“Ahh, Miss Potter,” Banlor noted, as the girl trotted up to him. “You’ve been stopping by a lot,” he observed.
“I have,” she agreed, bowing her head briefly. “Been needing a lot of supplies, and some of them can get quite expensive.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. His opinion of humans was far higher than it had been just three short years before, when he had met those two girls that had set the exchange rate for Equestrian bits; almost all of those Equestrian humans were infinitely polite, and it was bleeding off onto the non-Equestrian humans as well.
“Are you going to have enough to last you through your schooling?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” Hailey answered, flicking a lock of her hair out of her eyes. “I’ve actually been earning quite a bit more than I’ve been spending- it’s just been getting direct-deposited into an Equestrian bank, and it’s just as safe there as it is here, so…” She shrugged. “Similarly, getting gold from my vault here is easier than hauling bits from Equestria to change them out for galleons here.”
“Ahh,” he nodded. “Another ride to your Vault, then?” He’d heard before that the Equestrian banks worked differently from Gringotts. Their accounts didn’t actually hold physical money, meaning that the bank could be robbed without causing their clients to lose money- but in return, money was all they could keep safe.
She nodded as well. “Yes, please.”
He grinned, turned to the side, and held a hand up to his mouth as he called. “Griphook!”
The ride down to her Vault was, as usual, boring.
Though of course, it hadn’t always been boring. Throughout the first two years of her schooling, she’d only visited it twice; she hadn’t really had a reason to visit it more frequently. Each of those times, it had been a wild ride- a blast, so to speak.
Then she’d finished her Papa Tango, become an Etrah, and visited her vault only once. That time, it had been a nauseating trip.
So she’d gone ahead and ascended… and suddenly, the ride was child’s play- no, foal’s play. She had fond memories of racing Rainbow Dash across the skies and through fun little obstacle courses- and winning, even. No Gringotts cart could even begin to compare to that.
But eventually, they reached her Vault, and she stepped out of the cart. She hummed softly as she drew the key from her hair to open the door and went inside; Griphook waited patiently by the cart. It was about the fifth time he’d taken her to her Vault, after all.
Hailey sighed as she glanced around. There was a little bit less gold in here than there had been when she’d first come down, and a lot less silver or bronze; while she’d suggested to Hermione that she’d used her Equestrian funds to stock up on extras, she’d actually used her British funds. The bits she’d withdrawn when Hermione was with her had been left underneath Rarity’s sewing desk without anypony noticing, as payment for her gown for the Yule Ball- a payment Rarity wouldn’t have accepted otherwise. She hadn’t told the mare- and didn’t plan to- exactly how difficult it was to find out how expensive her wares usually were, since she almost never received the ‘list price’ when she asked directly, even if she mentioned Celestia’s unpaid labor laws.
About the only way Hailey had found to get Rarity to accept full payment for an item, at its full list price, when making it for a friend… was to get her to bill the crown directly for it.
But in any case, she was here now, and she needed to stock up on a bit of gold again. Her last handfuls of galleons had vanished far too quickly in getting extra supplies that she didn’t really need, so…
She paused, then drew her money bag from her hair as well, shrugged, and scooped the last of her knuts into it. She liked using exact change, so these things disappeared like paper in a bonfire.
She had quite a few more sickles left- a decent-sized pile. She shoveled a couple handfuls of that into her bag, before turning to face the mountain of gold. It still looked basically the same as it had years before, when she’d first come in; there were simply too many galleons in here to spend that quickly.
So, just like last time, she picked a random spot on the mountainside to plunge her hand into to retrieve some galleons.
But as she closed her hand on a few coins and pulled it out, triggering a small avalanche of coins she’d also pour into her bag, her fingers caught briefly on something.
She scowled, looking at that spot- then, instead of cleaning up the coins now littering the floor at her feet, she triggered another avalanche above that point and used it to fill her bag. Finally, she put her bag back into her hair, and started scooping large amounts of coins to the side. Hundreds of galleons rained down on the spot where the knuts had been.
Finally, she stopped.
That was definitely a hand, sticking out of the gold… and, when she probed at it with her thaumic senses, she recognized a simple stasis spell.
“That’s a hand,” she muttered, then looked back at Griphook. “I’m going to use some magic to move a lot of coins?”
