A/N: Round 9 Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition - Kenmare Kestrels Keeper - Word Count: 2,997 (In Google Docs)

Prompt: Write a fic based on the Disney movie The Rescuers.

"What on earth could they possibly be thinking?" Hermione exclaimed, looking frustrated and annoyed.

Ron, sitting across from her at their table at the Leaky Cauldron, was holding a copy of the Daily Prophet. It was Harry and Ginny's turn to take the kids shopping for their school supplies, so Ron and Hermione had been enjoying some time to themselves.

"Well, it's not like you can kill them, is it?" Ron asked. "S'pose they've got to go somewhere."

"But Gringotts?" she asked incredulously. "That's right in the heart of Diagon Alley! People go to Gringotts. It's no place for those monsters," she insisted.

Ron frowned at the photo on the front page of the Prophet. It was a black-and-white shot of the Head Gringotts goblin flanked by two Dementors. In bold letters, the headline read, "Gringotts to Employ Dementor Guards in Lower Vaults."

"You'd rather they go back to using dragons?" he asked her.

Hermione threw him a scathing look. "Of course not," she said reproachfully. "I worked very hard to push that regulation through the Ministry. I just don't see why they can't stick to their nasty curses and hexes to prevent break-ins. Why do they even need guards at all, let alone the sort that can remove your soul!?"

"Because," Ron answered in a conversational tone, "twenty years ago, three teenagers without an apparent pint of sense between them broke into one of the most heavily-guarded vaults in the lowermost levels and nicked a magic cup, then caught the first dragon out of town."

Hermione glared at Ron, but had nothing to say to him. He was right, which was both rare and incredibly infuriating.

The bell above the entrance jangled as someone entered, and Ron flinched but kept his eyes on the Prophet, avoiding her gaze. Hermione didn't really need him to tell her that people paid a lot of money for the best security measures, or that she was one-third of the reason Gringotts had adopted more extreme practices over the years. The goblins had used those exact arguments to fight the Anti-Dragon Captivity clause that she had authored as part of the Gringotts Security Reformation project the Ministry had approved only weeks ago.

This was possibly a better alternative to dragons, she reasoned to herself. Dementors, so far as she was aware, didn't eat or suffer from light deprivation. They weren't creatures that would need to be chained up or turned into victims of monstrous Pavlovian conditioning.

Hermione sighed heavily and let the indignance she was feeling slowly drain away. She honestly didn't have the energy to fight the goblins on policy any longer. Besides, Dementors were classified as non-human spiritous apparitions by the Ministry; they weren't handled by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

Put simply, they were somebody else's problem.

At that moment, tension siphoning away from her, a paper airplane slid neatly into the center of their table. Ron blinked in delayed surprise while Hermione looked around for the thrower. She barely caught the pleading expression of a young girl being led out the back door by a rigid-looking woman in black robes.

"What the...?" Ron began. When Hermione looked back at him, he already had the airplane unfolded. "Hermione, take a look at this," he said, handing it over to her.

She took the paper from him. Written in large, block letters were the words, "SAVE ME."

Hermione felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She looked from the note to Ron, indecision and determination battling in her eyes.

"Could be a ruddy prank," he said.

"Could," she said, her reply clipped.

Neither sounded convinced, though, and they were both on their feet an instant later, moving toward the exit.

"I don't see them," Hermione said, straining to see over the swarm of back-to-Hogwarts shoppers once she and Ron had made it to Diagon Alley.

"I've got them," said Ron, who was significantly taller than she was. He took her by the wrist and led her through the crowd.

He led Hermione to the entrance of a skinny alley between a second-hand robe store and a cafe. They hugged the front display of the cafe while peeking around the corner as carefully as they could.

"They're just standing there," Ron said.

"No," Hermione countered. "They're waiting for something. Or someone."

Before Ron could ask who that could be, he got his answer. A goblin materialized seemingly out of the shadows that lingered between the two buildings. The girl jumped in surprise, but the witch—a stern-looking woman dressed in fierce black robes with silver clasps—immediately launched into a harried conversation in hushed tones. The discussion looked both heated and strained.

