Reading Time: 83 Minutes

Title: Hidden Resources for Young Men of Quality
Author: MeyariMcFarland
Fandom: Harry Potter
Genre: Contemporary, Family, Fantasy, Humor, Paranormal/Supernatural, Urban Fantasy
Relationship(s): Gen
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Major Character Death, canon child abuse and war, grief and mourning, mental breakdown, Dumbledore bashing
Word Count: 115,299
Summary: Six years into Hogwarts and Harry was well used to being shuffled off to Privet Drive for the summer. Oh, traumatic things happened, great events going on, be a good boy and go back in your fetid little box. Not a lot that Harry could do about it yet, but still looked like Harry had yet another miserable summer aimed right at him. Until a letter came by courier from beyond the grave.
Artist: ani

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Part One: Fall of the House of Potter

1. On the Usage of Appropriate Staff in Times of Need

The bloody yard had dandelions. Harry glowered at the stupid yellow flowers as he dug at them with the stupid bit of broken metal left after stupid Dudley stomped on the Peverell Industries’ supposedly unbreakable spade he’d been using to uproot the things. Not like Dudley cared if there were dandelions.

He just wanted Harry to fail and get another beating from Uncle Vernon for breaking one of the “expensive” garden tools. Like Uncle Vernon hadn’t gotten it out of the skip already worn out and damaged.

If Duds made it through school without being arrested, it’d be a miracle. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had their eyes and ears fully, willfully, shut on that little fact, but everyone else in the neighborhood knew.

Not a few of them nodded when they saw Harry weeding. Little apologies, wordless and meaningless, but hey, apologies nonetheless.

“I want out of this bloody place,” Harry muttered as he gouged the last dandelion out of the lawn. “End of the summer can’t come soon enough.”

He’d hoped…

Before Sirius died…

He’d…

Well. Hopes didn’t mean a damned thing, now did they? Harry was stuck on Privet Drive and that was that. At least the damned dandelions had been dug up, right and proper.

“If Uncle Vernon would’ve just paid someone to tend the lawn while I was in school,” Harry grumbled under his breath as he gathered up all the wilting uprooted bits, “wouldn’t have had so many to deal with.”

If Uncle Vernon had been willing to pay anyone for anything he could make Harry do for free, Hell might’ve frozen over.

Harry paused as a neat black Peverell sedan slowly drove up Privet Drive. One of the ones that’d been new and exciting before he went off to Hogwarts but now were considered the boring, responsible choice since they were so reliable.

That was… odd.

Not in that there was anything odd about the sedan. It was bog-standard, just a nice black sedan with clean sides, other than just a trace of mud along the bottom of the wheel wells. Lightly tinted windows, which Uncle Vernon would’ve killed for. Possibly literally.

It was just… an odd time. An odd speed, too slow to be driving through, too fast to be looking at house numbers like the driver was lost.

Not one window curtain twitched open.

Not even at Mrs. Figg’s place and Harry knew that she was home. He’d seen her come shuffling in half an hour ago with bags of groceries that were mostly cat food and cat litter.

The sedan stopped neatly, precisely, in front of Harry.

The man who stepped out had a completely average navy blue delivery man’s uniform on. He had completely average, unremarkable features with perfectly average brown hair, brown eyes, and neat wire-rim glasses in a vaguely stylish squarish shape. In his hand was a completely average clipboard with a ballpoint pen. Blue, if the cap matched the ink.

His other hand held a parchment envelope.

“Mr. Harry Potter?” the courier asked.

“Uh. Yeah?” Harry said, staring at him.

“Excellent,” the courier said as he offered the clipboard. “Sign here, please. I’ve a letter and box for you. The sender paid special that I bring it when no one was about, during a time of day when no one was likely to notice.”

Both of Harry’s eyebrows went up.

The clipboard held a single slip of paper with a single line saying “sign here:” followed by a quick dash of a line scrawled across.

In Sirius’ handwriting.

In silver ink.

Harry’s breath caught. It felt rather like he was floating above his own body, maybe ten thousand feet up in the air. He watched his hand take the blue ballpoint. Watched himself tug the cap off with his teeth before he scrawled a “Harry Potter” that was even more illegible than normal on Sirius’ messy attempt at a line.

The courier smiled, checked his signature before recapping the pen with a little grimace of disgust at spit on the cap. And then he took the slip off the clipboard and passed that along with the letter to Harry.

“Just a mo’,” he said as he tossed the empty clipboard into the black sedan. “Let me get your box.”

Harry glanced down.

”Open only in private with no one else in the house.” Sirius had underlined “no one” three times.

“There we are,” the courier said as turned back out.

He passed Harry a dingy cardboard box sealed up with clear strapping tape. The printing on the box identified it as a shipping box for adult diapers, which had to be a joke on Sirius’ part. All the printed labels on it had been scribbled off with a permanent marker but one “L” had survived intact which matched the “L” on the courier’s sedan.

“…You’re having me on,” Harry said even though he could feel that this was anything but a joke.

The courier grinned. “I said the same thing when I got this job. Got to admit, the way he giggled over the box was not reassuring. Figured it was a joke.”

“A very elaborate one,” Harry sighed. He took the box. What else could he do? “Thanks, I guess.”

“Good luck with it,” the courier said, eyes flicking down at the uprooted dandelions. “And with that. Didn’t get the whole root. They’ll be back in a week.”

Harry groaned. “Don’t remind me. Anyway. Thanks. I think.”

The courier snickered before climbing back into his very normal, very average black sedan. He drove off, just a hair faster than before, turning right onto Wisteria Walk. In less than a minute even the sound of his car was gone.

Harry breathed slowly, carefully, as casually as he could during the entire process of setting the box and letter on the step. He finished gathering up the uprooted dandelions. Then he scooped up the box and letter, opened the door and calmly walked into the house.

Inside, silence echoed threateningly.

Harry stared into the living room where Dudley’s shoe prints marked the wall above the sofa. Over the last few weeks, Dudley had taken to flopping on the sofa and then rolling onto his back so that he could watch the telly with his feet up in the air and his head dangling down over the edge of the cushions. Aunt Petunia had fluttered about and been unhappy about the stains on the wall.

She’d had Harry scrub them off. Dudley put them back. Harry scrubbed. Dudley put them back, wider and higher and more aggressively. This last time Aunt Petunia had sighed and told Harry to leave them.

Dudley hadn’t made any more after he’d gotten away with leaving scuff marks on the walls.

It just figured. Harry couldn’t breathe in this house without getting scolded. Dudley could physically destroy things and embarrass his parents and the only thing that happened were a few snippy comments.

Harry glanced down at the letter and the box in his hands.

“Sirius…”

His room was hot enough to be an oven. Harry sent Hedwig out to hunt or sleep in the trees. He shut the door and then jammed his wobbly chair under the handle. He closed the curtains.

Then he sat on the floor and opened the letter.

Harry,

I am so sorry that you’re reading this. It should only be delivered to you if I die. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to die in the next few days. It’s not long before the school year ends. Dumbledore is up to something. So is You-Know-Who.

It’s obvious that it’s going to come to a confrontation.

It’s obvious that you’re going to be at the center of it.

For the record, I hate that. Hate! You should be able to be a kid, but neither of us ever got that. I understand just how angry you have to be right now. My parents were as abusive…

Well. They were as abusive as Vernon and Petunia, just with magic. Tried to spell me into being the perfect heir, the perfect Black, the perfect Slytherin. Beat me when the spells didn’t work. Tortured me in a dozen or so ways when the beatings failed.

Your dad saved me. Your mum taught me how to be a somewhat decent person. You, as a tiny little baby with a squinched up face, taught me what unconditional love is.

Which is why you have the box.

Amazing, isn’t it? I can hear my mum screaming in horror just looking at the thing. Pretty sure that not even your awful cousin would touch it, which is good. If no one is there, not a single person, carefully peel back the tape. Open the box. What’s inside is designed to help you.

It’s every single thing that I could think of to help you, gathered over the last couple of months. I hope it’s enough.

Because you can’t trust Dumbledore. You can’t trust the Weasleys. You might, maybe, be able to trust Hermione, but I’m not sure about that. No, I take it back. Trust her to do the research but verify. If Dumbledore told her to hold something back from you, for “your own good”, she would.

Fuck that.

I love you so much, Pup. I’m sorry that I couldn’t be there for you. It was never going to be allowed.

Open the box.

Then do whatever you think is necessary, no matter who objects or who gets in your way.

It was signed “Sirius Orion Black”.

Just that. Nothing else.

Harry wheezed in a breath through his tears and his snot-stuffed nose. It was…

Twenty minutes of sobbing later, after Harry slipped out of his room and checked that no, Aunt Petunia wasn’t back yet. He washed his face, drank some water, and then grimly sat back down in his bedroom to open the box.

The clear strapping tape didn’t need a knife to open. Once Harry put his hands on the box flaps with the intent to open it, the strapping tape split at the center, neatly at the corners of the flaps, so that the flaps were free.

“Okay, this is a prank, then,” Harry said as he very carefully opened the top two flaps.

The next two flaps had Sirius’ handwriting scrawled on them in permanent marker.

Touch Signature Here.

Harry blinked. “And I thought Moody was paranoid. Right.”

The slip of paper with his signature on it flashed brightly when Harry carefully tapped the box flaps with it. Over the last few years, Harry had been through some fairly intimidating wards. This one felt about a thousand times more dangerous than any of them.

Magic cascaded over Harry. It scurried around the bedroom and then shuddered through the house, which, actually, was probably why Sirius had insisted the no one else should be there. If Aunt Petunia had been home, she would’ve been screaming her lungs out. Didn’t bear thinking about what Uncle Vernon would’ve done.

The next moment, the magic flashed back, leaving Harry with an adult diapers box sitting open in front of him.

A ladder poked up out of the box.

Harry’s breath caught. “What the bloody hell did you do, Sirius?”

There wasn’t much time before Aunt Petunia came home. Maybe twenty minutes tops. Uncle Vernon would be home about thirty minutes after that. And Dudley would come straggling in complaining about being hungry maybe another fifteen after that.

“Let’s see what you left me,” Harry said.

Instinctively, Harry took the letter and the signature down the ladder with him. It was dark until he hit the bottom of the ladder, about two stories down. Then lights bloomed slowly around Harry. He saw…

…supplies.

Shelves upon shelves full of canned goods, both Muggle and Magi. Bags of rice and beans. Two whole pallets with flour and sugar wrapped in glowing, layered stasis spells. A cabinet stuffed to the gills with every kind of spice in the world. There were bookshelves stacked two deep that stretched from the floor up to the ceiling, which now that he was inside looked like it was four stories up, not two.

Six different wardrobes just in range of sight. Racks of shoes and boots, all in good leather. Three cloak racks full of cloaks for every kind of weather and every level of formality. Two coat racks holding everything from wind breakers to thick downy parkas that would see Harry through the arctic.

And more. So much more. The lights only shone right around Harry. This dragon’s horde full of stuff stretched off into the darkness. He kind of thought that it might be about four or five warehouses full of stuff.

All designed to help, protect and feed Harry.

Harry didn’t let the tears fall. No time.

Off to the left, near the pallets of flour and sugar, a light slowly blinked.

Harry went that way. Behind the pallets, around the back side of a looming bookshelf, was a little office area. Desk, comfy office chair, a few file cabinets that were probably just as expanded inside as the box itself was.

And a sleeping portrait of Sirius sitting on the desk.

It was maybe eight inches by ten inches. Black frame, little grubby gold easel. The painting woke up as soon as Harry hesitantly touched the desktop.

“Oh, bugger, I’m dead,” Sirius said. “Damn it all, Pup. I really hoped that this wouldn’t be necessary.”

“I’ve got maybe ten minutes before they come home,” Harry said, voice thick with the tears that he refused to allow to fall. “What do I need to do first?”

Sirius sucked a sharp breath between his teeth. “Not much time then. Right. First off, you need to leave me here. I’m what’s supporting all this expanded space. Second, get out of the box, close the lids, reseal the tape. Should just form right back up when you close the flaps. Then find every single thing that matters to you. Set the box on top of them. They’ll be taken into the box and stored right here by the desk.”

“Safer,” Harry said with a shaky nod.

“Much,” Sirius agreed. It was so odd seeing him look this stable, this sane. This serious. “Then, put your hand on top of the box. Say “shrink”. It’ll turn into a pack of cards. Put that in your right pocket. A purse will appear in your left pocket. That has money and all the keys you need to get into the vaults at Gringotts.”

Harry blinked. “So Gringotts is next?”

