This chapter stems, weirdly enough, by a negative review I got two years ago (on AO3) about a dislike of a certain trope due to it being 'illogical'. At the time, the "trope" was just a throwaway line. Though after getting that negative review, I sat down and thought "Wait, how WOULD that work?" Thus, a secret plot thread was born! One that even Melissa doesn't know about. …Until today!

Saturday August 28th, 1991

"So I guess this is goodbye?"

"It appears so."

Melissa and Lucifer sat beneath the tattered circus tent with their usual fare of firewhiskey. The room felt empty, now, having broken the orbs open and moved them out of the space before today's appointment with Torrero-Ramirez.

"I could bring you back after this. Fill in the blanks so it feels like you never left."

"That would be counterproductive on a few fronts," Lucifer chided. "Your acceptance to Hogwarts is contingent on my removal. Not to mention the fact that I'm not real. There isn't a benefit to continuing my existence."

Melissa scoffed at the idea, "There is to me."

Lucifer rolled his eyes. "I'm a glorified imaginary friend. You're no longer a child. An attachment like this isn't healthy."

"It certainly kept me sane in Azkaban."

"Well here's to hoping you never require an escape like this again."

Melissa gave a mirthless chuckle, "Hear, hear!"

They drank to the toast. Their final one in life, before Torrero-Ramirez came and ripped this place asunder.

Sunday August 29th, 1993

When her relatives from Surrey finally came to visit it was, by far, the biggest test of her endurance. Not because her cousins were any less exuberant than usual; but because that branch of Bennetts are the only ones who required more than the 'coma' story she's been feeding the rest of the family. By the sounds of things, Harry, Sirius, and even her parents had given them some information about what went down. So Jeff - like any typical eleven year old - thought it was cool that she went to prison.

Right. Sure. Great. Very cool. Ya-huh. Nothing absolutely wrong with that train of thought!

Thank fuck her uncle caught part of the conversation and pulled Jeff aside for a "talk".

Eventually she got so tired that she begged off to her room. Practically collapsing on her bed once she got in. Sleep was a welcomed thought.

*Knock. Knock. Knock.*

That, however, was not.

The door creaked open. After a pause, her aunt's voice followed. "This has been a lot, I take it?"

"Mmm."

The door closed, but footsteps walked across the room. Then came a creak from her desk chair. With a small inhale, her aunt spoke. "Tomorrow we'll be taking the kids to see a play." Melissa answered that with another hum. "While that happens you and I will be going on a different trip."

Mind pausing on the curious thought, Melissa lifted her head and looked over at her aunt. "What kind of trip?"

"The kind I'd rather we don't go on, but is necessary," Sophie replied. "Since you'll be going back to school soon, we're on a time constraint. Not to mention just getting out of Azkaban, we have to be careful."

"Okay… but you're still not explaining what this trip is or why."

Sophie looked as if she sucked on a lemon. Looking at her dead in the eyes, she answered, "The chests you sent me are sealed based on magical blood. Only you or a magical relative of yours can open it."

Huh. "But what about the others? Jeff and Maggie could try."

"They did. I tried," Sophie gave a strained smile. "Both of my kids are as muggle as I am."

Oh. Shit. That does put a kink in things. "Huh. Sorry you had to wait so long, then. I can open it right now, if you'd like?"

"They're not with me anymore. They're… elsewhere," Sophie gave a strained sigh. "Which is why you'll need to come with me tomorrow. It's time for you to find out what I've done with all our galleons."

Melissa was genuinely excited to wake up early in the morning. She put on all the right smiles and made all the right jokes to placate her parents. Soon after she weaselled her way out of the house, into the theatre, …into a wig and a new outfit, then into a rental car off to places unknown. Unknown, as it turned out, was a group of looming warehouses on a pier. During the drive over, Aunt Sophie gave her a fair bit of backdrop to work off of.

"As far as my contact knows, My name is Felicity Shaw. Repeat that."

"Your name is Felicity Shaw."

