Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns everything.
Thank you to orene treke (hopefully it's a good big finish!), Tarkemelhion (thank you, I'll enjoy it while I can then), Maria (Nev and Luna are cute!), Pareidolia (don't worry, Charlie is a strong guy but it'll take time), Faerylark (he's certainly living up the the Gryffindor name now), karin85 (I'm glad you like him!), and Fred kissed George (maybe he'll ask about Nargles next? We'd all like to know…) for their excellent reviews!
Sorry this is taking me so long to update, my life is suddenly insanely busy and I don't want to rush the ending! Please review and make my day!
Harry Potter and the Unholy Grails
Riddle, Black and Potter
"There really is nothing more revolting than Polyjuice Potion," Ron observed as he surveyed a grey potion that was slowly bubbling up the flask in his outstretched hand.
"Oh grow up Ron," Hermione chided him. "We are exceptionally lucky that Bill could get us any at all."
Ron stopped complaining. It was true, it had taken Bill nearly two hours to sneak out of Gringotts, break into the nearest apothecary and steal the potion. He had returned with a nasty cut on his arm from an over-zealous mother who owned the store and thought he was a Death Eater.
"Yeah," Harry agreed. "That mad witch could have killed him."
"Oh, don't say that," Hermione requested, looking a bit pale. "I'd rather not think about anyone dying. Flora Bunket."
"Excuse you," Ron offered.
"No," Hermione said impatiently. "We are becoming Flora Bunket and her family."
"Who?" Harry asked.
"The 'mad witch' from the shop," Hermione explained. "Bill took some off her and her children in the little scuffle they had. Then he stole their keys after he Stunned them."
Draco whistled. "Not bad," he conceded. "Your brother is surprisingly cool, Weasley."
Ron seemed to decide to take that a compliment and he smiled. Harry could not help but smile too when he saw the two most important men in his life getting along so well.
"Here you go," Hermione dropped a short hair into Ron's flask. "You'll be Mr. John Bunket, and I'll be Flora."
Harry and Draco held out their flasks of potion expectantly and Hermione dropped a curly hair into each of them. "You two," she waved her free hand at them, "will be our sons, William and Quentin."
"I get to be William," Draco said instantly.
"Aw, I don't want to be Quentin," Harry complained.
"My uncle's name is Quentin," Hermione scathed at them, though Harry expected that she was angrier for their wasting time than anything.
Ron was eyeing his now-beige potion with distaste. "Let's get this over with, shall we?"
"We've got the brooms?" Hermione asked.
"Yes," Draco confirmed.
"The keys?"
"Yes," Harry replied.
"Even your key, Harry?"
"Yes."
"O….okay then," Hermione said and raised her flask to her lips. As one they tipped the potion down their throats and gasped as it burned down their bodies.
Though Harry could not see the sun set outside he knew it must be late. His eyes began to ache at the sides and he found himself blinking unnaturally often, as if his eyelids were taking very frequent, very brief naps. When they returned to the room, he could see the effects of the long day on everyone around him as well. Mafalda, Logan and Mathias were all curled together in a tangle of limbs on a pile of pillows and fast asleep. Fred Weasley was sitting against a wall, his eyes closed and his head lent back so that Harry could see every inch of his throat. Angelina sat between his legs with her back against his chest, asleep. George and Oliver were playing a half-hearted game of chess on a set Bill had conjured them in an attempt to stay awake.
The only person who seemed perfectly alert was Percy, who was staring almost unblinkingly down at Charlie as he slept. Harry could see that the third brother was still trying to digest what had happened. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, leaning together on a loveseat in the center of the room, were sending both of them frequent worried glances. The four of them did not linger. Quickly they explained to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley where they were going, ignoring their cries of "No!" and "You mustn't!", and then they went on their way. Harry wondered when he would see them again.
Ten minutes later, they stood in the atrium of Gringotts, a happy family of four. Ron now greatly resembled Remus, but younger and healthier, while Hermione reminded Harry of a much-older Luna. Draco stared at Harry through laughing blue eyes under dirty blond curls. Harry knew that the boy he was impersonating, Quentin Bunket, was an eight-year old carbon copy of his older brother but with brown eyes and a smaller frame.
Together they stood in the glow of the lamps high, high above them and waited in line to be served. Finally they reached the front of the queue, which Harry thought was rather over-long for such a late hour. He suspected that many of the unblemished Wizarding families, those still free to do business, were drawing gold in anticipation of a big battle to come.
"Names?" the goblin at the desk asked them curtly.
