Chapter Nine

Harry's eyes adjusted and his heart leapt in his chest as he took in the familiar sight of Gringotts's marble floor and sturdy pillars. Even in the midst of Voldemort's reign, the goblins still rushed to and fro, as busy as they'd ever been – always more concerned with gold that where it came from. There was something comforting about always being able to rely on the greed of goblins.

Harry started towards the counter, ignoring the stares of immaculately-dressed wizards and goblins alike. He came to the counter and cleared his throat.

More cooperative than the barkeep had been, the goblin at the counter leaned over immediately. "Can I help you, young man?" sneered the goblin.

Harry had to admit – he had sorely missed the unique way in which magic folk sneered. From Snape to any goblin under the sun, they had a way of making anyone instantaneously aware of just how detestable they found them. Harry struggled to keep his expression cold despite the warm, fuzzy feeling blossoming in his chest. "I would like to know the required materials for opening an account at your bank," Harry stated, straight to the point.

The goblin adjusted its spectacles. "First and foremost, you will need a parent or legal guardian to hold the account partly. As well as the opening deposit, proof of your identity, blood status, and forms 16-E and 17-A and B," said the goblin. "Does that answer your question?"

"Yes. Follow up question: what constitutes proof of blood status?" asked Harry.

The goblin raised his eyebrows as if the answer to that question were the most obvious thing in the world. "Why, a family tree, of course. Please keep in mind that your blood status is only considered sufficient if you've more than two magical grandparents," he said.

Harry nodded. "Naturally. May I have copies of the necessary paperwork?" he said.

The goblin rustled some things around his desk, and handed Harry a folder full of forms and other documents. "Thank you," Harry said, silently asking the folder and its contents to shrink down to fit in his pockets.

If the goblin had any real misgivings about whether or not Harry should be in the magical world, they evaporated upon seeing his little magic trick. Children usually had a greater aptitude for wandless and wordless magic, but not deliberate magic, like Harry had performed. Someone as young as Harry would have needed private, specific, and expensive tutoring to have such skills – which anyone but pureblood families struggled to afford.

"A pleasure doing business with you, sir," said the goblin.

"Yes, yes, thank you," Harry said busily. He made his way out of Gringotts like he had somewhere to be – which he did, but if he got anything done was anyone's guess.

Diagon Alley was far quieter than Harry had ever seen it before. That may have been due to it being during the school year, or it may have been Voldemort trimming the acceptable magical population down to almost nothing. More likely the latter – between the need for Harry to prove his blood status and the number of previously-thriving shops that now had windows boarded up and signs taken down, there was no denying it.

Harry pretended to be unfazed, but that fuzzy feeling was fading fast.

He picked over the remaining shops – Flourish and Blotts and Eeylop's Owl Emporium still looked to be in business, along with a few others that Harry recognized. The one that caught his eye was what used to be Ollivander's – which had been rebranded as Diagon Wand Shoppe. Harry's stomach twisted into a knot at the sight of it. Ollivander had been in hot water with the Dark Lord the last time Harry had seen him – of course there was no way Voldemort would have let the man keep his shop, but looking at it with his own eyes... It just seemed wrong and unnecessary.

Harry steeled his nerves and entered the store, irritated by the inappropriately-cheery bell that announced his entrance.

A gray-haired witch was sorting through shelves of wands when Harry entered. She craned her neck. "Hello! Here for a wand? Or does it need cleaned, or..." She trailed off when she saw how young Harry was. "My bad, darling. Are you lost?"

"No, ma'am, I was actually hoping to price your wands," Harry said, deciding to look irritated by his treatment.

"Oh, they go for anywhere between twenty-five to sixty these days," the witch said, coming closer to the counter.

Harry couldn't suppress his recoil. "What, galleons?" he said before he could stop himself.

Instead of looking annoyed, the witch suddenly looked somber. "I'm afraid so, darling. Wandmakers are in short supply these days. Gregorovitch has been dead for years now, and with Mr. Ollivander being in Azkaban and all..." She shook her head. "Wandmaking is a strange art. You can't take a class on it or pick it up over the summer. It's old magic. Magic of the Earth, and all that."

