A few minutes later Gangrene walked back into the room carrying a stack of papers and several lengths of cloth, he handed Harry the stack of papers.
“These,” Harry asked. “Are the contracts and I’m supposed to read them, right?”
“Yes, Mr. Potter, you are supposed to read them and hopefully understand everything.” Answered Mr. Juris. Nodding his head in understanding Harry turned back to the first contract and started reading it. It was the contract for his new vault and while it wasn’t too hard to understand it was taking him some time to figure things out.
After Harry had been reading the contract for a couple of minutes however, Gangrene spoke up, “Mr. Potter? Is everything alright?”
“Um sure, Gangrene, it’s just that it’s taking me awhile to understand this properly.” Answered Harry.
“That’s just the standard Gringotts Vault Lease Contract, haven’t you read it before? Most people just skim it to see if there are any differences from the last time they had to sign one.” Replied Gangrene
“No, sorry, should I have?” Responded Harry.
“Yes, when you first visited us you should have been handed a copy so you know the terms under which your account operate. When you first visited us which teller did you speak to?” Asked Gangrene.
“Griphook was the teller that I dealt with on my first visit.” Harry replied.
“I’ll look into why Griphook didn’t provide you with a copy of our terms and conditions when you first visited us Mr. Potter after our business here is concluded, I suggest that you, Mr. Potter, keep reading.” Responded Gangrene.
Several minutes later Harry finished reading the Vault Lease Contract, turned to Mr. Juris and said, “I’m supposed to let you read this now before I sign it, right?”
“As your family’s lawyer that’s the course of action that I advise. Now is there anything about the contract that you don’t understand?” Asked Mr. Juris in response.
“No, or at least I don’t think so. But I suspect that the goblins are much better at writing contracts then I am at reading them. So, Mr. Juris, your opinion?” Said Harry and handed the contract to him.
Mr. Juris took the contract from Harry and started reading, finishing far quicker then Harry did, at which point he started speaking. “As I thought, the standard Gringotts Vault Lease Contract. Mr. Potter, there’s really only two things I wish to say to you: One, as Gangrene pointed out before, Gringotts is not like a Muggle bank, it’s simply a place to store money or other valuables and it doesn’t pay interest. The second is that the clause about not storing dangerous or illegal materials in the vault is more honoured in the breach than anything else. Nobody knows any more which party suggested it or which party got more out of it but after one of the Goblin Rebellions it was agreed to that the storing of items deemed illegal in Britain would be against the rules Gringotts let people use their vaults. The problem was that at the time the Vault Lease Contract was signed with Blood Quills, so that if it was broken people died. As a result when the treaty went into effect several people died and one investigation later it was revealed what happened. Now often these items were dangerous and had been put in vaults because that was the safest place to store them and while the goblins don’t like the idea of such items sitting in their vaults, they like the idea of such items being moved through the corridors of Gringotts even less, especially in groups or without much time between them. So it was agreed that an item could only violate that part of the contract if it was illegal at the time it was put into the vault and that Blood Quills wouldn’t be used in the signing of the contracts any more. And every so often, if there’s a way to safely destroy one of these items or a safer storage place is available, one is removed from Gringotts.”
“So I should sign it? It’s safe for me to sign?” Asked Harry in response.
“Yes, Mr. Potter, it’s safe for you to sign. In fact accessing by your Trust Vault meant you agreed to these rules, that’s why Gangrene was so upset you not getting a copy of the Bank's Terms of Service when you first visited them, you should have been informed of them.” Answered Mr. Juris. “Gangrene, could we have a Legal Quill and ink for Mr. Potter to sign with?”
“Of course, Mr. Juris.” Replied Gangrene, who went over of a small cupboard and opened it. Seeing the look of confusion on Harry’s face, Mr. Juris realized he had something to explain. “Legal Quills are special quills enchanted not to work if someone isn’t acting under their own free will, so as to stop someone from using something such as the Imperious Curse to force someone to sign a contract and in the Magical World a contract isn’t considered valid unless it is signed with one, and they leave a magical imprint on the contract so that this can be verified later on. Falsely marking a quill as a Legal Quill is a major crime.”
By this time Gangrene had returned with a pot of ink and the most bland quill Harry had ever seen. It was white and rather large for a quill and Harry guessed it came from a swan, with a two coloured stripes, one red and one blue. Gangrene put the ink pot in front of Harry then handed the quill to Mr. Juris who drew his wand and tapped the quill with it, causing it to glow golden for a second.
“That, Mr. Potter, was a verification spell, that golden glow you saw means that this is a real Legal Quill.” Said Mr. Juris and handed the quill to Harry.
