Chapter 7 — My Vault Has Too Many Zeroes

Emma had told me that our family was wealthy. I had understood this to mean that we had a comfortable house, money for the things we needed and people whose job involved sending her complicated letters. Nothing in those explanations had prepared me for opening a door and finding a hill made of gold.

There was still bare floor near the entrance to Vault Five Hundred and Twenty-One. Beyond it stood stacks of Galleons, cases of Sickles and sealed containers whose contents I couldn’t identify. The light caught the coins and reflected back across Harry’s face. He looked about as capable of speech as I felt.

‘Ken always did have a head for money,’ Hagrid said. He was laughing at our expressions, which seemed fair enough. I would have joined him if I hadn’t been so occupied trying to believe the gold.

‘He might have warned me about this bit.’ I stepped inside and picked up a coin, turning it over in my palm. It was heavy, cold and very much there. Whatever difficulties remained in becoming a wizard, paying for the school robes seemed unlikely to be one of them.

The goblin consulted a small ledger when I asked how much the vault contained. ‘Five hundred thousand Galleons,’ he said. ‘Two million five hundred thousand Sickles. Additional holdings are managed separately.’

‘And what does that mean in pounds?’ I asked. Harry made a small sound beside me, but I couldn’t tell whether he understood the numbers any better than I did. A conversion might help, assuming I could still multiply.

‘For an ordinary exchange, approximately five pounds sterling to a Galleon,’ the goblin said. ‘Larger transfers depend on the method, fees and source of funds.’ He delivered this without looking round at the coins, apparently immune to the distraction of working beside a small golden landscape.

The Galleons alone came to roughly two and a half million pounds at that rate. I stopped before attempting to include the Sickles. There were more useful things to ask than precisely how much money it took to make me forget the rest of my plans.

This wasn’t even the whole Mercer fortune. Emma had explained that most of the family’s wealth didn’t sit in the house, but investments and professional managers had seemed much less convincing than the evidence currently shining at my feet. The Mercers had been making money long before Ken went to Hogwarts. According to an old family rule, they preferred using money to collecting titles, which I was beginning to appreciate as a practical arrangement.

Ken’s generation had taken the family into the magical world without abandoning everything outside it. A financial company still managed part of the Muggle portfolio, and solicitors handled property and trusts under Emma’s supervision. I couldn’t have explained all the arrangements, but I understood why keeping everything in the same place would have been a poor idea during a war. My father had made sure this wasn’t the only part of my inheritance to survive.

I put the coin down. The money meant materials, equipment and help from people who understood the research better than I did. It could let me make mistakes without ending the work entirely, though that was a dangerous thought for someone who had already wasted a substantial portion of his treated paper. I ought to make a sensible plan before touching any of it.

For another few seconds, I just enjoyed the view.

‘How much d’yeh need today?’ Hagrid asked. He had allowed me a generous interval for staring, but the goblin was waiting with his ledger open. Apparently being wealthy did not entitle me to hold up the bank indefinitely.

‘A thousand Galleons,’ I said. I had the school list and my list of research ingredients, and no desire to discover halfway through the Alley that I needed another journey underground. The amount sounded rather more reasonable before I saw Hagrid’s reaction.

‘A thousand? Yeh don’t need anything like that for school.’ He looked at the money and then back at me, as if hoping a second look might remove a zero.

‘I can bring back what I don’t spend. If I find something from Dad’s notes, I’d rather have enough with me.’ I couldn’t give him a sensible estimate of what those ingredients might cost, which weakened the argument considerably. The goblin waited through it without offering an opinion.

Hagrid still looked doubtful, but the withdrawal went ahead. The goblin counted and packed the money, and I took the bag with considerably less elegance than I had pictured while admiring the vault. A thousand metal coins were a persuasive argument for buying some sort of enchanted storage.

‘You’re taking all of that round the shops?’ Harry asked. He watched me adjust my grip before we climbed back into the cart. ‘It looks heavy.’

