Harry sat waiting in the Gringott's lobby for his turn to be called. He didn't quite get how seemingly everything important he needed to do with his life ended up having to be done through the bank, but the soon to be Third Year student admittedly didn't pay that much attention in History of Magic and couldn't be bothered to read the books on the topic, either. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.
Finally he was called up by some no-name goblin with some ridiculous title like Axegnasher or something, it hardly even mattered. They all had such absurd names and he was convinced that Professor Flitwick's father had to have been a Wizard because no Goblin would ever have named their son so sensibly. Trundling up to the counter he was led past a dozen rooms of goblins counting gold piles and torturing debtors before being let into a small office.
Being underground there were no fucking windows but that didn't bother Harry too much, considering how much of his life had been spent in the dark, only being let out to cook or garden; birds had it easy. The goblin behind the desk was nattering on and Harry cut him off before he could get through even more ridiculous tripe that was undoubtedly only spoken to confirm Wizarding prejudices and some ancient notion of the Goblins being a proud warrior race.
"Can we just get this over please? I've got other things I'd like to do with my time." The goblin sneered at him but sighed and held out an orb and a large sheet of vellum. Vellum, seriously. Now granted Harry understood that some things really did need handcrafting for the magic to work, but paper wasn't one of them (Ron had taught him the Ministry memo spell that he'd in turn learned from Percy who learned it from Arthur and it worked just as well on A4 as it did on parchment).
Figuring that he wasn't going to have to prick his finger or gush half a liter out of his wrist or provide some other fluids, Harry took the vellum and spread it out, before firmly grasping the orb and pressing it to the edge of the sheet closest to him. Feeling a pull on his magic he watched as lines spread out on the page, generations of Potters and Evanses and their ancestors being laid bare. His eyebrow raised at a few of the names but ultimately it wasn't all that shocking. The Wizarding family trees could be more like family wreaths at times...
"So let's ignore all the names here, are there any that I should actually interest myself in?" Ravenclaw, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Peverell, Potter, Black, Selwyn, Parkinson-now wasn't that interesting-and Gaunt were all names that popped up somewhere in the lineage chart, but none of them were all that closely connected to the Potter line except maybe Black and Parkinson.
The Evans line was represented but it didn't go farther back than his maternal grandfather that he'd never meet (they weren't dead but Vernon's smarmy corpulence and Petunia's irascible envy had turned them off to ever wanting to associate with their surviving daughter's family), a small note indicating him as having been born with magical potential but it would never have been more than a squib's worth.
The goblin whose name that Harry still couldn't bother learning despite the engraved placard sitting on the desk sighed and grunted something that sounded like a very wet fart and the vellum shifted ever so lightly, the important lines leading to Harry's existence lighting up in purple. So he was still directly connected to the Peverell, Black, Potter (obviously) and Ravenclaw lines through... Rowena's brother, which he was definitely sure that was not mentioned anywhere in Hogwarts: A History or else Hermione would've known about it already.
With a word of half-hearted thanks Harry gathered up the vellum and left the goblin stewing in his own unimportance, not bothering to stop and pay as that had been done days in advance, and the consultation fee wasn't all that high either.
Weeks later (well before the Dementor Incident that would set the tone for the school year) he shared his revelations with his friends. Hermione looked almost starstruck at first before Ron and Neville shot down her high hopes. Harry nodded his agreement with them, further dampening Hermione's enthusiasm.
"Well after getting the test done I decided to look into any historians specializing in ancestry and, well, into government operations on top of that. People like Malfoy might get off on calling themselves lords, but the last true Lord died in 1701 and the Peerage isn't exactly going to let members of a secret society keep their titles if they were never going to show up to sit in Parliament. Serving in the Wizengamot is by appointment or election and doesn't have any hereditary seats...Ravenclaw's the closest that actually came to being a Lordship through the Drumheller cadet line, if not for the fact that the Drumhellers were all Danes."
Neville was quick to lend his agreement to it, grinning a little bashfully. "That and Cassius Ravenclaw was a notorious womanizer, never settled down in his life. Rumor has it he bedded so many witches in his time that he'd give Genghis Khan a run for his money in how many people are descended from him. The only one of the Founders that could actually claim a lordship was Salazar but all his holdings were in what's now Portugal. Rowena was a scribe, Helga was a shaman and Godric, well..." Gryffindor's namesake was an enchanter par excellence but he'd never been more than a squire.
Ron cut in next, nodding as if he knew something the bibliophile witch didn't. "Of course, we're all technically subjects of the crown, still. The last time someone tried to claim right to rule on basis of lineage or connection to the Founders, it sparked a civil war lasting over a decade. There were at least fifty other wizards who decided they had just as much of a claim if heritage was all they were going on." Thoroughly deflated Hermione sighed and asked Harry what the whole point of the exercise even was, if it wasn't going to grant him any special privileges or empowerments.
"Absolutely nothing," Harry replied with a grin. Hermione's reaction would go down in history as The Scream, a feat not surpassed in all the centuries that followed.