"I need to deal with my Gringotts vault."
Harry and Ginny were lying in bed at Grimmauld Place, one Saturday morning in April. Ginny was home from Hogwarts for the Easter holidays—or, at least, at Grimmauld Place with Harry. He didn't know if either of them truly called it home, but there was a tacit understanding that, once Ginny had finished her NEWTs, it would be Grimmauld that she came back to rather than the Burrow. In between Ginny's revising for her exams, the two of them had been shopping, browsing furniture and curtains and other sundries that might make the house a little more theirs.
"Deal with it?" Ginny frowned, rolling over to face him. The sunlight caught her fiery-red of her hair, and Harry reached out a hand, threading his fingers through it. Ginny let out a satisfied hum, her eyes slipping closed for a minute.
"There's a load of stuff in there I've never looked at," Harry explained. "I never had the chance when I was at Hogwarts, and then kept saying to myself that I'd do it once the trials were over, once everything calmed down, but…" he trailed off.
"Must be nice to have so much gold that you've not got through it all."
Harry pulled a face, noting the way that Ginny's features broke into a cheeky, teasing grin. She was nothing like her family when it came to money—where her mother might be ashamed of their financial situation, or where Ron might be jealous, Ginny was quite brazen. She liked to tease Harry about his Gringotts vault, about his big house in London, about the confession he'd made to her that, upon finding out aged eleven he had money, he'd had to be dissuaded from buying a solid gold cauldron.
"I didn't mean gold, you absolute git," chuckled Harry. "There's stuff at the back that's… well, I think it's my mum and dad's."
He looked away from Ginny, frowning slightly in the sunlight—or perhaps because a lump had risen in his throat and tears unexpectedly stung his eyes. The vault was playing on his mind because he'd had a letter from Andromeda, just before Ginny came back from Hogwarts. She had slowly been clearing out the Lupins' cottage, and came across a taped-up box of Remus' things that she thought Harry would want—she'd sent it to his Gringotts vault for safekeeping until he was ready to look at it.
"You want to talk about it?" Ginny asked softly, running a hand over Harry's chest, over the new scar that had formed there less than a year previous.
"I'm a bit worried I'll utterly lose it when I look at everything," confessed Harry, his voice shaking a little. "Like, I've spent my whole life not knowing and just… well, I don't know what to expect."
"I think that makes sense. When are you going to go?"
"I thought today. You said you needed to do some Charms revision and well, I think this is something that I need to do by myself, you know?" Harry chewed on his lip and looked at Ginny.
She reached out a hand and smoothed her thumb over Harry's lower lip. He felt a small sense of relief, a releasing of the tension in his shoulders at the soft, gentle way Ginny was looking at him, understanding and—dare he say it—love written into her gaze.
Ginny pulled back her hand, leaning over to kiss him where her thumb had just been. "Of course," she murmured against his lips. "I'll be here when you get home."
So, while Ginny settled herself at the big table in the kitchen to go over her Charms revision once again, Harry apparated from the front doorstep at Grimmauld Place to the designated apparition point outside Gringotts. It was a bright, warm spring day and the alley was busy with people. Harry had brought the invisibility cloak with him, just as he always did, but he decided against pulling it on. The alley was busy enough that people wouldn't notice the dark-haired man with his head down ducking through the crowds.
It was cool and dark inside Gringotts, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. Despite the crowds outside, the bank was fairly quiet, and as Harry walked slowly along the central aisle, he paused halfway down. On one of the pillars to his right was a plaque, and it was one of his favourite things in the world.
There had been lots of memorials erected in the year since the Battle of Hogwarts. Harry didn't care for many of them; there was a particularly gaudy one in the atrium at the Ministry that Ginny said made him look like his eyes had been surgically reinserted. This one, though, this one Harry loved very much—mainly for the fact it was absurd. The small brass plaque read: here, on 1st May 1998, Harry J. Potter, Hermione J. Granger and Ronald B. Weasley escaped with a dragon, the day before Harry Potter vanquished the Dark Lord.
Harry loved it for its vagueness. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than the thought of people who didn't know the full details spotting the plaque as they queued to get into their vault, coming away with the idea in their heads that the dragon had somehow been involved in killing Voldemort. In reality, they had been fiercely desperate at that point, and really very hungry, and the dragon was a result of a plan gone wrong. In any case, Harry thought darkly, it was a great deal more amusing a story than the real thing.
He approached one of the goblin's desks and cleared his throat. The goblin paused, quill writing of its own volition, and stared down at Harry. He felt a colour rise in his cheeks as the goblin studied his face, eyes flicking up to the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead.
