Chapter 3 – Vault Twelve
The cliff and the roar of the sea vanished in a single step.
Cool air closed around Jasper, dry and still and faintly metallic. For a moment, his ears rang, like they hadn't decided whether to listen to the ocean or the underground. The world shrank to stone and shadow.
He turned, half-expecting to see the slit of daylight they'd just walked through.
There was only rock.
The opening they'd come from was gone, the cliff face replaced by a seamless wall. If not for the lingering taste of salt on his tongue, he might have doubted they'd ever been outside at all.
Ahead, the tunnel stretched away, gently curving out of sight. The ceiling was just high enough that Fig could stand upright. Crystals jutted from the walls at intervals, shedding a pale light that left more shadows than it dispelled.
The hum was louder here.
It lived in the stone, in the rail set into the floor, in the air itself. Not a noise he could point to, but a pressure under his skin, in his teeth, in the back of his eyes. Ancient magic, Alder had called it—old threads, woven through everything.
Fig drew in a slow breath.
"Remarkable," he said quietly. The word sounded too small in the space. "Miriam was right."
Jasper rubbed his fingers together, trying to shake out the buzzing in them.
"It's… thick," he said. "Like walking through water."
Fig glanced at him, concern and curiosity both in his gaze.
"If it becomes too much," he said, "tell me. We need what you can see, Jasper. Not you collapsing on the floor."
"I'll manage," Jasper said. His voice came out steadier than he felt.
They set off down the tunnel.
The floor sloped gently downward. Water had marked slow paths along the walls in darker streaks; some of the crystals had grown around those paths, as if the stone itself had changed course to avoid them.
Symbols were carved into the rock here and there—curving lines and shapes entirely unlike goblin runes or the angular, precise marks of standard wardwork. In places, when Jasper passed, they flickered faintly, answering something in him with a brief pulse of light.
He tried not to think about Alder and the corridor. About the way the tear had stretched wider and wider, about the professor's hand slipping from his.
It didn't help. Some part of him kept matching the feeling in his chest now to the feeling he'd had standing in front of that crack. The same strain, the same wrongness behind the power.
"Look," Fig murmured.
The tunnel opened suddenly into a wider chamber.
The ceiling rose, revealing a rough dome supported by thick stone ribs. A metal rail, twin to the one in the tunnel, ran straight through the chamber and ended at a small platform on the far side. A single lantern hung above it, casting a circle of warmer light.
On the platform, there was a cart.
And beside the cart, a goblin.
He stood with a ledger tucked under one arm, spectacles perched low on his nose, dressed in a neat waistcoat under a dark robe. His expression sat somewhere between bored and faintly irritated, the expression of someone who had been told to wait and resented having his time wasted, even if he was being paid for it.
His ears flicked once when they entered, but that was the only sign he'd heard them.
"Professor Fig," he said, closing the ledger with a soft thud. "You are later than scheduled."
Fig smiled thinly.
"Our carriage encountered complications," he said. "I'm grateful your schedule was flexible enough to accommodate a dragon."
The goblin's eyebrows rose a fraction.
"A dragon," he said. "That would explain the scorch marks."
Jasper glanced down. There were, in fact, faint black smudges along the hem of his robe.
"We lost a man," Fig added. There was no tremor in his voice, but the slight pause before the words said enough. "George Osric. The Ministry will… inform the bank formally."
The goblin inclined his head, a short, precise movement.
"The safety of our clients in our airspace is a matter of grave concern," he said. "My condolences. And your companion?"
His gaze slid to Jasper, sharp and weighing.
"This is Jasper Hemlock," Fig said. "My student. Extraordinary circumstances have brought him farther than intended, but he is under my protection."
Under my protection. There was something solid in the way Fig said it, a line drawn on the stone.
The goblin studied Jasper for a heartbeat longer, eyes flicking once to where the Portkey rested hidden under Fig's robes, then back.
"Gringotts respects its arrangements," he said at last. "We received instructions from the account manager associated with your late wife's work. Both of you are expected at Vault Twelve." His mouth curved, not quite a smile. "Together."
