Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Two: Dumbledore Versus Gringotts
Sirius Black had not had the opportunity to be informed of the contents of the third prophecy, yet, when Dumbledore paid him a visit in Grimmauld Place to ask his assistance. No, he would get the whole story of that much later, after the quest at hand was complete.
It was, he would reflect, probably just as well that he didn't know the entire thing when he went to Gringotts with Harry and Professor Dumbledore. He would have been too angry to think straight.
His mind was still a tangled ball of yarn, and Harry, try as he might, still seemed to lack some key ingredient that would help him to untangle it. He'd said something, at some point, about deaging Sirius, so that his mental state, and physical state, were better aligned, or something. Sirius didn't quite understand all of the details.
Had Sirius been aware of the full implications of other lines of the prophecy, he would not have greeted Dumbledore with a respectful coolness. He would probably have attempted to murder him, instead, and then thought better of it, much later. Hot-headed and rash. He knew that. Azkaban had taught him patience, but it couldn't change a rather impulsive nature.
Was that the reason that his first response to hearing that they were planning to try to convince the Gringotts goblins to part with an ancient heirloom ("Hufflepuff's Cup") was that it sounded as if it could be fun?
Harry was coming along, which he knew should be his cue to consider it much less fun than he'd initially been inclined to believe. But, Harry was not to be underestimated. When this thought hit him, he rolled his shoulder, an involuntary response, thinking of that time when Loki had broken it.
No, Harry was not to be underestimated. Pity that Ron couldn't come, too.
Sirius was smart. He didn't need his role to be explained to him. He was Harry's legal guardian in the magical world, technically speaking (and, anymore, in the muggle one, too, more or less), which meant that no one would think twice about him being seen in Harry's company…well, except for those who wondered what a student was doing so far from school.
But then, too, Sirius had been cheated of some of his own belongings owing to wizarding court procedure—his wand snapped, and certain relics that would have been passed down to him as the Black heir passed on to other relations.
Like Bellatrix Lestrange, he suspected. If anyone had claim to the possessions of a woman who ought to be interred at Azkaban, at the moment, it was Sirius himself. Well, at least, anyone in the Order. He supposed that Andy and Cissy had best claim as next of kin. Tonks was also a candidate for this mission, but Sirius was the one trained in politics. And, Sirius was smarter than she was, more flexible, despite Azkaban. He didn't like to think this might come to a fight, but if it did….
Well, if it did, Sirius would be readier to battle than she would.
Dumbledore gave him only the bare bones of an idea, as if time were of the essence, and they must make haste, lest Bellatrix move the Cup to a more secure location.
"Where's that?" Sirius asked, breezily. "Hogwarts?"
This was almost amusing to him. But, he had his priorities straight, at long last. The sight of Harry, here at Grimmauld, looking a bit subdued and shaken, pulled Sirius to his senses. Just what had happened to cause that?
"Hello, Sirius. It's always good to see you," Harry said, immediately, with a bright smile that had to be completely fake. Sirius raised an eyebrow, a silent show of scepticism, and Harry sighed, and spread his hands.
Sirius deepened his frown, in response, and crossed his arms. If Harry were the sort for it, he would have fidgeted, here. Instead, he shook his head, and glanced at Dumbledore.
Ah. Keeping secrets, were we?
Sirius, with great reluctance, let it pass. He knew he'd be calling Harry via that mirror the first opportunity there was.
"Grimmauld Place is being left in the almost capable hands of Kreacher, and Tonks and Remus are here somewhere. I haven't been inclined to look for them. Don't know what they're getting up to. Don't want to know, come to that—"
Dumbledore was not impressed.
"We have arranged a meeting with the manager of Gringotts," Dumbledore said. "It is, as we said, an urgent matter, a dispute of inheritances. As the Head of your House, you have some claim to Bellatrix Lestrange's vault. Or, I hope you do."
