It was going to be a very long day. Liz lingered in bed a little longer than usual before actually getting up — part of her was honestly kind of dreading it.
Humouring Snape's suggestion, with no real thought that anything would come of it, she'd written to Dorea and floated the possibility of them meeting in Charing, do the school shopping thing and hang around for a bit. (They'd have other things to be doing, it wouldn't be just because it was her birthday, or really even mostly, that made Liz feel less weird about it.) Before Liz had known it, Dorea and Hermione had both agreed, and they'd also invited Daphne and Tracey and Susan and Hannah — Dorea had said she'd considered others, but those were the people in their year Liz got on with best, and she didn't want to overwhelm her — along with an adult chaperone in the form of Lady Ailbhe Greengrass, Daphne's mother (who'd sent her those photos back in first year). The other parents involved (or aunt, in Susan's case) had apparently all agreed that Greengrass was good enough, so it'd just be the seven girls, Daphne's mum, and Snape probably stalking them like a creep, she hadn't told anyone he'd be keeping an eye on them.
And also Daphne's little sister, who'd be starting at Hogwarts this year, so needed to do her school shopping too — Daphne had told Liz she could completely ignore Astoria if she wanted, her mother should be keeping her occupied most of the time. Also, Tracey was actually coming, which Liz was a little surprised by. She didn't think Tracey had spoken a word to her since Liz had used mind-control superpowers to make her go to Snape about the whole her grandfather planning to murder her business. That had been in...October? November? Most of the last school year, anyway. Tracey had been avoiding her ever since then, even getting Sprout to switch them to different partners and everything, it was a whole thing. Liz really hadn't expected her to come, but Daphne had said she was, so...
The plan was, Snape would be bringing her to a muggle clothing store somewhere later in the morning, and then somewhere to pick up some writing supplies — using the heavy, expensive paper mages preferred (which they called parchment but that was a separate thing) just to take notes seemed like a waste, and also writing with a quill was bloody frustrating. Then they'd be going to Gringotts, where Liz would get the hey, I'm thirteen now, you have to actually tell me something about anything meeting out of the way. She did plan to cancel Dumbledore's guardianship over her, and also his trusteeship of House Potter — Dumbledore technically had control of all this shite she supposedly owned, being fancy magical nobility and all, she hadn't even known about that until Snape had mentioned it — and also fire the person voting for her in the Wizengamot. Some bloke called Doge, Liz had obviously never met him, knew nothing about what he was doing in there, and honestly didn't care — if he wanted to keep speaking for her in the silly magical government thing, he could come talk to her about it.
Since she didn't know very many adult mages, and obviously she couldn't do it herself while still in school, the Potter seat in their silly parliament thing would probably remain empty for a while. Which, that was fine, she didn't care — Snape had said that as long as House Potter survived the seat would be waiting for her, however long it took for her to get to it it'd still be there. Maybe she could talk to Daphne's mum about it, she seemed nice enough...
After that, it'd be time to meet everyone in the Leaky Cauldron. After getting lunch — not there, they were going to go somewhere a couple blocks away in Charing Susan knew about — then they'd do all their shopping and stuff. That was probably going to take a few hours just by itself. Then they'd be dropping by Fortescue's, because of course, hang out for a bit, and then from there everybody would be going home — Snape would find her after everyone was gone through the floo to apparate her back.
Liz hadn't even gotten out of bed yet, and she was already exhausted.
Eventually, she dragged herself to her feet, and went about getting ready. It took her a little longer getting out of her room than it usually did in the morning, since she was actually getting fully dressed this time, tugging on socks, and then a dress over the usual shorts and vest and scarf. (She consciously wore the one Tracey had made her, which didn't really take special effort, since she only owned two.) How long she'd lingered stubbornly in bed, there wasn't a whole lot of time before they had to leave or risk being late, might as well get the dressing part out of the way now.
Snape wasn't in the kitchen by the time she got there, not that he ever was — how thin the smell of coffee was, he must have woken up hours ago. (Liz always went to bed before and woke up after him, she wasn't entirely convinced he slept at all.) Earlier this week, Liz had started stealing Snape's coffee, because hey, it was there. He didn't have a proper coffee machine or anything, instead this enchanted pot thing. It was actually kind of neat, just did everything on its own, didn't even need to grind the beans first or anything. Very cool.
She'd asked if he'd enchanted it himself, like the curse-and-poison-detecting ring he'd made her take back when he'd tracked her down over the summer over a year ago now, but apparently they just sold these things in magic stores. Still neat.
After a little bit of experimentation, Liz had taken to putting a little scoop of cinnamon in with the beans, mixing in her cup a splash of cream and a much smaller splash of lemon juice. The first time Snape had caught her at it he'd looked at her like she was crazy, which she didn't get — the cinnamon was really good, she thought, and didn't people put lemon in tea all the time? Weird. Anyway, Liz made up her coffee, took a couple pieces of nut fudge out of the cold cabinet — it had turned out sort of okay, she guessed, not entirely happy with it but it was edible — and set herself up at the kitchen table, poking at the copy of the Herald Snape had left out out of a lack of anything better to do.
Huh, apparently the writers for the Herald didn't believe the whole Sirius Black is totally a Death Eater story — there was an article in here speculating on exactly what the Minister's role in getting Dorea's dad locked up without a trial might have been, and whether an inquiry into exactly what had happened should be opened up. (The current Minister had been the ranking officer from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes on the scene, apparently, he would have been in charge of the investigation and cleanup.) She hadn't realised there were people out there not related to Dorea who didn't believe that part of the whole thing. Interesting.
Liz was finishing off her coffee when Snape appeared. Like most of the time when he didn't have to be somewhere magical, he was wearing normal person clothes — in this case, black trousers and a thin deep green jumper that buttoned up the front, the collar of a blue-black tee shirt poking out a little — his hair tied back out of the way. Snape looking like a normal person (except for the hair, she guessed, muggle men didn't often have long hair) never stopped being bloody weird. If Mark suddenly waltzed into the kitchen in a pretty lacey pink dress with little bows in his hair, it'd probably be about equally weird.
She had to bite her lip to keep herself from giggling at the mental image she'd just given herself.
Skipping right over any kind of greeting, Snape said, "Considering how long your meeting with the goblins is likely to go, we will need to leave soon if you are to have any hope of meeting your friends at the appointed time."
"Right." Liz popped up to her feet, rinsed her cup out quick before leaving it upside-down in the sink. "Just a minute." She slipped past him, shooting a glance at his back as she went. This whole thing was still...weird? She meant, that she was in Snape's house in the first place hadn't stopped being weird, but this whole thing, going out and all, was an extra bit of weird. For some reason she almost expected him to say something, she didn't know what, or be...different, but nope, he was just standing there same as always.
