16. Pillage and Plunder
April First, the twins' birthday, fell on Thursday. Rather than keep it limited to the late afternoon and evening, they decided to go all-out on the following Saturday. Saturday, of course, had no classes for Professors to complain were being interrupted.
It was a school-wide event that lasted all day. It started in the Great Hall at breakfast with a banner and fireworks — and everyone switching to the opposite gender for ten seconds as a "subtle" debut advertising for their Sexy Sweets. Even Snape seemed reluctantly impressed.
Despite having spent weeks making stock, they sold out of the half-hour version before lunch. Certain Wizards and Witches seemed to be especially interested in them, buying handfuls at a time. Even the Wizards and Witches without known boy- or girlfriends.
There were more fireworks and random pranks at lunch, and the party really got started after dinner.
Sirius managed to attend the party in the evening using a bit of self-transfiguration. Because everyone was dressing casual for the most part — no House robes — no one could say "Who's the guy wearing our House robes? I don't recognize him." They all thought he belonged to a different House.
It helped that Hermione used magic to make a composite face of all the Fifth-, Sixth-, and Seventh-year Caucasian boys for him to copy. No matter who looked at him, they all had the vague impression that they had seen him . . . somewhere.
The mild don't-notice-me spell helped prevent them from thinking too hard about that.
He had been working on self-transfiguration for the three months of "days" he had spent in the Room as one of his projects, the other big one was his legilimency . . . his mind was still a bit of a mess of distorted memories and emotions.
He had to work on his size, appearance, and ability to maintain self-transfiguration — Azkaban had done a real number on his concentration and control of his magic. Once he had it down properly, he would be able to go out in public without having to worry about being recognized.
The party was his final exam, as it were. Being able to maintain it without relapsing amid all the distractions was important. Once they were confident he could do it, they would start hunting the remaining Horcruxes.
Which they did on Sunday morning, after spending the night in the Room at the beach and getting a full night's rest.
Sirius went first with Dobby, to show him where Grimmauld Place was in London. Moments later, Harry, then Hermione, joined him via Dobby Express.
They were on a patch of unkempt grass at one corner of a small square. The houses surrounding the square were all alike, three-story brick townhouses crammed side-by-side, like one giant building with nary a gap between them. The grimy fronts of the houses were unwelcoming; some had broken windows with cardboard taped over the gaps, and paint was peeling from most of the doors that were painted. Adding to the distasteful appearance of the neighbourhood were the heaps of rubbish that lay outside many of the front steps
Sirius pointed at one especially unpleasant appearing house with a worn set of front steps leading to a battered front door. The door had a silver knocker in the shape of a twisted serpent but it had no handle, or anything else, that could be used to open it.
"That's the place," he said disgustedly, "Number Twelve Grimmauld Place." He glanced at the other two. "Don't move from here too far. This corner has a Muggle-repelling spell on it, as does the house. As long as we are in it, no one will pay attention to us."
Hermione nodded and pulled out her wand. A quick point-me had her facing north. She pulled out the map and oriented it properly with London in the centre. "Harry?" she said.
Harry nodded and pulled the cover off the small cage. It was barely the size of a children's shoebox, even with the crystal box surrounding it. He tapped the runes on the side that made the rat act as a Riddle-horcrux pointer.
The rat turned to face the house.
Hermione gasped.
The other two looked at her curiously.
"Sirius," she said a bit unsteadily, "cast a notice-me-not on us, then we'll walk that way." She pointed up the street, towards and past Number Twelve, but still in the park.
They walked past Sirius' ancestral home by several places, then reversed until she stopped when they were right in front of it. She looked up at the Wizard. "Sirius, I think there's one in your house," she said quietly.
"What!?"
She pointed at the rat. "He hasn't taken his eyes off your house since we started." She looked off towards another corner of the square. "If the horcrux was in Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, or Cambridge, he should be looking that way." She pointed. "In Essex or closer, that way." She pointed more to the east. She looked back at him. "In Hogwarts, the rat wasn't looking anywhere closer to London than ten or twenty miles. Definitely not here, in London. Or, maybe there are several close together and he was merely looking in the centre of their separate locations?" She sighed. "Or else we've totally messed the runes and he's not pointing at Horcruxes at all," she concluded.
