Gringotts Bank, Lestrange Vault
“Close sesame!”
With a loud grinding sound, the large door that was the entrance to her husband’s family vault slid closed, and Bellatrix Lestrange turned to face the hulking form of the Gringotts Troll that she had been assured would be the perfect guard.
It had better be since she’d just placed an object of great importance to her Lord and Master within it.
“Guard this Vault well, Hassan. Do not let any but myself or my husband or his brother enter here, or the Gringotts dragons will grow fat on your corpse. After the Dark Lord is done with you, that is.” She fixed the Troll with piercing purple eyes, letting the creature know how serious she was.
“No one shall pass Hassan!”
With a nod, Bellatrix turned and walked away, back down the long tunnel to the cart, where she climbed in, and it rolled off, squeaking.
May 1st, 1998, years later.
Harry, Ron and Hermione peered around the corner of the rock wall at the hulking form of the Gringotts Troll standing guard outside the Lestrange Vault, a giant bronze sabre in his hands.
“Oh great, how are we gonna get past that?” Ron asked.
“I have an idea,” Harry said.
-=-=-
Hassan stood guard as his Mistress had commanded. It had been a long time, truly, he didn’t know how long, and no one had come, not even the Goblins who taught him to speak and gave him a name. But he remained ever vigilant; no one would pass Hassan.
Suddenly, a disturbance in the group appeared around the corner and started to approach as if something was tunnelling just under the ground. He watched it approach with confusion, eyebrow raised as it slid right past him and under the door.
Wait…
Past him and under the door…
Someone had passed Hassan!
With a surge of fury, he turned to the door and raised his hands.
“Open, uh…Open…” he paused; what was that word again? “Open, sarsaparilla? Open, Saskatchewan?”
-=-
Inside the Vault, the burrowing disturbance stopped, and then three heads popped up out of the ground, and Harry, Hermione and Ron crawled out.
“Ugh, that’s no way for a Wizard to travel…underground,” Ron muttered.
“Who cares? We’re in. Now let’s get what we came for and go before that Troll comes in here.” Harry replied.
“And don’t touch anything besides the Cup; we don’t know what all this stuff might be cursed with.” Hermione agreed as the two-headed deep into the various piles.
But Ron wasn’t listening; he was instead staring, wide-eyed, at the mountain of gold.
‘So much gold, jewels and treasure. Bellatrix doesn’t deserve to have this. Why don’t you take it all? It could all be yours…’ a voice in the redhead’s mind whispered.
“Mine?” Ron said in an inquisitive voice.
“C’mon, Ron! What are you waiting for?” Hermione called.
“Mine?” Ron repeated.
“Hey, I think I found it, but it’s on top of a pile of gold, and my summoning charm isn’t working!” Harry’s voice echoed through the piles.
“Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!Mine!MineMineMine!” Ron suddenly yelled as he raced forward, jumped in the air and dived into a pile of gold trinkets.
“I’m rich! I’m wealthy! Yahoo!” he yelled just as he landed, submerged, then surfaced with a large diamond on his head, several pearl necklaces in his hands and gold bracelets on his arms.
“I’m comfortably well off! Woohoo!”
Unfortunately, the pile he’d dived into was cured with the Gemino curse, and every gold piece he touched started replicating. Ron soon found himself buried under a wave of gold, pushing him back towards the entrance.
“Ron! You IDIOT!” Hermione’s voice echoed over the noise of the multiplying treasure.
-=-
Hassan was still trying to get in outside the Vault but had no luck.
“Open, septuagenarian?”
Nothing.
“Open, saddle soap?”
Again, nothing.
“Open, sesame?”
Hassan took a few steps back in surprise as the rock door lifted, revealing the entrance to his Mistress’s vault. He eventually came across a young redheaded wizard piling up pieces of gold and various artefacts, which meant nothing to Hassan as he paused and glared down at the redhead who finally noticed him.
“I’m in the money, mhmm-mmmhmm-hmmm!” Ron sang to himself as he continued to pile up the trinkets, not quite figuring out that they kept multiplying as he touched them. Sensing a presence behind him, Ron turned to see the fat, lumbering form of the Gringotts Troll glaring down at him with beady eyes.
“Ah, redcap! Call a cart, and be quick about it! I’ve got a lot of loot to shift.”
Hassan raised his giant sabre over his head and swung it forward and down. It connected with Ron’s jewel-encrusted crown, a singular, enormous diamond on top of a small hat with a sound like a ringing gong.
Ron didn’t move, but a stupid smile spread across his face as a vertical split in the diamond appeared, continued down to the hat, and the two pieces fell off his head and rolled to the floor. A single red hair that had stood upright, somehow, then slowly peeled down in two halves.
