Even with the speed of the cart barrelling down another steep descent, the all-encompassing heat down in the depths of Gringotts where the oldest vaults were stored left Harry damp in all of the worst places. He resisted the urge to fidget as they swooped and leveled out along the haphazard tracks, tugging at the neck of his shirt momentarily, and wondered instead why they had skipped the waterfall three levels and ten minutes prior other than to spite him.

Bloody security measures.

Unfortunately there was no such thing as a good frostbite charm, but in that moment he wished he had found one over the past several years to counter the sweltering inferno. Glacius Tria had thawed even as he cast it minutes ago with a little intent and a subtle gesture from his right hand, thinking to outwit the circumstances. If he'd had his wand holstered in place as usual, he might have gotten somewhere more meaningful, but no, his holster rested in the back of his jeans per the instructions of his escort, so a bit of wandless concentration was all he had to fallback on, and he had never made it past the journeyman rank with wandless magic.

Middle of a bloody tournament and they yank me out for this goose chase.

The little fiend steering them like a maniac yanked hard on the breaks and their cart screeched to a grinding halt with no warning whatsoever. If he hadn't already braced himself from the previous drop off he would have been whipped forward and, quite probably, tossed over the edge into the yet hotter pit below. As it was his slippery grip gave up the fight against momentum and he tumbled a couple of hasty steps to catch himself on the front of the cart, shoring up the last of his patience.

"Bloody hell," Harry uttered dryly. He turned around to give the goblin a piece of his mind, only to find that Iggy - or Igh'rhuuk, though he had botched that pronunciation at the start - had clambered out of the shuddering cart and hobbled up to the large stone door inlaid with glittering bronze runes, seemingly oblivious to the wizard's distress. Harry shut his mouth with a grimace as he realized that trading insults at this point would just be a waste of breath this close to the payoff of his journey and stepped out of the forsaken vehicle to watch. With a practiced ease the goblin cast its left hand in cuneiform patterns across the surface, and the stone melted away, the runes fading to dust. A low hole into the vault ahead opened up with a whiff of cooler air ruffling Harry's hair, and that was all the incentive he needed to get on with the ordeal ahead.

As Iggy made to pass him, however, he could not resist a parting barb after all. "Thanks for the ride. I think I'll take the scenic hike next time." The scaly guide gurgled back at him in their indecipherable tongue, but the gesture it made - of the thumb clenched just-so between the fingers - Harry recognized from the paintings in Rome over the past two weeks. And for the first time since he stepped out of the international Disapparition point upon Mount Vesuvius a few months before, he felt his lips twitch into a grin reminiscent of his godfather. "And a good day to you, too."

He was feeling marginally better, up until he actually stepped into the vault. Crinkled evergreen eyes recognized a handful of auspicious men from the day before in Florence. Heinrich Feist. Rouland De Gaul. Arman Adémie. Skilled competitors he had been looking forward to matching wits with up until recently. Of course, if they had to bugger up my match, why spare the other semi-finalists? They three exchanged sullen glances amidst each other and then his way as his flip flops clopped irritably into the vault. He met each unhappy stare without hesitation, but on the inside he couldn't help but wonder, Just what happened in here before I arrived? They had departed on even terms, if not friendly, when the owl calling him back to England had come flapping out of the skies. Rouland had even made the half-hearted gesture to lament his misfortune in the goblins ever-present meddling.

Harry felt the sudden icy touch of Legilimency press against his Occlumency shield, flickering briefly back and forth in search of some previously concealed fault, and then relenting by the time that he had considered making a passing examination of their own. He kept his features from swaying overmuch at the subtle jab- off of the battle dais', he could excuse a parting examination like that, and he should have known better than to look them in the eyes besides- and then he was past the trio of foreign duelists.

