//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3:  Gringotts RW 
// Story: The Girl who Didn't Just Live 
// by computerneek 
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Ginny was still tired when she walked down to breakfast about a week before her birthday.  She had stayed up way too long the night before, examining her body and searching for anything- anything- that she wanted to change…  but she hadn’t found anything.  Just like every time she’d looked at herself ever since her reincarnation- she’d yet to do any changes to her body, simply because she was happy with it.  A lot of even physical psionic effects were becoming easy, as well- and her repertoire was expanding with ever-increasing speed; just two nights before that, she’d snuck out of the house in the middle of the night to test some offensive techniques she’d suddenly realized she knew.
She had no idea why she knew them, but she did.
But the fact remained that, this morning, she was tired.  So tired she didn’t notice that they had guests until she was just stepping into the kitchen.
That woke her in a hurry.  She let out a squeak of surprise and wrenched herself, half-physically and half-psionically, back out of sight.
Who was it?  Who was visiting?  She probed with her psionic senses, but didn’t recognize two of the signatures in the kitchen.
Then she looked down at herself.
She let out a soft sigh of exasperation, looked around to make sure nobody could see her…  and released the psionic invisibility she hadn’t realized she’d had, let alone activated.
Though it made sense she’d be able to do something like that, given what else she could do with her power.
Finally, since her psionics weren’t telling her who the visitor was, she focused instead on her ears.
“That was Ginny,” her mother was saying.  “She’s always so shy, any more.  Makes me wonder if she’ll be okay when it comes time to send her to Hogwarts.”
“That’s exactly what me and Pandora have been worrying about Luna,” an unfamiliar man’s voice answered.  “And the reason for the visit.  She’s really shy, and…”  He paused.  “Well, a bit strange as well, so if we don’t set her up with friends before she goes to Hogwarts, we worry she’ll just end up being a loner- and getting bullied, to boot.”
She blinked.  Pandora?  Luna?  That must be Xenophilius Lovegood…  who wouldn’t have a hope of detecting her soul, though his wife Pandora Lovegood might be able to, if she looked closely.
Luna, on the other hand…  hadn’t existed before she’d reincarnated, so she had no idea.  They’d been born at about the same time…
Or technically, Luna had been born about three months and five days after she’d started the resurrection process, making her a half a year younger than Hailey and about the same amount older than Ginny…  but that was beside the point.
“Speaking of Pandora,” her father began, “how is she doing?”
“You know how she is,” Xenophilius sighed.  “Always doing those experiments.  She managed to blow herself up last week- thank Merlin she survived.  She’s still at St. Mungo’s; the healers expect to be releasing her in another couple months.”  He sighed again, and Ginny could sense his sadness.  “They said it was a miracle that she was still alive.  I…  I worry about her too.”
Ginny let out a sigh.  Pandora and Xenophilius were one of the strangest couples she’d ever met…  but it was good to hear that Luna hadn’t lost her mother so young.  That kind of thing could do so much damage to her psyche that it wasn’t something she could wish on even her worst enemy.
On even Lord Voldemort.





Ginny shivered involuntarily.  Some personality changes could be expected when reincarnating, as she adapted to her new body- but she hadn’t expected to become nearly so curious…  Nor had she expected her secretiveness after those blue crystals had started appearing to develop into true shyness.
And now, those two qualities were at war with one another.  After breakfast, her father had gone to work, then her mother and Xenophilius had decided that ‘a friend would be healthy’ for both her and Luna…  so they had essentially thrown them at each other in the living room.  At least the rest of the family wasn’t here; Ron was out de-gnoming the garden with Fred and George, Percy was doing homework (it seemed a bit late in the summer to still have some left, but he’d blushed furiously when she’d mentioned it to him), and Charlie was in the kitchen talking with the two adults.  Bill had moved out a couple days ago, headed for Egypt to start his new job.
So now, she sat on one end of the couch…  and Luna Lovegood, likely to be one of the strangest girls alive thanks to her parents, had sat on the other end of the couch.  She’d even been able to confirm Luna’s strangeness a bit during breakfast- she’d noticed the girl had a psionic signature that didn’t make sense.
But both of them were terribly shy.
Ginny decided that it was time for her to man up-  No, girl up?  Woman up?  Hmm, that bore thinking on.  But it was time for her to call upon her skills as the reincarnation of Lord Voldemort and actually start the conversation.
“...  Hi,” Ginny muttered, slowly, with her face averted.
“Hi,” Luna answered softly, almost distractedly.
Ginny studied the fluctuations in her psionic signature, rather than reading her face- neither of them were looking at one another, so that was difficult- or using legilimency as Voldemort always had.  That was…  Yes.  That was definitely concern; the psionic signature always carried at least some emotional information.
She glanced up.
Yes, Luna did look concerned.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
Luna sighed, then glanced up as well, before meeting her eyes and studying her in turn.
She resisted the urge to break eye contact with the sheer force of the Dark Lord Voldemort’s will, and only barely managed it.
“You look…”  Luna began, then paused.  “Strange.”
She blushed.  Probably her inhumanly red hair.  She swept a lock of it aside, flicking it behind her.  “Er…  Yeah.”
“It’s like there’s two of you,” Luna muttered, almost transfixed.
Then it clicked.
Luna could see her soul.
Then Luna sighed, and averted her eyes.  “S-Sorry.  I’m always seeing things that aren’t there.”
“That was there,” Ginny told her flatly.  Her first order of business would be to find out what Luna thought of her soul; that would let her determine whether it would be necessary to abandon her body or not.  She really didn’t want to abandon it.
Luna looked up.  “What?”
“What you’re looking at…”  She shivered, and curled up, wrapping her legs in her arms.  “It’s my soul.”  She paused, and looked at Luna.  “I’m…  I’m a reincarnation, and one of the side effects…”  She sighed, unsure of how to word it.  “The fusing process isn’t done yet, so I technically have two bodies, one physical and one astral, until next year.”  She looked down at the couch between them.  “It’s a secret, though.”  She sighed.  “I…  I am not proud of my past life.”
Luna rose from the couch, and moved over to sit next to her.  It seemed like she’d successfully broken through the shyness barriers- even her own- and Luna was surprisingly comfortable with her after she did.  As if to prove her point, Luna gently rested an arm across her shoulders.
She shivered at the contact, but allowed it.
“I won’t tell,” Luna told her.  “They won’t believe me if I do, anyways.”  She paused.  “May I ask what that past was?”
She looked at her, and debated withholding it…  but something told her it was okay.  She wasn’t sure what, but she somehow knew she could trust it- that she could trust Luna.
So she checked her psionic sense, to make sure that only Luna would hear.
Then she projected a sonic wall around herself and Luna with her psionics, such that no sound would get either in or out.  It was something she didn’t know she could do before…  but it had come to mind, and she had suddenly realized she could do it, right on time.
It was very energy-intensive, though- more so even than the invisibility from earlier- so she couldn’t maintain it for long, and it was going to tire her out.  But, it did the job she needed it to.
“I…”  She hesitated.  Worst-case scenario, she still had a week before the reincarnation truly set in.  She really didn’t want to do that- her parents would probably be devastated if she simply dropped dead one day- but it was technically an option.  Even after that week, all she had to do was get her hands on a wand and cast the Killing Curse on herself; anything less wouldn’t suffice to kill her…  Once the reincarnation set in, at least; until it did, anything that would kill an ordinary ten-year-old would also kill her.
At least, assuming her psionics didn’t have any passive protection effects.
“I am the Dark Lord Voldemort reborn,” she muttered softly.
Luna looked at her.  “But you’re not a bad person,” she observed calmly.
She raised an eyebrow, allowing her sonic barrier to collapse.  She was right, it was tiring her out fast.  “You’ve only just met me.”
“I can see it,” Luna told her.  “Your…  color.  Bad people are red.”
She raised her other eyebrow, then used one hand to draw her candy apple red hair over her shoulder, so it would be clearly visible to both of them- and contrast interestingly with Luna’s waist-length dirty blonde hair, which was pouring down over Luna’s shoulders, both front and rear.
Luna actually smiled, letting out a soft chuckle.  “No, not that.  And darker.  But you’re not.  You’re…”  She paused.  “You’re white.”
She tilted her head.  “What’s that mean?”
She shook her head.  “No idea.  I’ve never seen it before.”
“Hmm,” Ginny muttered, rubbing her chin with one hand.  “I think…  Yes.  I might have an idea of what you’re looking at.”  She paused.  “I don’t know how to describe it with colors, though, so…”  She sighed, then looked up at Luna.  “What color are you?”
Luna shook her head.  “I don’t know,” she muttered.  “It won’t appear in the mirror.”  She sighed, then looked away.
She nodded.  “Yeah, that sounds like it alright.”  She smiled.  “Don’t believe them when they say you’re seeing things that aren’t real.  It’s real alright, it’s just so hard to see that most people- even me- can’t see it.”
She looked up at her.  “You can’t see it?”
She shook her head.  “I can’t see it.  However, when I was a phantom before I reincarnated, I could see it…  and I remember it.”  She paused for a few seconds to give Luna a chance to respond, but she didn’t, only looking thoughtfully at the floor.  “So…  what were you worried about earlier?”
Luna sighed.