In a much cheerier voice, she went on, "The Ministry has appointed me to oversee the dealings of the remaining stock. We've got all the leftover stock from our great wandmakers - Ollivander's and Gregorovitch's alike. They're the last of their kind, these wands. Folks have been petitioning those Native American wandmakers to set up shops in the UK, but for the time being, this is what you've got to choose from."

Harry took a moment to process all of this. "Twenty-five to sixty galleons per wand, then?" hummed Harry.

The witch nodded.

"Thank you for your time, ma'am. I might be back in here soon," Harry said.

"Anytime, darling," smiled the witch, getting back to her sorting while Harry exited the stores.

Other businesses, while being a bit more pricey due to the sudden lack of competition, weren't too far off from what Harry recalled. He wouldn't be getting anything he needed without money, of course, but the wand was by far the biggest concern he had as far as supplies went.

Harry stopped at last at the Leaky Cauldron, knowing he had no money to buy anything, but wanting to see if Tom was still alive.

He was. He greeted Harry kindly, if a bit more somber than he remembered, and of course asked where his parents were.

"Gringotts, juggling papers," Harry said, feigning exasperation. "Say, are you still reading that newspaper?"

Tom laughed. "What's a boy your age concerned with current affairs for?" he asked.

Harry shrugged. "I like to read, and who knows how long they'll be busy," he said.

Tom conceded and handed Harry the copy of the Daily Prophet - and a mug of cocoa to go with it, free of charge. Harry settled in to a squishy red armchair by the fire, feeling giddy with nostalgia despite himself. All he needed now was Crookshanks clawing at his shin and the comforting lull of Ron and Hermione's bickering in the background.

Harry pushed these thoughts out of his mind, lest Tom find him blubbering in the corner, and focused on the newspaper. The front page loudly sang the praises of the Ministry, which had apparently pulled off their greatest cover-up operation since the age of Grindelwald. The muggles were entirely convinced it was an attack by suicide bombers.

The news didn't get any more cheerful. Everything from stories about Ministry officials being busted as blood traitors, to the ever-increasing count of muggleborns killed since Voldemort's return, made Harry's cocoa taste less and less sweet. The only silver lining was a small section that mentioned a member of a "rebel group" being apprehended by authorities – which meant the Order was still alive somewhere.

Harry just didn't know how to find them.

"Thank you for the cocoa, sir," Harry said, coming up to the counter. "Do you mind if I take this photo out of the newspaper?" It was a photo of Rita Skeeter, beaming at the camera with her eyes glinting. It had been posted beside an article she'd written on halfblood etiquette in the new wizarding world. It didn't move much, with only her teeth flashing between her lips and one hand playing with a tress of hair.

"Go ahead, lad. I'll have a new one by tomorrow," said Tom.

Harry thanked him again and made up something about getting back to his parents before they worried about him.

He'd been gone for about three hours, and had, as far as he was concerned, accomplished nothing.

-O-

Draco followed his father up the narrow, sloping stone steps towards Azkaban. Howling wind and raindrops like pellets beat up against the two wizards, making their cloaks flap wildly and loudly. Only charms in the fabric for warmth, and charms in their boots for weight, kept them from being pitched off the jagged rocky plateau and into the freezing depths of the sea.

It was the first time Draco had been to Azkaban. He'd always known it was a terrible place, but words couldn't accurately portray just what kind of place it was. Lucius, who had been stationed at Azkaban for several months now, had tried to describe it many times – always failing.

Azkaban was a hole in the side of the Earth, sucking joy and sanity and safety into its depths to be frozen to death and forgotten about.

Voldemort had sent Draco to investigate a disconcerting report from his father.

At the base of the stone tower, Lucius fumbled with a ring of keys, finally finding a black skeleton key and opening the heavy door.

Inside, it wasn't much warmer or much quieter than outside. Wind gushed in through cracks in the stone, making hissing and howling sounds, from the shrillest shrieks to most somber of notes.

How many of those howls were from the wind, and how many from the prisoners, Draco had no way to tell – and if he did, he wasn't sure if knowing would have comforted him.

"Well?" Draco prompted. "Where is he?"

