It was only a few days later when Dippy popped in next to Harriet while she was picking flowers with Daphne to inform her that Hew was summoning her to his office.
The office itself was rather curious, the walls had bookshelves built into them such that there was about six foot of bookshelf and then a gap of wall for a painting, then another bookshelf and so on. One corner of the room was taken up by a large model of Greengrass Manor, resting on a table that was modelled after the grounds. It attracted Harriet's attention immediately and she noted that the grounds appeared to be a perfect match for those outside. A large globe rested in another corner of the room, a large antique thing bigger than Harriet herself. Hew's desk faced the doorway and behind him rested a large round window that looked out onto the driveway at the front of the manor. Harriet tilted her head and looked at the window quizzically, she had played in front of the manor and they had all flown around it on her birthday; but she couldn't remember a large round window at the front of the building.
"Harriet," Hew greeted her once Dippy had departed, and drew her attention back to him sitting at his desk, "you remember last week when I mentioned that we shall have to go and visit the goblins?"
"I remember," she affirmed with a nod.
"That trip will be today," he informed, "hopefully we will floo straight in there and then straight back home. We won't be able to risk visiting any stores in Diagon Alley today unfortunately, it's likely that if Dumbledore does have tracking spells on you that he will know the minute we enter Gringotts and will be waiting for you. Or, well… waiting for Harry Potter rather."
"Dippy!" He called and soon the house elf had appeared nearby, "please let Cossima know that we are heading out to Gringotts now and shall return once our business is complete, hopefully before lunch."
"Yes Master Hew, Dippy be telling Mistress Cossima," the elf affirmed before disappearing.
Together they walked down to the Grand Hall, Hew took a pinch of floo powder and called out "Gringotts!"
"Gringotts," answered a rough sounding voice and a goblin head appeared in the flames.
"Hew and Harriet Greengrass for a ten o'clock appointment," Hew informed the goblin.
The goblin head disappeared for a moment before reappearing, "come through."
Hew indicated for Harriet to step through and moments after stepping into the green flames that resulted, she found herself coming out of the Gringotts bank floo and remembered to step forward out of the way quickly. It's a good thing that she did, for Hew appeared moments later right behind her. Two goblin guards were standing on either side of the floo, but they were greeted by a third goblin in a suit and tie who gruffly ordered them to, "follow me."
This goblin led them to a room similar to the one they had gone to for the blood adoption, a plain austere room with a number of chairs and a desk. The goblin that they were meeting was already behind the desk and directed them with an outstretched arm to the chairs in front of him.
Once they were seated the goblin spoke up, "greetings wizard Greengrass, you have expressed concerns that young Miss Greengrass-Potter here is currently under some form of tracking charm."
"Yes," Hew confirmed, "the Chief Warlock floo'd me believing that Harry Potter was at Greengrass Manor."
"Yes, yes," the goblin hummed and stroked its jaw in thought, then added, "I believe that you have done the sensible thing, bringing her back to us," he made it sound like a wizard doing something sensible was a rare occurrence.
"Follow me," he commanded as he stood and walked around the desk to exit the room. They followed and he led them down a hallway to a door exactly alike the others in the corridor, it opened into a room containing a fairly large structure that appeared to be made out of silver. It was concave, and shaped like half an egg cut lengthways; larger at the bottom and sharper at the top but the base was flat however.
"Stand in there," he directed Harriet, who complied quickly.
He pulled on a cord hanging down from the ceiling and soon two other goblins entered the room carrying what appeared to be a large piece of parchment on an egg shaped frame.
"We will be covering the… tool, for a few moments with this results parchment, all you need to do is to remain standing until we remove the parchment, do you understand?"
Harriet gave him a nod and the two goblin assistants clipped the parchment over the egg shaped cave.
For Harriet, everything went dark. A feeling of peace came over her and she began to relax. It almost reminded her of the safety of her cupboard; which, despite its jail cell like nature, was a place where she was safe from Vernon Dursley (who was too large to get to her).
Hew watched in fascination at the magic the goblins wrought. Wizards generally tried to ignore and forget the fact that goblins had their own magic and if it was mentioned it was always in a derogatory manner as if goblin magic could never be the equal to human magic. However, such was not necessarily the case. Different does not always mean worse. Goblins, for centuries, had refined their magic while wizards for the most part had stagnated. Humans in fact, over the previous few hundred years, had proactively locked away magic considered to be 'dark'. It was all ridiculous however; the blood removal curse was classified as dark magic but was originally invented to quickly remove the blood from slaughtered animals, whereas a cutting charm that was originally designed to cut cloth could just as easily be used to cut a throat and was still considered a 'light' spell
The goblin inserted a red gemstone into a place on the side of the egg and withdrew a quill from a small compartment that was released. This quill he placed onto the parchment, nib touching and let go. The quill began writing.
