lomonaaeren (
lomonaaeren) wrote2019-02-17 01:58 pm
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Chapter Ten of 'Lightning and War'- Surprises at Gringotts
Chapter Nine.
Chapter One.
Title: Lightning and War (10/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, a few het and slash background pairings mentioned
Content Notes: Established relationship, angst, violence, dimension travel
Rating: R
Summary: Harry and Tom are pursuing Harry’s cousin Jonquil Potter into Tom’s dangerous, paranoia-ridden world. In addition to finding Jonquil, they need to deal with Dumbledore, Tom’s associates, and dangerous fluctuations in Harry’s magic. Sequel to Jonquils and Lightning.
Author’s Notes: This story involves a lot of background that won’t make much sense without having read the prequel. At the moment, I don’t know how long this story will be or if it will be the last in the series.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Ten—Surprises at Gringotts
“Are you sure that it’s safe for you and Potter to go to Gringotts, my lord? Since it seems that Dumbledore is targeting you specifically.”
“Dumbledore isn’t here,” Tom said, examining his robes in the mirror. He cast a spell that would Vanish any grime or dust that was clinging to them which he hadn’t seen, and watched as a small puff filled the air behind him. Really, it was all very well for the Malfoys to keep rooms full of shrouded furniture that they weren’t using at the moment, but they at least ought to order the house-elves to dust on a rotation. “And the Order has suffered devastating losses in a very short time. I think they are going to be rather busy making sure that their safehouses are actually safe.”
Abraxas hesitated one more time. “And are you going to take the other Potter with you?”
Tom blinked. “Jonquil? Of course not. Why?”
“Only because you told Harry that he should be ready to go at noon, and he’s still in that bedroom we gave her talking to her…”
Tom sighed and strode out of the room he used, navigating the few corridors with ease. Jonquil’s prison wasn’t that far from his own bedroom, and Harry had told him she saw that as a hopeful sign. But in truth, the wards preventing her from moving out of the room were so strong that the distance didn’t matter.
Tom knocked once on the outside of Jonquil’s door before he opened it, the wards sliding down his body like water. Jonquil looked up at him with a smile like sunrise had come again. Tom shook his head at her in irritation and focused on Harry.
“Are you ready to leave, Harry?”
“I wanted a few more minutes’ conversation with my cousin.”
Tom paused. That was a new tone in Harry’s voice, especially since he’d agreed that he’d taken a foolish risk going to face the Order of the Phoenix when they attacked Malfoy Manor. He stood up and planted his fists on his hips, in fact. Tom appreciated the view, but he doubted Harry was doing this to give it to him.
“Did you?” Tom mused. “Well, I suppose you can have them. And then you and I will leave to get to Gringotts on time. It will be respectful to the goblins if we keep the appointment they gave us.”
Jonquil gave him a big, wet-eyed glance. Tom graciously allowed it, and only turned to Harry, who had inclined his head so that his hair was hanging over his eyes. He said softly, “Jonquil, will you at least think about what I told you? What it means to have so many people who love you and want to help you?”
“They want to keep me a child.” Jonquil’s voice was as quiet as Harry’s, and Tom thought she might have sounded dignified if it hadn’t been for the way her chin lifted and her eyes darted over to him. Still as stubborn as an adder, Tom thought. “I want to find my own way in the world.”
“And when you do, you get bound and Stunned and stuffed in cupboards,” Harry snapped. He marched over to Tom. “I give up. Let’s go and make sure that we aren’t late and disrespectful to the goblins.”
Jonquil’s mouth was open a little, but she shut it with a snap when she noticed Tom looking at her and drew her shoulders back proudly. “I want to come with you.”
“You haven’t earned the privilege,” Tom told her coolly, and led Harry out with a hand on his elbow. Harry didn’t object, and he didn’t look back at his cousin.
Tom had to admit he was more pleased than he’d been in days. Well, to himself he did. He saw no profit in making the admission to Harry.
*
Harry paused when he walked through the front door of Gringotts. Of course he should have expected some differences between his Gringotts and Tom’s; this was a different world, and an earlier time period. But somehow he’d thought it would be restricted to things like a slightly different layout in the bank and perhaps more or less people wandering around.
He hadn’t expected the goblins to be the ones mostly walking around, fierce and tall and openly armed, and looking humans in the eye. There were no uniforms or tellers anywhere in sight. Instead, there was a large crystal throne right in the middle of the bank, and a single goblin sat on it, staring fiercely at everyone who filed in through the door. He wore a thick crystal choker around his neck and a band of iron around his waist. A line of wizards and witches stood in front of him, bowing as they approached.
“Different,” Harry breathed.
Tom tilted his head to look at him. “What do you mean?”
Harry wasn’t sure that he wanted to name himself as from another world or what exactly was different in front of the alert goblin guards. He simply shook his head as he and Tom got into the back of the line. “The bank I know is set up differently from this.”