Panning his gaze around further, Harry noted that a couple of dozen other family-heir's were gathered, some he was quite well acquainted with from their overlapping years in Hogwarts, others only passingly familiar from travels. A quick calculation nearly made him whistle in understanding of just how meaningful their lot was; despite the barren shelves around them devoid of golden galleons, silvered sickles and bronze knuts, the metaphorical wealth represented by the gathering of witches and wizards present at that moment could have bought the entirety of the British Isles and a chunk of old-world Spain besides.

"Ah." A curdling, subterranean drawl stifled the muffled crowds-talk kindled by his entrance. "Welcome, Harry Potter. You may take your place next."

Harry turned his attention over to the master-goblin presiding over this ceremony and, after the disaster in the lobby, he abandoned any notion of pronouncing the name embroidered into its drab tailored vest in flickering fire-stitch - Zghibhruk.

Where do they even come up with these names? He shook his head once. What ever happened to something easy to understand, like Griphook? He missed Griphook. The old teller had never given him any trouble in all of their encounters.

He shucked his robes off and slung them over the back of a nearby rack. An open tee and faded jeans rolled up to the mid-knee breathed a little easier, his flip flops raising a further din across the stone floor until he'd taken his position as indicated before the sagging mahogany desk. Ziggy, as he now thought of their minute overseer, raised a six inch pin tapered to a point so fine it vanished in the lantern light. "Your wand-dominant index finger," the goblin said.

He couldn't help another dig so easily presented after so many summers living and traveling with his godfather. "I assume you've taken all precautions to prevent cross-contamination? Sanitized that thing lately?"

Ziggy gurgled more heavily than his guide had, though at least no obscene gestures were offered, yet. "Your finger, wizard."

Harry turned toward his nearest fellows, Zacharias Smith, looking decidedly pale beside a witch Harry did not know. "Did he really prick each of you in a row? I'd expect at least a little cleansing- Oi!" He spun back in time to see the smug bastard settle back into the chair, pin held upright so as not to lose the droplets clinging to the now glistening tip. At once Harry pressed his thumb against the weeping digit. "If I die of Chimera-flu tomorrow my estate is suing, you realize," he said in lieu of his original topic.

"The world would be a better place," his new friend stated in return. Gringotts likely owned his estate now that he thought about it. "Now let us proceed with the ritual." Three drops fell from the tip of the pin. They splashed into a tiny bowl, looking much like a shrunken Pensieve, and at once the dark liquid within began to swirl and deepen further still, reducing from crimson into carmine, maroon, and finally to a semi-transparent wine-red.

"There. The associated bloodlines from Gringotts' present and past are gathered." Ziggy set the pin down and leaned back, finding some interest in the pattern of the desk top.

"And that would mean…?"

Ziggy pointed to another end of the vault. "Sit. Wait. Preferably in silence. The blood will sort out whose lines are truest."

Shaking his head again at the absurdity of it all, Harry nodded a passing hello to Zacharias, and then spied an unlikely couple chatting together in hushed tones that he couldn't in good conscience ignore, and subsequently marched over to join the ranks of Draco Malfoy and a Beauxbaton witch he had once saved from a decisively different sort of tournament more then a decade gone. The tap of his flip-flops across the floor gave the present head of the Malfoy estate ample time to groan and shut up.

Seeing an opening, the witch smiled and batted her lids prettily at Harry, her makeup unmarred by the humidity or the dew clinging to her blond locks, and sketched a curtsy he could appreciate far better after so many years. Harry returned the kindness with a bow with one leg crossed over the other, right arm sweeping before him.

"How good to see you again, Lady Gabrielle."

"It is good to see you too, Monsieur Potter," Fleur's younger sister answered. They each rose, and Draco, seeing how little would be garnered from his insinuations now, departed for less hostile waters without further word. Harry barely gave him a tip of his head, keeping his attention honed on more appealing company.

"I must confess myself curious that you are here in your father's stead."

