Chapter Three
The next day dawned bright and early. Nothing in the Prophet yet. Maybe Headmaster Snape was buying him time to disappear, Harry mused to himself.
It wouldn't matter so much being in the news if nobody bugged him about it. He didn't want to meet another Rita Skeeter dissecting his life, as she had after he won the Triwizard Tournament his fourth year. He tried his best to ignore the existence of several unauthorized biographies with his face in the bookstores. This was just going to give that woman even more ammunition against him.
Harry took to Diagon Alley as soon as it was light. Most of the shops were still closed, but Gringotts opened with the sun.
Harry dug out a key in his pocket and got in the cart as directed. When they reached his vault, he examined the grouped hills of coins, much lessened after six years, but still plentiful in his eyes. Suddenly curious, he asked the goblin waiting impatiently by the cart for a quick-count inventory of the monetary contents of his vault.
The goblin pressed a few buttons on a small box which glowed briefly and started to hum. He read from a small screen out loud to Harry. Parchments were out, obviously and new magical technologies were in.
"587 galleons, 642 sickles, 213 knuts."
Harry always wondered how his parents amassed such a fortune by the time they died in their early twenties, his mother of childbirth and his father of suicide. He had researched the story his aunt and uncle had fed him, and found them to be true.
He knew his father came from an old Wizarding family, but he although there were lineage lists recorded in huge books in the library at Hogwarts that detailed around fifty-three Potters living in the continent, he never did find his father's name. Nor was his own written anywhere in the self-updating list. And none of the other items in the vault shed any light to this. There were no photographs of his parents and their families and no letters. Perhaps Sirius Black had kept those, but he was the last person he'd ask.
He could have contacted any of the Potters on the lineage list, but decided not to bother. They'd have heard of him now, of course. If they didn't contact him, that must mean they're not interested. Like Mr. Black.
On impulse, Harry asked the goblin in front of him about the money. The creature glared resentfully back before finally answering.
"Lily and James Potter initially invested a fixed amount of 150 galleons sixteen years ago, as soon as Lily Potter had conceived. The account had a bigger interest rate than normal following the condition that you would only be able to access the vault in the year you turned eleven. Following their deaths, the contents of their joint vaults were transferred to yours. If that is all, sir?"
Harry hurriedly filled two empty sacks with around eighty galleons and a hundred sickles each. Upstairs, he had one sack converted into pounds. Then he arranged to open an account in a muggle bank that Gringotts dealt with. He wanted to be ready for any eventuality.
"Thank you for your patronage, Mr. Potter."
Whoever taught the goblins manners seriously needed to cut back on sarcasm.
By the time Harry walked back, some of the shops were already open, and a few people were wandering about. But the shop beside Fortescue's was still barred and empty. The proprietors were probably still asleep.
He decided to explore a bit while waiting. Growing up, Tom had shown him the different doorways to the other alleys, but Harry was still unfamiliar with most of them.
At the end of Diagon Alley, lay a forbidding looking hedge with large thorns. One had to prick his finger before he is allowed to pass, and beyond lay just a meadow with a dirt road winding through it. A sign marked it as Mantou Alley. Instead of buildings, there were little tents pitched onto the grassy knoll, colorfully patched and looking cheerful among the wildflowers. They were always different, Harry knew, set up by eccentrics and gypsies and enterprising housewives.
This morning, there were a few tents open and ready to do business, with small tables filled with thingamajums and gewgaws, as other early witches and wizards rummaged through them in utter seriousness.
Harry secured the sacks from Gringotts inside his cloak with its anti-theft spell, before starting for the nearest tent.
The first one had tiny perfume bottles with strange-coloured contents. Harry could swear some of them were vibrating. He eyed them briefly, before heading to the next one.
The colorful things strewn on green velvet caught Harry's interest. Small sculptures made of different rocks, precious or otherwise, stood on the table as if tiny monuments erected on grass. Harry picked up one in smoky amethyst. It was a snake striking, fangs extended, hood flaring.
The man behind the counter beamed at him. He was as small as Professor Flitwick, with tiny fingers that looked like they belonged to a child. But those fingers reached for the snake in Harry's grip, and they handled the stone deftly.
"Not many pick the snake-stone, sir. Too scary, too real, they say."
Harry smiled almost shyly. "I'm not afraid of snakes. Did you make them?"
The man smiled proudly. "Yes, Arugba make them with own hands. He buy stones and find stones, and he make many things with them."
"Do they have any magical properties?" Harry was curious, picking up another one in plain rock, a perfect rose on the verge of bloom.
"Some of them have protection spells, good for gifts. Other kinds have complex ones because of stone, but all bring good luck, sir."
The small man waved cheerily and Harry waved back. He had bought the snake-stone and a reddish-yellow amber cat curled around itself, sleeping. He needed all the luck he could get.
Harry browsed awhile, before stopping at the largest tent. In the long tables, stacks of books and parchments were scattered, some tied together by string, others looked like lost pages held down by oval rocks so they wouldn't fly away.
Randomly picking up volumes, and scanning titles and pages of the parchments, Harry came across several sheets of music tied in purple ribbon, and a book on earth spells that looked intriguing, even though Harry had never heard the term.
He added what seemed to be someone's journal, full of barely legible handwriting and amusing little cartoons that waved from the page, and finished with a bunch of random parchments. Some of them looked like they were written in some sort of code. Harry just added whatever seemed interesting, thinking he would at least have fun deciphering them.
He had a brief interest in codes and ciphers, recalling his own diaries written while still living with the Dursleys more than five years ago. He had some pretty inventive ways to hide his writing. But in the end, his uncle had thrown everything out, declaring the squiggles to be "unnatural."
Thinking of Uncle Vernon led to thoughts of Harry's aunt. Should he have told her everything? He had kept the truth from Tom automatically, even though he knew the older man's first reaction would have been sympathy. And then the second would have been fear. Aunt Petunia cared for him, but she was willfully blind to his world; she didn't need to know.
The small bespectacled girl wrapped everything in muslin and tied the entire thing with a green ribbon. It had cost Harry a mere fifteen sickles for the entire thing. He knew most of them would end up as useless, but there was a bit of comfort in the act of shopping for frivolous things. It was as if his life wasn't in grave danger.
By the time Harry returned to Diagon Alley, he was carrying different-sized packs awkwardly in one hand, while eating a rosemary-lamb sandwich in another. And the store was finally open: Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes.