Taking this as the cue to sign the contract Harry unscrewed the lid from the ink pot, dipped the pen in the ink and signed his name in the space provided. Once he was finished, Gangrene collected the contract and put another one in front of him
Picking this one up Harry saw that it was the one for the basilisk and that it was different from the one for renting the vault, for one thing it was shorter. As he began reading Harry began to realize why. Ones for renting vaults were used a lot and as such had to cover a lot cases. At Harry’s guess there would be at least one such contract active for each adult witch or wizard, plus accounts for most children and then there’s people using multiple accounts for some reason (like he now was) and he supposed the Ministry of Magic had one as well and these contracts had to be prepared to cover anything that might happen with any of those accounts, which Harry supposed was quite a lot.
This one on the other hand was a lot simpler, probably because it was a one-off contract, if one based on a template for similar situations. It said that Harry would supply Gringotts with the corpse of the Basilisk and the shed skins, Gringotts would then process the corpse, buy then the flesh off Harry minus their processing fee, then sell the rest Basilisk, including the shed skins if they were usable, for a percentage of the proceeds from the sales. There was even that bit they had discussed about Harry keeping some of the skin. The only thing Harry didn’t understand was the bit about Gringotts contacting him at a later date to arrange the details on licensing his name.
Apparently his confusion over this was noticeable. “Mr. Potter, is there something you don’t understand?” Asked Mr. Juris.
“Just this section about Gringotts contacting me about licensing my name, what does that mean?” Inquired Harry.
“Remember how the piece of parchment detailing what could be done with the teeth, fangs and bones mentioned ‘Boy-Who-Lived’ memorabilia? Well that’s what licensing your name is about, however that’s one of the things I have to talk to you about.” Answered Mr. Juris
With his question sort of answered and having finished reading the contract Harry handed it to Mr. Juris to read. Two minutes latter Mr. Juris finished reading and handed the contract back to Harry saying “It’s safe to sign, Mr. Potter.”
When Harry went to sign this contract was different yet again. Whereas the Vault Lease Contract had only space for a single signature, his, this Contract for Processing and Sale of Animal Remains had three, one for the person wishing to sell the animal, Harry guessed that was him, one the Gringotts representative, Harry guessed that was Gangrene, and one for a witness, Harry guessed that either Padma or Mr. Juris would fill that role, probably Mr. Juris.
“Is everybody we need here? I assume that Gangrene will be signing for Gringotts and that you will be witnessing, Mr. Juris?” Asked Harry, just to be sure.
“Yes, Mr. Potter, that is correct.” Answered Gangrene.
Seeing no reason not to, Harry dipped the Legal Quill in ink again and signed his name before hesitating, unsure of what to do next.
“Just slide the everything over to me Mr. Potter, the bottle of ink is charmed not to spill.” Instructed Gangrene seeing Harry’s uncertainty as to what to do next.
So, placing the ink bottle and Legal Quill on the contract well above his wet signature Harry did just that. Gangrene then signed the contract before passing it to Mr. Juris who signed it in turn.
At that point Gangrene spoke up. “Now, Mr. Potter,” And he handed the lengths of cloth he had come back into the room with. “These are your Portkey Tags for delivering the beast to us, simply one to the corpse or skin and then tear along the black line at one end, that will cause the magic to be released one minute later for safety reasons. If you can’ t find something to tie the tag to simply use a sticking charm instead, you will still need to tear along the line however. And unless there is any other business you can think of you have with Gringotts today, I will take a copy of your memory of your battle with the Basilisk and leave you to your business with Mr. Juris.”
“Yes there is. I just remembered being told that I might be the Head of the Black Family, and that there are some tests that could be run to determine if that is the case. Sorry for not mentioning it before or in my letter but do you or Mr. Juris know who I should see about having those tests performed?” Harry responded.
“Gringotts actually performs those tests, Mr. Potter, because like the Ministry we are supposedly impartial but with Gringotts both pre-dating the Ministry and with Gringotts already being set up to perform similar magic, the duty to perform such tests falls to Gringotts” Gangrene answered.
Part of that answer piqued Harry’s interest enough to ask a question. “Supposedly impartial?”
“One would have to be a fool to believe that if offered a choice between two candidates for a Head of House position and one expressed views against Gringotts we would try and weaken his claim. Most people believe that it is the persons price for expressing such views and is their problem and their fault and Gringotts isn’t to blame, we simply where simply doing what anybody else would do in our position. The Ministry on the other hand, well it’s very easy to see how the Ministry could favour one candidate over another because of some political issue, never mind the possibility of bribes or someone in the Ministry having a personal stake in an inheritance debate and decide to interfere, I’ll go get the materials needed to run the test to determine your standing in the Black Family and a container for that memory.” Said Gangrene before walking out the door.
