Hermione and Tonks froze on the spot, the bustle of Diagon Alley continuing around them like a blurred background while time seemed to slow as they stared at him in disbelief. Their minds raced to catch up with the sheer, suicidal audacity of what they had just heard.
He was joking, right? He had to be. No one, not even Albus Dumbledore at his most eccentric, nor Voldemort at the height of his terror, would simply talk about "breaking into Gringotts" over a casual morning walk. In the wizarding world, the bank was the ultimate symbol of untouchable security, to suggest a breach was a symptom of madness, a verbal signed death warrant.
They exchanged a wide-eyed look of pure panic, but before they could even find their voices to protest, they realized the young man had already turned his back on them.
He was walking toward the snowy white marble building that loomed over the intersection like a jagged ivory tooth.
"Harry, wait!" Hermione hissed, her voice cracking as she rushed forward to catch up. Tonks was right beside her, her boots clattering against the cobblestones, her hair cycling through a dozen nervous shades.
"What the hell do you mean, 'break into Gringotts'?" Hermione whispered frantically, her head darting left and right. She half-expected the very streetlights to grow ears and report them to the Ministry. "You can't just....people don't.....it's not a shop, Harry, it's Gringotts!"
"I mean exactly what I said," Harry replied, his voice calm. There wasn't a hint of unease or frantic energy one should feel showing on him at all. "We are going to go get the cup, and I don't feel like waiting."
The casualness of his delivery was more terrifying than the plan of just going in itself. They could tell he was actually serious about this.
Before the girls could muster another word, they were standing before the towering bronze doors. The uniformed goblins flanking the entrance tensed as Harry approached, their obsidian eyes narrowing as they watched him pass them.
They felt a weight in the air around him that made them tense just by his very presence.
Harry didn't slow down for a second. He entered through the doors, leading the two stunned women into the vast marble hall. He headed straight for a high desk where an elderly, sour-faced goblin was meticulously weighing a pile of rubies.
Thwack.
Harry smacked his palm onto the counter, which silenced the scratching of quills for twenty feet in every direction. "Take me to the Lestrange vault," he said.
Hermione felt her knees go weak. Tonks went rigid, her hand instinctively twitching toward the wand tucked in her pocket. Every goblin in the immediate vicinity stopped. The silence was deafening, broken only by the rhythmic ticking of a clock that suddenly sounded like a countdown.
"Key," the goblin growled, his voice like grinding stones. He looked ready to summon the guards, his long, spindly fingers hovering over a hidden alarm bell.
Harry didn't flinch. He reached into his pocket and produced a small golden key. He raised an eyebrow, a silent, mocking challenge.
The goblin squinted as he looked at the key, then looked back at the human who raised a brow at him. He sneered and growled before He nodded curtly, his movements jerky.
"Follow me," the goblin croaked, gesturing toward the heavy iron door leading to the tracks.
"Harry... how? Why is he just taking us?" Tonks muttered under her breath, her eyes darting around at the armored guards as if scared they'll attack at any moment.
"You have Bellatrix's key? How? We've been with you all morning!" Hermione whispered.
Harry glanced at them over his shoulder and gave a small, wicked chuckle, but he didn't answer them.
They stepped into one of the carts. The moment it lurched forward, plunging them into the dark, twisting tunnels of the subterranean labyrinth, Harry let out a short laugh at the expressions on their faces. They looked like they were waiting for the whole thing to collapse and goblins to start charging at them.
"You guys should relax," he said, leaning back as the cart picked up terrifying speed, the wind whipping his hair into a mess. "Nothing is going to happen."
"Relax? We're currently committing a capital felony in the most secure location in the British Isles!" Hermione whispered to him over the roar of the cart to avoid the goblin hearing her.
"Here," Harry said, waving his hand with a casual, sweeping motion.
In a flicker of distorted, oily light, the person sitting opposite them was no longer a handsome young man. It was Bellatrix Lestrange, her heavy-lidded eyes gleaming with mischief, and her dark curls wild and unkempt.
Tonks nearly launched herself out of the moving cart with a startled yelp. Hermione, who had seen the woman's face in the Daily Prophet, went deathly still, her breath catching in her throat.
"This is what everyone else sees right now," Bellatrix, or Harry, said, the voice a perfect, chilling mimicry of the witch's high-pitched, aristocratic drawl. "So try not to look so tense. You're supposed to be my honored guests."
He spoke, ignoring the goblin that was in the cart with them, and Hermione had to wonder if he did anything to him to just ignore them like that.
"Harry," Hermione whispered, her voice trembling. "I thought you couldn't use illusion charms in Gringotts. The Thief's Downfall... the waterfalls... It's supposed to strip away all glamours and Polyjuice."
"They are," Harry agreed easily, looking up at the ceiling where a massive underground waterfall loomed ahead like a curtain of liquid silver. "But, I'm not using charms. I am using an Authority. Something like this won't really work on me, so relax."
The cart plummeted through the Thief's Downfall. The cold, enchanted water drenched them to the bone, but when they emerged on the other side, Harry still looked like Bellatrix, and the girls noticed they had been altered too, their clothes and features shifted into those of high-ranking pureblood associates.
The waterfall had washed over them and found nothing to "cancel." This just showed how powerful Harry really was.
Finally, they reached the vault. They stepped out onto the narrow ledge, the dragon in the distance roaring and straining against its chains, its pale scales glowing in the dim light. Harry ignored the beast as one might ignore a barking dog and walked toward the vault door.
