25 25 - Lord Ignis-Merrygold, Visiting Family Vaults.

Once they were open.. it felt a little anti-climactic. There were no special sounds or smoke and each box only had a single ring in it.

"Congratulations, you can now formally identify yourself as Lord Ignis, Lord Merrygold or Lord Ignis-Merrygold, which do you prefer?"

"I suppose Lord Ignis is fine, but I was wondering if you could keep this a secret? I'd rather not have people knowing i'm now a Lord."

"Lord Ignis, you will find that we goblins of Gringotts take our clients privacy incredibly seriously, especially someone of your station."

"Thank you, Riptooth, also please just call me Leo, I don't care about this Lord stuff unless i'm at a formal event."

"Very well, Leo, to finalise your claim of Lordship, you must wear both rings and have your family magic accept you as Lord of each respective House."

I didn't respond and instead looked at both rings. The Ignis ring was completely black with a fine silver lining and a large dark-blue sapphire was perfectly moulded into it.

As for the Merrygold ring, it was made completely of gold with a bright-red ruby glowing inside of it.

Picking up both rings, I placed one on each hand, on each respective ring finger, and as I did so, I felt two different energies flowing into me through my hands and eventually encompassing my whole body. After a few moments of what felt similar to when I got my wand, the energies calmed down and I could tell that I had been accepted and was now officially Lord Ignis and Lord Merrygold.

Looking up to Riptooth who now held a smirk on his face, I asked "Can I see the family vaults along with any properties that I own?"

"Of course, Leo." After he said that, I stood out of his chair and he motioned for me to follow him, where I was once again lead through the seemingly endless corridors.

We eventually reached a different section of Gringotts and I was lead into a cart. Immediately we set off at top-speed through the winding tunnels which I once again enjoyed immensely. After almost 5 minutes of riding, I hopped out of the cart with completely messy hair and feeling a little dizzy.

In front of me was.. a dragon. Of course, not just any dragon, but a particularly large Hungarian Horntail, it had scars on its body and now that I see it in person, those spikes and ridiculously long teeth are suddenly a lot more frightening up close.

With my Super Contact Lenses, I can see magic, and well, magic is coming out of this dragon in waves. It's not a suffocating amount, but I definitely feel like I want to leave as soon as possible.

Luckily for me, the dragon didn't come closer to me and only growled. Riptooth took out some some sort of object and started shaking it which made a rattling noise.

The dragon instantly reacted and retreated backwards, revealing the large and strong looking vault door that was behind it.

Riptooth started talking as we walked, "This is the Main Family Vault of the Merrygold family, to enter, you must place your thumb on this pedestal so that your identity can be confirmed.

I did as he said and put my thumb on top of the pedestal that had a small indent on top of it, where I hissed in pain as I felt my thumb get pricked.

Lifting my thumb off the pedestal, I saw a spike was now protruding out of the indent and had my blood on top of it.

The spike receded and after a few seconds, the entire pedestal started lowering into the ground. Once that was done, Riptooth grinned and walked up to the vault door, placing his clawed finger into the intricate doors patterns, his finger traced down the door until finally, a click was heard.

After a few seconds of multiple different unlocking sounds, the vault door opened and a green gas floated up.

Making sure not to breathe it in, the gas eventually cleared revealing the contents of the vault within. The first thing that I noticed was the mounds of gold and jewels.

'Woah.'

The vault was incredibly large, feeling almost like a hall, and it was filled with rare items, I saw weapons, rare jewels, mounds and mounds of gold, but that wasn't what caught my attention.

In the back left corner, I saw a massive bookshelf that was filled with 100s of different books. Making my way over to it, I also saw a separate bookshelf that was a lot higher in quality. Picking up the first book in the shelf, I read the cover and saw that it said "Beginners guide to Enchanting."

I decided that now was probably the right time to take out my trunk. Lifting it out of my pocket, I enlarged it back to normal size and stepped inside the trunk that was actually a staircase.

Walking down, I saw a corridor with multiple doors on each side. Making my way over to the second door on the right, I opened it, revealing a large hall-like room.

This room was quite obviously a library. There were bookshelves everywhere, all reaching the ceiling of the 5 metre high room, and in many of these bookshelves were, of course, books.

These books consisted of everything that I had read. From all of the subjects at school, to occlumency, healing, warding, runes, etiquette, laws, arithmancy, languages. All sorted into specific sections.

This is my personal library. Some of these books are originals, some I copied by hand, others copied with magic. Overall.. I'm a little bit of a bookworm.

Well where else can I learn? People? No way, books are way more convenient.. and less annoying. Anyway, I walked back into the vault and levitated all of the books from the 1 metre high bookshelf that was presumably full of enchanting books, made my way back into my personal library, and slowly had each book sorted into a section of my library that was labelled 'Enchanting.'

After that, I did the same thing with the other bookshelf which was far larger than the previous one and after a minute, I realised that quite a large amount of the books weren't sorted through the automatic sorting system that I had in my library.

'These must be the ones that I already have.'

Leaving my trunk, with the books that I already had levitating behind me, I had all of the duplicates put back onto the shelves and decided to focus on the rest of the vault.

I thought myself 'Fuck it' and just levitated an entire mound of gold which probably consisted of at least 60,000 galleons, and just made them fly into my trunk, following behind them, I magically opened the 3rd door on the left and entered, revealing a comfortable and cozy looking study, there was a vault in the wall behind my desk, and unlocking all of the protections on the vault, I slowly levitated all of the galleons into the magically expanded vault that was bigger on the inside.

'I can use these if i'm ever running low or in an emergency.'

After I did this, I made my way back into the vault.

There were a few portraits on the ground that i'm guessing were of my ancestors, but I decided that i'd activate them at another time.

Leaving, I caught back up with Riptooth where we got back into the cart and made our way over to the Ignis Family Vault, which was apparently even deeper and more secure than the Merrygold Family Vault.

Finally reaching our destination, I was surprised that there was no magical beast protecting the vault door, however, the vault door itself was pure-black and looked ridiculously sturdy.

I looked over to Riptooth for guidance and saw him looking around warily but still walking forward.

I just shrugged and decided to follow him, but also keeping up my guard. Once we had reached the the over 5 meter tall door, I looked over questioningly towards Riptooth when I suddenly felt an overwhelmingly large amount of danger behind me.

Spinning around in a defensive stance, wand in hand, I looked around for any threats.

What I saw instantly froze me in my tracks.

One meter away from me, was a leopard-like creature, with its legs alone reaching above my head, it towered over me. It's eyes were glowing in a feral golden color and its teeth were long and sharp enough to pierce my head completely.

It was looking down at me threateningly and with its huge bushy mane of spikes around its face making it look almost like a giant lion, it was definitely threatening.

What was even worse, was that with my 'Super Contact Lenses', I could see its magic, and it was horrifying. Outwardly, there was nothing, it might as well not be there at all, but inside its body.. there was so much magic that it made me want to run away as fast as possible. It's entire body had glowing amounts of magic, ready to come out at a moments notice and I finally recognised just what creature I was looking at.

It was a Nundu, the most deadly creature in the world.