Chapter 22
The girls were still dozing in their pushchair when they met the Gringotts delegation outside Hogwarts.
"Good profit to you!" carolled Ted.
"And to you, law-wizard," sniffed Gornuk. "Beast-slayer Potter."
"Hello, Junior Manager Gornuk," said Harry nervously. "Erm, good profit?" Legal Expert Riptooth snorted, and yanked on the bell-pull, apparently not for the first time.
"Dratted wizards," he said. Eventually, Harry could make out a figure walking along the path to the gate.
"The Deputy Head," said Ted. "Dumbledore must be away, if she's having to authorise non-student entrants."
"We have a warrant," said Riptooth. "They don't have the option not to admit us. It's in the treaty." He told Professor McGonagall this, with considerable emphasis and enthusiasm for detail.
"So this is about the monster in the chamber?" she said. "Dumbledore said it was all sorted out."
"Albus Dumbledore is not the slayer of the monster," Riptooth said, "and so he has no right to determine whether things are 'all sorted out' with respect to the carcass."
"You, Mr Potter?" she said. "You're behind this expedition?"
"Yes, Professor. Mr Tonks said I had the legal right to claim the basilisk's body, since I killed it, but that I should assign some of the money as charitable donations to the school and to various school-related funds. So I'm doing that. It would be a bit of a waste not to. Oh, and compensation for the victims, I suppose. We're still working on the details."
"Professor Dumbledore said you wouldn't want to be bothered with the details, and it was best to just put the whole matter behind us." At this point Harry lost his temper.
"Professor Dumbledore makes a lot of decisions about me," he said. "And many of them have been very bad ones. Wasting valuable resources that might otherwise make the school a lot of money as well as me personally: I don't even know if that's in the top ten. I haven't stopped to count them. I just - please don't. If I start talking about it, I won't stop for ages, and it'd be a waste of the goblins' valuable time. Can you please just let us through? If you actually want to hear what I have to say about Professor Dumbledore's role in my life, I'd be happy to meet with you another time. Especially since you're apparently my cousin, not that anyone ever told me." Ted reached out and squeezed Harry's shoulder. Professor McGonagall's eyebrows had been rising further and further during Harry's speech; she pursed her lips.
"Very well," she said. "I shall abstain from questioning you for now. Nor shall I ask about those two children, who are clearly far too young to be part of the curse-breaking team."
"They're on the warrant," said Riptooth.
"I am sure they are, Master Goblin," snapped Professor McGonagall. "I said I am choosing not to enquire about them. But you will have tea with me at your earliest convenience, Mr Potter, at which point we will have much to discuss. Are you free tomorrow?" Harry exchanged glances with Ted.
"Sorry, no," he said. "But I could do the third?"
"Very well," she said. "I shall expect you at 4 p.m., promptly, in my office. Hagrid is also resident here at the moment; you may perhaps wish to meet him for lunch, though I would advise you not to criticise Albus Dumbledore around him." Harry nodded. He remembered the pig's tail.
"Thanks, Professor," he said, glad he wasn't in worse trouble. "I look forward to it."
And so they were in. The Hogwarts staircases were not particularly fun with a pushchair, though Ted helped gamely. Finally, they reached the third floor bathroom, and Harry had the dubious pleasure of introducing everyone to Myrtle. Myrtle hadn't met many goblins before, or many babies, and was actually quite polite, for her. The problem arose when Harry opened the Chamber entrance, and explained about sliding down the tunnel.
"Dahlia won't," came the announcement.
"Oh?" said Harry.
"Dark. Nasty. Dirty. Shan't."
"Daisy not like sliding," her twin added. "Not fun. Won't. If go down, have stairs. Want stairs!" At least part of the exchange had apparently been in Parseltongue, because upon the word 'stairs', the tunnel transformed into stairs.
"Dark," said Dahlia. "Want light. Want light!" Serpentine wall-sconces flickered to light. Harry sighed.
"You're making me look really stupid, you know," he said, but there was no rancour in it.
"Want clean?" said Dahlia hopefully, but apparently there were limits.
Down they proceeded. The cursebreakers first, checking everything was safe. The fallen masonry was quickly shored up, and a safe path to the Chamber ensured. In front of the massive serpentine door, Harry again said open, and they stepped into the Chamber itself. Somebody began swearing in gobbledegook.
"It's all right," said Harry. "It's definitely dead." The elderly bloodward specialist gently corrected him.