Tracking charm - applied 31st July 1980 - Lily Jane Potter
Tracking charm - applied 1st November 1981 - Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore
Blood based tracking charm - applied 1st November 1981 - Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore
Blood based status charm - applied 1st November 1981 - Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore
Blood based monitoring charm - applied 1st November 1981 - Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore
Hew gasped in shock when the quill revealed the presence of blood based tracking charms, for these to be active Dumbledore must have taken some of baby Harriet's blood before he sent her off to live with the Dursleys. Rage grew from the shock when he saw the status and monitoring charms. Dumbledore should have known exactly how the Dursley's were treating Harriet, yet did nothing about it. With those charms he should have known about all of the broken bones, burns and concussions!
Shortly, the goblins removed the parchment from the egg and then removed it from the frame. They laid the parchment out onto the desk and took the frame away, exiting the room. The original goblin looked over the results after gesturing to Harriet that she could step out.
"As Lily Jane Potter is deceased, you can chose to remove or leave that charm in place as you wish," he explained, "it is doing nothing and having no adverse effects, nor can it be hijacked by somebody else. The second we can remove easily of course, it's just a simple spell. The last three however… they will require something special."
"You can remove them though?" Hew asked, holding a comforting arm around Harriet.
"Of course we can," the goblin sneered, he seemed to take Hew's disbelief as an insult, "just a simple blood tracing and burning procedure. Wait here while I fetch the appropriate equipment and employees."
"There we go Harriet," Hew said, giving her a hug, "once this is done then nobody will be able to trace you. Would you like to remove the trace your mother put on you, or leave it there?"
She looked up at him in shock, "Lily Jane Potter was my mother?'
"Yes," he said with a smile, "it's common for mothers to put a trace on their children right away, saves babies getting mixed up."
"My mother was a witch?" She followed, trying to process all of the new information. The only thing she could ever remember being told was that her parents were drunks and had died in a car crash. The news that her mother was a witch was new to her.
"Oh yes," Hew said, "quite a powerful one too. Your mother and father were both instrumental in the fight against He-who-must-not-be-named."
Harriet's eyes widened and she asked, "who is 'He-who-must-not-be-named'?"
Hew hummed and explained quietly, "we call him that due to a special spell he had cast called a taboo that would let him know the location and identity of anybody who spoke his real name aloud. He was a very dark wizard who tried to take over Britain before you were born, the war against him ended on the night your parents died defending you, the night you got that scar; the night He-who-must-not-be-named died."
"Oh," Harriet whispered as she processed the new information, "do you think I should keep her trace thing?"
"There's no need to get rid of it," Hew said, "but if keeping it means that you feel a lasting connection to your mother through it, then I'd say that you should keep it. It's up to you really."
Harriet thought about it for a moment before coming to a decision and giving an enthusiastic nod, "I'll keep it then."
After a few moment the goblin came back into the room with another two assistants. Harriet couldn't tell if they were the same from earlier, but this time they were carrying a silver bowl encrusted with jewels and engraved heavily, a small silver bowl-shaped smoking brazier filled with hot coals, another silver bowl of water and a knife matching the one used during her blood adoption. These were all set down on the desk in front of Hew and Harriet.
"Now then," the goblin said, "we'll start with basic spells. Have you decided on just the one or do you wish me to remove both?"
"Just the one please," Harriet instructed.
The goblin merely nodded and withdrew a pair of silver scissors from his desk. He cut out of the results parchment, the listing of the tracking charm cast by Dumbledore. His cutting was extremely neat, a near perfect rectangle. This piece of parchment he touched to the red coals in the brazier and a blue fire took hold. He held the flaming piece of parchment over the bowl of water until the last bit of parchment had burned down to ash, which in turn floated down to rest on top of the bowl.
"Stand over here," the goblin directed Harriet slightly away from the desk.
SPLASH
He upended the bowl of water over Harriet's head, who wasn't expecting it at all. She reached up to grab at her sodden locks, but was surprised to find her hair still perfectly dry! She looked down at the ground and could see no sign of water on the stone either. Patting her face and dress showed that they too were perfectly dry. She looked at the goblin in amazement.
The goblin noticed her reaction and chuckled to himself, "come back here Miss Potter-Greengrass."
While she returned to the desk, the goblin cut out the Blood based listings of parchment and held them to the coals in the brazier as he did with the previous. This time however, he held them over the empty bowl.
