Chapter 1: What Harry didn't know
Standard Disclaimer: No, I don't own anything of the Harry Potter empire. Nope, nada, bugger-all. No money is being made here, damn it. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is extremely unlikely and is unintentional if it does happen. Most of them were idiots anyway.
Timeframe and Backstory: After Hogwarts by some years. This story shares the same AU as my Aftermath stories, where Harry Potter has married Luna Lovegood. Hermione married Justin Finch-Fletchly, is now the Countess of Aberfeldy and largely does without magic. By Right of Conquest, Harry Potter is the Head of multiple formerly Dark families. There are some concepts from some of my other stories as well, such as Hogwarts: A Pre-History.
The story begins about fifteen years after the Battle of Hogwarts.
Warning: Some serious drivel, some minor character bashing.
It was evening. Harry Potter sat was sitting in the great-room of the manor house, sipping tea while reading the sports section of the Morning Wand, which was running an article on the likelihood of the Auckland Keas and Uluru Galas breaking their long-term record of tied quidditch games. The new seeker for the Galas was the great-great-granddaughter of the founder of the team (and the Australian version of the sport) and the writer was musing on the chance that she could outmaneuver the skill of the Keas' beaters using the Māori warclubs instead of English bats.
Having spent some time in the outback after the Battle learning the local magic, Harry knew that the concept of winning at all costs was foreign to the locals. Sharing with your tribe was the only sure way to survival, so the idea of a perpetual tie was not out of the question, in spite of the 'white-fellas' view of the world.
Another article in the paper was talking about the recent sighting by muggles of witches on brooms flying around the bridges in London. It mentioned that the muggle papers and internet had shown videos and photos of some of the witches. Harry recognised Ginny Weasley from her long red hair, and knew that after winning the top of the professional league, keeping the Holyhead Harpies sober was a lost cause. Harry wondered at what point the Statute of Secrecy was going to become completely irrelevant, given the almost universal practice of carrying cell-phones with ever-improving photo and video capacities.
The older (100 years plus, on average) members of the Wizengamot and the ICW councils, of course, thought this was totally out-of-the-question because in their opinions the muggles could not have anything like those capabilities, given their innate inferiority.
Luna was reading a letter from her cousin in western Canada. She and Harry had visited Astrid at her place in British Columbia where she worked with the local sasquatch population recording their oral histories, which reached back to when their ancestors had crossed the Beringia landbridge leaving their yeti cousins behind.
Astrid shared Luna's deep interests in cryptobiology, which had so annoyed Hermione Granger during their days at Hogwarts. Most of the wizarding world thought the creatures they studied were either extinct or totally hallucinatory. But Luna and Astrid knew better.
Although rare, the Columbian mammoths still roamed parts of the prairies, often accompanying the annual migrations of the jackalopes who, due to their antlers, could not burrow like their rabbit and hare relatives to escape winter.
Astrid and Luna had been working on a joint project for a number of years, looking for a genetic connection between the sasquatches, the winnebagos of Minnesota and the Dakotas, and the wendigoes of the east coast. So far, they had identified a connection between the forest sasquatch group originally from the taiga of Siberia and the winnebagos in the Black Hills. The mountain sasquatches appeared to be a separate group more closely tied to the Himalayan yetis, whose ancestors may have arrived in North America in a separate migration, centuries apart from the lowlanders.
Their published studies were met with praise from the indigenous human populations of the Americas but generally scorned by the British wizarding communities as part of their on-going love-hate relationship with anything related to Harry Potter. The wizarding world, or at least the pure-blood British part of it, declaimed that this was further proof of Loony Lovegood's continuing insanity, and further evidence that Harry Potter was not the hero that so many had thought when he killed Voldemort. He 'obviously' did it purely so he could steal all the assets of all the pure-blood families. The fact that Voldemort and his Death Eaters had been killing almost as many pure-bloods as muggle-borns was conveniently forgotten.
To many, the fact that they had to have relied on a hero to save them from themselves was distasteful, and so it was easier to forget the actual events than to look critically on their own failings. It is always easier to find someone else to blame. And everyone 'knew' that Potter was only in it for the fame and glory. After all, Rita had been right all those years ago, and they themselves couldn't be blamed to believing her stories.
To Luna and their true friends, this was just further proof that what 'everyone' knew was usually wrong, and they all were idiots (at best). Just the kind to follow the latest ridiculous rumour to its logical conclusion and then believe it.