He didn't need a key. He simply placed a single, clawed finger against the cold, enchanted metal.
Fzzzzt.
The protections on the vault unravel, they simply ceased. It was as if the magic forgot how to hold its own shape in his presence. He pushed the heavy door open with a dull, echoing groan of tortured metal.
The vault was a mountain of gold, silver, and artifacts lying around the vault. Harry didn't waste a second as he moved forward, and there, sitting at the top pile of gold, was the thing he came here for. A golden Cup just sitting there. Just looking at it, he could feel the rot inside it, the oily, black, parasitic soul of Tom Riddle.
With a swift, casual swipe of his claws, he cleaved the cup in two. A piercing, unholy screech erupted from the metal, a plume of black smoke writhing in phantom agony before Harry's divine aura flared, incinerating the fragment in a flash of white light as it tried to get close to him.
He turned to leave, but stopped at the threshold, looking back at the piles of gold that could fund a dozen wars.
"Why leave it for her? Not like she'd ever use it anyway," he mused aloud. He shrugged, and with a broad sweep of his hand, a spatial rift opened like a hungry mouth.
Within seconds, the mountains of gold, the gems, and the treasures vanished into his personal "hammer space," which he used for storage. "Waste not, want not. I'll find a better use for this than rotting in a hole."
Minutes later, they were back on the surface, walking out of the marble doors and into the jarring sunlight of Diagon Alley. Both girls looked like they didnt understand the meaning of life anymore.
"Just like that," Hermione whispered, staring back at the bank doors with wide, unblinking eyes. "He just... walked in and out. He didn't even break a sweat."
"He robbed the most secure bank in the world. In broad daylight. In under twenty minutes," Tonks said hollowly, her hair a stunned, static-filled white.
"Next, the diadem," Harry said, snapping them back to the present reality. Before they could argue or ask for a moment to breathe and collect themselves, he slashed the air with his hand, and they stepped through a rift directly into the familiar, quiet seventh-floor corridor of Hogwarts.
He paced back and forth three times in front of the blank stretch of stone wall. To the girls' shock, a highly polished, ornate door materialized out of the solid rock.
"Harry, what is this place?" Hermione asked, her eyes wide as she stepped into a room that looked like a cathedral of forgotten things. It was a labyrinth of objects, looking like years of student junk, broken furniture, jewelry, and other things. "I've read Hogwarts: A History cover to cover multiple times, and I've never seen a single mention of a room like this before."
"It's called the Room of Requirement," Harry explained, his voice echoing in the vast space. He activated his Weaver Authority, his eyes glowing with the golden intensity.
He was looking for the only string of life that he knew would be here beside them. "Some say Rowena Ravenclaw built it as a sanctuary for her private studies. Others think Helga Hufflepuffcreated it to provide for its students' every need. Either way, it's one of the castle's greatest secrets, few know about it."
He found what he was looking for and followed the glowing red-and-black string through the towering piles of furniture and old potions kits. He reached a tarnished pedestal where a silver tiara sat, a single blue stone gleaming at its center.
As the girls approached, their eyes began to glaze over. They could hear it, a soft, seductive whispering in the back of their minds, promising them ultimate wisdom, timeless beauty, and the power to fix everything wrong with the world. They took an unconscious step forward, their hands reaching out for the artifact.
"Don't," Harry commanded, the authority in his voice snapping them back to themselves. He raised his right hand, and a gout of white-hot divine fire erupted from his palm.
The diadem was consumed in a heartbeat. The Horcrux shrieked, a sound like a thousand dying souls being torn from the earth, as Harry erected a shimmering, transparent barrier to keep the flames from consuming the entire Room of Hidden Things.
"Five down, two to go," he said calmly, the fine ash of the diadem drifting to the floor like grey snow.
He opened another rift, and this time, they emerged in a dark, overgrown graveyard. The air was heavy and stagnant, carrying the scent of damp earth, stone, and the slow creep of decay.
Harry paused, his shoulders dropping slightly. He looked at the headstones, his expression unreadable and suddenly very old.
"What's wrong?" Hermione asked softly, sensing the heavy shift in his aura.
"This was where Cedric died," Harry said quietly. "In my world, and I guess here too. It was the place where Voldemort came back to life."
The girls gasped softly, looking around the grim, shadow-choked surroundings of Little Hangleton. Harry had seen countless deaths, he had killed plenty himself, but the memory of the Hufflepuff boy, a boy who had simply been "a spare" for a coward like Peter Pettigrew, still sat like a cold, heavy stone in his heart.
Cedric's death was something he didn't think he would ever forget.
He sighed, shaking off the ghosts of the past, and began walking toward the woods. The Gaunt shack loomed ahead, a rotting, vine-choked ruin that looked like it was being painfully reclaimed by the earth. It was a place of filth.
"The ring is in there," Harry noted, his eyes narrowing. He didn't even bother going inside. He held out both hands, and a massive surge of power surged forward as he set the entire shack on fire.
The fire scoured the wood, the cursed stone, and the soul fragment hidden beneath the floorboards.
The same agonizing screeching echoed through the trees before the sound vanished into the wind.
Harry walked into the smoking, blackened embers and reached down, picking up a small ring with a black stone on it. He looked at it before he simply tucked it into his pocket.
"And then there was one," he muttered, his eyes flashing green. He turned back to the girls, who were watching him with a mixture of reverent awe. "Let's go. It's time to find the snake."
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