~Chapter 34~ Origins – 1 August 1995

~Harry (Dimitri)~

Harry found himself in that strange state of both awake and asleep as an idea occurred to him and he abruptly sat up, earning a grumble from Voldemort at the sudden rush of cool air, but Harry was too distracted too notice as the idea fully solidified in his mind.

He turned to Voldemort, who was watching him with worry, but he smiled and shook his head, which earned him a relieved smile in return before the older man tried to pull him back down, but Harry shook his head, which caused Voldemort to sit up slightly as well, "Is everything alright?"

Harry nodded, though his eyes were narrowed in thought, "Yeah, it just occurred to me that I never thought to visit my mom's vault. I mean, I know she left it to me, but for some reason I never thought to see what is in it."

Voldemort seemed to think for a moment before his gaze focused on Harry once more, "You think that it may hold an explanation to your Golden Dragon heritage?"

Harry grinned, "From what I've learned previously, all magical blood comes from a source, and even if its simply something that has stayed dormant, it still has to come from somewhere. I don't know why it never occurred to me before, but it is as if the Goblins are purposefully trying to make it seem like her vault isn't worth looking into. I mean, even Dumbledore didn't seem to pay it any mind, even though I know he usually stole from Muggleborns as well."

Voldemort frowned, "You do have a point there. I don't have anything planned for today, you want to visit Gringotts?"

Harry looked at him in surprise, "You already informed the Goblins of your return?"

The question earned him a smirk from Voldemort, "If the Ministry officials know, then you can be very sure that the Goblins knew a long time before them. It also seems as if the general populace didn't like Dumbledore as much as he thought they did." He then grimaced, "It seems I would have been pretty successful in my campaign if the Horcruxes hadn't been made, but I can't be too angry about that, since it brought me you."

For a moment Harry had a flash of what it would have been like if Voldemort hadn't made the Horcruxes and if everything that had happened, didn't happen. Would he still have found out about Voldemort being his soulmate?

He doubted it. Voldemort would probably have been the Minister and he would have simply been known as James Potter's son. It would have been a steep price to be able to grow up with his parents instead of the Dursleys, even though he hated to admit it. Even after everything that had happened, he wouldn't trade it for the world.

He shook off the sense of loss as he felt Voldemort's arms around him, "This might sound strange, but I am glad you tried to kill me as a baby."

He felt Voldemort's arms tighten around him and he turned slightly to see the affronted look on Voldemort's face before it changed into a grimace, "It might not have been my finest hour, but I guess that is a moot point since I wasn't in full control of myself."

Voldemort hugged him tightly before he released him and got out of bed, "Come on, the sooner we get there, the sooner we can find out whether the whole 'Royal Bloodline' thing was just your stupid amount of luck coming into play, or if there is something more to it."

Harry laughed as he threw a pillow at Voldemort, "Hey! That stupid amount of luck got me out of a lot of scrapes!"

Voldemort, of course, ducked out of the way of the incoming projectile and gave him a grin, "I'm really not denying or complaining about it." With that he ducked in his bathroom, leaving Harry to shake his head before getting out of the bed as well and heading to his own room.

Only one more year, no wait, it's two! Harry groaned as he made his way to his room after glancing longingly at the door separating him from his mate. Seriously, being stuck in a much younger body really sucked, but there was no way around it.

He quickly showered and dressed then made his way down to the livingroom, where Voldemort was already waiting for him.

They had a quick breakfast before making their way to the Floo, and within moments, Harry found himself standing infront of Gringotts once more. The only problem was that he'd forgotten that he was himself again, so the peoples' eyes were drawn to them the moment they appeared. Luckily Voldemort seemed to have enough of a reputation to keep them away and he unconsciously stepped closer to the man, who immediately pulled him into his side with a possessive grip while he glared at the onlookers in warning.

Harry laughed and shook his head at the peoples' reactions before he turned his attention to Voldemort, "You that this is going to be front page news as soon as the journalists finish typing it up, right?"

Voldemort smirked slightly before he nodded, "That is the idea, and if I weren't so possessive of the expressions you make when I kiss you then I would've kissed you in front of them to show all of them that you are off-limits and mine."

Harry felt strangely happy at Voldemort's admission, but he was also glad that the man didn't kiss him in front of everyone just to prove a point. The knowing glance that Voldemort gave him after squeezing his hand, also told him that Voldemort remembered about his previous disastrious run-ins with the media.

