Nashira checked again that the letter was still there and hadn't been a dream, then shouldered her backpack and headed for the front door to go to the library. Miss Brenna made a note that she was leaving and waved her out the door with a smile. It was almost a joke with the staff of the orphanage, how much Nashira Black liked to read. Some of the other kids weren't allowed to leave unsupervised, because they'd gotten caught with spraypaint or cigarettes or alcohol, but everyone knew Nashira never did anything but read.
She walked down the long driveway of the Home and turned automatically left, then stopped short. There was... something standing in her way. It was humanoid, but even shorter than she was, and it had knobbly green skin and long pointed ears. And very large pointed teeth. Nashira had certainly read enough to identify a goblin on sight, but she had also read enough to know that species names varied and what was right for one group could be offensive to another.
She shook herself mentally and decided to be as polite as humanly possible, in case it was the kind of goblin who ate children and could be convinced not to. She curtsied as best she could with her short pleated uniform skirt, bowing her head as deeply as she could without falling over. "Hello," she managed. What was a polite thing to say? "Um, good morrow. Is there anything I can do for you?"
She bit her lip, hoping she hadn't just accidentally offered to do anything by phrasing it wrong. If this was a fairy type goblin she might be stuffed. Don't eat the fruit, she thought.
The goblin grinned, which revealed even more teeth, and she fought to keep a pleasant smile on her face, praying that it wasn't about to eat her.
"Polite," it said. "Good. You got a letter yesterday, Miss Shafiq-Black. I would guess you have questions. I am Lagrak. I can answer them."
"I do," Nashira said cautiously. "Is there a price for the answers?"
The goblin laughed outright. "And clever as well! Better and better. The price is that you will remember that the goblins helped you, and you will consider what others tell you about us in light of that. You will remember that we showed you what you needed when others left you floundering. Do you find this a reasonable price?"
She hesitated, but he hadn't asked her to promise a favor even, had he? Just a consideration. A consideration that she probably would have given anyway. She nodded. "I do, Lagrak, sir."
He laughed again. "Your courtesy does you proud, but you need not call a goblin by a human title. If you wish to extend me the courtesy of the title, you may call me Account Manager Lagrak. I am in charge of the Shafiq and Black accounts at Gringotts."
"Accounts? Might I ask what Gringotts is?"
"Gringotts is the bank the wizards use," he said, still grinning. "We goblins run the bank."
"My- my parents had accounts there?" she ventured.
Lagrak laughed. "More than that, little heir. Both of your parents were the last heirs of long and rich family lines, and their only heir was you. You are the wealthiest individual in Wizarding Britain."
It took all she had not to stumble backwards or let her jaw drop in shock. Nashira struggled for words. She lived in an orphanage, she got two pounds a week allowance that she had to hoard for months to afford the books she wanted, and she was rich?
Seemingly enjoying her speechless state, Lagrak added, "Not to mention the properties. You own nearly a dozen estates, entailed by blood wards to pass only to you."
Nashira pinched herself on the arm, hard. It hurt, and the goblin was still there. Not dreaming. "I own a house? I own several houses? I don't even have my own bedroom!"
Lagrak kept grinning. "Would you like to be introduced to your vaults, Miss Shafiq-Black?"
"Yes, Account Manager Lagrak," she said faintly, "I think I might."
Lagrak extended a hand with long fingers and sharpened claws. "Take my hand, and I will transport us to the bank."
There's no point in hesitating now, she told herself. He's been nothing but polite. You own whole houses. You've dreamed of having something from your parents all your life. Take the chance. Leap.
Nashira reached out her hand and set it carefully on Lagrak's palm. His grin widened impossibly and he closed his fingers around hers, then took hold of a golden chain around his neck and spoke a harsh word she couldn't make out. Everything went dark and spun around her for a long moment, and then the world returned in a different shape. She was standing in a room with marble walls and a desk made of rich wood and topped in a scaly-looking leather that appeared to have come from something much bigger than a snake or crocodile.
Lagrak released her hand and walked around to the other side of the desk, where he hooked his foot around the stool there and sat down.
There were sheaves of parchment spread out across the desk top, in neat piles. Lagrak picked up the one nearest him and turned it around to extend it across the table towards her. "The account summary for the Black vaults and estates," he said.
She picked it up and looked at it, scanning down until the saw the number labeled 'Net Worth' in large blocky letters. It had nine digits. She sat down in the chair behind her abruptly. After the number, though, was the designation 'galleons'. "What's a galleon?" Maybe they were worth far less than pounds, so she wasn't quite as terrifyingly rich as this looked.
