jemina // sirius black

fourteen

chapter fourteen - brooms

For some reason, Aubrey had failed to inform me of Harry's new broom being confiscated by Minerva until three weeks before the final match. Two days before Gryffindor played against Ravenclaw.

I had assumed that he had just not been using it during practice, trying to keep the Slytherins from seeing it. 

Of course, I hadn't known how he got the broom, though I did truly suspect Sirius. 

I couldn't figure out how he could have gotten the broom without being spotted until I remembered that he had gotten quite good at glamour charms before the end of the war. It would've been quite easy to snatch a wand as a wolfdog, glamour himself, and then drop the wand beside the person he had snatched it from. 

But then the question of how he got the money occurred to me. Sirius had never gotten a key to my vault at Gringott's, said he didn't need it when I offered him the spare. One of his uncles had given him a lump sum when he was disowned, but I never saw him going to that vault. I thought that maybe he simply saved that money - or spent it all on that motorbike. 

He could have hidden the key before he was taken to Azkaban, or maybe he did have a key to my vault. The more that I thought about it, the more worried I became. 

Did he steal money? Did he rob someone?

It wasn't until I sent an owl to Gringott's asking for the last few transactions from my vault that I realized he had to have a key. The transaction history said that Remus was in Gringott's and had withdrawn several hundred galleons, much larger than any withdrawal that Remus had ever made before, and astronomically larger than any withdrawal that he would ever make. Remus was very uncomfortable with taking from my vault, even if it was in my stead. If I needed a lump sum like that, Remus would never go for me. 

Besides, Remus hadn't left Hogwarts, so I knew it had to be Sirius. 

When I asked Remus if he still had his key to my vault, he pulled it from his trunk and asked why I was asking. I just shrugged and played it off as making sure he knew he could use it. 

I had given it to him shortly after Lilian's birth. Since I wasn't in any mental shape to be out and about, he asked for the spare key that I had tried to give Sirius. He used that for a while, but at some point, it felt better to give him his own key, and permissions to use my vault. 

We exchanged the spare key with one specifically for him. I kept the spare key with me at all times, right beside my own key. 

The girls had their own vaults that they would gain access to when they turned 17. When my parents died, James and I split the money in their vault. I had put that money in a separate vault which I split into two when Aubrey was born, and then I evenly distributed it between three when Lilian was born. 

Very frequently, a portion of my vault would be taken, and then split into three. When I died, my vault would be evenly split between my children. Those vaults were never touched and were gathering tons of interest. If I had another child, I would make a vault for them with the same amount that the girls had when I made a vault for Lilian. Once they turned 17, the occasional payments from my vault into their's would stop. 

There was no doubt in my mind that they would all likely end up working even if they didn't have to. Aubrey was already interested in an internship with the Deputy Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation. 

It was an internship that she would have to wait until the summer between her 5th and 6th years, and she was already working on her resume for it.

The keys to the girls' vaults were secure within my vault, hidden within a portrait of my seventh great grandmother.