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Author's Responses at the end:
Chapter Twenty-Two: Hermione's Secret
They apparated to where Diagon Alley used to be, which was not far at all from the Institute.
Harry shouldn't have been surprised at all when just a few moments later Beverly's security contingent beamed to their coordinates, followed by the Prime Minister, two reporters, and what looked like some academics heavily loaded with different scanners.
"Beverly," he said, "I've been seeing the most fascinating things on the infonets."
"I can imagine," Beverly said. "Did you see my wand?" She held it up and made sparks appeared.
"A very nice wand," Jean-Luc agreed with a wry, loving smile.
Harry found he liked watching the two of them. Though Jean Luc Picard had not a magical bone in his body, he had obviously formed a deep and abiding bond of love and friendship with his wife.
The former Starship captain turned and looked at Harry. "You've had a busy morning. My wife's security team nearly had a fit."
Harry managed to look chagrinned. "Sorry."
"Don't be," Jean Luc smiled. "Your little lecture at the institute was being transmitted live through the infonet. I do believe you are a hit as an instructor."
"Well, I was the headmaster of our school for several years. I admit I don't feel that old, but I do remember what it was like to teach."
"So," the Prime Minister said, "what are we doing?"
Harry knew better than to question the source of so much goodwill. Besides, there was no point to the secrecy statutes any more. "There was a magical bank near this side with many underground vaults. It was run by goblins. One of my first wives left a message to me that she was able to save some things from our world there."
"Interesting," Jean Luc said. "You do know this was ground zero for a nuclear weapon?"
"So was Hogwarts," Harry pointed. "The Goblins might not have had any one wizard like me, but they had some of the most powerful protective charms on their vaults known to magic. It's possible the surface portion of the bank was destroyed, but the more I think about it, the more unlikely it seems that the deeper vaults would have been destroyed."
"So what will you do?" Beverly asked.
Harry's shoulders dropped. "Not sure," he admitted. "I was hoping to find some clue as to how to reach them."
"There's nothing here, not even trees," Mary pointed out.
"Yeah, noticed that."
She stuck her tongue out, and Harry summoned her to his side to kiss her lips. She giggled at the sensation not just of his kiss, but of the magical summoning itself.
Harry let her go and considered the ground before him again. "You know," Mary said, "an echolocation scan could determine if there's anything under there."
"Really?"
Mary nodded and pointed to the two academics who came with Jean Luc. "Those are archeologists, I bet."
The two nodded eagerly. "Can you scan for subsurface structures?" Harry asked them.
"Yes, sir!" the both piped. They ran forward and took out a larger scanner about the size of their head. A long spike shot down from the bottom of it. The two of them shoved the spike into the ground.
Both their eyes widened. "This is impossible," one said.
"Sounds like they found something," Mary said.
"Indeed," Jean Luc said. He walked over to the two and looked over their readings. "Fascinating!" he exclaimed. "What has this never been noted before?"
"We never searched," the taller of the archeologists said. "At first because of radiation, then because the British memorial commission's turning it into a park. There was never any need."
"Let me guess," Harry said. "A massive network of caverns with lifesigns?"
"Yes," Jean Luc said.
"How deep?"
"The nearest cavern has a passage not three meters below us," the shorter archeologist said. She walked over the grass about two meters from the scanner and stopped. "Directly under here."
"Please move, then," Harry said. He took her place and said, "Diffindus et lux!"
The beam that emerged from his wand looked suspiciously like a phaser beam that cut easily through the soil. When he had cut a perfect circle, Harry stepped off and looked around. He only then noticed the spectators.
"Would you folks mind clearing a space?" he asked the nearest cluster.
The people moved quickly out of the way as Harry levitated a nine-foot thick, ten-feet wide circle of the ground up and away, resting it finally on the ground outside his immediately ring of family.
It should not have surprised him one bit when a swarm of twenty goblins emerged with halberds in their hands and war cries on their lips. The stunned spectators and even Harry's family screamed in alarm, though Harry noted the goblins did not immediately attack. Rather they formed a defensive ring around the breach in their home.
"We mean you no harm," Harry said in what little gobbledygook he knew. The language was coarse and made his throat hurt. Also, he knew about a hundred words of it, including those he used.
The goblins looked a little leaner than the ones Harry had known—a little less civilized and a little angrier. But they were definitely goblins. "Who dares violate our halls!" one of the goblins said in perfect English.
