The Gringotts Account

By

Lancer47

aka STFarnham

A/N: This is my first Harry Potter crossover, which I had to start writing just after I finished the HP Saga. I had no intention of reading Harry Potter at all, believing that I wasn't included in the intended audience, but a certain evil person of my acquaintance left the first volume lying around, knowing that I would idly pick it up and check it out, and next thing I knew I'd ordered the complete set from Amazon and four thousand one hundred pages later the world is a dimmer place because there will be no more new Potter books. Sigh, at least there's still Fan Fiction.

Don Sample, in his intro to The Key of Dagon, suggested the following guidelines:

1) No one is anyone's long lost relative.

2) Giles is not a Hogwarts graduate who has been hiding his wand in a drawer for seven years.

3) Draco Malfoy is a nasty little git.

These strike me as eminently sensible, so I adopted them for this story.

I'll attempt to have the English characters speak in a British accent (designated by English spelling, but since my idea of English Spelling is to insert unnecessary u's, double up l's for no particular reason, reverse logical and comprehensible words that end in 'er' so they end in the illogical and much less comprehensible 're', and to randomly replace respectable z's with flighty s's, I don't know how successful I'll be.) The American characters will, of course, speak real English. ;-)

Disclaimer: I'm trespassing on land owned by J. K. Rowling and Joss Whedon. I'm not making a dime off this stuff and all characters will be returned unharmed, although some of them may require a short period of therapy.

Chapter One

The Hole in The Ground

"Giles!" Buffy asked with a frown, "how're we gonna come up with the moola to replace this building?"

"Moola?" inquired Giles with raised eyebrows.

"I guess you'd say brass, although I have no idea why since I thought brass money was fake money and I'm talkin' the real deal here, but whatever."

"Quite."

Giles and Buffy strolled around the large pit that used to be the London Headquarters of the International Watcher's Council. Peering over the safety railing into the depths of the now open-air sub-basement left them a little shell shocked.

"Thankfully," said Giles, "the rubble has been cleared away already. I don't think I would have been up to sifting through it, separating body parts from building material."

"You and me both," Buffy grimaced as she stared into the depths. "At least it's not as big as the hole we left in Sunnydale."

Giles shuddered as he contemplated the horror of a Sunnydale sized crater in the centre of London.

Buffy asked, "Did we ever get a reasonably accurate list of victims?"

"Our list, as of last Friday, included fifty-six identified and four unidentified remains. And of course, we still have twelve injured, which were mostly passers-by."

"Two of which are suing us?"

"Yes. They're Americans, of course. Bloody lawsuit-happy wankers," grumbled Giles.

"Giles! Language! Now that I'm living in England I've been looking up the meanings of these weird words you use, so I know what you're saying now!"

"Erm, these days that word is surprisingly common these days, Buffy."

"You never would have said 'wanker' when you were the Sunnydale High School Librarian. I mean seriously, it's kind of crude, don't you think? Imagine me or Dawn saying 'jerk-off' within hearing distance of my mother, for instance."

Giles frowned and said, "Of course Joyce would've disapproved, and washed your mouth out with soap, I should think. But if there's anything wrong with my use of language it's because I've spent entirely too much time in the corrupting atmosphere of Southern California."

Buffy, bored of lexical nitpicking, zipped back to the previous subject and asked, "But the lawsuits, Giles, how can they do that? I thought it was more difficult to start useless suits under English Law."

"Yes of course, but they're suing us in the States; they filed in some small town in Texas. According to our solicitor chap it's a place renowned for being friendly to specious lawsuits against larger, more well-financed organizations. The juries there are notorious for according huge awards on little solid evidence."

"Giles, we are are not that well financed."

"No, but they think we are."

"So we're getting sued because this building exploded, killing most of the inhabitants. What's their justification?"

"They claim that even though the name has changed and almost all of the personnel have changed, it's the same organization – which is hard to argue against – and they seem to think we must have done something to attract terrorists to our facility even though that would have been the fault of the late management. This subsequently has caused them pain and emotional distress that can only be alleviated by forcing us to part with large sums of money. Apparently our pain and distress is of no consequence, legally. And furthermore, they're somehow implying that it's our fault that pieces of the blown-up building landed on the pavement, right in front of, or worse, on top of innocent pedestrians who were walking along minding their own business."

