The Heiress

I was soaked to my shorts by the time I got to Knightsbridge. The streets were empty, but I didn't want to take the chance of casting a Shield Charm, and I usually don't keep Muggle clothes in my office, so I didn't have an overcoat. I'd taken a risk and cast a charm to keep the muck sticking from my boots as I slogged through the garden opposite the inn Hermione was likely staying in. As I stumped to the entrance, I saw the dressed-up bloke minding the doors give me a shirty look. I reckoned I looked like a drowned Kneazle, but since this bloke probably didn't even know what a Kneazle was, I didn't think about it too much.

I gave a grin as I walked by him. "Stay dry there, mate."

As soon as I walked in, I saw how right I was to charm my boots. The lobby was posh from top to bottom. Plush cream chairs and dark-red carpeting that stretched from the front door to a winding staircase. The leaping flames in a stone fireplace provided most of the light and warmth in the room, and everything that had a surface capable of gleaming, did. A stout older woman standing behind a low desk looked at me over her spectacles. She didn't look too thrilled that I was dripping on the carpet.

I slicked my hair back and trudged to the fireplace to warm up, dry off, and gather my wits. I really had almost convinced myself that I wasn't going to come here, but I hadn't been able to resist making a certain Firecall. But now that I was here, I wasn't sure just what to do. I didn't want to see Hermione, though I did have a lot more questions now that I had talked to -

"Welcome to the Gainsevert. Might I help you, sir?"

I turned. The woman from the front desk was at my side, peering up through spectacles that were larger than the face of a clock.

"Er, well ..."

"Are you ... checking in, sir?"

By her look, I could tell that she didn't that was likely, and by her voice, I could tell that she'd be nipping something behind her desk if my answer turned out to be yes.

"Actually, I'm just stopping in for a bit." I glanced over the little woman's head. A hefty Muggle in an ill-fitting business suit was coming down the stairs ahead of a distinguished-looking older woman and a younger woman who looked to be her daughter. All three walked along the carpet, vanishing down the shadowy hall. "I've come round to, er, deliver a letter."

"Ah. Well, we hold all correspondence for our guests." She held out her hand. "If you'll just tell me the guest's name, we'll be sure that it arrives safe and sound."

I weighed my options. Gringotts had dragons to guard its treasure. This place had this woman. She seemed to take her position too seriously to go around poking her nose into others' business, but the scroll was unsealed and I knew I couldn't chance leaving a piece of magical correspondence in Muggle hands.

"Actually, I'm told I need to make sure that the person, uh, gets it." Trickles of water were flowing from the bottom of my boots. Both of us pretended not to notice.

"It's a very important letter. The person's staying in, er, Room Five. I thought I'd nip round and see if she were there, and if not, I'll come -"

"Oh!" The woman sounded impressed and her smile actually looked genuine. "Room Five, did you say? One of our distinguished guests. Might you have the name of the guest?"

I hesitated just a second. "Hermione Granger."

"Ah, yes! Ms. Granger! Lovely woman, that." The woman lowered her voice. "Works in America, you know, but thankfully doesn't have a whiff of the bad manners or boorishness of that sort. Good breeding will out, my mother always said."

"Er, yeah. Mine says that, too."

"I believe I saw Ms. Granger going for high tea. It's complimentary for our distinguished guests." The woman nodded her head toward the shadowed hallway. "The drawing room is behind the staircase. Might I escort you, Mr. ... Mr ...?"

"Weasley."

"Weasley. Of course." The woman smiled in a way that made me wonder if her teeth were going to jump out of her head in the next minute. "This way."

We walked along the darkened hallway for about five steps and then suddenly came to a dim room of wood-paneling and black-and-white carpeting. Green armchairs were ranged along the interior, and gold-stemmed lamps shaped like overgrown gillyroot stood behind each chair. Heavy dark-yellow curtains were drawn, shutting out the gray skies and rain. Smartly dressed Muggles were relaxing in the armchairs, drinking tea and eating treats from individual platters that were placed on each table.

"Oh, dear. I do apologise. I don't see Ms. Granger here." The woman was looking around, adjusting her spectacles. "Perhaps she hasn't arrived yet."

"No," I said quietly. "I see her. There."

There was a pair of chairs in the far corner that on first glance looked to be empty. But I could see a tuft of bushy hair just visible from the above the chair back. The woman squinted in that direction and smiled vaguely. She left, but not before stopping the waiters and telling him to "fetch Mr. Weasley a towel."