"Galleons are gold coins worth twelve sickles. Sickles are silver coins worth 29 bronze knuts." He smiled. "But I suspect what you want to know is the conversion to muggle money, no? One galleon is worth five muggle pounds."
Nashira swallowed hard. She didn't even bother trying to multiply the number in her head. It was already so impossibly large that it might as well be infinite, five times one way or the other hardly made a difference. To distract herself from wondering whether she was richer than Bill Gates, she turned to the next page of the sheaf. It was a list of properties and estates.
12 Grimmauld Place
Ironoak House
Chateau Noir
Bijou
Every property had a list of 'house elves' after it - from Grimmauld Place only one to Chateau Noir with six. She looked up at Lagrak. "What's a house elf?"
"The servants of wizards. They sustain themselves on the excess magic of wizards in exchange for their labor cooking and cleaning. Once you have been confirmed as heir, you can call any of them to you at any time."
"Confirmed as heir?" She asked. "I thought I was already the heir. Didn't you say everything was entailed to me?"
He nodded. "Yes, but you must accept them, or they will remain no more connected to you than they were yesterday." Lagrak gestured to two small boxes on the corner of the desk that she hadn't noticed before. "These contain the Heir and Head rings for the Black and Shafiq families. Now that you are 11, you can take the Heir rings, though the Head rings will not accept you until you reach your majority at 17." He grinned, seemingly enjoying her constant shock and confusion, and pushed another stack of papers to her. "These are the Shafiq account summaries."
Another nine digit number, and another list of properties.
Hikmah
Villa Shafiq
Nur al-Qamar
Loch Willow
17B Grove Lane
Nashira looked up. "Is there anything I need to do to claim the Heir rings?"
Lagrak nodded. "We already know who you are, but your bloodline must be confirmed." He pulled out an empty roll of parchment and a shining copper knife. "Only requires a drop. If you will give me your hand again, Miss Shafiq-Black?"
Nashira bit her lip, but she extended her hand to him. What was the blank parchment for? Presumably goblins didn't use DNA tests, so how-?
Her thoughts were cut off by a sharp pain in her finger, and she watched the vivid blood drip down onto the bottom edge of the parchment. It seemed to spread upwards, then curled into the letters of her name. Lines extended upward, then traced out two more names above hers. Her parents' names. She was transfixed, completely forgetting the pain in her finger. Regulus Arcturus Black and Yasmin Amani Shafiq. She had parents.
The lines didn't stop there, however, spiraling outward and writing other names around them. Her grandmothers' names were Walburga and Amani. Her grandfathers were Orion and Jabir.
When the blood-turned-ink had finished tracing out the names for five generations back, birth and death dates faded in between all of the names. But-
"This can't be right," she said. "This says I was born in 1978. If that was right I'd be thirty-one! I'm only eleven."
Lagrak nodded. "We've known for a long time that there was something strange with the Shafiq-Black heir. For twenty years no magic could trace you - until the fall of Voldemort, when you appeared on the map again, in a muggle hospital. Your parents must have used old, old magic to lock you safely away from the world until the war was over. So for twenty years of your life, you did not live, and you did not age. They must have known there was a chance that they would not survive the war, or they would not have set you to reappear where you did."
She looked at her parents' death dates. Her father had died eight months after her birth, and her mother six months later. She ran her finger over the dates. They were so long ago.
"You are confirmed, now," Lagrak said. She started. She had almost forgotten why the chart had been made, in the shock of what it revealed. He took her hand again and tapped a ruby on the pommel of the dagger against the cut on her finger, and it closed into a thin scar, pale against her skin.
Lagrak took the two boxes and held them out to her, one in each hand. They were both marked only with a crest of arms and a motto. One said only 'Toujours Pur', the other 'Semper Virent' above something she couldn't read that looked like Arabic. She reached for the second, because it seemed more friendly. She opened the box and there were two signet rings inside. Both bore the crest pictured on the box, one with a shape like a sideways moon at the top. She looked at Lagrak. "Which one is the Heir ring and which one is the Head ring?"
"The one with the crescent is the Heir ring," Lagrak replied.
