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It begins after the war.
(Isn't that a mockery of a term. War has no beginning or end, there are still battles after your enemies bleed out. Its just that after, the battles are with your own head, the memories and guilt and the faces of those you killed.)
Harry Potter knows that feeling more than anyone. He sees those faces, Dobby and Fred haunt his dreams. Even little Tom Riddle, the boy he saw in a memory - that child did not deserve to die.
When Gringotts contacts him, requesting he come to sort out his accounts, he is grateful for the break. They're all living with the Weasleys right now, him, Ron and Hermione, and Molly is in full-form when mother henning them.
She cannot protest about him going to the bank, so together with George (lost, broken George, always looking around for his other half who left this mortal coil, and has latched himself to Harry like glue since the death of Tom Riddle) they set off to Diagon Alley.
It's been weeks since the battle ended, and the community is starting to knit back together. Still, they glamour themselves, unwilling to gain attention, and enter the bank. Harry flinches on entry, remembering the dragon and the gold that overflowed and burnt. The boy (and he is still a boy, because child soldiers like him never got to grow up properly, always scared and looking for a home that isn't there) curls closer to George, who holds him close and soothes his shaking.
"Hello, I'd like to see the Potter Vault manager. Tell him Harry Potter is here to see him." Harry says firmly, remembering what Griphook had told him about how to talk to goblins. He produces his key and with a nod, the goblin calls for the manager. As he appears, motioning for Harry and George to follow, Harry pauses.
"May the end of your enemies be agonising and slow." He says, and the goblins' eyes widened before he replied.
"May your sword always strike true."
Harry then follows the goblin who tells him his name is Goruth, and they enter a plush office with the Potter crest on the door.
When seated, they take off the glamours and Goruth hands him a knife.
"Two drops of blood on the parchment please. It shall both confirm your identity and provide a list of inheritances you have."
Harry doesn't flinch as he cuts his palm, and the drops fall crimson and hot to the parchment. A moment, then writing flows from the blood across the page.
Name: Hadrius James Asmidiske Potter.
Preferred Name: Harry James Potter (supplied by Albus Dumbledore).
Family:
Father: James Charlus Potter (deceased).
Mother: Lily Ariana Evans (deceased).
Godfather: Sirius Orion Black (deceased)
Godmother: Andromeda Arae Tonks.
Paternal Grandparents: Charlus and Dorea Potter (deceased).
Maternal Grandparents: Lewis Evans (deceased), Marigold Evans (nee. Parkinson, squib, deceased).
Siblings: Nymphadora Mira Tonks (god sister, deceased).
Inheritances:
Potter (paternal) - accessible
Peverell (paternal) - accessible
Gryffindor (paternal) - accessible
Black (godfather) - accessible
Slytherin (conquest) - accessible
Parkinson (maternal) - partially accessible, shared with Pansy Maria Parkinson.
Gaunt (conquest) - accessible
Dumbledore (debt) - accessible
Estimated overall fortune:
4,234,136,546 galleons, 11 sickles, 13 knuts
"Oh fuck me." Harry whispered as he glanced over the list, before he goes back to the family bit.
"My grandmother was a squib? Andromeda is my godmother?" He asks, and the goblin pulls a face.
"Why wasn't I placed with Andromeda?" Harry's eyes well with tears, still that scared little boy locked in the cupboard at heart. George bristles next to him, remembering bars on windows, bruises on pale skin, sending food during summer.
"Dumbledore blocked it, made himself your magical guardian." The goblin says, and the light fixture exploded when Harry realised that the Headmaster had likely known about the starvation and the beatings, known that he had a Godmother who could care for him, and let him to Petunia anyway.
"Is that why I have his Vault? Compensation?" Harry spits, and the goblin nods, unphased by the boys rage. It was justified, and something the goblins had tried to fix for decades.
"Use the Dumbledore vaults to create an orphanage for wix children, use every single knut to fund it. Make it diverse and bright and joyful, and employ someone of every single background. Employ creatures and halfbreeds and everything inbetween." He says, remembering prejudices and children like Draco who didn't know better than what their father's had poisoned them with.
The goblin grins, and makes furious notes.
"Anything goblin-made in any of my vaults should be returned to the goblin nations, though have a cursebreaker check over them before doing so." He decides next, once again remembering his time in the cupboard and anything he could have owned and loved being stolen from him. Wix had been doing it to goblins and veela and vampires for centuries, and he would not be complicit in it.
Goruth looks at the Man-Who-Conquered and sees a broken little boy with burning green eyes. The clan magic of his tribe pulls at him, and through his eyes, Chief Bloodeye watches the exchange.
Harry Potter knows not, but his act of what he sees as simple kindness? It won him the goblin nation.
"Next?" Goruth says next, after penning the order.
"A list of properties for all my vaults." He asks, and it appears before him.
Potter Manor (suitable)
Godric's Hollow (destroyed)
Potter Cabin (stasis)
Hogwarts (½)
Gryffindor Chateau (stasis)
Gryffin's Perch (disrepair)
Slytherin Castle (stasis)
Snake's Catacombs (used by inhabitants)
Peverell Island (used by inhabitants)
Black Manor (in use by Narcissa Malfoy and son)
Number 12 Grimmauld Place (suitable)
Dumbledore House (suitable)
Harry feels a vindictive glee.
"Take Dumbledore House and use it for the Orphanage. Stasis means under a stasis charm, yes? Excellent, I'll go for one of those. I would like to name Draco Malfoy as Heir to the House of Black, and I would like Narcissa and Andromeda to be scions of the House again. Narcissa and Draco may use Black Manor for as long as they please, I have no interest in it. I also want to establish a Vault and Hogwarts fund for Teddy Lupin. I'd like to name him the Heir of House Potter by right of godparenthood." Harry decides, and the goblin writes it all down for him.
