do for a discounted ten galleon-per-hour fee, and the permission to advertise that her firm had Harry Potter as a client. Harry saw nothing wrong with that arrangement, and agreed. She produced and filled out some parchments binding their agreement, signing herself, and then sliding it over to Harry, who took a quill and signed his name. He was getting used to using quills, but found their continued use in the magical world an odd choice.
"All right, now we'll just need to get… but it's sealed already!" She looked from the parchment to Harry. "Were you legally emancipated?"
"I… I don't know what that means," Harry admitted.
Beatrice showed him the bottom of the parchment. "Our contract sealed! It shouldn't have been able to do that without your legal guardian's signature as well. I assumed Hagrid had been appointed your guardian?"
"Erm… I don't think so."
She picked the parchment up and examined it more closely, her brow furrowed, putting it back down after a few moments. "This is strange," she stated.
Harry shrugged. "Sorry."
Beatrice stared at him for a while, although Harry got the impression that she was looking more through him that at him, her face somewhat screwed-up in bewilderment. He had just started thinking about how she looked rather cute that way when she seemed to gather her wits, shaking her head.
"All right. I suppose we'll just see. I am very glad you contacted me, though. They could have had you sign anything and it would have been binding." She shook her head, gathering the parchment in order. She had just finished using her wand to make three copies when Harry failed to stifle a giant yawn.
"I'm so sorry—I should have offered you some tea or coffee!" Beatrice said at once.
Harry waved her off. "No—it's fine. I just didn't really sleep last night."
"Well you shouldn't head to negotiations with goblins unless you're at your best," she said, tapping open a cabinet behind her. "I keep Invigoration Draught on hand for when I have a late night." She placed a corked flask in front of Harry, which had a golden liquid inside. "That'll keep you alert for a few good hours, at least.
Harry hesitated. A potion. He had read some of his first year Potions textbook, but had abandoned it once he realized he could do nothing without the necessary supplies. He was going to take his first magical potion. A small part of his brain told him that he should perhaps be wary—suspicious, even, but the majority of this thoughts simply said, Cool!
He uncorked the flask and took a whiff of the potion, which had a very strong smell not unlike banana. He tipped it back in one swallow, the taste nothing at all like the smell—a salty, meaty flavor. Regardless, the effect was immediate. Harry felt wide awake, and not in the shaky way he remembered getting when he had drunk too much soda at Mrs. Figg's. He just felt… invigorated. He made a mental note to put this potion at the top of his list of those to learn first.
Harry introduced Beatrice to Hagrid, but of course she remembered him, having graduated from Hogwarts only a few years ago. They made their way towards Gringotts, Hagrid getting Harry's blessing to stay behind this time, arranging to meet back at the Leaky Cauldron later.
As Harry and Beatrice entered Gringotts, he noted with interest the reaction to having her with him. She was clearly recognized, and everyone they interacted with on their way to and including Ragnok seemed a little stiffer than before. Harry took it as a good sign, not that he intended to ruffle any feathers, but it was good to know that perhaps his own feathers would keep from getting ruffled with Beatrice there.
"Mr. Potter," Ragnok said with a little head bow upon intercepting the group. "Ms. Hawkins," he added in the same fashion. "Can I assume then that you are representing Mr. Potter in his affairs today?"
"That's correct, Ragnok," Beatrice said.
"Contracted?" Ragnok asked.
"That's right," she said, withdrawing at once the parchments that she and Harry had signed. Ragnok took a long while to look them through before handing them back.
"Very well. If you'll follow me…"
Ragnok led them to his office. Harry noted that most of the items previously on Ragnok's desk had been cleared away; a single heavy, thick tome now sitting on its surface.
"We have much to go through," Ragnok started. "Let us start with the formalities. The Potter assets are some of the oldest and best protected at Gringotts, with enchantments dating back to my great, great, great, great, great grandfather's tenure with the bank. If you would kindly place the palm of your hand on the ledger…" Ragnok indicated the book.
Harry shot Beatrice a quick glance, who nodded at him, and he leaned forward, placing his hand on top. From the dark surface under his hand, a blueish white symbol briefly glowed brilliantly—a circle inside a triangle, divided in two, which Harry had never seen before. He wondered if it was perhaps a Potter family crest of sorts.
"Very good," Ragnok said with what almost seemed a sigh of relief. "Your identity has been confirmed as the rightful Potter heir, with all—"
In a swirl of glittering dust, two more books materialized on either side of the ledger, clearly unexpected by the look on Ragnok's face. He peered down at each of their covers, his usually veiled expression now revealing the shock and confusion he clearly felt. It took him several moments to recover.