Harry stared at the house, frowning. "We need to think about this first. Let's go back." He headed back to the corner to they had appeared at. Hermione nodded and followed him.
Sirius hesitated, stared at the house with pursed lips and a deep frown for several seconds, then trailed along behind them.
A minute later, they were in the Chamber of Secrets. Hermione sighed, sitting on the couch. "First, is there anyone living there?" She looked at Sirius curiously. "If there isn't, what's the floorplan and what might we find inside that we have to be careful of?"
Sirius was in the armchair opposite her, the low table between them holding Voldemouse in his cage. He ran a hand through his hair. "It's been abandoned for almost ten years, ever since my mother, Merlin rot her soul, died." He sighed. "It is completely overtaken with dangerous pests, though. Doxies, chizpurfles, Puffskein nests . . .," he frowned in thought, "I believe there's at least one boggart . . . and a murderous ghoul in the attic."
He leaned back. "Oh, and there's the house-elf . . . Kreacher," he said with a disgusted tone.
Hermione sat up. "A house-elf? Can you call him? Maybe he can tell us if there's anything in the house from Riddle in it!"
Sirius' disgusted look got deeper, but he sighed and nodded. "He might at that. My younger brother, Regulus, was a real Vol . . . Riddle fanatic." He shook his head. "He believed everything my mother said about blood-purity and willingly joined the bastard at the first opportunity," he said bitterly.
Harry and Hermione exchanged glances. Neither had known Sirius had had a younger brother.
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Hermione said quietly.
Sirius took a deep breath and blew out his cheeks as he exhaled. "Right."
"Kreacher!" he commanded sternly. "Kreacher, come here!"
Just as he was about to call again, there was a loud crack! A crouching house-elf, with enormous bloodshot eyes and covered in grimy rags appeared.
"Kreacher won't, Kreacher won't, Kreacher won't!" croaked the house-elf quite loudly, stamping his long, gnarled feet and pulling his ears. "Master was a nasty ungrateful swine who broke his mother's heart —"
"Shut up, Kreacher!" Sirius roared. "You will answer our questions completely and truthfully! And don't leave out any details."
Kreacher immediately silenced, his expression still mutinous, arms crossed, and glaring with resentment.
Both Harry and Hermione recoiled in shock from the two.
"Did Voldemort give Regulus anything to protect?"
Kreacher glared at Sirius, "No," he said firmly.
Sirius frowned, thinking. "Did Regulus ever bring something into the house or give you something that belonged to Voldemort?"
They could see the house-elf struggling, but then, reluctantly, he growled out, "Yes."
"Is it still at Twelve Grimmauld Place?"
Again, there was a struggle, and another reluctant, "Yes."
Sirius flashed a grin at the other two. He turned back to the fiercely glaring house-elf. "What is it?"
"A locket," Kreacher growled through gritted teeth.
"Get it, right now, and place it gently on this table." He pointed at the table, beside Voldemouse.
Scowling, Kreacher disappeared with a loud crack!
He returned less than a minute later and set a large oval locket of heavy gold, a little bigger than a chicken egg in outline, but no thicker than an ordinary pencil on the table. It had a braided gold-chain that pooled above it. A serpentine 'S' in glittering inlaid emeralds decorated the front.
Voldemouse quickly spun around and locked his eyes on Kreacher's locket. Harry and Hermione exchanged looks, leaned forward, and both began casting detection charms.
Hermione looked up at Sirius. "Yes, this is a Horcrux, and the magical signature matches Tom." She cast another spell, and parchment and quill appeared. The quill immediately began scribbling.
"She's listing all the spells on the locket," Harry explained, "to see what we need to do to move and destroy the soul-shard." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kreacher perk-up at hearing that.
Hermione hummed. "It can only be opened with parseltongue," she said. "Fortunately, the soul-shard is leaking from inside, and as such, we can use the ritual to seize it and remove it."