"Third floor," grunted Lucius, keys jangling in his hands. "This way – and don't look at the dementors for too long."

As they climbed the steps, Draco couldn't help but envy the Order. At Draco's first Order meeting, where he'd relayed the Dark Lord's plan about the muggleborns and the London raid, an ethereal jack russell terrier had bounced in through the fireplace to confirm Draco's loyalty with Ron Weasley's voice. It was a magic Draco had known existed, but had never seen with his own eyes before – mostly because no Death Eater could manage a patronus.

The silence soon ended when they reached the third floor, and Lucius lead Draco to the end of a hall. "It's there," said Lucius, teeth chattering. It was piercingly cold on the third floor, regardless of however many charms were on their cloaks.

Lucius unlocked the door, and Draco pushed it open. He peered into the stone cell, squinting through the darkness to make out the shape on the other end of the room.

He got his wand out. "Lumos," Draco said, and the cell was bathed in cold, blue light.

Slumped over on a cot, hair still clinging to the skull, was the skeletal form of Ollivander. Draco felt his brow furrow, and he entered the cell to get a closer look. "You said he died three days ago," Draco said as he inspected the skeleton.

"He was flesh when I found him," Lucius said, his hands jammed in his armpits in a futile attempt to keep them warm. "By the second day, his gut had burst, and now..."

Draco grabbed the skull with both hands and yanked it firmly off the spine. The motion jostled the rest of the bones, and the precarious pile of ribs and joints clattered against the stone. Lucius gasped audibly behind him, but Draco was concerned with the skull.

"Interesting,," he hummed, turning it around in his hand, running his thumb along the groove around the eye socket. "Did you have time to determine a cause of death?"

"Well, I... You know I'm no medic, boy," Lucius said. "I did look over the body, but it seemed as though the man just... died."

"A heart attack?" Draco turned to face his father.

Lucius shrugged. "Most likely. The wind is so loud, that even positioned right outside the cell, I heard nothing the night he passed away," said Lucius. "But the man was old – he was old when I got my first wand, and my father bought his first wand from him as well. Perhaps it was the cold, or the stress, or just his age."

"Even so," said Draco, turning back to the pile of bones, "that doesn't explain such rapid decomposition, especially in these conditions. Does Azkaban have a rat problem?"

"No, the dementors certainly scare away any rodents that even make it here," Lucius replied.

"Bugs?"

"Not many – some spiders and centipedes, but enough to eat a man in two days?"

Draco sighed, holding Ollivander's skull to his chest as he thought. This wasn't like anything he'd ever read about before, unless... "Perhaps his death and decomposition were more magical in nature," Draco suggested. "Perhaps he didn't see fit to continue living in these conditions and he..."

"What, killed himself? How?" asked Lucius. "He didn't have a wand."

"Not all magic requires such a thing. Our late friend was quite adept at wandless magic, if you'll recall," mused Draco. He had numerous childhood memories of evenings spent in the parlor with Snape and his mother, the man trying to show him all sorts of tricks that could be done without words or a wand. Making flowers bloom, or making them glow, or hum. Draco hadn't been very good at it, but Snape made it look as natural as sneezing, if far more deliberate.

Between that, and the number of spells and potions of his own invention, Snape had truly been a mind of a kind. Not that it mattered now that he was dead.

Draco put his feelings in a pile and shoved them in a corner to be dealt with later. There were more pressing issues at the moment.

"I shall report to the Dark Lord that it appears Ollivander took his own life through magical means," said Draco, "but it is best to open a more thorough investigation into his manner of death. Determining precisely whether or not magic was used is key. If so, that will be the end of that. But if not..."

Lucius nodded, looking green. They both knew what would happen if the Dark Lord found out that one of his most valuable prisoners had escaped, particularly to the guard who let it happen.

Draco wanted to tell his father not to worry – even if it did turn out that Ollivander had escaped, the Order wouldn't let anything happen to them. But saying so would mean exposing his own treachery, and even stuck inside the veritable black hole that was Azkaban, Draco didn't trust secrets to remain so.

The bones were gathered up and Draco left for Riddle Manor, choosing wisely the words he would use to report this to the Dark Lord – and to the Order.