"It would appear… that you are the last heir to more than one family line," he finally said slowly. Harry looked at the new books, They appeared even older than the first, the one on the right having an incredibly thick, silver cover, into which a three-pronged swirl design was etched. The other embossed with gold, or bronze, Harry unsure which as it was heavily tarnished, making it difficult to make out the imagery being represented.
Ragnok tentatively reached a finger towards the silver book, only to stop short a few inches from its surface, repeating the gesture with the other book as well. "I… do not have access to these," he stated in something of a half-statement, half-question, then looked to Harry.
Harry looked again at Beatrice, who seemed almost as nonplussed as Ragnok, but recovered enough to respond. "Try putting your hand on it, as you did with the other," she suggested.
Nervous without understanding any reason to feel as such, Harry forced himself to look calm as he moved to place his hand on the silver book, working to not flinch away as, the moment his palm made contact, it too glowed as the other had done, this time emblazoning the swirl pattern in purple light before dying away. At the looks of anticipation on Beatrice's and Ragnok's faces, he did the same with the other, seeing a golden flash of a coat of arms on the book cover before it too faded. Then, the middle book shivered in place a bit, increasing its thickness by a few inches. Ragnok reached for it, and seemed relieved when he could open it. He leafed through the pages quickly before turning back to one of the first pages, turning it around on the desk for Harry and Beatrice to see.
"The value of your assets has doubled," he said with a somewhat shaky voice. "There are details which I am not able to perceive, such as here, and here," he added, pointing at the page. "Are these visible to you, Mr. Potter?"
Harry looked. He could read names and addresses in the areas Ragnok had indicated. Harry turned to Beatrice, who was looking in the same place. She shrugged and shook her head.
"Charmed to be only visible to someone in a specific bloodline," she said. "Do not reveal what is written there until you can learn more about it." Harry nodded. "And those books are yours to take now," she added.
Ragnok spread his arms wide in a gesture of no contest. Harry took the two books and placed them on the desk in front of him, then retrieved his shrunken chest from the inside pocket of his blazer and tapped it with his wand. Once it was full size, he opened the second compartment and stored the books, quickly locking and shrinking it again.
"All right. Let's get down to finances then, shall we?" Beatrice said once that was done. Harry thought he saw disappointment flash across Ragnok's face, but he quickly recovered with a smile and a nod.
For the next hour, Ragnok went into great detail regarding all of the assets which had become Harry's when his parents had died, as well as those by whatever means had recently occurred right here in this office, which Ragnok could only theorize was the confirmation of a bloodline an ancient spell had been awaiting, hitherto unseen until the specific offspring of James Potter and Lily Evans came into possession of their family fortune. Harry wondered what would have happened if he had died that night with his parents. Would these two books have stayed hidden away until sometime in the future when another mix of distant relatives from the same bloodlines had a magical child, or would they have remained secreted away forever? Yes, Harry thought. That was probably it. It was just him… for now. If he had not come here last week, this would never have even been known. His mind carried his musings deeper, and father away. He imagined he was watching his parents grow younger, then seeing their parents, and theirs, until his mother's side led to an ancient relative who had fallen in love with a Muggle and transitioned to that lifestyle, then further back. Harry's attention seemed to spiral all on its own away from Ragnok's office until a loud silence recaptured it, and he realized that Ragnok and Beatrice had finished their back-and-forth that had been going on for some time, and were both looking to him as if for a response.
"Oh. Sorry—I, erm… kind of zoned out for a second," he said sheepishly.
Beatrice seemed to try to hide a smile. "Ragnok is offering you use of a vault card—similar to Muggle debit card, and in fact charmed to be able to use with any Muggle service on which one of their debit cards would function. It would be tied to your spending vault, and you would be able to use it to transfer funds to merchants directly from your vault rather than having the gold on your person. It does carry a transaction fee which goes back to the bank, which you might have heard Ragnok and I negotiate down to 0.75% from the standard three, what with the likelihood of the… extremities of your purchases, considering your wealth."
This did sound familiar to Harry, now that she was mentioning it. It seemed like a good deal to him, and he felt he could tell from the expression on Beatrice's face that she felt the same way.
It was another half hour after that when they finally left Gringotts, Harry feeling glad to get back into the fresh air. They met Hagrid at the Leaky Cauldron, Harry asking for a table outside, and insisting that he pay.