He got the raised eyebrow that meant Tom didn’t completely believe him, but Harry had sort of accepted that he couldn’t lie to a Legilimens. He kept his eyes mostly to the front, but let them dart around a little, as they neared the throne.
It actually didn’t take as long as he’d thought it would once he saw the length of the line. The goblin king waved his hand dismissively at most of the people, and other goblins sprang forwards and either led them into the back of the bank or ejected them out the door. The ejected ones looked warily at the sharp goblin axes and other blades, and didn’t protest—much.
A few people spoke to the king in his own language, and received some coins or jewels or, once, what looked like a sheathed sword directly from goblin hands. Harry wasn’t sure what the difference was, other than their knowledge of Gobbledegook. He hoped Tom spoke it. He sure as hell didn’t.
Only when they were close to the crystal throne did Harry start thinking something was off. He blinked up and then back down at the floor, and tried not to blush as he did so. He’d thought the goblin king had on some kind of weird armor that only encircled part of the front of his chest, and drooped down a little at the same time.
Now he realized. That wasn’t armor. Those were breasts. The king wasn’t.
“Is this the goblin queen?” he murmured to Tom, during a particularly loud interchange between a witch and the goblins.
Tom shot him a puzzled glance. “Of course. Well, the local queen. There’s a grander one who rules somewhere far away. Why?”
“I—never mind,” Harry said. He was glancing at the other goblins and noting more and more breasts, and deciding that either this was yet another difference from his world, or that he’d simply never paid enough attention to goblin anatomy before. Both were kind of disturbing to contemplate.
At last it was Tom’s turn. He stepped forwards and bowed and did speak in Gobbledegook, thank Merlin. Harry watched, and the queen spoke back, then nodded a little and waved another of the goblin women forwards. They were to be led into the back of the bank, it seemed, probably because Tom would need to fill out some kind of paperwork to claim Slytherin’s property.
Harry straightened up and started to follow Tom, only to freeze when the queen snarled something at him. He stood still and glanced over his shoulder, shaking his head when he saw how intently her eyes were fixed on him.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I don’t speak your language.”
The queen switched to English without a blink. “I want to know where you got that.”
Harry looked down, wondering if he had somehow walked out of Malfoy Manor with a goblin-forged blade or the like. Then he realized that the queen was gesturing at his face. He raised his hand, watching her. She nodded when his fingers stopped near his eyes.
“I’ve—always had them?” Harry wished he had a mirror, or could conjure one, so that he could look and see if he had somehow got a tattoo or the like without noticing.
The queen snapped something at one of the other goblins, and she hurried over. She had a sword in her hands, the blade pressing against Harry’s chest as she leaned up to stare into his face. Harry kept still, even though he was increasingly wishing that he’d waited outside the bank, or hadn’t come with Tom at all.
“Your eyes,” Tom said softly as he listened to the queen issuing some orders. They made the two nearest goblins to the throne turn and race into the darkness. Unfortunately, they didn’t do a thing about the sword still pressing against Harry’s chest and almost cutting his throat. “They think something’s important or special about the color of your eyes.”
Harry sighed. “Yeah, I get that a lot.” At least someone probably wasn’t going to come up to him in this world and start declaiming about how he had his mother’s eyes.
Tom glanced at him. “And you have no idea what it could be?”
Harry snorted. “How? You said that you don’t know anyone of my bloodline here, and—”
The goblin with the sword moved abruptly backwards, and the queen gestured with a hand that had a glittering crystal ring on it. Something that Harry hoped was an honor guard and not just a guard, a whole circle of goblins, came up and surrounded him and Tom, leading them back into the shadows.
“Do you think you’ll still get to claim your vault?” Harry muttered out of the corner of his mouth to Tom.
“I almost don’t care. This is much more exciting.”
Harry shoved his hands into his pockets, although he took them out again when the goblins glanced at him, since he didn’t want them to think he had some sort of hidden weapon. “Did you know that sometimes you and Jonquil sound a lot alike?”
Well, that got him glared at all the way to the cavern-like room where they eventually ended up.
*
Tom was still boiling at the insult as he sat down next to Harry in an elaborately carved chair in front of an immense stone. “Take that back,” he hissed at Harry.
Harry beamed at him, and said nothing.
They didn’t have to wait for very long before the stone cracked open and a shallow door opened, displaying a tunnel that appeared to dive into the floor. Tom was at least satisfied to see that made Harry’s mouth hang open, but it also puzzled him. It sounded like the Gringotts in Harry’s first world was very different.
And what could have caused that particular difference? Tom couldn’t think of any turning moment in goblin history that would have altered things so radically.
The goblin who came out of the door was a high-ranking female. Tom could tell because of how restrained her jewelry was, consisting mostly of small crystals sparking on a golden torque around her throat. Crystals such as those weren’t technically rare, but not many of them could take such high levels of polishing and faceting as the goblins wanted them to have, which meant the more you had, the more powerful you were.