On Thursday, August 12th, 2021, the mail flap clicked.
Hailey finished serving breakfast and, before digging into her own, went to get the mail.  She always liked to take a peek at it, and guess at what was what, on her way back to the kitchen.
Today, there wasn’t much on the doormat.  A brown envelope that looked like a bill was on top, then a postcard with a very generic photo on one side from Dudley’s Aunt Marge- who was Hailey’s…  she never was sure what.  Petunia was her aunt, so Vernon was her uncle-in-law- but Marge, who was Vernon’s sister…
She was supposed to call Marge ‘aunt’, which was probably at least sort of accurate, but she didn’t really know what she was supposed to call the…  family bully when it came down to it.
Marjorie Dursley was, presumably at least, a decent woman- except she absolutely hated Hailey for some reason that even Petunia couldn’t figure out, and always bossed Dudley around as well.  Nobody liked her, but she was richer than even Vernon and had friends in high places, so they couldn’t just tell her where to put her nonsense.
She glanced briefly down the postcard as she carried the mail back to the kitchen.  She’d never figured out what the difference was, but she’d always been able to read far faster than anyone else- nevermind her perfect recall.  Not that she usually let it show, or ever to anyone outside the family- people always got weirded out if they found out how fast she could read or how clearly she could remember from even a brief glance.  In any case, it looked like Marge was writing to tell them she was sick; she’d eaten a ‘funny whelk’...  She kinda felt bad about it, but she found herself hoping that it was going to make Marge’s life very unpleasant for a while.
Then she flipped the postcard to the bottom of the pile, and banished Marge entirely from her mind.
Then she paused.  This was a thick parchment envelope, addressed in green ink to a ‘Mr. H Potter’ in her bedroom…  and it had no stamp.  She scowled at it for a second, then flipped it to the bottom of the pile as well… to find the bill again.
When she got back to the kitchen, she handed Vernon the mail and sat down to eat.
Vernon also went through the mail.  He opened the bill, snorted at it in disgust, and flipped over the postcard.  “Marge is ill,” he informed Petunia.  “Ate a funny whelk.”  He sighed, then paused, gazing at the parchment envelope.
Then he turned it over, revealing a purple wax seal.  He showed the seal to Petunia.
“I’d forgotten about that,” Petunia observed, rubbing her chin.  “But isn’t it a bit late?”
Vernon shrugged.  “It arrived now, so…”  He sighed.
“Might as well,” Petunia nodded.  “Maybe they’re just a bit late this year.”
He chuckled.  “Maybe,” he muttered, before laying it flat on the table and sweeping it towards Hailey.
She captured it easily.  “It says mister,” she informed them calmly, without picking it up to reveal the address; he’d slid it across face-down.
“So it does,” Vernon answered.
“They don’t know you’re a girl,” Petunia told her.
She raised an eyebrow.  “That sounds complicated,” she observed, before popping the seal off with her finger and opening the envelope one-handed.  She shook the letter open, gave it a quick glance between bites, then repeated for the second page, before returning them both to the envelope.  “Definitely a bit late,” she informed them.  “Says ‘we await your owl by no later than July Thirty First’.  Pretty sure they don’t mean 2022- but if they don’t, it’s either two weeks late or two years early.”
Petunia laughed.  Her aunt and uncle knew about her perfect recall and reading speed, and didn’t mind when she let them show.
“So, this thing’s real?” Hailey asked.
“Ahh…  Yes,” Vernon said, rubbing his hair nervously.  “We, ahh…  must’ve forgotten to tell you about…  yeah.”
“Huh,” she muttered, glancing at it again.  “Perhaps after breakfast, then?”
“What?” Dudley asked suddenly.  He’d been following the conversation as well, though with an increasingly confused expression.  “What is it?”
“Not for you,” Petunia answered off-handedly, to Dudley’s evident irritation.





Professor McGonagall rang the doorbell, and waited.
There was no response.
She tried again- but again, there was no response.
She looked sideways at the empty driveway, and sighed.  Of course they would be out today!
A quick charm confirmed that the house was empty, before she headed back towards Hogwarts.
She’d have to come back tomorrow.