Once all the ash had collected, he said to Harriet "it will not be a small prick this time young wizard, we shall need quite a bit of blood for this. Be calm, the wound will heal quickly just as it did with a smaller cut. Now, hold out your hand over the brazier."
Harriet gulped, but held her hand out. Unless the goblin cut off her hand entirely, it would not be able to do much worse than the Dursleys had ever done to her. She watched in fascination as the goblin brough the blade to her palm and sliced it open from thumb to little finger. Blood immediately welled in her palm with strangely little pain. The goblin turned her hand over and she watched as blood dripped into the bowl to mix with the ashes. Once the blood stopped dripping, too quickly to be natural, the goblin let go of her hand and she pulled it back to herself. Her hand was completely healed, without even a faint scar.
"Now," the goblin said with an evil looking toothy smile, "time to burn out that missing blood."
He upended the silver bowl over the brazier and they all watched as the red sludge of blood and ash poured easily out onto the coals. It hit with a hiss and the smoke turned red briefly.
The goblin handed the bowl to Hew with the invitation, "check yourself that there is no blood remaining."
Hew showed the bowl to Harriet, it was completely clean inside.
"It's very very important Harriet," Hew explained, "that you do not leave any blood anywhere where it may be taken and used by somebody else. There are many many potent and powerful spells and rituals that can be performed with another person's blood and a tracking charm is probably one of the least nefarious."
The goblin nodded at Hew's words and took the bowl back from them, "it is done then. We shall subtract the fee from your vault. Is there anything else today?"
The goblin assistants took the tools away quietly.
"We have not yet received the accounting of Harriet's vaults," Hew informed the goblin, who seemed a bit embarrassed.
The gobin coughed, "Gringotts apologises for the delays wizard Greengrass, there were some… irregularities that we need to sort through. The accounting for Miss Potter-Greengrasses vaults should be completed within the week."
Hew looked at the goblin shrewdly, but nodded, "it is of no great import. Whenever it is ready, we shall look forward to receiving it, as well as an explanation of these... irregularities."
"Harriet?" Hew called her as he stood and the goblin escorted them back towards the floo.
Just before they reached the public areas of Gringotts however, a goblin intercepted them and spoke in hurried tones to their goblin escort. Hew and Harriet waited patiently while they discussed between themselves.
"Wizard Greengrass, Miss Potter-Greengrass; the teller here has just informed me that your Grand Sorceror Dumbledore arrived at Gringotts shortly after you did and is unfortunately still waiting at the teller's desk." The goblin informed them.
"He's still here?" Hew asked.
"Apparently the scragract brought in over one thousand knuts to change into sickles, the teller has been occupied the entire time doing this task," the goblin answered.
Hew gave a small laugh and a wry smile, "how about we pull a trick on him then?"
Harriet nodded at his look and he continued, "he doesn't know about Harriet. So if you leave by yourself first; just walk to the floo, take a pinch of floo powder and whisper 'Greengrass Manor', you should be able to get home without any troubles at all. I'll follow after a short while, long enough that Dumbledore won't match you with me. How does that sound? Do you think you can do that Harriet?"
Harriet gave a confident nod and Hew matched it with a smile.
"Well then," he said, "off you go. Please let Cossima know that I shall be a little late for lunch."
"Yes Father," Harriet said and turned back to the direction they were going. By herself she walked as confidently as she could muster, recalling the words and instruction of her grace and poise tutor was teaching her and trying her utmost to mimic Cossima. She glided out into the main part of the bank, noticing briefly an older man wearing outrageously tie-dyed robes waiting patiently at a tellers desk. He wore a long pointed tie-dyed wizards hat and had long white hair and beard. Aside from the one glance towards him, she focussed completely on getting to the floo. The wizard himself seemed to disregard her completely, aside from a first glance.
She reached the floo without any troubles and took a pinch of floo powder, "Greengrass Manor," she whispered as she threw the powder into the fire. With a whoosh the flames turned green and with a step she was safely heading home.
AUTHORS NOTES:
Thank you so much for the follows and reviews everyone. I'm so chuffed :)
Thank you to the following Story Follow/Favourites: ILRB80, Firelord331, Monitor2o3, nextss6, Niruzo, maeljuri, Ryuukira, Adicts, NeoArzg.
Thunderclaw03 - Dumbledore knows that something is happening, but it's not something he had AT ALL planned for. Minerva would be extremely supportive of Harriet…
I must say, they are NOT very happy with the Dursleys and while not *exactly* as dark as some, they are not exactly about equality when it comes to Muggles.
Blucougar57 - Thank you SO much! Once Dumbledore actually finds out what is happening…. A LOT.