"John Bunket," Ron supplied in a surprisingly deep alto. Hermione blushed a bit beside him.
"Flora Bunket," she said. "These are our children, William and Quentin."
"Key?" the goblin demanded. Ron pulled the Bunket's vault key from his pocket with sweaty hands.
"H-Here," he handed it over. The goblin inspected it carefully.
"Very well," the goblin said finally. "Our Head of Security himself will take you down to your vault. Ragnok?"
Harry's stomach did a nervous little flip as the Bill's goblin friend approached them. He felt a stab of regret that they were about to double-cross the same goblin that had helped them only hours ago.
Hermione reached out to Harry and he obediently took her hand like a good child. Draco ran ahead, bouncing with excitement and exclaiming to a tense Ron that they might see a dragon, just as they had rehearsed. Ragnok lead them along a corridor off of the atrium and then though a door some way down the hall.
As they stepped though, a wave of cold and damp air washed over all of them. Though the passage in which they stood was also made of marble, just visable was the bend in the tunnel where it turned to earth and plummeted downward. The whole place had the odd feeling of being underground, though Harry knew they were not. The mine car-like trolleys stood expectantly in front of them in a line of a dozen or so. Harry followed Hermione into one, where he settled awkwardly on her lap. Draco clambered in after him, followed by Ron and Ragnok. The goblin inspected the key that was still in his hands.
"Vault 437?" he asked them.
"Er, yes," Ron said gruffly.
"Very well," the goblin said, and with that the cart began to move. It lurched around the blind corner and the ornate candle chandeliers were replaced by torch brackets and the marble gave way to wood and soil. Suddenly, and without warning, they plummeted downwards.
It was like being on a roller coaster. The lights of the torch brackets streamed past them so quickly that the light of one bled into the next and they appeared to Harry as a bright blur along the walls. He screamed; he couldn't help it. His stomach somewhere his tonsils, he wondered if he would be able to pass off the scream as one of excitement, but from the amused look that Draco was giving him he doubted it.
Several times they roared past other passageways and once they passed a looming dark figure that Harry suspected may have actually been a dragon. Finally, when Harry felt they must have fallen for miles and miles, they swerved wildly into a side tunnel that leveled violently. Feeling most of his organs twist and continue zooming downwards even as they pulled to a stop, Harry moaned a bit.
"Are you ok, sweetie?" Hermione asked in a mothering voice.
"Uh huh," Harry grunted, climbing out of the cart onto the stone ledge. Ragnok had already unlocked the Bunket's vault and was staring at them expectantly.
Hermione acted. "Stupefy!" she whispered, and Ragnok fell over, unconscious. Somewhere, an alarm sounded.
"Ok," Draco said, immediately. "We have about a minute before security gets here. They'll know he's been Stunned. Remember the plan?"
"Yes," Ron murmured back. "Here are your brooms." He pulled two shrunken brooms from his pocket and enlarged them.
"Good luck," Hermione whispered, slightly fearfully.
"You too," Harry said. Then Ron tossed him a broom, he mounted it and he and Draco sped off down the passage.
Ron and Hermione got to work. The plan was to make it look like the Bunkets had tried to rob the vaults around theirs. Using anything and everything heavy that they could find in the Bunkets' vault, they made quite a show of hammering and denting the doors of several nearby vaults. It was not long before a large contingency of security goblins were to be heard clamoring down the passage. When they caught sight of Ron and Hermione, they laughed mirthlessly and derided them plainly in gobbledygoek.
"Run kids!" Ron yelled, as rehearsed. Hermione dropped two Decoy Detonators behind her back and they scuttled noisily in two different directions, sound very much like trainers pounding on stone. The goblins stared after the retreating noises, looking unsure about what to do.
Ragnok was stirring beside them. All at once he seemed to recover his sense and he jumped to his feet. He whipped a mirror from his pocket and pointed it at them. Ron and Hermione were startled and horrified to see their own faces looking back. Apparently, Polyjuice Potion did not fool this mirror.
Ragnok stared at the mirror for a second, indecisive, and then seemed to make up his mind. His fixed a cold stare not on Ron or Hermione, but on the goblins before him.
"Not very impressive," he chided them all, speaking in English for Ron and Hermione's benefit. The other goblins stared blankly back at him.
"Had these been real intruders, they would have escaped by now!" Ragnok shouted at them.
There was a collection of confused mutterings from the security force. Finally, one of them murmured a question at Ragnok timidly.
"Yes it was a test!" Ragnok bellowed back. "You did not pass! You let the intruders in! You allowed their accomplices to escape! You did not bring any back up wizard support!"