"Good. Keep repeating that as much as you need to. Now, I've told him that my husband is a wizard." Catching Melissa's alarmed expression, Sophie moved to reassure her. "Don't worry, Mal already knows all about magic. I don't have any details, but there's bad blood about it so I don't push. As I was saying, since he thinks I'm married to a wizard, you're going to be my daughter today. Alisa Shaw. Call yourself Allie, for short. If anything slips even remotely like Melissa, he'll hopefully mishear it for Alisa."

"Okay. My name is Allie Shaw." She paused, looking in a mirror to adjust the brown wig on her head. "Are you really that scared of him?"

"Of him? No. Of wizards and the goblins if they ever find out…" She glanced over at Melissa. "You know better than I do how bad things can get."

The thought of the consequences made her shudder. "Don't I ever."

In time the car rolled into one of the many warehouses. A rattling of machinery echoed around as the garage door closed behind them. As the two stepped out of the car, her eyes swept over the space, finding a collection of furnaces, machines, and containers whose purposes she couldn't quite identify.

"Took you long enough," a man's voice called out from the other side of the car. "Did you get the blood?"

"There was a complication in that," Sophie answered. Wait- Felicity, Mum, stick with that!

"How so?" The man, presumably the infamous Mal, asked. Melissa peeked around the car in answer. "What, who's this?!"

She lifted up her hand as if in attendance. "The complication. The solution, too, really."

The man narrowed his eyes at her, calculating the possible threat. She did the same with him. A quick sweep of him showed muggle clothes. Steel-toed shoes, worn trousers, a toolbelt -no wand (no gun either)- with various appliances, and a shirt that did nothing to hide the ample amount of muscle on his arms. Definitely not a wizard.

She settled on his face. Amber-brown eyes that, while technically warm in colour, judged her coldly. His hair was nondescript, a dark brown shaved close to his head. Though a crisscross of scars one cheek helped make him stand out. His cheekbones seem familiar, though.

Their eyes broke as he turned to her aunt. "You brought your kid? Seriously?!"

"I didn't have a choice. I couldn't take her blood without questions. Besides, she's the reason we have them in the first place."

"She's right, you know," she gave the man a sly smile. "I'm the one that sealed them."

"You?!" He looked her over, expression changing with a flurry of emotions. Thoughtful, familiar, amusement, anger, disgust. Honestly, Melissa couldn't keep track. Eventually Mal huffed. "You're your mother's kid, at least. Got a name?"

"Allie," Melissa thanked her lucky stars as she answered.

"Short for something pretentious, I bet."

"Alisa," she shrugged. "Not too pretentious, I hope?"

"Eh, I've heard worse," Mal shrugged. "Come on, let's get this over with."

He practically stomped off deeper into the building. Nearly out of earshot, Melissa couldn't help but ask her 'mum', "Where did you even find this guy?"

"A jewellery shop, if you can believe it," she explained as they followed after him. "When I first got started, I went to ask the jeweller about melting the coins down into gold bars. Luckily for me, Mal stopped me."

"Oh? Why's that a good thing?"

Ahead of them, Mal shouted back. "You can't melt goblin gold! Magic doesn't work that way. Not to mention the Ministry's always got their eye on this kind of thing. You think your mum's the first person to notice what morons wizards are? One word from the jeweller and your mum would've had her pretty little head wiped clean, if she's lucky!"

Reaching their destination, Mal started to pull out the sealed trunks. Melissa, meanwhile, had her mind spinning. "Let me see if I got this right. So you can't melt galleons down into bars?"

"Nope."

"Then how are you doing this at all!? You need to get rid of the serial number so that they aren't tracked, don't you?"

"Right you are, Allie Cat." He tossed an object over to her. Melissa caught it, and twisted it in her hand. The finger-sized object sparked a flair of recognition. With a button pushed, a knife flicked outward. "You know what to do."

