Chapter 9: The Founding of House Watson

With a faint pop, the world reassembled around Harry.

The crackling energy of side-along Apparition faded into the heavy stillness of early morning London, and before him stood the soot-streaked bricks and fogged windows of the Leaky Cauldron. Behind him, Winky and Dobby adjusted their robes with fidgety hands, eyes scanning for a threat, loyal and tense despite their small forms.

Harry inhaled slowly. The air here was thick with the scent of spilt ale, old wood, pipe smoke, and something slightly acrid—like scorched cinnamon and ghosted spells clinging to the beams. It was a scent that carried weight and memory—a pub at the edge of two worlds.

"Remember," he whispered, his voice low but clear, "first sign of trouble, I’ll call."

Winky’s large brown eyes shimmered. Dobby nodded hard enough to wobble.

With a final squeeze of his talisman inside his pocket, Harry stepped forward. Alone.

The pub door creaked softly as he pushed it open. Inside, the Leaky Cauldron was in that peculiar hush of post-dawn—chairs still stacked, hearths low with last night’s embers, and only the faint clink of glass and muttering from behind the bar.

Tom, the bartender, glanced up from where he was polishing a chipped tankard. His pale eyes squinted for a moment, clearly not expecting a child, let alone one walking in alone with the calm of someone used to dark wood and wandlight.

Harry stepped toward him without hesitation. His posture was straight, his expression composed. Controlled. If there was one thing the manor had taught him, it was how to hide fragility behind stillness.

“Good morning, sir,” Harry said evenly. “My parents are waiting for me in Diagon Alley, but I can’t open the wall on my own. I don’t have a wand yet.”

There. Calm. Believable. A half-truth wrapped in decorum.

Tom blinked. For a heartbeat, his weathered face looked sceptical—but then the boy’s politeness seemed to win him over.

“Ah. That so?” he said, voice rasped with age and tobacco. “Well, then. Give me just a tick, lad. I’ll finish up here and get you through.”

Harry nodded, offering a small smile, well-practised, precise. He could feel the weight of Tom’s glance linger a little too long, trying to place him. But the man didn’t ask questions. Just turned back to his clothes and bottle, humming something off-key under his breath.

Harry exhaled silently, letting his eyes roam the dim room.

No one else. No chatter. Just the quiet crackle of the hearth and the flick of Tom’s rag on glass.

And him.

A boy of six, standing alone in a place meant for adults, surrounded by shadows, secrets, and drink.

But he wasn’t afraid.

He was watchful. Sharp. And in control.

When Tom finally came around the bar, Harry followed him wordlessly through the narrow passage into the courtyard. The bricks were cool and mossy, damp with the last kiss of night. As Tom raised his wand and tapped the brick sequence, the wall rippled apart like breath drawn between teeth, revealing the cobbled heart of Diagon Alley.

Harry stepped through, the magic brushing his skin like static and salt.

He didn’t look back.


—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wall sealed behind him with a gentle shhhhkt of closing stone.

And Harry stepped into Diagon Alley—the first real breath of the magical world he had only studied from books and memories older than grief.

It was quieter than he expected.
The morning air was crisp, almost shy. It carried the smell of damp parchment, warm bread just beginning to bake, and distant ash from chimney flues reluctantly awakening. A thin silver fog still clung to the uneven cobblestones, broken only by the flick of owl wings overhead, their amber eyes blinking down at the lone child below.

Harry moved carefully, the soft soles of his shoes making no sound on the worn path, his footsteps threading the cracks between sleeping storefronts.

Some windows were already half-lit—candles flickering behind glass, runes glowing faintly like stars caught in jars. A quill shop blinked to life as a feather twitched of its own accord. In a far stall, a toad croaked once, long and low, before going still again.

It was beautiful, in the way ruins were stunning. In this way, forgotten magic still whispered to those who listened.

But Harry didn’t linger.

He kept close to the shadows of buildings, his pace steady but measured, small hands tucked into the pockets of his coat. To an untrained eye, he might have looked like a child running an errand for a parent lingering just out of view.

But there was no parent.

Just him.

He passed a tall witch adjusting the bolts of enchanted cloth outside Twilfitt and Tattings. She glanced up once, startled, then back to her work. A shop boy emerged from Eeylops, yawning, a crate of tiny cages dangling from one arm—the owls within blinked at Harry and didn’t hoot.

