(Enchanting Melodies) Chapter 304: Murky and Tabby (Patreon)

Chapter 304: Murky and Tabby

25 December 1994, Gringotts

Hopefully, the odds would be in his favour. After taking a deep breath, Harry slowly walked into the cavern… After all, he had a vault to rob.

Harry wasn’t a professional robber… He never thought that he would ever have to do anything like this. If he needed gold, then there were hundreds of better ways to do it than breaking into one of the most secure locations in magical Britain. Unfortunately, he had no other choice, and so, he had decided that if he was going to be a robber, he would be a good one.

He had learned earlier that planning a robbery was similar to a stealthy infiltration of a place, something that he was pretty good at. The most important thing was, by far, the preparation. One needed to have a good idea of the place they were robbing, to make an accurate plan…

Unfortunately, Gringotts just didn’t allow anyone to know the details of what happened in their endless tunnels. Relations between mages and goblins were often hostile and the goblins were very adamant on anyone studying their secrets…

To be fair, Harry had no interest in their secrets, just the damn vault. He had gotten as much information on a small scale during his research on the Goblins. He had copied a large chunk of the Hogwarts library before, and more than a few wizards had documented their relationship with Gringotts. There were plenty of small facts that seemed harmless, but they gave Harry a better picture of the processes regarding the bank…

But since all entrances were unavailable to the public, he had to exploit the only vulnerability they had, which was to sneak into the carriage of someone visiting the bank…

It couldn’t be someone Harry was affiliated with, since the vaults were enchanted to remember each time, they were opened to be logged for security purposes, and also the Goblin was present during the event, which was often reviewed on a weekly basis. This made the prospect of hiding the heist to be pretty unrealistic. The inspection could theoretically happen the next day, or seven days away, and it wasn’t something that Harry could really avoid without taking way too many risks…

Anyway, Griphook was up for a bad time when the bank inevitably caught on to the robbery. They would also look at all his dealings, including the fact that he was there when Umbridge visited her vault just minutes prior to the robbery, making her a possible accomplice…

Honestly, it was sort of petty of him to do this. Umbridge, while an absolutely horrid human being, hadn’t done anything bad to Harry. He hadn’t met her since his guardianship hearing, but he still disliked her massively. He also felt bad for Griphook… Unfortunately, Harry needed to Goblin to get the Cup of Hufflepuff… If there was another way to retrieve it, he would have done it, but a goblin was needed to open the vault.

Anyway, the reason why Harry was so focused on preparation was that he found out quickly enough that the biggest threat for his robbery wasn’t the dragon, but the actual alarm system that the goblins put in place…

Dragons were not used for their physical might, but for the simple fact that their magical sensing was unparalleled. They had the ability to sense even the subtlest of magics and were trained to sound the alarm… Mages were so caught on the fact that they were the ‘protectors of their treasure’ that they didn’t even understand their true purpose…

Which was weird because the dragon in front of Harry was pretty pathetic, all things considered. He never expected to feel pity of all things towards a dragon. He knew that it would have been probably mistreated, but he didn’t expect for things to be this severe.

The dragon’s scales were dull and patchy, with large spots where they seemed to have fallen off entirely, showing raw, sore-looking skin. Its eyes were cloudy and unfocused, looking more like a tired old dog’s than a fearsome creature's. The dragon’s wings were tattered and torn, clearly not used for flying anymore, and its claws were chipped and broken.

Chains were wrapped around its legs and neck, leaving deep, painful-looking marks. When the dragon breathed, it came out in weak, shuddering bursts, barely producing a flicker of flame. It was painfully thin, its ribs sticking out sharply.