Ron chuckled momentarily, blinked, then turned and ran screaming deeper into the Vault.
-=-
Harry and Hermione were fighting to keep their heads above the constantly replicating treasure after Ron had triggered a tidal wave of detritus that had knocked them over and into the treasure mound upon which their target sat. This consequently meant they, too, were buried.
‘That idiot!’ Hermione thought as she scrambled for her wand and tried to remember the counter spell for the Gemino curse. The constantly moving mounds of metal kept knocking her about, but she eventually managed to close her fingers around a wand. Not knowing if it was hers or Harry’s, she yelled out the counter-spell, and the moving mountain of metal finally fell still.
She sighed with relief, only to realise, mortified, that the shifting mound on top of them had somehow moved her to the point where she was sitting on something decidedly not metal.
She was sitting on her best friend’s face.
‘Oh my god!’
Immediately, she started to move, to stand, wondering how fate could be so cruel to her.
“Harry?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m here, I got it.” He muttered as he tried to sit up, Hufflepuff’s Cup clutched in his hands. He smiled at her, blushing as she helped him stand, and they climbed on top of the mound.
Embarrassed, she refused to meet his gaze for a moment before she cleared her throat and looked at the Cup.
“Right, got what we came for. Let’s find Ron and go.”
“Uh, right,” Harry said. He turned around and climbed to the floor, only to have a panicking Ron run right into him.
“Ugh! Ron! What the—”
“Quick! Take it!” Ron said, trying to push a ring into Harry’s hand, a ring that bore a large diamond on it. “Take it and it’s yours!”
Harry looked down at the ring and then up at Ron before casually tossing it onto the pile. Ron stared at him slack-jawed.
“Hassan CHOP!”
The Troll they had seen guarding the door came running in, sabre over his head, ready to cleave.
“Halt!” Hermione said, holding up a hand. Ron and Harry stared at her slack-jawed as the Troll did so. “I am your Mistress, Bellatrix Lestrange. My companions are leaving this Vault, and we will not return. I’m going to need someone to take ownership of it. Would you like to have it?”
Ron gaped at her, eyes wide, mouth flapping like a dying fish as he gave her a look that told them he thought she was insane. Harry just smiled at his friend’s ingenuity before turning and gesturing for Ron to go ahead. Ron turned to leave, but he didn’t go far.
“Oh yes, Mistress,” the Troll grinned, disregarding that Hermione looked nothing like Bellatrix. “Hassan like! Hassan like!”
“Very well.” Hermione then made a rather intricate, complex and, if Harry were honest with himself, rather lewd dance move while subtly gesturing for Harry and Ron to run for the exit as she slowly danced around the Troll. It also didn’t escape Harry’s notice that every time Hermione made a rather provocative gesture with her hips, they were aimed at him, and she seemed to make a little moan each time. He had to wonder just what was going through her head.
When Hassan was between her and the loot, she raised her wand and fired a single firework charm.
“It’s yours.”
The Troll grinned before running and taking a flying leap, diving into the mountain of gold.
“Okay, let’s go, boys.”
-=-
It wasn’t until Harry and Hermione reached the platform where the cart sat waiting for them that they realised Ron was missing.
“Where did he…” Harry asked, looking back. Hermione rolled her eyes.
“Three guesses.” She deadpanned.
“Help! Help! Help! Save me, mate! Save me! HELP!” Ron came running out of the Vault and charged down the corridor towards them, a giant diamond clutched to his chest as if his life depended on it. The lumbering form of the Troll came barrelling after him a few seconds later; sabre raised over his head and a look of murderous rage in his eyes.
“HASSAAAN CHOP!”
Harry and Hermione exchanged looks and sighed, each rolling their eyes.
“Okay, Ron, back here.” Harry gestured behind a rock formation by the cart before casting a disillusionment charm on his friend. “What’s with you?”
“I can’t help it! I’m a greedy slob! It’s my hobby, save me!”
“Hassan CHOP!” the Troll yelled as he rounded the corner, finding Harry and Hermione resting against a rock, but no sign of the thief he’d been chasing.
“He went that way,” Hermione said, gesturing further up the track, which disappeared around a corner. The panting Troll looked at them before hopping onto the tracks, which creaked and started to lumber down them, thankfully not in the direction they needed to go.
“Is he gone?” Ron whispered.
“Yeah, we got rid of him,” Harry said. Ron leapt out of cover and started running towards the Vault entrance.
“Oh boy! I’m rich! I’m wealthy! I’m independent! I’m socially secure! I’m rich!”
The two other teens looked at each other and rolled their eyes again. It looked like they were going to be there for a while longer.