“Mhm,” Sirius agreed. “You’re my heir, Harry. I left all of it to you. All of it. Every single knut. All the property. Every elf, book, and piece of trash. Dumbledore doesn’t want you to get it. He thinks he can control what happens to you and to the Black family fortune. He can’t. You are my heir, which means you get the Black family magic. Already have it, actually. You’ve had it since you were about six months old. Get to Gringotts, today if you can. Tomorrow at the very latest. I put plans in place to make sure you’ll never be subject to anyone else’s control. But you have to hurry because if anyone, anyone at all, finds out before you get to Gringotts, they can block it.”

“Bugger,” Harry breathed. “Right. I’ll… talk to you later, then.”

“Go,” Sirius ordered Harry. “Be careful. Punch anyone who tries to stop you, Pup. Right in the bollocks.”

Laughter startled Harry. Made it easier to climb the ladder that was more like three rungs going up instead of two stories.

Yeah, not much time before Aunt Petunia got home. He’d better hurry.

2. When Traveling Discretion is Advised

In the end, Harry had carefully, deliberately, made a ridiculously black mark with the edge of his shoe. Right over the sofa. Getting his things had taken all of about eight minutes. That was fine. The purse and the transformed box were in his pockets, safe and sound. They didn’t show in any way until Harry put his hands in his pockets. So that was fine.

The issue was getting out of Number Four without Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon pitching a fit about it.

Harry got dinner started, a simple salad because Aunt Petunia still lived in the hope that she could get Dudley to lose weight, along with some nice thick beef and Swiss sandwiches that weighed a pound each. He’d just gotten together a nice batch of Pimms for his relatives to drink with dinner.

If everything went to plan, Harry would not be there for dinner.

Or any other meal ever again.

“What is that mark?” Aunt Petunia screeched from the front door.

“Sorry, Aunt Petunia,” Harry called to her as he put the Pimms in the fridge for the moment. “I think Dudley had grease on his shoes. I couldn’t get it out.”

She looked utterly horrified when he left the kitchen. Nice new dress, new shoes, a new updo for her hair. While Harry wore ratty clothes that should’ve gone in the bin a decade ago.

Hmm.

He might bit a bit more upset about Sirius’ box than he’d allowed himself to realize.

“That can’t stay,” Aunt Petunia said, horror and fury and futile dismay all mingling together on her horsey face.

“I can’t get it out,” Harry said helplessly. “I mean, not without funny business and that’ll just cause problems. I suppose I could go get a fresh pot of paint. I checked. The last one has dried up.”

Aunt Petunia shut her eyes, lips moving as she counted to ten. Then back to zero. And then to ten again. When she snapped her eyes open, there was only fury and determination left.

“Do it,” Aunt Petunia said. “Be quick about it.”

“I’ll need a fiver,” Harry said.

Defiantly. With what he hoped was the right level of resentment. Probably came out a bit too angry given the way Aunt Petunia’s lips thinned, but it was fine. She huffed as she dug into her new purse, pulling out a wrinkled fiver.

“I want a receipt and every bit of the change,” Aunt Petunia snapped at him. “Now get going. No dinner yet and this.”

“Oh, no,” Harry said, vaguely waving at the kitchen with the fiver. “I made dinner. Salad, beef and Swiss. Mixed up some Pimms, too. I hadn’t gotten to the fruit yet, though.”

Aunt Petunia’s mood promptly improved. “Well, that’s a relief. Now get going. Don’t you dare steal a single penny of my money, understood? You’ll eat when you get back.”

Harry glowered as he normally would, but he agreed. Anything to get out of the door and out of Privet Drive before Uncle Vernon came home.

As often as Harry’s face had been in the Prophet, it was probably a waste of time to wear a cap. People recognized his glasses. They recognized his face. They recognized his shoulders and the way he walked, stood, dodged away from obnoxious professors trying to pull him into the camera shot.

Still.

Harry spent the fiver on a cheap but solid black T-shirt, a pair of navy blue cargo shorts and a floppy sunhat that would, actually, be really nice to keep his nose from burning while he did yard work.

If, you know, he ever did yard work again.

Ten minutes later, Harry had a ticket into London out of the funds Sirius had left him. Once he had a chance, he would need to get different glasses. These had been rubbish when Aunt Petunia picked them out of the charity bin. They’d barely been good enough when he was a kid. By now, he was barely better able to see with them than without.

Hermione had taught him several spells to adjust the lenses to match his eyes. That’d been helpful. Problem was that he had to apply the spells every single day.

Summertime. Stupid Statute of Secrecy.

But that was something that he could address, once he was in Diagon, now wasn’t it? Around that much magic, no one would even notice if Harry did magic. So that was a plan.

Forty minutes and two transfers later, he was off the train and heading up the road to the Leaky Cauldron.

He’d dodged into a different charity shop at the last transfer since it was just across the street from his station. His new trainers weren’t held together by duct tape. They were scuffed and dodgy, but relatively whole. The new glasses he’d picked were sort of squarish, bit squished on the outside edges to make them more of a wedge than a square.

They looked very weird on Harry’s face, but the thick black rims were as unlike as possible to his normal round glasses that they made a great disguise when coupled with the hat and clothes.

All the bits and pieces of his other clothing had gone in bins along the way to the Leaky Cauldron. By the time he hit the Leaky Cauldron’s block, Harry had nothing tying him back to Privet Drive. Not even his old glasses.

New ones had a better prescription to start from anyway. Better glass, better frames with more substance to hold the spells, once he could actually do the spells. So yeah. That was good.

Harry’s nerves still jangled as he strode up the street, trying to be the exact opposite of a young man who was exactly where he shouldn’t be without any kind of escort. Confidence. He needed to act confident, even if he was about to claw his way out of his own skin from sheer nerves.

The sun was just setting behind the buildings when he pushed open the Leaky’s door. It’s light colored everything on the Leaky gold and rose. Looked almost romantic and historic instead of dingy and run-down.

Sound hit like a wall.

Inside, the Leaky was chaos. People everywhere, all the tables full. Crowds of people stood and walked and drank between the tables. The bar was three deep with customers shouting orders to Tom and his staff.

“Great game!” one man shouted to his mate, right overtop Harry’s head. “Did’ya see that seeker?”

“I did!” his mate shouted back, pushing Harry out of the way of their enthusiasm.

Fortunately, that pushed him in the direction Harry wanted to go.

“Excuse me, pardon me, budge over, thank you, thank you,” Harry shouted as he shimmied through the crowd with one hand on the purse in his pocket and the other hand on top his head so that his sunhat wouldn’t get knocked right off in the revelry.

“I can’t believe them,” another man groaned as he stared morosely into his beer.

“Worst. Game. Ever.” His girlfriend / wife / friend / whatever shook her head as she sipped at her elf wine.

Today. There would have to be a big quidditch game today. Just Harry’s awful luck.

Or wonderful, maybe. Harry slipped through the crowd towards the back door, getting a few looks but not too many. Sure, he could barely shuffle sideways through the masses of people, but at least they didn’t much glance Harry’s way.

Those few who did? None of them had that spark of surprise, delight and awe that came with meeting the Boy-Who-Lived. Or even the disgust, dismay and fear that came with meeting someone that the Prophet had repeatedly called a nutter.

Harry was just another person in the Leaky, then another person spilling out of the Leaky and onto Diagon Alley. He was normal. One of the crowd making their way from the pub towards their destinations.

When was the last time Harry had been free to just walk up Diagon Alley?

Years?

Yeah, years.

After he blew up Aunt Marge, actually. Ever since that his movement had been curtailed. His freedoms, what few he had, cut off. Sirius was right. Harry really did have to do something to get free from Dumbledore’s control. It wasn’t like Dumbledore had ever done a single thing to help him.

Harry stepped to the side, underneath Quality Quidditch Supplies’ awning, so that he could spell his glasses to the correct prescription. He made a point of cleaning them on the hem of his shirt, peering through them as if getting spots off and everything, before putting them back on.

No one seemed to notice.

It wasn’t paranoia if people really were out to get you.

Harry thought about strolling. He thought about running full tilt because enough time had passed that Aunt Petunia would’ve started getting angry instead of just being grateful that Harry wasn’t around to ruin a “perfect” dinner with her precious little family.

No, she would not inform Dumbledore.

She wouldn’t need to. Someone had to be watching Privet Drive. Spells at least. Harry had yet to forgive Dumbledore for last summer.

He settled on a purposeful stride with as grim of an expression as he could, eyes locked on Gringotts’ steps so that no one would try and interact with him.

Who knew here Rita was? She’d love to write a story about Harry, paint him as a nutter yet again. Harry knew Hermione had Rita under her thumb, but it wasn’t a tight grip, and Harry knew that Rita would break free the instant that she could.

No one noticed Harry trot up the stairs into Gringotts.

No one paid a speck of attention to him joining a line and waiting patiently for his turn.

The goblin at the till sneered at Harry’s floppy hat and his thick black glasses. “Key.”

Harry took a deep breath and opened the purse Sirius had given him. There had to be a key in there, right? He said something about vaults.

Eight keys rested in the bottom of the purse this time as it was spelled to give you exactly what you needed. One of them poked its handle up for Harry to grasp. He pulled it, palmed it so that no one could see the key itself for fear that it was somehow distinctive enough to be identifiable.

The goblin froze when Harry rested it on the counter.

His eyes flicked to Harry’s and there was the moment of recognition.

Followed by rage, resignation, and then a deeply annoyed smirk that looked like war looming on the horizon.

“I need access to my vaults,” Harry said.

“Very good,” the goblin said. “You will be escorted. Step aside. Wait at the bench.”

Harry tucked the key back into his purse and did as told.

Gringotts never closed, it seemed. The light coming from outside slowly dimmed as torches flared to life inside. The flow of witches and wizards slowed to a trickle. Most of them looked like they were drunk, hungry, drunk and hungry, or begrudgingly paying off bets from the game earlier today.

Only once the lobby emptied did a goblin step to Harry’s side.

“This way, please,” the young, rather nervous looking goblin said. “Quickly.”

“Thank you,” Harry said, deeply relieved to get out of the lobby at last. “Let’s go. Faster the better.”

People’s voices rang on the steps along with stumbling footsteps. Harry and the young goblin exchanged looks before rushing towards a side door. They made it just before the great doors into Gringotts opened. Harry blew out a breath in relief once they were out of sight.

“All right, vault please,” Harry said. “Let’s get this handled.”

3. A Proper Gentlebeing Ensures Their Affairs are Handled Promptly

Harry’s normal vault wasn’t too far down. Having talked to a few of the pureblood kids who weren’t complete berks, at least not berks all the time like Malfoy, Harry knew that Gringotts’ vaults went from fairly shallow things down to holy crap, that’s an entire mountain on top of your head. Complete with the impression that the ceiling was about to crush you.

Of course, there were a few Tube lines that were like that, too, not that Harry’d ever had much of a chance to ride the Tube. Someday, though. Once all this was over and he got to live his life, he had a private little life goal to go ride the Tube all over London. See sights.

Go in and ogle the British Museum specifically because it made Hermione breathe fire even worse than house elf rights.

Which, you know, whatever.

That was in the hazy “someday” that went along with puppies and rainbows, kittens and having an actual family that loved him.

The cart ride getting to Harry’s normal vault was always a blast, full of drops and swooping turns that reminded him of riding his broom while chasing the snitch. Short. Much too short in Harry’s opinion. The ride was over too quick, every time he’d been.

Which honestly hadn’t been anywhere near often enough, just in practical terms, but then no one trusted Harry to handle his own money. Couldn’t let the abused kid get his hands on enough money that he could escape from his awful home, right? He might just pull a runner and then where would the Magi world be?

Yeah, Harry was definitely a good bit more bitter than he should be.

Should as in “it wasn’t safe to show” as opposed to should as in “whatever are you so upset over?”

Harry bit his lip, then let it go again quick-like because nope, not smart on this cart ride.

The ride down to Sirius’ vault was a good long ride, nice solid five minutes of the best swoops, drops, turns and breakneck acrobatics that Harry’d had in ages. At one point they splashed through the spray of an underground waterfall that had to be fifty meters high. He heard a dragon roar off through the tunnels and for the life of him, he’d swear that he got a whiff of troll once.

Best part was the bit where they ground upwards for about twenty meters and then plunged so close to straight down that if Harry hadn’t been latched into his seat and clinging for all he was worth, he would’ve been vaulted straight out into the darkness to splatter against the unseen walls.

The jerk and swoop when they reached the bottom of the plunge forced a whoop of delight out of his lungs that made Halfacre, the cart driver, cackle with glee.

And if Halfacre seemed to decide to extend the ride by flicking a couple of switches and pulling a lever so that they veered abruptly off to the left for another series of swoops, loops, barrel rolls and a fantastic plunge, well, Harry wasn’t going to complain.