"Here, let me," Harry said, and cast his own detection charm, but saying it in parseltongue. He studied the results for a few moments. "Nothing else special, really. Impervious to outside forces, impenetrable to liquids . . . I see some of the spells that were on the tiara to infiltrate the mind, but no compulsions."
Hermione stood and walked some distance away. "I'll get started on the ritual circle," she said. "You find something we can use as a target, Harry. Something easy to ruin and impossible to repair, afterwards."
He grinned, took his trunk off his necklace, unshrunk it, and climbed inside. Moments later he came back up with a small jar with a fly inside it.
Grinning at the other two, he said, "I had Dobby find me three geriatric flies that were only hours from passing on." He waved the jar around. "They are stasised at present. We do the ritual, and then watch one of them die of old age!" He paused. "Or we can AK it anytime." The others nodded. The rule against the avada kedavra only applied to thinking beings, with some believing that meant Wizards and Witches only.
The jar was unbreakable, of course.
It took the two of them two hours to prepare the circle. Five minutes later, there was a red-eyed fly buzzing around in Harry's jar and glaring at them balefully.
After a thorough examination of the locket to make sure that while there were signs of the Horcrux having been there, there were no taints left of the evil mad wizard's soul, they gave the locket to Kreacher. They had no idea whom else to give it to, so why not make it a memento of the master he revered most?
He actually broke down into tears.
They stayed in the Chamber waiting for the fly to die. If he didn't pass on before dinner, Sirius planned to hit him with the avada. While they were waiting, Kreacher told them the story of how Slytherin's locket came to be at Twelve Grimmauld Place, and his many, many attempts to destroy it.
It left both Sirius and Kreacher in tears.
Then Harry and Hermione spent time discussing if they wanted to take their OWLs or NEWTs at the end of the year. Both had advantages and disadvantages. If they took the NEWTs, they would be done with Hogwarts — and have to leave their friends behind. It would also draw an incredible amount of attention to them. Doing nothing would let them stay with their friends, but they would be monumentally bored with their classes.
The same was true if they took their OWLs. The only time they would see their friends would be in the Common Room and at meal times.
If they did take their NEWTs, would Madam Marchbank agree to keep the results secret as she had for Transfiguration? And if she did, could they stay in the classes working on Master projects?
They decided to ask McGonagall her opinion on the matter.
They took their lunch down there.
It wasn't until mid-afternoon that the fly finally died. The sudden appearance of the smoky-black visage of Tom's face flowing from the fly, and screaming its distress at finding itself dying, caught them by surprise.
Still, it was a pleasant surprise. Plus, it was good timing, as Harry and Hermione had to make a quick "stress-relieving" trip into the Room for Luna, Ginny, and Suzanne a few minutes later. Three "hours" in the room came out to a bit over three minutes of real time, so Sirius didn't have to wait for long for Harry to return.
Not that they told him the real reason for their disappearing for a few minutes. Hermione claimed it was to look for a book.
Then they returned to London.
Hermione sighed. "He's facing that way, now," she said pointing in a new direction — and definitely not where she had said it should be.
She drew a line on her map.
"There are three more of these things, plus Riddle, right?" Sirius said.
They both nodded.
"Well, it's possible that one of those is closer to us than the one that was indicated while we were in Hogwarts," he said reasonably.
Hermione sighed. "That's possible," she agreed.
Sirius thought a moment. "How about we hit Bristol? That's far enough to the other side of England that it should give us an idea of where to check, next."
A few minutes later, in an alley in Bristol, Hermione was drawing a line to London.
A few minutes later, armed with a map of London that Dobby retrieved, they revisited Grimmauld Place and Hermione was drawing a new line. King's Cross Station gave them a second line — which crossed the first line at Charing Cross Road.
They looked at each other. "Diagon Alley," Harry said dryly.
The alley just down the street from The Leaky Cauldron was empty when they arrived. Voldemouse verified that the other soul-piece was either in or behind Daigon Alley. A final check before they entered had Voldemouse pointing his beady red eyes straight into the Alley.
Five minutes later, they were staring in disbelief at Gringotts Bank. Voldermouse was staring nearly straight down.