It ended up taking more than a minute — a quick stop in the bathroom (ugh, not even going to bother with her stupid hair), picked up her school bag quick in her room, made sure her list and her money and stuff were in there, and then getting her boots on took a little bit, the laces on one had slipped. When she was ready, Snape was still waiting in the kitchen. He held out a hand, after the briefest hesitation Liz took it.
Instantly, she was slammed over the head with the crushing blackness of apparation.
Liz teetered only a little bit when they reappeared, one hand propped against a nearby wall, taking a few deep breaths to settle her stomach. Tucked in a little out of the way spot in an alley against a little old barrier wall of some kind somewhere, they weren't actually alone, three people clumped together not far away, jumping and squawking in shock at two people appearing out of nowhere. Before Liz could even consider what they should maybe do about that, there was a tingle on the air, Snape reaching out with his mind, and the three of them went straight back to their business, ignoring Liz and Snape entirely.
Oh, those two were buying mandy from the third one — she guessed it made sense they happened to be in the same out of the way spot Snape had decided to appear in, then.
A couple turns, and they came out into a much more open street. Clearly a busy place, the road was packed with cars trundling along, plenty of people on the wide pavements, wandering back and forth between the large, squarish, off-white stone buildings. This was very familiar, actually — she didn't know where they were exactly, the name on the side of a building nearby drawing a blank (sounded like a bank or something), but the area... She'd known they were in London by the smell (or some other big city, she guessed), but the design of these buildings, the pale stone blocks and the little jagged bits around the roofs and windows, this was in the West End somewhere, toward the south. She thought Trafalgar Square should be down a bit around the corner over there, which meant the Leaky Cauldron was that way...
Snape didn't lead her toward the little hidden magical town, but she hadn't expected him to. They walked down the street a bit, and then around a corner, continuing on some more, and eventually came to a narrower, curvier street, this one lined with shops and stuff. A little bit more walking, and Snape led her into what was obviously a clothing store, the inside clean and bright, racks and shelves filling the surprisingly large floor space.
Looking around, Liz thought it was a little nicer than the places she usually went. She'd never really put much thought into what she wore, and didn't really care, to be honest. Back before the mind-control superpowers had kicked in, she'd mostly been given old tee shirts taken in a little bit to mostly work as simple dresses, if horrid looking ones. (Which, that actually took more effort than just going out and buying her something cheap, since at least minor work had to be done to narrow the neck so it didn't slip over her shoulders, which was really weird in retrospect.) And after that, she'd hardly bothered either. She'd just steal pants and a cheap, simple dress from somewhere whenever she needed something new — the cheap and simple mostly because they were less likely to notice it was gone, and she didn't have to worry about, like, anti-theft tags being stuck to them or whatever. And once she'd had money, she hadn't really changed what she got either, the only difference being she...usually actually paid for things now.
It seemed kind of like a waste to not get the cheapest shite she could find, since she really didn't care that much anyway. But explaining that to Snape would be really awkward — especially if he tried to turn it into one of those talking about how Liz is broken conversations — so she just wordlessly stalked off toward the girls' section.
Not wanting to forget anything and end up having to ask Snape to go out again, she'd made up a list ahead of time, so it was easy enough to go down it as quickly as humanly possible. A few new dresses, because her old ones didn't all fit anymore. (The one she was wearing right now wasn't great, even, but it wasn't clinging too tight yet, the others were worse.) A couple pairs of trousers, which was a little bit of a pain to figure out — she didn't think she'd ever gotten muggle trousers before? She'd gotten a couple pairs that were meant to be worn under robes in winter (like the shorts, but longer and a bit thicker), and her quidditch uniform, obviously, but that was it, she thought. She'd certainly never worn denims in her life. It was just habit, really, she'd grown up wearing dresses (altered tee shirts) all the time, so it was what she was used to. Again, she didn't really care, but it turned out dueling in a dress or even robes was kind of awkward, and mages thought it weird to wear the under-robe trouser things out in the open, and she probably shouldn't wear her quidditch clothes to dueling club, so. A couple shirts to go with that, and a jumper for when it got cold, and there, done.
Not that it actually turned out that easy. Just in case, she'd decided to try everything on to check she had the right size — she didn't normally bother, since she could guess pretty well, and she didn't care too much if it was a little awkward. Also, the thought of taking her clothes off in public made her extremely uncomfortable. Thankfully, she was wearing those magical shorts and vest under this — Snape had warned her they'd probably have to take her measurements again when getting new robes, ugh — but unfortunately the changing stalls here didn't have a solid door, instead just a heavy curtain. There were hooks that held it in place, but Liz was ridiculous, she ended up having to fix it to the side with a sticking charm, and even then her skin was still crawling a little, it was annoying.
She had guessed the dresses and the tops right. The trousers, not so much — she'd never gotten any before, she didn't know the sizes at all. It took a couple tries to find things that fit properly, only making her ever more frustrated with the whole partially undressing in a public place thing, but it didn't get so bad she needed to get out her calming potion, it was fine. Tracking down a couple packages of socks and pants and there, that was everything.
Awkwardly lugging her basket back toward the counter at the front — she couldn't cast a featherweight charm, she wouldn't be able to remove it without the person ringing her up noticing — she looked around the front of the store for Snape. He...didn't seem to be up here. There were a few shelves and those round racks up here, but, Snape was pretty bloody tall, his head should be clearly over them. Was he back in the men's section looking at stuff? Ugh, if she had to carry all this shite around looking for him...
Distracted, Liz only had a split-second warning. She felt the intent forming just behind her, she jumped, twitched forward out of the way before the woman could put a hand on Liz's shoulder. She whirled around, the weight of her basket nearly making her over-balance, to glare up at the woman. Just walking up and grabbing at strangers, what—
"Oh! I'm sorry, you're Liz, right?" The woman had on a nametag (JENN), Liz noticed, she must be an employee. "Are you looking for your father? Tall bloke, long black hair, green jumper?"
Liz gaped at the woman for a couple seconds. She meant Snape, that's who she was describing there. "Er, yeah, that's...who I'm looking for." It...probably wasn't worth explaining to this random person she would never see again that Snape wasn't her father...
Smiling down at her — an odd note of concern churning in her head, but Liz didn't think she was acting that weird, she didn't think not being grabbed by strangers was too much to ask — the woman said, "He said he'd be waiting at the coffee shop next door. If you're ready...?" She trailed off, glancing toward the register nearby.
Oh, so, that was how the woman knew Liz's name, Snape must have asked her to point Liz in the right direction. Did that mean... No, she kind of doubted Snape had actually told this random muggle Liz was his kid. That would be...weird. She'd probably just assumed.