"No, Mr Potter," said Stonejaw. "He is astounded at the size of the creature. We all are. We have never heard of a basilisk reaching even half that size. Ten percent of the parts from that thing, and twenty-five percent of the returns from selling eighty percent of it? Gringotts will make a great deal of money, far more than anticipated. Sub-Chief Ragnok will be very pleased indeed. It will come to the attention of the Head of the Bank. And you performed a truly extraordinary feat in killing it."
"I did have help," said Harry. "I had Fawkes and the sorting hat."
"Learn to take a compliment, Harry," said Ted. Harry blushed.
"Thank you, Expert Stonejaw," he said.
"Better," said Ted.
Meanwhile, the cursebreakers were fanning out, checking for traps, making sure everything was safe. They noticed the gateway in the statue's mouth, and Harry dutifully opened it. He was then told to keep well back while it was inspected. Eventually, the cursebreakers called the chamber as clear. The harvesters seemed focused on gathering the shed skin for now. Harry hoped he'd be able to get the ritual done before the actual butchering started; he worried it might be a bit too gruesome for the girls.
"Where should we go for the ritual?" he asked Ted. Ted thought about it. "Where was it that the diary-shade placed the girl it was possessing?"
"Right by the statue's feet," said Harry. "You think that was a significant spot?"
"Well, by your account, she lay there for the best part of a day, and during that time, the diary-wraith drained enough essence from her that he had become almost fully corporeal, capable of holding and using a wand, by the time you arrived," said Ted. "Either any spot in the chamber would have done it, or he thought that was the best one."
"He," said Blood Ward Expert Stonejaw silkily, "was not a goblin with three centuries of experience in cursebreaking, wardsetting, inheritance magic, and their intersection. I am."
"I'm sorry if I slighted you, Expert Stonejaw!" said Harry. "I didn't mean to offend you. I just wouldn't have presumed to ask... I mean... you didn't come here to do favours for me. You're very important."
"I am," he said. "And one of the privileges of seniority is I am permitted to indulge my curiosity a great deal. Which is, in fact, why I am here. I was curious. A thousand-year-old chamber, tied by the builder to his heirs. Of course I wanted to study it. And if my study happens to benefit you, then so be it. I like to talk as I think, sometimes. And I can hardly talk about the details of your family's history to anybody but you, and perhaps your little wards, though they are rather young even for elementary magical study. And, I suppose, if your lawyer happens to hear, he, too, is bound by confidentiality."
"It would be an honour, sir, to hear anything you have to say about this place," said Harry. Ted nodded, dumbfounded. Stonejaw then embarked on an explanation of the relative age of different parts of the chamber. The long, narrow space and the pillars were part of the original, as was the serpentine door. One thousand years old, with a remarkable degree of complex sentience. The statue at the far end was much newer, perhaps fourteenth century; it covered over and blocked an earlier structure, which had been warded so that some branches of the family could access it, but others could not, perhaps fifty years earlier. In his or her petulance, a member of the rejected branch built the statue, ensuring their favoured cousins would also struggle to access the original structure, especially given that the basilisk's quarters had been moved to inside the statue. Harry and his cousins, were, alas, descended from the branch of the family that built the statue, and had been disbarred from the original structure. Hmm. He would consider whether the disbarment also extended to them. The question was how it had been enacted. This was fascinating. But to return to the overview, there were also some side-chambers off the main hall, likewise part of the original, but which didn't seem to have seen use for hundreds of years, and which the young whipper-snapper cursebreakers hadn't spotted. He would point it out to them later, if they hadn't tumbled to it themselves by then. Prisons on the left side. The right had been basilisk housing and possibly workshops of some description, but the transfer of the basilisk quarters had done terrible things to the space. If you imagined combining a faulty Spatial Expansion charm with a very bad switching spell? Yes, quite. It wouldn't be pretty. The tunnel from the Chamber gate to the third floor was the same vintage as the statue, another petty bit of spitefulness; and the actual bathroom entrance was newer still, eighteenth-century, contemporary with the plumbing system. Hmm. To answer Harry's original question, he said, and certainly if one considered the Gaunt family, the spot with the greatest magical resonance was undoubtedly the halfway point between the statue and the door. Now if Harry would excuse him, he would be investigating that fascinating disbarment issue. Was he right in thinking the password for the statue's mouth was different from the other password? Harry told him they were 'open,' and 'speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four,' and Stonejaw nodded, slowly, as he ambled off.