With a grimace, Melissa cut her hand open and smeared it over the first trunk. The lock popped open, and Mal flipped the lid, revealing a glimmering chest full of galleons and jewels. Mal whistled loudly over the loot. "You weren't kidding, Shaw. This is a hell of a find." He looked over at Melissa. "You're seriously telling me that this isn't stolen? Where did you find it?"

"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In the Lost and Found room."

"HA!" Mal burst out laughing. "Those fucking rich pricks!" He thrust his hand inside, lifting up a palm-sized mountain of gold. He looked back at her with dark glee. "You want to know how we do it? Come and see..."

The galleons were poured into a container as Mal spoke. "Like I told Shaw all those years ago, goblin's are arrogant bastards and tricky with how they make their gold. It can't be melted, duplicated, nothing! Won't flake or degrade in any natural way. Hell, you can even throw them into mud and it takes nothing to make them shiny as ever.

"I explained all this to Shaw. Figure I can help a lady out of hot water. Do my good deed for the day." He hopped off of the stool and walked over to a lever. "But then she asked me something that nobody's ever asked me before. If these coins are designed to be perfectly pure, solid gold, what happens if they touch liquid gold?"

Mal pulled a lever, a rush of hot, molten metal poured out of a spout, into the container. Melissa peered over the ledge, watching as the molten slosh filled gold-bottomed rectangles chalk full of galleons. "What does happen when they touch?"

"That's just it. Not a damn thing." He closed the lever, letting the last of the liquid fill the space. "Might as well be mud for how pristine and clean the coins are after the fact."

"I don't get it," Melissa confessed.

To his credit, Mal went over to her and presented her with two ingots of gold. "Tell me, which of these bars is pure-formed gold, and which is full of galleons?" Melissa took each bar, inspecting them, weighing them on her fingers, but unable to answer the question. "Exactly. They're perfectly the same. The same weight, the same ping, the same everything. Everything except what it costs to buy them."

Ah! The train of thought started to make sense. "But what happens if someone melts it?"

"Then they get liquid gold and coins alike."

"So what's stopping someone from finding out about this?"

Mal scoffed at the question. "Selling it to the right people who won't do that, middlemen included. Besides, we make sure to change coins from different places so no one gets suspicious if that ever happens."

"Well, colour me impressed. This is brilliant."

"'Course it is."

Watching the process in motion, Melissa's attention eventually turned to what remained in the trunk. "What about everything else? Not like we can melt down rubies." She plucked one out and held it up for emphasis to the question.

"That's a spinel," Mal replied with barely a glance. "But don't worry, I can take care of the rest."

The off comment caught her off guard. "Wow. You really know your gems."

"Eh, it runs in the family," he said with a shrug, focused more on his work than her questions.

For her, though, that comment put her mind on edge. A thought train moving in a direction she didn't expect, crashing into other parts of this trip until it all came to one conclusion. "Mal. That name's short for Malachite, isn't it?"

The machine quieted as the man moved a lever shut.

"That's why you look familiar. You're a Wystan."

From his stool, he glared down towards her. With a head shake he muttered. "Knew you were a fucking Slytherin. Of course." Louder, he answered, "I was a Wystan. Not that those pretentious fucks would dare let me sully their good name."

Dare she ask? "What happened?"

"Didn't get my fucking letter, that's what happened," he scoffed, opening the spout again. "When my sister's letter came as usual, but nothing came for me, dear mummy and daddy figured they were better off burying me in the yard than letting the world know they got a squib in the family." He raised his shirt with his off-hand, revealing an ugly scar sliced down his side.

Melissa looked it over with a glare. "Fucking monsters!"

"Heh. You're damn right. Not that their precious pureblood society would see it that way. Getting rid of the squib heir to the family business is just common sense, in their minds."

"Mel- Allie," Her 'mum' stepped in before things got worse. "You know these people?"

She nodded. "The Wystans run the magical side of the mining trade in the country. They've got their hands in all sorts of things. Ores, precious stones, that sort of thing. One of my schoolmates is from a branch family."

