Chapter 326: The Scout and The Red Herring

The heavy, granite door of Vault 162 stood partially ajar, sealing the interior from the vast, echoing darkness of the subterranean cavern.

Dobby climbed out of the master trunk, his large green eyes wide as he took in the towering shelves of classified Ministry ledgers and the glittering heaps of illicit wealth. He stood rigidly at attention, his knitted vest dusted with wood shavings from the ladder.

Orion turned to Bellatrix.

"Aunt Bella," Orion instructed softly, his voice echoing in the quiet vault. "You know your assignment. Prepare the distraction."

Bellatrix’s manic grin widened, her dark eyes flashing with pure, wicked delight. "With pleasure, little star."

She stepped back over to the master trunk, tapped the side latch, and shifted the storage mode.

Reaching into the upper cargo layer, past the stacks of Umbridge’s confiscated ledgers, she withdrew a heavy velvet roll containing an assortment of specialized tools: sticks of alchemically treated silver chalk, a fine obsidian chisel, and several small crystal phials of luminescent, conductive ritual fluids.

Orion had spent hours yesterday briefing her on the foundational aesthetics of the diversion he required. Bellatrix had found the sheer, mocking audacity of the plan utterly hilarious—an absolute masterpiece of psychological gaslighting that would leave the Ministry investigators and Gringotts curse-breakers chasing ghosts for months.

Without wasting another second, she moved to the exact geometric center of the granite floor, kneeling down to begin the meticulous, theatrical preparation.

Orion turned his attention back to Dobby.

"Tell me, Dobby," Orion murmured, dropping his voice to a low, serious register. "Can you sense the spatial wards down here? How are they structured? Is there a single, massive perimeter covering the entire subterranean sector, or are they anchored vault by vault?"

Dobby closed his large eyes, his bat-like ears twitching as his innate elven senses reached out into the bedrock, tasting the ancient enchantments woven into the stone.

He remained silent for five seconds before opening his eyes, looking up at Orion with a serious expression.

"The wards are not one big blanket, Master Orion," Dobby reported in a hushed squeak. "There are many wards, woven at multiple specific places. But each vault possesses its own barrier placed directly to the doorframe. Dobby cannot Apparate directly inside the neighboring vaults without ringing the loud goblin alarms in their high offices."

Orion nodded, entirely unsurprised. "A compartmentalized security grid. Completely standard for Gringotts."

It meant Dobby could not simply pop directly onto the floor of the Lestrange vault from here. He would have to physically navigate the cavern on foot, bypass the dragon, and breach the threshold manually.

Orion reached into his mental Inventory grid.

Retrieve.

In a flash of digital blue light, a heavy, ancient silver key materialized in his right hand. It hummed with a quiet, reality-bending resonance—the one-time-use Skeleton Key he had secured from the Room of Requirement during his first year.

He paired it with a small, folded piece of parchment: a scaled-down, meticulously drafted map of the deep cavern lane, marking the exact route from Vault 162, past the Hebridean Black’s chain boundary, straight to the heavy, iron-bound door of the Lestrange Family Vault.

Orion knelt down, pressing the key and the map into Dobby’s small, spindly hands.

"Listen to me very carefully, Dobby," Orion commanded, his indigo eyes burning with intense, protective authority. "Remember the plan, and follow it to the letter."

He gripped the elf’s small shoulder firmly.

"You will navigate the shadows along the cavern wall. Do not let the dragon catch your scent. When you reach the Lestrange vault, you will use the Skeleton Key. It will bypass their blood-locks and alarm wards natively, without tripping a single goblin sensor."

He raised a strict, cautionary finger.

"Once that door swings open, Dobby... make sure you do not touch a single item with your bare hands. The treasure inside is heavily enchanted with both the Flagrante and Geminio curses. Touch a single goblet, and it will burn your flesh and duplicate infinitely, crushing you beneath boiling gold and alerting the entire bank."

Orion held Dobby’s gaze. "Use your elven telekinesis. Either float Helga Hufflepuff’s Cup directly off its shelf, or use another hook as discussed to pick it up, and then place it inside the stasis pouch, lock the door behind you, and return straight to this room. The Cup is the only target. Stay safe, Dobby."

Dobby’s chest puffed out with fierce, unyielding pride. He tucked the key and the map into his vest, saluting sharply.