Harry spoke. "I'd like access to my vault, please. Oh—and an inventory, if you have one."
"An inventory?" The goblin raised his eyebrows. "We don't usually supply an inventory unless you are planning to make a significant withdrawal or deposit, Mr Potter."
"Well," Harry said slowly, "I believe I had a significant deposit recently. A box should have been delivered from Mrs Andromeda Tonks."
"Yes," the goblin replied, running a finger down his ledger and scowling. "It arrived earlier in the week. Did it contain gold? We don't usually expect gold in cardboard boxes."
Harry sighed. "No, it didn't. You've got an inventory, then, or not?"
"One moment, please."
The goblin hopped down from his seat and walked to another desk to confer with his colleague. Harry tapped his foot impatiently. Things had been—to say the least—difficult since the war when it came to the goblins. There might be a plaque with his name on it in Gringotts, but Harry knew full well that it wasn't because the goblins wanted to honour him. Quite the opposite—it was a reminder of him royally pissing them off. It probably would have simply said Harry Potter nicked our dragon if the goblins thought they could get away with it.
Soon enough, the goblin returned, bringing with him another who carried a large scroll of paper.
"Graniad will show you to your vault, Mr Potter," the first goblin said, returning to his seat and to the ledger in front of him. "He has your inventory."
"Thank you," Harry replied, and turned to Graniad. This goblin was older than the first—a great deal older, if Harry wasn't mistaken—and had a very tiny pair of pince-nez perched on the end of his small nose. He smiled a little leeringly at Harry, and offered the large scroll for him to take.
"Your inventory, Mr Potter," murmured Graniad, his voice supple and almost whispering. "Follow me."
Harry did as he was bidden. He followed the goblin to the little cart, squashing himself in with his knees underneath his chin, one hand gripping the inventory and the other gripping the side of the cart. Ever since the war, Harry had been a little wary of the carts—after all, he knew how far there was to fall if something went wrong.
Harry wondered if Graniad had been there the day they stole the dragon. He knew what the aftermath of that had been; Harry had a personal insight into Voldemort's mind, and he'd witnessed in exquisite detail exactly what happened to those who stood in the Dark Lord's way. As the cart lurched forward into the darkness, Harry found himself wondering if Graniad felt the same way about Harry that so many of the goblins did—resentful that he, a wizard, had transgressed one of the few places where they held the power, and in doing so had led to so many of his compatriots to die.
Soon enough, the cart came to a stop and Harry extracted himself from it as gracefully as he could, glancing over his shoulder. The eery, echoey halls underneath Gringotts had always made him a little on edge. He stepped forward and dug a hand into the pocket of his robes, pulling out the key to his vault and handing it over to the goblin.
"I will wait here," Graniad instructed. He inserted the key into the lock and turned it, before stretching out a long, hairy finger. His nail came into contact with the wrought metal door. Very slowly, Graniad traced it down the metal and Harry watched as the opaque door melted like liquid. He nodded at Graniad, and stepped inside.
The front portion of the vault was very familiar to Harry. Simply put, it was stuffed full with gold. Gold galleons everywhere—stacked across the floor and in neat, towering piles upon the shelves that were carved into the strange rock face walls, each one with a little wooden notice below saying things like Interest: 1981-1991, or Legacy: C. & D. Potter, or Sale of Rights: Sleakeazy's Branding. To the righthand side was an archway leading to another room that had appeared in the summer of 1996; above it, a sign read Legacy: S. O. Black.
Harry was not going in there today. He picked his way past the piles of gold, squeezing round a huge and rather precarious one at the rear into the portion of the vault he never ventured into. He'd known it was there, of course, and had even peeked into it on occasion when he came to collect coins. There was never time, though—never time to properly explore whatever it was that was hidden in the back of the Potter vault, away from prying eyes.
Until now, that was.
Harry waved his wand at the sconces on the walls and they ignited, casting the contents of the vault into flickering relief. He moved his wand hand again and the inventory soared from his hands, suspending in mid air and unfurling. His eyebrows shot up—it was long. No wonder, he mused as he glanced round the crowded vault and surveyed its contents. There was stuff everywhere; boxes and boxes, some cardboard, some wooden, along with crates and artwork and what looked like a slightly singed sofa. With the inventory floating next to him as he moved, Harry set to work sorting through it all.
He started with the big items. Along with the sofa, there was a slightly chipped statue of a witch that apparently came from an auction—the pedestal it was on was too worn to work out who it was. There was some other wooden furniture, including a truly ugly mahogany dresser; consulting the inventory, it said that it came from his parents' house.