Best cart ride ever!

He grinned so hard his face hurt by the time they reached the vault way down under the earth where it was warm and humid instead of cool and dry. Felt kind of like a sauna, honestly. Hot and steamy all around. Harry was glad he had summer clothes on.

“That was amazing,” Harry enthused once they were off the cart in front of a vault with no number on the door. “You have the best job ever!”

Halfacre grinned at Harry, all fangs and sparkling eyes. “It’s rare to have a wizard with sense.”

“My friends would disagree with you on me having sense, but they’re obviously wrong,” Harry said.

Harry’s trust vault, the few times he’d ever been to it, had a number on the door. It was clearly labeled and easily findable. Probably there were maps that showed who owned each of the numbered vaults. Seemed like a logical thing for Gringotts to do and something that Ministry would insist on.

These vaults looked like they were much older than the Ministry. Much older. This deep into the earth under Gringotts, there were no numbers. no names. Nothing to indicate who owned the vaults.

Though, actually, there were no vault doors, either.

The cavern that Halfacre led Harry to was massive, the size of a Quidditch pitch in length, width and height. No torches adorned the dark granite walls with their chisel marks. Instead, the granite had veins of smoky quartz shot through with threads of silver and gold. Light glowed in the quartz, reflecting off the silver and gold to illuminate the cavern.

Not one vault door. No locks. No keyholes, either.

Harry hummed as Halfacre stopped in the center of the cavern and stared expectantly up at Harry. There was a hum of magic about him, something that felt like Aunt Marge’s dogs staring hungrily at Harry. Or maybe like a curse in the process of being cast.

Threat of death and destruction with no instructions; just Harry’s luck.

“No clues?” Harry asked Halfacre.

Halfacre snorted, not like a laugh, more like disgust. He, very significantly for a Goblin who’d been downright chatty up until this moment, said not one word. Harry ran the tip of his tongue over his teeth.

This was a test. Halfacre might not actually be Halfacre. Might be whatever it was that Sirius had set up to make sure that no one could track back to Harry or take the Black fortune.

Harry did not turn around to see if there was another Halfacre at the entrance to the cavern.

Turning his back on this Halfacre did not feel safe. At all.

“Of course it can’t be simple,” Harry sighed. “I can’t even blame Sirius. He earned his paranoia.”

Halfacre snorted a laugh, baring his sharp teeth in a grin that felt much more threatening all alone so deep under Gringotts.

There had to be something among what Sirius had given him. The slip of paper with Harry’s signature?

No, his gut said it was too soon for that. That was for final confirmations, not for opening doors. And, well, opening doors was something you used keys for.

“Here’s hoping his plans were good enough,” Harry said as he pulled out the purse.

When Harry opened it, the keys that had been there were gone. All that remained was a single galleon.

“Huh,” Harry said as he delicately fished the galleon out. “Looks normal.”

It certainly didn’t feel normal. His fingers tingled as soon as he touched the galleon. When he pulled it out of the purse, the quartz flared as bright as the sun at noon in the depths of August’s worst heat waves.

Harry flinched, shielding his eyes with the purse so that he wouldn’t be totally blinded. He did, obviously, keep the galleon out.

“Interesting,” Halfacre said.

When Harry opened his eyes to peer at Halfacre, he was alone in the center of the cavern. Halfacre stood back at the entrance to the cavern, solidly outside of the doorway. And, oddly, there definitely was a vault door.

Two other goblins stood behind Halfacre, not in the tailored business suit that Halfacre wore but in heavy laminate armor that looked like brass. Maybe? Or gold. Harry didn’t know enough about metals to be sure.

“What just happened?” Harry asked, still holding the galleon in his fingertips, shivering with the charge it gave off.

“We were warned that the wards placed on this vault would… be lethal to one who did not carry the correct key,” Halfacre said. “We, the Goblin Nation, are not pleased that the Black Family fortune has been removed from Gringotts.”

“Removed…” Harry breathed. “Oh. Oh, bloody hell. That’s what he set up! Was there anything left behind? Anything at all?”

“Just the letter behind you,” Halfacre said. He nodded towards Harry.

No, towards the floor behind Harry.

Sitting in the exact middle of the cavern was a stapled stack of lined notebook paper. Sirius’ scrawl cut across it, in the same silver ink that had been on the letter Harry carried.

Harry licked his lips before sitting in on the floor next to the letter. He kept the purse in his lap, the galleon in his right hand. And picked up the letter.

Sorry for sending you on fetch quests, Pup.

Harry choked on a laugh. “This is like a puzzle quest, I guess. Kind of fun if the stakes weren’t so high.”

The Goblins won’t be happy at all with you. I’ve liquidated virtually every single asset that the Blacks have. Sold properties, cleared out every vault. Sold off most every single thing that I could, outside of the stuff that will be useful for you.

You have all the books, of course. Those are in the box. Bunch of wands, lots of tools, enough cauldrons that you’ll probably never need another even if you live to three hundred.

That’s a bare drop in the bucket compared to the Black wealth.

Dumbledore isn’t the only one who wants that money, Pup. Malfoy, You-Know-Who, three quarters of the Wizengamot and the entirety of the Ministry. They all want a piece of what the Black family gathered up.

I won’t let them take it.

You’re my heir. You are the sole heir to the Black and the Potter estates. Right now, the Black estate consists of my parents’ pit of a house in London. You know about that mess. I took steps to strip it bare of anything useful pretty much as soon as Dumbledore stuffed me in there. Don’t worry about the junk that’s been left behind. Most of it was just decoy trash I bought to keep Molly and the kids busy so that they wouldn’t notice me escaping to take care of everything else.

That meant angering the Goblins. I’m sorry that you have to fix it, but it’s pretty straightforward to fix.

Go to the Potter vaults. Plural. There are at least four, possibly as many as ten. Lily had her own vault, too. That had all her books and notes. You’ll want those. Never, ever, let anyone see those notes, Pup.

Lily studied some of the blackest magic possible, rituals and blood sacrifice, to find a way to save you. It’s all in her notes.

Empty out those vaults. Same procedure as with your things, except once you’re in the vault all you have to do is set the box down. It will load it all up automatically.

With a very nice inventory that Remus created back when we were in school. You’ll have the best accounting possible once done.

Then go talk to the Potter account manager, Silverclaw. He has the next step you need to take. Three more after him. Talk to Silverclaw. Pick an estate to hide on (the Potters had almost as many as the Blacks). Talk to your Seneschal. Find Lacey Black.

She works for Gringotts. She’s married to my cousin Anthony. She’s a curse breaker who can ensure that you’re safe from everything that might come at you.

I love you, Pup, more than life itself.

And truly, I’m sorry for sending you running around like this. It’s the only way to make sure that all the pieces are secure.

Harry breathed through the tears. Scrubbed his face dry with the hem of his black T-Shirt. And then stood, sniffling.

“The galleon is the key to get in here safely, right?” Harry said to Halfacre who nodded, no longer smiling. “Huh. And what would happen if I left the galleon in here, say, over on the far side of the cavern so that whoever came in had to cross the whole thing to get to it?”

Halfacre’s smile came back with all of his teeth showing. The guards in their laminar armor grinned, too, all toothy hunger.

“Good,” Harry said.

He didn’t cross the cavern. He went back to the door and then used his wand to levitate the coin all the way across the room. Seemed appropriate to set it right in the light from one of the quartz veins. It gleamed temptingly.

“Perfect,” Harry said. “Let’s close this up. I need to go to the Potter vaults next and yes, you’re not going to be happy with me, but I trust Sirius. If he said this was necessary, it was.”

“I hope that you’re right, wizard,” Halfacre said as he closed the vault back up.

The door disappeared into the stone wall.

4. When Undertaking a New Path Wise Advice is to be Sought

Silverclaw was to Goblins what Helen of Troy was to humans, apparently. While Harry didn’t see it, every single Goblin who interacted with Silverclaw went all google-eyed and as fidgety as Ron around Lavender when she had a new sundress with a deeply plunging neckline.

He was also so angry that his very shiny, very silvery claws set off sparks every time he touched anything. There were dozens of gouges across the marble surface of his desk, though Silverclaw didn’t shred a single piece of paper or parchment. Probably good. Those were all records of the Potter fortune and estates.

Plural.

Harry had dozens of houses.

Dozens.

In Britain. Scotland. Two in Ireland. One in Italy where he owned an entire island that was unplottable and so heavily warded that no one could have gotten at him or his parents.

You know, if they’d gone there. Which they hadn’t.

Apparently because Dumbledore thought that the Fidelus which relied on trusting your friends to never betray you even if threatened, stalked or tortured was so much better than literal centuries old war wards layered over blood wards layered over bloody runic arrays that were, according to Silverclaw, taught to ICW war mages as what NOT to try and break.

Yeah. That.

Harry might just possibly be righteously pissed off.

He had a keep, too.

A literal stone keep, a castle, with war wards that had never been breached. In Scotland! Not too far from Hogwarts as the broom flew.

All intact when his parents were alive. Potter Manor where his grandparents had lived had been destroyed utterly. Everything else? All good. Lovely. Perfect. Very safe indeed.

Dumbledore hadn’t thought that it was best, so his bloody perfect saintly parents hadn’t gone to any of their strongholds.

And, because Dumbledore said so, Harry couldn’t possibly go there after they died miserably at the wand of the most dangerous Dark Lord the world had ever seen.

Nope.

The safest place for Harry to grow up was at Number Four Privet Drive where he was beaten, starved, and worked like a slave.

You know, Harry wasn’t any less angry than Silverclaw. He was just angry about different things. Perfectly understandable.

“Nothing,” Silverclaw said yet again. “You have been taught nothing about your duties as the heir of the House of Black and the House of Potter.”

While Silverclaw was the Goblin’s Helen, his office was a remarkably normal-seeming office. Stone floor, stone walls with old chisel marks, a big desk about twice as long as Harry was tall and just about that wide topped with very fine gold-threaded grey marble. He had wood filing cabinets and a bookshelf carved into the wall behind his desk that held several hundred leather-bound account books.

A great many of which seemed to be for various Potters that Harry was descended from. That he should have known about years upon years ago. Before he even started Hogwarts, much less now that he was nearly sixteen.

Harry smiled. It was a terrible smile that hurt his face. He couldn’t seem to stop doing it.

“Nope,” Harry agreed. “Don’t even know what the “House of” means. And right this moment, I don’t bloody well care.”

That drew Silverclaw up short, though the gnashing teeth and claws sparking against his desktop didn’t stop. Silverclaw sneered at Harry as if he’d just abandoned everything that his parents and Sirius had ever believed. Wanted. Built.

Yeah, right.

“There is no time for rage right now,” Harry snapped at Silverclaw. “I’ve been kept bloody ignorant because Dumbledore decided that I should get to be a child. You know, after shoving me into an abusive household to grow up. Sirius was very clear. You have something I need to do. My seneschal had something for me. And I need Lacey Black. She works for Gringotts.”

Silverclaw drew a long slow breath through his flaring nostrils, eyes narrowed at Harry. “I was directed to ensure that you chose a safe location. You have two options: Potter Keep or Potter Sanctum.”

“Keep is in Scotland,” Harry said, double-checking the inventory in his lap. “Sanctum is the one in Italy, right?”

“Exactly,” Silverclaw agreed.

Harry drummed his fingers against the inventory. Then stopped to look at his blunt, ragged nails. He chuckled, nodding to Silverclaw.

“I’m angry enough that I want claws like yours,” Harry quipped. “Pity I only have human nails.”

Surprisingly, Silverclaw looked flattered instead of rolling his eyes.

“All right,” Harry said. “I need someone who can check to see if I have trackers on my body, my clothes, glasses, whatever. I dumped everything I was wearing before, but there’s no guarantee that they didn’t transfer over, as I understand it.”

Silverclaw hummed as he wrote a quick note that he dropped into the box on his desk. It flamed away.

“Lacey Black is one of our best curse breakers,” Silverclaw said. “She will be able to determine that. Your seneschal Amal Swashlin can be summoned.”

“Good,” Harry said. “Say that, oh, someone tried to access my trust vault with my key, but I wasn’t there. It’s happened often enough. Make it sound like a final offense.”

“It’s what?” Silverclaw snapped.

Harry sighed. “You need to get your people checked for curses and mind alteration because Mrs. Weasley used my key multiple times to get money for my school things. And I know Dumbledore had the key the rest of the time.”

“We will do an immediate audit,” Silverclaw said as he much more aggressively wrote another note, hopefully to this Amal person.