"Vault Twelve," Fig repeated. "Miriam didn't mention a number."
"She would not," the goblin said. "Some vaults have numbers. Some have names. Some are known only by their… agreements." He stepped aside and gestured toward the cart. "Please. Sit. The bank does not like to keep certain doors open longer than necessary."
Jasper climbed into the rear bench of the cart. The metal was cold even through his damp clothes. Fig settled beside him. The goblin took the front position, hands resting on a simple array of levers and a single, round, polished stone.
Up close, the rail looked less like something forged and laid, and more like the rock itself had oozed up from the floor and frozen into metal halfway through changing its mind.
The goblin flicked a lever.
The cart jerked.
Jasper's stomach dropped as they plunged into the darkness beyond the chamber.
Air rushed past his face, cold and sharp, prickling his skin. The crystals along the tunnel walls became streaks of light. The rail hummed under them, the vibration singing up through the cart into Jasper's bones.
He'd never done this before. He knew he hadn't. And yet something inside him tightened, braced, as if this was the start of a ride it had memorised without his permission.
"Gringotts runs deep," Fig called over the wind. "Older than the Ministry, older than most wizarding structures still standing. Goblins prefer the safety of stone to the unpredictability of the surface."
Jasper nodded, more to show he'd heard than out of any desire to test his voice. It was currently busy making sure he didn't make any undignified noises.
They shot around a tight bend, the cart tilting. Jasper's shoulder knocked into Fig's. The hum of the ancient magic rose and fell with the curves of the tunnel, like a giant breathing.
The tunnel opened suddenly into a cavern so large the cart might as well have been a beetle on a web of rails.
Tracks ran everywhere—up, down, side to side, looping over and under each other. Other carts flashed past in the distance, brief glints of metal, hair, and cloth. Waterfalls tumbled from higher ledges into glowing pools far below. Stalactites hung like teeth.
It all thrummed.
The hum he'd been feeling since the cliff was a roar here, a constant vibration under his skin. Not loud, not the way sound was, but all-encompassing. It seeped through him, through the rock, through the rails.
The cart veered onto a narrower track branching away from the main web. It plunged through a curtain of falling water before Jasper could brace himself.
Cold slammed into him. For a heartbeat, everything was nothing but water, shocking and heavy and biting like needles. It ran into his collar, down his sleeves, soaking him in an instant.
It carried something with it.
For a moment, Jasper felt strangely exposed, as if all the little protections he'd been carrying—charms in his clothes, Alder's hurried wards, the faint residue of corridor magic—had been washed away. The hum shifted, less muffled, clearer.
He gasped when they burst out the other side.
"Thief's Downfall," Fig said, raising his voice against the sound of water still pounding behind them. Droplets clung to his hair and beard. "Gringotts enchantment. Strips away charms, glamours, concealed curses—anything the goblins don't like passing their doors."
The goblin in the front added, "And… other irregularities."
His tone suggested he'd noticed something more, though he didn't elaborate.
Jasper shivered, not entirely from the cold.
Whatever thin layer had been between him and the ancient magic was gone now. He could feel every thread more clearly, each one like a line of light tugging in a different direction.
The cart began to slow.
Up ahead, the track ran alongside a narrow ledge cut into the rock. A second goblin waited there, beside a stone pedestal. On the pedestal sat a forked metal rod planted into a block of cloudy crystal.
The crystal glowed faintly from within, like a milk-white eye half-open.
"Standard security measure," their goblin guide said as the cart shuddered to a halt. "Step out, please."
Fig climbed out first, landing lightly despite the uneven stone. Jasper swung himself down beside him, boots slipping a little on the damp rock.
The goblin by the pedestal picked up the metal rod.
"Stand there," he told Fig, pointing to a patch of floor in front of the crystal.
Fig obeyed, squaring his shoulders.
The goblin swept the rod up and down in front of him. As it passed, the crystal brightened to a mild, steady blue.