I squished over to the corner. As I got closer, I could see that Hermione was reading a scroll. From the look of it, it was another statement from Gringotts. There were still pieces of parchment in her lap and they looked the same. I wondered about that as I got to her chair, drew out the parchment she'd left and waved it in her face.

"You left that in my office. I reckoned you might want it back."

She gasped and jumped up. "What are you doing here? How did you find me?"

I took the card out and held it up. Unlike the scroll, it had no enchantments on it and was creased and damp. Hermione peered at it for a second and then mumbled something under her breath.

"Interesting language you've picked up in America."

She snatched the scroll and turned her back on me. "I'm sure you're very busy. It certainly seemed as if you had your hands full in your office."

"What are you on about? I hadn't even started work ..."

Then I realised what she was going on about - Wren.

"My hands full? That usually doesn't happen before noon."

Hermione whirled around and gave me a look that let me know I'd put just enough of cockiness in my voice. I smiled, knowing pretty well that it might be the last thing I did with my mouth before Hermione buried her fist in it. She gritted her teeth a little, but didn't move.

"Thank you for returning this. Goodbye, Ron."

I turned around, took a step or two and then stopped. Even before I faced her again, I could tell that she hadn't moved an inch.

"Before I go, there's something I want to know."

"Oh, so now you'd like to talk?" she hissed. "Well, I'm afraid I'm busy now, Ron, so -"

"- Why don't Ginny and Harry know that you're here?"

Her expression changed from angry to stunned. "W-what?"

"Harry came round yesterday and said he and Ginny were expecting you on Friday. I Firecalled Ginny up at Hogwarts an hour ago inviting her and Harry down to mine for dinner," I said. "I knew there wasn't any bloody way she'd agree to that if she knew you were in town ahead of time, but she said she and Harry would love to come down."

Hermione lowered her eyes. "Did you tell Ginny that I was here?"

"Why were you in my office this morning?"

"Is that a 'no'?"

"Is that a 'Yes, Ron, just showing up in your office unannounced was completely inappropriate and unnecessary?'"

We glared at each other, and while we did that, a waiter had put down a platter of goodies and a steaming pot of tea. He also had a towel, but instead of giving it to me, he spread it over one of the chairs and then told me I was free to sit down. He looked a little confused as to why my boots were relatively clean. Hermione barely held on to a smile, but she whipped out at me as soon as he was out of earshot.

"I'd come to discuss a business matter and you screamed at me to get out. You didn't even give me a chance to explain what I wanted!"

I started to answer, but decided against it when I realised I'd come to the end of what I'd worked out in my head that I would say to her. The entire situation was buggered to hell. She was right - I had tons of work to do. I shouldn't have come. I should've just mailed the scroll to Ginny and Harry, or dropped it off at the area of Gringotts reserved for lost items, or thrown it in the bloody gutter. I'd done the exact wrong thing in coming out there to confront her, and I knew I would, because I could never bloody think straight when I was around her. From as far back as I could remember, I'd always managed to do the wrong thing when it came to Hermione, and I was getting too bloody old for it all.

"I didn't say anything to Ginny," I said. "Far as she and Harry know, you'll be 'here' on Friday. I don't know how you plan on pretending that you just got off a Muggle aeroplane or whatever it is, but I suppose you'll figure something out."

But Hermione was looking at the scroll. "This has been unsealed. Did you open this?"

"Er ... it was an accident. I thought it was a report I needed to read."

"Did you read it?" she demanded. "Did you see what it said?"

"A little." I hated that she had me on the defensive now. "How else d'you suppose I knew that it was yours?"

"You've read it! Oh, thank Merlin!" Hermione looked about to faint with relief. "Ron, did you see the figure on the bottom of the scroll?"

"It was pretty hard to miss. Quite a bit of money, that. Didn't think being a teacher in a Muggle school paid that well."

"Ron, I don't have any idea where that money has come from. I don't think it's mine."

"Not yours? What do you mean it's not yours?" I gave her a skeptical look. "It's your name on the ledger -"

"That's just it - I shouldn't have a vault at Gringotts." Her eyes were wide. "I closed mine when I left Britain to go to the United States. Yet these statements," she gestured to the pile on the table, "claim that I've had an E-level security vault for almost as long as I've been out of the country."

That got my attention. E-level vaults were high-security chambers that only certain goblins were able to access. They were rare and getting one took bloody near forever and involved more paperwork than I wanted to think about, since eventually, all the requests went through me.