"No offence, Mum," Harry muttered, grimacing at it, "but this is hideous."
The artwork was interesting, but Harry didn't know enough about wizard painters to tell whether it was important or valuable or even just something documenting his own family's history. He made a note to take the inventory into the Ministry at some point and get the Department of Magical Artefacts to tell him what was what. There was the remnants of a vase that Harry wasn't really certain sure as to why his parents had kept. They were sitting atop the ugly dresser, wrapped in tissue paper with a small brown label that said P's vase in his mother's hand. Who was P, Harry wondered—surely not Peter Pettigrew? Harry couldn't think of another P who might have been sending his parents a vase, and something about it made his heart hurt; that he didn't know who their friends were, who could have sent them a gift. He was of half a mind to get rid of the thing—perhaps it had been damaged in transit—but there was something about it that niggled at the back of his mind.
Harry noted the box from Andromeda sitting to one side, and decided to take that one home with him. Looking around, he noticed something else. There were schoolbooks—boxes of schoolbooks, and his eyes lit up when he realised that his father's were there too, alongside his mother's. He hurried over to pull one down that was marked with 1977-78: JFP. A quick calculation told Harry that was his parents' sixth year at Hogwarts. He reached into the box, brushing dust away here-and-there, and pulled out a slim notebook and stared down at the cover.
A lump rose in Harry's throat and he sat heavily upon a crate that looked like it contained silver drinking goblets. He had never seen James' handwriting before. He traced his fingers over the letters; they were more elegant than he'd anticipated, and Harry wondered which of his grandparents had taught James to write. James F. Potter, the inscription on the front of the notebook read, Transfiguration 6.
James was more of a precise wizard than Harry had given him credit for, too. His transfiguration notebook was practically a work of art—that careful, elegant hand filled page-upon-page with complex diagrams and theoretical explanations of spells. What Harry was particularly taken with were the notes in the margin, often in a different coloured ink or far more hastily scribbled, that said things like soften wrist movement or confer w/ Moony or absolute disaster, do not use. Harry realised he was looking less at a student's notebook, and more an elegy to someone who had mastered their subject, who had been curious and excited by the potential for knowledge. It made his heart ache and drum heavily in his chest to think that his father had been more than that brash, arrogant boy in Snape's memory, more than the martyr who died for his wife, his child, his cause. James Potter had been a scholar and—if the notebooks were anything to go by—he rivalled Minerva McGonagall.
Hours passed as Harry was engrossed in the paraphernalia of his parents' lives. He found photo albums of his parents as children; he laughed a little tearily at the moving images of James as a baby, fat fists waving at the camera, hair utterly untamed. He wondered how to explain to his own children—the children he hoped he and Ginny would one day have—that there were no photographs of Harry as a baby. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon hadn't thought photos of Harry were worthwhile.
There were two suitcases that caught Harry's eye, tucked away to one side. His fingers brushed the brown labels on them—he didn't recognise this handwriting. They simply said For Harry. Something—some instinctive, primal sense of knowing—made him pause at the latches. This was something he wanted to share with Ginny, he thought, glancing round the vault again; so many things he wanted to show her lay here, only just discovered.
Making up his mind to return to Grimmauld Place, Harry took up Andromeda's box and balanced it beneath his arm. In the other hand, he grasped the suitcases' handles, and slowly picked his way back through the neat piles of gold. He reached the door and ducked, taking the small set of stairs outside his vault two-at-a-time.
"Will that be all, Mr Potter?" Graniad asked, his long fingers drumming against the wall outside the vault.
Harry glanced over his shoulder to look into the vault for a final time before nodding. "Yes," he said, "that's all."
It was growing darker by the time Harry apparated from Diagon Alley to Grimmauld Place. He landed heavily and swayed, the box under his arm and the suitcases in his hands. With a quick jump up the steps, the door swung open, and Harry stepped into Number 12. Inside, Harry made his way straight to the kitchen. He could hear a Weird Sisters record playing, the familiar chords of Hippogryff or Bust. He took the stairs as quickly as he could with his precarious load, and all but burst into the room.
"What's this stuff?" Ginny asked, hurrying over to catch the box as it nearly slipped out of Harry's arms as he descended into the kitchen.
"From the vault," Harry explained. He crossed the room and set the two suitcases down in front of a pair of armchairs that sat before the fireplace at the end of the long kitchen. "I spent all day there, I've got so much to tell you."