That was inspiring. Sirius did not ask what would happen if their negotiations fail. Neither did Harry. They both knew that it would result in Dumbledore, and perhaps them, too, breaking into Gringotts to steal the Cup—a foolhardy decision that might well get them killed, given the innumerable protections the bank had established to prevent theft.
Travel to Diagon Alley was enabled through floo. Harry grimaced as he realised that they'd be traveling via fireplaces. And, by now Sirius knew that Harry never landed with grace and poise after such a journey. A blow to his ego, but not a harmful one. "Keeps you modest, right?" he asked. Harry glared at him. Sirius smirked.
"The Leaky Cauldron!" he cried, throwing a handful of powder into the Grimmauld Place grate.
People seemed desperate to avoid their notice as they walked the mostly deserted streets of Diagon Alley. It was very bleak. People hadn't been this terrified even when the notorious mass-murderer Sirius Black first escaped from Azkaban. Bellatrix was the sort of person whom it only made sense that new horror stories about her actions during the war would continue to surface even over a decade after Riddle's fall. They might never know all her crimes.
"I don't know why Riddle thought that hiding a horcrux in Gringotts was a good idea. I'd like to say he did it before the war, but Lestrange has been locked up in Azkaban all this time. Surely, someone went through her personal effects whilst she was locked up in Azkaban. But, that leaves the question of why he'd choose this place when he himself broke into it only a few years ago."
Harry was being inclined-to-nitpick-and-try-to-showcase-how-he'd-do-a-better-job-of-taking-over-the-world, again. Sirius shook his head.
"No place is impregnable, no matter what people like to think. Even Hogwarts is not completely safe. I broke out of Azkaban, and into Hogwarts. He chose a place that few people would even dare to try to break into. 'Course, he'd have chosen better if he'd tried someplace no wizards had never heard of—or maybe overseas—"
Dumbledore didn't mind their rather silly conversation about the intelligence or lack thereof in Riddle's plans and decision-making. The diadem, in the heart of Hogwarts. The ring, left behind in his family's ancestral "manse". The locket, left in some strange cave by the sea, but which had taken up a residence (although Riddle didn't know it) in Grimmauld Place.
Sirius silently wondered if Riddle hadn't hidden something in Azkaban, the third place in Wizarding Britain renowned for being unassailable. The three parts of the castle: mott, keep, and treasury. If you looked at it in that way, he seemed well-fortified. Harry, of course, was not impressed.
Harry was never impressed. At least that made sense.
Gringotts did not keep them waiting. They were considered preeminent, important customers. Sirius and Harry both hailed from families of long-standing. Purebloods down for generations. Dumbledore was one of the most renowned wizards in the world. No one wanted to be on his bad side—not even goblins. There was some insurance for them there, at least.
There was a certain trick to looking around, awed, and not showing it, seeming to look only straight ahead. It was the sort of thing nobility, fake nobility like the Blacks, and royalty did, to showcase their superiority. Dumbledore, somehow, didn't notice that Harry could pull this off, too. Perhaps, he thought that Harry was just nervous about the coming confrontation.
There was always a coming confrontation.
No one asked why Harry Potter was there. Perhaps, it was the rumour that Harry Potter, "The Chosen One", was Dumbledore's protégé, and the knowledge that he was Sirius's godson, and heir. Or, perhaps, they just didn't care. What wizards did was usually just wizards' own affairs. They didn't know Harry as Sirius did.
"Good evening, gentlemen. It says here that you have questions concerning the ownership of an item stored in the vault of one Bellatrix Lestrange," the goblin said, wrinkling his nose. He must have been the manager, because he had his own office. Also, because the goblins that had brought them to this room had called it the "manager's office". But, there were no visible signs that the manager was anything but an ordinary goblin—that was to say, sly and very fond of gold. He didn't even introduce himself. Sirius suspected that it was because, to his mind, they were unworthy of hearing his name. It was usually the sort of thing goblins announced on the front lines of a battlefield, shortly before tripping a clever little trap that killed a hundred wizards at once. No hotshot goblin would just throw it out casually, not even, it appeared, to a wizard as famous as Dumbledore.