Luna looked over at Harry who was still engrossed in this reading, and asked, "Harry, do you remember Bunyip Scamander? She is coming to Scotland in a couple months to check out Loch Ness and the Black Lake by Hogwarts. She is doing a study of lake monsters, and met with Astrid to look at the Ogopogo in Lake Okanogan, and wants to check on Nessie and the Giant Squid."
"Astrid says that she and Bunny will be over here for about a month and want to know if we would like to get together. We could even put them up in one of the manor houses up north."
Harry nodded. "Bunny? Ah yes, she is the great-granddaughter of Newt Scamander. She took after his work on strange animals, or something. Okay, that sound like a good plan. We could even go and visit the staff at Hogwarts while we are there. I haven't seen Minerva, or Hagrid for a while. We might visit Nev and Hannah too, if you're okay with that." Luna's breakup with Neville had been unpleasant, when he was offered the Herbology professorship at Hogwarts, and refused to go on any of her field-trips anymore.
Luna said, "Great, I'll let them know, and I'm okay with Nev's decision by now – I think we both won, in the end. By the way, Bunny also asks what you did with the basilisk you killed."
Harry looked puzzled. "I killed it. That was about all I did with it."
Luna continued. "Did you save anything from it?"
Harry responded. "Well, after it bit me, I took the fang and killed the horcrux. I think I left the fang in the Chamber."
His wife shook her head. "I think Bunny is asking if you kept any part of the basilisk or sold it to somebody. After all, just like with the Right of Conquest properties, you killed it, so you own it."
Harry shook his head. "Who would want a dead basilisk?"
Luna smiled. "My husband, sometimes you are a couple chasers shy of a quidditch team. Basilisks are exceedingly rare and valuable. I know we are what the muggles call 'comfortably well-off' or more accurately 'stinking rich' but according to the legends, their venom can be used in a lot of very expensive potions, and their skin can be used for impenetrable armour. Back a long time ago, some great warriors attributed their survival to their basilisk cloaks and breastplates turning away arrows and spears. These are of course legends, because there hasn't been a basilisk on the market of a good thousand years. It was said that only goblin-made weapons could pierce the skin. They were so rare that there is almost no documentary evidence any more, only rumours and legends."
Harry grimaced. "I am sure that the carcass has rotted away by now. It's been around twenty years. As for the use in potions, with Snape teaching, I hated that course, in spite of always being told that my mother was a prodigy in it. As soon I could, I forgot everything I knew about potions, except where it overlapped into cooking and baking, which I do enjoy. I don't think basilisk venom would be too good in a casserole. Although now when I think about it, I can imagine a number of people that I might want to give one to."
Luna smiled again, with a touch of sadness about clueless husbands, especially those with one-track minds that got derailed frequently. "Harry, how long does a basilisk live?"
He nodded. "Well, from what I know of it belonging to Salazar Slytherin, it must have been over a thousand years old when I killed it. I am sure that, to grow to the size it was, it must have been, or rather I hope it had been, fully grown, so a few years beyond that. Why is this important."
She answered "According to the books on rare animals, the flesh of a basilisk is highly toxic to almost all pathogens and also self-healing. So, they don't age and they never got sick, so they last a very long time.
Harry saw where his wife was going with the topic. "Okay, Luna. I give in. I will check with Bloodax and see what I can arrange for a team of goblins to do whatever they need to do with the carcass. I assume there will be some money coming to me for the proceeds, minus of course the processing fees. Kind of like taking a pig or cow to the slaughterhouse to sell and paying for the packaging of the steaks. I will have to get permission from Minerva as well to have the goblins come into the Chamber of Secrets to do the work, presumably while we are there with Bunny and Astrid."
Harry and Luna Potter witnessed something that most of the wizarding society would have never imagined. When Harry asked his account manager whether there was a market for a dead basilisk, or at least parts of one, the goblin shrieked extatically and immediately called several other goblins into his office, where they spoke rapidly in goblinese for almost an hour. One very senior goblin (as indicated by his elaborate suit and many medals or awards which the two humans had never seen before) then turned to Harry and asked (in heavily accented English) "May we please be seeing your memory of you fight with creature?"
