The next morning, I returned to Gringotts.
This time, I wasn't there for money. I had the Ministry folder, the list I'd made the night before, and considerably better questions than I'd brought on my first visit a year ago.
The goblin at one of the front desks looked at me, then at my signet ring.
"Mr Peverell."
"I'd like to speak to Thimgrin."
He didn't ask why. He simply nodded and disappeared down a side passage.
Thimgrin appeared a few minutes later. He hadn't changed at all. He still looked as though he personally remembered the construction of half the underground tunnels and had reservations about the workmanship of the rest.
His gaze settled on the folder under my arm.
"You've been to the Ministry."
"I hope you worked that out from the folder."
"Yes."
At least he was consistent.
"I found out that I have three active vaults and two archived ones."
"Correct."
"I want to see the other active vaults."
Thimgrin nodded.
"Of course."
I waited for more. Nothing followed.
A year ago, I probably would have started arguing with him. This time, I opened the folder and took out a folded sheet of parchment.
"I also want the full expenditure history of the Family Property Maintenance Fund, particularly anything relating to the Peverell ancestral home. A catalogue of the documents deposited by Elias Peverell, too, and copies of every active long-term agreement I'm entitled to access."
Thimgrin studied me for a few seconds.
"That is a much better enquiry."
"I'm learning."
"Evidently."
He turned towards the side corridor.
"Follow me."
The route didn't take us to the main vault.
The cart branched off earlier, then turned again, descending into a section of the underground passages I hadn't seen before. The tunnels grew narrower, the stone darker and rougher. In several places, old protective markings had been carved directly into the rock, partly covered by newer layers of spells.
I made no effort to examine them more closely. After the last few weeks of the school year, my eyes deserved a little boredom.
When the cart finally slowed, we stopped before a set of doors much smaller than the entrance to the main vault. They had neither a lock nor a keyhole. A dark stone slab stood beside them.
"Your hand," Thimgrin said.
"The ring isn't enough?"
"This vault uses an older means of authorisation."
I placed my right hand against the stone.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a faint warmth spread beneath my skin. It didn't feel like a spell, or the pressure I sometimes felt when using my eyes. More as though something were checking me.
The signet ring grew cold. Something clicked softly inside the stone, and the doors opened.
The first thing I saw was shelving. Hundreds of shelves, stretching across the chamber.
There were no piles of Galleons or chests of jewellery. Instead, the room was filled with folders, ledgers, metal boxes, parchment tubes and wooden cases bearing small labels.
I looked at Thimgrin.
"An archive."
"A document vault," he corrected. "But yes."
I stepped inside.
The air was cool and dry. Subtle preservation charms were at work on every section of shelving. Some documents looked relatively recent. Others varied so much in colour, material and handwriting that, without the labels, I might have taken them for museum exhibits.
"Is everything catalogued?"
"Everything in Gringotts' care."
"I want the catalogue."
"It will be prepared."
I walked along the first row, reading names, dates and deposit numbers. The eighteenth century gave way to the seventeenth, then the sixteenth.
The further I went, the less it felt like one family's paperwork. These shelves held hundreds of years of decisions made by people who had borne my name, most of whom I knew nothing about.
"How old are the oldest documents?" I asked.
"Older than Gringotts itself."
I turned.
"You keep things that are older than the bank?"
"They were not always kept here. Successive members of your family transferred portions of the archives to Gringotts at various times."
That immediately raised another question.
"So this isn't the complete family archive."
"No."
"Do you know where the rest is?"
"No."
Naturally.
I looked back at the shelves. If the Peverells had maintained an ancestral home for centuries, it made sense that they hadn't sent their entire history to a bank. Some of it might still be at the house.
If I could find it.
A little further along, I noticed a familiar name.
PEVERELL, ELIAS
I slowed.
His section was small: a few folders of accounts, contracts, bank correspondence, instructions and powers of attorney. Nothing that looked particularly mysterious from the outside.
I took the accounts folder and opened it.
The first few pages were exactly as dull as I'd hoped. Deposits, transfers, management fees, rental income and property maintenance costs. Elias's signature appeared at the bottom of some of the forms.
I looked at it longer than necessary.
It explained nothing. It was simply proof that someone had once sat over a similar document, held a quill and decided that a particular sum was worth approving.
A bill for the roof.
The thought almost made me smile. This was exactly the sort of thing I'd been looking for. The great revelations could wait; for now, I was glad to find something ordinary.