"Can you hear what they're saying?" Hermione asked Ron, but he shook his head.

"Not really," he said, "but I'm fairly sure the goblin's wearing a Gringotts smock. Not that I know if any goblins who don't work at Gringotts, mind you."

"It had to be bloody Gringotts," swore Hermione, who had picked up a bit of Ron's more colorful vocabulary after so many years of marriage.

Ron smirked despite the seriousness of the situation, but Hermione didn't see. It was only a moment that his attention was diverted, however. His eyes returned to the girl, who was fidgeting nervously while the witch and goblin spoke in low tones.

"D'you get the feeling like you recognize her?" Ron asked, and Hermione made an affirmative noise in the back of her throat.

"Daisy Somerholt," Hermione said. "She was in the Prophet—what was it?—two months ago, I think. Her parents were really well-to-do. Invented those earwig-y things that automatically translate from one language to another. But… they died," she said, and sympathy filled her voice. "Some accident in South Africa while they were working."

"I wish we knew what they were saying," Ron said, straining to hear. Their conversation, however, was drowned out by the cacophony that was Diagon Alley in August.

"I think we already do," Hermione said thoughtfully, and he turned to face her.

"What d'you mean?"

Hermione was frowning as she watched the trio in the alley, her eyes sharp. "I think they're going to use Daisy to open her family vault."

"But that's crazy," Ron said. "Why would a Gringotts goblin break into one if their own vaults? It's not like they need the money. They're bloody Gringotts, aren't they?"

Hermione shook her head; she didn't know what they were after, but she knew that Daisy was caught up in the middle of something nasty.

Before Hermione had time to consider what that plot could be, the goblin stepped away from the witch, melting back into the shadows the way he'd come. Hermione, sensing what would happen next, shoved Ron backward a step and pressed against him, wrapping her arms around his neck. Ron looked more than a little flustered by this sudden display of affection, but the moment was short-lived. The severe-looking witch swept out of the alley a moment later, hand firmly clasped around Daisy's arm, paying them no attention.

Hermione stepped away from Ron fluidly and began to follow Daisy and her captor; it took him a surprised moment to recover before doing the same.

When Ron caught up to Hermione, she was walking as quickly as she dared, maintaining a safe distance from her quarry.

"Hermione."

"Not now, Ron," Hermione said under her breath.

"No, listen," he insisted. They had almost reached the stone steps of Gringotts.

"Ron, this isn't the time."

"Hermione," he said fiercely. He put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. "We can't just follow them to the vault, you know," he told her.

Hermione scowled and reached into Ron's robes suddenly. He blushed a deep red, but she came up a moment later with his Auror's credentials. She slapped the badge against his chest.

"Are you a bloody Auror or aren't you?" she asked him. "We're investigating illegal activities."

She turned from him and stormed up the stairs and through the doors into the bank without looking back.

"That's not exactly how the law works, Hermione!" he called at her back, but chased after her anyway.

When Ron entered Gringotts, he saw that Hermione had already begun accosting a very familiar goblin indeed. Griphook looked none too amused at Hermione's line of questioning, which seemed to be about how he at least owed them the benefit of the doubt since he'd abandoned them to the lower vaults when he was supposed to have been their ally.

Ron grimaced, but approached the conversation anyway.

"Who betrayed who?" Griphook was asking. "The great-and-wonderful-boy-who-didn't-chuck-it-when-he-was-a-baby was going break our deal and take our sword. And then you went and stole it back, anyway."

"No one stole anything," Hermione argued. "The sword doesn't belong to goblins. It belongs to Gryffindors. It found its own way back."

Before the argument could get any nastier, Ron interrupted. He put his Auror's credentials out, despite the fact that he had no jurisdiction over goblin affairs in the least, and said, "We have evidence of a potential break-in."

The words "break-in" stopped Griphook for a moment. He looked considerate, as though weighing the odds that Ron was lying to him to do some "breaking-in" of his own.