“I think I see it,” Hailey said suddenly.
She and Petunia were walking up Charing Cross Road.  After breakfast, Vernon had taken Dudley to get ‘babysat’ for the day with Gordon, one of his gang members, while Petunia took Hailey into the living room to explain what they’d apparently forgotten to explain as she grew up.
Apparently, she was a witch.  Not only that, she was known to be a very powerful witch…
Who the magical community believed was a boy named Harry, because her parents had told the world she was a boy…  then the way she’d survived when her parents had not had made her famous.
And she didn’t mean ‘witch’ in the traditional sense Hailey was familiar with, either- she meant it as ‘female wizard’, not ‘evil woman with a mole on her crooked nose that always rides a broomstick and brews nasty potions in fairy tales’.
It kinda made sense, when she thought about it.  She’d been banned from playing an offensive role in any of the team sports in PE after slam-dunking the ball mid-triple-backflip over the basketball hoop while the rest of the class was still halfway across the court.  She’d also been banned from a defensive role shortly thereafter, simply because she was too good at it…  so the PE teacher, at a loss for how she could participate without completely overshadowing everyone else, usually had her run around with everyone but never interact with the ball and stay out of the other players’ way.  Whenever they played something like tennis, she was set alone against three or four other students for a somewhat even match.  Once, they had even experimented with having her play multiple tennis games at once…  but it was too confusing for the other students, with all the balls flying around.
A disparity like that could easily be caused by magic.
And that wasn’t even counting that she was fluent in every language that anyone in the school could name, even the ones she’d never heard of before!
“You see it?” Petunia asked.  “Where?”
It didn’t make much sense that the Leaky Cauldron, the building they were headed to, would be invisible to Petunia…  but such it was, theoretically.  Wizards.  Of course.
She pointed down the street.  “Two blocks,” she informed Petunia.  She’d always been able to read every line whenever she took eye exams, no matter how far she was from the sign- and without relying on her memory, almost like even her vision was that much more precise as well…  Both near and far, because she could see just as clearly right in front of her.  That…  power wasn’t too useful in this crowded sidewalk, but she’d spotted it through a gap in the crowd.
Petunia looked, evidently didn’t see it, and sighed.  “Alright.”
When Vernon had returned from getting Dudley ‘babysat’, he’d picked Petunia and Hailey up and taken them to the train station…  then Hailey and Petunia had taken the train to London while Vernon drove to work.





Ginny shivered.
It was the day after her tenth birthday- the first day in which she couldn’t simply abandon her body and flee if she was detected.
Well…  Technically second, but that phase of her reincarnation had set in just past dinner on her birthday, so it didn’t really count.  That made it the number one most vulnerable day of her life as Ginny Weasley, even though it was also the first day in which nothing short of the Killing Curse could force her out of her body.
And she was in the Leaky Cauldron…  alone.  She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to get separated from her family…  but she had.  How?  Was it one of Fred and George’s pranks?  Just the year before, they’d managed to get Ron stranded in Diagon Alley for almost an hour before anybody noticed!
She was sure they thought it was funny, but if it turned out to be them, she was going to give them a piece of the Dark Lord Voldemort.  It wasn’t just scary, it was absolutely terrifying!
She was trapped.  Muggle London was a capital Bad Idea (though probably actually less dangerous to her than here, when it came down to it).  She didn’t have any Floo Powder, so she couldn’t use the Floo to return to the Burrow to wait.  And of course, she didn’t have a wand to open the door into Diagon Alley with!
Sure, she could apparate, but then she’d have to immediately kill herself because that would give her away to anyone with even half a brain.  She was also fairly sure she knew a way to open the door wandlessly, but that would be just as revealing.
So she was trapped.
She’d already hidden herself in the back of a corner booth.  She was tempted to use her psionic invisibility…  but what good would that do?  Give her away?  Well…  not quite.  But it would tell the world she was a Royal…  which would get the attention of people like Dumbledore, who would recognize her for who she used to be.  Nevermind that it didn’t work very well in crowds like the one in the Cauldron, thanks to working by way of observer-dependent illusions.
So yes, it would give her away, just not directly.
“So what next?”
She jumped, looking up.  Who was-?
Right.  From her position, she was hidden from most of the crowd.  Only three people in the whole pub could see her…  Except, of course, for the front door to Muggle London and the two muggle-dressed people that had just entered.  One was a blonde adult, and the other was around Ginny’s age, with wavy black hair going out of sight.
Ginny buried her face in her knees again.  She’d made sure to position herself so that, even curled up as she was, the underside of her skirts were not visible to the rest of the pub.  She also tuned out their voices, focusing on listening for her mother’s voice.  Or her brothers, but they weren’t as distinct, so she wasn’t as sure that she’d recognize them.
A second later, an arm was suddenly laid across her shoulders.
She froze in shock…  then slowly raised her head and turned to see who was touching her.
It was the girl that had just entered.  She’d somehow moved all the way from the entrance to her booth, and slipped through it to sit next to her, in about a second.  Even her companion- her mother?- was staring at her, though nobody else in the pub seemed to have noticed anything.
“It’s all right,” the girl told her.  “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”  She hugged her gently.
Ginny stared, too stunned to do much else.  Even her fear and terror were ebbing away.  Who was this girl?
“It’s alright,” the girl repeated, drawing a finger through her hair.
It was an oddly relaxing feeling.
“It’s alright,” the girl repeated again, smiling kindly at her.  “What happened?”
She stared at the girl.  All her fear was gone, just like that.  How had she done that?  Who was she?
On top of that, she couldn’t help but trust this girl.  Why?  Who was she?
“Who are you?” she asked.
“So you’re curious, eh?”  The girl chuckled softly.  “You can call me Hailey.”
“H…Hailey,” she muttered, hugging her back.  Seriously, how was she doing it?  “I…  I got separated from my family.”
“Okay,” Hailey nodded.  “Let’s see if we can find them, shall we?  Do you know where they went?”
“Diagon Alley,” she muttered.  “They’re going Hogwarts shopping.”  She sighed.  “I don’t have a wand, though, so I can’t follow.”
“Diagon Alley,” Hailey repeated amusedly.  “Hmm…  Where’s that?”
“Through the back door,” she muttered.  “But you need a wand to open the wall-portal.”
Hailey smiled.  “There are people going through that door every few minutes,” she informed her.  “We merely have to wait for one of them.”  She chuckled.  “I also happen to be here for Hogwarts shopping, so do you want to search for them first or just tag along until we inevitably cross paths?”
Ginny stared at her, the two options warring with one another in her mind.  On the one hand, she knew Molly would be looking for her, once she realized she was missing- and on the other, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever felt as safe in her entire life- including as Lord Voldemort- as right here, right now, with Hailey.
Then of course, there was the part where she was at the number one most vulnerable part of her reincarnation, which made safety of paramount importance.
But of course, was it a false sense of security?  Did Hailey feel so safe due to some magical effect, rather than because of actual safety?
No, it was actual safety.
She couldn’t explain how she knew it…  but she did.
Being around Hailey was actually safe.
As such, it was a foregone conclusion.
She hugged Hailey- but, reluctant to prolong her mother’s fear, didn’t say anything.  How could she pick one?  She could either be safe, or stop her mother from worrying!
Hailey chuckled softly.  “C’mon, then.  Let’s go find Diagon Alley.”