Liz ended up having enough muggle money for everything, a few pounds left that should be enough to get paper and pens and stuff. The three bags were sort of awkward to carry, and annoyingly heavy. The woman asked if she wanted someone to come with, to help her carry it all, but really, it was only next door, and Snape would probably magic it all back to the house anyway, it was fine. Liz stomped off before the woman could say anything else weird and intrusive and annoying, levering the door open with an elbow.
The woman hadn't actually said which direction the coffee shop was in. Liz tried right first, and thankfully it was right there. The doors opened out, but someone just happened to be leaving as she walked up, she slipped in behind him. She spotted Snape instantly, sitting at a nearby table picking at a muggle newspaper.
It was kind of surreal, Snape sitting in a muggle coffee shop and not looking the least bit out of place, just sitting there sipping and reading, the other people bustling about not giving him a second glance.
...Except that woman a few tables away watching him...and now she was imagining what he looked like with his shirt off, oh god gross...
(Liz had noticed over her first two years at Hogwarts that a fair number of the older Slytherins and Ravenclaws, er, had thoughts about Snape sometimes. She didn't get sex stuff in the first place, but she really didn't get that.)
She stomped over to his table, levering against her hip heaved the bags up to fall on the table — Snape's borrowed newspaper fluttered, one of the pages nearly getting away before he clapped it against the table. Giving her that familiar cold eyebrow raise of his (probably at stomping around and tossing her bags like that), Snape opened his mouth to say something, but before he could she blurted out, "Did you tell Jenn I'm your kid?"
Snape blinked, twitching back in his seat a bit. "What are you talking about?"
"The woman back at the store informed me my dad was waiting in the coffee shop next door, which, that was confusing, because I was under the impression he's been dead for nearly twelve years now."
"Ah." He let the paper he was holding gently fall down to the table again, took a slow, casual sip of his coffee. "My apologies, I should have been more specific."
"It's alright, it was just confusing, took me a second to figure out who she was talking about." With some effort, Liz stopped herself from glaring at the woman ogling Snape — apparently, Liz being here made him more interesting than he'd been a second ago. (She was assuming Snape was a single father, after an extra second to check his hand for a wedding ring, so, there was a second person making that assumption, jeez.) "Can we go? That woman over there is imagining undressing you, it's awkward."
His face twisting with a grimace — he seemed even more uncomfortable about it than Liz was, which was honestly sort of funny — he levered himself up to his feet, plucking one of her bags off the table with his free hand. He hesitated for the briefest second, Liz might not have noticed without mind magic, before mumbling, "Quite," and starting for the door.
Liz bit her lip to keep herself from smirking — okay, it was definitely funny. Trailing after him back outside, once she caught up she asked, "What do you do when you catch students thinking about you?" He must have noticed at some point...
"Retreat to my office and extirpate the memory of the experience with a judicious application of liquor."
...She was only mostly certain he was joking.
After a couple minutes, they ducked into an alley, where Snape shrunk her bags down to an absolutely tiny size, small enough each would fit in the palm of her hand, so they could easily fit in her school bag. They wouldn't be going back to the house until the end of the day, apparently. Liz could maybe attempt a shrinking charm, but there was no way she could cast one that well — which meant she wouldn't be able to pack away school supplies, since Snape would be hiding off somewhere while she was with her friends. (He didn't want to have to deal with the annoying questions they'd get if anyone knew where Liz was staying, so.) He just said to ask Daphne's mum to do it, which, that was the obvious thing to do, she guessed...
The difference was she'd never met Ailbhe Greengrass before — she'd sent her a letter that one time, along with those photos of her parents, but that was really it — and while she seemed nice enough, Liz didn't know if she'd be comfortable with relying on her spellcasting. It wasn't until she articulated that thought that she realised she did feel comfortable relying on Snape's spellcasting — when she thought about it, why shouldn't she, he had contributed to making sure she didn't die after subsuming that piece of the Dark Lord. (From what Dorea had said, it was very possible he'd literally saved her life.) And, there was the potion-and-curse-detecting ring he'd insisted she take a year ago, she was even wearing it right now, he'd supposedly enchanted it himself. (She'd already been considering buying one anyway, but Snape claimed his work was more thorough than most commercial enchanters', so.) And the calming potions, of course. It only made sense it wouldn't bother her having him take care of spellwork that was beyond her on her behalf, especially if she knew what he was doing before he did it. She kind of doubted she'd be equally comfortable with some woman she'd never met doing the same thing.
But that was sort of an uncomfortable thought, so she kept it to herself.
The office supply store was a short walk from there. Liz picked up several notebooks, a couple packs of pens, and also a pack of loose unlined paper and a pack of coloured pencils — when she'd been making her list, Snape had said she would want extra paper to sketch out her runes work before doing it in something permanent, and also planning in multiple colours was useful to keep straight which symbols belonged to which element in the enchantment, which, that was really clever, why wasn't that on the official supplies list? (Because mages didn't use coloured pencils, obviously.) Snape picked up some pens himself, to use only for his own notes and stuff, since handwriting done with a quill looked obviously different he had to use one for his correspondence and essay marking. (Because Snape actually put some considerable effort in pretending to be a "normal" mage, at least where purebloods could see him, it was kind of weird.) All that didn't take nearly as long as the clothes shopping, since she knew exactly what she was getting and it wasn't hard to find, they were in and out pretty quickly.
And then it was off to Charing. Liz didn't recognise the street they were on, but it didn't take very long, looping south and east toward the river, before her surroundings started to become very familiar. When they got to the Leaky Cauldron — looking sad and dilapidated next to the much more modern buildings on both sides, which was sort of funny, considering how mages tended to think they were so much more civilised than muggles and all — Snape didn't go in with her, waved her on and said she'd meet up with her in the afternoon. Okay, then...
Liz made it all the way to Gringotts unmolested, to her relief, she'd half-expected to get mobbed. But she'd realised by now people didn't often recognise her unprompted — when people thought of the Girl Who Lived, they usually imagined someone...more, than she was. She was pretty unimpressive-looking, all tiny, wearing cheap, simple clothes in dark, dull colours, her hair a terrible bloody mess. Even after having seen her picture a couple times in the papers now, most adult mages didn't realise who she was until she said something that gave it away, or someone else pointed her out. Which was almost funny — she had to be the least recognisable celebrity in history.
Almost funny, because nothing about all that Girl Who Lived shite was in any way amusing.
Gringotts was the usual bustling hive of activity, the glittering hall lined with desks so high they put the goblins in them over the taller humans' heads, the goblins seemingly more focused on whatever paperwork or counting or weighing or whatever they had in front of them above the business of their customers, filling the room with low mumbling chatter and the clicking of scales, broken here and there with a mage raising their voice a little to make sure the goblin they were talking at was actually listening.
By the cold, hateful humour in many of the goblins' minds — not quite the same as a human would feel, but close enough Liz could tell what it was — she suspected they were being rude and annoying on purpose. Liz didn't blame them, the history between British mages and the goblins was...complicated? Not good, anyway. How many wars had they had? twelve? sixteen? Something like that.