"You both know how much gold I have," he said in an undertone when Hagrid seemed a little uncomfortable with taking advantage of Harry's offer. "This is the kind of thing that's going to make me happy, so this is the kind of thing I want to spend it on."
Beatrice and Hagrid eventually embraced Harry's viewpoint, going through two bottles of wine between them, and ordering without a care of price, not that the Leaky Cauldron had many menu items of extravagance. Once they finished eating, Harry was glad that neither of them seemed in a rush to leave. It was nice to nice to sit out in the magical world and chat for a while. Only occasionally did someone do a double take in Harry's direction, their gaze drawn initially by Hagrid's size, then zeroing in on Harry's scar, but he was not bothered by it. In fact, Harry felt it was turning out to be a fantastic afternoon…until Beatrice remembered something.
"Oh—Hagrid, I meant to ask you. I had assumed you were Harry's legal magical guardian, and thought we'd need your signature for his paperwork. It turns out he could sign for himself, but there may be a circumstance when that is no longer the case—I don't know. Are you his guardian?"
"Me? Nah. Erm… I mean I would o' if Lily and James had asked, mind, but… em… they were close with people more their own age who could look out for Harry. It's his aunt and uncle that have guardianship, i'nt that right, Harry?"
"Yeah," Harry confirmed, but could not help but notice the shifty tone of Hagrid's response.
Beatrice seemed to sense it as well, as she did not press the issue, but shared an awkward look with Harry, who added yet another item to his list of things to learn more about.
They said goodbye to Beatrice, who would update Harry monthly on the state of his finances. Harry was eager to visit Flourish and Blotts, which Hagrid was not keen on, as the space between shelves was rather narrow. After a firm deadline being established for meeting back at the Leaky Cauldron, they split up yet again. Harry found the clerk from last time, who enthusiastically helped Harry find the section he was most interested in perusing today.
Now he stood, leafing through a copy of Unfogging the Future, which had been advertised as "A guide to all basic fortune-telling methods, including palmistry, crystal balls and bird entrails." Harry was not exactly sure if this was the book for him, but it was at least a start, and he added it to his basket. After his… dream? vision? of the graveyard, Harry was eager to learn all he could to help him zero in on what had occurred. He knew it was not normal, and so must be related to magic, which meant he ought to be able to learn about it. He collected four more books before browsing the other shelves and picking up a few more titles that sparked his interest. With only a few minutes before he had to meet Hagrid, he forced himself to start heading that way.
Harry had almost made it back to the Leaky Cauldron when a swirl of movement near a wall startled him. He turned just in time to see a wizard spin into existence where there had previously been no one. The man smoothed down his robes and started walking down the street as though nothing unusual had just happened. Looking around, Harry saw that no one else nearby was paying this occurrence any attention either. Wanting to investigate, he tried to casually walk over to the spot at which the man had appeared, wondering if there was perhaps something here connected to the Floo network. The wizard had not been holding any object which might have been a Portkey. Eventually abandoning any pretense, Harry searched the spot for clues, eventually finding a tiny, worn plaque on one of the bricks that read, "Apparition Site #12." Checking his pocket watch, Harry hurried back to the bookstore, making something of a scene as he scrambled through the aisles until he found the book he had remembered seeing earlier on something called Apparition, grabbing it and tossing Galleons on the counter on his way out.
Breathing heavily, Harry got to his meeting place with Hagrid just in time.
"All right?" Hagrid asked worriedly.
"Yeah," Harry panted. "Just remembered a book I wanted at the last minute."
Hagrid grunted. "Ye sure do like reading."
They made their way inside to the fireplace. Harry considered that he definitely would enjoy reading this book if it showed him a way to appear like that wizard had. They Flooed back to Mrs. Figg's, Harry thanking Hagrid for once again escorting him to Diagon Alley.
"Anytime!" Hagrid said. "Well… not any time. Got school starting on September 1, so that'll keep me busy…"
Harry held up a hand, smiling. "It's fine. I've got Hedwig now. She can get whatever I need. And I'll write to you, if that's okay."
Hagrid returned the smile. "That would be great, Harry."
When he got back to his room, Harry pushed hard against the urge to grab one of his new books from his trunk, instead greeting Hedwig, then throwing off his clothing as quickly as possible and sliding into bed, the Invigoration Draught clearly wearing off. Waves of exhaustion poured over him as soon as he closed his eyes, and he fell into a deep sleep.