And always, the cobblestones echoed just a bit too sharply beneath hi as if the alley itself were questioning the rightness of a six-year-old walking alone beneath windows that remembered war.

He didn’t let it show. His eyes flicked upward, sideways. Not nervously calculating. He scanned the reflections in the windows, the archways above, and the corners where movement might hide. His posture remained relaxed, but his awareness was exact.

He didn’t stop to peer into shops. Didn’t gaze long at wand displays or sugar quills or broom models floating in stasis. He had read about those things and studied them. He didn’t need to pretend to be wonderful right now.

Not when he was a child walking among grown-up ghosts.

The cobblestones sloped upward slightly as Gringotts rose before him—white and sharp-edged, its doors like teeth carved from bone. Even in morning light, the goblin bank seemed to judge all who approached.

Harry paused at the foot of the steps.

He took one breath in.

Let it out.

And then climbed, step by step, steady and sure.

It wasn’t wonder that carried him forward now.

It was a purpose.

—----------------------------------------------------------------

The doors of Gringotts loomed before Harry—tall and forbidding, etched with age-old warnings in languages few wizards could still read. The cool marble threshold beneath his feet seemed to hum with tension, like the bank itself was testing the worth of all who crossed it.

Inside, it was cooler than the alley. Dimmer, too. The white light came not from lamps, but from the stone itself—veins of enchanted quartz running along the walls like ancient circuitry. The scent of metal and ink filled the air, undercut with something sharper—like scorched silver and pride.

Goblins moved quickly through the halls. Their footsteps were light but purposeful. Claws tapped against parchment, quills scratched across ledgers, and ledgers closed with dry snaps. Gold clinked, and spells pulsed faintly from behind runed doors.

And then there was Harry.

He stepped forward with measured confidence—small in size but not in presence. He scanned the room until he found an open counter, where a goblin was recording something with fast, precise strokes.

Harry bowed—not low, butadequately. Then he spoke:

“ᚱᚨᚾ ᚾᛖᚱᛞᛖᚱᚨᛗ, Griphook. ᚨᛗ Harry Potter. ᛁ ᚹᚨᚾᛏ ᛏᛟ ᛗᚨᚲᛖ ᚨ ᛏᚱᚨᛞᛖ ᛁᚾ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛗᛖᚨᛋᚢᚱᛁᚾᚷ ᛞᛖᛈᚨᚱᛏᛗᛖᚾᛏ.”

The Gobbledegook came fluidly. Each word is sharp and precise. The respectful structure of a formal request, old-style.

The goblin behind the desk—Griphook, according to the carved placard—froze mid-scratch.

His eyes, sharp and amber, lifted slowly.

Harry held the gaze without flinching.

For a long moment, nothing moved in the great hall. Just the soft flick of a gold scale in the distance, the rustle of parchment.

And then—

Griphook rose.

Not in alarm. Not in suspicion. But in recognition.

He studied Harry—his size, his voice, the carefully spoken syllables of a language most wizards butchered without apology.

“ᚨᛗ Harry Potter?” he repeated, reverting to Gobbledegook, his voice low with new curiosity. “You speak the tongue of stone. Fluently. And with deference.”

Harry inclined his head. “ᛏᚺᛖ ᛚᚨᚾᚷᚢᚨᚷᛖ deserves it.”

That made Griphook blink. Then his expression shifted—something halfway between admiration and worry.

“Your family is in Brazil,” he said, switching to English now, quieter. “Not expected to return until year’s end. What… brings you to our hall alone?”

Harry’s fists curled for a breath. Then released.

He didn’t lie.

“I’ve come to sell an item,” he said simply, still in Gobbledegook. “I’ve waited a year, per a pact. And now I come with something of value.”

Griphook narrowed his eyes. He could feel something strange in the boy's weight behind the words, deliberation. He recognised the careful masking of pain and the iron self-control of someone far older than their frame suggested.

He gestured.

“Come with me,” he said, voice softer now. “We will walk together. You will tell me your story. And I will decide how best to serve you.”

Harry nodded and fell in beside him.

They walked through polished halls and rune-etched archways, their steps echoing faintly.