Ginny couldn’t believe their luck.  No sooner had she, Hailey, and Hailey’s mom stepped into the courtyard behind the Leaky Cauldron than the brick wall opened from someone returning to the pub, and the three of them walked through the portal before it closed.
Then…  they were through.  They were in Diagon Alley, where she knew her family was.
If only she’d thought to do that.  Then she wouldn’t have been so scared!
On top of that, they had only gone half of the distance to Gringotts before Ginny heard a familiar cry.
“Ginny!”
Her mother very suddenly burst out of the crowd and veritably glomped Ginny.  Her and Hailey’s hands separated as Molly lifted her into the air, hugging her so tight she was forced to reinforce her body with her psionics in order to retain her ability to breathe.  Even if she did end up needing to die to escape notice as Voldemort’s reincarnation, she simply couldn’t allow her mother to be the one to kill her.  Especially by accident- it would probably devastate her far worse than the Dark Lord Voldemort ever could have- far worse than even an army of boggarts!
Though on that topic, boggarts had never been any worry to her back when she was Voldemort.  They merely turned into Voldemort as well, something which she’d always found amusing rather than frightening, though she’d never allowed anyone to find out.
“M-Mom!” she cried, carefully modulating her psionic reinforcement to keep the pressure from being any sort of dangerous, but still allow it to give her some difficulty breathing, so people wouldn’t get suspicious.  “C-Can’t- Breathe-!”
Her mother nearly dropped her, then set her back on her feet and released her.  “S-Sorry!” she yelped.  “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Ginny answered, breathing deeply.  “I’m okay.”
“Oh wow, you made it,” Fred said suddenly- or possibly George, they were identical twins after all- from behind her.
She rounded on them immediately.  As it turned out, both of them were there, standing next to one another, and both looking at her with faux-impressed expressions.  “You did that, didn’t you?” she demanded, looking from one suddenly worried face to the other.
She didn’t need legilimency to know that she was right.  It was them.  They had deliberately gotten her separated in the Leaky Cauldron, and caused the whole mess.
At the same time, her mother turned to Hailey and her mother to exchange greetings.
“Uh-!” Fred began.
“Come on, Ginny, it was funny,” George said, in what he evidently thought was a winning voice.
She slapped him.
She’d always been strong for her size- but now, her psionically-reinforced muscles delivered a slap he wouldn’t soon forget.  She made sure not to go too inhumanly strong, though, as that would give her away…  if not as Voldemort, then as a Royal.
“That was mean,” she corrected him.
Then she froze, as she felt Hailey’s hand on her shoulder, and looked over at her.
She didn’t know how she knew it was Hailey’s hand before she looked…  but she did, and it immediately calmed her down.
“Calm down, Ginny,” Hailey told her calmly, cheerfully.  “You can’t kill them.”
Ginny sighed, choosing to ignore Hailey’s odd choice of words.  “Yeah, I suppose,” she muttered, and turned her back resolutely on her brothers, to return to where Ron, Percy, and Charlie were watching her mother and Hailey’s talk.  It sounded like Hailey’s mother was explaining their meeting with Ginny to Molly- and the way she was describing it…
She blushed.  Had she really been that pitiful?  Her, the reincarnation of Lord Voldemort Herself?  …  Himself.  Every once in a while, she forgot for a moment that Voldemort hadn’t been a girl.
“Do you have any idea how scared she was?” Hailey’s voice trailed up from behind her.  Hailey wasn’t yelling, but rather speaking in a low, dangerous tone.
Then it struck her.
This woman…  wasn’t Hailey’s mother at all.
She was Petunia Dursley.
Which meant that Hailey wasn’t just any random odd stranger- she was Hailey Potter, the very girl she’d used to kill Lord Voldemort!
She whirled back around…  then had to bite back laughter.
Hailey was tiny.  Fred and George were already as tall as Molly- which wasn’t much of an achievement, she had to admit- and it put them a full head over Hailey…  but they were both cowering in fear as she advanced on them, remanding them disappointedly.
Why did she cause so strong of a feeling of safety in Ginny, yet cause such a powerful fear reaction from the twins?  It wasn’t because they’d already met before, at a time that Hailey couldn’t possibly remember and Ginny hadn’t realized she had, was it?
She stared, transfixed, as Hailey effortlessly backed her older and stronger brothers against the wall.  Even Ginny couldn’t do that- her main weapon was ‘tell mom’!
Well…  that and her persistence.  That’s what got Ron to change his ways, that’s what helped Ron to recover from his own abandonment in Diagon Alley with what she was pretty sure was no lasting trauma.  She wasn’t susceptible to the same trauma, having been some seventy years old when she died and retaining her mental maturity, even if her brain wasn’t so mature.  That was actually a point of irritation for her; her immature brain wasn’t capable of some of the things she did as a matter of course as Lord Voldemort, and as her soul fused to her body more and more completely, she became more and more reliant upon that brain, so it was becoming more and more limiting on what she could do.
She’d already caught that brain immaturity causing some problems- for example, she’d panicked when she was scared in the Leaky Cauldron.  Because she hadn’t thought about the whole maturity problem, she had completely failed to find a way out on her own…  and of course, when Hailey had saved her, it had actually been a rescue, of sorts.  However she had done it, Hailey had delivered the shock necessary to snap her out of her panic and bring back her rational mind.  She’d also penetrated her defenses while she was in that panic-stricken state, while her defenses had all been hopelessly inadequate to stop even the weakest legilimens from learning who she was…  but Hailey evidently thought she was an ordinary ten-year-old, not a reincarnation.
That was to say, even though she could have very easily- even right after her rational mind had been reasserted, she had still been in a state of shock- and had Hailey asked, she probably would have told her who she used to be- and even about her psionics.
But Hailey hadn’t asked how she got separated from her family, or why she couldn’t reach them, or whatever- and, she realized now, those would have been stupid questions to ask had she been a real ten-year-old.
Instead, Hailey had-
“Ginny?”
There was a hard note in her mother’s voice as she set a hand on her shoulder.
“Huh?” she asked, looking up in alarm.  Was she in trouble?
There was a burning fire in Molly’s eyes, and her voice trembled with barely suppressed rage, but she smiled as kindly as she could.  “Would you like to stay with Hailey for the rest of the day?” she asked.
Ginny stared.  Her mother was so furious…  but she obviously wasn’t the one in trouble.  And Molly, so dead-set on pampering Ginny and otherwise helicopter-parenting her…  was willing to release her to the custody of a stranger she’d only met a few minutes before, for the rest of the day?  What magic had Petunia- a muggle, unless Ginny remembered incorrectly- used to get Molly to trust her so completely?
“Well?” Molly asked, evidently impatient.
Ginny blushed and, since her rational mind was taking so long to try to evaluate other questions, decided to go with the answer she wanted to give, rather than the one she judged would be right.
“Y-Yes,” she muttered.
Molly nodded, and pushed her gently towards Petunia.  “Then have fun, and I’ll see you tonight in the Leaky Cauldron.”
Ginny then stared as Molly stepped past her, straight towards Hailey and the twins…  then reached out to put a hand on Hailey’s shoulder as well.  She shivered- if Hailey was able to offer her a ridiculous level of safety through who knew what means-!
Hailey looked up from her remanding of the twins.  “Hmm?” she asked, curiously.
Ginny’s jaw dropped.
Hailey had gone from an angry Avenging Angel (that seemed to be what the Twins thought she was, anyways) to a curious, cheerful eleven-year-old in an instant.  She looked calm, collected, curious, and cheerful as she looked up at Molly, not at all worried or angry.
“Allow me,” Molly stated darkly.
“Sure, no problem,” Hailey said cheerfully, then ducked out from under Molly’s hand, turned on the ball of her foot, and walked straight away from the twins, over to where Ginny was, with a smile on her face.
Ginny winced as she saw the last of the color draining out of the twins’ faces as Molly advanced on them.
So apparently, even Hailey- who could pacify and gain the trust of Lord Voldemort in an instant- couldn’t match a mother’s fear factor.
She found that amusing.  That Lord Voldemort’s greatest weapon would be…  her mother.
As soon as Hailey reached her and Petunia, she hugged her.  Since she’d unexpectedly made friends with the girl- she was fairly sure that’s what had happened- before realizing who she was, she would have to discard all of her plans of what to do when she encountered her, and just play it by ear…  and be herself.
She’d still need to check to be sure Hailey wasn’t carrying any dark magic left over from Voldemort’s suicide, though.  But that was about the one thing that wouldn’t change, no matter what.





