Previous parts can be found at
<http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/Fics/BLS/index.html>
I don't usually do Author's Notes, I think a story should be
self-contained, but I think I need to make a few about this story.
First of all, an apology for taking almost a year between updates.
Secondly, I started this before JKR got around to publi****ng "Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows" so there are some discrepancies. For
the purposes of this story assume that everything in DH happened pretty
much the way JKR said it did, but different people died. (I've already
established that three characters that JKR killed are still alive, and
killed one that JKR let live, and I need one more that she killed, whom
I haven't mentioned yet, to still be alive.)
Thirdly, elements of the scene in the bank bear a strong resemblance to
a scene in "Harry Potter and the Exiled Slayer"
<http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2778565/>
by M. Scott Eiland. I had this
scene in my head *before* I read his version of a visit of a Slayer to
Gringotts'. The resemblance is purely coincidental. (I do commend
Scott's story, and all the others he has written, to all readers.)
Chapter 5
They Apparated into a quiet courtyard in Cambridge with a *pop*! It had
been a long time since Harry'd had to Side-Along-Apparate with anyone,
and the experience was just as unpleasant as he remembered it being. He
shook his head to clear it while looking around to see if anyone had
noticed them, but the few Muggles in sight were completely ignoring
them. The courtyard's concealment charms seemed to be working. He
released Ginny's arm. He still wasn't happy about her being there, but
Ron and Hermione had sided with her and he hadn't been able to talk her
out of coming. They had been quite adamant that if anyone was to be
left behind, it would be Harry, since he was unable to use magic to
defend himself.
It was only a few blocks through the old city to the address that they
had for Alexander Harris. The building looked to be over a century old,
but it had been recently renovated to hold several flats. Hermione used
an *Alohomora* spell to get past the front door, without having to have
anyone buzz them in. They made their way up the stairs to the second
storey where Alexander Harris shared a flat with Dawn Summers. Ron
knocked on the door.
There was no answer, and they couldn't hear anyone moving inside the
flat. He knocked again, harder. There was still no response.
"Okay." Hermione looked up and down the hall, to make sure that no one
was watching, and then pointed her wand at the lock. "*Alohomora!*" The
door swung open.
They quickly entered the apartment, closed the door behind them, and
started to look around. Harry found the light switch, and turned it on.
None of them took any notice of the keypad by the door.
The sitting room of the apartment was clean, but full of the clutter of
people who didn't care too much about neatness. Books and papers were
sitting out on tables; cu****ons were askew on the couch, where they had
been arranged more for comfort than appearance. Clean dishes had been
left in the rack beside the kitchen sink to dry, rather than being put
away into cupboards.
Ron had picked up a photograph from a shelf. "Hey Harry, take a look at
this!" He handed it over to him.
The picture was of a group of people standing on a wooden bridge over a
small river. One of them had the face that Harry still wasn't used to
seeing looking back at him in the mirror, but in the photo he seemed to
have both eyes. Another was the girl who had been seen with "him"
outside the Leaky Cauldron. There were two other young women, a blonde
and a redhead--both about his own age--and an older, grey haired man,
with them in the picture.
"It looks like you somehow managed to switch appearances with this
bloke," said Ron, pointing to another picture of just him--again, with
two eyes--and the girl.
Hermione was examining the book shelves that covered one entire wall of
the main sitting room. "They've got books here on history, languages,
mythology..." She frowned, and reached for one old volume. "I think I
remember seeing a copy of this one in the Restricted Section of the
Hogwarts library." She opened the book and leafed through its pages.
"This is a book on Ancient Magic!" She looked back at the shelves.
"They've got dozens of books about it!"
---
Dawn and Xander's phones both rang at the same time. They pulled them
out, and looked at the text message displayed on their screens. "What's
up?" asked Buffy.
"Someone set of the alarm in our apartment," said Dawn.
"Let's go," said Buffy, "I'm driving."
---
Willow heard a bell toll as she and Kennedy passed through the large
bronze doors. The sound reverberated through the vast hall, making
everyone stop and look around. The other customers in the bank didn't
seem to know what to make of the noise, but all of the goblins were
looking toward the door--at them.
"Okay," said Kennedy, "we seem to have set off some sort of alarm."
Willow felt Kennedy tensing for action beside her, and action by a
Slayer was almost always of the violent sort, so she placed her hand on
Kennedy's elbow. "Don't do anything," she said softly. "Let's see how
this develops."