(She had to wonder why the mages had put goblins in charge of all their money stuff in the first place, given how much they really didn't get along.)
Anyway, Liz didn't make for one of the high counters. Partially because she wasn't sure a goblin behind it would be able to tell she was even there, too damn short, but also because she didn't really need to: standing along the left and right walls, clumped together and mumbling to each other, were several groups of goblins. They made a point of looking like they were busy, deep in conversation and occasionally walking somewhere else in the room, but Liz was pretty sure they were actually there to help clients with something more complicated than just going down to their vault or having money changed. When Liz had tried to get more information about all the shite she supposedly owned, she'd been led over to one (who'd then led her through one of the doors lining the wall and away), but she'd also seen mages just walk up to them before, so. Pretty sure this was the right thing to do.
She still thought goblins were a little weird. They were kind of similar to house elves, in that they were really short, had creepy too-long fingers, and weird-shaped heads (too pointy?) with big eyes and long ears, but not quite the same. They tended to be right around shoulder-height on Liz, so a little taller than elves, and their eyes were flatter (or the lids at least), coming to points at the corners — which actually made their eyes look more human-shaped than the huge balls elves had in their heads — their teeth all long and pointy, fingernails looking more like little claws...which elves had too, now that she thought about it, it was just more obvious in goblins. Probably because there was a harder, sharper, crueler edge to them — elves were too cheerful and friendly all the time to notice they could probably tear out someone's throat with their teeth.
But, well, supposedly not all goblins were like that. Looking around, every single goblin in the main hall was wearing a yellow and blue (Gringotts' colours) robe, mostly obscuring the leather and metal under it — armour, probably enchanted to resist all kinds of magic. All of them were armed too, not just the ones with the big pikes by the doors. Boots and gloves had the grips of daggers sticking out of them, the handles of axes hanging from belts sometimes peeking out the hems of robes. Those probably had all kinds of enchantments too, to deflect curses or go right through shields, that kind of thing. They were sort of intimidating, honestly, despite how tiny they were.
In one of the books about magical Britain Liz had picked up at some point, it'd been mentioned that Gringotts was actually run by the goblin military — so, that they were all carrying weapons and wearing armour made perfect sense. Presumably, there were less scary goblins out there somewhere, those just weren't the goblins humans ever got to see.
Anyway, Liz walked up to a trio of chattering goblins, trying not to think about the fact that all three of them were probably very dangerous people. (And goblin minds were all hard and smooth, like polished steel, Liz didn't know if her mind-control superpowers would work on them at all.) Once she was within a few steps, she stopped, cleared her throat — their conversation cut off instantly, three pairs of dark, Snape-ish cold eyes flicking to her. "Hello, I'm Elizabeth Potter. I just turned thirteen, so I would like to talk to somebody about my a– estate." She remembered that's the word the singularly unhelpful goblin had used last time, it was silly but might as well play along.
The goblins stared at her for a second, one glancing down at her clothes before giving her a skeptically raised eyebrow. But, weirdly, it was that goblin who grumbled, "Come with me, Your Grace." That was what people on the Wizengamot were supposed to be called when being all proper, she knew, said with a slightest note of sarcasm on his harsh goblin voice. (Or, maybe she was just picking that up through mind magic, she wasn't certain.) The goblin turned and stalked off toward one of the doors out of the hall, Liz following silently after him.
After a brief walk down a corridor of gleaming off-white granite, the steady magical light glinting off little bits of quartz in the stone here and there, Liz was led into a room. It was very plain, made of the same polished granite as everything else above ground level, the square floor and undecorated walls cut perfectly flat and smooth, the ceiling only broken here and there with an occasional magical lamp — the frames very simple, little bronze boxes letting out orange-white light. A couple bookshelves were against the wall on the opposite side — not separate wooden things, but as though an extension of the wall, made of the same stone and without any visible seams — holding thick volumes and a few bits of metal that were probably enchanted devices of some kind, though Liz had no idea what for. There was also a table in the middle of the floor, three padded chairs on one side and five on the other, and that was it, the rest of the space vacant.
If the golden, glittery main hall was meant to impress upon visitors the goblins' wealth, all the people working at the desks that they had better things to do than run about at the whim of their human clients, these little meeting rooms didn't seem intended to impress at all. She assumed that was on purpose — that it was hard and cold and inhospitable to suggest to clients that they weren't here to make them comfortable, that this was impersonal business to them and nothing else, they were not friends, the sooner the meeting was done with the better.
Of course, Liz didn't want to be here any longer than she had to either, so she didn't really care.
The goblin had pushed the door open and waved her inside, saying something about being in in just a minute, closing the door again behind her. Liz couldn't help a faint niggling of nerves at the way out being shut, but it wasn't locked — she hadn't felt any spell come into effect holding it closed, and she tried the handle just in case. Right, it was fine, no problem. It took fewer steps to get to the table than she'd expected, the featureless empty room looking bigger than it actually was.
Goblin-style chairs, she'd noticed on her previous visits, were kind of weird, very low to the ground — and it wasn't just that these were goblin-sized, to be extra unaccommodating, the five on this side of the table were actually noticeably larger than the three opposite — low enough even Liz, tiny as she was, couldn't sit normally, the table lower than the distance between her feet and her knees. There were no armrests, so sitting with legs crossed was fine, and also space under the chair people's legs could go — kind of like kneeling and sitting back on your heels, except with the chair giving you some cushioning and stopping you from straining anything...and also without actually having to put any weight on your knees (though there was a strip of soft leather laid down there just in case). And the chairs were fixed to the floor so they couldn't be pulled out either, people instead sat on them sideways before turning back forward, slipping their legs in place one at a time.
Liz probably shouldn't be sitting cross-legged in a dress — the chairs were close enough to the table the goblin wouldn't be able to see anything, and she was wearing shorts anyway, but still — so she'd have to do the not-kneeling thing. She slung off her backpack, dropping it on the table nearby, hitched up her skirt a little, then stepped over one of the chairs with one foot, bending over to plant a hand against the table, slipped her foot under the chair, then brought up the other one, slipping it in place before finally sitting back on the chair.
She was kind of grateful the goblins sent her in here alone first, because trying to do that with someone watching would probably be awkward. They had to be making people uncomfortable on purpose...
(Maybe giving a people they'd just been at war with control of all the money hadn't been a great idea. She had no idea what the fuck mages back then had been thinking.)
Thankfully, she was only waiting for a couple minutes when the door on the opposite side of the room opened up, probably the same goblin from before stepping through (Liz actually couldn't tell for sure). He'd acquired a file while he was gone — or a box, really, the goblins' files were enclosed on all sides — looking almost comically outsized folded under his arm, like Hermione carrying around a big bloody encyclopedia or something. The goblin smoothly slipped into the chair across from her, so easily and quickly he was obviously used to these things. Setting the wood-and-leather file down on the table, he poked at it with his long fingernails for a second, a panel on one side sliding aside; with a bit of white silk, he plucked something out of the revealed compartment. "Your hand, please."