“Don’t bother,” Harry said. He waved off Silverclaw outrage. “I’ve already pulled everything, Silverclaw. There’s not one knut left in the vaults. Whatever’s been siphoned off is all that will be stolen. Sure, track down who did it, but I already know that it was Molly and Dumbledore. Molly for me and Dumbledore to pay for his grand plans of sitting on his arse while Voldemort rampages around.”

Silverclaw huffed as the door to his office opened to let a slim young woman about twenty-five or thirty years older than Harry in. She had black hair, dark brown eyes that were as unfriendly as Pansy Parkinson’s when she glared at someone trying to flirt with Draco Malfoy, and a business suit with a neat pencil skirt in charcoal grey.

“You summoned me, Account Manager Silverclaw?” Lacey Black asked.

“Yes,” Silverclaw said as he gestured towards Harry. “Heir Potter-Black is in need of your skills. He is worried about tracking spells.”

Lacey Black’s eyes went wide at “Heir Potter-Black” and then went hard as diamonds at the tracking spells bit. It wasn’t actually easy to sit still when she drew her wand. Everything in Harry screamed that this was someone who was hugely dangerous, maybe not to him, but in general.

The spells she cast were like nothing Harry had ever seen before. Hogwarts hadn’t given him much of an education in tracking spells or detection spells, but Lacey cast sort of like Fleur had. Down to a very solid grip with her pointer finger and thumb and a very loose grip with her other fingers.

“You went to Beauxbatons?” Harry asked as Lacey’s magic coiled and crackled around him.

“I did,” Lacey confirmed. “You’ve no tracking spells on your clothes or personal belongings. Well done, there. There are some on your magic and your body. I can dispel them easily enough. And there’s something deeply vile in your scar.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Harry sighed. “Right. Get rid of the trackers. Can we get rid of the trace on my wand?”

“Not without it being noted by the Ministry,” Lacey said even though she was busily casting spells all over Harry.

“Fine, I’ll use a backup for a while, then,” Harry said. He shrugged at Lacey’s raised eyebrow. “It’s a long story. What about my name made you react that way?”

“…I…” Lacey hesitated visibly. Not in her casting, just in answering. “My husband is a Black. His father was cast out for being a squib, so we were never taken into the family magic. We… felt… Sirius die. We knew there was an heir. We haven’t been able to find the Black Heir so that we could swear to him and the family.”

Harry’s breath caught.

Not all from the realization that this was family. Lacey and her husband could be his family, could be people fully and totally on his side. They weren’t part of the Hogwarts thing. They, presumably Lacey’s husband had gone to Beauxbatons too, had learned totally different things and had no allegiance to Dumbledore or the Ministry.

The other part was feeling like Lacey was tugging on his intestines with every spell she broke.

Seriously, weirdest sensation ever.

“There,” Lacey said with a firm nod. “You’ve no tracking on you at all now, other than the Trace on your wand.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Harry said as he sagged in his chair. “Okay, I need to know just what it means to swear to me and the family.”

Lacey’s smile went crooked and nervous, which looked really strange on her cold, determined face. “It means what you as the Heir want it to. If you want us to serve you, we would have to. If you want us to swear never to serve Dark Lords, that would be more than acceptable. Keep your secrets, help you learn, keep you safe, whatever you choose.”

“Huh,” Harry said as he rubbed his thumbnail over his bottom lip, letting the jagged edge from gardening catch on his dry lips.

That was… somewhat disturbing. The extent of power possible. Though pretty clearly, he didn’t have that power over them until they swore and presumably Lacey wouldn’t let her husband swear anything stupid. She was very clearly not a careless or uninformed lady.

Harry pulled out the purse and, after a moment’s hesitation, opened it.

A folded piece of paper sat in the purse.

“Okay, seriously, this is really like a scavenger hunt or something,” Harry said as he pulled the note out.

The outside of the note said Pup, give this to Lacey. Don’t read it until she has.

“Uh-huh,” Harry said, staring at Sirius’ silver writing. “This is for you. I’m to read it after you.”

Lacey took it and frowned. “What is this?”

“It’s a note from Sirius Black,” Harry said, smiling wryly at the way Lacey started and nearly dropped the note. “He… made plans before he died to get me to safety and to deny everyone else in the world the Black legacy and fortune. It’s why Silverclaw and the Goblins aren’t happy with me. I’m taking both the Black fortune and the Potter fortune out of here. You know, after I finish all of Sirius’ fetch-quests.”

Lacey’s shoulders slowly came down as she stared down at the note. He couldn’t tell what she thought about it, though she did allow the right corner of her mouth to curl up in a tiny smile when he called all the sneaking about “fetch-quests”.

Eventually, Lacey opened the note with a reverent air.

Her breath punched out of her as her cheeks went as pale as bone. Harry almost stood when Lacey’s knees started shaking. He did when she made a low moaning sound and tears welled up in her eyes.

Thankfully, she allowed Harry to urge her into the chair, though that might have been because she had one hand over her mouth as she cried. Eyes locked on the note that she silently offered to Harry to read.

Lacey, Sirius wrote in a less casual scrawl, I charge you and Anthony with protecting my heir and my son in all but blood from the forces arrayed against him. It won’t be easy. I know you can do it. You’re brilliant and talented and I desperately wish I’d known you and Anthony existed before three days ago.

You’re Blacks. You’re the sort of Blacks that we used to be, brilliant and dangerous, loyal to the bone and to hell with everyone else.

Harry will adore you. Whatever children the two of you choose to have, I know Harry will dote on them. He’s desperate for family, both because of the family magic and because of all the shite that’s happened to him.

Take care of him. Trust him. Give him the help he needs, and he’ll give you a home like none you can even conceive of.

Because Harry’s Heir Black, yeah, but he’s also a Potter.

Potters make homes, the very best homes.

He’s my boy. Take care of him for me since I can’t do it anymore.

Harry sucked a soggy breath in at Sirius’ signature at the bottom. He laughed a little before passing the note back to Lacey so that he could wipe his face off. Fruitlessly since his stupid eyes didn’t seem to want to stop crying.

“He’s not wrong,” Harry said, looking anywhere but at Lacey or Silverclaw. “First instinct when you said you’re related was “family for me!” So yeah. He’s not wrong.”

“I… had much the same response,” Lacey said through her own tears and awkward laughter. “I’ll summon my husband right away. The sooner we’re sworn the better. I’ll come up with an oath that we can all agree on.”

Harry nodded. “Do. We can talk about exactly what needs to be added or changed once there’s a draft, you know?”

“Mm,” Lacey agreed.

She tucked the note away into her vest pocket and hesitated for just a moment before resting her hand on Harry’s shoulder. He had to fight another wave of tears of mingled grief and hope at the firm touch. Then she was gone, leaving Harry to flop back down into the chair.

Bloody hell, this day was never going to end.

5. Hired Staff Must be Properly Managed to Prevent Poor Performance

What Goblins called “tea”, Harry would’ve described as “bilge water”. It stank like swamp water, had the vague brown tone like what came from wood slowly getting waterlogged in a stagnant body of water, and tasted like someone had scrubbed the bottom of their shoes.

Edible. Barely.

Just a decidedly odd contrast to the truly amazing scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam that Silverclaw summoned when Harry tried to stand and nearly passed out from exhaustion and overwrought emotions.

And hunger. Definitely hunger was in there, too, what with Aunt Petunia’s refusal to feed him an actual meal. And the hour. Whatever hour it actually was now. Harry wasn’t sure since Duds had smashed his taken-from-the-bin cheap wristwatch back at the start of the summer, but he thought it was nearing midnight. Maybe just past.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a cuppa this bad before,” Harry said, staring into his cup while pondering if he could ever get the taste off of his tongue again.

Silverclaw smirked at Harry. “Human taste buds are not well suited for our tea.”

“Yeah, clearly,” Harry agreed.

He set the cup on Silverclaw’s desk and pushed it as far away from him as he could without getting up from his seat. It didn’t insult Silverclaw. If anything, it seemed to amuse him. Harry snarfed down two more scones with as much clotted cream and jam on them as he could manage. Not the best way to fill up but at least it got the worst of the taste out of his mouth.

Silverclaw deigned to fill Harry’s cup with clean, fresh water to wash the scone away. They’d only just begun to discuss which was better, ham and cheddar sandwiches or chicken and Swiss, when Silverclaw’s door flew open as a tall, slender man with dark skin, messy black hair, and a wild sort of fury around him stormed in.

“Silverclaw, what in the bloody hell is going on?” the man, probably Amal Swashlin, demanded. “Your message woke me up from a sound sleep. You can’t close the Potter vaults—we’ve got a bloody contract. Why wouldn’t you do an audit to determine who stole from the vaults instead of just closing them out?”

“Yeah, sorry, that was me, actually,” Harry said. “Amal Swashlin?”

“What?” Amal snapped at Harry this time. He frowned, blinked several times, and then jerked upright as his cheeks paled. “Mr. Potter! Oh, goodness, please pardon my language. Silverclaw and I have been working together for decades now.”

Harry grinned. “No, it’s fine. No worries. We just needed to get you in here immediately in a way that wouldn’t be too noticeable to the Ministry and certain individuals of power.”

Amal opened his mouth. He shut his mouth. Then he sighed as he smoothed his hands over his rumpled vest and the bunched-up seersucker shirt underneath it.

The longer Harry looked, the more obvious it was that they’d jolted Amal out of deep sleep, and he’d responded by throwing on whatever clothes were at hand. Including two completely different socks and house slippers instead of proper shoes.

“Sirius Black named me his heir,” Harry said as Silverclaw summoned a cup of Goblin tea for Amal that Amal promptly banished and replaced with a normal cup of tea. “I’m working through all the things that he believed were necessary. He specifically said that I was to contact you as quickly as possible.”

“Well, yes,” Amal said as he flicked his wrist to expose a silver link bracelet with a heavy chunk of turquoise set on a thumb-width bar of gold.

A second flick of the wrist made yet another of Sirius’ silver ink notes appear in Amal’s hand. Harry eyed it warily. After the gut-wrenching grief of the last few, he wasn’t sure he was ready for another one ripping his heart in two.

“He requested that I hold this message and give it to you in person whenever we met for the first time,” Amal said as he offered it to Harry. “It’s sealed, of course. I presume it has something to do with your inheritance. No other reason to give it to me.”

Harry laughed, shaking his head at how shaky the sound came out. “Yeah, maybe. There’s a lot going on. Pretty sure that he kept you out of it all to keep you safe.”

The note just said Give to Harry Potter on first meeting.

Inside was yet another of Sirius’ notes.

Pup,

You’re obviously doing well if you’ve made it to Amal. Keep him safe, kiddo. He literally holds the key to the Potter investments, the Potter properties (the literal keys, mind you), the Potter wards (only person alive who can get in them sitting right there in front of you), and the Potter seat on the Wizengamot.

He is quite literally the most important person in your life as of this moment. Lacey and Anthony will keep you company, keep you safe to the best of their ability.

Amal is your link to the Potter legacy outside of the vaults.

He’s single, unmarried, never dated much at all. As of the day I wrote this, he lives alone and has no pets or even plants to worry about. Doesn’t much care about dressing for his station so he’s no reason to go back to his flat.

If he goes back, he’s dead.

Do not let him leave.

Enlist Silverclaw and Lacey if you need to, but do NOT let Amal Swashlin leave your sight. You-Know-Who has been hunting him for decades. It’s why he’s got no family: they were all killed in the war. Dumbledore would rip straight through his mind if it gave him a hint of where you are. And the Ministry has tried to deny him the right to even attend the Wizengamot. They’d throw him in jail.

That man right there is your second priority.

First priority is finding the safest place possible to hide out. Amal is second. Figuring out what to do with the shite in the box is third, a very distant third.

Do your best.

Love you always,

Sirius

Harry sighed as he leaned back in his seat. Not as bad as it could’ve been but…

…No, it was just as bad as it could’ve been because here was yet another person that Harry knew nothing about. Someone who held all kinds of history and secrets that had been forcefully denied him.

Like, Wizengamot? Harry had some kind of vote or power in the Wizengamot? Where had that been when they’d had that farcical little trial for usage of underage magic? He couldn’t actually access his homes without Amal? Not to mention the list of people who’d gladly kill Amal if they got the chance.

And Amal came scrambling in wearing house slippers of all things.

“Right,” Harry said. “You’re not leaving.”

Amal opened his mouth and then shut it again.

“How many people would gladly kill you if they got the chance?” Harry asked.

“I’m supposed to keep count?” Amal asked, entirely too flippantly. “Goodness, I’d have to check my records.”