I turned another page and found the fund.
ANCESTRAL HOME MAINTENANCE FUND
I ran my finger down the entries. The payments weren't enormous, but they were regular. They had begun before Elias disappeared and continued afterwards.
Frowning, I read on.
Seven years ago:
Structural repairs — approved automatically
Four years ago:
Interior maintenance — completed
Two years ago:
Renewal of external protections — completed
I straightened. This no longer looked like a fund that merely existed on paper.
"Thimgrin."
The goblin came closer. I turned the folder towards him.
"These payments continued after Elias disappeared."
"Yes."
"Who approved them?"
"The fund."
"A fund can't hold a quill."
"It doesn't need to."
I looked at him.
Thimgrin pointed to one of the entries.
"This is an old family fund. It was established to fulfil certain obligations without requiring the current head of the family's approval each time."
"So if the house needs repairs, the fund pays."
"If the expenditure meets the conditions laid down by the fund's founder."
"Who does it pay?"
"That depends on the obligation."
"In this case?"
Thimgrin glanced at the document.
"The funds were disbursed through a mechanism tied directly to the property."
"Meaning you don't have an address."
"We don't need an address."
"The bank sends money to a house it can't locate."
"You are oversimplifying the mechanism."
"I'm trying to."
Thimgrin did not look convinced.
I returned to the records. Repairs, maintenance, protections. The house wasn't merely an entry in a Ministry register. Someone, or something, responded when work needed doing.
"Can the fund cover servants attached to the property?"
"It can."
I looked up.
"House-elves?"
"They may be covered by such a fund. Gringotts does not, however, maintain a register of beings magically bound to private estates."
That was reasonable. And extremely irritating.
If a house-elf really had remained there, it might know everything I needed: where the house was, what had happened to Elias and Aria.
It might even remember me.
I stopped that thought before it went any further. First, I had to find the place.
"I want a copy of this fund's complete history."
"Starting from which year?"
I thought for a moment.
"The last fifteen years. If something earlier turns out to be relevant, I'll go back through the older records."
Thimgrin nodded.
"Sensible."
It was nice to hear that from a goblin.
I turned a few more pages and came across a much more recent entry, dated the previous year.
I recognised the day.
It was the first time I had put on the signet ring.
SUCCESSION ACTIVATED — CONFIRMED
CONTINUITY OF THE FAMILY LINE — CONFIRMED
PROPERTY STATUS UPDATE — ACCEPTED
I read the entries again.
"This happened when the ring accepted me?"
Thimgrin glanced at the date.
"Most likely."
"The house was notified?"
"I don't know whether 'notified' is the appropriate word."
"The fund was."
"Yes."
That was enough.
Somewhere, there was an estate neither the Ministry nor Gringotts could locate. Yet the magic tied to it had apparently recognised that the Peverells had an heir again.
I closed the folder.
Yesterday, I'd had a lead. Now I knew it pointed to something still active.
The third active vault lay considerably deeper.
The journey took long enough for me to start suspecting that the designers of Gringotts had a personal grievance against the human spine.
When the cart finally stopped, we faced a set of black metal doors. There was no name, crest or number.
I looked at Thimgrin.
"And I assume this is the one that'll be harder to discuss."
"A restricted repository."
"What's inside?"
"Items kept separate from the main vault."
"Why?"
"Each item has its own reason."
"Dangerous?"
"Some."
"Cursed?"
"Some."
I hesitated.
"Illegal?"
Thimgrin gave me a distinctly cold look.
"Gringotts does not reorganise private deposits every time British officials change their minds about an object's legality."
I had to admit, that was the most goblin answer I could possibly have received.
The doors had three points of authorisation. The first matched the signet ring. The second resembled a handprint. The third was a small, dark recess whose purpose I couldn't make out.
"What goes here?"
"I don't know."
"Really?"
"The Peverells established the condition of access."
I pressed the ring into place, and the first point lit up with a pale glow. When I placed my hand against the second, it responded as well.
The third remained dark.
The doors did not move.
I stepped back. If my ancestors had decided that a vault full of potentially cursed objects required a third condition of entry, perhaps trying to break through its protections wasn't the best way to introduce myself.
"Is there an access log?" I asked.
Thimgrin looked at me.
"Yes."
"May I see it?"
This time, something resembling approval appeared in his expression.
"Yes."
A few minutes later, I was handed a small sheet of parchment.