"Papa has renounced the old ways. Fleur is happily married to Monsieur Weasley and does not care for additional inheritance. Thus, I am here on our family's behalf." She leaned closer. Her breath reminded him of fine chocolate and succulent duck. "I look forward to seeing you in France again soon, Harry."

"Perhaps when we're through today?" Her dark blue gaze fluttered. "Of course, I suppose that your father still disapproves of any suitors, so our rendezvous may be interrupted. Repeatedly, if he cannot break the wards on the first attempt."

Gabrielle hummed her own approval, warm amusement aglow in her cheeks. They both turned as Ziggy spoke up again.

"Our first indecision has risen! The Grail has deemed the lineage of Marnix Black to run through the veins of Harry James Potter and Draco Lucius Malfoy equally. Those so named, come forward."

"Good luck, Harry," she told him, offering her hand. He bowed to kiss the ring finger lightly and rose, marching toward his old rival.

The first words out of the blond eel reeked of the usual tone in their banter, ever since that one banquet hall at Grimmauld when Sirius legally signed Harry as his heir. "Shaking the cradle, Potter?"

Harry sighed. "'Robbing the cradle', Draco; if you're going to subsist on petty remarks at least do them justice. And no. She's been of legal age for three years, pining after me with as-yet unrequited love for twelve, and the age gap isn't so wide as to make your choice of insult meaningful besides."

Ziggy raised the tiny Pensieve between them ere Draco could put together a response. "Enough banter. Sip."

Disgust welled up on both of their faces, though for differing reasons, of course.

"Sully my lips with their tainted blood?" Draco uttered, aghast.

"First the pin, now this?"

Draco flushed. "No. I refuse."

Harry resisted the urge to nod. They hadn't always been enemies. "For once we're nearly in agreement."

Ziggy offered a grim twitch of his lips. "Sip or forfeit your gold, wizards. Gringotts will be delighted to add the Potter, Malfoy, and Black vaults into the remaining lines of inheritance."

The cost of losing the old family riches in addition to the chance to rightfully claim whatever Harry himself had - to say nothing of the accumulated wealth in the remaining men and women's treasure troves - softened Draco's pride. He swore to the late Dark Lord Grindelwald and drank.

Harry sighed.

"Isn't there another way to do this like civilized beings? A good old duel to the death?" A beat later Draco dropped unconscious to the floor. "Well. That was easy."

Ziggy halted him with a reluctant noise and said, "Draco Lucius Malfoy has begun his trial. Now sip."

Is it really worth touching a rim that has borne the kiss of a Malfoy? Of course, he would have felt the same had it been Narcissa. Some blood is tainted. On the other hand… His mind made up, he said so that all in the vault could hear him, "Let it not be said that a Potter-Black should refuse to walk where a Malfoy has not so graciously gone before." And he took a swig, the sour, diffusive, coppery taste strong on the tongue and hard down the gullet.

How do vampires get off on this?

Any further sass that he'd had in mind faltered. The vault wavered. He laid a steadying hand upon the desk, seeing double - the surly master-goblin, and a scene of some far away gloomy English day. "Uh." He said intelligibly.

"Awaken, or forfeit. The Grail shall answer if you do not."

Harry sank to his knees, grip still present upon the desk yet quickly slipping, until he had fallen to his rump with his gaze panning up to the swaying lanterns. He could just make out the conversation growing around him as a part of his mind fell away into long centuries past, while another part of his fading thoughts kept his tongue from lolling out the side of his mouth and stopped his eyes from closing.

And then he lost track of the latter.

With a sound like a muggle train-wreck, Harry snapped back into awareness in the middle of a forgotten English field surrounded by hundreds of medieval soldiers in arms shouting war cries. Full iron plate and steel crashed together, maces, war hammers and shields colliding like an orchestra from hell.

Harry clapped his hands to his ears with a curse that would have made Sirius' proud. "What in the name of Morgana's everlasting rack is going on?"

