Chapter 1: Robbing Gringotts

Harry Potter sat on a wooden bench in the King's Cross Station, lost in thoughts and memories of the past year, waiting for the Dursleys to come pick him up.

A hundred thoughts seemed to be passing through his head at once. The trial, the nightmares, the visions, Umbridge, the prophecy, Ministry . . . Sirius's death.

It had been a hard year.

With a sigh, Harry looked around the muggle platform around him, and saw an old man, looking about seventy of age, limping over to the bench where Harry was sitting, leaning heavily on his cane. Harry scooted to the side and put Hedwig's cage on the floor to make space for the tired man, who sat himself down to give some rest to his legs.

Harry looked at his wrinkled face for a second before his thoughts moved unbidden away from the present and to the past. His thoughts moved from dark to darker places as memories of the battle in the Ministry passed through his mind.

"So who'd you lose son?" the old man asked suddenly, startling Harry.

He chuckled at Harry's shocked expression, "You've got the look about you. Its very obvious to anyone who's been in the war. So? Who'd you lose?"

"It was my godfather" Harry finally said.

"Were you close?"

"Yeah . . . Yeah. We were close. He was my only remaining family."

"I'm sorry."

There was a small silence, in which Harry's mind drifted back to that one moment when he had finally realised that Sirius was gone, that he couldn't just pull back the veil and bring him back to life.

"You ever lose someone? In the war?" Harry suddenly asked.

"I have. Jerry, one of my best mates, died in 1940 in the front lines when we were in Egypt. Used to love horse riding. I still remember how the day after he died, me and my other mates snuck out of the camp. We drank to his memory and got a local to rent us his horses" the man chuckled, "We broke a lot of bones that day trying to ride those."

Harry felt a bit sick inside, "You celebrated his death?"

"Oh no! However did you get that idea? No. We were celebrating his life. Its a good thing to do for people who are mourning someone close. I don't mean to be insensitive, but I reckon you should do the same."

"So I should just not mourn him and make merry? Is that what you're saying?" Harry said, his voice cold.

"What I'm saying son, is that mourning is fine." the old man said calmly, "Its healthy for the soul. But in the end, you have to learn that you hold onto the love, not the loss . . . So tell me. What was your godfather's favourite thing to do in the world?"

It took Harry a second to realise it.

"Being free" he muttered, just as much to himself as to the man.

The old man paused for a second, perhaps trying to make sense of that, before he spoke, "Then celebrate that. Celebrate his life. Don't let the moment of his death define your memory of him. Let his life define it. Think of what he would have wanted you to do, and then do it."

Harry looked at the people bustling through the station, thinking about what the old man was saying. The station clock gave out a chime.

"Oh sweet Jesus! Look at the time!"the old man suddenly exclaimed. With a groan, he put weight on his cane and lifted himself onto his feet.

"Well, I'm off lad. You take care now." he said, before he hobbled off into the crowd.

The old man's advice had driven something into Harry.

Right now, sitting at this station, he had a choice to make. He could spend all his time this summer in a proverbial hell, be a nice boy and do what he was told.

Or he could forget about the war and have some fun.

Now that Voldemort's return was public, he wouldn't be holding back on his attacks anymore. It would soon be all out war.

And with the prophecy hanging over his head, this summer might just be the last time Harry would ever have a chance to have some fun. Heck why was he even kidding himself? There was a very strong chance that he wouldn't even live to see another summer.

It wasn't exactly hard to see what Sirius would do.

Screw the Dursleys. If this was going to be the last summer of his life, then by goodness he was going to live.

Checking to see that his trunk, which Lupin had enchanted with a permanent voice activated shrink-unshrink charm for him, was still in his pocket, he picked up Hedwig's cage and walked out of the station.

He headed towards a small hidden alleyway next to the station, where he pulled out his trunk and unshrinked it, before pulling out a piece of parchment and a quill.

For a moment Harry considered going into a long and hard rant, detailing out all the problems he had over the years at Hogwarts. All the monsters he had to fight and the detentions he had to serve. And the toilets! Oh the Merlin forsaken toilets! Yes, he thought, those deserved a whole paragraph unto itself!

But in the end, he discarded the idea, since he couldn't be arsed to write out an autobiography on a piece of parchment with a ruddy half broken quill and an inkpot while he was hunched over on the floor of a dirty alleyway.

Instead, he wrote down a small but effective message,.

Dear Professor,

Toodles

Sincerely,

Harry

Folding it up, he let Hedwig out of her cage and tied the letter to her leg.

"Take this to Hogwarts girl, and then go stay with Hermione until I come and get you." he said, stroking her feathers.

Hooting sadly, Hedwig gave his ear a last affectionate nip before taking off to deliver her master's message.

Harry watched until his beloved pet had faded from sight. It would take Hedwig a few hours to get to Scotland and deliver the letter. He had until then to decide what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go.

He quickly shrunk his trunk back up and put it into his pocket, before making his way back towards the portal to Platform Nine & Three Quarters.

Walking through the divide that separated the muggle platform from the magical one, Harry looked back and forth across the platform, and located the floo station.