"I am Harry Potter, Heir of the Four Founders and Lord Hogwarts."
His words had an immediate effect on the goblins, but it was not the one Harry expected.
"You did this to us!" the lead goblin roared. "Your arrogance destroyed our world! Be gone, foul wizard, and leave us in peace!"
Though Harry didn't expect their rage, after a moment's thought he realized he should not have. "I have come to claim my vaults," he said. "The first vaults."
The leader goblin snarled and lowered his halberd menacingly. "Do you think Gringotts still exists, wizard?"
"Gringotts is forever, or so I was once told by your ancestor."
The goblin looked around the circle of humans. "These are muggles," he said.
"The statute of secrecy is no more," Harry said. "As much as you think you suffered, goblin, know the wizarding world suffered the ultimate price. It has been four centuries, and I and my wives, and our chosen godmother, are all the magic users left."
"Good riddance," the goblin said.
"Is it? How has business been for the past four centuries? The world has changed, Honored Goblin. The muggles have science that approaches or sometimes even surpasses magic. They travel the stars and visit other worlds. I do not stand here thinking I am superior to muggles because of my magic. I am humbled by their own power and science. But I am still trying to save what is left of my world, and the first Lady Gryffindor has told me the First Vaults hold the keys."
The goblin snarled, then looked directly at Katherine. "The new Lady Gryffindor looks scared."
"Not too scared to kick your head in," Katherine snarled back.
"Katherine!" Susan whispered.
The goblin, though, laughed. "And the new Lady Slytherin attempts subterfuge just as the original."
"How do you know who we are?" Mary asked.
"We are Goblins," the creature said proudly. "We created the first true bank in the world under the charter of Lord Gryffindor. We are keyed to the magic of the heirs and can see that magic in you."
Harry stepped toward the halberds, and then knelt down on one knee until he was eye-level with the lead goblin. "You are as surely a part of the wizarding world as any wizard. The time for hiding is over, Honored One. It is a time for us to live and be free. The threat has passed. And I will need your help. If I am to rebuild Hogwarts—if I am to gather the muggle born and create a new wizarding world, I will need the help of any magical creatures that live. Not as subjects, but as equals."
"We have heard such words before," the goblin said.
Harry nodded, held his wand to his chest, and said, "I, Harry Potter, Lord Gryffindor, Lord Hufflepuff, Lord Ravenclaw, Lord Slytherin, heir of the Four Founders, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamut and Chief Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards hereby swear and declare that the goblin nation will be given the same rights and opportunities as any wizard of witch in any future magical government to which they may become a part. So sworn by me on my magic."
The goblins eyes widened as the magic of the oath swept over them. "Mighty words, wizard," he said, but without his sneer.
"Words that should have been spoken long ago," Harry said. "There are no purebloods left to oppose me. If we are going to fashion a new world, we must do so together. Will you join me?"
"I am Rockfoot," the Goblin said.
"Honored, Rockfoot."
"You and your wives may come. The muggles must stay."
Harry stood and looked back at the stunned civilians. "Rockfoot, this muggle is Jean Luc Picard, Prime Minister of the entire planet. His wife is a witch, and he has been most helpful. May he come?"
Rockfoot nodded abruptly. "He may come."
Instantly Jean Luc's security team started to protest. "Why is it people are always trying to keep me from having any fun?" the prime minister demanded.
Harry turned toward the men. "He has been welcomed into the home of the goblins. He is their guest and under their protection, as well as mine. Frankly, he's safer with them. If someone tries to attack him out here, you'll just stun the attacker. In there, the goblins would kill the attacker and then likely eat them."
For some reason that didn't seem to make the security team members feel better. Jean Luc assured them it was going to be fine, and then with a broad grin he took his wife's hand. "I haven't had a decent adventure in years!"
* * *
There were no carts. Rather, Harry and the others followed the goblins down a long flight of stairs until they emerged into a magically expanded cavern almost a square kilometer in size which was crawling with goblins.
"Rockfoot, are you senior?" Harry asked.
"I am."
"How many of your brethren still live?"
"Only two thousand," the goblin admitted. "Our numbers decline every generation. Fewer and fewer births. Our arithmancers tell us it is due to the death of magic in the world."
Harry nodded—Hermione had once given a similar theory on magical creatures. Without wizards, all such creatures would slowly decline.