Nashira steeled herself for some kind of catastrophic reaction and picked up the Heir ring. It slid easily onto her finger, seeming much too large and loose, but when it reached the base of her finger it fit perfectly. There was a pricking feeling underneath it - did the ring just stab her too? - and suddenly the crest flooded with color and she was overwhelmed with awareness.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to winnow down the input she was dealing with, and focused on the strongest feeling. When she pushed her mind towards it, she got a picture of a townhouse, with a shell of light seething around it. Seeming to calm down after she acknowledged it, the feeling she got from it subsided to the back of her mind - easily reachable but no longer demanding all of her attention.
She focused on the rest in turn, seeing visions of house after house, some huge and some almost normal sized, one an ordinary-seeming flat. When she finished with the houses there was another feeling, but it was different. It felt warmer and more alive, and like many things at once. She focused on it and got an impression of a crowd of people even shorter than Lagrak, with huge eyes and floppy ears. She supposed they must be house elves - and she realized that she now knew all of their names, and they matched with the lists under the properties on the account summary.
After she had acknowledged the house elf bonds, everything subsided enough that she could pay attention to her own body again. She opened her eyes to see Lagrak looking tolerantly amused, like Miss Brenna when she came in to dinner late. "I'm sorry, Account Manager Lagrak. I was overwhelmed."
He nodded, looking pleased that she had apologized. "I expected as much. The bonds with the wards and the elves are often... affecting when first accepted, from what we have seen." He grinned. "Would you like to take the Black Heir ring now?"
Nashira swallowed hard. It would be overwhelming again - but if she put it off, she'd make it worse by dreading it. And she wanted to claim the rights of the daughter of both of her parents. Her mother had worn this ring, surely, and her father must have worn the other. She nodded and reached out to open the other box. Neither of these rings had a crescent like the Shafiq Heir ring, but one had a fleur-de-lis. She looked up at Lagrak. "Is this one with the fleur-de-lis the Black Heir ring?"
He grinned. "It is."
She picked it up, took a deep breath, and slid it onto her middle finger, one over from the Shafiq ring. Just like the other, it adjusted itself as it slid down until it fit perfectly at the base of her finger, and like the other, it pricked her underneath, and then it flooded with color and the bonds came. She was pleased to find that they were less overwhelming now that she expected them, and she managed to sort through them without squeezing her eyes shut, ending again with the house elf bonds.
"Congratulations, Heir Shafiq-Black."
Nashira blinked away the afterimages of the wards from her eyes. "What do I do now, Account Manager Lagrak?"
Lagrak laughed. "Well, you could go straight to one of your properties, but I believe you had some questions about a letter."
Her eyes widened and she yanked her backpack around to pull out the letter. In all the finding out about her properties and parents, she'd forgotten about what started this whole thing. She pulled the letter out and set it on the desk in front of her. "My first question is why does this say my tuition has already been paid?"
Lagrak grinned widely. "The money first. Good. Your parents arranged for your tuition to be paid to the school as soon as you came out of stasis. We took care of the payment eleven years ago."
She nodded, feeling warm inside again that her parents had made sure to take care of her. "That makes sense. Um, why is it called Hogwarts?"
"Wizards are terrible at naming things."
She laughed a little and looked down at the letter again, flipping the page over to see the equipment list. "Where do I get all of these things?"
Lagrak gestured to one side. "Outside of this bank is Diagon Alley, the main street of the wizarding district in London. Shops there sell everything you will need."
She nodded. "All right. Can I go get money out of my vaults to buy it with?" She paused, struck. "Can I convert some of the money into pounds, too?"
Lagrak nodded. "We can convert into any currency, for a small fee. You cannot access the main gold vaults until you come of age, but your parents designated a trust vault for you that should suffice for your needs." He reached into a desk drawer and produced a small golden key. "This will open your trust vault. The Heir rings will open the heirloom vaults you are allowed access to, and when you get them, the Head rings will open every vault you have a right to."
Nashira took the key and smiled down at it. It was from her parents, for her. She looked back up at Lagrak. "How do I get to my vaults?"
Lagrak stood and stepped towards the door behind her. "I can take you there, if you will pick up your papers and follow me this way."
She took the two sheaves of account statements, bundled them together with her Hogwarts letter, and tucked it all into her backpack, then stood and followed after him. They exited the room into a long marble hallway that led to a cavern of more ordinary stone, with what looked like miniature railroad tracks running through it. Lagrak stepped forward and pulled a lever, and a door in the wall opened and two minecarts tethered together came rumbling out to stop in front of them. Lagrak climbed into the one in front, which had a further assortment of levers in it, and gestured at the other. Nashira climbed in and settled herself on the bench in it, wishing she had something to hold onto.