"Known personal magic," the goblin muttered. "A few standard enchantments. And…" his gaze flicked to the bulge where the Portkey sat in Fig's robes "...an artefact of interest."
"A family heirloom," Fig said smoothly.
The goblin's mouth twitched, but he didn't argue. He nodded to Jasper.
"Next."
Jasper stepped into place.
The hum inside him climbed as the rod was raised. He felt oddly as if he were volunteering for something and regretting it already.
The goblin passed the rod in front of him.
The crystal flared white.
It wasn't a subtle glow. It was a bright, sharp burst of light that threw the goblin's features into stark shadow and made Jasper's eyes water.
The goblin froze.
So did the one from the cart.
The rod was pulled back a fraction. The goblin's fingers tightened on it.
"Again," he said.
He swept the rod slowly up and down.
The crystal flared even brighter, then settled into a thin, intense glow.
"Unregistered signature," the goblin said, voice very quiet now. "High intensity. Not wand, not animagus, not cursed object, not potion influence."
The other goblin frowned.
"That classification is not possible," he said.
"Nevertheless," the one with the rod replied, "that is what the stone reports."
They slipped into Gobbledegook then, sharp-edged syllables biting at the air. Jasper didn't understand much of it, but he caught enough to make out words like record and anomaly and old.
The word old came with a different twist to it. Respect and worry.
Fig took a half step closer to Jasper, not quite blocking him, but definitely declaring a side.
"Is there a problem?" he asked.
The goblin returned the rod to its cradle on the crystal, carefully, as if it might explode.
"The bank likes to know what walks in its deepest halls," he said. "Your student carries a kind of power we do not see often. We will record the signature."
"What does that mean?" Jasper asked, before he could swallow the question.
"It means," the goblin said, "that if you return, the stone will recognise you."
His gaze was searching, but he didn't look afraid. Just wary. Assessing.
"As long as that information stays in Gringotts," Fig said, "I see no reason for concern."
"The bank does not share lightly," the goblin said. "Nor does it forget."
The repetition of that line from earlier dug under Jasper's skin. The idea of a piece of stone remembering the shape of his magic was… not comforting.
But the goblin stepped back and gestured to the cart.
"Vault Twelve," he said. "Do not keep it waiting."
They climbed back into the cart.
As soon as they were seated, the front goblin threw a lever. The cart jerked forward and plunged into the darkness again. The platform, the scanning stone, and the intense white glow vanished behind them.
The track veered away from the main cavern, down a narrower, less polished tunnel.
The stone here looked different. Older, somehow, less worked. The crystals were farther apart, their light weaker. The air smelled minerally and cold, but there was another scent under it too—a dry, dusty sharpness like old parchment and lightning.
The hum was very loud now.
Jasper's teeth buzzed. He could feel threads in the rock, tugging and knotting together. It was less like standing near a storm and more like standing inside the cloud.
"You all, right?" Fig asked, voice pitched low so the goblin wouldn't easily hear.
"Yes," Jasper said. Then, because Fig was the sort of man you didn't lie to without a good reason, he added, "It's just… a lot."
He pressed his free hand against his chest for a moment. The beat of his heart and the beat of the magic were out of time, and his body didn't seem to know which one to follow.
"Miriam said these places felt like… pressure," Fig said, eyes on the tunnel ahead. "She also said that after the first few, it was stranger to be away from them."
"I hope that's not true," Jasper muttered.
Fig huffed quietly.
The cart began to slow again.
They emerged into a small, isolated chamber, much smaller than the cavern above. The ceiling lowered, the walls pulling in close. The rail ran straight onto a stone platform and ended in front of a single, heavy door.
The door was round and set deep into the rock, built of interlocking rings of metal etched with strange marks. No numbers were obvious at first glance. When Jasper looked closer, though, his eyes found patterns—clusters of symbols that twisted, shuffled, and settled into a simple sequence in his mind.
Twelve.
"Vault Twelve," the goblin said, climbing out.