And as Harry began to speak—carefully, but not guardedly—he noticed the way Griphook’s pace slowed. The way the goblin no longer looked at him as a client… but something more complex.

A potential.

A survivor.

A child with dangerous clarity, who spoke like a diplomat and walked like someone who refused to be unseen.

By the time they reached the Measuring Department, both understood something essential about the other.

Respect, earned and offered.

And trust, lightly begun.

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They walked in silence at first.

The halls of Gringotts grew darker the deeper they went—not shadowed, but dim with age and memory. The air smelled of earth, metal, and old enchantments. Every stone held history. Every step was watched by something unseen.

Griphook did not rush him.

He didn’t ask again. Just waited—walking in even strides beside the boy who spoke like a prince but moved like someone used to being forgotten.

Finally, Harry began.

“It started four years ago. Halloween.”

His voice was steady—stripped of dramatics. But not empty.

“My brother was attacked. He lived. The world called him the Boy Who Lived.”

A pause. Just long enough to breathe.

“I wasn’t attacked. So they forgot I existed.”

He didn’t need to elaborate. Griphook’s face had already shifted. Not with pity. Goblins did not pity. But with understanding born of long centuries watching wizards fail their own.

“At first, I thought they were just... busy. Then I thought maybe I’d done something wrong. After a while, I just stopped thinking about it.”

He shrugged slightly. But his hands, small and still childlike, were curled tight at his sides.

“Then Merlin came. Told me to give them a year—to let them remember me on their own. And if they didn’t… I could choose my own path.”

Griphook turned his head slightly at that.

“Merlin?” he asked in Gobbledegook, his voice unreadable.

Harry only nodded. “The real one.”

A faint hum of magic passed between them—recognition of something ancient, and binding.

“So,” Harry continued, “I waited. One year. I stayed quiet. I studied. I gave them a chance.”

He stopped walking. They stood now before a massive door marked with Gobbledegook sigils for valuation, purity, and truth.

Harry looked up at Griphook, eyes clear and heavy all at once.

“They left. Without a word. The manor was empty when I woke up. The elves said they’d gone abroad for two years. They didn’t even check if I was with them.”

There was no tremble in his voice. No tear. But the wound was there, raw and exposed, not for pity—but for proof.

Griphook was silent for a long moment.

Then he did something goblins did not do.

He bowed his head—not deep, but just enough to say: I see you.

“You held your silence,” he said quietly. “That takes strength. More than most your age—or any age—would know.”

He turned toward the heavy door, his hand lifting to touch one of the runes.

“What you seek, Mr. Potter, may go beyond coin. But in this hall, you will be given what you earn. And you have earned much already.”

A pause.

Then, more softly, with a glance over his shoulder:

“And if your family wishes to contest what is now yours… they will find no allies here.”

Harry stood a little straighter.

And for the first time in many months, he felt something he hadn’t known he missed:

The safety of being believed.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The door to the Measuring Chamber opened with a sound like stone inhaling—ancient, reluctant, reverent.

Inside, the light shifted. It wasn’t sunlight or torchlight. It was something deeper. Soft golden luminescence floated through the air like pollen, illuminating shelves lined with scales, enchanted weights, and rune-inscribed ingots. The room thrummed—not with noise, but with presence like the air had been sifted through magic too old to name.

Harry followed Griphook in silence, his small footsteps quiet against the gleaming black stone.

At the far end of the chamber stood a goblin whose very posture exuded age and power. His robes were pressed but worn at the edges, his eyes sharp as cut diamonds, irises the colour of hammered steel. His ears were longer than most, the tips adorned with tiny bands of metal—ranks of experience.

“Mr. Potter,” Griphook said with crisp formality, “allow me to introduce Ironfist, Master of Weighing and Valuation for the past two hundred and twelve years.”

Ironfist inclined his head without breaking eye contact. “Pleasure,” he said in Gobbledegook, his voice like gravel laced with fire.

Harry returned the gesture with quiet respect. “The honour is mine,” he replied fluently, drawing a flicker of surprise—and approval—from the elder goblin’s face.

“Let’s see what you’ve brought,” Ironfist said, gesturing toward the long obsidian counter between them.

Harry nodded, fingers trembling slightly as he reached for the second compartment of Merlin’s trunk.

The latch clicked open.

And the room… changed.