A goblin came toward them, and bowed deeply, "How may I be of service to
the Slayer?" he asked. He was a tiny little creature, barely three feet
tall, with an over-large head, and wispy grey hair.
"Uh...you know who I am?" asked Kennedy.
"Of course, it has only been three hundred years since the last time a
Slayer visited Gringotts. Humans may have short memories, but goblins do
not." The goblin gave her a little bow. "I am Narlblat. How may I assist
you?"
"Only three hundred years, huh?" asked Willow.
"Three hundred twenty-four years, to be more precise," said Narlblat. He
gestured with his hand toward the side of the bank's main hall. "Please,
if you'll come this way, we can discuss the status of your account."
"My account?" asked Kennedy.
"Yes," said Narlblat. "The last Slayer to visit Gringotts opened an
account with us." He ushered them through a doorway, into a small
office, and took a seat behind an antique wooden desk that was nearly as
tall as it was. Narlblat pumped a lever at the side of his chair,
raising him up to desk level.
"How much did she deposit?" asked Willow, taking a seat of her own in
front of the desk, and gesturing Kennedy into another.
The goblin opened a drawer in the desk, and riffled through it until he
found what he was looking for. He pulled out a file, and leafed through
it. "One thousand Galleons," he said.
"Wow!" said Willow. "A thousand Galleons, collecting interest over three
hundred and twenty-four years. That must add up to quite a lot by now.
What sort of rate do you pay?"
"It has varied somewhat, over the last few centuries," said Narlblat.
His fingers started to fly over a three dimensional abacus on his desk.
"Hmm...The average interest rate over the last three centuries has been
three point five seven two percent, compensating for the nineteenth
century inflation cycle, the depression of nineteen-sixty..." Gold beads
shuttled back and forth along thin silver wires.
Willow had done the rough calculation in her head. "Three point five
percent over three hundred and twenty years! That's like--sixty million
Galleons now!"
"Well, yes, it would be, if that was all there was to it," said Narlblat.
"What else is there?" asked Kennedy.
"Well, we have three hundred twenty-four years of service charges," said
Narlblat. He flipped through the file, consulting figures written on its
pages. "The revaluation of the Galleon in 1845, the account surtax of
1973, vault fees..." His fingers flew over the beads of his abacus.
"So, what's the balance?" asked Willow.
The beads stood still. "Three hundred twenty-seven Galleons, sixteen
Sickles, and twenty-three Knuts," said Narlblat.
"What!" asked Kennedy. "I've only got three hundred Galleons left of the
thousand that was deposited?"
"Oh no!" said Narlblat. "That's how much you owe us."
---
Ginny came out of the bathroom. "Hey Harry, take a look at this." She
held up a small plastic case, that seemed to hold an eye. "This looks
like a match for yours."
Harry looked at the eye in the case. It did seem to match the colour of
his new eye. He was pretty sure that if he tried it, it would fit in the
socket of the eye he was missing, but he really didn't want to try that
experiment. Even if it did fit, he didn't think it would feel right. He
remembered how Mad-Eye had felt about his own eye, after it had been
worn by the impostor: it had never seemed to be clean to him after that.
He handed it back to Ginny. "Put it back where you found it."
Ron looked through a doorway into another room. "This looks like some
sort of office."
Harry, Ginny and Hermione followed him through the door, and looked
around. There was a desk with a new looking computer on it, more
bookshelves, filing cabinets, and a drafting table which had architect's
drawings of a large building on it. Harry looked them over, and saw that
they were captioned: "Council HQ, Waterbeach." He looked through some
stacks of paper on the desk, and saw invoices for construction
materials, tradesmen contracts, copies of building permits and other
such things, all for the same address in Waterbeach.
Hermione had been looking through more of the papers stacked on the
desk. "These look like university course notes...It looks like Dawn
Summers is enrolled there, studying Linguistics, and Mythology... Oh,
she got an A on her latest assignment..."
"Acceptable?" asked Ron.
"No, for Muggles, a A is the same as an 'Outstanding.'"
"Weird!" said Ron.
Harry tried the computer that was sitting on the desk. It came right to
life with a "*boing!*" noise when he moved the mouse, but it only
displayed a window asking for a password. He didn't have any clue what
it might be, and there weren't any convenient scraps of paper in sight
with strange words written on them. Magic wouldn't be any help here
either, even if he could do any. Magic performed on computers tended to
just made them crash. Muggle Affairs knew of a few experts who might
have been able to access the data on it, but they had neither the time,
nor a legitimate reason to call them in to help.