Moments later Gangrene walked back in carrying a piece of cloth warped around something and stacked on top of it a knife, a small pot filled with something, a roll of bandages, what looked like a rag and two empty phials. Putting everything done on the table he then removed everything from the top of the cloth bundle and put it to one side. When Gangrene unwrapped the bundle Harry saw that inside was a single stone slate.
“This, Mr. Potter, is the stone we use for determining position within the Black Family. It functions similar to muggle pH testing equipment. A cut will need to be made across your palm with this Athame,” Said Gangrene holding up the knife. “Allowing your blood to spill onto the stone. The stone will then change colour to indicate your status within the Black Family, if things are complicated, as I suspect they will be, the stone have several block of colour across its surface to explain things. Now as this isn’t a formal Inheritance Test I will be taking a sample of your blood so that the results can be duplicated later on.”
“Not a formal Inheritance Test?” Asked Harry
“That’s very easy to explain, Mr. Potter. For the results of a test like this to mean anything there have to be a lot more people present to witness the results, including several from the Ministry. Taken all together it takes a lot of work to set up such tests and normally there is an informal Inheritance Test like this before hand and the formal test is just a verification of the results with more witnesses present. From my understanding the Malfoy family lost a lot of face when the test to determine if Draco Malfoy was the Head of House for the Black Family gave a negative result. Mr. Malfoy Sr. had insisted that there was no way his son wasn’t the new Head of House for the Black Family and so managed to arrange for the formal Inheritance Test to occur without a preceding informal Inheritance Test, so when the negative result was announced it was very public and the Malfoys had wasted the time of a number of important people, who were not impressed when they found out the Malfoy’s had not gone through the customary informal Inheritance Test beforehand.” Replied Mr. Juris.
“It is important to note however that in cases dealing with Families Magical, such as the Blacks or Potters, that apart from cases where the next Head of House is unknown and the tests are needed to determine who is the Head of House, such tests are are merely a formality so that there is an official public record of the passage of control of the Family Magic to the next Head of House.” Added Gangrene. “Now Mr. Potter, if you would come over here I can start the test.”
Seeing no reason not to, Harry got out of his seat and walked over to Gangrene. Once Harry was standing next to Gangrene he started talking again. “I will make a cut across your left palm, Mr. Potter, and then you will need to hold your palm over the stone so that your blood can fall on it and be absorbed. Once the stone changes colour I will gather a similar amount of blood in this phial.” Gangrene picked up one of the phials, removed the stopper and placed it next to the stone. “Then I will place this against the cut to stem the flow of blood and Mr. Juris will treat the wound. The cream will cause it to heal faster and hopefully it will be fully healed by the time you are ready to leave. Now, Mr. Potter, are you ready to begin?”
In response to Gangrene’s question Harry simply nodded his head and held out his left hand. It hurt when Gangrene made the cut but everything was over rather quickly and Harry’s hand was treated and bandaged before they all started examining the stone.
“Now this is very interesting.” Said Gangrene. “This top half tells us that you are a member of House Black despite the fact that you would normally belong to another Magical Family and that your membership in that Family isn’t affected, as the stone doesn’t tell us which Family presumably it is the Potter Family.” And he pointed to an orange box diagonally striped from top right to bottom left with grey taking up half the stone and with another box inside it, this time blue and grey stripes going the other way.
“This next block.” He continued, this time pointing to a blue box surrounding squares of gold and silver that took up the other half of the stone. “Tells us that you are the Family Heir, and not only once but twice over. You are both the Heir according to the normal line of succession and the designated successor of the current Head. You normally only see that when the Heir is the son of the current Head, as we know that your father is dead and was not at any point a member of the Family Black, this is most peculiar. Unfortunately what it means will have to wait until another time.”
Picking up the unused phial Gangrene resumed speaking. “Now, Mr. Potter, are you still prepared to give me a copy of your memories?” He asked. A nod from Harry indicated that he was. “Okay, then all you need to do is think of the memories in question, touch your wand to your forehead and then pull it away slowly. If the memory extraction is successful there will be something that looks like a silvery thread on your wand, that is a copy of your memories of the event, simply place them in this phial and our business will be complete.”
Harry found it easy to follow Gangrene’s instructions and soon he had a copy of his memories in the second phial Gangrene had brought in. “Thank you, Mr. Potter, if I want to show these to anyone I will of course contact you. Now while my business with you is finished I believe that Mr. Juris has several things he wants to talk to you about.” And with that he walked out of the room.
Thanks to Tommy King for his beta'ing, meteoricshipyards for typos busting and all the folks at the Caer Azkaban and Seel'vor fan fiction Yahoo groups for all the help I can't keep track of