Five minutes after that, they were back in the Chamber of Secrets.
Hermione sighed deeply. "Well, it makes sense." She looked at the other two. "It is supposed to be the safest place for your money or anything else you want to keep safe."
Harry shook his head. "We need to find out what Gringotts allows in a vault — and what the Ministry allows Gringotts to store."
Sirius nodded. "I'll see what I can remember about their regulations." He looked at the other two. "Where do you think it is?"
Harry shook his head. "No idea . . . except it has to be one of his Death Eaters, I'm sure. The Diary was with Malfoy, who I heard was supposed to one of the 'inner circle' of Tom's Death Eaters."
Sirius snorted and gave a bitter laugh. "Most of his "inner circle" are in Azkaban." He ticked them off on his fingers: "Bellatrix, Rabastan, and Rodolphus Lestrange, . . . Dolohov, Rookwood, Jugson, Gibbon, Mulciber, Travers, and Rowle." He shook his head. "Not in Azkaban are Alecto and Amycus Carrow, Avery, Crabbe Sr., Goyle Sr., Malfoy, Yaxley, Macnair, Snape, Nott, Selwyn, and Wormtail."
He narrowed his eyes and started pacing. "It's interesting that the only two Death Eaters the wanker has with him right now are Wormtail and Barty Crouch, Junior — both who the ministry says are dead."
He glanced at the other two. "Do you think he doesn't trust the others?"
Harry rolled his eyes. "It's more likely that he doesn't want them to see him so weak!"
Hermione sighed. "Too bad we don't have the vault keys; we could just go into Gringotts and check."
They all nodded.
"Wait," Sirius said, perking up. "How good are you two at runes?"
Harry shrugged. "Fairly good," he flashed a grin and smirked, "we got Outstandings on our practice NEWTs."
"Well, I highly doubt they had their vault keys on them when they were arrested, so their keys are probably in their mansions. Do you think you could make sappers? Those are stones you place around something to drain the protections faster than they can recharge. They're fairly slow because you have to use more stones than the property has charging their protection rune-stones; the ratio between charging and discharging determines how long it takes — which is usually days . . .. Which means they're never used on occupied places because the wizards inside notice and counterattack or call for help."
Hermione stared at him, "And in this case, with empty mansions, for the most part, no one would notice; so, who cares how long it takes? Once the protections are down, then we can just grab the keys and then go to the vaults and see if one of them has the horcrux!"
Sirius was nodding.
It took only a few moments for The Professor to provide sample rune-scripts for absorbing magic. Studying them, Hermione frowned. "These discard the magic absorbed as heat . . . but the heat build-up can soften the stones enough to ruin the runes on the stones if they are smaller than the ones they are draining, or crack the stones if the absorption rate is too high and it heats up unevenly. So, you need a bunch of them or a really, really, big one that the defenders could see and target." She took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
"But energy is frequency-dependent," she said half-musing and half-explaining. "That is, heat is a lower wave-length, around one millimetre to just below visible light at seven hundred nanometres. Visible light is three hundred to seven-fifty nanometres, and so carries more energy away than heat." She frowned at the runes. "If we could move it up from heat to visible light, we could double the capability of our sapper. Going to ultraviolet, about ten nanometres, would make it a hundred times more efficient. Which means we could use smaller and fewer stones."
She grinned at the other two. "I wouldn't want to be near one for more than a minute or two, though, you'd get quite the sunburn."
Then she sighed. "I imagine most sappers were carved on the spot, because their very ability to absorb magic would prevent Wizards from transporting them by magical means. . .. So, we need a way to turn these on and off."
First, they came up with a rune sequence to absorb and put out the magic to turn a parchment blue — they didn't want to crash the castle, after all! Then they tried several different methods of deactivating and activating the runes. None worked. Putting separate pieces together to make a complete line of runes simply didn't work, no matter how they arranged the runes. If a rune had even a tiny bit of space separating it from the others . . . such as a torn edge or physically different parchments . . . the sequence didn't work.