He flattened his fringe over his scar before going over to the man handing out the floo powder, and paying him a couple of knuts for a handful of powder.

"Diagon Alley" he clearly enunciated.

A second and half of mind tumbling brain gomboozling famboozlespins later, Harry stepped out of the fireplace in Leaky Cauldron.

Keeping his head low, he quickly slipped to the back of the pub and tapped out the sequence for the brick wall to open up before he stepped into the alley and headed to Gringotts.

Entering Gringotts, he immediately went to the nearest open teller.

"Yes" the goblin looked down at him and asked when he finally noticed him.

"I need a way to store galleons" Harry answered quickly.

"One moment" The goblin rummaged through a small chest on his desk for several minutes before pulling out a small pouch, "This pouch is expanded on the inside. It can hold thousands of galleons along with anything else of value you choose to put inside it. And its protected to only let its owner open itself. Fifty galleons cost. Will that be all?"

"No," Harry said, "I'll be making some withdrawals from my vault please."

"Of course." the teller said. He called a scruffy looking goblin passing by and click-clacked away in Gobbledegook for a second, before he turned to Harry.

"Follow him. He'll take you to your vault."

The goblin led him to one of the doors leading off the hall. Soon, they were sitting in a cart, speeding down the rail roads that led deep into the cavern.

Harry stared at the wrinkly faced goblin, who genuinely had the most horrifying facial structure that Harry had ever seen. It was nightmarish. It looked like a hippogriff had taken a dump on a pair of shoulders and stuck ears onto it.

Feeling a little bad, Harry tried to start a conversation.

"What's your name?"

The goblin sneered, disfiguring his face even more "None of your business you filthy wand toting sack of dung wizard."

Well. Feeling a much less bad for comparing the goblin to a hippogriff dung, Harry stepped out of the cart in front of Vault 687.

"Key" the goblin snapped at him, reaching out to take his vault key.

As the goblin opened his vault, Harry curiously looked at the door of the vault next to his own. It was an pure black metal door, with no keyhole like his own vault.

"High-security family vault" the goblin said with a toothy smirk, noticing where he was looking. "Families with actual money have the extra protections added in. Only a goblin can open one of those. Anyone else who tries get sucked into the vault and is left to rot." the goblin snarked before rasping out a few chuckles.

Harry knew that. The vault had a striking similarity to the one he had visited back in first year with Hagrid to retrieve the Philosopher's Stone.

The familiar stylized M on the carved stone crest above the door stared at him, tempting. A plan was forming in his head, unbidden, one he was pretty sure would work . . .

The Malfoys were death eaters, and were almost definitely bankrolling the Death Eater operations. Harry had decided that didn't want anything to do with the war for this summer, but that was no reason to not dick the Death Eaters over any chance he got.

Harry asked himself the question that had made him start off on this strange aimless journey.

What would Sirius do?

It wasn't exactly hard to guess.

Looking left and right along the long tunnel to check that nobody was around to see what he was about to do, Harry promptly picked up the Goblin by the scruff of its neck and slammed him head first right into the stone wall with all his strength.

"Whaaa . . ." the goblin slurred, knocked out of his senses. Frowning at the fact that the goblin was still conscious, Harry bonked him into the wall one more time.

And once more, just to be sure.

Making sure that the hideous little monster was finally unconscious, Harry dragged his unconscious body over to the Malfoy vault, and stroked the door using one of the goblin's long fingers.

The door simply melted away, revealing piles and piles of golden Galleons, dwarfing the his own vault in both size and content.

It took Harry almost half an hour to dump all the galleons into his new brand spanking new pouch, leaving only a few sickles and knuts. He stepped out and the door solidified back into existence.

Now it was time to make sure the goblin didn't suspect anything.

Harry dragged the goblin over to near his own vault before shaking the goblin's shoulder, waking him up. The next part of the plan had to be done perfectly, or he would probably never make it out of the bank alive.

"Urgh . . ." the goblin muttered before he regained his bearings and narrowed his eyes at Harry suspiciously. "What happened here? Why am I on the floor?"

"That's what I should be asking you!" Harry exclaimed, trying to channel his best acting abilities. "I go into the vault for ten minutes and you decide to take a nap! Rest assured I'll be reporting you to your supervisor and moving my gold and business elsewhere! Honestly! Sleeping on the job! The nerve!"

The goblin's suspicion vanished as panic took its place. If any supervisor heard that he'd driven such a famous client from the bank then he'd be fed to the dragons!

"No! Don't! It'd destroy me. Please." The goblin begged, singing a totally different tune now than he was before.

Harry took his sweet time before answering, riling up the goblin to the point that he was purple in his face, before he relented, "Fine . . . But I take this money pouch free of cost. And get me out of this hell-hole fast."

The goblin agreed immediately, and ushered Harry to the cart and sped them back to the surface, where Harry converted some galleons to pounds and made his way out of the bank.

With his scar well covered by his cap, Harry now made his way into Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment, which was the place to go for pretty much any magical items you wanted.