A wave of heat rolled out—not oppressive, but rich. Alive. The lights flickered, not in fear, but in deference. Magic stirred in the corners, invisible but electric, as if something old had just awakened.

Inside the compartment lay crystals.

Dozens.

They pulsed with a faint inner glow—colours shifting subtly from deep indigo to molten gold, breathing light like a sleeping heart. Their surfaces were smooth, but not polished—each curve natural, organic, grown rather than carved. And from them came a low hum, almost imperceptible, like the vibration of a spell being whispered just out of hearing.

Harry hesitated, unsure. He picked up one of the larger ones—its warmth curled instantly into his palm, neither hot nor heavy, but alive. Like holding lightning that had decided to be kind.

He placed it on the counter.

Then another.

Then a third.

Griphook froze mid-step. Ironfist did not move at all—but the corner of his mouth twitched. It was no surprise. It was a shock that held me in awe.

“Mr. Potter,” Ironfist said slowly, almost reverently. “Do you… Know what these are?”

Harry glanced between them. “I assumed they were some kind of energy crystal. Magical, obviously. I… I was hoping they might be worth enough to buy a small home.”

There was a pause so deep the room itself seemed to hold its breath.

Griphook turned toward him, voice hushed in a way Harry had never heard from a goblin before.

“Harry… these are Aether Crystals. Pure magic. Not enchanted—born of magic itself. They’ve not been seen in over five thousand years.”

Ironfist stepped closer, his hands hovering over the crystals without touching.

“These are not sold,” he murmured. “They are guarded. They are fought over. They are used only in the deepest of ancient magics—wardstones for entire kingdoms. One of these could power a Fidelius Charm large enough to cloak a mountain. Their worth is not in coin, but in what they make possible.”

He paused, then said what Harry could not have imagined.

“Each one of these—on the open, unrestricted magical market—would be valued at approximately fifty million galleons.”

The words dropped like stones into water.

Harry blinked.

“Fifty million?” he echoed, dazed. “Each?”

Griphook nodded, his voice equally subdued. “And you have over twenty, not counting the smaller fragments. Enough to power a continent’s worth of wards. Enough to make you a political power, whether you want to be or not.”

Harry stared at the crystals. They didn’t look like power. They looked like hope—beautiful, strange, unknowable. And he had almost sold them like trinkets. His heart thudded, not with greed, but with the dizzying realisation of what he held… and how little he had ever asked for it.

“I… I just wanted enough to be free,” he whispered.

Ironfist’s eyes softened—just slightly.

“You still can be. But now, you must also be wise.”

Griphook placed a firm hand on Harry’s shoulder. “We must take you to Director Ragon. These crystals are not a matter for public valuation. They will attract attention. The wrong kind.”

Harry nodded numbly, his thoughts a swirl of disbelief and unease.

“I don’t understand why everything in my life has to be... so much,” he muttered under his breath.

Griphook smiled, rare and grim. “Because some lives are forged in silence. And others in fire.”

Harry didn’t know which one he was.

But he followed them toward the deeper vaults of Gringotts anyway—still clutching the crystal in his hand, still unsure whether it had chosen him, or he it.

Either way…

It was only the beginning.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The corridors of Gringotts twisted downward like veins carved into the bones of the earth. Harry followed Griphook deeper and deeper, past vault doors laced with runes that shimmered and whispered as they passed. Here, the air felt heavier, not with damp or dust, but with age. The deeper one went, the more history pressed in from the stone.

When they finally stopped, it was before a door unlike any Harry had seen.

It stood at the end of a narrow passage—tall and arched, forged from pale-white metal that shimmered like moonlight on bone. Strange symbols carved in Gobbledegook and other, older tongues spiralled out from the centre, glowing faintly with embedded enchantments. Across the top of the frame, a polished inscription read:

Director Ragon. Knock, and Enter With Truth.

Griphook gave Harry a small nod before raising a hand and rapping twice.

The door did not open so much as unfold—panels sliding soundlessly into themselves like water drawn back from stone. A soft pulse of warm air greeted them as they stepped inside.

The office was beautiful in its austerity—clean lines, dark stone shelves stacked with tomes, ledgers, and ancient relics. The walls were adorned with blades, broken contracts in protective frames, and one long tapestry depicting the founding of the Gringotts bank—woven not in colour, but in shimmering thread of metal and memory.