“Do you have your records in that bracelet?” Harry asked. “Because I mean it. You’re going nowhere. I’m not letting you out of my sight. Not now. Probably not for several years.”

“That will be moderately uncomfortable at times,” Amal quipped as he tugged his shirt down enough that it wasn’t bunched up under his vest. “Oh. Oh my. You’re serious.”

“Quite,” Harry agreed. “Can I get into any of the Potter properties without you?”

“N~no,” Amal said slowly.

“How about the wards?” Harry asked.

“Ah, that would be a “no” as well,” Amal said as he groaned and sagged in his seat.

“Do I even need to ask about the Wizengamot, not that I know a single bloody thing about the Wizengamot?” Harry continued.

“Fine,” Amal huffed. “You’ve made your point. I’ll… I suppose I’ll just buy a new wardrobe or something. And yes, I have all the vital records in my bracelet. No one can access them but me. Though Silverclaw does have copies of virtually all of it. The Ministry has bits. And I have dead drops where the really critical things are duplicated in case someone does actually kill me.”

Harry nodded slowly. “…Good. So, safest place for me, you, and two more people to live?”

“Who?” Amal asked with complete focus and utmost seriousness, which was kind of a deep relief to see.

His eyes did flicker to Silverclaw who had that “I am deeply unimpressed with your Magi nonsense” sneer again. Harry considered that. Considered that Silverclaw had most all the information that Harry needed.

Considered that Dumbledore and Molly had very clearly been working very, very hard to keep him from ever meeting Silverclaw.

“No, I trust him to a fairly large degree,” Harry said. “Not totally, not yet, but Sirius put a lot of faith in him, and he’s been quite reasonable with me other than the swamp-muck tea. Frankly, I trust the Goblins more than I trust anyone else in the Magi world, including my best friends.”

And wasn’t that a kick in the arse to realize?

Over the last five plus years, Harry had gone from complete faith in Hermione and Ron to disappointment, fury, and outright distrust of them to back him up on what he needed to do. Yes, Ron had eventually given Harry a grudging apology. Yes, Hermione had explained why she’d gone over his head.

Repeatedly. Her reasoning was sound. It just displayed a total lack of faith in Harry’s sense and ability to take care of himself.

He still loved them both. They were the very first friends he’d ever had.

He didn’t trust them anymore.

Maybe not since those first betrayals. Which was an issue to deal with privately later. Much later. Maybe years from now. Perhaps he could’ve had a fair, equal friendship with them if they met without Harry’s Boy-Who-Lived legacy hanging over their heads.

They hadn’t had a chance for a real friendship.

They never would now.

Silverclaw’s jaw dropped open a fraction of an inch at the revelation that Harry trusted the Goblins. Amal’s jaw just flapped as he tried to say something and failed.

“Doesn’t matter right this instant,” Harry said, waving off their shock. “Best, safest place for me, you, and two more Magi.”

“That’s… hard to answer,” Amal said slowly. “Um. Gringotts is always the safest place for anything precious. But. I don’t think we could get you to the Sanctuary in Italy in an untraceable way. The Keep isn’t secure enough. The wards need a lot of help. And, well, anywhere isn’t going to be secure against all of those opponents.”

“Huh,” Harry grunted. “That’s about where I landed, too. Darn it all. Well, once the others get here, we’ll have a discussion about it.”

Amal frowned at Harry as he shifted in his seat while looking at his toes. He started and then went beet red, apparently only just noticing that he had house slippers on instead of shoes. Harry snickered.

“Give me a second,” Harry said. “If you don’t mind my accessing the things that Sirius left me in your office, Silverclaw?”

Silverclaw’s sneer returned, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Do as you will, Wizard.”

Not exactly permission, but Harry was going to take it that way since he didn’t want to address the curiosity all but eating Silverclaw alive.

Harry pulled out the playing card shaped box. He could reshape it, go diving down into it and hunt around. Or he could trust that Sirius wasn’t actually a total idiot who threw an infinite amount of stuff into a box with no organization or method to bring out what you needed. Sirius had used Remus’ inventory spell. Presumably, that inventory could pull out exactly what Harry needed when he needed it.

Pair of shoes for Amal. A robe that would be warm and comfy, too.

As Harry concentrated, a pair of nice leather shoes materialized on the floor in front of Harry’s toes. A moment later, a nice navy blue robe landed on his lap. Harry smiled and tucked the box away again as Silverclaw’s eyebrows rose towards his poofy hair and Amal’s jaw dropped open again.

“Huh, Sirius wasn’t as flighty as he seemed,” Harry said. “Here we go. Shoes and a robe so you aren’t quite so obviously just rousted out of bed.”

“…Thank you,” Amal said, blinking. “That was quite interesting. I’ve not seen a holding spell that returned things in exactly that fashion.”

Didn’t stop him from putting the shoes on or from slinging the robe on, too. Amal shrank his house slippers and tucked them into the robe’s pocket.

Harry rubbed his hands over his face. There was so much he needed yet, but at least with Amal here and safe, he had a chance of learning what he needed to. Of course, the key part was going to be finding a place where they could all be safe from everything Dumbledore, Voldemort and the Ministry could throw at him.

And that was probably going to be the hardest part of all of this.

6. On the Formation of a Household for Gentlebeings of Power

Amal had only just sat back down when the door opened up again.

“You’re serious,” a man who looked remarkably like Sirius said as he followed Lacey in. “Really? No jokes?”

“Do I ever joke about things like this?” Lacey asked.

While Lacey’s expression didn’t change at all, there was a sort of warmth to her tone that made Harry’s cheeks go hot. It felt… almost… intimate to hear Lacey speaking that way to Anthony, because who else could that be?

“Sometimes,” Anthony said only to splutter and then go flamingly red when he spotted both Harry and Amal watching the two of them together.

Like Amal, Anthony looked like he’d been dragged out of bed. Possibly literally. Surprisingly enough, Amal had done a better job getting dressed before coming to Silverclaw’s office. He’d had proper trousers and a shirt, an actual vest, even if he’d not quite gotten them on properly.

Anthony had on a dressing gown in painfully bright blue over lime green pajamas with darker green banana leaves on them. His hair was as much a rat’s nest as Harry’s always was and his feet had been thrust into fuzzy white bunny slippers.

“Wow,” Harry said, staring at Anthony’s clothes. Pajamas. Disaster area of garments that should never be seen together, much less in public.

“Yeah, no, I’m going to have to second that one,” Amal said from behind the hand he’d raised to hide his sudden grin.

Anthony turned to Lacey with the sort of fond annoyance that Aunt Petunia had whenever Uncle Vernon started in on Rugby is The Best Game Ever rants. From Lacey’s smirk, she’d expected that response and was deeply amused by it.

“Really?” Anthony groaned. “Why do I love you?”

“Because I’m amazing, terrifying, and the most competent woman you’ve ever met,” Lacey replied instantly with an actual grin.

The grin only lasted for a moment, but it still made Anthony blush and Harry snicker. If anything, Silverclaw looked tired of all the human nonsense while Amal studied Anthony and Lacey like they were puzzle pieces that didn’t fit in at all.

“All right,” Harry said, recapturing everyone’s attention. “Anthony, Lacey, welcome to the Black family. There’s probably some sort of ritual to be done, but we can do that later. Unless it’s urgently needed to keep you and me safe.”

“It can wait a bit,” Lacey confirmed with a serious little nod.

“It definitely can wait,” Anthony agreed as he shoved his hands in his obnoxious bright blue dressing gown’s pockets. “Better to do it somewhere private and safe.”

“Good,” Harry said. “This is Amal Swashlin, the Potter… seneschal?”

“Seneschal,” Amal confirmed, eyes wide as he stared at Anthony and Lacey. Apparently, he now knew why they were there and was a bit overwhelmed. Impressed? Surprised maybe.

Whatever. Harry was too tired to parse out adult facial expressions. They could deal with their emotions themselves.

“Lacey,” Harry said, “gut instinct: Where’s the safest place for the four of us to hide out from literally everyone in the world?”

“Gringotts,” Lacey said before grimacing. “But that won’t work. The Ministry…”

“And Dumbledore and You-Know-Who,” Harry agreed tiredly. “Same answer, Anthony?”

Anthony shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much. But it’s obvious.”

When Harry turned to Silverclaw, he got a snarl that would normally have been scary enough to make Harry flinch. The faint buzzing of utter exhaustion in Harry’s ears, familiar from years of being worked until he dropped by Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, kept the fear away. Also made the world feel like it was about two meters out of reach down a faintly echoing tunnel which meant that Harry urgently needed solid food to eat, about half a liter of water, and at least four hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Sucked to be him because that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

“I have to walk out of here with everything,” Harry told Silverclaw. “Sirius set things up so that I could do that. It’s big. It’s obvious. It’s going to be very, very clear once people follow the trail that I took a runner. Thing is, I agree with Amal, Lacey and Anthony.”

Silverclaw’s eyebrow went up as his snarl subsided into a faint sneer.

“This is the safest place in the world for me, for them, and for everything in the Black and Potter legacies,” Harry said. “Which means that we’ve got to be sneaky about this. I have to walk out of here in the not too distant future. I was seen going in, so I have to be seen coming out. I need to go… somewhere… to eat and sleep and stuff. But then I want to portkey back into Gringotts so that we can… I don’t know. Set up new vaults? Hide the four of us in a vault spelled to look and feel like we’re outside? Something. I’m guessing right now.”

Silence echoed louder than the ringing in Harry’s ears for a long, fraught moment.

Then Amal started spluttering while Lacey threw up her hands like Harry was being stupid. All the shouting. All the protests about Harry not risking himself, as if that made sense. All kinds of listing of the many, many things that were wrong with the sheer idea of Harry hiding at Gringotts.

Silverclaw sat and sneered through the parallel tirades.

He wasn’t actually angry. When Silverclaw tapped his desk, there were no sparks. No gouged-out chunks of marble. Just delicate little taps as deliberate and thoughtful as Aunt Petunia carefully setting down a teacup so that she could pointedly stare when Mrs. Number Eleven made a pronouncement about what the neighborhood should be doing for the latest charity drive.

Through it all, Anthony stood there with his hands in his pockets, head rotating back and forth as he listened first to Lacey and then to Amal and then back to Lacey again.

“I cannot believe this,” Lacey finally huffed.

“It’s not safe enough,” Amal agreed even though they’d been ranting about totally different things.

“Exactly,” Lacey said as she stabbed a finger at Amal and nodded like he’d just set down new natural laws of the universe.

“Right,” Anthony said with a cheerful little chirp to his tone that made both Lacey and Amal glare at him. “So, we’re doing it, right?”

“I’m doing it,” Harry confirmed. He shrugged and waved a hand at both Amal and Lacey. “No. It doesn’t matter what objections you bring up, there needs to be more of a trail left. I have to be seen leaving Gringotts, probably in the next half hour at the latest. I have to be seen going to ground somewhere. Maybe after, I don’t know, dodging room to room or something. As far as I know, portkeys will get me wherever I need to go without my learning to do it.”

Anthony nodded. “Floo is tracked. The Knight Bus logs everyone who gets on and off. Apparation needs to be licensed and you’re nowhere near well-trained enough to learn yet. That leaves side-along, which would expose one of us, and portkeys. Obviously, portkeys are the answer.”

“I agree,” Silverclaw drawled. “Reluctantly, but I agree. Skulduggery followed by repeated portkeys is the best choice in this case. I am somewhat puzzled why you believe that the Goblin Nation would allow you to hide in Gringotts when you’re removing so much from our premises.”

“Puzzled” meant “irritated but curious”. Harry sighed as he slouched in his chair. Grownups, of any race, seemed to need to have everything explained to them in little bitty words. Why couldn’t they just follow the logic? Why?

“I would’ve thought that was obvious,” Harry drawled right back at Silverclaw because he was way too tired to be polite about anything anymore. “Gringotts is the safest place in the world. Sirius only wanted the Black and Potter treasures removed to keep anyone else from getting them. I take them. You inform, oh, Narcissa Malfoy maybe, that her trust vault was closed by the Black Patriarch before his death and that the heir, me, removed everything from Gringotts.”

“Truth,” Silverclaw said.

“Then,” Harry said with a wave towards Anthony, “when they demand that you tell them where I took it, you say you have no idea. I mean, hearsay is only hearsay. I said that I was going to flee for the safest place possible—”

“Which would logically be Potter Sanctuary in Italy,” Amal breathed, eyes going wider and wider behind his glasses.