-=-
Several hours later.
“There, I think that’s the last of it,” Ron muttered as he dumped the last sack-load of treasure into a colossal cart nearly 20 feet high. Harry and Hermione stared at it, neither having the slightest idea of how Ron was going to get it out of the Vault, onto the track, or even where he’d found it.
“Just a quick check to see if I missed anything.” The redhead muttered to himself as he searched the now empty Vault before seeing something resting in a corner. He stooped, picking it up.
“Hey, what’s this?”
It was a small, nondescript-looking copper oil lamp.
“Well, polished off, it might be worth a few Knuts,” Ron muttered, ideally rubbing a speck of dirt off the lamp. There was a rush of air, and he turned.
Floating over the lamp was a large figure with just a torso, arms and head; the legs were missing. Instead, a smoke trail led down to the lamp’s spout.
“I am the Jinn of the Lamp, oh Master!”
Watching from around a corner, Harry and Hermione exchanged looks, not believing their eyes.
Ron blinked before a look of pure jealousy and anger crossed his face.
“Oh, no you don't! You want my treasure! Well, it's mine, understand?!” He grabbed the Jinn and shoved it into the lamp’s spout before climbing on top of it and jumping, doing his best to force the spirit back in. All Hermione and Harry could do was watch in horror.
“All mine! Down! Down! Go! Go! Mine!”
There was an explosion of sound and magic, and Ron was thrown off to the side as the lid of the lamp flew open and a fountain of flames burst forth, and from them, the furious face of the Jinn appeared.
“INFIDEL! You have desecrated the Spirit of the Lamp! Prepare to take the consequences!”
“Consequences, schmonsequences, as long as I’m rich,” Ron said dismissively as he walked back towards the cart full of loot, utterly oblivious to how much he’d stepped in it.
Harry and Hermione exchanged looks, their eyes wide.
“Run?” Hermione whispered.
“Run.” Harry agreed.
While Harry did feel bad abandoning Ron to the wrath of the Jinn, his friend had it coming. There were just some things he wasn’t willing to fight, and an enraged spirit was one of them.
As they reached the cart, they heard the sound of thunder behind them and saw the reflected flashes of magic and light on the cave walls.
-=-=-=-
Cap d'Agde, France, 5 years later.
Harry smiled as he approached his newly minted four-and-a-half-month-pregnant wife, clutching some freshly caught clams in his hands. She smiled back up at him; she only wore a hat, watch, pair of sunglasses, and the two bands on her right hand.
Hermione Potter lay sunbathing, gloriously naked, putting aside the book she’d been reading as she smiled up at her husband.
It had been 5 years since Voldemort had fallen at Hogwarts, and the Second Magical War had ended, and the majority of his followers had also ended up dead or in Azkaban for the rest of their lives.
Questions had been asked regarding Ron's fate, but all Hermione and Harry had said was that he’d fallen victim to his own greed in the Vault. Molly and Ginny were not happy with that answer, so things were relatively cool between the Potters and Weasleys. Sirius, Remus, his wife Tonks and their son Teddy, Neville, his wife Hannah, Fred and George with their wives Angelina and Alicia, along with Bill and Fleur, had attended their wedding the previous week, with Sirius being Harry’s Best Man, and both Luna and Fleur being Hermione’s Bride’s Maids, and Gabrielle as the Flower Girl.
“It was really nice of Fleur to recommend this place. I had no idea France had an actual nudist town.” Harry said. Hermione smiled and nodded, taking some of the shellfish and prying at it herself.
“It’s wonderful here. I think we should either move or buy a small house here.” Hermione said, ogling her husband.
“I wonder how Ron made out with that Jinn,” Harry said as he pried open another shell, revealing a small pearl.
“Hey, look, a pearl!” he said with a grin, turning it to let his wife see it.
“It’s beautiful,”
A small figure suddenly appeared, maybe an inch tall; it rapidly crawled up Harry’s arm, then his hand, and jumped onto the shell.
“It’s mine, you understand? Mine! Mine! All mine! Go! Go! Go! Do you hear me? Out! Out Out! Mine! Mine! Mine! There’s only enough for me!”
Hermione and Harry stared wide-eyed at the tiny form of Ron Weasley, who looked like he hadn’t aged but had shrunk down to an inch tall and was now hugging the pearl in the shell while he ranted in a high-pitched voice.
Then they rolled their eyes, clearly he hadn’t changed at all.
“Oh brother…” Harry sighed, shaking his head, siding his free arm around his wife, pulling her in, and kissing her temple. “Close sesame.”
“I’m rich! I’m a happy miser!” were the last words they heard from Ron as the shell closed.