He could fully understand why someone would foolishly try to release the dragon out of a sense of compassion… Unfortunately, a dragon, no matter its state, was still a fearsome creature, a possible weapon of mass destruction. Even if this one was chained to be nothing more than a prop and a fancy form of magic detection for the goblins…

It was why Harry stayed under his cloak for entire minutes as the chained dragon kept looking around. It was frankly insane that the dragon understood that there was something magically unusual near him, but thankfully hadn’t really thought that it was a threat, and he has quickly returned back towards the cart when he almost felt detected… To think that a dragon’s sense would bypass a deathly hallow… No, that wasn’t right, Lily had done it too. The dragon had probably sensed a gap in magic or something similar and was weirded out. Still, it wasn’t the time to postulate, he wasn’t going to risk entering while the dragon was still conscious.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief. That could have made things a lot more complicated. Now, the question was how to deal with a dragon without using any magic…

No, that was insane… There had to be an easier way…

Harry used his Arcane Hearing to analyse the magic around the dragon and how it was tied to the wards… It took a bit of time to focus properly; Gringotts was filled to the brim with magic, and it was hard to distinguish anything… It was like trying to listen to the lyrics of a song while a thousand others were playing at the same time.

Anyway, it didn’t take long to find the resonance between the dragon and one of the runes… He couldn’t really understand the language, but the feeling of alarm was very distinct. After making a quick calculation of the speed of someone sounding the alarm, Harry jabbed his wand to the ground and released a pulse of directed magic, like a modified anti-ward, that went through walls and deliberately deactivated the connection between the dragon and the rune. It was just a small glitch for a few seconds, but it allowed Harry to open a small portal above the dragon and shape his magic once more, casting a stunning charm at the dragon tailored to ignore its magical protection. The spell flew into the portal, hitting the confused dragon’s head on the other side.

He took a deep breath when that was done. The dragon was knocked out by the spell and fell with a thud. Harry tried to mask any form of possible magical detection by masking the portal with the dragon’s magic, which any enchantment would be tailored to ignore to avoid too many false alarms…

It had seemingly worked, and now Harry slowly walked deeper into the cavern. He slowly walked with his Arcane Hearing active… There were hundreds of enchantments being layered, ones that Harry couldn’t really decipher without wasting too much time…

Instead, he ended the compulsion on Griphook, allowing him to enter. It would be better to learn from the goblin directly… As expected, Griphook growled when he noticed that the traps were activated and continued, “Fucking incompetent idiots… A least they knocked out the dragon.”

The goblin pressed his palm into one of the walls and the runes started to glow one by one in some weird pattern. The process took a few minutes, but quickly, Harry could hear the intensity of the magic slowly fade away into its deactivated state.

The grumpy goblin walked towards the Lestrange Vault. The vault door was massive and impressive, made of thick, dark metal with intricate patterns of interlocking runes. As the goblin approached, the door seemed to shimmer and ripple, like water disturbed by a stone. Slowly, it began to melt away, the metal dissolving into a silvery liquid that pooled at the edges before disappearing completely.

And the moment it did, Harry cast a quick compulsion charm, making Griphook look to his right, and cast a quick time-freezing petrification spell. The goblin froze in mid-movement, frozen in time, which allowed Harry all the time in the world to enter the vault.

Inside, the vault was a dazzling sight. Piles of gold galleons, silver sickles, and bronze Knuts were stacked high, glittering in the dim light. Precious gems and ornate jewellery lay scattered among the coins, their facets catching and reflecting the light in a mesmerizing dance of colours. Ancient artifacts, each with its own aura of magic, were carefully placed on pedestals and shelves. These included intricately carved wands, shimmering cloaks, and old tomes bound in rich leather.

The first thing he did was remove the obvious curses on every item on the vault. He had analysed them and there were a few disturbing ones… Then, he summoned the gold into an expanded pouch that he made, essentially emptying half the vault, with the artefacts being the only things remaining.