“And that I’m going to buy multiple portkeys so that I can’t be traced,” Harry continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “So. I leave your office. I go talk to whoever does portkeys. I buy, oh, let’s go with twenty. Twenty portkeys because I am suddenly very flush with money and I’m getting the heck out of Britain. I’ll get portkeys to Italy. I’ll get portkeys to Japan, to Brazil, to Australia, New Zealand. How about Finland? I’ve always been curious about Finland. I’ll get some for multiple places in Britain, too. Maybe one to Ireland. The Shetland Islands? Sure, let’s include the Shetland Islands.”

Even Lacey looked a little awed by the idea.

“That’s very expensive,” Lacey said in an almost approving tone.

“Like I care,” Harry said. “I can literally, and have literally, survived on five pounds a week. Sirius gave me everything. I’ve got all the goods, the clothes, the books, the, the, the stuff that I need to set up anywhere in the world. Bloody hell, if I had a portable folded space like the Weasley tent, I could set up anywhere in the world and live like a king for decades before I had to go out.”

“Food,” Anthony said.

“Mountains of it, all in stasis or preserved,” Harry retorted.

“No one knows that you’ve contacted us,” Amal whispered. “As long as the three of us aren’t seen, no one will connect our disappearance for quite a while.”

“Exactly,” Harry said. He shrugged. “You guys stay here. You set up whatever new vault we need, I don’t know what’s required for that. Lacey, you work here. You’ve got to know.”

“I… do,” Lacey said but she stared at Anthony who grinned as he rocked on his toes, making the bunny slipper ears flex and the little bunny faces smile.

“We live in Gringotts,” Anthony said with a huge, huge grin. “But that’s part of Lacey’s contract. Her family gets to stay… with her.”

Harry started laughing. “Oh, Merlin’s pants. Sirius thought of everything. I’m now your family. Amal, how do I make you family? Official-like?”

Amal shrugged and came over to kneel on one knee in front of Harry. “I swear the official oaths as your seneschal and your vassal. The oath is pretty straightforward. You ask me if I swear to protect your interests, defend your estate, aid you in all your work and your life, and help you achieve all your goals. I swear that I do, same phrasing. Then our magic bonds the two of us and I’ll answer only to you until you have an heir and then it’s both of you.”

Harry blinked.

The buzzing in his head rose, then subsided as his magic lurched greedily inside of Harry. This was family. It was family in a different way than Anthony and Lacey, but it was still family.

Harry wanted family. Wanted. But only if they would be safe. That was vital. Damn it, if he just wasn’t Harry bloody Potter this would be so much easier.

“Okay,” Harry said. “I’ll have loads of questions about vassals later, but let’s do this.”

“It’s kind of a Potter thing,” Amal confided as he had Harry put his hands on the outside of Amal’s lightly folded hands. “Both the vassal thing and the millions of questions well after the fact.”

Magic already thrummed between them.

“Do you, Amal Swashlin, swear to protect my interests, defend my estate, aid me in all I have to do and help me achieve my goals?” Harry asked.

His magic rose in a green and gold cloak around the two of them, wrapping a bubble around them so that they were cut off from everyone else. Amal’s magic rose as well, filling the lower part of the bubble with red and deep sapphire blue streamers of magic that seemed to dance with joy around them.

“I, Amal Swashlin, do swear to protect your interests, defend your estate, to aid you in all that you have to do and to help you achieve your goals, Lord Harry James Potter,” Amal said, laughter twinkling in his eyes when Harry realized that he’d missed the part where he said his own name.

Their magic spun down into a rope that connected Harry to Amal. At first it was loose and fuzzy, but in a matter of seconds it spun tighter and tighter until it was hard and bright, then brighter, then it was as thin as a thread before it flashed, and the vassal bond formed between them.

Harry wheezed.

Amal squawked. “Oh, hell, no! You are going nowhere, not as tired as you are right now.”

“We don’t have time for me to sleep,” Harry groaned.

In the background, Lacey’s ice-cold expression shifted just enough that she was openly amused as she slipped out of Silverclaw’s office to get to work on the whole new vault, portkey purchase, and temporary hide-out thing. Hopefully a new name, too. Anthony snickered at Amal’s outrage.

Apparently, though, “vassal” didn’t mean “I do what you say, sir, yes, sir”. It meant “giant mother hen who will badger and lecture and threaten and then use sad eyes to get you to do what he wants.”

Amal still didn’t win.

Not because Harry gave in or because Harry was right.

He didn’t win because another Goblin poked his head into Silverclaw’s office to inform Harry that Chieftain Ragnok insisted on meeting him. Right that instant. Ten minutes ago would’ve been better, so get moving Wizard.

7. Negotiation is Critical to Building Strong Alliances

All kinds of new sights tonight was about all that Harry could think as he was escorted into a huge cavern easily the size of four or five quidditch pitches combined. At least three high, definitely four long and maybe five wide.

It was hard to be sure. Overhead, the ceiling of the cavern glowed with the light of thousands of tiny gems that twinkled dimly. Not like stars. More like the hint of eyes watching from the darkness that caught the light every time they blinked.

Mushrooms carpeted the floor of the cavern. Large and small, in every color and shape possible, the mushrooms gleamed with magic. Also with viscous goop that Harry suspected was poisonous. Even the Goblins avoided getting near the really drippy goopy ones that reminded him of a rooster’s waddle.

That meant that they took a winding path through the cavern towards a huge crystalline geodesic dome. Harry had to duck under mushroom caps wider than he was tall and carefully hold his breath through a patch of puffballs that sent up spouts of spores that went off like firecrackers midair.

Eventually, though, they arrived at the crystalline dome. That was white. White struts. White glass. Crystal? Maybe diamond. Harry couldn’t tell. Either way, it was white. Just white. Aggressively white to the point that it made all of his Goblin guards twitchy as they led him…

…right past a very direct, very wide path that led a couple meters straight to the lifts.

Yeah, that was about what Harry expected.

Mess with the wizard. Why not? Not like Chieftain Ragnok wasn’t waiting for him to show up.

Chieftain Ragnok sat behind a smoky quartz crystal desk the size of a small swimming pool, directly in the center of the geodesic dome. Rather like Silverclaw, the other Goblins looked at him with awe. No sexual interest, just awe and a little bit of fear. Justified, maybe. Chieftain Ragnok had shoulders half again as wide as Silverclaw’s with powerfully muscled arms that strained the sleeves of his business suit when he leaned on his desk to study Harry.

“Heir Potter-Black,” Chieftain Ragnok said. Kind of like a detective in one of Uncle Vernon’s crime shows on the telly when he was getting ready to question the suspect and turn them into a quivering pile of apologies and nerves.

“Chieftain Ragnok,” Harry said with a bob of his head because he had no idea what the proper way to greet the Chieftain of the Goblin Horde might be.

“Explain your idea to me,” Chieftain Ragnok said. “You want to, what? Live in Gringotts like a rat in the tunnels?”

The make it good didn’t need to be said.

“Well, preferably not in the tunnels,” Harry said. His knees didn’t quite want to keep him upright, but he wasn’t exhausted enough to fall down yet.

Yet.

Explaining his whole idea, as loose and unformed as it was, took rather longer than Harry expected. Chieftain Ragnok had a talent for raising one eyebrow sardonically to make Harry back up several steps and go back over things with more detail.

Like he had more detail to give.

Eventually, like twenty minutes into the two minute explanation, Chieftain Ragnok frowned.

“You truly expect that you will walk out of here to draw the watchers away,” Chieftain Ragnok said.

Harry shrugged. “I have to. They’ll lay siege to Gringotts until they get to me if I don’t. First, it’ll be Dumbledore looking to get me back under his thumb. Then it’ll be the Ministry because that’s just the sort of idiots the Ministry employs.”

Snickers all around which made Harry feel better. Obviously, the Goblins had been on the wrong side of Ministry nonsense more than a few times. Professor Binns certainly made much of it in every history class.

“And then, once he realizes where I am, You-Know-Who will come and do whatever it takes to get at me,” Harry finished. He shrugged. “So yeah, I have to walk out of here. I have to be seen. And I have to take some sort of portkey to get back here.”

Chieftain Ragnok hummed. “We do not generally allow humans to live under Gringotts if they are not employed by us.”

“Fair,” Harry said. “I wouldn’t if I were you. I don’t think it’ll last too long, honestly. I mean, without me out there to be the sacrificial lamb taking down You-Know-Who, Dumbledore will have to actually do something. The Ministry, too. Plus, I do have places where I can stay eventually. Potter Keep needs its wards updated, which I’d be perfectly happy to pay you to do. Potter Sanctuary would be safe but getting there is an issue. I just need a safe place to stay while we deal with all the threats. And,” Harry waggled a finger vaguely in Chieftain Ragnok’s direction, “I’ll want to set up all new vaults. A vault? I have no idea. Either way, I want to set up new vaults for all the stuff Sirius gathered up for me.”

Every single Goblin started like that was a stunning revelation. Even Chieftain Ragnok looked shocked, which was just weird.

“Safest place in the world?” Harry said impatiently. “Where else would my money go? Come on, Sirius pulled everything because people were trying to steal it all. Unconnected, unlabeled vault that no one knows belongs to me is the safest thing possible. I mean, I’ll pay for a vault to live in if I have to but frankly? I don’t know why you’re asking me when Lacey is the one in charge of this stuff. I’m just a kid.”

Chieftain Ragnok laughed.

Except it was more like gnashing teeth and a huff of breath let loose too forcefully than an actual laugh.

“Very well, Heir Potter-Black,” Chieftain Ragnok said. “By the time you reach the lobby, your portkeys will be ready. If you return—”

“I will,” Harry interrupted. “I gotta. Amal’s staying right here where no one can get at him. He’s the one who knows everything. I have to come back for him, Lacey and Anthony, one way or the other.”

“If you return, we will discuss exactly how long you will live in Gringotts and what repairs need to be done to Potter Keep to get you out of our hair,” Chieftain Ragnok finished. “If you actually do return what you took to new vaults, there are… other options that can be discussed. Ones that would be beneficial to both you and to us. Very beneficial indeed, if you’re willing.”

“Absolutely yes,” Harry agreed. “Totally fair. Thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Goblins are the only sensible people in the entire Magi world, I swear.”

It was a thousand times easier to ignore the pointedly startled looks at Harry saying “thank you” to Chieftain Ragnok than it would be to explain just how many times he’d had to deal with various Magi, young and old, who had not one tiny little shred of common sense.

There was a reason that Hermione complained about the lack of logic at Hogwarts and in the Ministry.

This whole lay-a-false-trail thing was going to be ridiculously hard with Harry stumbling around blurry-eyed and fuzzy-brained, but that hardly mattered. He needed to get moving. Dumbledore had to know that Harry had left Number Four.

There was zero chance that Dumbledore hadn’t put trackers on Harry. His clothes, his wand, his trunk, all the things he’d left behind as he made his way to Gringotts; they all had to have some sort of tracking. Frankly, Harry wouldn’t be surprised if Dumbledore had his blood and used that to track Harry’s movements, too.

Not that it would work anymore. Voldemort had Harry’s blood now. Whatever spells Dumbledore had set up that utilized Harry’s blood would give messed up results. Thank goodness.

The trip back to the lifts was on the short, wide path, not the winding through the glowing mushrooms. Harry leaned against the wall of the lift, not quite daring to let his eyes drift shut. Pretty sure that if he did, he’d fall asleep standing up. Wouldn’t be first time he’d done it.

“We’re here, wizard,” one of the Goblin guards said.

Harry groaned as he levered open the eyes that he hadn’t intended to shut. “Right. Sorry. Going on like four hours of sleep in the last three days. Thanks for waking me up, anyway.”

Anthony, in actual clothes and real shoes, stood outside the lift. He smiled welcomingly and then shook his head when Harry stumbled out of the lift.

“Pepper-Up,” Anthony said as he firmly put the vial in Harry’s hand.

“Oh, thank you,” Harry breathed before downing the thing in one gulp.

He shuddered as the false energy charged through his body and his magic, wiping away the buzzing in his ears and the weights in his limbs. It felt fragile, brittle, but the Pepper-Up did its job well enough for the moment.

“Nutrient potion,” Anthony said and then scowled when Harry opened his mouth to protest. “Don’t even try. Lacey scanned you. You have no secrets left, kiddo.”

“Fine,” Harry grumbled. That one tasted like overcooked Brussels sprouts with moldy cheese, but the brittle feeling subsided a bit so obviously he’d needed it.

Next there was a pain relief potion that made the Goblins frown at Harry. It was gold, one of the strongest ones, instead of the more normal green or blue ones that Madame Pomphrey gave him. Then Anthony insisted that Harry had to choke down a ham and cheddar sandwich, even though it was twice what Harry would’ve been able to manage normally.

The potions apparently helped his body tear into the sandwich as soon as it hit his stomach because he somehow got the whole thing down.