Behind a great obsidian desk sat a goblin who looked older than the vaults themselves.

His skin was the colour of aged parchment, etched with lines that could have been scars or simply time worn into flesh. His robes were deep emerald, trimmed with silver thread, his eyes sharp as flint but glowing with quiet intelligence. His gaze met Harry’s and lingered—not searching, not judging, simply… knowing.

“Ah. Mr. Potter,” he said, his voice like slow thunder. “Come in.”

Harry stepped forward, the crystal still held carefully in his palm.

“Thank you for seeing me, Director Ragon,” he said, bowing his head slightly in Gobbledegook. “Please… call me Harry.”

A brief, amused glint flickered in the elder goblin’s eyes.

“And you may call me Ragon, then—though few have earned the right so quickly.”

He gestured to the chair across from him—rich black wood with runes inscribed along the arms. As Harry sat, the chair adjusted subtly, rising to better fit his small frame.

“I’ve heard… a great deal in a short time,” Ragon said, folding his hands on the desk. “You bring with you power that hasn’t touched this earth in millennia. And yet you wear it lightly. That is… uncommon.”

Harry looked down at the crystal still resting in his hand. “I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t even know what it was. I just… wanted to live. Away from them.”

Ragon nodded slowly. “And in wanting that, you’ve come upon a crossroads few your age have ever stood before.”

He paused, then reached for a thick scroll beside him. Unrolling it revealed ancient parchment covered in layered ink—some of it faded to brown, some gleaming silver as if freshly written. At the top, embossed in both Gobbledegook and Latin, were the words:

The Right of Founding – Minor Clause Exception 473B

“There is an old law,” Ragon said, tapping the scroll, “predating even the Ministry’s bureaucracies. It allows a minor—under specific magical conditions—to declare themselves as the founder of a new house. To do so requires that they possess a source of wealth or power sufficient to sustain themselves independently, and the will to sever themselves legally and magically from their birth house.”

Harry blinked. “You mean… I could stop being part of the House of Potter?”

Ragon’s gaze sharpened slightly. “You would not cease to be Harry Potter. But you would become something else entirely. You would establish a new bloodline. A new magical branch. And magic would recognise you as its head.”

Harry said nothing for a long moment. Then he asked quietly, “What would it cost me?”

The room fell still.

Ragon spoke gently, but without flinching.

“You would no longer be protected by the wards of House Potter. You would forfeit all legal inheritance rights to their titles, lands, and heirlooms. If you fail to maintain your standing—specifically, an independent income of at least two thousand galleons per month—your claim would be voided, and you would return to their custody. No legal guardianship. No free trade. No ownership of your own magic.”

Harry absorbed the words slowly. It was a risk. A gamble, even with the crystals. But then again, hadn’t everything in his life already been stacked against him?

He thought of the empty kitchen. The white sheets were over the furniture. The silence that had answered his waiting heart.

“And if I succeed?” he asked.

Ragon leaned back, the barest shadow of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Then you become Harry Potter of House Watson—independent. Free. Answerable to no one. Not even your parents. Magic would mark you as an adult, regardless of age. You could own property. Conduct contracts. Forge your own legacy.”

Harry nodded, quiet but resolved. “Then I want to do it. I want to find my own house.”

Ragon handed him a silver-tipped quill and a thick document scrawled with tight legal language. At the top was a blank space.

“Write the name of your House at the top,” the Director said. “And sign below. Your magic will do the rest.”

Harry hesitated, the weight of the moment sitting heavy on his chest.

He thought of what he wanted to be—not in name, but in purpose. Strong. Enduring. Quietly brave.

He wrote, carefully and clearly:

House Watson

Then signed his name beneath.

The parchment flared with light—blue and gold—and vanished in a pulse of quiet thunder.

A mark shimmered for a moment on Harry’s palm, then faded. The magic had accepted him.

“Welcome,” Ragon said softly, “to the oldest kind of freedom.”

Harry breathed out.

And for the first time in his life, the breath was entirely his own.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For a moment, Harry didn’t speak.

The air still hummed faintly where the founding parchment had disappeared, the magic newly bound and irrevocable. His hand tingled—nothing painful, just the warmth of power acknowledged of something ancient leaning forward and saying: Yes. You are real now.