Ginny was, if she was quite honest with herself, surprised with herself.  She was far less shy and fearful than she usually was- and as a result, she realized she’d missed out on so much that was going on around her in previous years.
For example, there were hundreds, even thousands of people running around the busy street with hair colors just as vivid as hers…  though often actually more exotic.  For instance, that one- which looked to be around first-year age and hauling a large amount of packages- had a monochromatic rainbow for her hair and a compass rose printed on the back of her golden jacket.
There were also a lot of older students running around with similarly odd hair colors- like that one, who had a bright teal stripe down the middle of her dark purple hair, which she had draped over her black robes.
As a result…  she didn’t stand out at all.  As a matter of fact, she probably looked refreshingly normal, despite her very vivid hair!
The goblins looked no different when they reached Gringotts…  but they had never scared her.  Even at the height of her reign of terror, she could casually walk into Gringotts, talk to a teller just like anyone else (though everyone else in the bank always screamed and ran for the hills whenever she did that), and get some gold from her vault.  They simply didn’t care who she was, so long as she followed the rules, which meant no fighting in the bank.
Seriously.  People should have realized that the Dark Lord Voldemort had never once attacked anyone while at Gringotts- and had always respected the rules at the bank!
But because of that, she was completely unconcerned about the many instruments she knew the goblins had that would tell them about her soul, whether they could sense it directly or not.  They wouldn’t care, and also wouldn’t tell anyone.
It also meant that she’d always felt the safest at the bank, ever since her reincarnation.  At the bank, where she was surrounded by people that simply wouldn’t care about her past self.
As such, she was completely comfortable- not that she could be anything else, while walking hand-in-hand with Hailey- as they approached the long counter in the massive marble hall of the bank.
“What do you need?” the goblin Petunia had selected grumbled as they approached.
“Uh-!” Petunia began, looking uneasy.  “We need to recover Hailey’s vault, and retrieve some money from it.”  She put one hand on Hailey’s shoulder as she spoke.
The goblin glared at her.  “Use words that make sense,” he barked.
“Uh-!”  Petunia seemed distinctly uncomfortable.  “Well, her parents died some time ago, but left-!”
“So you need to reclaim the family vault, then,” the goblin interrupted grumpily.
“Uh- Yeah.  Hailey does, specifically.”
The goblin looked at Hailey, then flinched and nodded.  “O-One moment.  Griphook!”
Ginny looked at Hailey as well, then gave a small start at the deeply unimpressed look she was giving the goblin.





Griphook turned out to be another goblin.  After the two goblins conversed briefly in Gobbledegook, he started leading them down the marble hall.
“What did he say?” Ginny asked, judging it a normal question for a child her age.
“He asked Griphook to take us to the next available vault manager,” Hailey informed her, “whatever that is.”
Griphook paused, looking back at them.  “You understand gobbledegook?”
“Uh…  Yes, apparently,” Hailey answered.
Griphook raised his eyebrow for a second, then shrugged.  “No matter.  In here, please.”  He opened one of the side doors, revealing a much smaller marble hallway.
“Gobbledegook?” Petunia asked, confusion evident in her voice.
“That’s what their language is called,” Ginny told her.  “Er…  in English, at least.  I don’t know what it’s called in Gobbledegook.”
Griphook glanced back and said what sounded like a single word in Gobbledegook, then sighed.  “Unfortunately, it doesn’t translate, and the wizard that made the English name so long ago wasn’t very nice, was he?”
“No, he wasn’t,” Hailey agreed.  “And you’re right, it doesn’t translate.  The closest you’d get would be ‘Language of the People’...  but while that’s plenty descriptive, it’s not very distinctive.”  She chuckled.  “Though of course, Japan is properly called Nippon in Japanese- and that translates roughly to ‘Land of the Rising Sun’, which also isn’t very distinctive.”  She paused.  “I wonder where the word ‘Japan’ came from…?”
“Anyways, here we are,” Griphook announced, stopping in front of a closed office door.  “I will wait here while you work with him.”
Ginny tilted her head.  “How do you know he’s the next…?” she began.
He smiled.  “We have special signals that you don’t know to look for.”  Then he knocked on the door, pushed it open, and waved Ginny, Hailey, and Petunia inside.





The goblin in this room was…  not very talkative.  Once he heard that Hailey needed to reclaim a vault, he waved Ginny and Petunia to a bench against the wall, ordered Hailey gruffly to a stool in front of his desk, then worked silently with his many weird instruments and tools.
Finally, he shoved a piece of parchment and what Ginny instantly recognized as a blood quill at her, and told her to sign.
Hailey picked up the quill…  then held it as she read the agreement.
“Just sign it,” the goblin growled.  He’d never graced them with so much as a name.
Hailey said something Ginny didn’t understand- probably gobbledegook- and the goblin flinched backwards in surprise.
“Wha-?  You know gobbledegook?” the goblin asked, in english.
“And old gobbledegook,” Hailey confirmed calmly, to the goblin’s evident horror.  “This thing’s got a ton of fluff in it.”
Ginny stared.  She’d never even heard of Old Gobbledegook, yet Hailey could read it?
“J-Just sign it,” the goblin barked, sounding half-panicked.  “Don’t read it, just sign it!”
“I will never sign anything I cannot understand,” Hailey informed him calmly.  “So I’m reading it.  Have patience.”
“Just sign it,” he commanded right away.
She fixed him with her gaze.  “Have patience,” she commanded firmly.
He recoiled as if he’d been struck, a look of utter terror on his face.
Ginny stifled a giggle.  No doubt the same terror technique she’d used on her brothers, whatever it was.
A minute later, Hailey finally sighed.  “A bit wordy,” she observed, “but I suppose it works.  Now then.”  She glanced at the desk on either side of the parchment, then looked up at the goblin, whose terror seemed to have gradually faded.  “No ink?”
“Y-You won’t be needing any,” the goblin squeaked.  Evidently, his terror was only hidden.
“Okay,” Hailey nodded…  then put the quill to the page.
Bang!
Ginny let out a brief scream of alarm at the sudden noise- while Hailey just jumped and froze.
The quill had disappeared.  No- Ginny spotted many tiny fragments of peacock feather Blood Quill raining down through the air.
“Um, is it supposed to do that?” Hailey asked.
The goblin stared for a few seconds…  then wordlessly turned and left the room through the door behind his desk.





The room was silent for some five minutes before the goblin returned, with what looked like a fresh blood quill.  He sat down, gave it to Hailey with the same sort of terrified air as Wormtail had used when informing the Dark Lord Voldemort of where the Potter’s home was, then sat back in his chair.  “Sign it,” he instructed her.  His voice quavered, but just like Wormtail, he controlled it…  to a degree.
She looked at the quill, and back at him.  “Aaaand this one won’t explode?” she asked.
He nodded silently.
“And also no ink?”
He nodded again.
She nodded, and put the quill to the page.
Bang!
She nodded again.  “Okay, I kinda expected it that time.”
He wordlessly turned and left the room again.