Griphook nodded his acknowledgement.
Hailey nodded as well, stepping back from the mountain, and took a deep breath. It was always a good idea to make sure the goblins knew what she was planning on doing before she actually did it- they didn’t tend to like magic in the first place, and surprising them with it was… Not a very good idea.
Not that they could hurt her, but she didn’t want to flaunt that at them too.
“Okay,” she muttered, and put out her hands. First, the base spell- gravity manipulation, to negate the weight of all the coins. She felt Griphook shiver as the coins began to shift, despite the distance between them.
Second, a sorting spell, to organize everything. It didn’t immediately take effect, though- it wasn’t sure where to put everything.
So third, a stacking spell. The galleons would be neatly stacked against the back wall, sickles on one side of the door, and knuts- if there were any left- the other side of the door. Anything else would join her in the remaining floorspace in front of the door.
Almost instantly, coins started moving. The mountain of gold seemed to lurch towards her- creating space against the back wall for the galleon stacks- before grinding suddenly to a halt. Sorting and stacking spells weren’t instant, after all- and stacking spells were polite enough to bring things to a halt when making space for the stacks.
Sorting spells weren’t, though. Knuts and sickles suddenly shot out from underneath the mountain to stack themselves on either side of the door, where she had told them to, sending galleons- and the existing pile of sickles- flying. Her sorting spell was smart enough to block anything from leaving the vault- but everything else, save a couple inches of ‘safe zone’ around each stack, was quickly a bedlam of flying coins.
She tacked on a quick shield charm to keep them a couple inches off of her as well. She might be indestructible, and the sorting charm might be keeping anything from impacting anything, but she didn’t fancy getting them stuck in all sorts of uncomfortable nooks in her clothing while she waited for the sorting charm to finish.
In the gaps between the coins, she could see Griphook staring open-mouthed as more coins sped out of nowhere to stack themselves.
After a few minutes, she stepped slowly out of the bedlam to join Griphook just outside the Vault. “What did my ancestors do to earn all this gold?” she muttered. “I’ve already sorted a good twenty thousand galleons!”
“S-Sorted?” Griphook asked.
She nodded. “Antigravity to reduce the magic required to sort, a quick sorting charm that also counts the items it’s sorted, and a stacking charm to stack the coins neatly. Do you mind if I tie them off? It’ll make withdrawals, deposits, and keeping track of how much I have a lot easier, without having to do this every so often.” She gestured at the bedlam inside the vault- which didn’t seem to have gone down much.
“So long as it doesn’t interfere with anything outside the Vault, we don’t care what standing enchantments are placed inside of it.”
“Ahh,” she nodded. “Then I’ll just…” She closed her eyes for a second. “There.”
When Hailey returned the following day, coins were still bouncing around in her Vault- though not nearly as many. She and Griphook could actually see the veritable wall of gold forming against the far wall by now, with the walls of silver and bronze to either side of the door.
“It’s still not done yet,” Hailey muttered, with a sigh. “Looks pretty close, though.” She reached forward to touch the invisible boundary across the door, that the coins were bouncing off of.
Then she recoiled with a gasp. “Wh-What the hell am I going to use nine million galleons for?” she muttered, leaning heavily against the wall. “Now I’m seriously wondering what my ancestors did!”
“That is a lot,” Griphook agreed gently.
“Though…” Hailey reached out, and touched the boundary again. “Fifty thousand galleons worth of sickles, fifteen hundred worth of knuts… one deed, and one house elf?” She tilted her head. “I wonder how that happened?” She looked through the door. “Anyways, this looks like it should finish in another…” She paused, using a quick counting charm to count the flying coins, then did the quick math with the known speed of the sorting and stacking charms. “Um, hour or so.” She sighed. “I guess that’s it for now, and I’ll be back after a stop at Fortescue’s.”
“Okay, so that’s done. About time, too.” Hailey sighed, and walked into the Vault again and looking around. “Oh, neatly done, too.” She drew her money bag from her hair again, and opened it.
There was a brief flurry of coins flying in and out of it, then she closed and stowed it again. “Yup. Just as easy as I thought.”
Finally, she stepped over to the center, where a house elf and a large scroll were lying on the floor. The vault looked a lot bigger now that all the coins were stacked so densely. The elf was wearing a neat little dress, splayed out on the floor and still frozen under her stasis spell, so Hailey picked up the scroll first.