Several variations involving the remainder of her lovely figure followed as he rolled aside of a handful of knights locked quite literally at the hip and still pummeling each other brutally. Blood leaked like a sieve through mail and ran in thick rivulets down the outside of battered joints, splashing loose with each ringing thud.

Harry's eyes leapt around the violent battlegrounds for a chance to get to his feet and get away. It took him several more moments of narrowly dodging on his hands and knees and, at last, being partially trampled by a pair of yowling jousters, before he remembered that he was a wizard. He closed his eyes and rolled on the spot, feeling that welcome, crushing clutch of Disapparition squeezing him through a pinprick of reality over the literal crushing sensation of iron boots undauntedly stamping his ribs apart. A moment later he could breath again as he reappeared in a grassy plane only a little removed from the brunt of the clashing.

He sat up with a grimace. This was no time to be ginger about the bruising and worse now spanning generously underneath his shirt, as a quick pat down proved he had nothing poking through where it did not belong and everything still attached where it should have been. A shard of splintered wood the size of a Quaffle spun through the air and gouged out the dirt only inches from his left hand as a reminder that this was no place to be for a comparably speaking, naked wizard.

"What did I get myself into now?" He patted his jeans down and with triumph found his wand holster still tucked away just where he had left it, following Igh'rhuuk's orders in the lobby of Gringotts. And like another train barreling through his brain, he remembered what had lead up to this unfortunate set of circumstances. "Oh you son of a Quintaped, Ziggy," he bit off as he scrambled away from another piece of shrapnel and snapped the holster into place around his right forearm. The supple leather conformed comfortably into place, ready for the correct amount of tension and intent to eject eleven inches of holly and phoenix feather into his awaiting palm.

Finding his feet as the knights continued to bash each other senseless, Harry circled far around them, then began to sight the surroundings for more information. No sign of two particular commanders in charge, or even much in the way of camps, which he assumed meant that the opposing forces had marched and decided to commence battle at once.

No trace of Draco skewered on the end of a pike, more's the pity.

As he examined the dismal landscape further outward, a glint of silver off of a decent knoll to the... north-west, he approximated, caught his eye. Aha. Two horseback men ensconced in unsullied, glistening armor sat there observing the bloody chaos taking place below. Only the taller of the two wore a crown, which meant a noble of some sort. The banners flapping in the cloudy breeze at their backs gave him a moment's hesitation.

"What did the King of England use?" He felt certain that, at one point or another, he and Sirius had observed the emblem as Harry worked on his dueling across Europe in the aftermath of Lord Voldemort's second fall. But now that it actually mattered he could only draw a blank and make an assumption. However, the coat of arms of the Moste Ancient House of Black could not be mistaken, even lacking several particular lines, which was as good a reference as any to the era, as if the knights had not been enough.

"Time to go meet my great-great-grandcestor." Harry began the journey, and by the time that he was halfway up, a recurrent throb and creak from his ribs foretold that any dexterous motions in the immediate future would be unhappy ones. "Bloody hell, this is going to be a problem, isn't it?" he asked himself through gritted teeth. If this was some dream whipped up by the goblin's magic, it sure as hell felt real enough. He had never learned decent healer magic, however, and the field-work charms acquired in France some years ago were spotty with disuse. He'd usually taken a set of potions and submitted himself to the care of the local magical infirmary when his training and duels went awry.

When he finally crested the hilltop, he was regretting that glaring oversight.

"Marnix Black?" he uttered dryly toward the mounted knight at ease before the banner of House Black.

"Ah, that cur," the man answered in a crude English accent. To Harry's dismay the knight drew a long black sword out of the shadows of his cape and pressed it to Harry's cheek until a drop of blood ran off the tip. "How unfortunate that fool fled with naught but his head upon his shoulders an hour past."

Well shite!