He walked up to the door, took off one glove, and pressed his bare palm against the centre. The metal under his hand lit with a reddish-gold glow. Rings within the door began to move, grinding against each other with a sound like distant thunder.
Jasper felt almost nothing from the door itself. Whatever goblin magic warded it was different to the ancient threads he'd been following. Separate. Parallel lines that didn't quite touch.
Behind the door, though—behind it, the hum knotted.
Even through the metal, he could feel it: a concentrated presence, like a heart beating behind a ribcage.
The circles in the door rotated through a final third of a turn and stopped.
"With your permission," the goblin said.
The door rolled aside, heavy and deliberate, opening onto—
Emptiness.
The vault beyond was circular and bare. No piles of galleons. No shelves. No chests. Just smooth stone walls and floor. In the centre, faintly visible, was a circular pattern carved into the ground—lines intersecting, spirals within rings—but whatever had once sat there was gone.
Fig took a step inside, frowning.
"This… is not what I expected," he said.
"The vault holds what it was meant to hold," the goblin replied. "That does not always take the form wizards anticipate."
"Has anyone else been here?" Fig asked sharply.
"No," the goblin said. "The protections on this approach make that… unlikely. And the accounts associated with this vault have not been accessed since Professor Fig's wife last met with our manager."
His gaze flicked around the empty stone. He didn't look convinced, but he wasn't lying. Jasper had learned to recognise the difference in adults; whatever else goblins were, they weren't usually bad at honesty when they chose to use it.
The hum pressed in on him from the wall to his right.
It was almost physical now, a low throb that made his fingers twitch.
He moved toward it before he realised he was doing it.
"Jasper?" Fig asked.
"It's here," Jasper said. "Not the middle. The wall."
He reached out.
Up close, the wall looked like any other: grey stone blocks, smoothly finished. But beneath that surface, the threads of light were tightly woven, tangled into a familiar shape.
Circle. Crossed lines. That not-quite-eye.
The symbol he'd seen in the cliff. In the corridor. In the flash of the tear.
He put his palm flat against the stone.
Cold. Then warmth, flowing up through his fingers and into his arm.
Light flared under his hand.
The symbol burned onto the wall, lines of white-blue tracing out the pattern that had been hidden there for Merlin knew how long. The hum grew into a full chord, vibrating through the room.
Stone shuddered.
The goblin swore under his breath and took a quick step back.
"This is not goblin magic," he snapped. "This is not the bank's doing."
"No," Fig said, voice full of something like awe. "It's older."
Rings of rock—not visible a moment before—began to rotate around the glowing symbol, sliding back into the wall. The circle carved into the floor lit up, lines rushing out from its centre to meet those in the stone.
Dust cascaded down in small sheets as hidden mechanisms moved.
With a quiet, final thump, a section of the wall simply sank away.
Beyond it, a sloping passage disappeared into soft, pale light.
Cool air spilled out, brushing Jasper's face. It smelled of dust, but not neglect; more like a room that had been closed for a long time on purpose. There was a faint hint of ozone too, like the air before a storm.
The hum rolled out with it, stronger and clearer.
The goblin recovered enough to speak.
"My responsibility," he said, very firmly, "ends at the vault door."
He pointed to the original round doorway, not the hole Jasper had just opened.
"Whatever lies beyond that passage is not Gringotts' concern."
"You won't come with us?" Fig asked.
The goblin's eyes flashed.
"We are custodians of wealth and agreements," he said. "Not fools who walk willingly into unknown magic that moves of its own accord. The bank will honour its part—we brought you to Vault Twelve. Whatever you choose to do now is your own affair."
He stepped back toward the cart and watched them from what he clearly considered to be a sensible distance
Fig looked from the open passage to Jasper and back again.
"You're still with me?" he asked quietly.
Jasper flexed his fingers. His hand still tingled where it had touched the stone.
He could turn back now. Go no further. Leave whatever waited down that slope unopened and let other people deal with whatever cracked the world. He could pretend he hadn't felt the magic reaching for him in the corridor. Pretend he hadn't been dragged through it.