It unrolled easily, and she scanned down it quickly. “Huh,” she muttered. “So I guess I own an estate here in Britain too, not just a ridiculous Equestrian mansion.” She sighed.
“Equestrian?”
“Yes, in Equestria.” She looked down, at the source of the voice, to see that the house-elf had sat up, and was looking up at her. “Well hello there.”
The elf blinked at her. “General Kenobi,” she answered.
Hailey blinked. “Uh… what?”
She shook her head. “I…” She trailed off, and looked down. “I don’t know.”
“You… don’t know?” Hailey asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve been here for…” She paused, looking around. “A very long time,” she finally muttered. “Master was very, very poor, and couldn’t afford to feed me, so I was put to sleep to await a future, wealthier master.”
“Very poor,” Hailey muttered slowly, looking down at the deed in her hands.
The elf wrung her hands. “He had the house, but nothing else,” she muttered. “He put it in a Fidelus-stasis to the deed to preserve it for a richer descendent, then bound the deed shut- and to this Vault- until such time as a hundred thousand galleons could be presented. I…” She paused. “I set my stasis to cancel when it unlocked.” She looked around the Vault. “How… How long has it been?”
“No idea,” Hailey muttered.
She sighed. “Oh. Well… English changed, so…”
Hailey paused, then blinked. “Oh! You were using a Lingual Time Compensation Spell, weren’t you?”
She nodded. “I was.”
“Ahh. The good news is those things are easy to measure. One moment.” She held her hand out, closed her eyes, and cast the requisite spells. They wouldn’t be possible with a wand- but they were simple Unicorn magic spells, invented hardly fifty years after Starswirl’s time.
It took her about two seconds. “Total span… about one thousand, four hundred and twelve years.” She opened her eyes again. “That’s quite a while.” She sighed, and looked down at the deed. “A Fidelus-Stasis, huh?” she muttered. “Neither of those charms are foolproof, and combining them wouldn’t have done any favors, either.” She sighed. “Whelp. I’ve got another hour or so before bed time, so why don’t we go check it out real quick?”
“It was… Right here, right?” Hailey looked up, having just teleported herself and the little elf- she hadn’t asked what her name was- to the location that magic ascribed to the address in the deed.
“Eek!” the elf squeaked- before looking around. “Y-Yeah… It’s been…”
“Overrun by pests,” Hailey observed, putting her hands on her hips. “Apparently, at any rate.”
Right at that moment, the massive, wooden drawbridge shattered and crashed down into the moat of lava below, leaving just a few remains.
“Yup,” Hailey nodded. “And that didn’t even look like a magical pest- termites, of all things.” She sighed. “Now, what’s the best way to deal with it?” She looked up. “This place is layered in so many anti-teleportation spells it’ll take my toughest one to punch through it- and there’s at least three that specifically mention house-elves.”
The elf simply stared.
Hailey, meanwhile, looked around. “Hmm. This is… rather larger than the deed suggested. I was expecting a mansion, not…” She sighed. “This thing looks like a fortress straight out of Hell. Lava moat, black stone walls, darkened, withered courtyard, though at least part of that is the moonlight…” She glanced up at the remains of the drawbridge. “And it would seem the stasis wasn’t enough to keep pests out, so God only knows what we’ll find in there- and it’s almost certainly not livable.” She rubbed her chin. “I guess you’re my elf now? Or am I misinterpreting something?”
“Er- Yes, Young Mistress,” the elf bowed, stepping away from her. “Is- Is there a Master, or…?”
She shook her head. “My parents are dead,” she answered calmly. “I am the only living heir to the name I carry.” She sighed. “Yet I’m hardly a Hogwarts student, and during the summer, I live with some muggle relatives.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure where you’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
The elf tilted her head. “You mentioned a mansion in Equestria?” she asked.
“Well yeah, but that’s across the dimensional barrier, and the magic patterns in Equestria are… Ahh, unhealthy, shall we say, for anything not from Equestria.”
“But you can go there…?”
She nodded. “Yes. I went through a rather lengthy and, quite frankly, painful magical process to make me part-Equestrian, making me able to not just survive those patterns but exploit them. But that same isn’t true for you, so…”
“You mentioned a Hogwarts?”
“Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,” she nodded. “It was constructed about two hundred and fifty years after you went to sleep- and while it’s got space for me to sleep, I’m not so sure about you.”
“I can…” She took a deep breath, and let it out. “It was early morning when I went to sleep. I can work through the night, maybe fix it up a little.”
“Yeah, I suppose… but I don’t really want to impose,” Hailey muttered. She drew her wand, pointed it up at the shattered remains of the drawbridge, and focused her magic on her wand. “Reparo.”
The simple charm was normally only useful for small objects- but Hailey knew that, if she gave it enough power, it could fix anything. So, exactly as she expected, the bits of drawbridge remaining suddenly crackled and popped, the termites violently removed by an Equestrian anti-pest spell, then grew down to reform the full drawbridge once again. Finally, it hinged slowly down and landed at her feet with a dull boom.
“It’s kinda impressive how they got a wooden drawbridge to stand just two feet above the surface of the lava,” Hailey mused, looking at it. “I’ll admit, I’m curious how that works.” She chuckled. “Probably the same way as how we’re not feeling the heat in front of it.”
“It wouldn’t be an imposition,” the elf observed, and looked up at her. “I like to work. My kind likes to work- that’s why I helped so many to find work in wizarding homes, back before…” She sighed.
Hailey looked at her. “So… You’re one of the first, then?”
She nodded. “One of the first, yes. Are… Are house-elves still around?”
Hailey nodded. “Yes. But over the last fourteen hundred years, the relationship between our kinds has…” She sighed. “Worsened, I’d say. House-elves fast became the slaves of the rich, got treated like dirt, and forced to wear rags. It’s reached the point where, nowadays, you release- or dismiss- a house-elf by giving them clothing, and being free is a massive disgrace to a house-elf.” She sat down on the side of the drawbridge, dangling her feet over the edge; a quick heatproofing charm kept the lava from destroying her clothes. “It’s… disappointing,” she sighed. “Even the house-elves at Hogwarts, some of the best-treated elves in the entire nation, can’t wear real clothes because that stigma has been ingrained into their brains so far that giving them clothes actually drives them to tears. Of pain, not gratitude.”
The elf looked at the edge of the drawbridge. “A-aren’t you burning yourself?”
Hailey grinned. “Not with a heatproofing charm,” she answered. She laid flat on her back, still dangling her legs over the edge, and looked over at her. “I’m almost stupidly powerful, but I don’t know how to start in stopping this sorry dirtball from spinning its way unto damnation.” She gestured vaguely at the field around the fortress, and sighed. “Hopefully, I’ll learn something that’ll help with that in my remaining three and a half years at Hogwarts.” She gazed up at the night sky for a few seconds. “Come to think of it, what’s your name?”
She sat on the side of the drawbridge as well, though not dangling her legs over the edge. “Aurelia,” she muttered, softly. “My name’s Aurelia.” She sighed herself, looking over towards the rest of the fortress. “I spent just three years taking care of this place before willingly going into stasis, but…” She trailed off, looking up at the building. “It’s going to be a lot of work.”
“If you’d like, I can pick up a few books on pests tomorrow,” Hailey muttered, raising her hand up in front of her to look at it. “There are probably at least a few new techniques for dealing with them from the last fourteen hundred years.”
“Isn’t that expensive?”
“Nah,” she chuckled. “Mass production has come about since you went to sleep, so books are printed by the thousands by now. Especially the ones like that. Not to mention, you saw how much was in that Vault, right?”
“W-Was the spell telling the truth…?”
She nodded. “Yup. I cast it. But ten million galleons is…” She paused. “Quite a bit more than I’ll ever need. Plus, I’m already employed- and it’s a very well-paying job.” She sighed. “It’s so well-paying that, if I were to convert my pay to galleons and put it in that vault, we’d quickly run out of space. And to top that off, I’m an immortal, invulnerable proto-goddess that’s basically destined to rule the world, so I’m probably just going to keep earning more and more.” She gazed up at the stars, and traced out a constellation with her fingertip. “Mind, I’ll probably be spending more and more at the same time, and managing the economy of an entire nation or even planet before too long, but…” She sighed. “But what else can I do?”