A projecting pensieve was brought into the office, Harry extracted his memory of the fight from many years ago, and the group all watched it. After some frantic discussions in the goblin tongue (or tongues, it was hard to tell if there were just technical terms or different dialects, but some of the sounds would have been difficult for human throats to reproduce) the senior goblin asked to see the memory again, but with the playback speed slowed and paused, so that several of the goblins could take measurements and estimates of size of the carcass, largely based on the size of Ginny Weasley's body lying on the chamber floor as there were few other references visible. Harry was asked about how tall or wide Ginny had been at the time as well as his recollections of the size of Fawkes the phoenix. This was followed by more frantic discussions and scribblings on parchments.
After this went on for nearly a half-hour, the senior goblin turned to Harry and said "Based on our calculation, subject of course to actual measurements of body, and the volume of venom from the beast's poison sack and its fangs, we are prepared at this time to be offer you a minimum of twenty-three and a half million galleons for ownership of carcass. This is your net return after the costs of our own teams harvesting and transporting the materials from the site, which we will bear. We would need to have permission from Hogwarts, as well as your help getting into the chamber, for access in order to conduct our work. If our estimates of size are low, we will increase the amount due to you, but the minimum will stand as our offer. Will this be sufficient?"
Harry looked at Luna, whose eyes looked ready to pop out of her head at the stated amount, and said "I think that sounds fair." Considering that Harry had considered the basilisk worthless to him, he seemed to be taking it almost carelessly. His wife knew they were very wealthy, but the offer was still phenomenal.
The sound of a whole room of goblins cheering indicated that Harry could probably asked for a lot more and Gringotts would still have been happy to comply. As he had not thought the carcass had any value at all, and the goblins were going to do all the work, any amount was just gravy.
Harry then commented, "There may be some old documents in the chamber as well. I don't know if those would be of any value, and who would own them if there are."
Another brief conversation on Goblinese took place among the Gringotts staff.
Bloodax looked to Harry, and asked, "The chamber was said to be a secret and belonged to Salazar Slytherin, rather than Hogwarts itself? Until about sixty or seventy years ago, no-one really knew of its existence, for sure, and it did not appear on any maps of the castle. This is correct?"
Harry thought about the Marauders' Map which had never shown the Chamber. "I believe that is true."
The goblin asked, "Your Lord Voldemort, or in reality Tom Riddle, accessed the chamber during his life? And to your own knowledge, no-one else other that Slytherin or Riddle had access to the Chamber until you entered it? Other than, of course, Ginevra Weasley who was taken there by Voldemort as an unwilling pawn in his schemes." Harry nodded.
"He also claimed to be the last Heir of Slytherin, and we can check our records to confirm this. Although the chamber itself physically may be considered part of the Hogwarts Castle, even if inaccessible to most, any documents which would be in the chamber would, to the best of our understanding, be the personal property of Slytherin himself, or of his Heir. Therefore, by your Right-of-Conquest, it is our interpretation that any and all documents within the Chamber are yours to do with as you will. We will have our legal experts confirm this, but that should be true. Either that, or any rights to the documents would be the public domain as the ownership of at least Slytherin's own papers would have expired centuries before any copyright laws existed. So if you are the only one who can access them, I would say they are yours"
Luna asked, "I suspect that any documents, that Slytherin himself wrote or owned, would be in either an archaic form of English or on some other languages. Would Gringotts have staff who could translate the documents into a more contemporary form?"
Bloodax smiled. "Lady Potter, we do have staff with those skills, either in this branch or others around the world. We understand that Slytherin came from lands east of here near what you call the Black Sea, whereas there are a wealth of documents from the Byzantine Empire. Depending on the number of documents to be translated, a very nominal fee could be negotiated once the final value of the basilisk is determined." Luna got the impression that Gringotts expected to make a great deal of gold on the remains for the beast, and that the additional fee would be extremely nominal.
Luna thought for a moment, and then commented, "We have some people coming to visit this year who might be very interested in seeing the remains of the beast. We also need to get permission form Hogwarts for access. How much lead time will your people need to prepare for the harvesting?"
Bloodax smiled. "We obviously would like it sooner than later, but we may want to take a close look at the markets to assess the best return on our investment. If you wanted immediate action, we could have a team there in two days, but I believe that it will take a while to get your arrangements made. Once you have the timings in place, we would appreciate one to two weeks notice so we will not need to take teams off their existing tasks and also not have to bring in specialized workers from other branches. Is this satisfactory?"
Both Harry and Luna nodded.