"What evidence?" he asked suspiciously.

Ron despaired internally; he'd been hoping Griphook wouldn't ask that question. Ron sighed and pulled out Daisy's note from his robes, pushing it across to the goblin.

"What's this supposed to be?" Griphook demanded.

"It's evidence that Daisy Somerholt's guardian, or whoever she is, is going to use Daisy to access her family's vault," Ron said.

"Impossible," Griphook said, dismissing the idea instantly. "The Somerholt vault requires a goblin to open it, and goblins are excellent judges of character." He eyed Hermione meanly as he said that, causing her to huff angrily.

Before she could explode, Ron coolly interjected, "We have reason to believe that a goblin is conspiring with Daisy's guardian." He went on to tell Griphook about the fervid conversation they had witnessed in the alley.

Griphook was silent for a long time, surveying Ron keenly. Finally—either because the other goblin's action had been suspicious enough or because Ron seemed to be speaking earnestly—Griphook answered.

"I'll take you there," he said, "but if there is nothing deceptive going on, there will be hell to pay."

The force of this threat accompanied by Griphook's impressive array of teeth left Hermione and Ron entirely convinced of his conviction.

Hermione held a hand over her mouth and kept her eyes closed as the cart descended further into the blackness than she ever remembered going before. Ron held her hand, though he looked a little pale himself.

"Nearly here," Griphook said, but he'd said that four times since they started, and each time had been accompanied by a very toothy smirk.

This time, however, it seemed to be the truth. The cart began to noticeably slow, finally coming to a stop in seemingly the middle of nowhere. Ron felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that had nothing to do with the ride down and everything to do with the idea of Griphook luring them into a revenge-fueled trap.

"We walk from here," Griphook said, getting out of the cart. He walked on without looking back leaving Ron and Hermione to catch up once their knees remembered they weren't made of pudding.

They had stopped a floor above, Ron and Hermione realized as they approached the Somerholt vault, so they wouldn't draw attention to themselves by arriving in the cart.

"Here," Griphook said, leaning around a wall of stone. Hermione and Ron peered around, as well.

Daisy, the stern witch, and the shady goblin were all standing inside the Somerholt vault. The witch and goblin were furiously searching for something, and unlike the conversation in Diagon Alley, their argument was crystal clear within the hollow depths of Gringotts.

"You said it would be here," the witch accused, "but it isn't."

Daisy flinched at her tone. "I only saw it once, Aunt Mabel," Daisy said, defending herself. "I didn't even know what it was then. It was a long time ago. Maybe… maybe they sold it."

"It's not something you just sell," the goblin sneered, his voice sharp. "The Dragon's Tear is priceless. And it belongs to the goblins!"

Griphook hissed knowingly, and Hermione glanced at him. "What's the Dragon's Tear?" she whispered, and Griphook shook his head.

"Goblin myth," he said, "about a great goblin king who slayed an ancient dragon. When it died, the dragon shed a single tear, which turned into a diamond."

"Dragon's don't cry diamonds," Ron said.

"No," Griphook agreed.

"You are running out of time, witch," the goblin in the vault said menacingly.

"We both are," she snapped. "You want your Dragon's Eye just as much as I want the gold, so don't pretend you're in this with me."

"There!" Daisy shouted at that moment, pointing to somewhere in the back of the vault.

"I see it!" Mabel cried, squinting at the place Daisy had pointed. "I see it!"

Mabel and her goblin conspirator launched themselves in that direction.

"I've got it!" Mabel cried from somewhere within the vault.

"Give it to me!" the goblin demanded. "Give it to me!"

"Have it," Mabel shrieked, "but remember our bargain. The vault for the Tear."

As they squabbled, Daisy seized her opportunity to escape on her own. She stepped out of the vault, but only got halfway to their cart before clutching her chest and falling to her knees.

"We've got to get Daisy out of there," Hermione whispered anxiously, but a triumphant cry from within the vault distracted her.

Griphook held up one, long finger to his mouth.