And that was when Harry used his Arcane Hearing to locate the purpose of his visit, the cup of Hufflepuff. It had been an immediate thing; the foulness and unnaturalness of its song could easily overwhelm anything else, like a loud screeching in the middle of an orchestra…

Harry warped the space around the cup and levitated it into an especially prepared pouch… He was planning on destroying it as quickly as possible but not in the middle of a bank with hundreds of detection enchantments around him. That was a recipe for disaster…

The rest was easy enough… He made copies of each item in the vault, and put the rest in another pouch… By the end, he left only a pile of gold, for the bank fees, and the temporary copies. He was tempted to put in some leprechaun gold, but an amount this large could easily be traced back. To avoid basic detection, he put up a fake illusion which also simulated a similar magical aura of the original cursed treasure, which would trick anyone who wasn’t focusing too hard. It wasn’t easy but he was able to make it semi-sustainable by using the ambient magic inside the vault to power the enchantment, making it possibly last for months at a time, without leaving any traces of his own magic, which could theoretically be used to track him down.

With that done, he left the vault as a happy man, and unfroze Griphook. The goblin quickly looked around and Harry cast another compulsion charm for him to think that everything was fine and that he had done the inspection. The goblin nodded to himself, closed the vault once more, reactivated the traps, and entered the cart.

The ride back was far less stressful, especially since Harry hadn’t been swarmed by angry goblins for stealing from them, a scenario that he was fully prepared for… When they arrived at the surface, one last compulsion charm, made Griphook think that he had already filed any paperwork, and just like that, Harry exited the bank under his invisibility cloak, having probably committed the heist of the century…

He walked towards his meeting point with Daphne and removed the cloak. He was immediately hugged by Daphne, who exclaimed, “Harry! You’re alright!”

“Yes, I’m fine. Everything went according to plan. I had to improvise a bit with the protections, but we expected that since we didn’t know much about them… Other than that, no one suspected anything.”

“I was so nervous…”

Harry hugged her back, “Don’t worry, everything went well. What about your side?”

“Umbridge is still asleep. Wormtail put back her key and her wand without any issues… The gold I withdrew is also in her money pouch, so we shouldn’t have any loose ends…”

Harry nodded, “Alright, let’s just go to Hogwarts. The vault took a bit more time that I would have liked, and we need to hurry before Blaise or Tracy get found out…”

She nodded and Harry created a portal to Hogwarts but near the dungeons… Before Daphne could question him, he put up some very strong privacy charms, took out the cup of Hufflepuff and placed it on the ground. He took out a basilisk fang from his pocket and stabbed it into the cup.

There was a moment of intense resistance, as if the cup itself were fighting back. A high-pitched scream echoed through the dungeons, the sound of the Horcrux's dark magic being expelled. The cup trembled violently, cracks spreading across its surface as the venom from the basilisk fang did its work. Finally, with a shattering sound, the cup split apart, a wisp of dark smoke escaping before dissolving into nothingness.

Daphne gave him a horrified look, “Longbottom has one of these things in his scar?”

He simply nodded, grabbed the remains of the legendary cup, put it in his bag, created another portal near their beacon with a wave of his wand, and then with some effort, followed up by creating the final portal to Durmstrang…

The both of them landed in his room in the Hogwarts Express turned dragon, and Daphne groaned, “What the hell, Harry?”

“Sorry, we’re a bit late…”

“So what?” she growled.

He shrugged, “I wanted to spend the rest of the night together at the ball since we missed most of it.”

Her features softened before she turned away with her cheeks slightly pinker than usual. Harry took that as a win, and just activated the signal to get Tracy and Blaise to return. In the meantime, he changed back into his official clothes, and Daphne did the same in her room. By the time Tracy and Blaise had returned, they looked exactly like they did when they left.

Harry opened the portal one last time and they left, looking grateful. They probably had a very nice time together during the ball…

With that done, he bowed to Daphne and said, “Lady Greengrass, would you do me the honour of joining me for the rest of the ball.”

The blonde snorted, “Stop acting like a snob, Harry. Let’s just go…”

And just like that, they went back to the ball, as if nothing had happened. No one knew that they had essentially pulled off the heist of the century. After all, the night was still young…