As she finished the thought, a bar emerged from the floor of the cart and raised itself up to sit at the perfect height for her to grip. She took hold of it, feeling much better about riding in this now. "Thank you," she said to the bar, just in case, and it warmed a little under her hands. The seat under her suddenly seemed more comfortable.
There was a grinding sound from in front of her, as Lagrak pulled the levers into a new arrangement, and then the cart suddenly took off down the tracks, quickly enough that Nashira was very grateful for the bar. It dropped down into a tunnel, then swooped around a corner and through a confusing jumble of other sets of tracks.
"They opened a new vault for you, so it is higher up in the bank," Lagrak said. "The family vaults are much deeper." The cart whisked around another corner, then jerked to a stop in front of a door at least twice Nashira's height. "Here we are, vault 672." Lagrak stepped out of the cart onto the ledge in front of the vault, and Nashira followed him carefully, feeling a little wobbly after the fast ride here.
Looking more closely at the door, she saw a keyhole in the center. She pulled the golden key out of her pocket and put it in. Before she could turn it, the door seemed to melt away around it, leaving an empty archway. She looked back at Lagrak. "Is that supposed to happen?"
He nodded. "A security measure. The key is magical rather than physical, so the lock cannot be picked."
She nodded uncertainly and turned back to the vault. Now that she was paying attention to what had been revealed rather than how it had been revealed, she was shocked by the enormous heaps of coins. Lagrak had mentioned gold and silver coins, and the numbers on the account statements were huge, but a trust vault had sounded small. Nashira supposed this probably was small, compared to the numbers in the main vaults.
Once she got over the shock at the enormous amount of money, she noticed that there were other things in the vault as well. Sitting prominently in the front was a trunk covered in leather that looked similar to Lagrak's desk. On top of it was a bag made of glittering silver chain mail with something purple peeking out from behind the links. She picked up the purse first, and looked inside.
"Wizarding work, but well enough enchanted to suffice," sniffed Lagrak. "The interior is much larger than the exterior, and if you reach inside thinking of an item within it, your hand will find it."
Nashira opened the purse and looked inside. She could see purple silk around the opening, but beyond that it faded away into darkness. "Can I put money in this?"
"You can. The weight of items within it will also not affect you."
Nashira nodded and slung the strap over her shoulder, then knelt to look at the trunk. There were four locks on the front, the keyholes all looking different levels of worn. A tarnished silver key was sticking out of the first keyhole. She looked back at Lagrak. "Is this a really secure trunk? Where are all the other keys?"
Lagrak grinned. "There is only one key. It opens all four of the locks, and each one opens a different compartment inside the trunk."
Nashira looked back at the keyholes, and this time she noticed a tarnished silver plate beneath them. She picked up the hem of her skirt and scrubbed at it, clearing it enough to make out the letters engraved into it: 'Yasmin Amani Shafiq'. "This was my mother's trunk," she whispered. "She left me her trunk." Reverently, she reached out and turned the key in the first lock. It clicked, and the lid opened a fraction. She lifted it and looked inside. The first compartment was the same size as the inside of the trunk, and there was nothing in it except a letter at the bottom. She reached in and carefully lifted it out.
Written on the outside, in slightly faded black ink, was her name. Nashira Yasmin Shafiq Black.
She turned it over, and it was sealed with two colors of wax, black and purple mixing together slightly in the center, each one stamped with a crest just like the ones on her rings. With shaking fingers, she pulled her pocketknife out of her training bra and tried to slide it under the wax like she had with her Hogwarts letter. The wax on this letter was old and hard, however, and it broke. Blinking hard against tears, Nashira flicked the knife closed and dropped it into the purse without looking.
She opened the envelope and slid out the contents. There were two letters, both shorter than she might have wanted, but longer than she'd ever dreamed she might get to see. She picked up the first nervously and read.
My darling Nashira,
If you are reading this, your father and I have not survived to see you off to Hogwarts ourselves, but the war is long over. I'm sorry we couldn't be there, my love, and I'm sorry that you grew up an orphan in the muggle world. Regulus and I knew we couldn't trust either side of the war to treat you right if we weren't there, and we had no guarantee that anyone we could trust would survive if we did not, so we left you to be a foundling. I wish I could have raised you. I wish I could have given you this trunk myself, told you stories about things I hid inside and the time your father stole the key so he could fill it with flowers for my birthday. Jasmine flowers, like my name that I passed on to you. I hope you know what your name means.