"Shhh…"

Even as he insisted on silence, Hermione felt the temperature in the already-chilly underground drop by a few degrees. Her breath puffed out in front of her, and an icy grip around her navel crawled outward toward her extremities.

No… she thought hopelessly as she recognized the hallmark effect of the Dementor. No sooner did she think their name than three of the offending creatures ascended from somewhere below.

Hermione reacted on instinct, and was glad when Ron did the same.

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" they cried together, and their wands erupted with silver light.

"Dementors!" Mabel cried from inside the vault, at the same time her partner hissed, "Wizards!"

The two patronuses bounded toward the Dementors, barring their immediate path, and Ron and Hermione ran for Daisy. Before they could reach her, however, Mabel inserted herself between them, wand pointed directly at Hermione.

"That's quite close enough," Mabel said. Wand held steady, she reached down and grabbed Daisy by the arm again. Daisy flopped in her grasp like a puppet without strings, looking stunned.

"Let her go," Hermione demanded. "It's over. We've found you out."

"Perhaps," Mabel said, "but the two of you won't be leaving Gringotts to tell anyone what you've found out. Bogrod!"

This last must have been the name of her partner, because he stepped out of the vault a moment later. He wasn't looking at Ron or Hermione, however; he was glaring at Mabel.

Bogrod tossed a gem at her feet, looking terrifying and furious. Mabel looked confused.

"What is this?" Bogrod demanded, pointing to the jewel. "This is wizard trickery! This is wizard deception! This is NOT the Dragon's Tear!"

Hermione and Ron cast furtive glances at each other; Dementors hammered heavily at their defenses, and Griphook seemed to have disappeared completely..

"What are you saying? Of course it is," Mabel said. "What else could it be?"

"It isn't even a diamond," Bogrod hissed. "Costume jewelry!"

"That's impossible," Mabel said, shaking her head. "AAAH!"

Daisy had returned to her faculties enough to stomp hard on her aunt's foot, and Mabel jumped to the side, releasing the girl. Daisy stumbled toward Ron and Hermione desperately while Mabel raised her wand to incant.

"Expelliarmus!" Hermione shouted before she had the chance. The spell hit Mabel, and her wand flew out of her hand and over the edge of the apparent infinite spiral into the belly of Gringotts.

"NO!" Mabel screamed, reaching for her wand, but missing it by inches.

Daisy took her final steps into Hermione's arms while Mabel knelt at the precipice, mourning the loss of her wand. Bogrod had disappeared somewhere into the darkness while the Dementors continued to fight through the barrier of light.

A low whistle to their left caught Ron and Hermione's attention, and they looked to see Griphook, who had commandeered Bogrod's cart. Ron lifted Daisy into his arms and they jogged toward the cart together.

Once Daisy and Hermione were in the cart, Ron moved to step out and retrieve Mabel, but the cart jerked into motion and he was forced to sit or chance following Mabel's wand.

"Griphook!" Hermione said, sounding scandalized. She was holding Daisy close to herself. "The Dementors! You can't just leave her down there! Our patronuses don't have the range! And what about Bogrod?"

Griphook looked grim, but didn't stop the cart. "We won't leave her down there," he said. After a moment, he added, "For too long. And don't worry about Bogrod," he continued, his grim features turning ugly. "Goblins try our own."

At that moment, Daisy spoke, surprising everyone.

"That thing," Daisy asked, her voice hoarse, "does it really belong to goblins?"

Griphook looked at her as though he'd just realized that she were a walking, talking thing. "If it exists," he said, "it belongs to no one more than to goblins."

Daisy, looking exhausted, nodded. She reached into her robes and produced a diamond as large as Hermione fist and pushed it at him.

"Have it," she said.

Griphook's hands closed around the stone, all unpleasantness leaving his face in favor of shock.

"I don't want it anyway," she said, turning over in Hermione's arms.

"Where did you find this?" Hermione asked, stunned.

Daisy sniffed and tightened her grip on Hermione.

"My parents found it," she said, "in South Africa."