---
Normally, it took almost twenty minutes to drive from the new Council
Headquarters to Dawn and Xander's apartment. Buffy did it in just over
five, paying no attention at all to speed limits, and hardly any to such
petty annoyances as stop signs, or traffic lights.
Dawn wasn't sure which was worse: keeping her eyes open, or closed.
With her eyes closed she didn't *see* any of the near misses as Buffy
swerved through the traffic. She also had no warning when they were
about to take a sharp turn, or swerve to avoid other traffic or
pedestrians on the road. Sometimes she could hear the blaring of horns,
fading away behind them, after some of Buffy's more violent manoeuvres.
She could here Xander muttering "Never again!" to himself, over and
over. "I don't care what the emergency is! I'm never getting in a car
that Buffy's driving, ever again!" Of course, he'd said that before, and
every time he swore that it *would* be the last time, but he always did
it again.
The car screeched to a stop, and Dawn opened her eyes to see her
apartment building. They all jumped from the car, leaving it sitting
askew in a no-parking zone, and ran into the building.
---
Harry heard a key scraping in the lock of the front door. Ginny grabbed
his arm, and he felt her twisting, Disapparating out of the flat, back
to the garden of their cottage. Ron and Hermione *cracked* into the
garden just a second after they had arrived.
---
Dawn heard a series of loud *pop*s, just as Buffy was pu****ng the door
open. Buffy was the first into the apartment, with Xander right behind
her. Dawn was the last one through the door. She looked quickly around,
but didn't see anything that looked out of place: there was no one
there, other than themselves.
"What was that noise," asked Xander.
"I caught a glimpse of someone," said Buffy. "The last 'snap' was him
vani****ng. I guess he had some friends with him."
They quickly checked the bedroom, bath, and office, but they didn't find
anyone, or anything, hiding in any of the rooms.
"Anything missing?" asked Buffy.
"I haven't noticed anything," said Xander. "We'll have to look more
closely to be sure, but we really haven't got that much that's worth
stealing. The TV, stereo, and computers are all still here."
"If they could use magic to tele****t away, I doubt if they were here to
steal anything as mundane as our TV," said Dawn. "I don't think that
they were looking for anything that they could fence." She looked
around the room again, seeing nothing but the usual chaos. "There are
disadvantages to not being obsessive about tidying up after yourself."
"They might have tried to download something off the computer," said
Xander.
"Everything im****tant on it is well encrypted," said Dawn. She went into
the office, and saw the password screen. "Did you touch this, Xander?"
she called out to him.
"Touch what?" Xander came back into the office, to see what she was
talking about, and saw her pointing at the screen. "No. Why?"
"Did you notice if it was awake when you were in here before?"
"I think it was, but I'm not sure," said Xander. "I don't remember it
waking up. I didn't hear the '*boing!*'"
"Neither did I." Dawn typed in her password. "I'll check the logs, see
if anyone tried to access anything while we were out."
---
"I can't believe that they tried to charge us all those extra fees!"
said Kennedy as they walked back down the steps from the entrance to the
bank.
"I know," said Willow. "And I thought dealing with Citibank was bad.
Still, we've got our Galleons now!" She shook the bag containing two
hundred of the gold coins--worth about a thousand pounds.
"I still think they short-changed us," said Kennedy.
"I'm sure of it," said Willow. "I'm just happy we got out of there
without us owning them anything. *She* would have straightened them out
in short order."
Still, Willow figured that they had made out okay. The goblins had their
own links into the wider world's banking systems, and once Narlblat had
gotten a look at the sort of assets that the Council had at its command,
he'd been quite happy to wave the outstanding charges on the Slayer's
account, in the hope of getting a piece of their business in the future.
He had quickly agreed that her account should have just been closed when
its balance had dropped to zero.
"So, where to first?" asked Kennedy. "The book store, or the newspaper
office?"
"Let's start with the newspaper," said Willow. "Though from what Neville
had to say about it, I'm not sure how useful it will be."
"If nothing else, we can catch up on the Quidditch scores," said Kennedy.
---
Dobby served them tea in the sitting room of Harry and Ginny's cottage
while they tried to figure out what they'd learned. It wasn't much.
"Alexander Harris seems to be a building contractor," said Hermione,
"and Dawn Summers is a student at Cambridge. If it wasn't for those
books on Ancient Magic, I'd say that they were just a couple of fairly
normal Muggles."
"So, what's our next move?" asked Ron.
Ginny set her tea cup on the table in front of her. "This may seem like
a radical idea, but we might try talking to him."
--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
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