The table wasn't very wide, but Liz still had to lean annoyingly far forward to be close enough for the goblin to drop the thing he'd plucked out in the palm of her hand. It was a black gemstone, a little rectangular block a couple inches on a side, the corners and edges lined with what Liz was pretty sure was silver. The instant it touched Liz's skin it started to glow from within a calm, pleasant blue — the same thing had happened the other times Liz had attempted to get through one of these meetings, she assumed it was some kind of weird goblin magic that checked to make sure people were who they claimed to be.
The goblin nodded, snatched it away again, carefully not actually touching it with his bare fingers. He dropped the gemstone back in its compartment, stuffing the bit of silk away, then slid the panel back into place. A bit more poking around, and there was a series of high clicking sounds, bits of the box shifting around and breaking apart. Before long, there were three separate boxes spread out in front of him, two flat-ish rectangles, like notebooks, one more square, opening up with a couple more pokes into a complicated-looking glass inkwell, holding pools with three different colours of ink and two fancy-looking metal fountain pens.
Once he was done setting up, the goblin folded his hands on the table in front of him, finally looking up at Liz. "And what is our business here today, Your Grace?"
"Um..." Well, that was sort of a complicated question, she guessed — until he told her some really basic things, she couldn't say exactly what she wanted, could she? "First I'd like to know about stuff, I guess? I mean, the previous times I was here, I was told I had other, er, assets, besides just the vault I'm allowed to withdraw from, but since I was a child the bank wouldn't deal with me. So. I would like to know what all I've got going on here."
Through her brief ramble, the goblin's face slowly shifted, brow dropping and eyes narrowing, his hard and smooth mind growing sharper and colder. He was silent for a brief moment after she was done, then grumbled, his voice thick and harsh, "Do you mean to tell me that your secretary has been in communication with you not at all?"
Liz blinked. "My what?"
The goblin scowled, pointed teeth showing past curling lips. One of the files clicked open at his touch, he turned the cover over, flipped through a few pages before stopping. "According to our records Albus Dumbledore was invested with trusteeship over the House of Potter, and all persons and properties therein, in November of Nineteen Eighty-One. In January of Nineteen Eighty-Two, Mister Dumbledore named one Galatea Merrythought managing secretary of the estate; Madame Merrythought was replaced by Dedalus Diggle in June of Nineteen Eighty-Six, who holds the office to this day."
She had no idea what a managing secretary was supposed to be, but it also didn't really matter at the moment, she didn't think. "Dumbledore didn't tell me shite, and I have no idea who this Diggle person is."
"...You've never even met him."
Lifting one shoulder in a shrug, "No. I told you, I don't know anything about any of this."
The goblin let out a hiss through his teeth, followed by a few muttered words she didn't understand — cursing in his native language she assumed. He yanked at the edge of the table, pulling out a drawer — which was wild, Liz hadn't even realised there were drawers in this thing — slipping out a single heavy sheet of paper before slamming it closed again. Dabbing one of the pens in the black ink, he scrawled away on the page for a moment, probably no more than a couple sentences. A bit more scribbling toward the bottom, and he spun the page around, slid it halfway across the table toward her. "Sign your name on the line, Your Grace — in red ink, if you please."
Giving him a Snape-ish sort of look, one dubious eyebrow raised, Liz dragged the page closer to her. The goblin's hand was a weird half-printing half-cursive, and not super easy to read, but after a couple seconds picking over it she figured it out. Gross negligence, breach of contractual responsibilities, blah blah, she got the gist of it. "We're firing this Diggle bloke?"
"I recommend doing so most strongly. Regardless of whether he has done anything improper on your behalf during his tenure, for a man in his position to not only fail to properly educate you, but to not discuss his managing of your House's estate with you even once, is a flagrant failure to perform a managing secretary's most basic duties the like of which I have never even heard of. If you leave here today having done nothing else, at the very least you should do this."
...So, what he was saying was, there's been some bloke Dumbledore appointed to take care of all her shite, but who was also supposed to keep her informed on just what he was doing — which he most definitely had not done. Right. She guessed firing him made perfect sense, then. It was pretty clear the very brief statement here was only firing this Diggle bloke, and doing nothing else, so Liz didn't see how putting her name on it could come back to bite her in the arse. She leaned uncomfortably far forward to pick up one of the smooth metal pens, dipping it in the red ink — there was some kind of enchantment on the pen to suck up some ink, Liz could feel it tingle against her fingers — and signed on the line.
When the goblin took the paper back, he tapped at the table a couple times, a panel sliding back to reveal a little compartment built into it. He signed his own name under hers, it looked like, picked a stamp up from inside the compartment and pressed it against the page, then slid it aside, still within arm's reach but separate from all the other stuff. "I will send the order in to be processed as soon as our meeting here is finished. The instant it is properly filed within our records, which should take about an hour, Mister Diggle's access to all your properties, accounts, and investments registered with us will be revoked; notices to that effect will reach Mister Diggle and your Ministry by end of day.
"I will be recommending Gringotts conduct an audit of the Potter estate. Honestly, Your Grace, I do not expect to encounter any significant abuses — from the surface glance I took before meeting with you, it does not appear there has been any activity of notable volume since Nineteen Eighty. It is, however, our policy to carry through such an investigation in circumstances such as these.
"With Mister Diggle removed from his post, you will begin receiving regular statements from us. Most of these will require no response, they are simply intended to keep you informed as to regular developments. As you are still of schooling age, and have no education at all in financial matters, I would recommend that you find a new secretary as soon as reasonably possible. However, barring unforeseen emergencies, I believe everything will keep without incurring serious consequences, at least for a few years.
"Now, do you have any further questions for me on this matter?"
She'd hardly had any questions for him in the first place. She guessed, she would probably either have to find someone to handle money stuff for her, at least until she was out of school and felt like dealing with it herself, or just...learn. From what she'd heard over the years, though, she had the feeling money stuff could be very complicated, so that might not be very easy, probably easier to just pay someone who already knew what they were doing to take care of it. But, that wasn't something she had to do right now. "Um, can I cancel Dumbledore's guardianship of me too? And apparently there's someone speaking for me in the Wizengamot I've also never met..."
The goblin let out a sharp sigh, his eyes tipping up to the ceiling for a second. He leaned a little back in his chair, his hands settling in his lap — one hand was fingering the top of his axe, Liz noticed, that wasn't unnerving at all. "I understand your education in these matters has been neglected, Your Grace, so I will attempt to form my explanations in layman's terms. The relationship between this institution and your government is one determined by treaties negotiated between our peoples; the privileges and responsibilities of each party are strictly defined by the terms of these treaties. We here at Gringotts have authority over a variety of economic matters, and great freedom to determine the framing and execution of contracts between various parties.