"Can you have Andromeda come here? I assume she knew at one point that she was my godmother, and I know for a fact she wouldn't have just accepted what Dumbledore said about me being placed with my aunt and uncle. How much would it be for her to be checked for memory charms?" He asks, thinking out loud, and George gapes. It makes sense, but God, how had they all supported someone arguably as evil as Voldemort.
"No charge, Lord Potter." Goruth stated, and sent an Imakuni (goblin form of patronus messenger) to Andromeda.
She arrives in the floo with Teddy in her arms, and Harry beams when she offers him up with a fond smile. The little boy turns his hair midnight black, and gives a gummy smile.
The adults watch as Harry Potter gives a joyful smile, and wonder how often he's been able to smile in his life. It looks young on his face, and twitches at the sides as if his face isn't used to forming it.
"Why did you call me?" Andromeda asks, taking a seat and thanking the house elf that popped in with tea for them all, bringing her cup to her lips.
"We believe you have been memory charmed. Are you willing to submit to a scan?" Goruth asks, and the woman nods, her brow furrowing.
The scan pours writing onto parchment, and Andromeda goes red in the face slowly, her eyes shining with the Black Madness that had been absent before. Restoring her as scion must have returned it, and the volume she hits rivals that of her Aunt Walburga's portrait.
"That old goat!" She screams, and the power lashes about her like a gail. Teddy whimpers, and Andromeda calms to hold the boy close. The only thing she has left of her daughter.
She falls to her knees and sobs, and through tears, she looks up at Harry.
"I'm so sorry, Harry." She says, and the bond that had been suppressed bursts free. The hole in his heart from Sirius' death is soothed slightly by the settling of Andromeda Black returning to her rightful place as godmother.
"Auntie." He sobs, and dives into her arms like a child.
It hits him.
Tonks was dead. His sister was dead.
With a cry, Harry Potter shatters, and the Child-Who-Saved falls to the floor of Gringotts. He feels safer on foreign goblin territory than he ever has before.
Not long after, the broken child stands, and something feral is in the way he bares his teeth.
"Get it done, please Goruth?" He asks, polite and gentle as ever, but his eyes are sharp and almost elven.
Bloodeye watches through Goruth's eyes once more and sees destiny so firmly entangled around Harry Potter. When he squints, he sees the figure behind him.
He sees Death.
"Right away, sir." He says with Goruth's tongue, and the bank gets to work.
◇◇◇◇◇◇
Harry looks over the properties he owns via locator sphere, and decides that Gryffins Perch, while in disrepair, would suit his needs perfectly.
Harry Potter was a thing bitter and cold, a child just a step away from obscurial status, despite being eighteen. Children like him, broken sharp little things with eyes too empty, never truly grow up. But can never be children.
Harry Potter is a paradox that shakes the Earth, that makes the Deep One's stir in their millennium slumber.
Harry decided that he would fix up the Perch, and he would turn it into a sanctuary. For those who cannot move on from the war, for those who are too damaged and scarred. For those still hunted. Harry won't discriminate, he will only open his arms and accept them like he needed someone to do when he was a child.
The Perch was a marvel, and he feels something like excitement in his chest when he looks over it in the orb. It was a huge tree house, expanded magically of course, made of rosewood. It expands across a grove specially planted by the people of Cymru (what Wales was before it was stolen by the English, what it still is in its core) for the Potter family for their aid in rebellions. The Lordship ring on his finger tells him in flashes of memory of Lord Corinth Potter and his rage for the stealing of Cymru and how the English treated them, of how he did his best to send aid, to heal and feed and ward what he could without being caught in his treason. He was caught, and executed for it, but the people of Cymru never forgot. They planted the grove where they buried him, and the legend says that the magic in his body made the seeds grow, and in the branches it formed what would become Gryffin Perch.
He takes George by the hand, calloused against his own, and he takes the port key offered.
They are spat out in the Perch, seeing mess and ruin, but between them, it gets fixed. Harry is more powerful here, the family magicks connecting to his core and crying out with joy for a Potter finally returning to it, for the first time since Grindelwald.
Days later, no sleep, minimal food for the both of them (out of choice, out of habit, who knows?), the work is completed.
The place almost glistens, the many rooms furnished and beds made, the kitchen stocked and the place re-warded for safety.
Harry takes George by the hand and pulls him into a bedroom, the Potter Crest on the door.
It's there that he asks, softly and unsure, if George would like to share this room with him, so they never have to be apart.
George smiles for one of the first times since Fred died, and the kiss he presses against Harry's lips tastes like gunpowder and cigarette smoke.
◇◇◇◇
At first it's just George and Harry, and that's perfect for them. Molly hates the idea, but Arthur sees their healing, and quiets his wife.
Then comes Draco Malfoy, his eyes too tired for his age and a hideous scar marring his left arm from where he's carved his slavery mark from his skin. No questions are asked, he's just directed to a bedroom.
Draco fits into their lives like he was meant to be there, he recommends books to Harry who is still so new to their world. He knows how to calm George from his rages when his heartache gets too much. He's the friend they need.
Next to arrive is Luna, who folds herself into Draco's arms like she's finally coming home.
Andromeda appears with Teddy on the anniversary of Tonks' death, eyes watery but determined, and she says she would never be apart from the children she has left again.
Then comes Irina, a young vampire with a cross burnt into her face.
After she is welcomed, she floodgates open, and refugees flood in. Elves, goblins, dragons, vampires, those broken by the war, orphaned children who were too sharp to be in an Orphanage.
Harry Potter loves them all like his own, and eventually, he heals.
His wedding is a grand affair, with guests of all species. He's never been happier, and he swears that when he leans in to kiss his groom, he sees Fred and Sirius smiling proudly behind him.