"I thought that maybe it was some sort of mistake, but -"

"It can't be a mistake," I said, feeling slightly offended on behalf of Gringotts. It was hell working there, but it was always a very correct hell - right down to the last knut.

"Mistakes don't happen with E-levels. The goblins would sooner stick probity-probes up their own arses than muck up what goes on in those vaults. Maybe, er, you applied for one and left before you heard whether it was approved or not?"

"I did no such thing. I have my final statement from my old Gringotts vault here."

She reached into her purse and pulled out a much-faded piece of parchment. I took it and saw that it was a ledger statement bearing Gringotts' seal. A red X was stamped in the top-left corner and the balance read "zero," noting that the bearer had been given the balance of her account in Muggle currency.

"You see?"

I did see, but it didn't make any sense. Vaults with hundreds of thousands of Galleons in them didn't just appear with the wave of a wand. "What about the salary the Ministry gave you before you left for America. Could it have been that?"

"Oh leave it, Ron. It wasn't salary; it was severance. You know that." She didn't look at me when she said that. "And that was paid out to me in Muggle currency before I left."

I kept quiet. We were nearing a line that I knew we couldn't cross, because it was difficult being around her now, and if we got to that place I wouldn't be able to keep a civil tongue in my head.

"Right. Well ... I don't know what to say. In the eyes of Gringotts, you've got a vault that's watched round the clock, and you've got a right nice amount of Galleons in it. Lots of people would love to have your problem."

She looked at me for awhile. "Yes ... perhaps. And I think I've heard from one of those people."

Hermione went back to her handbag, slowly withdrawing another piece of parchment. She held it between thumb and forefinger like she thought it might burn her. She started talking and I had to bend close to hear that smoked-honey voice of hers.

"I told Ginny and Harry that I would be in London on Friday because I wanted to see if you could help me get to the bottom of all of this." She paused. "And I knew that if I so much as hinted to them that I wanted to see you, they would have found a way to talk me out of it."

With that, she handed over the paper. I unfolded it, and the first words hit me between the eyes with the force of a Stunning Charm.

Attention Muggleborn bint,

The money isn't yours. Touch it and die.

Stunned, I raised my eyes and met her sombre gaze.

"Now that I have your attention, Mr. Weasley," Hermione said with a small sigh, "would you like to join me for tea?"

~*~

"... And so I thought that maybe the best thing was come to London and find out just what this is all about. I thought that maybe the best way to go about that was to see you - or try to, though, well, I'm not exactly sure what you do at Gringotts -"

"Neither do I. They say that's the fun of it."

Hermione half-smiled and took a sip of her tea. "One of the goblins said that they had copies of all the ledgers concerning this vault. They said that all of them had been owled, but since I only have these five, I think it's rather safe to assume that the other owls were intercepted."

"Maybe." I looked at the note again. "When did you say this came?"

"Three months ago, right before the Christmas holidays. I usually turn away owls, but thought it might be something from y-, er, from ... Ginny and Harry, which is why I didn't send the owl away."

"And you did a tracing charm?"

"I took that parchment directly to the United Council on Magical Affairs, in New York," said Hermione. "They said the owl had been charmed with so many misdirection enchantments that tracing it would be pointless. When I told them that I had no idea where the money had come from, they suggested that I go to Gringotts and see whether a mistake had been made. It's possible that the person who sent that note is a wronged party."

"We don't make -"

"- mistakes. Yes, you've said that several times. But I'm telling you that this money isn't mine. At least one other person agrees with me, obviously."

I crammed a scone in my mouth and took my time chewing it. Over the past half-hour that Hermione and I talked, she'd dried my clothes with a softly muttered spell, I'd eaten more preserves than probably was good for me, and I'd heard the strangest story since Warren had told me about his Muggle granddad who'd been able to build models of Muggle ships in tiny, tiny bottles.

"The blokes in America don't know their arses from their elbows, apparently," I said, wiping crumbs off my chin. "If it were some sort of mix-up, the thing to do would be to go to Gringotts and file a request for an inventory of the vault."

"Maybe this person did do that and wasn't satisfied with what he heard."

"I doubt it. Whoever sent you this wasn't about to go through any sort of official process. 'Touch the money and die?'" I growled and glared at the letter again. "And the American blokes told you to come back here and settle this yourself? That was their solution? Fucking hell, do they do anything over there except watch fellytision and use the microscope oven?"

