The Ledger

His Uncle was the perfect person to help him in that regard since keeping books was a part of his job at Grundig's. You don't become a corporate manager of a sales department if you can't keep and read a ledger. While he wasn't the accountant of his division, he was responsible for the record books in his department. Which meant he had to know and understand what those books said. Because if the accountant was a fraud, it was Vernon who'd get in trouble for his records as he was the Division Manager for the department.

Before they'd left the country, his Uncle had leant his aide in translating the goblin accounting ledger into language Harry could understand. It'd been a revelation that after learning about all his accounts and taking the heir rings for each estate he was entitled to, the goblins had still allowed Albus Dumbledore to pilfer funds from him with which to pay his flunkies. As far as he could tell Molly hadn't been helping herself to anything more than what was needed to do the shopping she did on his behalf when she would visit the bank with his key in hand. But a whole lot of other people were making very free with his money. Including her youngest son and daughter.

Harry was now a much wiser young man who knew he was being used far more than anyone would believe and by far more people than he knew the faces of. People he'd never even heard of were being paid monthly from his vaults. Sitting with his Uncle going over his ledger, Harry had resolved to tend to the matter before he went back to school in September.

Vernon gave him a few ideas of what he could do while still remaining under the radar given that he had so many different and completely legal names he could claim. So long as he consistently used both his first and middle names he could attach each account to a different surname. And he could use just his initials for his given names instead of having to use the full names. Or use a combination of an initial and a full name. Like Harry J Potter. Or H James Potter. Or even H J Potter if he wanted to. All were legal and acceptable. So between them they'd worked out an appropriate name for each account and a signature for each name. Which is what he put into motion when he'd visited the Alley yesterday. Harry had needed time practicing the different signatures until he could write each one without hesitation or having to stop and think about which signature he needed to use to draw funds from a specific account.

All in all though sitting with Harry and going through his accounts had left Vernon was feeling a lot better about leaving Harry behind in Britain when he was ready to move his family away. The money angle had been the one thing Vernon had been quietly worrying about. Because while the house was his free and clear, he'd still need food and sundry items. Things that took money. Money the boy at fifteen years of age had no way of reliably getting legally. Not to mention there were other bills that had to be paid monthly. Electricity, phone, water; they all cost money monthly and Vernon was worried about how Harry could possibly pay those bills without him and Petunia around to do it for him. But with the kind of money Harry was to inherit, he'd land on his feet quite easily. Even if he dropped out of school before receiving job worthy qualifications, the boy didn't need to worry about getting a job. And with any luck at all, it'd be a long time before anyone realized he and his wife had abandoned the boy before he'd come of age.

His Aunt had also sat in on the meeting. She'd listened with shock as Vernon told her how influentially wealthy her nephew was in the Wizarding World and how he was being defrauded by everyone in authority there. Then she'd come up with a few ideas of her own. Mainly for the goblins who saw nothing wrong with letting people not of the blood defraud a helpless child. Lily had told her how important blood connections were to those people and how if you didn't have the right of blood you couldn't claim a real connection to anyone no matter who they were. It infuriated her that for people who supposedly revered him and his parents, one of whom was her baby sister, they saw nothing; absolutely nothing; wrong with ripping him off behind his back. And the goblins, who's duty it was to watch over his accounts to prevent just such an occurrence, had allowed it to happen. Were still allowing it to happen. Simply because Harry didn't know they were!

Unknown to Harry, Petunia had made Vernon stop in London so she could pay a visit to the wizarding bank and give those nasty, thieving creatures a piece of her mind before they left England. She told him she was aware it might not do any good but she really felt she owed it to Lily and to Harry to try. It was her duty to do for Harry what she believed Lily would've done had she survived to do so. And Lily wouldn't have hesitated to tear those thieving goblins a new one for ripping him off the way they had.

Since Vernon was also outraged at how his nephew had been treated he hadn't argued too hard about it and only remained in the car because of Dudley. Dudley had made it clear the one time he'd been allowed in the Alley, he saw nothing wrong with owning magical devices even as Vernon and Harry had repeatedly told him it was illegal for him as he wasn't magical. He knew taking Dudley back into the Alley would only have his son whining and complaining about all the neat things they wouldn't let him get. Whining and complaining that would likely carry on for weeks before the boy would forget about it. So there was no way Dudley was going into the Alley again.

But Vernon and Petunia had both taken offense at the goblins trying to absolve their own guilt by placing it on an innocent child. So a stop was justified. Someone needed to speak up for the boy and make those disreputable thieving creatures do their bloody job. Which was probably why the goblins had gone along with Harry's plans for the thieves.

Neither one had stopped to consider just how Petunia would be able to get into the Alley without Harry to open the portal for her. To be honest Petunia hadn't even considered it might be a problem She just made her way through the tavern into the alley and tapped the appropriate bricks with her finger and the portal opened. She'd then made her way to the bank.

Once in the bank she'd been subjected to a lot of sneering and comments of how it was Harry's fault as the account holder and not their problem if he came of age only to find there was nothing for him to inherit due to his poor management skills. That hadn't lasted for very long.

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