Across the desk, Ragon regarded him with the quiet satisfaction of a smith who had just tempered fine steel. He studied Harry, not as a curiosity now, but as a person who had chosen—and had been chosen back.

“Now, Lord Watson,” the goblin said, the corner of his mouth lifting in something perilously close to a smile, “we come to land. Every house, even a new one, must have ground to grow from.”

Harry blinked at the new title. Lord. It didn’t feel heavy yet. It felt… strange. Like a coat he hadn’t grown into, but one he wanted to.

Ragon continued, gesturing to a thick ledger. The pages shimmered faintly as he flipped them open—images and maps glowing softly above the parchment. Valleys, ridgelines, forests dusted with morning mist—all unfolding before Harry’s eyes in layered illusion.

“We have three available estates at present, all over one hundred acres. Two manors—one in the Scottish Highlands, one in rural Wales. And…” Ragon paused, letting the page turn itself, “a castle. Quite old. Remote. But structurally sound and protected by wild magic that predates even goblin mapping.”

Harry’s breath caught.

“A castle?” he repeated, voice low and awestruck.

The illusion hovering above the desk flickered into a new image: thick stone towers wrapped in ivy, perched high above a rolling forest. A narrow river wound around the base like a silver thread. Flags, long faded, rustled in a ghost wind. The windows glinted with age and defiance.

“It was once called Caer Seryn,” Ragon said, voice almost reverent. “No one has claimed it in centuries. Wizards feared the wards had grown feral. But you…” He tilted his head, eyes narrowing in calculation, “You carry crystals no wizard dares touch. You’ve spoken Gobbledegook to the bones of this bank. I think Caer Seryn may know you already.”

Harry didn’t hesitate. He didn’t need to.

“I want the castle.”

Ragon let out a low, amused hum—a goblin’s version of a chuckle, dry and knowing.

“I thought you might.”

And then the desk transformed.

Dozens—no, hundreds—of papers began appearing in neatly stacked rows. Deeds. Transfer contracts. Magical surveys. Old family waivers. Authorisation for independent maintenance of ancestral wards. Documentation for importing personal items, hiring magical staff, and commissioning ritual protections. A mountain of legal formality.

“These,” Ragon said with the faintest trace of mischief, “are the bones of your house.”

Harry stared at the stack, a little dazed. “Do I… need to sign all of them?”

“Every single one,” the Director replied, not unkindly. “You wanted to be free. Freedom has a cost. This is yours.”

The pen felt heavy in Harry’s hand, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was real. And so he began.

One by one, he signed his name: Harry James Potter Watson. Over and over, the quill danced in his fingers, the ink gleaming silver for a moment before vanishing into the parchment. Ragon watched without hurrying him, occasionally sliding a paper aside or pointing out where his signature needed to curve differently to bind the magic properly.

And as the pages dwindled, something strange began to rise in Harry’s chest.

Joy.

Not the flicker of happiness that came from finishing a chapter or learning a new word. This was pure and whole—the kind of joy that filled his lungs and pressed behind his eyes and made his hands move faster, just to claim the life being offered him.

He would have a home. A real home. Not a room someone else forgot. Not a house walked away from without a goodbye. But stone walls that answered to him. Grounds that listened. Magic that belonged with him, not around him in spiteful silence.

A castle.

His.

“Almost done,” Ragon said, nodding approvingly as the final documents slid into place. “You’ll find the property already warded, but your crystals can be anchored to expand and personalise its magic. I suggest enlisting a goblin wardsmith. We do not outsource our trust lightly, but I suspect a few old hands would take an interest… for you.”

Harry glanced up. “Why?”

Ragon paused, then leaned slightly forward. His ancient face, lined with centuries of war, trade, and politics, softened.

“Because, Harry Potter Watson, you walked into this bank with magic older than our vaults, and you treated us with respect. Because you listened. Because you asked for nothing unearned. And because sometimes… the old world chooses to rise again through the young.”

Harry didn’t know what to say. So he simply nodded—quiet, eyes stinging.

When he signed the final line, a golden seal stamped itself onto the last page.

And it was done.

“Welcome, Lord of Caer Seryn,” Ragon said, rising from his chair and offering a formal goblin salute. “Your house has begun.”

And this time, Harry smiled.

Not because it was polite.

But because it was real.