Dumbledore who, apparently, was completely unworthy of attention, in the manager's eyes. There was a spark of curiosity at Harry's presence, which swiftly disappeared, and the goblin dismissed him as irrelevant (ha!), and then his eyes landed on Sirius Black.
"Ah, Mr. Black. Come for a settling of accounts, have you? We expected you to visit much sooner."
Sirius shrugged in his standard casual apathy, minus tilting his chair back. He wasn't fifteen anymore. "I was busy. Wars and all," he said, in a disinterested drawl.
Dumbledore's eyes had better not be twinkling.
"I see, I see," the manager said, with an eerie grin that showed far too many, far too pointy, teeth. "Regrettable. Perhaps some other time."
"Maybe," Sirius said, with the sort of noncommittal apathy that had infuriated his mother, back in the good old days. "Maybe we could settle some of it, now. For instance, I have it on good authority that you turned over something of mine to my cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange. A trifle. My first broom. Sentimental value, you know. Maybe I could ask for a trifle of hers in return."
"We don't do trades," the goblin said, stiffly. He sat ramrod straight in his chair, hands clasped before him, and didn't so much as blink. Dumbledore drew lazy spiral shapes in the air. He might, or might not, be doing something. "We will return your broomstick to you."
Sirius's face lit up. "Oh! It's still intact, then! Excellent!" And Harry, rolling his eyes, cut in,
"You won't perform a trade? Not even if the item in Lestrange's vault is stolen, and rightfully the property of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?"
It was the first Harry'd spoken since they'd arrived, and his voice was already soft and no-nonsense. This was Harry at his most dangerous, word-wise. Sirius almost beamed. He had some inclinations towards head-ruffling and paternal pride that he quashed for three different reasons before his hand could twitch. Ah, self-control! It hadn't deserted him!
"There are no items in Mrs. Lestrange's vault not registered to her as the owner. You wizards have different customs as regards property than we goblins, as I understand it. However, as she is the current—"
"Actually, either way, the Cup is rightfully the property of Hogwarts," Harry interjected, with that casual arrogance that made most people leary of challenging him. The goblin, for instance, narrowed his eyes and frowned, but made no move to interrupt. His fingers may have twitched, slightly, and he might have clasped his hands more tightly together, but he did not speak of disrespect, or tell the adults in the room to try to rein Harry in.
Just as well. Harry was the highest in the pecking order of them all.
"You see, it was made by Helga Hufflepuff, and was intended to be a liquids-only version of the famed cornucopia, but, when that attempt failed, it was used instead as first a torch, and then something of a Holy Grail. The point is, Helga Hufflepuff created it by herself. and bequeathed it to Hogwarts upon her death. It was passed down through her family, but, as she has no living wizards or witches who qualify as 'heirs', that special bequest prevails. On both sides of the equation. Lestrange is laying claim to an object that was stolen from its rightful owner, Hepzibah Smith, by one Tom Riddle, and, owing to this, Hogwarts has been denied a piece of its history, and an artefact that could help it with the coming war."
"Wizarding wars and properties are not our affair. We have no place in this war of yours—"
"Then I feel the need to point out that, by keeping the cup here, you are embroiling yourselves, quite intimately, in our affairs. After all, this cup is an artefact that is being used to keep the Dark Lord immortal. By safekeeping it, you are effectively choosing his side."
"He speaks for the rights of 'lesser creatures', such as we lowly goblins—"
"You know he'd crush you underfoot the moment no wizarding resistance remained. You're of no use to him, unlike the dementors, which he can use to sow terror and despair, or the giants, which he can use for purposes of wholesale slaughter, and mass destruction, or the werewolves, which he can use to terrify and threaten wizarding families that disagree with him. Goblins have a long-standing rivalry with wizards, and he could never be sure of your loyalty. Once he'd won, he'd stab you in the back before you could betray him. You must know the type."