"Ron, I'm British and it's obvious this owl came from over here. It was out of their jurisdiction."

"That's bollocks, and you know it!"

"Well, I'm here now," she said. "It's been three months since that note came and not a single owl. I thought perhaps if we could find out who this money really belongs to, well, maybe then we can discover who sent that note to me."

I thought that over. "I approve E-level vault requests, but this one was made before I started working at Gringotts. There's a bloke I work with named Warren who handles anything high-security. I'll ask him his opinion."

"His ... opinion?"

"Well, your name's on the account and you're the one getting the year-end statements," I said. "So as far as the bank is concerned, there isn't any problem. Even if there were, 10 years is a long time not to find it out. But Warren can at least look into it and see when the vault was opened. That might help a little."

"Couldn't it have just been a mis -" She caught herself and was quiet a second. "Can anyone just open a vault in the name of anyone? Could you open a vault in Harry's name, for example? Or in ... I don't know ... Galvin Gudgeon's name?"

"Er, within reason, I think. Though since he retired, I reckon Gudgeon could use all the spare Galleons he could get."

I was a little surprised that Hermione remembered anything about Quidditch, let alone any actual players on the still-playing-like-rubbish Chudley Cannons. I wondered if somehow she managed to follow the game in America, and if so, why the bloody hell would she want to.

"But an E-level vault's tricky. If someone does open one for someone else, it's usually for a family member or something."

Something struck me then. "Oi, you don't suppose you have a maiden aunt or something that you never knew about? A witch who might've -"

"No."

"Well, I mean stranger things have happened, and it might explain -"

"If I had a so-called 'maiden aunt,' don't you suppose that she would have at least let me know that she had given me a vault containing more than eight-hundred thousand Galleons? I mean, really, it's not that hard to send an owl."

The last part of that comment sounded particularly tart and it seemed to be directed at me, which was strange. I doubted that she would think that I'd want to write to her after everything that had gone on between us. I scowled into my cup.

"Well, it's more probable that you had a rich aunt who opened the vault for you than Gringotts getting things mixed up, but we'll see."

"We will?" She looked eager. "You're going to help me figure out what this is all about?"

"Right, well, for me, there's nothing to figure out. It's your vault - right, I know - you say it isn't. Blimey." I took another scone. "Give me a day or two to get it sorted with Warren. Come round to Gringotts on Friday in the afternoon sometime."

"Friday?" Hermione didn't sound pleased. "What do you suppose I do between now and then?"

"Enjoy your tea," I said, my eyes narrowing. "And then get out of here and go to Harry and Ginny's."

"What? But -"

I held up the note. "As long as you can't find out who this is, you shouldn't take any chances. Tell 'em that with all the rush, you bolloxed up the dates."

"Ron, really, I -"

"Come off it, Hermione. Someone's threatened your life!" I ducked my head when people turned to look at us. "You'll be safer there than here, and maybe Harry and his team can do a better job tracing this owl than the American wankers did."

"Harry?" She looked pensive. "You think I should tell Harry about this?"

"Cor, of course you should! You weren't going to?"

She hesitated a moment. "Well, yes, of course I was. But I thought I might try to figure out things from the Gringotts end first."

"Hm." She was fidgeting with her napkin, and it occurred to me why Hermione might be reluctant to get Harry and Aurors involved. And thinking on it, I reckoned she had every reason to be more than a little nervous, but she had to know that Harry wouldn't let any of them harass her and he'd do all he could to help.

"Right, well, the Gringotts part of it is the least of your concerns right now. I'm going to Firecall Ginny tonight and ask them what time they want to come down for dinner," I said, leaning toward her. "And I expect her to come up with some naff excuse why they can't come down. Understood?"

Hermione looked about to say something else, but nodded. "Friday then?"

"Friday." I stood up. Hermione's drying charm hadn't done much for my boots. I wondered if the charm I'd cast had cancelled out her drying spell. "Thanks for the tea."

"Thank you, Ron. For finding me. And listening." Her voice was even softer than usual. "I'm glad you came."

I didn't think I could say anything without completely going round the bend, because the way she looked at me and that little half-smile made me feel ... I couldn't describe it, but it was good in a way that wasn't good. Like being tickled.

Without saying anything else, I squished out of the drawing room and back down the shadowy corridor.

When I walked past her to go back out in the rain, the woman from the front desk dashed out and offered me an umbrella. I waved her off without slowing down.