I don't know how long it will have been when you see this. I don't know if we will have died soon after we kept you safe, or years later. And I don't know if the war will have ended six months from now or sixty years. I hope it's not too long. You have grown up in a world I never saw, in peacetime, and I hope you never have to see war.
Always know that we loved you. We moved mountains to keep you safe, my darling girl, and my arms ache without you in them but I know that this is for the best. Live, Nashira. Find all the happiness in the world.
I wish you rainbows on every day of rain, my little star.
Your mother,
Yasmin Amani Shafiq
Nashira leaned back away from the letter, sniffling and trying not to mar it with tears. She dropped the letter back into her lap and pulled her backpack off of her shoulder, rooting frantically through the front pocket until she came up with a slightly grubby handkerchief. She pressed it to her eyes and sobbed.
Her mother had loved her, had wanted to be there for her. They had only given her up to save her life. They had wanted her.
She cried for a few minutes, until she could swallow back the tears and lower the handkerchief. She wanted to read the other letter. She realized suddenly that Lagrak had just been standing there waiting while she cried. She twisted to look at him. "I'm sorry I'm taking so long, Account Manager Lagrak," she managed to choke out. "My parents left letters for me."
Lagrak looked startled, but he smiled. "Don't worry, Heir Shafiq-Black. You are more than important enough a customer to the bank to be worth my time."
She nodded and turned back to the letters, took a deep breath, and picked up the second.
Little one,
I hope you are as lucky as we named you, Nashira. Your mother chose it, a name from her family's heritage, but one that's been given to a star. Everyone in my family is named for stars, except my poor cousin Narcissa. We wanted you to have a name from both of us, because you are from both of us. I hope you know the constellations and the stars. Look up and find Regulus, and know that I'm looking down at you.
I'm so sorry I'm not there for you, sweetheart. You and your mother are the best things that have ever happened to me. I only got you a few short weeks before we had to send you away, but you took my heart with you.
We've made sure your tuition is paid. I hope Hogwarts is peaceful in your time, with no one recruiting behind the scenes. I hope people have forgotten the war. If England is still divided, there's a secondary trust vault with tuition for Beauxbatons. I want you to be safe, my little girl. If England isn't kind to you, go to France. The goblins can help you find the Black family artifact that can teach you the language overnight.
I miss you, and I love you, and I hope you're happy, my Nashira. We did everything we could to save you.
Your father,
Regulus Arcturus Black
Nashira bit her lip hard to hold back the tears while she carefully refolded the letters and put them back into their envelope and dropped them into her purse, then broke down crying again. Her handkerchief was cold and sodden, but she couldn't bring herself to care. They loved her, had loved her. She had had a family. She hadn't been thrown away, she had been saved.
She cried until her eyes hurt, then scrubbed her face with the hem of her shirt. She looked dubiously at her sodden handkerchief and decided to shove it back into her backpack instead of her magical new purse. Sniffling, she pulled out the stack of parchment Lagrak had given her and her Hogwarts letter, and tucked them into her purse instead of her backpack. It seemed like a safer place for magic things. She paused, then, thinking that she'd better make sure she really could get things back out.
Pocketknife, she thought, reaching in, and felt it under her fingers. Letters from my parents. Her groping fingers touched parchment, and when she pulled it out, it was the envelope with her name on it and the broken seal. She put it back in. Hogwarts letter. Parchment again, and she pulled it out to confirm that it was the right letter. Good. If she had dropped the letters from her parents into a bottomless pit and could never see them again, she would never have stopped crying. She dropped her vault key into the purse as well, for good measure, because it seemed less likely to get lost than way than if she put it into her backpack.
She looked back up at the trunk. There were three compartments left to look at, and Lagrak was waiting. She closed the lid and locked the trunk, then moved the key to the next keyhole over and turned it. It clicked again and she opened the lid, only to be confronted with... a blank surface of wood just below the lip of the trunk? There was a handle set into it, so she shrugged and stood up to pull on it. Once she'd started it moving, it kept going up on its own, and she let go hurriedly before it pulled up out of her reach.