A flicker of unease, as if the manager did not want to acknowledge that Harry had a point. Harry glanced over at Dumbledore, who might as well have been playing solitaire for all the help he was giving. He was basically the chaperone of a chaperone. What was the point of Dumbledore coming? A chance to see how Harry worked? That thought didn't sit well with Sirius. He wanted to tell Harry not to give this his all, not to give it his best shot, to keep some secrets to himself.
Of course, Harry was no fool, either. It wasn't as if he'd played the "god" card on the goblin manager.
"Furthermore," Harry said, "these are stolen goods. Do you want to be known as the hub for black market dealings? The next Knockturn Alley? That wouldn't be very good for business, would it? Pureblood families would desert you, move their finances elsewhere, to preserve their own reputations."
He held up a hand to silence the goblin as he was about to speak.
"Don't tell me that they'd have done already if they'd been able to find a way. 'Necessity is the mother of invention'. Wizards have figured out some pretty ingenious loopholes as it is. Did you know there's a spell that creates pocket dimensions? It might be hard for some wizards to learn, but there will always be those who prize their good name most highly, and would be willing to put in the extra effort. And that's only one alternative, off the top of my head. Trust me, there are others. Dragons, for instance. Those special regulation trunks would do for most families. And muggleborns need not stop here at all. Particularly not if the wizarding world decided to open up its own bank, run by wizards."
The manager found this prospect to be duly alarming.
"We can't relinquish the valuables of our customers' vaults—" he tried again.
"Trust me: if you make it clear that you're doing this because you refuse to traffic stolen goods, then no one will think less of this establishment. They might even think you had something of a code of honour, atrocious though I suppose that thought is for you."
The goblin sneered, as if this were a cue. Sirius could almost feel his resolve cracking. Harry was actually kind of scary. Sirius made a mental note not to ever have anything Harry wanted.
Dumbledore chose that moment to start engaging himself in the conversation. He ceased from making designs in the air with his finger, and turned to face the goblin manager directly.
Sirius tensed. He guessed at a certain sudden wariness on Harry's part—his seventh sense, perhaps? It was more of a feeling—when Harry was turned away from him, and currently in the business of not revealing his hand. He had the suspicion that Harry also noticed his own sudden caution, although, again, Harry didn't acknowledge it.
Sirius suspected that Harry wanted to stomp on Dumbledore's foot, or something, to ensure his silence, but knew that that was a bad idea regardless of cause.
"We will have this…artefact, delivered to you. You are not to accompany us down to her vault. Restitution to the value of this object is expected in advance."
This seemed to disturb Harry more than ever. Although Sirius couldn't see it, he knew that Harry brought the Sword of Gryffindor with him wherever he went. That was one of the few artefacts he possessed of equivalent value.
"Of course," said Dumbledore, now Harry had done all the work. "We will discuss this in more depth, later. Hogwarts has many secrets."
"That will be all," the manager said. "Unless you have other artefacts you wish to reclaim from the vaults of one of our clients."
Dumbledore would steal Harry's fire by leaving him to do all the work, and then finish the deal. But Sirius, knowing Dumbledore as long as he had, suspected that he'd wanted this to be Harry's victory, and his intent was less to steal it from under his nose, and more to ensure that the poor, bumbling minor didn't ruin things at the last minute. It was the sort of unjust treatment of his dogson that had Sirius biting his tongue and clenching his fists to keep silent, to keep from admitting Harry's secret, which was not bound down deep with ancient magic, as the last one was.
Trust. "I've more to say with you concerning my lost possessions, you know," Sirius said, with a frown, but he left it at that, as he knew he must. This wasn't his victory, but it wasn't Dumbledore's, either. It was Harry's, as it should be.