This goblin sat down in front of them at a marble desk that grew abruptly out of the ground, and regarded them steadily for a moment. Then she turned to Tom. “You are the only human here who speaks Gobbledegook?” she asked in that language.
Tom nodded. “My companion is from another world and doesn’t speak it at all.” He didn’t see the harm in telling them Harry was from another world. At this point, they must at least suspect it, or they would have found someone of his apparent lineage before now.
Not that Tom knew what was so special about Harry’s green eyes, which was another reason for telling the goblins the truth. He was as curious as Harry, and less scrupulous about his ways of fulfilling that curiosity.
The goblin hissed in a way that resembled Parseltongue but didn’t cross the border into it. “That explains it.”
“The way that Her Blood recognized him?”
The goblin noted and opened a shallow iron box that she’d been carrying. “This is the key to the vault held in the Slytherin name for ten centuries. Do not lose it, Mr. Gaunt.” Her eyes sparked like the crystals. “We will know.”
Tom accepted the key, a tiny golden thing that shone like her crystals. He nodded and tucked it away into his pocket.
“Now,” the goblin said, leaning forwards intently and switching back to English. “What name do you go by?”
Harry didn’t seem disconcerted by her abrupt manner. Maybe that was something he was familiar with from whatever goblins he’d known in his own world. “Harry Potter.”
The goblin paused. “Here, the Potter name died out four centuries ago.”
Harry nodded. “I know that my companion said he’d never heard of it,” he murmured. “Is there something that my ancestors left here, or a grudge that you wish to settle with me because of them?”
Harry’s voice was completely calm, and his attention completely focused on the goblin. Tom had to admit, in the silence of his own head, that he was impressed. Harry was ready to move at any second. Anyone looking at him would never have believed that he was actually suffering from the fluctuations in his magic that he was.
Tom touched his key and then his wand. And as long as I am here, he will not need to defend himself.
“There is an artifact,” said the goblin. She tapped her nails on the edge of the desk for a moment. “It can only be worn by a true Potter. It will kill anyone else who tries.”
Harry shrugged. “I’m not a true Potter in the sense of the word that would have mattered in this world. I’m not really related to them.”
The goblin pointed an accusing finger. “But the Potters in this world all had those green eyes, and no one else has them.”
Harry blinked at her in silence. Tom raised his own eyebrows. From what he knew, in Harry’s world, his green eyes had come from his mother, not from any Potter.
And Harry said the same thing now, shaking his head when the goblin glared at him. “It’s an amazing coincidence that the Potters here did have green eyes, but I’ve found the circumstances bend towards something like coincidence when I travel between worlds. I’m not willing to try and touch this artifact.”
“I am bringing it out.”
The goblin disappeared into the back of the bank. Harry rolled his eyes in what looked like exasperation and glanced at Tom. “What am I supposed to do when she brings it to me? If I can’t wear it without dying—”
“The Potters in your second world accepted you as blood family despite the fact that you’d not been born there. You think of Jonquil the same way.”
“What does that have to do with a lack of Potters in your world?”
“It means,” murmured Tom, his ears cocked to the argument that was happening in the shadows, “that the artifact might accept you anyway. It’s probably tired of being ignored and locked away. I imagine that it would prefer to be worn.”
“And I should risk my life for that? You’re the one who’s always arguing that I take too many risks—”
The goblin who had helped them before marched back into sight, holding the oddest diadem Tom had ever seen. It had a blue jewel on the front, and he might actually have thought it was Ravenclaw’s lost diadem, if it hadn’t been for the overlapping scales of green metal it appeared to be made of. The goblin dropped the diadem on the desk in front of Harry and looked at him expectantly.
“It’s humming,” she explained, when Harry just stared back at her. “That means it likes you.”
“It means that it might be eager to test me,” Harry retorted flatly. “That doesn’t actually mean that it’ll let me wear it!”
“Gringotts is tired of holding the Potter Diadem in custody.” The goblin nudged it towards him. “Wear it.”
“I’m tired of risking my life,” Harry said, with a quick glance at Tom. He nudged the diadem back across the desk. “Keep it.”
The goblin looked on the verge of stomping her foot on the floor, something Tom had never seen, but then, life with Harry was always full of surprises. “Wear it. Please.” It sounded as though she had gargled with gravel to speak the last words. “We don’t want it anymore! It sends magic throughout our bank that weakens the foundation and makes the walls tremble.”
Tom felt his eyebrows rise. “Maybe you should—” he started to say.
And the diadem rose off the desk and shot towards Harry, binding to his forehead. Harry gasped and reached up a hand that stopped a centimeter or two away from the diadem’s green scales. For a second, Harry swayed back and forth dangerously.
And then he collapsed.