“Water,” Anthony said. He laughed at Harry’s glare. “Just drink it.”

“And I thought that Amal would be the mother hen,” Harry grumbled between gulps of blessedly cool water.

“Who do you think arranged for all of this?” Anthony quipped. He nodded once Harry finished the water. “Right. We’ve gotten you thirty portkeys. They’re set on this ring of keys. The silver keys are for Britain locations. The brass is for Ireland, the Isle of Mann, Shetland Islands, places like that. Copper is for Europe and beyond. The one gold key? That’s to bring you back here.”

Harry took the ring of old fashioned skeleton keys, a little bit awed that they’d actually gotten it done. He’d expected that they’d have to time to make five, maybe ten portkeys, not an absolute horde of them, despite what he’d planned in Silverclaw’s office.

“Now, you should make sure to get some distance between arrival and departure points at least once or twice,” Anthony said as he waved for Harry to follow him towards the front entrance of Gringotts. “Do you have a broom?”

“Yep,” Harry said because knowing Sirius he had some of the very best brooms in the world in his box. “Several.”

“Use one. Maybe one that you don’t mind leaving behind,” Anthony said with a grimace. “Brooms are known to pick up traces of the magic of portkeys. It can have a real effect on professional quidditch players’ brooms.”

“I had no idea,” Harry said as he pulled out the box and thought about a just barely good enough broom that he could abandon and no one would tie to him automatically. And that they would believe that Harry would risk his life on if it came to it.

The broom that popped out made Hogwarts’ school brooms look like a Firebolt. Its tail was ratty. The handle looked like it was about to fracture. Frankly, the thing looked like it might’ve been handmade by an amateur.

“That’s not scary at all,” Harry drawled as he shook his head and put it back in the box. “I wouldn’t mind never seeing it again, so there’s that covered.”

Anthony grimaced. “Yeah. Yikes. Maybe fly really low and go slow on that one.”

Harry nodded.

The front lobby had people in it. Tired ones who sounded like they’d only just gotten up and stumbled off to Gringotts to pick up some galleons for breakfast. Which meant that Harry had been awake for somewhere around thirty hours.

Thank Merlin for Pepper-Up potions.

“This is the flat,” Anthony said. He passed Harry a slip of paper with an address, a little map and a key. “This is the… other flat. You’ll get there and there should be instructions hidden in the middle of the flat. Be careful, please. You need to be seen going from one to the other but… try and, I don’t know, skulk about a bit or something.”

Harry laughed. “I’ll do my best. Make sure Amal stays safe. I’ll be back as quickly as I can, promise.”

The hug came from nowhere.

Harry started. Then he awkwardly patted Anthony’s back. When Anthony didn’t immediately let go, Harry gradually, cautiously, allowed himself to relax into the hug, all the while ignoring the shaky feeling that hugs always gave him.

Yeah, couldn’t be the hug. Harry was just tired. Very tired. He really needed to get this done so that he could rest.

8. A Young Gentlebeing Must Follow Orders

Best thing in the world, Pepper-Up potions. They didn’t make the exhaustion go away, exactly, but they did a great job of making you forget that you were about to faceplant at any second. Harry sort of loved them and hated them at the same time.

While it was really, really, really nice to be able to continue his escape from Number Four Privet Drive, the inevitable crash was not something he looked forward to.

Still. Nice while it lasted. If only it helped with map reading in the magi world.

Harry studied the little map of where he was supposed to go, keeping his head down so that his face wasn’t as visible. He didn’t think that anyone on Vertic Alley had figured out that Harry was the Boy-Who-Lived, but they definitely noticed the young man faffing about as he tried to figure out where to go.

Which was fine.

It was the point. Distract people and stick in their heads for when Dumbledore, the Ministry and Voldemort’s people came looking for Harry’s trail.

While Diagon Alley was all shops and such, Vertic Alley was nicer boutiques with apartments above them scattered between the Magi version of discreet high-priced hotels. Nothing that Harry would’ve ever set foot in, even with the amount of money he now had at his disposal, though he made sure to peer in windows and then hurry onwards when anyone noticed him.

The flat that he’d “rented” was on an offshoot of Vertic Alley that he missed once, backtracked, pretended to miss a second time because no one had even glanced at him as he retraced his steps and then finally headed up while obviously counting doors.

Direction Alley was all flats. Every single narrow building had flats in them. Some nice ones, some pits, most just regular old flats that were much like what you’d find in the Muggle world. You know, except for the magical lights and such.

Four Wisteria on Direction Alley had four floors. Harry’s flat was on the first floor, which was good. The ground floor was super-busy, full of college age people hauling furniture into an flat while laughing and teasing each other. Harry studied them just long enough to be noticed and then scooted up the stairs to his flat, which was right off the stairs.

“Oh, lovely,” Harry said as soon as he opened the door. “A bedsit. Great. Well, fine.”

“Who’s the kid?” one of the college age people asked just loud enough for Harry to hear them, which was perfect.

Harry breathed out and leaned back against the door. He couldn’t sit down. Obviously. Too much left to do. But also, the edges of the artificial energy of the Pepper-Up felt just a bit crumbly so yeah, no sitting down. He might not get up again and then he’d get caught.

For a bedsit, it wasn’t that bad of a flat. Clean counters in the tiny kitchen which was utterly bare. Clean bedding on the narrow twin bed. Even clean curtains. To Harry’s surprise, someone, probably a house elf, had gone over the baseboards sometime in the last decade. They barely had any dust and grunge coated on them.

It didn’t make sense to head straight back out, not with the moving going on downstairs. Harry peered out onto the street, unsure if he was happy that there were no obvious signs of people looking for him or not. Yes, he wanted his passage to be noted. But at the same time, no, he really didn’t want anyone actively searching for him this minute.

For one wild moment, Harry was desperately glad that Hedwig was so independent.

She’d been off hunting when he made his escape. If he knew Hedwig, she’d realized that he’d taken a runner as soon as he’d left Number Four. She wouldn’t search Harry out until he settled somewhere secure. All Harry had to do was make sure that he made it to a safe place that Hedwig could access.

You know, eventually.

Actually, Gringotts used owls.

She could probably find him just fine there. Well, that was one problem solved with no effort on his part. Good.

Half an hour of aimless pacing across the bedsit later, the shouts and laughter downstairs had died down to occasional calls from the ground floor flat out to their friends bringing things in. Traffic out in the street had picked up, too, plus Harry heard several people tromping down the stairs outside his door.

Probably a good time to be seen to skitter to his other flat.

Being seen turned out to be as easy as opening the door.

Both Harry and the young woman on the stairs startled to see each other. Harry garbled something apologetic before shutting the door in her face. When he checked a minute later, she was gone. Harry made it up the stairs and into his other flat on the second floor without issue, though he was spotted going into the next flat by a very tired looking man with an enormous mustache coming out of the flat across from Harry’s.

Harry darted inside and slammed the door, hoping that the man only got the slightest glimpse of his face. He made a point of slamming the locks shut just to make it perfectly clear that he didn’t want to be noticed, found or remembered, which would logically stick Harry in his mind so firmly that he thought about Harry all day long.

So.

“Step one done,” Harry murmured as he stared around Flat Number Two. “Not bad. At least it’s not a bedsit.”

There was an actual table with two wobbly chairs that looked like they’d been cobbled together out of broken bits of other chairs, so technically not a bedsit. And the bed was actually a queen instead of a twin. Luxury!

The “middle of the flat” was, as far as Harry could tell, the fireplace which was exactly halfway between the front window and the back wall of the even tinier kitchen. There wasn’t anything on the mantle or the hearth, but there was a thin strand of twine dangling out of the flue.

“Someone really loves their mysteries,” Harry murmured with a low chuckle when tugging the twine tumbled a carefully wrapped package into his hands. “Actually, looks like Amal likes puzzle mysteries just as much as Sirius did.”

Because the package had a note in Amal’s handwriting wrapped around a perfectly ordinary rock. No feeling of magic held in check, so it wasn’t a portkey. No runes. Just a rock that helped keep the note where Amal put it.

Though it had better have been someone else that put the note there, not Amal. Harry wanted Amal safe in Gringotts, not haring around setting up a trail for Harry to follow.

Use floo powder and call out “The Next Step” before entering. You will emerge outside at a public rural floo site. Use portkey immediately. There should be few people about. If any aurors are there, turn and call out “Harvest Lane Shop” before going through the floo again.

Harry raised an eyebrow at that.

Well, best to get on with it, then. Hopefully there wouldn’t be any aurors because the last thing that Harry enjoyed was going through the floo. He’d take side-alongs over the floo. Heck, he’d take riding a broken, failing broom with no cushioning charms over the floo.

Harry went through the floo braced for the spin that always sent him stumbling out to land on his face. Happened again when he arrived at the outdoor floo, though he managed to just stumble a step before he brushed himself off.

While scanning the area.

Looked like he’d been sent out to the Welsh hill country. The floo stood in a big open fireplace like what used to be in manor houses. It could’ve cooked a whole steer on a spit. There was no house left, just the fireplace and a stubby broken chimney that let a lazy curl of smoke drift up towards the puffy clouds overhead.

A river rushed by, tumbling over boulders, over to his left. A mountain, bare of trees, loomed to the left. Between the two stood a hilly meadow full of heather and gorse. This early in the day, the light was gorgeous enough that Harry stood there and smiled at the view for just a bit.

The air smelled so good. Fresh and clean in ways that Harry’d only ever had at Hogwarts. It was warm enough already that Harry was comfortable in his new clothes despite being obviously rather higher in elevation than he had been in London.

“Wow,” Harry breathed before shaking his head. “Like to spend some time here someday. This is lovely.”

“Good to hear,” a man said behind Harry. He grinned at Harry’s jerk of startlement. “Could spend time if you wanted.”

“Can’t,” Harry said apologetically to the very nice older auror with his white beard clipped close to his chin and his cuppa steaming in the morning. “I’ve got errands I have to finish before I can take a break.”

“Well, I hope you’ll have them done quick-like then, lad,” the auror said as he toasted Harry with his cuppa. “Come back and visit sometime. We don’t get enough young-uns out this way.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Harry said, looking over his shoulder again. “You’re lucky to get to live in such a beautiful place.”

The auror beamed as Harry tossed floo powder in. “Thank you!”

“Harvest Lane Shop,” Harry said before striding back into the floo.

He stumbled three steps once he emerged on the other side. The Harvest Lane Shop was actually a foot-traffic-only shopping street full of little carts and stalls with umbrellas and awnings overhead. Another absolutely lovely place, though it was mostly empty of people at the moment. A couple of the shop keepers stood off to the side, chatting quietly before setting up their wares.

Above the awnings, the shop keepers had encouraged grapevine and sprays of honeysuckle to form a green, growing roof over the whole lane. While the grapes weren’t ripe enough to harvest, their little green globes looked like they were getting close to it. The honeysuckle filled the air with an amazing scent that made Harry smile.

Another place that he never could’ve imagined. Even if Amal hadn’t really intended these stops to be anything special, Harry couldn’t help but be grateful to have been allowed to see them.

There was beauty in the world. Beauty and peace and people just living their lives in quiet harmony with their surroundings. Harry shook his head at himself. He must be tired if this was the result of him going somewhere new.

Or, a very quiet part of himself murmured, this was the result of Harry finally being freed from all the walls and limitations and cages that he’d spent his life trapped in.

Not the time or the place for thinking such things. Not when there were people around to watch Harry’s expression twist from joy into dismay and disgust. He glanced over at the shop keepers.

They didn’t even glance Harry’s way, which was a relief.

He brushed himself off and then looked around. No one watching. No one listening.

Good enough.

Time to bounce through a few of his thirty portkeys to that his trail got well and truly muddled. Harry pulled out his ring of portkeys, picking one of the silver ones for a Britain destination. As Harry braced himself before triggering it, he had a wild moment of regret.

“I really should’ve asked how to land properly,” Harry muttered as his finger brushed over the trigger rune.

There was no time to flinch, not with the portkey’s magic hooking into his gut and locking his fingers around the key ring so that he couldn’t let go. Harry flew up into the air, really, really, really hoping he didn’t land on his face or throw up once he arrived wherever he was going.

9. Proper Preparation Makes Following Plans Easier

Harry landed in the Forest of Dean, flexing his knees and throwing his hands out the way he’d figured out worked decently well on the sixth portkey. He landed on a bluff overlooking a wide, lazy river with a steep hill on the far side covered in pine.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Harry groaned as he bent over with his hands on his knees as his stomach rebelled against the repeated portkeys. “Bloody buggering fuck. I’m not doing that again for a bit.”