"Yeah?" Ginny's eyes lit up and she smiled warmly. "I made food—you want to eat first, or sort these things?"
"Eat," replied Harry gratefully, flashing her a smile. He'd spent the entire day at Gringotts and he was utterly starving. "Whatever you've made, it smells incredible."
Ginny had turned and was seeing to the oven, pulling plates from the warming drawer and casting her wand at a pan on the stove. "Mum's chicken pie, and there's ice cream for pudding."
Harry grinned and crossed the room, slipping behind Ginny to wrap an arm around her waist and pull her flush against him, the contact and the press of her body immediately making him feel safe, at home. He'd wondered all day if he'd made the right decision, going to the vault alone—there was so much there that he wanted to show Ginny, or to ask her opinion on, or to simply have her hand in his as he sorted through the objects that told the story of James and Lily Potter.
"Got bored of Charms revision, did we?" Harry mumbled into Ginny's hair, breathing in the fresh, floral scent of her shampoo.
"Utterly," she replied. "There's only so many times you can go over the theory of Protean Charms. At least with a Fail-Safe Pastry Charm, you've got something to show for it at the end."
As they ate, Harry chattered. He told Ginny about the vault, about the furniture, about the strange, broken vase and the horrible mahogany dresser. She laughed as Harry described the difference between James' baby photos and Lily's, and slipped her hand into his as he told her about the schoolbooks, the gentle history of a young man and a young woman who had so much promise. Ginny had squeezed his hand and promised him that their children—their one day—would never have to go without knowing who their parents had been, who their parents were.
After they'd eaten, and accompanied by a bottle of firewhisky, the two of them settled themselves in the armchairs by the fireplace. There was a gentle lapping noise from the sink as the dishes tended to themselves. A full stomach and the gentle, soft fuzziness from the firewhisky made Harry feel as though he was prepared for whatever the suitcases might hold.
"Ready?" Ginny asked, tucking her feet up beneath her and taking a sip of her whisky.
Harry nodded. "Yeah," he replied, and waved a slightly-shaking hand towards the suitcases. The lids sprung open, and the two of them leant in.
Photographs. That was what dominated the suitcases—photographs, and handwritten letters in scrolls of parchment or tucked into envelopes. Harry felt like he had stumbled upon an entirely different world; everyone looked so young. There were so many faces. Harry poured at the photographs, hungry for this information he had never had, for clues about the lives of witches and wizards who had perished before he was born, before he'd known how to form words. He recognised the beautiful, grinning face of Marlene McKinnon; Mad Eye Moody had once morbidly explained all the deaths in the first Order of the Phoenix to Harry, and he'd never forgotten it.
"Do you recognise anyone in these, H?" Ginny asked, using her pet name for him as she squinted at a photo. "I only know your mum and dad, and Remus and Sirius. Actually, saying that, I think Kingsley's at the back of this one."
"Let me see," replied Harry, peering over at the photo Ginny was holding. From the outfits, it looked like it had been taken the same night as the one in Harry's hands. "Yeah, I know a few. That's Marlene McKinnon on the lefthand side by Sirius. I think the one at the front is Dorcas Meadowes—Voldemort killed her personally—and the tall one there, with the blond hair, he's Benjy Fenwick. They only found a piece of him, his little finger…"
"Bloody hell," Ginny breathed, her face going pale.
There were so many pictures. Harry wanted to stare at them for hours, press them against the fibres of his mind so that he might never forget. He worried, as he stared at the smiling faces of the first Order, who would remember them if he didn't. Dumbledore was dead, Sirius was dead, Remus was dead. There were a few of the old guard still left, but Harry wondered how much they wanted to remember. He didn't blame them—the guilt of surviving was a heavy burden to carry.
"Hey, this one looks like it's from your dad to your mum," Ginny said, the sound of her voice almost surprising Harry. He looked up and took a note that Ginny was handing out to him. Harry unfurled it, cleared his throat and began to read it aloud.
My darling Lily, the note said in the handwriting Harry now knew as James'. I miss you like hell. I'm bored out of my mind, and we're getting nowhere with the intel. The only thing keeping me going is the nights when everyone's asleep and I can slip my hand beneath the covers and think about how it feels when you—
"Absolutely not!" Harry yelped, his cheeks going bright red as he hastily shoved the note back into its envelope.
Ginny cackled beside him. "Oh come on! Like father, like son," she teased. "I bet we can find some uncanny resemblances between that note and the filthy letters you've been sending me all year."
"I'm recommitting to abstinence until marriage as a result of that comment."