"Now surrender your little stick from wherever you have it hid, and pledge fealty before King and Crown," the unknown knight ordered, giving Harry a once-over assessment. His lips drew back into a shallow grin. "Or not. And I shall pluck it forth once I have your head in a sack to add to the pikes about my hold, as I have so many others before you." That black blade pressed harder and the flow of red running off the edge doubled to a nice drip, and now that Harry was rather more attune to the situation at hand, he could feel another sensation dancing on the edge of his senses, a quiet, steady pulse.

Don't tell me this is rune work?

He had never gotten a hand for that particular brand of ancient casting, either. Too much investment for too little reward, in his line of work. But his lessons at home and abroad had taught him enough to be familiar with as many ways of casting as he could, and so he felt reasonably certain that the slight hum originated not from the sword pressing into his cheek, which was clean down the sleek lines, but that suit of armor which shone more brilliantly than it had any right to under this gloomy sky.

He measured his options in the few seconds still available after reaching this unpleasant conclusion.

A cooling charm with no pressure is one thing, but trying to disarm him like this... far too unpredictable. Bloody git means business too. Harry slowly raised his hands and crossed his wrists so that he could rest his fingers upon the holster. Fortunately I've got another idea in mind.

"As you command, Sir...?" he trailed off around a wheeze.

The light in those cruel blue eyes danced with anticipation, proving the assumption that he had an ego in need of reassurance. "Sir Reginald Flynn, witch. Now your stick or your life."

Never thought I might appreciate getting shanghaied into that gladiator ring three months ago!

Harry uncrossed his wrists and flung himself back from the impeccably sharp steel, trusting that his memory was true of the bumpy slope to this point. His ribs creaked again, and he stumbled, yet when he rose a little off balanced, he held in his wand-dominant hand a pale reflection of that black sword, not unlike a hazy mirror, something glimpsed from beneath a pool of water. It was not quite as good a sympathetic conjuring as the gladiator-cores with which he had forcibly learned to fight in swordsmanship, nor was the rippling shield which he likewise manifested with another touch to the holster, but, he thought, Any port in a storm.

And it was sufficient, until he had more knowledge of the muggle's armor and defenses, of what kind of spells he could actually perform and expect to pierce the rune work without putting his wand at risk of being chopped in half.

Sir Flynn leveled his weapon and reared his mount. "I had hoped to get some sport from this one now that coward Black has fled!" he roared with approval.

Harry could never have outrun the proud and tall beast underneath the knight, but he hardly had to. He just had to outwit its master, and on that front he felt a little better about his capabilities for as he began to circle about keeping both knight and noble in his line of sight, Sir Flynn dismounted and approached him, exuding confidence. "Before King and Crown, you shall stand in lieu for that pitiful wretch who escaped earlier! I think I shall be taking the pleasure of seeing you in bloody chains that I might indulge in the screams offered in my dungeon cells, witch. Only when your throat has cracked and your tongue shriveled shall I grant the Lord's mercy and add your head to the battlements and your devil's stick to the holy treasury!"

Harry grimaced and sucked in a deep breath. He could only pace and wait, feeling out the uneven terrain and trying to measure up his opponent. So far to this point the crown-wearer had done nothing more than observe, an aloof air of disinterest in play, and so Harry put him mostly from mind.

Sir Flynn closed the distance in three long strides and struck.

Recent matches in the Roman underground had taught Harry enough about reading an opponent to avoid having his head chopped off in the first few moments of swordplay. The muggle knight feinted. Harry raised his shield and held his ground. Another few beats. Then that sword swung low and Harry caught it upon his doppelganger, albeit with considerable strain upon the unstable magic as his body protested the action, and the pain flashed across his face.

I never thought I'd want one of those stable gladiator pieces here and now!

He held his ground again and thrust back just before the agony reached a crescendo. After that it was all his seeker-honed and later dueling-reared reflexes that he could parry in time or else thrust his shield to deflect, but as with the matter in that illegal underground coliseum, the magic imitating life would not endure for long- and he had no interest in depleting his original wand's core sustaining the sympathetic magic. Through thick and thin, old holly and phoenix feather had saved his skin, and it deserved a better send off than to fizzle out like this.