What with the way his head swam, Harry had maybe an hour at most before the Pepper-Up potion entirely gave out on him. Unfortunately, his stomach was in full revolt, so another portkey wasn’t happening until it calmed down. Which meant he needed to get a bit of distance between here and the next portkey, then a bit of distance again before he headed back to Gringotts.

The Forest of Dean, the magical portion of it anyway, was another kind of lovely that Harry had never dreamed of. Tall narrow trees with thick green canopies overhead that echoed the thick layer of moss on the forest floor. He’d landed on a walking trail with a well-packed gravel path bordered by a rib-high fence made out of cast-off tree limbs with the bark still on. Kind of like the Burrow, the fence had that completely handmade look with ridiculous joints that were only possible with magic.

As Harry slowly trudged up the path, heading west so that the sun wouldn’t be in his eyes, he didn’t see a single nail or screw. Just pegs and ropes holding the fence together.

Around him, birds sang. A few screeched, not like Hedwig. More like a really opinionated crow. Maybe a crow-relative? Magpie? Possibly?

“Who knows?” Harry murmured, amused in spite of everything. “Not like I know a single thing about birds.”

A family of deer, mama and two fawns that were getting all teenaged and leggy, pranced across the path. They neatly jumped the fence in two acrobatic leaps that made it look like they floated on air.

Harry spotted a snake basking on a rock in the light of the sun. It had a bulge in its belly that was distinctly rat-shaped. Harry smiled.

“Good meal?” Harry asked the snake.

The snake raised its head, eyes narrowing to slits as it studied Harry. “A speaker? Unusual. But yes. It was a very fat, very slow, very stupid rat.”

“We are rare, sadly,” Harry agreed. “Nice catch. I’m just heading away from the sun. It’s nice on my back. Not in my eyes.”

“You need nictating membranes,” the snake said as it laid its head back down on the warm rock.

“True,” Harry agreed because yeah, that’d be helpful when trouble happened, even if it would make him look like a creature instead of a messy human. “Any big predators off that way?”

“Oh, no,” the snake said. “Just deer trampling around. And rabbits. Be careful. The rabbits will bite and stomp.”

“I’ll be careful,” Harry promised, grinning. “Enjoy the sun.”

“I was until a speaker came to disturb my nap,” the snake grumbled.

It tucked its head under a coil, which made Harry laugh as he headed on up the path. That was… pleasant, actually. Doing things that he never would dare to do with people around was kind of freeing. Why did he spend so much time hiding what he could do?

“Oh, right,” Harry drawled as he reached the top of a gentle hill and gazed through a gap in the trees at the utterly gorgeous valley stretched out below him. “Too much nonsense if I’m not the perfect little pawn. Well, I think I’m ready for the next jump.”

Maybe.

It’d been a solid fifteen minutes. He hadn’t walked very far, but that was fine. The next jump was the one where he planned on using the rickety old broom. Harry planned on getting a lot of distance between arrival and departure points there.

This time, instead of popping around Britain as he had been, Harry picked one of the brass keys.

“Hmm, that should work,” Harry said, peering at the inscription on the handle of the key. “Yell Island, Shetlands. Okay. No idea, but it should work well enough.”

He fell flat on his face on arrival, arms and legs giving out on him. One foot landed on a seaweed covered sandy verge that stank like marine death. The rest of him landed in white sand that also stank like marine death, but at least it wasn’t all nasty with half-dried black seaweed sticking to him. Rising winds tugged at the back of his shirt and ruffled his hair.

Harry groaned as he rolled over, spitting sand out of his mouth. “Last. Bloody. Portkey. Swear to god. Just one more, thank Merlin.”

The sun moved a fair bit across the sky towards clouds looming on the horizon before Harry managed to more than heft himself up off the sand. He staggered over to a rock sitting a low tide and plopped himself on that as he waited for his head to clear. Which it didn’t.

“Great,” Harry grumbled as he realized that the Pepper-Up had given up on him. “Right, so where is Yell Island, then?”

Looked like the northernmost part of the Shetlands, actually. Yell Island itself didn’t seem to have a single tree or shrub growing on it. Lots of grass, some very low-growing gorse, but nothing taller than that. Wind blew in off the North Atlantic constantly, slowly chilling Harry despite the heat of the summer sun beating down on his head.

Very damp, very cool wind. Kind of felt good. At least it kept him awake despite his exhaustion.

“Okay, Sirius,” Harry muttered as he pulled out the box. “Got anything that’ll carry me over flying and then portkeying back?”

A tiny vial of Felix Felicis marked with “Peverell Industries” appeared in the palm of Harry’s hand. The potion inside gleamed like liquid sunshine. Harry grimaced. He’d not realized they were Magical as well as Muggle.

“Oh-kay, then,” Harry said as he summoned the raggedy old broom. “Guess it makes sense. This broom is a bit past its use-by date. I need all the luck I can get.”

Harry chugged the Felix Felicis. And then shuddered as the entire world took on a sort of bubbly golden glow. Everything was possible. Anything that Harry put his mind to, he could accomplish it right now. Might be just the thing for confronting Voldemort, eventually, if Harry couldn’t push the duty off on someone else. An adult, preferably.

But right now, all Harry needed was to mount up on his rackety old broom and then fly towards Sweden. He spotted several people cresting the hill behind him. They had robes, the light summer versions, and pointed hats that they kept a firm grip on so that the wind wouldn’t steal the hats right away.

Harry made a point of visibly cursing and then pulling his invisibility cloak around himself so that they couldn’t identify him. He didn’t completely cover the broom. No point to that. He wanted people to eventually connect the dots.

The wizard and two witches shouted as Harry lifted off and spun his ancient broom out over the ocean.

“Don’t do it, you bloody fool!” the man bellowed at Harry. “There’s a bloody blow coming in!”

Which, huh, they weren’t wrong.

There were huge billowing clouds up over the ocean, well, well out to sea. They were much closer than they’d been when he first arrived. Moving fast, that storm. It looked to him like it would make landfall in an hour or so, by which point he would be gone anyway so Harry didn’t fuss over it.

He did make a point of looking over his shoulder and letting them catch a good solid look at his face before tugging the cloak close over his body and then over most of the broom, too. To make it seem like Harry was taking a wild, desperate chance, he left the tail of his ratty old broom exposed so that they could track which direction Harry went. Then Harry zoomed off over the North Sea, flying just high enough that the rapidly rising waves wouldn’t splash him.

He tried very, very hard not to flinch for those slapping waves. The broom had zero cushioning charms and a very rough cut to the handle, so his privates were getting a bit abused. Chafing on his thighs, too. Still worth it to escape properly.

Okay, now to portkey to safety. Except…

What did happen if you portkeyed while moving?

Harry’s gut shrieked that it would be officially Not A Good Thing To Try. Very loudly. The golden cast of the world crinkled at the edges, too, so yeah. Not doing that. It did mean that he needed to find somewhere to land.

There was another island off to his right, just as bleak and empty as Yell Island. Harry hummed, looked at the lack of cover, and then glanced at the storm.

Much closer. Too close. It’d moved a lot faster than Harry expected. Bloody hell. This was going to be tight.

“Right,” Harry said. “Point me a rock big enough to land on.”

His wand was still in his pocket but pretending like it was on his palm worked well enough with Felix Felicis buoying him up. A golden bubbly arrow showed up on his palm, sending Harry veering off to the left, right into the teeth of the storm.

The rock, once he found it, was a literal algae-covered rock. In calm seas, it might’ve been dry at the highest of high tides. Right now, with a huge storm blowing in, the waves washed over it every few seconds. Unless they crashed into it in giant sprays of water that soaked the toes of Harry’s shoes.

“This is the worst idea ever,” Harry commented to the storm which had darkened the skies and transformed mid-morning back into early dawn. A very wet dawn.

Rain slashed down around Harry as he hesitated. The sequence of events had to be done right otherwise this wasn’t going to work. And he might just drown. Harry wasn’t any better at swimming that he’d been for the Second Task so yeah, he’d best get this right.

“First, the cloak,” Harry said as he whisked that way into the box.

The box got tucked into his waistband, right against his skin. Harry summoned a spare wand from the box, wishing with all his might for a wand that would let him cast a really solid shield. What appeared in his hand was a gnarled old wand with a tip that rather terrifyingly reminded Harry of Ron’s wand in second year. He could see tiny bits of unicorn hair sticking out the end.

Still, it helped Harry cast the strongest shield around himself and the rickety old broom that he’d ever cast in his entire life.

Harry landed on the rock. And then flinched as a wave crashed hard against his shield. The shield held and Harry stayed dry.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Harry breathed. “All right, broom. Time to lay a false trail. Let’s see how far I can banish you so that people think I ended up in, oh, how about Sweden? Finland? I know, Greenland! Though I really appreciate the help. You were rocky and painful to ride but you did just what I needed to when I needed it.”

And Harry was obviously really damned tired if he was talking to brooms and getting the feeling back from the broom that it appreciated the thanks.

Harry put the ratty wand away, summoned a different wand that would do well for aimed banishment, and then grinned when Sirius’ box served up a wand as smooth and sleek as a knife. Possibly with a metal core given the weight of the thing. Either way, it hummed happily in his hand as Harry pointed at the broom and then banished it with the full intent that it would wash up on the shores of Sweden or Finland for someone to find.

Let them, specifically Dumbledore, the Ministry and Voldemort, think that Harry took a runner into a storm and got himself killed by drowning.

It wouldn’t last. Harry was sure of that. Dumbledore at the least had to have ways of tracking Harry’s movement, even if the man never seemed to pay attention to what his spells told him about Harry’s condition.

But it should confuse everyone and slow them down, which was all that Harry wanted right now.

A wave so big that it would’ve swallowed Number Four entirely slammed into Harry’s shield. He cursed as he grabbed for the ring of portkeys with fingers made clumsy by exhaustion and rising fear. The Felix Felicis came through with a surge of golden bubbles that flipped the golden Gringotts’ key up into Harry’s hand just as another wave fell onto his shield, smashing it to pieces.

“Go!” Harry screamed as the portkey hooked under his navel and flung him away from the rock along with a good third of the sea water that had attempted to drown him.

Harry arrived in a bubble of sea water that supported him in its center for just long enough that he glimpsed Silverclaw and Anthony staring at him with jaws dropped open and eyes wide.

Then the water collapsed and dropped Harry to the stone floor while the stolen wave drenched Anthony.

Not Silverclaw.

When Harry groaned and raised his head, Silverclaw stood there in a gleaming silver shield, perfectly dry, while Anthony spluttered and picked bits of seaweed off his suit. Harry snickered. And then flopped back onto the wet floor.

He groaned.

“Are you dead?” Silverclaw asked in much the same way that Mrs. Number Eleven asked if Aunt Petunia’s petit fours were handmade or not.

“Oh, go gut someone and steal from their corpse,” Harry mumbled at Silverclaw.

Hopefully incomprehensibly.

“Hm, I see you’ve actually put some effort into learning Goblin flirting, Heir Potter-Black,” Silverclaw said.

He smirked when Harry dragged an eye open to glare at him. Harry growled and tried to wave a hand but the Pepper-Up was well and truly gone. The Felix Felicis was also clearly gone, or he wouldn’t have made sense to anyone. Which meant that Harry was on his own dealing with all of this. Again.

“Don’t flirt with the most attractive Goblin to have ever lived,” Anthony said as he dried himself, the room, and then Harry with sweeping gestures of his wand.

“I’m not flirting,” Harry complained. “I get enough people trying to flirt with me. I’m trying to learn how to discourage the flirting.”

“Fair,” Silverclaw said in the most amused tone that Harry had ever heard from a Goblin. “I would suggest accepting their worship as your due and then crushing their confidence by ignoring all their advances. Though Magi do seem to complicate such matters abominably. Regardless, Lacey suggested strongly that you be taken straight to the Healers once you arrived. I see she was right about that.”

“Please,” Harry groaned.

Exhausted, cold and damp despite Anthony’s spells, Harry nonetheless still felt like he had Felix Felicis buoying him up despite the potion having well and truly run its course with that last portkey.

He’d done it.

He’d escaped from Number Four, outrun all of Dumbledore’s tracking, and now he finally had the chance to live his life with people who would be an actual family to him instead of the abusive mess Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon and Dudley had always been.

Yeah, there were still problems. No surprise there. Dumbledore and Voldemort. The Ministry and his maybe-friends. Getting a proper education and handling the mess of stuff that Sirius had gathered up for him.

None of that mattered. Not right now. He was free.

Every bit of pain and struggle was worth it to be properly free of the Boy-Who-Lived and being Harry bloody Potter.

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