With Ginny still laughing, Harry tucked the letter back into one of the suitcases. As his eyes passed across stacks of letters bound with string or ribbon, and photographs paper clipped together, he paused over another note. Harry recognised that handwriting. It was not Sirius' hasty rush of ink, nor Remus' neat, scholarly cursive, nor his parents' distinctive styles. No, that was a long, slanted kind of penmanship that Harry knew so very well; letters written in that hand had once upon a time filled him with a dual quality of both excitement and trepidation.
Dumbledore.
Harry snatched it up and opened it, hands shaking. Out of the envelope came three rings, and Harry caught them clumsily. He frowned. He reached into the envelope again and pulled out a letter.
Harry, it read.
Please find enclosed your parents' wedding rings, and your mother's engagement ring. They were retrieved from Godric's Hollow the night they died by Sirius Black. He sent them to me for safekeeping.
I hope, one day, that they will be yours to share with whomever you choose.
Yours,
A. Dumbledore
Harry felt as though his heart was cracking in his chest, and let out a gasp. The thought of Sirius going to Godric's Hollow, and finding them there—Harry could barely cope with it. He couldn't fathom the agony that Sirius must have felt as he removed their rings from their still-warm fingers, parcelling them up and sending them on to Dumbledore for safekeeping. James and Lily, his best friends, lying there with lifeless bodies and unclosed eyes…
Harry turned the rings over in his fingers. His father's ring was matte gold; it looked like it would fit Harry perfectly. Without thinking, he slipped it on, noting how it hugged the base of his ring finger just right. Harry wondered whether as a baby he had wrapped his small fist around this ring, been mesmerised by the way it caught the light. He wondered too if Lily had absentmindedly played with it on James' hand as they lay in bed together.
The engagement ring was delicate; a small gold band set with small diamonds and emeralds. Harry wondered who had picked it—was it James, or had he and Lily chosen it together? Harry passed the letter to Ginny, not taking his eyes from the glittering gems in his hand. He heard Ginny take a sharp intake of breath. All he could think about was the fact that Lily Potter's finger had once warmed the cold metal of the ring; had, perhaps, turned it back-and-forth to distract a teething baby Harry, or got it caught in the fibres of James' jumpers. The ring seemed to hold so much life in it—it seemed to tell such stories. Harry wanted it to be once again a part of his story, too.
"I want you to have this," Harry said slowly, holding up the engagement ring. He thought he saw panic flicker across Ginny's features and had to bite back a chuckle. "But not now. Later, when things don't seem quite so… fragile."
Ginny's face split into a grin. "Are you asking me to marry you, just not yet?"
"Yeah," Harry laughed suddenly, almost taking himself by surprise, "I guess I am."
"Well then—" Ginny closed the gap between them and gave him a soft kiss— "I'd love to."
They stayed there together a little longer, chuckling at some of the things that Harry had pulled from the suitcases. There was so much more to explore. Ginny even convinced him to let her read aloud the risqué letter that they'd found—Harry couldn't remember if it was two firewhiskies they'd had at that point, or three— and he laughed, hands over his face in embarrassment. As he'd explained to Ginny once she finished the letter, just because he'd never known his parents didn't mean he wasn't excruciatingly awkward about their sex life.
All of it came back to one thing, though. It came back to the fact that Lily and James Potter had lived—had been vital, whole people who had loved one another honestly and messily and vibrantly and yes, at times, filthily. As the night enveloped them and Ginny stood to make them cups of tea, Harry looked down at his parents' wedding rings, glittering gold in his hand. He felt a jolt in his stomach as he spotted an engraving on the inside of each of them. With shaking hands, Harry lifted them to eye level, turning them slightly so that the light fell in just the right way to reveal four words that had been woven into his mind since that night in the Forbidden Forest.
These were the words that had sustained Harry in his moment of greatest fear, greatest weakness. They were words that whispered in the space between Harry's heartbeats, whose syllables he shaped in the quiet marrow of the night—something sacred, secret, profound. Their power remained undiminished, no matter how many times he breathed them out into the universe, because they were his father's words, and James Potter's legacy was the son sitting in that candlelit kitchen, alive and whole.
And in it all, Harry thought, as he blinked back tears and felt Ginny's small hand gently slip around his forearm, his father had been right. James, and Lily and Sirius and Remus—all of them—had been with him, from the moment he first took breath to the day he thought was his last. Not only in the colour of his eyes and the waywardness of his hair, but in who he was. Like the shape of those rings between Harry's fingers, the people they had been had come full-circle in him.
Until the very end.