Ginny jumped awake, suddenly hyper-alert.  “What-?  What happened?”  She felt like there had been something on her nose.
“I’m done,” Hailey said, her hand retreating from Ginny’s face.  “Took quite a while, and another goblin, but it’s done.  He’s asking if you’re a reincarnation.”
Ginny blushed.  The second time the goblin had left, he had taken so long to return that she’d actually gotten bored and fallen asleep against Petunia- and apparently, slept through his return or whatever else.
There was a recognizably different goblin behind the desk, who was watching her calmly…
Then Hailey’s words finally clicked.
He’d asked if she was a reincarnation.
She had expected them to ignore that fact, not announce it!
She felt her face heating up far hotter than before as she nodded faintly.  “Y-Yes, I am,” she squeaked.  That was not the kind of fact she’d wanted to advertise in front of Hailey, or anyone else for that matter.
“Ahh,” the goblin nodded.  “I thought so.  Reincarnations are an exception to our normal age limits, so if you want to reclaim a Vault now, you can.  Would you like to?”
“Uh-!” Ginny began uncertainly.
“I should probably mention that he’s really polite,” Hailey informed her seriously.
Both Petunia and the goblin laughed out loud.
Ginny let out a small chuckle.  “Ah, heh heh, yeah…”  She paused.  “Oh, why not.”  She rose from the bench.  “Let’s go ahead and see if there’s anything to reclaim.”
The goblin raised an eyebrow.  “You didn’t have a Vault in your past life?”
She shook her head.  “I did, but I emptied it.”
“Ahh,” he muttered.  “Well, while reincarnations usually reclaim their own past vaults, that isn’t always the case.  And besides, it’s easier to reclaim a vault than to designate a new one.”  He chuckled softly.  “Anyways, shall we get started?”  He gestured her towards the stool, while Hailey took her seat next to Petunia.
“S-Sure,” she muttered, moving to the stool to sit down.
“Now then,” the goblin said, digging around in the desk.  “I’m sure you already know what this process entails, correct?”
“Uh-!” she began, and shook her head.  “No, I don’t.  Last time, I registered a new vault.”
“Ahh,” he observed.  “Well, we start out the same way, by finding the magical signature we’ll need to bind to the new vault.”  He pulled a small armload of instruments out of the desk- all the strange ones from earlier- and set them on it.  “And for that…”  He trailed off, wielding the first couple of instruments; one looked like a small pedestal, and the other a short staff with a window in the top and a peg at the bottom of the handle that fit into a hole on the pedestal.  It only took him a couple seconds before he removed the staff again, setting it aside.
“Alright, that’s done,” he informed them, selecting another instrument.  This one looked almost like a mirror of sorts, except that it wasn’t reflective.  He lifted it up, and set it on the pedestal as well.  “This will compare your signature against every unassigned vault we have, and return every match it finds.”
“Every match?” Ginny asked, raising an eyebrow.
He nodded.  “We store the signature in a simple magical format that allows us to query it for its relationship with another signature, but that’s about it.  This information is searching for any vault whose signature reports any relationship to yours, making them candidates for reclamation; I’ll then be going through them one by one with another instrument to find the best match, which is then the one we offer for reclamation.”
The instrument glowed suddenly, and he looked at it.
“Hmm, almost a hundred candidates.  As expected from a reincarnation.”  He paused.  “And as expected, not a single one is empty.”
She raised an eyebrow.  “As expected?  And wouldn’t that mean my old vault is not…?”
“When the owner of an empty vault dies, we undesignate the vault rather than keeping it for reclamation,” he informed her, changing instruments again.  This one looked like a staff again, with a window at the top.  “An empty vault is an empty vault, and we can always designate a new one.  It helps keep the number of unclaimed vaults down, which makes this process faster.”  He chuckled.  “Once upon a time, it was typical for any given wizard to have over a thousand candidates, rather than the sixty or seventy for a non-reincarnation today- but that was also a time when we struggled to create vaults as fast as wizards wanted to designate them.  But then we started the practice of undesignating unclaimed empty vaults, and now some six percent of our total vaults are actually designated, so it’s been centuries since we dug the last new one.
“In any case, very few wizards actually think to reclaim instead of just creating a new vault, which means the number of unclaimed vaults is climbing steadily; a millenia ago, after we started the undesignation practice, it was typical for any given wizard to have just five or six candidates.”  He sighed.  “Oh, that one’s a pretty close match.”  He wrote something down and looked back at the instruments.
“...  Huh,” she muttered, then looked over to where Hailey and Petunia were sitting.
Petunia was leaning back, watching with a look of calm disinterest.
Hailey smiled at her.
She smiled back, then turned her attention back to the goblin.  “Er, you mentioned age limits earlier?”
“Ah, yes,” he nodded, then paused.  “Hmm, that one is a really good match.  Anyways, the age limits.  We don’t allow witches or wizards below the age of seventeen to designate new vaults, nor below the age of ten and eleven months to reclaim old vaults, as that’s the youngest age at which any given witch or wizard will receive their Hogwarts invitation.  All the other schools use the letter-sending time as the age point, rather than the start of term as Hogwarts does.”  He chuckled.  “It looks like you just turned ten, but as I mentioned before, reincarnations are an exception.  We still don’t let reincarnations designate new vaults until seventeen, but you can reclaim a vault from the moment you can walk and talk.”  He leaned around his instruments.  “We don’t recommend it that early, but we do allow it.”  He returned to his instruments.  “Hmm, another decent match, but with that other one…”
Then he paused, and suddenly leaned around it again.  “Are you a Royal?”
She blinked.  “Uh-  Y-Yeah,” she muttered, blushing furiously again.
“Ahh,” he nodded.  “That explains why it’s taking so long to inspect each relationship.”
“That other one was really fast, though…?” Ginny asked.
He nodded.  “Well yes.  That’s because it only needed to inspect your magic once, and was only checking for ‘any possible relationship’.  This one needs to not just look at but query your magic on every vault to determine the exact relationship between you and the previous holder.  It always takes longer on Royals because those powers have a tendency of getting in the way.  Fortunately, it doesn’t need to penetrate your natural wards like a blood quill, so it still worked for Hailey.”  He laughed.
Hailey tilted her head curiously.  “What is a Royal?” she asked.
Ginny looked over at her.  “A Royal is any witch or wizard with otherworldly powers,” she informed Hailey, and sighed.  “You are one too…  and Royals are called such because they, well, are, as far as the government is concerned.  But you don’t want anyone to find out until after you at least graduate Hogwarts, believe me.”
“That would explain why her natural wards are so strong,” the goblin mused.  “Even blew up the measurement quill.”  He chuckled.  “Not every Royal has stronger natural wards, but it’s not uncommon.”  He glanced at Ginny.  “And it won’t matter for you, because Royal or not, reincarnations are already immune to blood quills.”  He chuckled.  “Means I don’t need the usual spiel about the dangers of blood quills, since they’ll explode for her and simply not work for you.”
Hailey giggled.  “But they’re still dangerous?”
“Oh yes.  Forcing someone to write a statement about themselves with a blood quill is an ancient form of mind control that simply cannot be reversed short of death and reincarnation, as an example.  But neither of you will ever have to worry about that.”
“Our friends might,” Hailey observed calmly.
He tilted his head.  “Yes, yes they might.  Especially if someone tries to manipulate you through them.”





