Gringotts Wizarding Bank was not a place Edmund had expected to find himself so soon after the end of term. He had visited once before, with Mr. Thornbury, on the day he had withdrawn gold for his school supplies. That visit had been brief, transactional, the kind of errand that a child conducts under the watchful eye of an adult. This visit was different. This time, he was the heir. This time, he was expected.
The carriage that Mr. Thornbury had sent arrived at the manor at nine o'clock sharp, driven by the same wizard in livery who had looked so uncomfortable in the country. Edmund climbed in, Perseus left behind for the day, his wand in his pocket and the folder of documents in his hands. The carriage moved without horses, gliding over the rutted lane with a smoothness that seemed to deny the existence of the road beneath.
He watched the countryside pass—the green hills, the dark lochs, the scattered farms that marked the edge of the wizarding world—and thought about what he would find. The documents had listed four vaults, each with a different purpose, a different history. The main vault at Gringotts held the gold that had supported the Prince family for generations. The vault in London held artifacts. The vault in Edinburgh held books. And the vault in Hogsmeade held potions, the last remnants of a family business that had once supplied half the apothecaries in Britain.
He did not know what condition they would be in. The Prince family had been fading for decades, their wealth diminishing, their influence waning. But they had been careful. The vaults, Mr. Thornbury had said, were intact.
---
Diagon Alley was quieter than Edmund remembered. The summer crowds had not yet arrived, and the shops that would be bustling in August were still sleepy, their proprietors leaning in doorways, their windows displaying the same wares that had been there in the spring. The goblin guards at the entrance to Gringotts were the same as always—small, sharp, their eyes following him as he approached.
Mr. Thornbury was waiting inside, his thin figure almost lost among the marble pillars and the high, vaulted ceiling. He nodded as Edmund entered and gestured toward a goblin who stood behind a counter of polished black stone.
"This is Griphook," Mr. Thornbury said. "He will escort you to the vaults."
The goblin looked at Edmund with the same assessing gaze that Mr. Thornbury had worn on his first visit. "The Prince vaults," he said. "They have not been opened in some years."
"I know," Edmund said.
Griphook's lips twitched. "Follow me."
---
The cart ride was as disorienting as Edmund remembered—the plunge into darkness, the rush of cold air, the sudden turns that seemed designed to unseat anyone who was not holding on. But he was prepared this time, his hands gripping the sides of the cart, his eyes fixed on the torchlit tunnels that flashed past.
They descended deeper than he had gone before, past vaults whose numbers were in the hundreds, then the thousands, then the tens of thousands. Griphook said nothing, his face impassive, his hands steady on the controls. And then, abruptly, the cart stopped.
They were in a cavern that seemed carved from the living rock, its walls lined with doors that were older than any Edmund had seen. Griphook led him to one near the end of a narrow passage, its door marked with a crest he recognized: the cauldron and flame of the House of Prince.
"The main vault," Griphook said, and touched the door with a long, thin finger.
The door swung open, and Edmund stepped inside.
---
The vault was not what he had expected. It was smaller than the vaults he had seen in the books, the ones that belonged to the old families. There were no mountains of gold here. There were stacks of Galleons, perhaps a thousand of them, arranged in neat columns on shelves that lined the walls. There were Sickles and Knuts as well, in smaller piles, and there was a chest against the far wall, its lid closed, its lock tarnished.
But there was also something else. Something he had not expected.
On a shelf near the entrance, separate from the gold, were objects. A wand, old and dark, its core visible through a crack in the wood. A ring, its stone cloudy, its band bent. A bundle of letters tied with a ribbon, the paper yellowed, the ink faded. And a portrait—small, no larger than his hand—of a woman who looked like him.
Edmund reached for the portrait. The woman in it was young, her hair dark, her eyes sharp, her face set in an expression of determination that he recognized because he had seen it in the mirror. She looked at him, and for a moment, he thought she would speak. But the portrait was still, the magic that had animated it long since faded.
"Your great-grandmother," Mr. Thornbury said from the doorway. "Elena Prince. She was the last of the Princes to sit on the Wizengamot regularly. After she died, your grandfather attended only when he could not avoid it. Your father did not attend at all."
Edmund set the portrait down carefully. "Why?"
"Because they were tired," Mr. Thornbury said simply. "The Prince family had been fighting for centuries—for their place, for their principles, for the things they believed in. Your great-grandmother fought for the rights of Muggle-borns, for the regulation of dark artifacts, for the protection of magical creatures. She lost more often than she won. And by the time she died, the family was too worn to carry on the fight."
He gestured to the vault. "This is what remains. Enough gold to see you through Hogwarts, perhaps enough to restore the manor if you are careful. But not enough to buy influence. Not enough to buy power."
---
Edmund looked around the vault. The gold was not nothing. A thousand Galleons was more than most families had in savings, more than enough to live on for years if he was careful. But compared to the Malfoys, the Blacks, the Lestranges—families whose vaults were said to hold mountains of gold—it was a pittance.
He turned to the chest against the wall. The lock was old, the key long since lost, but he did not need a key. He drew his wand, touched the lock, and whispered, *"Alohomora."*
The lock clicked open. The chest lid rose.
Inside, there were documents. Parchments stacked in neat piles, each tied with a ribbon, each labeled in a hand that Edmund recognized from the letters in the manor. He lifted the first pile and read the label: *Prince v. Malfoy, 1789. Settlement of Debt.*
He opened it. The document was old, the ink brown, the language formal and precise. It detailed a loan made by the Prince family to the Malfoy family in 1763, to fund the expansion of the Malfoy estates. The loan had been repaid, with interest, in 1789. But the document was not a receipt. It was a contract, and in the margins, in a hand that was not the same as the one that had written the contract, were notes. *Repaid in full. Debt cleared. But the Malfoys remember.*
Edmund set the document aside and reached for another. *Prince v. Black, 1812. Marriage Contract.* This one was longer, more complex. It detailed the marriage of a Prince daughter to a Black son, the terms of the dowry, the rights of inheritance. The marriage, he saw from the notes, had produced no children. But the contract, unlike the debt, had never been formally closed. The alliance remained, in name at least, intact.
He read through the chest, document after document, for what felt like hours. There were debts owed and debts collected, marriage contracts that had produced heirs and contracts that had not, alliances that had been forged and alliances that had faded.
And now they were his.
---
He did not open the other vaults that day. There was too much to absorb, too much to understand. He asked Griphook to seal the main vault, thanked Mr. Thornbury for his time, and walked out of Gringotts into the afternoon light with his head spinning.
He found a bench near the fountain in the center of Diagon Alley and sat down, the folder of documents pressed against his chest. The square was busy now, the afternoon crowds filling the spaces that had been empty in the morning. He watched them pass and tried to make sense of what he had learned.
He had money, enough to live on but not enough to buy influence. He had a seat on the Wizengamot, a seat that had been held by a family too tired to use it. He had alliances, or the remnants of them, threads that connected the Princes to families that were still powerful.
He had the Malfoys, who remembered a debt that had been repaid a century ago but still owed the Princes the memory of a favor. He had the Blacks, who had married into the family once and never closed the contract. He had the Greengrasses, who had been allies since before Hogwarts was founded. He had the Potters, who had been friends when the Princes were still a family of consequence.
These were not nothing. But they were not enough.
He rose from the bench and walked back toward the Leaky Cauldron. There was work to do. Not the work of spells and potions, but the work of an heir. The work of a family that had been sleeping too long.
---