The goblins all hung their heads, ashamed.
"Shall we round up the children?" one brave goblin asked.
"They were not children," Ragnok waved his hand airily. "Transfigured rats. I would suggest you return to your posts. I will escort my colleagues out myself and will expect a full report on what you did wrong from your squad leader by tomorrow. Do you understand?"
The goblins murmured their assent and then trudged back up the tunnel. Ragnok climbed into the cart again, followed by a stunned Ron and Hermione.
"I will take you back to Bill," Ragnok hissed angrily at them. "I will then have to flee before they discover your accomplices. I will not even attempt to help them, do you understand?"
Ron and Hermione nodded mutely as the cart began to ascend again. Their job was done. Now it was up to Harry and Draco.
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Harry and Draco sped along at breakneck speed through the dark tunnels. Harry wished that he had though to ask Hermione for some portable fire; it was very dark here. The occasional torch bracket that had seemed to blur by while in the cart seemed oddly spaced apart now, so that Harry could see Draco only every once and a while. He flicked in and out of the firelight like an illusion and Harry felt himself asking him questions just to know he was really still there.
"Do you know which way we are going?"
"Yes," Draco hissed into the rushing air around them.
"You remember my vault number, right?"
"Yes."
"Oh good," Harry racked his brain for another question. "Do you think they'll catch us?"
"They will if you keep talking," Draco pointed out and as if ha had summoned them, a little force of goblin security appeared silhouetted in the tunnel ahead of them. Draco swerved into a side tunnel, Harry right behind him straining his ears for any noise that might indicate that they had been spotted. When there were no shouts or running footsteps, Harry exhaled loudly and relaxed a bit.
The side tunnel that they had shot into dived almost vertically downwards. With no choice but to do the same, the boys plummeted into the increasingly heavy darkness. Harry's lungs and nostrils filled with damp, musty air.
"Pull up!" Draco shouted suddenly. Harry obeyed him without question and it was a good thing he had. The tunnel suddenly leveled out and began to curve upwards again, almost instantly the passage gave way to a huge cavernous hall with no visible floor and the tracked abruptly ended, like a giant ski jump, and dropped away into the darkness. Any cart that rolled down that tunnel would send itself and its riders to destruction.
"Look," Draco said in an awed voice, waving his hand in a circle around them. Harry looked. The hall stretched out for great distances on either side of them. As his eyes began to adjust, Harry could see that the walls were pocked with the openings of hundreds of other tunnels, some of which dropped straight through the ceiling.
"How are you supposed to know which tunnels go to the vaults and which ones end up here?" Harry asked.
"I don't think you are," Draco murmured. "I'll bet only the goblins know. That's while Bill insisted we have a goblin help us or not go, I suppose."
"But the drop would kill anybody who made a wrong turn!"
"Yes," Draco agreed, "and if not the drop, those would certainly do it."
Harry followed his gaze. For a second he thought that somebody had lit a fire on the floor of the cavern, but the jet of flame was extinguished almost instantly. Harry realized what it must be. His suspicions were confirmed when the next jet of light fell upon a forked tail and shiny scales.
"Dragons," he breathed, remembering Halcyon from the cave under the Uffington Dragon. Somehow he guessed that it would not be as easy to talk to these dragons, for there were several of them, he now realized.
"I'm glad we weren't in a cart," Draco said finally, tearing his eyes away from the creatures below and turning his broom left away from Harry. "Come on, one of these is bound to take us back up to your vault."
They streaked off again, dodging the occasional column of rock and flying over the heads of dozens of dragons. Draco picked a large passage that dropped nearly vertically into the cavern through the ceiling and zoomed up it.
It took them several minutes to finally locate Harry's vault and Harry could feel the constraints of time pushing in on him. He wondered how Ron and Hermione were and whether they had escaped the goblins. How long did he and Draco have before the security found them?
Pulling up in front of the vault, they dismounted silently. Harry had not been here in what felt like a very long time and the lock had collected a fine layer of dust. He laid his broom against the wall and slid the key into the ancient door. Clicking the lock over with a dull clang, Harry pulled the door open heavily.
Just as it had in his first year, the amount of gold in his vault surprised him. Piles and piles of galleons lay over every square inch with dustings and spots of silver and bronze which were the less valuable sickles and knuts. Among the money lay treasures, most of which Harry had never looked twice at. He looked now and he saw Potter family heirlooms, piles of old books and, set atop a pile of galleons, a Head Boy badge.