His eyes darted across the knight's figure, searching for a weakness, a crack in the armor where he could strike at. Yet each blow, on the briefest of attempts when he did land a hollow strike, offered him up nothing meaningful, other than that the armor did not vaporize him, and that Sir Flynn paused just a beat as if expecting just that. The longer that Harry endured, the more a frustration grew in the knight's response, as the wizard proved to be more than easily blooded sport.

"Vile creature!" Sir Flynn barked. "How fare you this!"

Harry ducked and spun away from a hefty overhead double-handed slash, losing ground as he was forced toward the slope he had ascended, for Flynn recovered and repeated his strike relentlessly, driving him toward a position of abandon. And it was there, in the midday gloom, as Harry retreated while facing the knight, that he saw the vulnerability which he had sought out. It was small, barely more than a slit between mail and gauntlet, yet recurring, and lacking the same unnatural sheen.

It would have to be enough.

Harry abandoned his shield as the knight drew up yet again, both of them breathing hard, and, stepping forward and inside of Sir Flynn's range, Harry swung upward in feigned defense. The false blade met its steel counterpart in midair, and all that Harry had to do was to push his intent forward and not buckle under the pain and pressure as the tip skittered up Flynn's sword toward that pale gap, while Flynn's own sword tip flowed down his imitation toward Harry's neck.

Which of them would land the crippling blow?

Harry exhaled hard and pushed his magic forward in an act straight out of the illegal underground, from wand, into sympathetic structure, and then into the opponent's flesh.

Stupefy!

A pale glint of red danced up the wavering sword and clipped the edge of Sir Flynn's exposed inner wrist. It was a better cast then with a stave, if only. The muggle staggered and took a step backwards, staring at his flagging sword arm and the hand which surrendered his steel to the grass below.

"How?" the knight demanded as numbness spread outward from the point of contact. "How could you have overcome the craftsmanship of your own people?" Just then the knight's legs failed him, and he catapulted to the ground, twitching until the last vestiges of spellwork crawled through his veins.

Harry drew a deep breath instead of answering, and he remembered the other man present. The noble had retreated far enough to offer them a free dueling space, taking Flynn's steed in hand as well, and now the other man merely watched with a shrewd curiosity. Harry bent and snatched up Flynn's sword, and only then allowed his sympathetic magic to fall apart, fading like mist before morning rays.

"Well fought, witch." The noble finally spoke. Harry resisted the urge to correct him, still catching his breath again. "In truth, I have known some measure of delight in your kind, and my uncle too knew of companionship ere the clergy encouraged my retainer's folk to resume their duties. When you find Black, remind him that our meeting is yet unfulfilled." With that the other man whickered to his horse and turned away.

Harry looked down at Sir Flynn, up to the horse left unattended, and then back over the slope to the still clashing soldiers. "What of your men?" he called at the noble's back.

"What of them? I have more who have not gone mad."

Harry grimaced at the casual disregard as much as the phrasing, and when he looked again and seriously, he began to notice something about their movements that he had missed from up close. They were moving with a peculiar clockwork precision that he had not seen for a very long time, though it came back to him readily enough.

Like men under the Imperius curse.

End of Chapter One.

A/N: This event isn't localized to just England. The assorted surviving handful of Gringotts' branches world-wide are pulling in every wizarding family that has ever split off or gone extinct under certain names(see Peverell enduring through the Potters) and divided up their gold with clauses, complaints, and general logistics over the centuries, so that the old records can be closed out at last, leaving just a series of concise account holders wielding a considerable sum of currency - though, being this is goblins they're dealing with, there are certain dangers involved. The English branch retains records from the closed branches regarding France, Germany, possibly Spain, hence the foreigners gathered.

I've got a lot of stuff sketched out for the past as much as the future for this fic, and I'm hoping to keep progress going soon. Thank you for reading.