The list was short. The same names recurred over the decades, all Peverells. The most recent entry was at the very bottom.
Elias Peverell.
The date was from eleven years ago, not long before he had disappeared from the official records.
"Do you know what he took out or left behind?"
"No."
"You don't record changes to the contents?"
"Not in this repository."
"Why?"
"At the family's request."
That was new.
"So the Peverells deliberately established a vault where Gringotts records who enters, but not what's inside."
"Yes."
I looked back at the black doors.
Elias had gone in. I didn't know why, what he had found there, or whether he had taken anything with him. For now, I had no way of finding out.
I folded the log.
Not everything locked away needed to be opened immediately.
At least, I could try to believe that.
"I want a copy of this log."
"Of course."
"And any documentation concerning the vault's access requirements, if it exists."
"I will check."
For now, that was all the answer I needed.
We didn't return to the main part of the bank until the afternoon.
We hadn't visited the two vaults listed as archived. Thimgrin explained that they had been formally closed once their original purpose had expired. They still belonged to the Peverells, but reopening them would require the bank to inspect their old protections.
I didn't argue. I already had enough.
The prepared copies were waiting on a table in one of the side rooms: the catalogue of the document vault, fifteen years of records from the ancestral home's maintenance fund, the restricted repository's access log and an inventory of Elias's documents.
Beside them lay six thin folders.
"The agreements?" I asked.
"The active long-term agreements."
I sat down.
"I'm allowed to read all of them?"
"They all currently apply to you as the family's legal representative."
That wasn't quite an answer to my question, but this time it would do.
I glanced at the brief descriptions on the folder labels. A property agreement, an old deposit, reciprocal access to archives. The others would have to wait as well. After several hours underground, I had no intention of beginning a thorough examination of legal paperwork.
"Can I take the copies?"
"Yes."
"All of them."
Thimgrin slid them towards me.
"The copying fee has been deducted from the family's administrative fund."
I looked at him.
"So this time you're not even trying to sell me parchment?"
"You own a fund intended for precisely this purpose."
"I'm starting to enjoy having funds."
"A common affliction among people who have them."
I slipped the documents into my bag.
"One more thing."
Thimgrin waited.
"If you knew about all these vaults, funds and documents a year ago, why didn't you mention them then?"
For a moment, I genuinely thought he would give me the same answer as before.
You didn't ask.
Instead, he regarded me for a little longer.
"A year ago, you came here as a ten-year-old boy who had discovered only minutes earlier that he was the last member of the Peverell family."
I hadn't expected that.
Thimgrin continued.
"You asked to see the vault. I showed it to you. You collected your signet ring, money and the basic information you needed to access your assets."
"And the rest?"
"It was still here."
That was… fair.
"You assumed I'd come back on my own?"
"I assumed that if you wished to manage the family's affairs, you would begin asking questions about them."
I looked at the stack of documents in my bag.
Almost a year. Rather a long time.
Then again, for most of it I really had been more interested in learning magic than studying the family accounts.
"You could be a little less literal sometimes."
"You could ask more questions sometimes."
"I'm working on it."
Thimgrin nodded.
"I can see that."
That evening, I spread some of the documents across my desk.
Hedwig perched on the back of the chair, watching the growing pile of papers with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
"You don't have to read it."
She hooted.
"Neither do I."
She looked at me.
"Technically."
I left the fund records for later. I already knew the most important things they could tell me.
The house existed and was being maintained. Its protections had been renewed even after the family had officially vanished from British wizarding life. And when my succession had been confirmed, something in the system had responded.
That was enough for one day.
I set the restricted vault's access log beside the other papers. Elias's name was still the last entry. I wasn't going to spend tonight inventing reasons for his visit; without more information, one explanation was as good as the next.
That left the agreements.
Six folders.
I should have left them until morning. It was late, and the language used by magical lawyers seemed primarily designed to punish people for being able to read.
Even so, I picked up the first.
A property agreement. Nothing urgent, as far as I could tell from the opening page.
The second concerned a deposit.
I opened the third and read the heading.
Then read it again.
RECIPROCAL ARCHIVAL ACCESS AGREEMENT
Parties to the agreement:
House Peverell
and
House Black
My hand stopped at the edge of the page.
Hedwig hooted softly, but I didn't answer.
Black.
There was one very specific reason why that name mattered to me. One very specific man bearing it was currently in Azkaban.
I pulled the folder closer.
Sleep could wait.