Treading his way carefully through the treasure, Harry plucked the badge from its perch and tucked it into his pocket. Its pressure and weight were irrationally comforting. Harry glanced over at Draco, who was sitting amid a pile of silverware, and he suddenly wondered what his father and mother would have thought of him dating a boy. "Lucius Malfoy's son, to be exact," he thought ruefully, but he knew that if they had met Draco it wouldn't have mattered.
Picking a pile of money and treasure, Harry sat down and began to sift. The first thing that he picked up was a jade necklace. Harry imagined his mother's face with that necklace on and smiled.
Sifting again through the coins, next he found a beautiful mirror. As he stared down into it, his face swam out of view and another replaced it. His mother smiled and waved and just as Harry wondered where James was he was there beside her, smiling. Then Sirius' face swam across the mirror, replacing Lily and James'. Harry realized that he could control who was in the mirror by thinking about them. Ron, Hermione, Draco, Luna, Neville…he felt a pang in his heart when he realized how long it had been since he had seen Neville and Luna.
Placing the mirror carefully aside, Harry crawled around to another pile and began to sift through that. There were several piles of jewelry, but it was all necklaces and everything he had picked up clearly belonged to his parents, not Regulus Black.
"Aha!" Draco cried suddenly. Harry was jerked out of his concentration. There were noises in the corridor; a cart rattled past but did not stop. He turned around to face Draco.
"What is it?"
"Is this it?" Draco was holding a thick oval locket aloft in front of him, grinning. Harry's heart leapt then sank. It was not the locket; Slytherin's locket was gold.
"No," Harry said glumly, resuming his search with increased desperation. Draco's smile fell of his face and he dropped the locket dejectedly and then he too kept searching.
Harry was starting to feel a lot like giving up when something pushed the locket out of his mind once more. He gasped, and Draco turned around to look at him.
"What is it?" he echoed Harry's earlier words.
Harry seized both handles and tugged the Hogwarts Quidditch Cup from a pile of rubble. It was very heavy for his little boy body to lift and he ended up setting it down again on a pile of paper. Coins cascaded in every direction, ringing and clinking. Draco stood up to see what Harry had found.
"Wicked," the blonde smiled.
"Why would my dad have this?" Harry asked, confused.
"Well, according to Hogwarts a History," Draco said, suddenly sounding so much like Hermione that Harry started, "when the plaques on the cup are filled the captain of the winning team of that year gets to keep the Cup."
"Awesome," Harry breathed, running his finger over the little plaque that read Gryffindor.
"Hey, look," Draco picked up a small locket from the hole made by the Cup. "Is this it?"
"No," Harry said regretfully.
"Do you think summoning works in a Gringotts vault?" Draco asked.
Harry shrugged and then waved his wand, "Accio locket!"
No less than fifty lockets burst forth from the piles of gold, hitting Harry in the shins and hands as they raced at him.
"…I guess so," Draco said, mildly amused. He picked up a locket and held it up for Harry's inspection. Harry shook his head; that wasn't the locket either. They began pulling lockets off the pile and examining them. After several minutes, Harry was getting discouraged. When he picked up a large gold locket that he had been sure was Slytherin's and it promptly turned into a golden tiara in his hands, he threw his hands up in frustration.
"It will take us forever to sort though all over these," Harry observed. "Look, all the chains are tangled up."
"Maybe we should summon Regulus' things instead and then sort the lockets out from that?" Draco suggested. He waved his wand and murmured, "Accio Regulus Black's possessions!"
Nothing at all happened. Draco turned to Harry, confused. Harry raised his own wand and repeated the spell. He was immediately inundated with a hundred odd objects.
"You must have to own the vault to summon things in it," Harry guessed.
Draco nodded, pulling apart the stuff at Harry's feet. There was absolutely no locket in it. Harry could feel his legs stretching and his face burning; he was returning to his own form. Draco, pouring over a parchment on the ground now, was starting to go blonde.
"It's not here," he concluded finally, feeling oddly hollow.
"Harry, come look at this," Draco said.
"It's not here," Harry repeated, panic rising in his chest.
"I know," Draco beseeched him. "Look at this!"
He shoved a parchment under Harry's nose and pointed to a passage in it. The paper was titled "The Last Will of Regulus Black." It was dated August 1980.
"To my brother Sirius," Draco read in apparent excitement, "who was right all along, I leave my house in Knockturn Alley and all its contents in the hope that he can sell them for some gold."
Harry eyes went wide. "Regulus had a house in Knockturn Alley?"