Writing the whole sequence on the parchment, tearing it in half and using reparo to put it together worked. The drawback was that it only worked with things they could take apart by Muggle means! Not practical with rocks which would require magic to split. Plus, if you broke it with Muggle means, you had to make sure you gathered all the fragments or reparo wouldn't work — especially if the fragment lost was part of a rune!
Their slow restoration of the Vanishing Cabinet proved that point. You didn't want to spend days of effort to set up the attack while in-sight of the enemy!
Sirius finally provided the solution. "A trap spell to activate it!" he suddenly cried out in triumph. "Put that first, a 'Do nothing until activated' rune-script!"
"What should we make the trigger?"
"A smear of blood?"
Hermione suddenly grinned. "How about making the trigger when the owl delivers the package to its destination?"
The other two stared at her.
"No risk to us that way."
Sirius looked impressed. "That might work," he said slowly. "Make the address General Delivery to the . . . Antonin Dolohov's family residence, for example. Or the Lestranges, I know both don't have any other relatives."
"We need to make sure they have no other family there," Harry said warningly. "We don't want anyone to know what we're doing."
Sirius shrugged. "Unless they were as paranoid as my family, we should be able to find their mansions and verify that they're empty, bring an owl and see if the addressing method works. If it does, then if it has an unplottable charm on it, the sapper will pull that down too." He tilted his head side-to-side and added, "As well as anti-apparition and portkey spells. Once we get there, we can erect our own spells to keep others unaware of what we've done."
Hermione shrugged. "We don't even need to bother with an actual Death Eater estate . . . we can use Grimmauld Place to see if using an owl will work. And Kreacher can tell us if it did."
The other two nodded.
They didn't finish composing the letter until just before dinner. It was addressed to General Delivery at the Black's ancestral home in London, contained a trap spell to turn the parchment blue one second after the owl let it go, and asked Kreacher to bring the letter to Sirius when he saw it. Most of that time was spent on making the rune-script that powered the trap-spell.
While they went to the Great Hall, Sirius went out into London. Now that he had the proper transfiguration skills, he wanted to have dinner in a public place, which he hadn't had the pleasure of in many a year.
After dinner, the two students sent off the owl with their mail. Sirius didn't return until after curfew to join them in the Room. While they had their studies, he worked on further perfecting his transfiguration skills. In the 'afternoons' they decided on how to go about finding the vault keys, which were no doubt well hidden.
Sirius wanted to burn the buildings to the ground and then sift through the ashes for the keys. Harry had a different idea.
"We should take everything moveable that isn't a portrait from the property. Or, if we can find the deed, sell it to ourselves for a knut. I'm sure we could get a lot of galleons for the mansion, itself, if we could sell it."
The other two just looked at him.
He shrugged. "They are going to die in Azkaban. It would be a waste to just let everything slowly fall apart and rot," he explained. "We can sell whatever we don't want. I'm sure there are plenty of Wizards and Witches who'd like some of those things, so we can sell them to a pawn shop or junk dealer. It'll give us more galleons for after Hogwarts." He paused, then added, "We should empty their vaults, too, just in case they manage to get out."
Sirius laughed and shrugged. "Sure, but I don't need any more galleons. My family has enough that I'll never spend it all." He shook his head. "If the Lestranges and the others are as rich as they pretended, you'll dwarf the Malfoys and rival my family!"
Harry shrugged back. "Sounds good to me. I don't have that much right now, in my vault. Selling the basilisk ingredients will take years. It's a nice buffer, I guess. I don't know . . . and Hermione has almost nothing of her own."
Sirius gave him a puzzled look. "What do you mean? Your parents were rich. Maybe not as rich as the Malfoys and some of the other families, but they didn't have to work if they didn't want to. With what your dad left you . . . well, when you reach your majority, you'll never have to work, either, and you'll still have a very comfortable life for you and Hermione."
Hermione stared at Harry. "I think we need to go to Gringotts and get some answers."
Wide-eye, he nodded, and half-whispered, "Yeah!"
Sirius shrugged. "You can do that this summer, it's not like you can access it any time before you're seventeen. In the meantime, we should start with the Lestrange mansion, then Dolohov." He frowned, thinking.