"Speaking of finances," said Buffy, dismissing possibly years of litigation with a flip of her hair, "what have you and Willow found out about the IWC's accounts?"

"Willow and Dawn have done most of the work. They've managed to find several small accounts, enough to keep us in food and mortgage payments for the next six months. But the Bank of England is giving us the run-around on a couple of bigger accounts, which we will need for our capital fund, but I believe I'll be able to prise them from the banker's grasp soon. The insurance company is a bigger problem; they are claiming that since this was a terrorist bombing, they aren't obligated to pay; it was an 'Act of War' as defined in the contract. It's hugely ironic that it's so very hard to refute the terrorism rumours that we planted. Worse, if we somehow convince them that the First Evil was actually responsible, then they'll call it an 'Act of God', and still won't pay. We may eventually get our money though, because Quentin actually managed to bamboozle the Insurance Company with some of the fine print he inserted into the contracts. Since it was quite clearly an 'Act of Evil' – God having nothing to do with it – I expect we'll prevail when our policy is fully deciphered and explained with the proper backup at hand."

Buffy shook her head, "I'd rather face an army of vampires than be forced to read Insurance contracts."

"And you have faced an army of vampires, so you know whereof you speak." Giles paused to stare into the hole and contemplated an explosion big enough to cause this. He shook his head at the general destruction, and turned back towards Buffy. "So, speaking of Quintin, we've also started the paperwork to access Traver's Swiss bank account – the bounder had managed to embezzle two million pounds before his death, which is looking more and more timely to me, if it weren't for all the other deaths. Luckily, his will named the Council as his major beneficiary, so we won't have any difficulty reclaiming his ill-gotten gains."

"So it's all good. Two million pounds, that's like, what, almost four million in real money?"

"Now Buffy, it is real money, backed by the Bank of England, good to buy all the Italian shoes any Slayer would ever need."

"How would you know how many shoes I might need?" Buffy retorted, "And the money thing? Pounds and Euros still don't seem as real as Dollars to me. Although I imagine that will change once I actually get to spend some. So anyway, no more money worries?"

"Not precisely. By far the biggest entry in the Council's ledger is referred to only as 'The Gringotts Account', and, unfortunately, we have yet to identify what financial institution that might be. The millions we've accounted for already may sound like a lot, Buffy, but you'd be amazed at how much our activities suck down – remember, the scope of the Council is international. Why, the retirement and benefits obligations alone account for... I don't even want to think about it. And on top of that we're finally paying a stipend to all Slayers. If there were only one or two it would have been a breeze, it could have come out of petty cash, it wouldn't have been noticed, it ..." Giles belatedly noticed the unpleasant frown on his Slayer and hastily skipped a few pithy phrases, "but when we need to come up with payroll every month for more than four hundred Slayers, that's a horse of another color.

"The thing is Buffy, all these accounts I've been talking about are financed by the annual interest from the Gringotts Account, which appears to be our primary capital account; if we can't find it, we're going to be out of cash in about two years and we will be forced to borrow against, or worse, sell some of our real assets. That will allow us another year, or two and then we'll be living on what income we have from rents and such. The fate of the world rests in our duty, and we can't do our duty without a great deal of money, so we need to find the missing account."

Buffy frowned, "I'm beginning to see the problem. Are you sure that 'Gringotts' is an actual financial institution and not some sort of dodge from the old Council? Like the persistent rumors of Council alchemists changing lead into gold or something?"

"The good news is we actually do have alchemists on staff, and most of them survived the First, and they can indeed make gold from lead. But the bad news is that it turns out to cost more in energy and material than the gold is worth. Alchemists are excellent for making small amounts of impossible-to-find materials that are used for magical spells and such, but not very useful in the capital gains department."

"Oh," said Buffy, "too bad. So, not to change the subject or anything, but why don't we just sell this plot of land, it must be worth quite a lot as it's in the middle of London, and build a new place somewhere cheaper? And maybe more private." Buffy waved her arm at the land under discussion.