Several minutes later, the goblin finally let out a sigh.  “Aaand, there’s the last one,” he told Ginny, before switching instruments again, consulting his notes, and manipulating it.  It looked almost like some kind of lightweight typewriter, which he’d stacked on top of the pedestal instrument.  “I’ve identified the vault you can reclaim,” he informed her, examining his instrument.  “It’s laid unclaimed for almost eight hundred years now, but has several thousand tons in it.  Do you want to proceed?”
“Sure,” Ginny muttered.  “How much is…  several thousand tons?”
He shrugged.  “We only have a mass readout, so it could be anything.  If it’s galleons, that’s enough for you and your descendents to live comfortably for several generations.  If it’s knuts, it’s probably still enough for you to do that, though only maybe for descendents.  If it’s bottles of water- that’s happened- then it’s just a lot of water.  You won’t know until you open it up.”  As he spoke, he pulled out and started filling out some paperwork- the Vault Agreement, it looked like.





“That took a while,” the runner goblin observed, as Ginny, Hailey, and Petunia emerged from the office.
“It did,” Hailey agreed.  “It took him so long after the first two quills exploded that Ginny here actually fell asleep!”  She laughed, putting an arm around Ginny’s shoulders.
Ginny blushed scarlet.
He chuckled.  “Oh, that.  Yeah, Rannuff was getting in a lot of trouble earlier for the wanton destruction of a couple of blood quills.  Then after he was…  dismissed, Karrast came out to report that the measurement quill had exploded!”  He laughed.  “I’ve never heard that before.”
“Dismissed?” Ginny asked.  “Doesn’t that mean executed?”
He paused, looking back at her, and sighed.  “In this case, yes, it does.  He claimed not to understand the procedures we have in place to ensure no expensive blood quills get destroyed, but with all the training…”  He sighed.  “The High Goblin found him guilty of deliberate sabotage- comparable to treason, if we still had a nation.  And no, there were past…  incidents that were considered as well.”  He paused in front of a door at the end of the hall.  “Though before we head out, I notice you both seem to have keys now?”
Ginny blushed.  Were Gringotts keys that easy to detect?
Hailey nodded.  “Yeah.  We both reclaimed vaults.”
“And would it be correct to assume you want to visit them?”
“Definitely mine,” Hailey said, then looked down at Ginny, who nodded faintly.
“Alright then.”  The runner finally opened the door to the main concourse, letting through a wave of noise, and led them out.
He then proceeded to lead them halfway down the hall, then straight back out of the main concourse through a side tunnel before anyone spoke.
Ginny, even though she’d been expecting it, still found herself surprised by the bare stone tunnel.  It was lit by flaming torches- magical torches that would never go out, she knew- and there were railroad tracks lying on the floor.
It just seemed so strange the way they connected the polished marble hall directly to these rough stone tunnels.
“What do the exploding quills mean?” Hailey asked, once the goblin had whistled for a cart.
“It means your natural wards are stronger than average,” he told her, while a cart hurtled up the tracks towards them.  “Sometimes, a regular wizard can be strong enough to cause a low-level blood quill to explode- but usually, whenever any of them explode, it means we’re working with a Royal.”  He shrugged.  “Not that it means much to us, while you’re in our bank.”
“While we’re in the bank,” Hailey repeated, while the runner motioned them all in.
“Yes.  Those powers give you ridiculous legal authority in the wizarding government, but it’s hard to use said authority when there’s nobody else around, isn’t it?  And of course, even if you were to make a radical policy decision while at the bank and attempt to enact it immediately…  We’re not afraid of fighting for our rights.”
“As you should be,” Hailey nodded, as the cart took off down the tracks.  “Unafraid to defend your rights, that is.”  She sighed.  “The bits and pieces I’ve been hearing are suggesting that the wizarding government needs an overhaul to that end, but I definitely don’t want to be doing stuff like that just yet.  I’d be bound to screw something up, or get manipulated by someone.”  She sighed again.  “And I don’t want a political career anyways.”
“Well, if nobody finds out about your powers…”  Ginny trailed off, then leaned in to whisper in her ear.  “What was his name again?”
Hailey laughed.  “Well yes, if nobody finds out about them, I won’t be forced to take a political career- but that’d just be a pain, wouldn’t it?”  She looked sideways at Ginny.  “He’s Griphook, by the way.  You must have forgotten when you napped.”
She blushed furiously.  “Well…  yes,” she muttered, “but isn’t it as simple as not using them?”
“Even though in every show or whatever- like Frozen, I liked that one- suppressing some kind of ability only ever makes it explode?”
She blinked.  “R-Right, yeah…  I forgot about obscurials.”
“What’s that?” Hailey asked her.
“Uhh…  That’s what happens when a witch or wizard suppresses their magical nature, rather than embracing it:  It tears them apart from the inside, and can…  well…  When it breaks free, it can kill people around them as well.”
“Ahh,” Hailey nodded.





The rest of the cart ride was mostly silent, before they arrived at the front of what seemed to be Hailey’s vault; Griphook had called Hailey forward to key the door.
When they got it open, Ginny was completely unsurprised by the small fact that three whole walls of Hailey’s vault were hidden by a veritable tidal wave of gold.
“My parents must have been rich,” Hailey observed.
“Well of course,” Ginny answered immediately.  “Several of your ancestors invented some major potions in use today- Skele-Gro, the Pepper-Up Potion, and the Sleekeazy Hair Potion, to name a few.  You must have inherited- and reclaimed- the ancestral vault that royalties still flow into anytime one of those potions is sold.”
“Ahh,” Hailey muttered, nodding vaguely.  “So what’s the money’s value?”
“Twenty-nine bronze knuts to a silver sickle, and seventeen silver sickles to a galleon,” she informed her, before turning to Griphook.  “I forget the exchange rate?”
“You must not have changed money often,” he observed.
Ginny laughed.  “Only twice in my entire past life.  And in neither case did I pay much attention to the rates.”
He sighed.  “Each knut exchanges for twenty U.S. cents either way,” he informed her.
“So five U.S. dollars and eighty cents for a sickle, and ninety-eight sixty for a galleon,” Hailey observed instantly.  “Though the United States is across the ocean?”
Griphook shrugged.  “That’s the exchange that’s set in stone upstairs.  If you want to exchange euros or pounds, we use the current currency exchange rates from the United States Dollar to compute the exchange rate involved.”  He paused.  “I believe a galleon is worth approximately seventy pounds right now.”
“So why the United States Dollar?” Hailey asked.
He shrugged.  “Because that was the first branch of Gringotts to deal with muggle money.  They spent months researching the value of the United States Dollar to come up with a fair exchange rate- then, since wizardkind doesn’t trade with muggles and as such can’t participate properly in the currency market, we decided to make it a fixed rate and use muggle conversions for the other currencies.”
“You should only need ten or fifteen galleons to get everything on your shopping list,” Ginny informed Hailey, once he’d finished talking.
“Okay then,” Hailey nodded, pulling out a bag and starting to pile coinage in.  It looked like she counted out twenty golden galleons, then seventeen silver sickles…  and filled the rest of the bag with bronze knuts, before she tucked it into her pocket…  Which, Ginny noticed, wasn’t nearly large enough to hold the bag, yet still accepted it without bulging.