"A branch, huh?" Mal said. "Who's kid? Ruby? Beryl?"

"Onyx, I think?" She paused for a moment as the name caught up with her. "Um, Ruby's dead. Sorry?"

Mal barely reacted to the news. His eyes seem to file the fact away than to treat it as a death in the family. "Eh, it's nothing to me. As far as they know, I'm dead, anyways."

"Fair. And she was a Death Eater, besides."

"Heh! Surprise, surprise." He finished up his work and hopped off of the stool. "Anything in those trunks I should know about? There's only so much I can move around without my boss asking questions."

"There are some things," she answered vaguely. She went and opened the other trunks. One was pre-filled with gems, so that wasn't an issue. The others, not so much. "I've got a couple half-melted cauldrons. Silver, brass, I only took ones that looked valuable. And inside of this one is dragon eggshells and a couple other things I figure would be useful as potion ingredients. Don't suppose you know anyone in Knockturn Alley?"

"I have a couple contacts," he answered as he peered over her shoulder.

"Good, because I have some things that are too valuable to risk giving to just any bidder." She moved to one trunk, working through a lock system hidden inside. A wall of the trunk popped inward, exposing a new compartment with a magically expanded interior. Moving carefully, she pulled out various items and placed them on a table. Meeting his eyes, she pointed out each item in a slow procession. "These, here, are sheddings of basilisk skin. …From your expression I'm sure I don't have to explain just how valuable it is."

A now pale Mal stared at her, wide-eyed. "You seriously found that just lying around?"

She didn't answer, instead moving on to pull out the next item. A long and heavy one. "Here we've got a magic carpet."

"Really?" Both Sophie and Mal leaned in on that announcement. "Magic carpets are real?"

"They are," Mal answered, "but not legal in Britain. Depending on how old it is, someone can try to grandfather it in by claiming it was in their attic for ages."

"Not a bad idea," Melissa said. "Though this last one won't be so easy." She tapped at the last item for emphasis. "This is the lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw."

"...Okay, now I know you're fucking with me," the words came at a deadpan, but Melissa wasn't surprised by the reaction.

"You would think, and yet, here it is. Well, what's left of it, anyway." She gestured at the fractured sapphire in the middle. "Some idiot cursed the diadem with dark magic, and someone else killed the curse by stabbing it with basilisk venom. So now it doesn't work how it's meant to."

"Kid… did you seriously stab a thousand year old relic with basilisk venom?!"

"No!" She scoffed. "I wasn't around when that happened. I only know the story behind it." In hindsight, she really should have told Harry to have Caireen go easy on the diadem. Alas, fear makes fools of us all.

"So… you've given me a broken relic, with no proof that it even is a relic?" He shook his head. "That's a hard sell."

"Well, whether it's sold to magicals or not, I'll leave the sale in your hands. Just be careful. Something like this can get you the wrong kind of attention."

Mal seemed amused by her concern. "You think I've lived this long without being careful?"

Her eyes flicked to the scars on his face and torso. "Never hurts to hear it twice."

Mal grinned, then turned over to 'Felicity'. "Cute kid. She really takes after you, doesn't she?"

"Of course," 'Felicity' smiled back, then wrapped her arms around Melissa from behind. "Like I told you, Mal, we couldn't have done this without her."

That's for sure, Melissa thought to herself.

She watched as the minting process went on, her mind flashing back to the previous three months, to Azkaban, as it did. Silent worries of 'Is it worth it? Is this safe?' playing in her mind. And yet there was another voice, one merging with Mal's as he ranted against the "backward, selfish pureblood society" that tried to murder him at eleven years old. The voice reflected that this same society has no issue with soul-sucking monsters, or groups of purebloods torturing muggleborns for sport. That only pursued a hidden terrorist because his plan accidentally, tangentially, resulted in the death of "sacred" magical blood. A society with a potential to be easily taken over by said terrorists in three year's time, at the expense of thousands of innocent lives.

You know what, he's got a point. Fuck what they think!