"However, we do not have authority over the Wizengamot or your Ministry, or the laws promulgated and enforced by those bodies. This division of responsibilities constrains what we can accomplish today, from this room, somewhat. For example, the office of the secretary of a House is one defined by contracts under our authority — that is something we have power over here. Your representation in the Wizengamot and Mister Dumbledore's trusteeship over your House, an office created by force of Wizengamot decree, are not within the power of Gringotts to affect. Do you understand so far?"
"Yes," though he was very lucky Liz had such a good vocabulary for her age, thanks to picking things up through mind magic, she doubted a normal thirteen-year-old kid would have been able to follow all that. "You're saying there's nothing we can do about either of those."
Lifting one sharp-nailed finger, his lips curling a little, he said, "Ah, no, that is not what I am saying. Myself, as a representative of this institution, I have no power in these matters; you, as Lady of the Noble House of Potter, do. Your representative in the Wizengamot—" He glanced back down at one of his files. "—a man by the name of Elphias Doge, is your representative. If you wish to revoke this man's authority to speak on your behalf, you need only send Wizengamot Administration Services notice to that effect. You may write a letter and send it to them by owl, at any time, though they may request you come in to confirm in person.
"Mister Dumbledore's trusteeship over your House, on the other hand, that is a more complicated matter. In simple terms, the purpose of this office is to invest a third party with power over the leader of a formal House who, for whatever reason, is unable to manage their family's affairs on their own. The trustee's authority is only ended once their charge's incompetency is resolved."
Right. That made sense. She thought. "But, if this was done because I was too young to handle things, now that I'm thirteen shouldn't it have ended on its own?" She was pretty sure? The idea of a legal age of majority was kind of confusing in magical Britain just in general. It was thirteen for most things — making legal agreements, signing contracts, getting married, being tried as an adult — but not everything. Apparently, for the purposes of enforcing the Statute of Secrecy, someone was still considered "underage" until they passed their OWL exams (or something equivalent), which for most people was around sixteen...but exactly what that meant Liz wasn't really clear on either, she thought the possible punishments were just different. It was complicated, was the point.
"No, I'm afraid not. To dissolve a trusteeship over you, you must demonstrate to the relevant bodies that it is no longer necessary. Theoretically, Mister Dumbledore will remain trustee indefinitely if this determination is never made."
...Okay, that was fucking stupid. "And how does that determination get made?"
"The least risky option would be to petition the Office of Child Welfare to make an evaluation as to your competency. Simply in sending such a request, the Office is legally obligated to open an investigation into the matter — it may interest you to know they are prohibited from informing the trustee that an investigation has been opened. The most likely response is that they will ask you to come in for an interview. Depending on how the evaluation progresses, this may go quite long, broken into multiple sessions over a course of weeks. Should your interview go well enough they decide to proceed, they will then ask others to come in — friends, family, neighbours, perhaps your professors at Hogwarts. They will request a report from Gringotts as to the health of your finances. At this point, they will ask you in to meet with the Council on Family Law. They will question you as to what was discovered during their investigation, and at this point a determination will be made.
"If they rule against you, the process is finished — you would be required to submit a fresh petition and start over. If they rule with you, they will make a recommendation to Wizengamot Administration Services for the trusteeship to be dissolved. There will be a brief hearing in the Wizengamot on the matter — as your trustee happens to be Chief Warlock, he will be required to recuse himself for the duration of the process — after which they will vote on it. If they vote with you, the trusteeship is dissolved immediately; if they vote against you, at this point in the process as a Lady of a Noble House you would be able to demand an appeal from the floor at any time, you needn't start over from the beginning. I am not well-versed enough in the current political environment within the Wizengamot to predict whether you would be successful or not."
...To get out from under Dumbledore, she literally had to have a hearing in magic parliament? What the fuck?! What the hell did they spend all their time doing over there that they were dealing with this kind of thing, really, that was just stupid. "Okay. That sounds like it would take forever, is there a quicker way?"
Grimacing a little, the goblin ground out, "Yes, though I would not recommend it. Theoretically, you could petition the Wizengamot to dissolve the trusteeship directly — however, without an evaluation from the Office of Child Welfare as to your competency, they would most likely request such an evaluation themselves, and wait for their determination before proceeding. The only alternative course is through the Department of Law Enforcement. If you were to accuse Mister Dumbledore of negligence, or some other crime against your person or your House at large — which, with what little I have learned already, I am certain you could — after the Aurors conduct their own investigation, Dumbledore would be tried by whatever proceeding is appropriate. As soon as he is officially charged, he would be removed from his office as trustee.
"However," he grumbled, pointing up with one finger again, "this would not dissolve the trusteeship itself — the office would instead need to be filled by someone else. Unless the Wizengamot decides to intervene and do it themselves, the new trustee would be chosen by a ruling of the Council on Family Law. You would be invited to participate in the proceedings, to testify before the Council, and you are allowed to express your preference, but they needn't heed your opinion — the Council would select your new trustee, and they may choose whoever they like. Given the particulars of your renown among your countrymen, Your Grace, I suspect following such a course would be very unwise."
...Yeah. Yeah, he was probably right about that. Chances were, these Council people would replace Dumbledore with someone who hated her for not being the good little Girl Who Lived everybody had expected her to be, who would just be extremely irritating to deal with at best and actively malicious at worst, or with some crazy Death Eater arsehole, who would intentionally make her life difficult in revenge for their idiot Dark Lord getting himself blown up. Risking putting herself in that position sounded like a terrible idea. "Right, let's not do that."
The goblin's lips twitched, his steely mind ringing as though struck — she didn't have a lot of experience with goblins, but she was going to guess that was amusement.
"I know you can't do it for me, but I don't know shite about any of this legal stuff. Can you tell me what I'm supposed to say, at least? To fire my representative and start the ball rolling with the Child Welfare people, I mean."
"Of course, Your Grace." He pulled a couple more sheets of paper out of that drawer, and they got started.
The first letter was super short, literally only two sentences, saying she was dismissing this Doge bloke by the authority of blah blah blah. Goblin person — she didn't know his name, but he also hadn't volunteered it, so she wasn't certain if she should even ask — warned her that she'd probably be called in to WAS to confirm it, since there was no way to tell from the letter that it was really her, but that was fine. Presumably Snape would tell her where to go.