"Dobby will not touch the burning gold!" the elf promised fiercely. "Dobby will bring the bad cup back to Master Orion without a sound! Dobby is a phantom!"

"Go," Orion whispered.

With a silent, effortless blur of motion, Dobby slipped through the ajar granite door, vanishing into the cavernous gloom like a shadow.

Orion stood up, pulling his Hawthorn wand from his sleeve. He pointed it out through the narrow gap in the door, aiming squarely at the back of Bladehurl’s neck, where the goblin teller was still sprawled motionless on the bridge.

"Stupefy," Orion cast silently.

A fresh bolt of red light struck the unconscious goblin, refreshing the magical coma for another two hours. Orion was not a wizard who left loose ends to chance; the last thing he needed was a half-awake goblin groaning while they were still in the middle of their work.

He turned back around, surveying the interior of Vault 162.

Bellatrix was entirely absorbed in her work, humming a disjointed, eerie tune as she carefully traced thick, complex silver lines across the granite floor, the alchemical fluid sizzling faintly as it bound to the stone.

Orion had a few minutes to kill while the pieces moved.

He accessed his Inventory, pulling out the sleek, wire-rimmed Scrying Glasses. He slipped them onto the bridge of his nose, the magical interface overlaying reality with floating text boxes.

He walked slowly down the rows of tall steel shelving, inspecting the contents of Cornelius Fudge’s private slush fund.

"Pretty standard bureaucracy," Orion muttered, adjusting the frame.

The shelves were lined with hundreds of thick, leather-bound folders:

[Ledger: Unregistered Campaign Contributions - Wizengamot 1991]

[Parchment: Regulatory Waivers - Quality Quidditch Supplies (Bribed)]

[Folder: Extortion Files - Department of Magical Transportation]

There were no ancient, soul-eating blood traps. No flesh-melting protective wards.

It made complete sense. Cornelius Fudge was a corrupt, cowardly politician, not a dark wizard. He kept this vault secret through bureaucratic obfuscation, goblin bribes, and institutional confidentiality, not through lethal curses. It was purely an administrative vault designed to hold dirty paper and illicit wealth.

Orion took off the Scrying Glasses, vanishing them back into the digital void.

He walked toward the far corner of the vault.

Piled against the back wall, glowing with a rich, hypnotic, warm golden radiance under the lantern light, was a colossal mountain of raw wealth.

It was a towering, sprawling pyramid of gold Galleons, easily ten feet high, containing hundreds of thousands of coins—the accumulated kickbacks of a decade of political corruption.

Orion stopped at the base of the pile. He stared at the glittering mass of gold.

The silence stretched for ten seconds.

"What are you doing?" Sparkle’s interface buzzed into existence beside his temple, her digital waveform tilting in confusion. "You’re just staring at it. You know you are rich, right?"

Orion didn’t answer immediately. A strange, completely childish, uncharacteristic gleam entered his indigo eyes.

"Hey, Sparkle," Orion whispered softly.

"Yeah?"

"I gotta do it, pal."

Sparkle blinked. "Do... do what? Orion, we are literally in the middle of a grand heist. What do you have to do?!"

Orion didn’t explain.

He slowly turned around, his back to the massive pile of gold.

He crossed his arms over his double-breasted black coat, took a single, deep breath... and deliberately, entirely unbothered by gravity, allowed his knees to buckle.

He fell straight backward.

CRASH-CLINK-CLATTER!

Orion slammed back-first into the colossal mountain of gold.

Thousands of solid Galleons shifted, cascaded, and clattered loudly, the heavy coins sliding around him like a golden avalanche, completely cushioning his fall.

He sank several inches into the shifting sea of wealth, his boots buried in gold, his head resting comfortably against an incline of shining coins.

He crossed his legs, folded his hands over his stomach, and stared up at the rough-hewn granite ceiling of the vault with a look of profound, blissful, completely idiotic satisfaction.

"..."

Sparkle’s interface went completely, utterly silent. The digital waveform flatlined for a full five seconds.

"You..." Sparkle finally choked out, her voice a mixture of absolute disbelief and sheer, hysterical exasperation. "You just pulled a Scrooge McDuck. In the middle of an active, red-level Gringotts infiltration."

Orion closed his eyes, letting the cool, heavy clatter of hundreds of thousands of Galleons settle around his shoulders.

"This," Orion murmured, a tiny, contented smile playing on his lips, "is nice."