"They obviously didn't want you to know." Lucius told him simply. "All of the sacred pureblood families have a seat on the Wizengamot; did it never occur to you to ask why Dumbledore, a halfblood, was the Chief Warlock when he had no rights to a seat?"
"No." Harry replied easily.
Lucius sighed. "Dumbledore is using your own seat to preside from, in your name of course. If you claimed your lordship then he'd have to…step aside, to make room for you. I don't believe that he'd enjoy relinquishing such power and then having a new Chief Warlock voted in as well, one that perhaps won't be deep in his pocket and willing to play puppet to him. After all, nearly every person on the Wizengamot is pureblooded; only certain exceptions are made, as the Heads of all reputabledepartments also have a Wizengamot seat."
"So, you're saying that he's sat in the seat that I should be in? Who has the Black seat?" "It's currently being held by Dumbledore too as the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, fancy that." Lucius sneered. "Two seats that you should have control of are being presided over by him and he didn't even tell you about them."
Harry's hand clenched tight as the fury rose in him again. Even if he didn't know what to do with his two seats, he didn't want Dumbledore to have them. It would serve him right for locking him back up with the Dursleys after Sirius' death and ordering him not to leave the house and ordering him not to send out any owls or for his friends to send any to him.
"I want to claim my lordship, both of them." He said firmly.
Nagnok nodded. "We will set this up for you, for a fee, of course."
"I think I have enough in my vault to pay a fee. I don't think I'll spend all that gold on school things when I only have two more years left." "What do you mean?" Lucius asked him carefully.
"The vault I have here. I think there's more than enough gold in there to see me through the next two years of schooling and to pay a fee."
Lucius sighed. "This is much worse than I feared. I take it that no one has told you the difference between house vaults and trust vaults."
Harry frowned. "I…no."
"The vault that you are using now would be a trust vault, money laid aside for your use by your parents. Your father, as Lord Potter, would have had control of the house vault, which would be considerably larger than a mere trust vault. He would then lay aside trust vaults for all those in his house and supply the trust vault with a sum of money. He could choose a lump sum or he could choose to top it up weekly, monthly, or yearly with a fixed sum for however many years he wished to do so, which would then be taken from the main house vault. With his death and with you being so young, that vault would have been sealed off until you either came of age or claimed your lordship."
Harry swallowed hard. He felt sick to his very stomach. "No one told me that either."
"After fifty years have passed and no one has claimed it, then anything inside the vault goes to the Ministry. The Potter vault has been sealed for fifteen years already; I can't begin to imagine the amount of interest that has stacked up over the last decade and a half."
"It is a substantial amount." Nagnok nodded. "Lord Potter and his lady wife rarely touched the house vault and Lord Potter chose to deposit a lump sum into a trust vault for his son. I believe they only took out what they needed for food and small items. Lord Fleamont and his lady wife left their son a vast amount to begin with, after their untimely passing. If we add in the considerable Black family vault too, which has been sealed for eleven years after the passing of Lady Walburga Black, then you are a very wealthy young wizard."
"Sirius was using his bank vault." Harry pointed out confusedly.
"Sirius was the rightful heir, but he never claimed his lordship after his father passed away and neither did he claim the house vault after his mother passed away six years later." Lucius told him patiently. "I believe he was still using his, more than considerable, trust vault."
"Oh." Harry felt overwhelmed and a little shocky.
"I understand that this is a lot to take in." Lucius told him and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
Harry reacted violently and he all but shoved the man's hand off of him. "Don't touch me. You have no right to touch me!" Harry shouted, his mind flashing to the events of the graveyard and those of the Department of Mysteries, where Sirius had died that night.
"As you wish." Lucius said silkily. "If we could hurry this meeting along, Nagnok."
"Of course, Lord Malfoy. Now that we have validated who you actually are and that you are Harry James Potter, heir to the Potter and Black families, we can now start the claiming process."
"What do I need to do?"
"This will disrupt your education." Lucius cut in. "Meetings can be called at any time of day, though we do tend to wait until the next morning if a situation occurs during the night, unless it is gravely urgent and cannot wait, of course. You will be given your lordship rings and when they heat up, you are to make your way straight to the Ministry for a meeting. A meeting that cannot start until everyone who has been called arrives. Your professors cannot stop you from going to these meetings, but likewise, you will not be allowed to slack off on your education, you will have to work doubly hard at your studies than everyone else in that school."