Harry becomes a fixture at Fortescue’s, spending a load of time there enjoying his new robes and reading furiously. It’s weird. He forgot how much he used to like reading. Hiding in the library was the best way to avoid Dudley and his gang; the librarian, Mrs. Schonhausen, was nearly as scary as her magical counterpart Madam Pince. But when he went to Hogwarts, he stopped.
Time to make up for it now, at least. Harry learns that Gringotts isn’t just a bank. The goblin rebellions were resolved by giving the goblins sovereignty over the bank and the tunnels under it; deep underground lies the goblin nation, which no wizard has ever seen. Since goblins are trusted to be neutral in wizard affairs, they handle money, the economy, contracts, and the like. You can file deeds and wills and so on with Gringotts if you want extra security, though you don’t have to, and it costs money to do it. There are some truly scary enforcement capabilities, but Harry figures you’d need that, otherwise wizards would just break their contracts and whatnot without a care. Magic makes it really easy to commit crimes. So naturally someone made sure the goblins could legally collect on a debt or whatever.
Gringotts also manages family charters, which explains what Nordok was talking about. The details of most of the charters are private but generally they dictate who can inherit and what kinds of powers Gringotts has over managing the family estate.
And, as it turns out, there’s more streets than just Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley. He wanders around and finds Civic Alley, Cardin Alley, Market Alley, Occasion Alley, Practick Alley, and Horizont Alley all nearby. There’s probably others, but he doesn’t want to get lost.
Hedwig comes back after being gone nearly a week, bearing a letter from Professor McGonagall saying that she’s added Harry to the Ancient Runes class. The postscript is written slightly less formally and tells him that his parents were both near the top of their class and they would be proud of him for challenging himself academically.
It’s enough to make Harry decide he’s not going to let Ron or Hermione convince him to slack off this year. His parents were smart. Maybe Harry’s not a genius, but it would be nice to see how he can do when he really tries.
Harry sits down to carefully write a letter to Nott now that Hedwig’s back. He keeps it simple, asking about quidditch and what electives the other boy chose for the year. The elective classes are taught with all four Houses, so maybe they’ll have one or two together.
It takes Bear sitting on his mum’s trunk at the end of his second week of freedom for Harry to remember he should open it. “Oh. Right.”
The trunk is old and creaky, and the magic on it seems to be decaying. The storage compartments have fallen apart and dumped everything willy-nilly into one pile. There’s not much—some class notes, hair clips, a scarf made of knobbly red wool, a broken quill…
At the bottom is a silk bag. It looks a bit out of place among the rest of the detritus, so Harry pulls it out curiously.
It’s a set of tarot cards. He remembers Cynthia’s offhand prediction with the force of a bludger to the head. She wasn’t wrong. They’re beautifully painted in rich jewel tones. The top card is numbered XVI THE TOWER and depicts a black tower standing stark against a red and yellow sky. A dash of gold paint is a lightning bolt hitting the battlements and the base of the tower is crumbling.
“Ominous,” Harry says, showing it to Bear, who whines and stuffs his head under a pillow.
Deciding to try it out, Harry rereads the first few pages of the chapter in Unfogging the Future on tarot cards. There are tons of ways to do a tarot reading, but what looks like the simplest one is to just meditate, calm your mind, and “open one’s senses and listen to what the universe wants you to hear.” Then you draw a single card.
Meditating is still really hard. Harry’s been trying, but he can’t seem to sit still for long enough, and he definitely can’t feel his magic. But he does manage to get to something like a quiet state after a few minutes, so he takes a deep breath and shuffles the cards and draws one.
Three of Cups. Harry pulls out the tarot book and looks it up. Friendship, joy, and working together. Maybe it’s telling him Nott will turn into a real friend, or that Ron and Hermione will write back soon.
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