"Tomorrow, I'll start checking to see which of the Rookwood, Jugson, Gibbon, Mulciber, Travers, and Rowle estates have people staying in them. As soon as we do one, we can start the next."
Now, they would have to see what happened with the owl they sent, and the parchment.
o\O/o.
In the castle the next morning, before breakfast, Kreacher woke Sirius and handed him a blue parchment. They sent their first owl-mail sapper to the Lestrange estate that morning before classes. Unlike the one to Grimmauld Place, this one had hundred-pound stone feather-lighted and reduced to a tiny size. When the owl dropped it, there was a delay of ten seconds before those two spells were cancelled and the sapper spell activated. With a hundred-to-one ratio between a normal sapper and the absorption and release rate of this stone, it shouldn't take all that long to bring down the spells cast on the estate — assuming the stone powering the protections on the estate didn't weigh more than five tonnes. Sirius said they probably didn't.
If the spells, wards, didn't fall in the first week, Sirius would see if he could toss a second stone onto the property.
When the wards did fall, the sapper-stone would activate a portkey message to the Chamber of Secrets notifying them of that.
They hoped.
Sirius planned to apparate to outside the Lestrange Estate each day to see if anything was changing.
They added studying advanced curse-breaking techniques, duelling, and finding ways to adapt their magic-sapper to cursed items to their 'study days' routine.
Sirius discovered that using the twins' Sexy Sweets made anything he did outside of the Chamber in both the Wizarding World and the Muggle world a cakewalk. He had to get used to the new Muggle dress-code, but with so many women wearing men's clothing designed for them, it wasn't that much of a change.
Except for tailoring, most Witches were not dressed all that different from the Wizards, anyway.
Naturally, when he went out to Muggle nightclubs, he went only with slightly transfigured features. "No need to disappoint the birds," he said.
It took two weeks. They waited an additional day, just in case. They also sent an owl-package to Dolohov's manor — might as well get started on that while they plundered the Lestranges' estate.
The Lestrange estate was impressive. The main building had nine bedroom-ensuites, a library, a Master's Office, Mistress' Study, nursery, floo and apparition room, a meeting room, a ballroom, abortorium, dining room, kitchen, and five bathrooms. There was a nearby building that Sirius called an Oast house, which had been used for brewing beer in past times. There was another outbuilding for servants — as if the Lestranges would allow such lowly creatures as house-elves onto their property.
The servants had fled when they realized that with none of the Lestranges to renew their access, they would eventually either be evicted or just plain killed as intruders by the protective wards. Naturally, those same spells prevented any of the servants from looting the manor. They left with only the clothes on their backs and a few personal items they had purchased themselves.
With the protective spells down, it would take several days for the main ward-stone to build up enough magic to power all the spells it had. That meant the three no longer needed the sappers, so they were smashed, first. That made it easy to use magic to find and smash the main ward-stone with a sledge hammer, next.
With the main stone destroyed, it was simple to put in their own ward stone. All it needed were Muggle-repelling, Wizard-repelling, anti-portkey, anti-apparition, and eviction spells for anyone not themselves. That would leave them in peace with plenty of time to explore and pillage at their leisure.
It took two more weeks to find the vault key. In the meantime, Sirius managed to make a few connections on the continent. Using the Chunnel, which had been open for shipping services since Nineteen-ninety-three, and had started regular train service before Christmas a few months ago, he managed to avoid any encounters with Ministry officials. To their delight, he found both Wizarding and Muggle dealers who would take whatever they wanted to sell. And sell they did, especially when the items looked "almost new" but were clearly antiques.
Of course, they made copies of any of the furnishings they liked, and stored those in the Chamber of Secrets, reduced in size and stored in expanded trunks. Sirius took great delight in destroying the Lestrange portraits — except the one that disclosed where the key was and how to get to it.
It was a fair exchange for not being destroyed and being placed in Hogwarts so he could visit with the other portraits. The only stipulation, magically enforced, was that he never disclose what had happened to the Lestrange estate or who had done it.
They spent most of the mornings on the weekends going over the buildings on the estate looking for hidden caches. The training given them by The Professor, and the books s/he had provided meant they missed nothing.