“Oh boy,” Griphook observed, as he and Ginny approached the door to her vault.  “This door has something leaning against it.”
“How much?” Ginny asked.
He shrugged.  “I don’t know.  It’s been sealed for nine hundred years, so if there’s any kind of royalties or whatever flowing into it, it could be all the way to the ceiling with coins.”
Ginny rubbed her chin.  “Is it safe to apparate down here?”
“To apparate?” Griphook asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” she nodded.  “I’d like to be able to get out of the way in a hurry.”  She glanced sideways at him.  “I was licensed in my past life.”
He sighed.  “I’m afraid it’s not safe to apparate down here, even just a few feet.  This is one of the older sectors with enchantments that will slaughter anything that tries to apparate, rather than one the remodeled ones that use a simple anti-apparition jinx.”
She winced.  “Alright.  So I’ll turn the key and run?”
“Probably best,” he agreed.  “That or possibly use magic of some sort to reduce the potential avalanche.”
“I think I’ll do both,” Ginny muttered.  “Er, if I’m allowed to?”
“Go ahead,” Griphook informed her.  “About fifty years ago, we actually had a new vault owner get crushed to death after opening their newly-reclaimed vault- the gold was piled all the way to the ceiling.  That vault is currently without an owner.”  He sighed.  “And the biggest vault in the entire bank, to boot.”
She winced.  “Er-  Okay.”  She walked up to the massive double doors, held out her key, and inserted it into the keyhole.  “Alright, here goes.”  She closed her eyes, set up psionic and wandless magical barriers to slow down the advance of anything coming out of the vault, and opened them.
Finally, she braced herself to run, then turned the key.
A fraction of a second later, the doors flew open.  The key somehow came out of the lock in her hand as the doors struck her, tossing her briefly into the air, spinning like a top.
She landed painfully on her back…  and looked up.
A massive avalanche of gold was pouring out of the vault.  It was stacked all the way to the ceiling- and the pressure was far greater than she’d expected.  The impact from the doors had disrupted her psionic barriers- and her magical ones, being wandlessly cast, simply weren’t strong enough to hold it back.
And it was too late to flee.  A huge tidal wave of gold was falling directly down onto her- and it was going to crush her so bad.  At least her immortality work would keep her from actually dying, but it wouldn’t stop it from breaking every bone in her body.
Quite suddenly, two things happened, both at once.
First, she was no longer underneath the wave crashing down on the ground.  Instead, she was all the way back at the cart, lying on the ground right next to it.
Second, she knew she could use her psionics to teleport…  and apparently had just done so instinctively.
She sat up, and looked.
The others jumped backwards a bit, but were already out of range of the avalanche.
“Alright,” she said, making both Petunia and Griphook jump, as she scrambled back to her feet.  “That was unexpected.”
“Wh-What?” Petunia asked.
She smiled.  “Apparently, I can teleport with my Royal powers.  And that teleportation can’t be blocked or detected by…”  She paused.  “By any magic that I know.”  She included the Dark Lord Voldemort’s entire repertoire as a skilled spellsmith in that statement, and scowled.  “It’s not as efficient as apparition, but it’s got a much faster activation sequence.  I doubt I could have apparated out of that even if it was an option.”  She walked up to the avalanche of gold as it stopped moving.  “So, how to deal with this?”
Griphook rubbed his chin as well.  “You could probably use magic to shove it back in,” he observed.
She scowled.  “I don’t have a wand, though, and I don’t know any wandless spells- Royal powers included- capable of moving this much in under an hour.  And that’s assuming there’s space near the entrance!”
Hailey blinked, as if she’d suddenly remembered something.  “Or I could just, er, cause it to be organized,” she suggested.
“You could…  what?” Ginny asked.
“Cause it to be organized, so to speak.  Apparently, that’s something that I can do.”  She smiled.  “Royal powers, probably.”
“So you’ve also got powers that you just suddenly know how to use?” Ginny asked.
Hailey shrugged.  “Yeah.  And always when it’s most convenient, too.”
“Huh,” she muttered, rubbing her chin.  “Did, er, anything come to mind to pull me out?”
“Nope,” Hailey answered.  “Instead, I somehow knew you had an ace up your sleeve.”
“Weird,” she scowled, then shrugged.  “Eh, whatever.  I did have a sort-of ace up my sleeve, so no big deal.  Um…  Go ahead, as long as it’s allowed…?”  She looked at Griphook.
“No problem here,” Griphook informed her.  “Royal powers are always interesting to watch in action.”
Hailey chuckled.  “Probably not this one.”  She held out her hand…  and snapped her fingers.
There was a brilliant flash of bright, white light…  and the money pouring out of her vault was gone.  Instead, through the still-open doors of the vault, she could see the coins stacked neatly against the back wall all the way to the ceiling.
“You were right,” Ginny observed, walking up to the doors to look inside.  “You did just…  cause it to be organized.”  She entered the vault, walked past the several shelves that were near the entrance, and looked around.  She was at the edge of a large open space in her vault.  The wall in front of her was entirely hidden by the neatly stacked wall of galleons; to her left, it was sickles; and to her right, knuts.  In the middle of the space were three small piles of coins.  One of galleons, one of sickles, and one of knuts.
Hailey followed her in.  “I only moved the coins,” she informed her, “and put them in spaces that weren’t already occupied, so there’s nothing buried.  That said, you’ve got about eight hundred million galleons in here, all told.”
Ginny looked at her.  “What?”
She shrugged.  “When you count the smaller denominations, at least.”  She gestured at the piles.  “I left about a thousand of each denomination here.”
Ginny looked at it.  “That’s going to be enough to last for a lifetime if I’m frugal or get a decent job,” she observed.
“It is?” Hailey asked.  “What about food?”
“If I’m frugal,” Ginny reiterated.  “It’s a pretty advanced technique, but there are spells that can conjure food.  It’s also not very good food…  but it’s nutritious.  And what I’m used to eating, too.”  She shrugged.  “But with this much?”  She gestured around the vault.  “What am I ever going to spend a million galleons on?”  She reached down to pluck a handful of coins from the pile of galleons, then dropped them into her pocket.  She could use her psionics to keep them from rattling on the way home, until she could hide them in her room- and if her family noticed the bulge, she could tell them that it was some souvenirs- or perhaps toys, she was still that age- that Hailey had gotten or given her.
Then, she and Hailey headed back to the entrance…  but Ginny froze a few steps away, looking to the side, along the final row.  The shelves were covered in various magical trinkets and doodads she’d have to inspect at a later date- but one item, hanging elegantly on the wall, had caught her attention.
Hailey paused, following her gaze.  “Hmm?  What is it?”
“That,” Ginny said, stepping closer.  “Yeah.  That’s the Sword of Gryffindor.”  She looked at Hailey.  “And since Hogwarts was founded a thousand years ago…”  She trailed off.  “What’s your bet this vault belonged to Godric Gryffindor, one of the four founders of Hogwarts?”
Hailey raised an eyebrow.
She shrugged.  “It’s his sword, so…”  She sighed.  “Anyways, I guess we can investigate that later.  God knows I’ve got time.  How about we get back to the surface and see about your Hogwarts shopping?”