"Are the vaults intact?"
"Of course," Rockfoot said.
The goblins stopped and gathered along the path, watching them with large eyes and sharp fangs. Still, they made no effort to stop their progress. One young goblin even reached out a hand. Unthinkingly, Harry touched the hand.
The creature's mother shrieked and yanked the child back, but Harry paused. There was a darkness coming from the child. "Is he ill?" Harry asked.
Rockfoot translated the question into gobbledygook. The mother responded in kind. "He has the shadow flu. It kills more of our children every year."
Harry stepped toward the goblin. "Please let me hold the child," he said.
Rookfoot translated. Confused and worried, she handed the young goblin over. It was the size of a human newborn, though probably three in age. It had a glazed, slightly confused look on its sharp face, and only three sharp teeth protruding from its gums. The feeling of wrongness permeated the child.
"Ladies," Harry said. "I'll need you. It's a magical ailment, a failure of its magic to sustain her. I'll need your help to heal her."
The five wives simply placed their hands on Harry's back. He accepted the warmth from their contact and let it flow through him, into his hand, and finally into the chest of the deathly sick goblin.
He essentially just charged the child's magic. The goblin girl blinked as the cloudiness fled her large black eyes. She asked for her mother in gobbledygook, and Harry handed the young goblin back to her stunned mother.
"I need to go to the first vaults," Harry told Rockfoot, "but before I leave make sure to have all those affected by the disease brought forward. I will not leave until all have been healed."
Rockfoot was staring at Harry with awe, and dropped into a kneeling bow. "It shall be done, Lord of Light!"
As they continued down the path, Harry felt eyes on the back of his neck and turned to see Picard staring at him with a raised brow. "Lord of Light?"
"I was a messiah once," Harry admitted. "I saved the world from a dark wizard. Died, got reborn, so they made a church out of it. For a while there I thought I might even have deserved it. Then I lost the world to a nuclear war, and realized there are no messiahs, and that no matter how powerful I became, I could never save everyone."
They finally reached an area that Harry recognized. They were in the old vaults now. Rockfoot stopped. "Your blood, Lord." He produced a well-worn knife and Harry cut the heel of his hand without hesitation and placed it against the door.
The old connection reformed. Harry felt the other four vaults responding, and through force of will alone keyed them to his wives.
The door opened with a moan of rusted metal and the whirl of old magic. Everyone behind him whistled when they saw the piles of gold, but Harry did not care about that at all. His eyes first took into the fact that the vault had been greatly expanded. But more importantly were the shelves that lined all the walls, shelves fifteen feet high filled with jars.
Many tens of thousands of jars.
Harry stepped into the vault and peered at the shelves. They had large letters on them, given evidence that the jars were organized alphabetically. Obviously Hermione's work.
He stepped even closer and removed a jar from the shelf. He was in the A section. The jar he lifted was labeled as an ashwinder. Inside he saw a miniature fiery snake frozen with a stasis charm. He looked along the shelf and saw a hundred of the creatures in 12-ounce jars. He looked above the ashwinders and saw a shelf dedicated to only three jars labeled acromantulas. Below the ashwinders was a shelf dedicated to Augureys.
We saved everything, Hermione had said.
While the others stood around examining the gold and the magical artifacts with insatiable curiosity, Harry went down the shelf. Centaurs, billywigs, even two basilisks. Chimaeras, diricawls and dragons by the hundreds. Every magical creature he knew of, some sentient, some not. He even found a shelf of merpeople and banshees.
The other wall was dedicated to magical flora of every description, many Harry didn't even recognize, some he didn't know were magical at all. As he continued looking through the vault, it kept expanding and expanding. Eventually, however, the jars gave way instead to books. Hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions, of books.
"Harry?" Susan asked.
He turned and only then realized he was crying. The others were no longer looking at the vault, they were all looking at him. Even Rockfoot. "She saved everything," Harry said. "Our whole world. Every magical species, every magical plant. Enough to form viable populations. Dark creatures or light—if they had magic Hermione and the others saved them." He looked up. "Gods, they really were smarter than me. While I was trying to fight and save a trickle here or there of wizards, they were saving our whole world."
He turned to Rockfoot. "You call me Lord of Light? I am nothing. It was Hermione, Lady Gryffindor, and her sister wives, who were the true saviors." Flushed with joy, Harry swept the startled goblin in a hug.