They finally made it into the bank, where Griphook seemed to be waiting already and the Goblin merely motioned them to follow as soon as he saw them, leaving both Harry and Voldemort feeling quite confused. They entered the Goblin's office and Griphook removed a box from one of his drawers.

The box had a golden dragon etched on top of it, with emerald eyes that seemed to be glowing, and the Goblin coughed uncomfortably, "This is a slightly unusual situation to explain, but this was left in our care when your mother made her will. Her specific instructions were that we had to list the vault under your inheritance, but we were to ignore it completely unless the dragon's eyes started to glow, at which time we should expect your arrival and immediately take you to the vault once you arrived. If you didn't arrive of your own free will within a month's time, then we were ordered to show it to you after we performed a ritual on you to remove any strange rituals or spells."

Harry gave a meaningful look at Voldemort, who nodded in agreement. It seems his mother had known something about Dumbledore's machinations. He tried to open the box, but it wouldn't open at all so he glanced back at the Goblin in question.

Griphook motioned for them to follow him and they made their way into the bowels of the bank, far deeper than Harry had ever expected to go. They came to a stop at a heavily warded vault and Harry cautiously exited the cart before Voldemort followed him.

Griphook motioned them towards a small dias before the door and Harry took a deep breath as he placed the box into the groove left in the dias. Nothing seemed to happen though, even as the dragon's eyes glowed brighter, and Griphook stepped forward, "You may want to add a few drops of your blood…"

He had barely finished speaking before Harry did just that and the box seemed to open as a click was heard from within the vault. The box itself revealed a golden dragon pendant and Harry removed it from the box before turning to the door, which slid open to reveal a panel in which the pendant seemed to fit.

Harry placed the pendant within the panel and the door slid open, but when he turned back to call Voldemort, Griphook shook his head, "Your mother warned us that any outsiders, no matter who they were to you, would not be permitted unless you wanted them dead."

Harry turned to Voldemort and his mate gave him a nod before he leaned back against one of the pillars to wait, but Harry felt the connection between them open slightly wider just in case.

He turned back to the vault and entered it.

At first, it seemed like a normal vault with gold, books, and jewelry, but as he walked deeper, he found a door with a golden dragon on it. He hesitantly opened it and found a small room with two books stacked on top of one another.

He moved closer and saw that the books were locked to the table with a strange vine, but when he tried to remove it, one of the thorns pricked his skin and he hastily drew his hands back, only for the vine to come alive and disappear.

A slight tingle had him glancing at his hand and he found that both the wounds from the thorn and the cut he'd made earlier, disappeared and the books seemed to glow as if trying to get his attention.

He slowly removed to first book, and was surprised to find that it was a diary of sorts, one that his mother had written. A quick glance through it, revealed that it referenced the second book quite a bit, which also happened to be a diary from someone he didn't know, however both books warned that he wouldn't be able to remove them from the vault for safety reasons.

He wondered whether the safety reasons had something to do with the reason why the Golden Dragon race had somehow become extinct.

He looked around and found a chair hidden away in the corner of the room. He drew it closer and opened his mother's diary first.

At first, it didn't reveal much as he relived his mother's years at Hogwarts through small sporadic entries that only revealed the most important moments of her life such as her sorting, her first classes, random embarrassing or amazing moments that only seemed to happen at Hogwarts, and then the day she woke up with golden wings on her back.

The entries seemed to increase from there as she became very wary of Dumbledore and she began to slowly weave spells around her that would make her seem mostly insignificant, though it became harder when she found out that James Potter was her soulmate.

She still kept up the spells, but tried to be more subtle in order to not draw attention from Dumbledore as she finally allowed James to court her. A letter from Gringotts alerted her to the fact that she actually had a vault under her name, but she was strictly instructed to keep anyone from acompaning her.

The marauders helped her to sneak out of the castle one Saturday and she easily made it to Gringotts, where her world got broken to pieces.

Harry frowned as the diary refused to allow him to page further, but then the other diary glowed and he placed his mother's diary down to pick up the other one.

It started off with small rants about how it wasn't fair and how the writer, named Rose Mortay, would have to marry someone that had been chosen by her father and at first, it simply seemed to be the diary of a teenage girl in a pureblood family, but as he read further, he found that the diary had been written almost two-thousand years ago.