Out of the trunk emerged a set of wooden doors, with several drawers underneath them. She opened the tall doors first, finding inside a closet rod with a dozen empty wooden hangers dangling from it, all smelling of cedar. She closed the doors and pulled out the drawers, which were all empty except the bottom one, which had a sachet that smelled faintly of dusty flowers when she sniffed it. Looking around the sides of the wardrobe, she found another handle that made the wardrobe go back down into the trunk when she tugged on it.
She locked the compartment and moved on to the next. This one had four different sections with handles. She pulled them up one at a time. The first one was full of old textbooks. When she peeked inside their covers, she saw her mother's name written in the same elegant script that had signed the letter to her. The second was full of a mismatched collection of books she'd never heard of and novels she knew very well. The Chronicles of Narnia in a matching set stood next to something called Tales of Beadle the Bard. Her mother had read too. She ran her fingertips over a copy of The Collected Hans Christian Andersen and smiled so widely it hurt her cheeks. She could read the same books her mother had read.
The third and fourth shelves were empty, ready for her to fill with her own books. She went back to the second section and pulled out Morgana Reborn, picking mostly at random, and tucked it into her purse to read later, then closed the compartment and went to the next. When she unlocked it, the smell of flowers seeped out, and she opened it cautiously.
Inside was a miniature greenhouse - the sides of the trunk seemingly turned to glass with the sun shining through - and it was full to bursting of jasmine flowers. She closed her eyes and basked in the smell of flowers her mother had tended, that maybe her father had planted, if she went by the line in her mother's letter. After she had committed the scent to memory, she opened her eyes and looked down at them again. Her eyes caught on something scratched into the glass and she leaned closer to peer at it, swiping away the condensation that obscured it.
'Yasmin, I know you don't use this compartment, so I thought I would make it into something that would bring you joy. Jasmine flowers for my jasmine flower. Love always, Reg.'
She touched the words again, reverently. Her father had made this for her mother. They had loved each other. She bent and buried her face in the flowers, ignoring the dew that covered her face. The cool petals soothed her swollen eyes, and she thought she could happily spend the rest of her life buried in her mother's jasmine flowers.
After a long minute, though, she reluctantly drew back. Before she shut the trunk, she picked a sprig of flowers from the profusion and tucked them behind her ear. She started to close it, then paused and picked another sprig to drop into her purse. She closed and locked the trunk and dropped the key into the purse as well, then paused to wipe the dew off of her face with the hem of her shirt.
"I suppose I should get some money now," she said. "Thank you for your patience, Account Manager Lagrak."
Lagrak grinned and gestured towards the piles of money. She stepped towards them and started to scoop up a handful, then paused and looked at it. She didn't want to run out of money without realizing it, so she should keep count. She fished around in her backpack again for one of the small notebooks that she wrote lists of what books she wanted and how long it would take to save for them in, and turned it to a blank page. Then she started lining up galleons in piles of 20. There was so much money, and she had no idea how much all the things she had to buy would cost, so she counted out twenty piles and transferred them into her purse, then added ten piles of ten each of sickles and knuts. She noted all the numbers down in her notebook, then dropped it and her pen into the purse as well.
She hefted the purse experimentally. All of those coins had been terribly heavy, but Lagrak was right, the purse didn't weigh any more than it had before she had poured them all into it. She stood up and turned to Lagrak. "I think I'm ready now." She paused. "Wait - can you convert into pounds straight out of my account, or do I need to bring up extra galleons for that?"
"We can debit your account ourselves, you need only request how much currency you require."
Nashira nodded. "All right. I'm done here, then. Except, how can I bring this trunk with me? The letter says I need one for school, but I don't think I could fit it in the cart with me, even if I could carry it."
Lagrak grinned. "Feel for the bonds with your house elves. While you are in the vault, you can call one of them here, and it can carry things for you. If you want something fetched from a vault while you are outside, it will have to have the key, or you will have to come with it - the Heir or Head rings will not work if you are not wearing them."
Nashira bit her lip uncertainly and focused on the bonds with the house elves. She focused on the ones bound to Loch Willow, her favorite from the glimpses of them she'd seen, and picked the one that looked friendliest. "Um, Mildy?" she said uncertainly.
There was a loud pop, and the house elf appeared in front of her. Her eyes and ears were just as large as Nashira had seen in her head, and she was wearing a starched white pillowcase with the Shafiq family crest embroidered onto it in purple and copper thread.
The house elf stared at her, its eyes going even wider, and they filled with tears. "Young mistress!" she cried. "We have waited for you for so many years, and you have returned to us! And you have called Mildy first! Mildy is honored!" She burst into noisy tears.