"It's more complex than simple ownership. It seems that we have an incorporeal hereditament concerning this land and the surrounding block."

Buffy looked utterly baffled, "What? What's that in American?"

"Oh, quite, it's merely the opposite of a corporeal herditament."

"Geez Giles, way to clear it up!"

"It turns out that this plot, and the buildings on it, is owned by interests of Buckingham Palace in an alliance with the Church of England – I don't actually know all the details yet – and the Council merely has the right of use, including rents, in perpetuity as long as we occupy a substantial portion. And that means it's not ours to sell, but, we get the rent-money from the surrounding block, which is a significant percentage of our current income."

"Oh," said Buffy. She waving her hand towards the other buildings that shared the block with the former Council and continued, "You mean we're making money off these buildings even though we don't really own them?"

"Yes. These rents, inadequate though they may be for the long-term, are what's keeping us afloat right now."

"Wow! That actually sounds kind of amazing, sort of like cheating."

"In a way I suppose it is, Royal edicts sometimes have that effect. But I think we earned it."

"Oh yeah. Well, the Slayers earned it through the ages, but the old Council reaped the benefits."

"That's about right. But we are changing things now."

"True. So, how did you figure all this out?"

"Actually, it was really quite amusing; when investigators from Scotland Yard and MI-5 first started nosing around after the explosion, asking impertinent questions of the surviving Watchers, no one could find a record of anyone paying property taxes for this land. Since the Council has occupied this spot since the Great Fire of London, the Inland Revenue people were positively gleeful while contemplating the amount of money we might owe. But word came down from Buckingham Palace, and just like that, everything was straightened out."

"I thought the Queen was just a figurehead, with no real power anymore."

"Perhaps not much direct power, but a great deal of influence. Especially in certain areas, such as in our world."

"I see," said Buffy, "or really, I don't see, but I'm fast catching up."

They both looked into the crater some more, and glanced around at the nearby property while continuing their stroll. Finally, Buffy asked, "Are you sure it's wise to make Dawn our Chief Financial Investigator? On top of her research duties and everything?"

"Yes, she learned a lot about money flow from Anya."

"Not to put too fine a point on it Giles, but you do remember how good she was at shoplifting? I mean, she's outgrown it, but still, I worry."

"That's one of the reasons she's good at identifying fraud herself."

"Now Giles, having sticky fingers isn't anything at all like cooking books, I mean really."

"Buffy, you need to have more faith in your sister."

"The last thing we need is Faith in Dawn!"

"Er, ah, I didn't actually mean it like that!"

"Gotcha!"

Giles polished his glasses and said after a moment, "She's been instrumental, along with Willow, in identifying most of our lost funds so far. It seems she picked up a number of skills that enable her to spot financial mischief in lists of numbers at a glance. Oh, we'll still need a CFO, and the actual counting and bookkeeping will be done by people who enjoy adding, subtracting, and writing down precisely shaped numbers with sharp pencils. But she's surprisingly good at understanding the deeper meaning of dry and stuffy financial twaddle such as double-entry ledgers and balance sheets and..."

"And if you think it's dry and stuffy," interjected Buffy, "then..."

Giles interrupted with a frown, "If I may be allowed to continue? Yes, thank you Buffy. It would appear that Dawn, with an assist from Willow, is just what we need to prevent some other unreconstructed old Watcher from slipping a few million quid out from under our noses."

Buffy nodded, with a faintly surprised expression, "Huh. Well, I guess I have to face the fact that my li'l sis really is growing up. It's not easy, is it?"

Giles smiled gently at Buffy, "No, it's not easy."

Next: Finding Gringotts

A/N:

It belatedly occurs to me that London is situated just barely above sea level, so in all likelihood London buildings don't even have basements, much less sub-basements. But I like the image of Buffy and Giles looking over the edge into the depths of the sub-basement, so I decided to leave it in. Unless of course hordes of Londoners make their objections known to me. In which case I'll just get out the Brasso and polish my artistic license.