"Our world is going to live again, Rockfoot! Gringotts will shine once more in the light! Goblins will have seats on a new wizengamut, children will learn charms, dragons will fly in the sky and unicorns will run freely through forests. It will all be like it was before."
Then came the cool, logical voice of Jean Luc Picard. "Mr. Potter, there are nine billion people on Earth. Where do you think these creatures will live?"
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Author's Responses:
First, I think I may have lied to you about the number of chapters. I may have said earlier that there were only twenty-three chapters. However, after a final look through there appear to be twenty four. So, after this latest post there are two chapters left.
Next, I'd really like to thank everyone for reading and reviewing. The response to this story has continued to exceed expectations, being only my second story to exceed 700 reviews. It may even surpass 800 before I'm done, which is truly gratifying. Thank you all for those reviews and comments.
Now for Questions and Answers:
Q: For some reason, I'm seeing a visit to DS9 and a chat with Sisko and the wormhole beings coming up, as well as Q, if for no other reason than for ** and giggles on his part. As for Wesley, just have him visit for two paragraphs to see what his mother is up to, then kick him to the curb.
A: Nope, no Sisko or Wormhole aliens. And no Wesley. Stories done, and there just is no place for him. Sorry. That said, though I normally don't go for them if someone wants to do an omake of Wesley showing up and PM it to me, I'll be glad to add it to a chapter. I don't normally go for omakes, but there has been a lot of interest in Wesley so I'll open that up for whoever wants to do one.
Q: I'm just wondering where The Traveler (See: "Where Noone Has Gone Before", "Remember Me", "Journey's End") has been while this screwing around with subspace and warp energy by the minds of sentients has been going on. Or is The Traveler a mage himself?
A: He's out with Wesley ;) No Traveler either. In fact, there are a lot of ST cameos I could have thrown in, but that just seemed...gratuitous. I had a fairly tight narrative and made a point of only including ST characters who had a legitimate reason to be in the story. It all comes back to authorial decision making, of course. For all the wonderful stories in the ST universe, this one is solely Harry's.
Q: Hermione's line about killing Harry's brother-in-law. I presume you mean Green. Or were you talking about Ron? :)
A: Although he probably had it coming once in a while, Ron was not her intended victim ;)
Q: When you were talking about the main methods of transportation, even though you had them Apparate, you didn't have Harry mention Apparation.
A: D'oh!
Q: Only problem with this story, i feel it is too short. it is very, very good, though.
A: I just like my stories to end. I've read some fics that go on for two or three hundred thousand words and eventually I just give up. I appreciate tight, well thought out narratives and plots. The multi-year re-writes have to be pretty extraordinary to keep my interest. Otherwise I prefer the 80000-150000 word stories and tend to write those myself. It's all personal preference, so there you go ;)
Q: In your universe, that could lead to a spin-off of Vulcan mages.
A: Actually, magic as practiced by Terran wizards and how it relates to other species (and Vulcans in particular) is specifically addressed before the story is out.
Q: Whatever happened to Draco after he stopped being an **?
A: He served as Minister for Magic after Harry took over as Headmaster and Chief Warlock/Supreme Mugwump. He was killed in the nuclear strike that took out the ministry.
Q: Enjoying the story more now that the sex scenes are slowing down and we're getting more of the return of magic. The potential is interesting. Could a good arithmancer speed up the initial calibrations of warp engines and "tweak" those already assembled, in essence doing what Kozinsky claimed he could do?
A: At least within this story, it's possible, since I linked arithmancy with advanced warp physics. And as for the sex--I honestly considered cutting out all the overt sex scenes because none of them seemed to belong. I did in fact cut out the marriages nights. And no, I won't post that version on my yahoo group because I just think it changed the tone of the story. I might even go back and remove the Naomi sex scene. It just didn't add anything and actually took someone of the innocence of the story away. That said--I really don't like going back to things already posted. So who knows.
Q: Only one problem I saw in this chapter. The locket was originally in 12 Grimmwauld place then stolen my Fletcher and ended up with Umbridge. It was Hufflepuff's Cup that was in Gringotts.
A: I did answer this question by PM, but just as a general reminder this story is a sequel to Harry Potter and the Four Founders, so everything that occurred after OoTP should be considered AU.
Well, thank you all again for reading and reviewing. After this chapter, only two more chapters remain.