The second one was going to be a pain. She didn't mean writing the letter — it was longer than the first one, but it didn't take that long before they were done — but all those interviews and things, to get people to believe she'd be just fine on her own, she'd have to tell them things. If it meant Dumbledore wouldn't have legal power over her anymore, sure, she could do that, no matter how unpleasant it would be...though she probably shouldn't tell them about using mind magic to steal shite from people. She could say she was staying with Snape though, make something up about being kicked out of the Dursleys' or something, but she'd have to talk to him about that first, since he didn't want people to know and all...
Once all that was done, Liz set the letters aside, and the goblin poked about his files for a moment, taking papers out to form four separate piles. And then he started to explain what all shite she had lying around. Turned out, it was kind of a lot.
One pile was stuff, gold and jewelry and various potions or alchemy supplies and enchanted things — much of it held right here at Gringotts, but anything the family had registered with the bank or had been involved in one contract or another filed by them would also be on the list. Apparently, there had been a lot of potioneers in the family — the founder of the House had even been one, "Potter" had originally been meant as an occupational thing — so there were actually kind of a lot of rare and valuable potions stuff squirrelled away, cauldrons and stills and stuff, but also a bunch of exotic ingredients under preservation charms. As far as enchanted devices and jewelry and the like went, the Potters actually had a relatively small amount of that, compared to other Noble Houses, being a younger family and all. Or, that's what the goblin said anyway, it sure sounded like a lot of shite to her — too much for him to actually go through it line by line, just gave a general summary instead.
"Do I own a pensieve?" Tamsyn had explained a bit about memory-focused scrying over the last couple weeks, and the stuff sounded fascinating. True, she would need to get her hands on someone's memory in the first place to use it, she'd have to ask them for a copy...or just steal it out of their head, since she was a mind mage and everything. Apparently, while the standard charm to extract a memory copied it, leaving the original in your head, there was a variation that actually removed it — Tamsyn had said it was a neat trick for a memory-stealing mind mage to still have the memories on hand, to be looked at when she wanted them, while also not getting confused by all the shite that didn't belong to her floating around in her head.
Also, there were people who sold memories, copies made from a donation from someone who'd personally witnessed the event. Liz had looked at some of that, and most of what they had was stuff she wasn't interested in — there was a lot of artistic performances and political events and stuff — but she'd found a couple sellers who sold memories of duels. Memory-recordings were made of all the major international tournaments as a matter of routine, since pensieves let people in the business pick over every tiny detail for where they went wrong or research against their opponents, but they also had a whole bunch of famous duels — they even sold copies of Dumbledore's showdown with Grindelwald, complete with commentary edited in by experts, which was wild. Liz had her eye on this big collection, the greatest battles of the modern era or something like that...
The goblin flipped through the list for a moment before finally, "Ah, yes, so you do. Carved of crimson alabaster in Seventeen Eighty-Nine by Justinus Ollivander as a wedding gift for his great-niece Areti Fawley. It was later gifted to her daughter Eustacia, who married into the Potters in Eighteen Twenty-Four. It's been in the family ever since."
That was way more information than she'd needed, but okay. "Um, can we have someone go get it out of the vault?"
"It is not held here at Gringotts. According to the provenance on record here, it is kept at Rock-on-Clyde."
"Okay. What's Rock-on-Clyde?"
A shiver of what Liz suspected was irritation ran through the goblin's mind — not directed at Liz, she was pretty sure, but the people who'd horribly failed to properly educate her in these things. "It's the family manor, situated in rural Denbighshire."
...So, Liz owned a bloody manor somewhere in Wales. Good to know.
That ended up working as a transition into the properties the family owned — the goblin kept referring to the family holding things, despite Liz being literally the only Potter alive — like land and buildings and junk. Most of them, it turned out, were plantations, where all kinds of potions ingredients were grown — apparently, the House of Potter actually controlled a fifth to a quarter of the apothecary market in western, central, and northern Europe, which was fucking insane, she'd had no idea. But the places someone could actually live in, or at least the ones that weren't already rented out to people (who were even paying her rent, apparently), were rather few.
(Liz barely managed to hold in dark laughter at the thought that she'd literally been stealing hotel rooms to stay in for a couple years now, but at the same time she owned enough extra houses that she was renting them out to people, who were paying her rent, and she'd had no idea. Some kind of sick joke, that.)
There was a single-family home that was between tenants at the moment, in a town in Holland somewhere Liz couldn't pronounce the name of. It was less inconvenient than it might seem to go stay in a foreign country over the summer, since the floo network could get her from London to Holland in two jumps and owls could cross the North Sea just fine, but she still doubted she'd be doing that. Maybe just to visit next summer for the hell of it — Tamsyn said she could learn languages instantly by copying them out of people's heads, so she should pick up French at some point, being the big international language everyone spoke on the magical side (few people in other countries spoke English, unfortunately) — but not something she could do right now. There was another house, big and fancy by the way the goblin talked about it, near a town called Gandia in Valencia...which was in Spain, Liz thought? On the Mediterranean, apparently, but Liz didn't know where Valencia was, probably Spain or Italy. That one sounded like there were a lot of people around, and was probably more space than she really needed, and was probably also really hot, Liz's hair didn't do well in the heat...
Actually in Britain, most things the Potters had were currently being rented out, or had been gradually sold off over the last century or two. (The family had been rather large once upon a time, all the houses and shite had actually been used before.) There was the manor in Wales, of course. It sounded huge, the way the goblin talked about it — the point of the manors the Noble Houses all had was to house the entire family for special occasions or emergencies or whatever, and the family hadn't always been tiny — and was probably really weird, she doubted it'd be as familiar as Snape's house. It did have lots of neat stuff in it though, including that pensieve. Gringotts wasn't allowed to take stuff out of the house without her present, due to the terms of their treaties with the Wizengamot, but they could reconnect the manor to the floo network for her so Liz could go pick it up herself — apparently, the connection had been allowed to lapse back in 1981 (after her parents had gone into hiding, but before they'd died). Liz signed the paperwork giving permission for Gringotts to go do that, which required another form to let them take the gold to pay for it and to set a password for the floo, blah blah, she'd get a letter when it was done in a couple weeks. She'd definitely check this Rock-on-Clyde place out, but she didn't plan on staying there.
Her parents had had a house in a place called Godric's Hollow, a mixed muggle–magical town somewhere in Somerset. (Liz had heard of it before, it was named after Godric Gryffindor, supposedly where he'd been born, but nobody really knew that for certain.) Apparently, it'd been a muggle house before her parents had bought it and fixed it up to work with magic, so would maybe be a lot like Snape's house, less weird magical shite going on. She couldn't live there either, though — there was some damage around the entryway, where Voldemort had smashed down the door and briefly fought James before moving on, and one of the rooms had been wrecked pretty badly where he'd gotten himself killed, one wall and parts of the roof blown out, half-collapsed in.
Apparently, when people said the Dark Lord had gotten blown up on that Hallowe'en, they weren't exaggerating for effect.