‘I’ve just discovered a disadvantage to being paid in gold.’ I settled the bag where I could keep hold of it during the journey. ‘After the essentials, I’m finding a better way to carry things.’

Harry’s vault came next. Number Six Hundred and Eighty-Seven opened with the key, revealing far less money than mine, but his expression made the comparison seem pointless. He stood at the entrance without moving until Hagrid gently told him to go in. Whatever doubts had followed him to Gringotts, there was enough waiting here to settle the question of buying his school things.

I looked away while he collected what he needed. When he returned, the money pouch was modest, and his grip on it was firm. He sat beside me with a different expression from the one he had worn outside the bank. I hoped he would be able to enjoy the rest of the shopping now.

Hagrid became serious as we approached Vault Seven Hundred and Thirteen. This time he told us to stay in the cart while the goblin opened the door. There wasn’t a glittering pile inside; Hagrid went in and returned with a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. Harry leant forward to see, and I caught the back of his coat before curiosity could take him any farther.

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‘Careful,’ I said. ‘I’d rather not explain how we lost you down here.’

Harry settled back but kept looking at the parcel. ‘What is it?’ he asked, as Hagrid pushed it deep into his coat.

‘Hogwarts business,’ Hagrid said. He made certain the parcel was secure before getting back into the cart. ‘Which means none o’ yours, you two.’

I couldn’t reasonably argue with that, however interesting it made the package. We endured the return journey without learning anything more about it. By the time we reached the street, I was grateful for sunlight, level ground and the prospect of shopping somewhere that stayed still.

Hagrid took us to Madam Malkin’s for robes. I climbed onto a stool, expecting to be measured, and still wasn’t prepared for the tape to come at me without anybody holding it. It ran round my shoulders and up towards my neck while Madam Malkin selected the required black fabric.

‘Hold still,’ she said. ‘It won’t get a proper measurement if you keep moving.’

‘I usually get an introduction before something goes round my throat.’ I stayed where she put me, watching the tape finish its work with what seemed like unnecessary confidence. Harry was laughing on the next stool until his own tape demanded his attention.

We bought the required robes, and I added a spare set. After the state of my desk at home, expecting to remain neatly dressed throughout a year of practical magic seemed optimistic. Carrying the wrapped purchase to Flourish and Blotts, I began to understand that each item on the school list would also need somewhere to go.

Books were going to make that problem worse. The shop smelled of paper, binding glue and dust, with shelves full of titles which might explain what I had been struggling to learn. Harry stopped over the moving illustrations, delighted when a picture changed. I remembered television well enough that motion alone didn’t surprise me; an illustration reacting without a screen or machine was another matter. I wanted to know how somebody had made it work.

I started with the textbooks: spells, history, magical theory, transfiguration, potions and plants. Then I looked for introductory explanations of the subjects Dad’s notes kept assuming I understood. Each extra book seemed essential until I saw them accumulating beside the school pile. Hagrid had noticed it too.

‘Planning ter finish all that before September?’ he asked. He lifted a volume to read its title, then returned it to the stack without suggesting I put it back.

‘I’m hoping to stop wasting materials on things I should have learnt first,’ I said. ‘If even one of these explains Dad’s potion notes properly, it’ll earn its place.’

Harry had found a book about curses. When I asked what had attracted him to it, he grinned and said, ‘Dudley,’ which explained his interest without telling me much about Dudley. I decided not to discourage the reading. Hagrid would presumably stop either of us if the purchases began to fulfil Emma’s warning too literally.

At the cauldron shop, I bought the standard pewter model Hogwarts required. Then I noticed a gold one which could stir its own contents, keep a controlled low heat and shrink for storage. After weeks of trying to work from Dad’s experiments with whatever I could find at home, I had considerable difficulty walking away from it.