"You know what that means, Harry? He left it to Sirius who left everything to you. There must be a key somewhere…"
They searched. After a few long moments, Draco emerged triumphant, clutching another parchment to which a key was taped. "Here's the property deed and key! 722 Knockturn Alley…"
"It's there, isn't it?" Harry's stomach seemed to flip over. How would they get to the locket now?
Draco nodded. Another cart rattled past but did not interfere with them.
"We should go," Harry decided. He couldn't believe that security hadn't come after them yet.
"Yeah," Draco agreed, tossing once last look over his shoulder at the mounds of gold as he followed Harry from the vault. Swinging the heavy door closed again, Harry withdrew the key and then mounted his broom.
"Can you get us out?" Harry asked Draco.
"Out to where?" Draco asked. "I don't think we'll be able to get back to Bill and the others now."
This hadn't occurred to Harry, but he knew it was right. "Into Diagon Alley then, I guess?"
"Ok," Draco said, and kicked his way off the ground. Ten minutes and one very close shave with a cart full of goblins later, they found themselves in the cart room with the chandeliers where they had started. Here they ran into another problem. There was no handle on the inside of the door to the lobby of the bank.
After some debating, they decided that their best bet would be to wait until somebody came through and then try to sneak past under Harry's invisibility cloak. Eventually, they were not sure how long exactly, a family came through with a goblin. Together they squeezed past before the door closed and crept along the corridor to the lobby. They appeared behind a counter where an old goblin was angrily shouting, "Where is Ragnok!" over and over. Avoiding the jostling and surging crowds of customers there, they wormed their way outside.
They did not take the cloak off until they were well away from the bank. Diagon Alley was dark now, the few lights that were not broken glowed gloomily over the cobblestones. Looking through the windows of the shops, Harry could see huddles of people, often large crowds, inside every one.
They hurried up the street, dashing quickly through the patches of light. Evenutually and too late, Harry realized that the few people left were all Death Eaters. They were everywhere, hiding in the alleyways and sitting on the benches. Inevitably, one of them near the entrance to Knockturn Alley spotted Harry and Draco, and called out, "Oi, you there!"
"Run!" Harry urged Draco, pulling the confused blonde after him down several side-streets before throwing the cloak over them.
"Harry, what…"
"They're all Death Eaters!" Harry whispered urgently. "Come on, we've got to get inside. Fred and George's shop is around here somewhere."
Walking as fast as they could underneath the cloak, the two men paced back to the main street and then tiptoed up the storefronts to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Peering through the dark glass of the large windows out front, they could not see anybody. Circling the store, they went around the back and knocked gently on the door. Even the soft knock seemed to hit the night like a canon blast.
Several long moments later, they heard the lock click over cautiously. The door opened the smallest crack and a voice whispered, "Show yourself."
This was an odd request from somebody who could not see them, but Harry and Draco did as they were told. As the cloak slithered off their shoulders and into Harry's arms, the door finally opened.
"I thought it might be you, Harry!" a beaming Neville whispered, pulling them inside and shutting the door tightly again. It was very dark in the shop storeroom, but Neville moved with unusual grace through the piles of boxes until they reached a staircase that led them upstairs. There, sitting in Fred and George's living room, was Luna.
As soon as she saw them, she jumped to her feet and hugged Harry, smiling at Draco. "Hello boys," she said warmly and dreamily. "It's very nice to see you again. We were getting rather worried about you all."
Harry grinned back, relief washing through him in waves as he knew that his friends were safe. Draco looked happy to see them okay too. Clearing his throat, the blonde asked, "Neville, how did you know that we were invisible without opening the door?"
"Oh," Neville looked suddenly solemn. "I had this. You can look through it like a telescope."
Reaching into his pocket, the chubby boy pulled a glass sphere. With a sick swoop, Harry realized what it was. "Moody…?" he asked, knowing the answer.
"He was killed by Rodolphus Lestrange," Neville said heavily. "That's how they found out safe house. They figured that you would be with Moody, but of course they were wrong."
"Are the other safe houses still safe then?" Draco asked. Harry, for his part, sank heavily onto the nearest couch and put his face in his hands. Moody…dead….
"Yeah, I think so," Neville guessed.
"Well, at least that's good news," Draco said, sitting beside Harry and draping his arm across his shoulders comfortingly.
"You guys should get some sleep," Nevile suggested. "Tomorrow is not going to be easy."
"Yes, don't worry, we'll protect you," Luna murmured.
Both boys look vaguely skeptical but there was no denying how tired they were. Getting up and stumbling over to the beds in the next room, they fell onto them gratefully and fell almost instantly to sleep.