Instead of fixing the place, Dumbledore had signed the property over to the Ministry — Liz still owned it, the Ministry just had permission to use it. It was a monument or something now. Because, it was more important to preserve the house as it had been that night, as an historical marker to immortalise the event or whatever such nonsense, than it was for it to be used as a house Liz could actually live in. Apparently.
The goblin said Liz could cancel the contract whenever she wanted. She should probably go down to Godric's Hollow first, just to see what they'd done with the place, but she suspected she'd end up doing that — whatever they'd done, she doubted she'd be happy about it.
The last available place was a townhouse in a place called Caoimhe's Refuge (in the English, suggesting he wasn't using the proper name), which was a magical town in Ireland Liz had heard of before. That place was newer than the manor, dating to the 18th Century, and sounded much less over-the-top, so despite being a purely magical home where Liz might not even know how to use the bloody kitchen it was probably her best bet. But it would need some work before it was liveable, though less than the half-ruined house in Godric's Hollow. The last person who'd lived there — a Lyndon Potter, who the goblin claimed had been her great-great-grandfather's older brother — had died in the 50s, and the house had been vacant since. Empty magical houses tended to attract all kinds of weird pests and shite, and enchantments and wards could drift out of alignment over time, someone would need to go over the place to make sure it was safe to sleep in, and it would need to be thoroughly cleaned up. But it wouldn't take so long the place wouldn't be ready for her to live in by next summer, so.
The goblin quick wrote up a contract to have one of Gringotts' cursebreakers go in and check the place out — their job would be to go over the wards and all the enchantment work, they wouldn't actually repair anything (or remove anything too broken to fix) without further permission from her. Liz read through the whole thing, and the language was relatively plain, didn't look like she was agreeing to anything she didn't mean to, so, signed that one too. They would have to wait for the cursebreaker to clear the place before hiring a cleaner, so, that would just have to sit for now. Which was fine, they had nearly a year before she needed it.
The other two piles of papers didn't take nearly as long to talk about. One was for investments the family owned, total or partial ownership of various companies mostly operating out of Britain but also several in other countries, mostly Holland, Scandinavia, and France — and also some muggle businesses, to her surprise. Most of them were apothecaries, selling supplies and completed potions, or alchemy workshops, which created more complicated products to be used in potions or whatever, but there were also a few publishers in there, mostly people who printed academic stuff in Britain and Holland — apparently, she owned a third of Goldwing Press, which happened to publish her textbooks for Potions and Herbology, wild — and also about a seventh of the Northern Herald, the Prophet's only major competitor. There were also loans and stuff the family had given out to people, but most of those had been paid off in the time since anyone had actually paid any attention to these things.
Also, they had (relatively small, tiny portions of the companies) investments in Vauxhall, Jaguar, BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen, and then Fiat, Renault, and something called PSA Peugeot Citroën, which were apparently more car companies she'd literally never heard of before. It seemed her grandfather had thought cars were neat? According to the goblin, he hadn't been trying to accomplish anything in particular, he'd just done it because he'd felt like it? Which, okay, then...
Probably not quite as weird as the her old pureblood magical grandfather apparently buying shares in muggle car companies for the hell of it, the way patent law in magical Britain worked, if someone was, say, making a potion for their own use, that was fine, but if they were making it to sell to someone else the patent holder was supposed to get a cut. Potters had invented a lot of potions over the centuries, and a lot of them were still used...so, apparently, Liz made money off other people making and selling potions, just because her ancestors had come up with them. It wasn't a small amount of gold either — she didn't know enough to run the numbers, but she was pretty sure she'd be able to live off of royalties for old potions and never have to work a day in her life, even excluding all the other shite the Potters had going on. So. Good to know.
(She almost wanted to be annoyed that she hadn't known about any of this before, to the point that she'd literally been stealing stuff to survive, but honestly she was just relieved she never had to worry about money ever. Which didn't mean she intended to forgive Dumbledore for leaving her abandoned and ignorant with the Dursleys, she was just saying.)
And then the fourth pile was all contracts the family had with individual people, other magical families, and also other organizations. Most of the ones with people were about the businesses they ran that the family technically owned, and there were a bunch of trade agreements with other families for stuff — apparently, things could be moved freely between things the family owned, but if they wanted to deal with a supplier or shipping thing owned by someone else, they needed to make a contract with the magical family who owned them, which was weird but whatever — all of which ran on its own just fine, Liz didn't need to worry about any of that. Apparently, the Potters had a few vassal houses, meaning Liz was literally their lady, like some weird feudal shite out of the Dark Ages, but those agreements also ran just fine on their own, she didn't need to worry about that either. (No matter that it was just fucking weird.) The contracts she had with other organizations — for example, Saint Mungo's, the big magical hospital run by the Wizengamot, paid a flat monthly fee for the use of all potions owned by the Potters instead of paying the royalty for each one, which the goblin claimed was writing off thousands of galleons a year (fucking hell) — some of those should maybe be renegotiated or reviewed eventually, but they could keep until she learned enough to know what the fuck she was talking about, or just had someone else to deal with it for her.
Though, by this point Liz felt very certain she wouldn't be managing this shite on her own. All the financial and legal nonsense she'd have to learn, she really just didn't want to spend the time and effort necessary to get good enough at it to not accidentally screw herself. It was kind of overwhelming, honestly. Much easier to pay a professional (or three) to do it for her and just not have to think about it, she'd get to that eventually.
After what felt like fucking forever, they were finally wrapping up. They quick checked they had all their letters and work orders straight, the goblin asked if there was anything else she needed — other than withdrawing some money and changing a few sickles for pounds, no, not really. They didn't make Liz go all the way down to her vault, her goblin just knocked the total in her trust vault down a few galleons and had a clerk count it out for them, someone would take the proper amount out of the vault over the weekend. (Apparently, that was how they managed bank notes, they had a whole system going on down here.) Her signature on a last form authorising the withdrawal, and that was it, they were done.
Walking through the atrium on her way out, Liz cast a quick charm to check the time — that was cutting it close, she was supposed to meet people in the Leaky Cauldron in less than fifteen minutes...
Yeah, been a while since I've posted, I know — been distracted by other projects, and also slowed down by health issues, it's a whole thing. It also didn't help that this chapter got ABSURDLY LONG, seriously. Maybe narrating through Liz's whole birthday was a mistake...
Since dropping a 35k chapter on your heads seems like a bit much — I know it's quite a time investment, maybe not something people will want to do all in sitting — I've split it up into four more manageable pieces. It is slightly awkward, because the narration is just going straight through without any discontinuities. (For that reason, I'm going to post them all at once.)
If people want to skim the worldbuilding info-dumps coming up, that's fine. There are important nuggets of information in there (which is why I didn't just edit it all out), but I understand not everyone is as much of an enormous nerd for this stuff as I am.
Right, carry on, then.