All the spells hiding the caches had fallen prey to the sappers. Once they had fallen in strength to a certain point, they had collapsed and exposed what they had hidden.
It just took time to thoroughly examine each room in each of the buildings.
.o\O/o.
They went on an early Saturday morning, when most Hogwarts' students were still asleep. Only cafés and restaurants were open in Diagon Alley, and those were for early risers and people who hadn't gone to sleep, yet.
The Goblin gave them a suspicious look, at first, and then scowled when Sirius leaned forward to tell him, "I'm currently transfigured to look different from my normal appearance so as not to panic your customers."
The Goblin escorting them to the carts made Sirius reverse the transfiguration, and made the other two swear they were showing their true appearances.
The cart-ride ran under a waterfall that drenched them, then almost immediately dried. When asked, the Goblin had simply said, "Thieves' Downfall."
The vault was crammed from floor to ceiling with galleons, gold and silver goblets, silver armour, the skins of strange creatures — some with long spines, others with drooping wings — potions in jewelled flasks, shields, goblin-made helmets, and even a skull still wearing a crown.
Sirius had been right. With this much gold on hand, they wouldn't have to work a day in their lives, if they didn't want to.
Sirius started in, but Harry stopped him. "First, let's make sure there aren't any traps."
Nodding, the older Wizard turned to the Goblin. "May we cast detection spells on the vault. I doubt my cousin could resist adding a few additional protections."
Growling, the Goblin, Hobnail, agreed.
Harry and Hermione cast their detection spells.
"Gemino and Flagrante Curses," said Hermione.
Harry sighed, "Everything we touch will burn and multiply. The copies are worthless, unfortunately."
She nodded. "And in that enclosed space, if we set off the spells, we would eventually be crushed by the weight of expanding gold or burnt to death."
"We'll have to be very careful," Sirius concluded.
They were surprised when the Vault's door closed and left them in darkness. Sirius however, told them not to worry. Hobnail would wait for them, and open the vault door for them to leave — if anyone ever thought the Goblins might leave a key-holder in the vault to die, well, there wouldn't be any gold left in the vaults. Not to mention the war the Ministry would declare on the menaces.
It was actually better that way. No Goblin saw them bring down both of the protective curses. Nor saw how the block of crystal Hermione removed from her expanded purse had a rat in it that instantly looked in the direction they needed to go.
They finally found the horcrux, in a small golden cup with two finely-wrought handles. Looking closer, they saw a badger engraved on either side, with jewels for eyes.
Summoning it didn't work, so Hermione levitated Harry up to retrieve the goblet.
Sirius, meanwhile, was shrinking as much of the galleons, sickles, knuts, business parchments, and other valuable items into an expanded trunk they had rescued from the Room. Even as big as the inside of the trunk was — they had increased it to the size of a small one-bedroom apartment — it was still going to be a tight fit.
Once they had the goblet, Harry and Hermione just watched Sirius work. He left behind the portraits, stuffed trophies, and anything that he thought wasn't worth taking.
He did take all the documents in the vault.
Unexpectedly, he ran out of room. Nothing could go into the trunk until something else came out. Sirius put his self-shrinking trunk in his pocket when he finished. Then Harry and Hermione took out their own trunks and put in them what hadn't fit inside the Sirius' trunk.
Then Sirius cast an illusion over the front of the vault that made it look as if it were untouched from when they entered. It would last until the next Wizard or Witch came in.
Hobnail opened the vault, looked inside at them, and sniffed. He studied the illusion for a moment, but said nothing.
As they were getting into the cart to return to the surface, Sirius handed the Goblin a roll of two-dozen five-galleon coins. "As far as you can remember, we walked into the vault, looked around, and came back out with nothing more than we went in with."
The Goblin said nothing as he took the roll, but he had a nasty grin.
They left Diagon Alley and returned to Hogwarts in time to catch the end of breakfast. Hermione had wanted to investigate a bit more on Harry's inheritances, but Sirius said they didn't really have the time. The two needed to be seen at breakfast.
.o\O/o.