‘Yeh don’t need that for school,’ Hagrid said. The price had made him stop beside me. ‘Haven’t even started Potions yet.’

‘That’s why I’ve bought the pewter one as well. This would be for the research.’ I watched the shopkeeper demonstrate the stirring again, imagining how often Dad’s instructions assumed I could maintain something at a steady heat. The cauldron wouldn’t teach me the rest, but it might make that particular part less difficult.

Hagrid didn’t look convinced, yet he let the purchase go ahead. The gold cauldron shrank to a palm-sized disc, making it the first thing I had bought which actively improved my prospects of carrying everything. Harry watched the demonstration and decided to buy a compact gold one too, in addition to his required pewter model. I had been considering a remark about unnecessary spending until I remembered who had started this.

‘You could cook supper in that,’ I said. ‘Mind you, I’d want to decide between stew and potion ingredients before using it.’

Harry examined the small disc in his hand. ‘It would be easier to put away than a saucepan,’ he said. He packed it with his things, evidently pleased that having money had allowed him to choose something for himself.

Scales, a telescope, quills, parchment and the remaining supplies joined the growing collection. I was checking what was left on the list when we reached Slug & Jiggers Apothecary. Jars filled the window, and for once I didn’t have to wonder whether the shop might be relevant. I had a separate page of questions for this one.

Hagrid saw me take out Ken’s ingredient list. ‘Let me have a look,’ he said. ‘Some things in there won’t be for young wizards.’

‘It’s mostly from Dad’s notes.’ I handed the page over rather than try to explain every item. He recognised the sort of work immediately, which made me feel better about showing him, although he began rejecting things almost as quickly.

‘Not these three,’ he said, indicating the entries. ‘Dangerous, restricted, or both. And yeh won’t find Runebark in an ordinary apothecary. Never seen one carry it.’

‘Dad mentioned less ordinary suppliers.’ I watched his expression become distinctly less encouraging. ‘I take it that means a black market?’

‘It means don’t go lookin’.’ Hagrid returned the page, making certain I knew which items he had ruled out. ‘Yeh’re eleven, Oswald. Get what yeh can use properly first.’

That left enough to begin with. I still had treated paper at home, and Hogwarts ought to teach me more about the work before I needed to solve every supply problem. I put the rejected items aside for now and followed him in, where the smell nearly drove Harry and me straight back onto the pavement.

Roots, powders and less identifiable things occupied jars from floor to ceiling. I endured the air long enough to buy the permitted materials: common potion bases, mineral preparations, clean cinnabar, dragon-blood tree sap and other ingredients Ken had used as inscription media. None of it supplied a new stack of treated Runebark. Before paying, I asked whether a legitimate seller ever had that in stock.

The apothecary offered very little encouragement. Occasional lots turned up, he said, but age, storage and price made them a doubtful purchase. What happened between harvesting the bark and processing it mattered as much as finding the tree. That matched the difficulties in Dad’s notebooks rather too well.

‘If a sound batch does come in, could you remember the name Mercer?’ I asked. He promised nothing, but I had at least asked somebody who might have a useful answer one day. For now, I collected the supplies he could actually sell me and escaped outside with Harry.

Harry sniffed his sleeve and made a face. ‘It’s in my clothes,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that’s how they keep people from staying long enough to argue about the prices.’

‘Next time I’m bringing a mask.’ I moved a little farther from the door, where somebody entering the shop had released another sample of its atmosphere. ‘That place makes the pub seem fresh.’

‘A gas mask,’ Harry suggested. He gave up inspecting his sleeve and followed as Hagrid pointed us towards the next shop.

Ollivanders occupied a narrow frontage between its neighbours. A single wand lay on a faded cushion in the window, beneath a sign claiming centuries of experience. I stopped beside Harry, suddenly less interested in the bags we had accumulated. My parents’ wands had refused to work for me, and every experiment since had led back to something I didn’t understand. Behind this door, I might finally find the tool everyone expected me to use.