"You could say I've seen you before, though I doubt you could say the same. I doubt your eyes could focus at the time, you were very young. It was back when your father took over the estate from Charlus."
"Lester here got his start as bailiff for your grandfather," Barchoke said as way of an introduction, finally seeming to find a topic he was comfortable with.
"If your father had had it his way you would've been named James Jr. or Jamie - Merlin help us, but your mother insisted on Harold - or Harry, after her father," he said offhandedly. "But aye, that's my bailiwick," Lester agreed. "Enforce borders, resolve disputes, collect usage fees and rents, thump a few heads if people forget what's what," he said with a wink. "Not that I had to do a lot of that," he explained. "Your family was always good about getting good people. Sit down with them for tea and suddenly they're all 'Oh! I forgot we owe you money!'"
"My family owned land?"
" Owns land," the old wizard corrected. "'Potter and earth go hand-in-hand,' or so they used to say. Even Gropegold couldn't sell it for all he was for kicking people off it. Not without you being of age and with your specific approval."
"Then why was he kicking people off their land?"
"Off your land," Lichfield corrected him again with a pointed finger that said Harry'd get a good poking if he didn't learn the difference soon.
"It's not so uncommon with landed estates," Barchoke provided. "There's very few of them left but from time to time things change over from one generation to another, the new one bringing in new ideas on how to use the land, or just wanting a bit more cash-on-hand, and so they shuffle people off their property-"
"Naturally, we all thought that's what he was doing for you," Lester said. "Might be another five years before you can properly inherit but if you had already decided you'd prefer glittering gold over your family's land-," Lichfield pulled a face to show what he thought of that idea. "Best start early rather than re-up someone's lease for another ten or twenty years and make you wait to squander your inheritance."
And with that Lichfield settled into a deep silence, the look of concentration on his face making him look all the more like a gnarled root. 'An old root that'd likely poke you if you went on without him,' Harry thought. Just when he was finally trying to think of a way to bring up something he wanted to talk about - namely his problem with Dobby or the reason Gropegold was carried off in the first place - the wizened old man gave out a single terse "Damn."
"You remember something?" Barchoke asked.
"No, that's the problem," Lichfield groused. "I can't for the life of me remember where the Potter estate was. The main estate," he clarified, "the home estate, the center of Potter power. I visited there more times than I can count-," the grubby old wizard said with a shake of his finger, as if to order himself to recall it. "-But for the life of me I just can't remember the name . It should be right about-," he made a grasping motion as if to grab the air in front of him only to come away with nothing.
"Locked?" the goblin suggested.
"Could be," the old bailiff said cryptically. "It'd keep anyone from any minor lines we don't know about from sniping his Investiture and keep the likes of Gropegold from leveling the place. I'll have to check the old records for it. Might be in there. Gropegold would've been too lazy go back that far. But the name . Potter's Soil? No. Potter's Wheel? No, that's just stupid."
"Anyway," the goblin said, drawing their attention again. "We seem to have gone a bit far afield-"
"It's the boy's fault," the old bailiff said, squinting at him with one eye larger than the other. "He's got Charlus's way about him," he said to Barchoke. To Harry he said, "To his dying day the old man would sit back and smile while everyone around him would natter on for hours, saying nothing. I swear it was some sort of spell. Your father on the other hand, the few times I met with him you couldn't get him to shut up."
"Will you please shut up?" the goblin cried.
Lichfield held his hands up in mock surrender, lips a thin gnarled line on his face, and then pointed at Harry as if he'd been the one doing all the talking.
"Anyway, " the goblin said. "As I was trying to say - before a rampaging hippogriff stormed through the conversation-," Barchoke shot Lichfield another look. "Here at Gringotts the relationship between Account-Holder and Account Manager - well, it's virtually sacrosanct."
The goblin seemed to settle himself once more in his chair.
"Gringotts itself does not pay Account Managers, outside of a small training stipend to get them started. The Managers make their money from the account profits and lose money, in the form of Remittances back to the Holder, should their advice prove faulty. That said, who are we to care if both Holder and Manager lose their shirts because of bad investment strategy so long as the Holder himself signs off on it? As Lester here said, for the longest time that's what we thought Gropegold was doing for you-"
"-More precisely, for your guardian," Lichfield clarified.
"My guardian?" Harry asked curiously. "But the Dursleys don't know anything about Gringotts."
"And there's the rub," Lester emphasized with a point.
"The Dursleys?" Barchoke asked, scribbling a new note on his page. "These are those muggles you wrote about?"
"Yes, my aunt and uncle. If they knew I had any money it would have been gone before they had to change my first diaper."
"Just how long have you been with them?" Barchoke asked incredulously.
"As long as I can remember," Harry said. "They said I'd been left on their doorstep just after my parents died."
The goblin and the stump shared a look and Harry thought he saw a gleam in the old stump's eyes.
"Now this aunt and uncle, as you call them. Who are they exactly?" the Litigator asked.
"They're-," Harry floundered, at a loss for any other words than the ones he'd already used, "my aunt and uncle. My mother's sister and her husband."
"A real aunt and uncle. Huh," Lichfield grunted. "I thought she was dead. Or maybe I just hoped she was."
Barchoke looked at him curiously.
"The woman was a shrew, the man was worse - if it's still the same one she was with."
"That sounds like them," Harry said curious as to how a Gringotts Litigator knew Aunt Petunia.
"Nearest blood relative then," Lester said as he nodded at Barchoke. "That's clever."
"Very clever," the goblin agreed.
"What's clever?"
"A blood relative," Lester repeated. "Back then, You-Know-Who and his followers-"
Barchoke made a disgusted face.
"-They targeted whole families, not just certain people. Young people, especially very young kids, they were moved around all the time. Grandparents, godparents, friends-of-the-family, whoever they had in the hopes that if You-Know-Who came to call, at least some of the family would survive."
Lichfield noted the disgusted face Harry was wearing now as well.
"It was grisly," Lester agreed, "but it worked. Some kids your age and older are only alive because they weren't at home when their parents were killed. It was Ministry law at the time for any wizarding orphan to be placed with their closest blood relation-"
"So I should have been placed with the Dursleys?"
"-Their closest blood relation in the wizarding world," the Litigator clarified. "Unless it was specifically spelled out otherwise."
Harry was having difficulties seeing where he was going with this.
"We have no evidence yet to say it was supposed to be anything different. We may not even find that once we comb through your vault and dig through our files-"
"It's the Ministry that handles Wills," Barchoke interjected.
"-And we don't want them involved just yet," Lichfield finished for him. "Those sisters hated each other though and your parents had plenty of friends to call on - and they knew they were being targeted, so why did you end up in the muggle world?"
Harry had no answer for him.
"You were a wizarding child, born in the wizarding world to wizarding parents and you end up with them? That, to me, says a guardian was involved and a guardian means the Ministry. By the spirit and letter of the law, anyone in our world would have had a better chance at getting you than a muggle couple, even your mother's sister, so that - to me - says abandonment."
.....
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