Nashira stared at her, nonplussed. She hadn't been expecting quite this sort of reaction. Then again, Lagrak had said they bonded with wizards, and they hadn't been able to bond to anyone in years, since all the family had died, had they? They had had the houses, but that couldn't be the same. "Um, it's nice to meet you, Mildy," she ventured.
Mildy beamed up at her. "Young mistress is just as kind as her mother was! What does young mistress need from Mildy?"
"Please call me Nashira," she said uncomfortably.
"Yes, Miss Nashira!"
Nashira supposed that that was as good as she was going to get. "Um, could you carry my trunk for me? I need to go shopping for school supplies, and I don't think I can carry it out of the bank myself."
"Of course, Miss Nashira! Miss Nashira should not have to carry her own trunk!" Mildy snapped her fingers, and the trunk floated into the air and hovered next to the house elf.
Nashira looked up at Lagrak. "Can I come back and look at the other vaults I can access later? I'm- not sure I can handle seeing more of my parents' things right now."
Lagrak's smile looked almost gentle, or perhaps she was just getting used to it.. "Of course, Heir Shafiq-Black. We can take the carts up to the surface and you can get your muggle pounds, and your elf can help you find where you need to buy your things. House elves often do the shopping for lazy wizards, so she should know all of the stores you need."
Nashira nodded. "All right. Thank you, Account Manager Lagrak."
Lagrak led the way out of the vault, and once Nashira and Mildy and the trunk had all passed through the arch, the door reappeared, sudden and silent. Lagrak climbed back into the front cart, and Nashira climbed into the second one, then bit her lip. "Mildy, can you fit in here next to me?" she asked.
Mildy looked nervous. "Mildy has ridden in the goblin carts before, and they make Mildy... not well. May Mildy wait here until Miss Nashira reaches the surface, and then Miss Nashira can call her again, and Mildy will apparate to her side instead?"
"Oh, you get motion sickness!" Nashira exclaimed. "Of course you don't have to ride with me. I'll call you when I get off the cart."
"Miss Nashira is very kind!" Mildy cried, beaming. "Mildy will wait here."
Lagrak frowned. "No one is to be unsupervised in the vaults. Apparate home, elf, and then return when she calls you."
Mildy squeaked. "Of course, of course, goblin sir! Mildy is sorry." She grabbed the trunk and vanished with a loud pop. Before Nashira could do anything else, Lagrak pulled several of the levers on the cart, and with a loud grinding sound it set off again, looping around and onto another track. Within a couple of minutes, it was back in the cavern at the top that they had set off from. Nashira climbed out, slightly unsteady, and Lagrak pulled a lever that sent the cart off to disappear behind a door in the wall.
Nashira shook herself, and once she had her balance back, called for Mildy again. Mildy appeared in front of her.
Lagrak gestured for Nashira to follow, then headed for a set of double doors off to one side from the hallway they had entered from before. Nashira hurried after him, and they emerged into a huge marble hall that left her blinking, it was so much more brightly lit than the vaults. Lagrak led her over to an empty counter and sat down behind it.
"How much muggle currency would you like, Heir Shafiq-Black?"
"Um, just a moment please, Account Manager Lagrak." She reached into her purse and pulled out her notebook and pen, then scanned down through the list of books, adding up in her head, then adding half again as much for good measure, just in case. "Three hundred pounds, please." Wait, she might need some clothes, too. "Sorry, no, five hundred." She didn't have to spend all of it, after all. It would probably be better not to spend all of it, actually, to avoid getting accused of theft. It would probably be suspicious for an eleven year old to have hundred pound notes. "Um, can I have it in twenty pound notes?"
Lagrak nodded. "Of course." He reached below the desk and pulled out a tray of money, then counted out twenty-five notes into a pile, which he pushed over to her. She took them and dropped them into her purse. She probably needed to buy a wallet. Having her money just floating around in her purse at random seemed silly, and it would probably also look strange in stores.
"Thank you, Account Manager Lagrak. I'll be back to see the other vaults soon."
He grinned. "I will see you then, Heir Shafiq-Black."
AN:
Easter eggs in this chapter:
Loch Willow: A reference to Lock Willow, from Daddy Long Legs, the 1912 epistolary novel by Jean Webster. Can be found for free at gutenberg DOT org /ebooks/157 , as it's out of copyright.
All easter eggs are added with the greatest affection for what they reference, and may be considered a recommendation for the work in question.