Rose mentioned how their Golden Dragon race was slowly becoming extinct as fewer children were born and they started arranging marriages between families that they believed would have a higher chance at having more children. They also faced constant threats of being hunted for their scales and they mostly closed themselves off from the world.

Rose tried to refuse the marriage, but her family didn't listen because the Royal family had to play their part, and as the only heir of the Royal family, she had a bigger part to play than most, in order to continue the royal line.

In the end, she ran away with her friend from the Gryffindor family, a lesser branch of the Golden Dragon race. Coincidently, he was also her soulmate, but she knew that her family would simply kill him off if they knew.

They got married in one of the human cities and started traveling around the world, just in case her family managed to send people after them, but soon they settled down.

Harry frowned as he turned the next page of the diary and found splotches of blood and tears on it. It made the words harder to read, but he could still make out some of it.

The people sent from the royal family had caught up to them while Rose had been at the market and she came home to find that her husband had been murdered. She was distraught, but as she hugged her mate's body she found a familiar letter sticking out of his pocket, one that he always carried with him with the instructions that she had to read it if something ever happened to him.

Harry shook his head. If she was meant to read the letter after something happened to him, wouldn't it put her in more danger just in case the people came back? It made no sense at all, but he carried on reading.

Rose grabbed everything she could before she fled into the city and managed to board a carriage that was heading to a smaller town. On the way there she opened the letter and found that her mate had planned to make their persuers believe that he had kidnapped her so that if they caught her, she wouldn't be punished for leaving.

Unfortunately she never got to tell him that she was finally pregnant and she knew that her family would kill the child, even if their numbers were dwindling.

She managed to change her appearance to look slightly older than she was, and she told everyone that she was a widow. It didn't last long before she spotted the people her family sent after her and she had to travel again.

This continued on for eight months until her daughter was finally born, but she knew that simply leaving her with a family would create problems. She also knew that her time was running out, and without her soulmate, she would rather die than stay alive. So she made a deal with the deity of Time that was one of the two deities that the Golden Dragon clan worshipped, her life for her daughter's, if he could send her to a time where she would be safe and happy.

The deity agreed and Rose wrote the last entries in her diary before she gave both the diary and her Golden Dragon pendant to the deity. He promised that he would ensure that Lily Mortay Gryffindor would inherit all she owned in the future and the exchange was made, leaving Lily as a sudden new addition to the Evans family.

Harry sat back as his mind tried to process everything, but he struggled to string two coherent thoughts together as the diary's tale kept swimming through his mind. Was this how his mom had felt?

He shook his head with a grimace and his gaze landed on him mother's diary once more as it glowed. He picked it up and turned the page that he hadn't been able to get past earlier. The diary only held one last entry and it was addressed to him.

My dearest Harry,

By now you've read through both diaries, and it must have been quite a shock to you. I know I was shocked to learn that I was adopted and that I wasn't even born in this time. I doubt my adoptive parents knew about it though, because nowhere else does it state that I am anything other than a muggleborn, so I guess the deity Rose spoke about, did their job quite well.

Unfortunately this means that you have to keep this a secret from everyone, unless you know that you can trust the person with your life.

I had so many things I wanted to say when I started this letter. I wanted to ask you how you are and if you are taking care of yourself, if you are happy…but I guess it doesn't help to ask because you wouldn't be able to answer me if you inherited my vault.

Please keep safe, and please keep away from Dumbledore if possible. Please remember that I love you.

Lots of Love,

Mom

Harry didn't know what he was supposed to think as he closed the book, but he felt Voldemort's questioning probe down their link and a quick tempus alerted him that two hours had already passed.

He slowly stood up and placed the diaries back in their places before closing the door and walking through the vault once more. He promised himself that he would return to look through it at a later time, but at the moment he just wanted to get home and think about everything he'd just learned.

He exited the vault and the door closed automatically before the pendant removed itself from the door and floated over to him. He placed it around his neck before hiding it under under his cloak and turning towards Voldemort, who had moved to stand next to him the moment he exited the vault.

Voldemort gave him a questioning glance and Harry grimaced, "I think I need some time to process everything, but it's not anything close to what we thought."

They made their way out of Gringotts, but immediately apparated from the doors to avoid the crowds.