But the knot he'd been feeling since Alder's office, since before that if he was being honest with himself, pulled tight in his chest.
If he walked away, he'd be walking away blind. And in his experience, it was always worse to be blindsided by something big than to see it coming.
"Yes," he said. "I'm with you."
Fig's shoulders eased a fraction.
"Then we go on," he said.
He raised his wand.
"Lumos."
Light flared at the tip, bright and steady. It mingled with the faint glow from the crystals in the passage beyond, pushing the shadows back a little further.
Jasper drew his own wand. It felt less like a stranger in his hand now. The wood warmed under his fingers, as if pleased to be doing something other than being clutched in panic.
The passage sloped downward at an easy angle. Its walls were smoother than the tunnel they'd used to reach the cart; the stone was worked by careful hands. The same looping script ran along the edges, repeating phrases Jasper couldn't read but could feel—steady, rhythmic, like incantations written into the bones of the place.
Behind them, the goblin watched from the cart, eyes dark and unreadable.
"If we are not back in a reasonable time," Fig told him, "you may assume we are dead."
"That assumption," the goblin said, "was already in place."
Fig smiled faintly.
"Honesty is refreshing," he said.
Jasper swallowed, throat dry.
He looked once at the bare vault room. The circular mark on the floor still glowed faintly, the last of the light retreating as the door settled into its new shape. Whatever this chamber had been before, it had always been a waiting room, not a destination.
"Ready, Mister Hemlock?" Fig asked.
Jasper listened to the deep, quiet thrum in the air. To the weight of the power pressing in around them. To the echo of Alder's voice telling him the world had been bent, and someone had to straighten it before it snapped.
"As I'll ever be," he said.
They stepped across the threshold together.
The hum grew louder with each step down. The light changed, deepening from pale crystal glow to something richer, almost golden. Symbols on the walls brightened as they passed, then dimmed when they moved away, like eyes closing again.
Jasper could feel… something gathering ahead. A presence, almost. Not a person, exactly, but not an absence either. Like walking down, a corridor toward a room where someone was thinking very hard.
His skin prickled.
"What did Miriam call these?" he asked, if only to set his voice against the silence.
"Chambers of memory," Fig said quietly. "She believed the people who built them—Keepers, they called themselves—stored pieces of their knowledge here. Decisions. Warnings. Records written in magic instead of ink."
"Why hide them?" Jasper asked.
"Because some knowledge is too dangerous for a library shelf," Fig said. "She thought they were trying to ensure that only certain people, at certain times, could access what they left behind."
"How did they decide who?" Jasper murmured.
"I suspect," Fig said, "that we're walking into the answer."
The passage curved one last time.
It opened into a round chamber.
Light washed over them, soft and gold and blue at once, coming from no single source. The walls were smooth and unadorned, save for the faint suggestion of symbols etched so shallowly they were more memory than mark. The floor was a shallow basin of stone, and in the centre of it stood a raised pedestal.
On the pedestal rested a shallow stone bowl filled with liquid light.
It swirled slowly, surface never quite settling. Threads of brightness looped within it, rising and falling, forming shapes that dissolved as soon as Jasper tried to focus on them.
The hum started and ended there, centred in that bowl. Everything else was an echo.
"A Pensieve," Fig breathed. His voice held equal parts wonder and dread. "Or… an earlier version of one"
Jasper took a step forward without realising he was moving.
The liquid in the bowl brightened as he approached, threads of light curling toward him. The feeling in his chest sharpened, like standing in the path of something about to happen.
He thought of Alder, reaching out toward the tear, of the corridor warping. Of the sensation of being pulled along a path he hadn't chosen.
His hand twitched at his side.
"Carefully," Fig said, as if reading his thoughts. "We came here for answers. Let's try to take them on our terms."
"Do we have terms?" Jasper asked.
"That," Fig said, "is what we're about to find out."
Together, they moved down towards the basin and drew nearer to the waiting bowl of light.
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