Sighing, Harry resisted the urge to simply flop down against a tall pile of galleons and just sleep. He muffled laughter a second later at the thought that he'd literally be rolling himself – and sleeping – on money.

"Focus. Focus," he shook his head to try and get back to what he was attempting to do; that is, sorting through the innumerable items and artifacts that were haphazardly littered around the Potter family vault. Why had no one bother to at least arrange them when they put them here? Then again, he heard that some items were only recently deposited, more like returned, after being wrongly seized by the Ministry for who-the-bloody-hell-knows-why.

He had long given up trying to sort everything out properly and for now simply focused on at least separating everything into piles such as books, heirlooms and artifacts, albums, et cetera. He picked up a worn leather-bound book that looked like a journal and knocked into a metallic chest next to it. Luckily, it didn't fall from where it was on top of a small table, but his ears picked up the sound of something clattering and sliding against yet more coins.

Glancing around for the source of the noise – since it couldn't have come from the chest – his quidditch-honed eyes caught a small metal item nestled near his feet amongst some sickles. Bending down carefully, Harry's fingers sifted through the coins to pull out… a key?

Taking a closer look at it, he noted that not only did it look ancient, but the thing was rough on the edges and sporting minor evidence of rust; surprising as most magical items seemed immune to such deterioration – as proven by some items in the vault that seemed like it didn't belong in the last few centuries.

There wasn't anything else attached to the key. Harry frowned and leaned in to look at the metal chest from before. If it fell from around there maybe it had to do with the chest? He was about to put the key into the lock of the chest before he realized the chest wasn't actually locked in the first place.

Opening it, he found some jewelry, some old photos of what he assumed were the ancestors to whom once owned the items, and another key. Looking at the chest's keyhole, he realized its key was the one inside the chest. Then… what was the key in his hand for?

Interest piqued, Harry spent some time rifling through the items nearby but all proved useless in giving him an indication what the key was for.

"Whatever it is you open must be one seriously guarded treasure," he mumbled as he ran his fingers over the mystery key. It looked ancient. If he had to relate the design to something it would be one of those olden jail-cell keys he saw sometimes in muggle movies he watched with Hermione.

Realizing he'd spent quite some time getting distracted by the key, Harry shook his head and decidedly slipped the key into his pocket. He'd think about it more another time. For now, he still had more sorting to do. Yay.

I wrote the notes to this story back around 2013 after rewatching At Worlds' End (and I avoided watching Stranger Tides until like, 2016). I didn't really want to post it until I had most of it written considering my habit of leaving things hanging for ages lol.

Anyway I wrote the first 2 parts back when I began drafting the plotline and then after being stuck in a cargo ship with no wifi for 13 hours and watching AWE again I started writing some more. I'm about halfway done with the original plan now so fingers crossed it should be finished.

This was planned to be a relatively short story anyway since I have a habit of making things get too long so don't expect it to be a long one!

As always, reviews are appreciated :) In the meantime, you can check out what I'm up to on instagram: wandernhunger :)