Except wands. The shop was strictly non-sexual in nature.

Harry heard a faint ringing sound as he opened the door and he looked around for the shop keeper.

"What can I do for you?" an old man asked as he approached.

"Ah . . . Do you have one of those wizarding tents? The kind with loads of rooms." Harry said, "I was looking for one that's good for at least a couple of months worth of travel."

"Well I think I have just the thing for you" the old man replied enthusiastically, "the Super Awesome Patent-pending tent, also known as the SAP tent. It has three rooms, dragonhide lined fabric, and is charmed to set itself up as soon as you throw it into the ground. It has successfully passed all Ministry and ICW standards."

"That's impressive." Harry's interest was piqued, "What else does it have?"

"A lot more! All of the regular stuff obviously, to keep you going if you have to kip in the middle of nowhere. A rucksack for everything you want to keep handy without opening up the tent. It also has its own stove, a stocked icebox, fold 'em up beds and so on. It's the best thing for travel in the shop."

"Wow," Harry said, quite a bit impressed, "Anything else you think I should carry around that you'd recommend to someone who was planning to travel around for a while? Money isn't an issue."

The shopkeeper looked Harry up and down before he zeroed in on his glasses. "A few more things sir" he suggested, "A pair of in-eye lenses made by Septiceye Sam to keep your glasses from inconveniencing you . . . And if you buy the tent then I'll throw in a copy of The Magical Atlas for the Magical Wanderer as well." the old man looked at Harry's ragged clothes, "You'll be wanting some new magical clothing as well. Self-mending and weather proof and the likes."

"That seems reasonable" Harry said, "Just give me the best of whatever you recommend."

"No problems sir," The shopkeeper started putting several items on the table, "the Septiceye Sam glasses will adjust to any prescription, are weatherproof and even have a zoom feature. This Allspeak Potion is for learning languages. You have to just hear or read the language once to gain a full understanding of it. Each dose can help you learn up to a dozen languages, and you'll understand them even after the potion wears off. I'd suggest five vials, since each dose has effects lasting a month. A bit expensive, but I'd say definitely worth it. That should be it."

"There is one more thing that I would like to get," Harry said nervously, "I was wondering if you had something that would allow me to . . . blend in better?"

"Why would you want that?" the shopkeeper said suspiciously "Are you up to something shady? I want nothing to do with that sort of thing."

Harry looked around to check that no one was watching, before he nervously lifted his bangs to show his scar.

"Ah, I see . . . " the shopkeeper said in comprehension, "Never fear Mr. Potter. I've had something like that for a few years now. I wouldn't ever part with it normally, but I reckon it'd do good in your hands. Consider it an apology for believing all the nasty stuff the Prophet printed about you all throughout the last year."

He pulled out a golden ring with a small ruby on top of it from his pocket and looked at it reverently.

"This . . . this is a Confundus ring. The Confundus ring. Used to belong to Nicholas Flamel." Harry's eyebrows shot into his hairline. The shopkeeper continued, "I had to go through a lot of hoops to get it. It creates a small undetectable Confundus field around you, and people won't be able to tell your face apart from somebody next to you as long as you have this on. Its believed that this is how Flamel was able to move around in public without getting stampeded. It probably does a lot more stuff that I don't know. I reckon you need it more than I do."

"Thank you so much," Harry gave a relieved smile, "You have no idea how much you helped me. Just one more thing. Is there any way I could convince you to keep my coming here a secret? I'd really rather not have people following me around when I'm travelling."

"No worries Mr. Potter. It'll be our little secret" the shopkeeper said with a grin.

Soon, Harry paid for his purchases and walked out of the store, a few Malfoy galleons poorer, and wandered down the alley, wondering where he should head to next, and what to do.

He had just ditched the Dursleys, and robbed a pureblood family out in Gringotts, without even planning what he was going to do and where he was going to go! he thought to himself.

The loud calls of a news paper hawker distracted him from his thoughts, "Today's headline on the Prophet! DEVILISH WITCHYS to move to FRANCE out of fear of You Know Who! Celestina Warbeck PREGNANT for the EIGHTEENTH TIME!"

Harry's head snapped towards the hawker.

Devilish Witchys! That was Dean's favourite porno magazine! Harry borrowed it all the time! They moved to France!?

"One Prophet please" Harry quickly demanded, handing the hawker a few knuts.

He quickly read through the article about the Witchys, before sighing with relief. Thankfully, they would still be continuing to supply in Britain.

As he was about to fold up the Prophet and stuff it into a bin, a small advert caught his attention. It was nothing special, all boring looking, and was stuffed in the bottom corner of the page where no one would really see it.

The first line of the advert read,

Newt Scamander,master of the magical creatures, is looking to hire one young intern for a summer wide assignment of adventuring,exploration and learning!

This will be a fun light-hearted travel story, with elements of Rorschach's Blot's and nonjon's writing styles. Hard goals, I know, but I love their work and I really wanted to write something in their veins. Every chapter after the second chapter will take place outside England. Rest assured, this chapter contains most of the cliche elements you'll see in this story.

REVIEW!