If Old Tom Can Rob It, Why Can't I?

Professor Vinda did not go to Gringotts with Isaac and Hagrid, choosing instead to browse Diagon Alley.

After all, it was the busiest shopping street in Britain's Wizarding World. What woman could resist eagerly shopping along the most prosperous commercial street in a foreign country?

Isaac followed Hagrid to Gringotts.

This was Isaac's second visit to Gringotts.

Gringotts was a snow-white building, towering far above the neighboring shops and dazzling in the sunlight.

Its bronze doors had been polished to a gleaming shine. Goblins in scarlet uniforms trimmed with gold stood at the entrance. They were about a head shorter than Isaac, with dark skin, pointed chins, and shrewd black eyes.

They climbed the white stone steps, and Isaac saw a line carved onto the second door:

Enter, stranger, but place your hand upon your head.

For if you seek to take a treasure that is not yours,

Thief, you have been warned; beware

Of finding more than treasure underground.

Isaac stared at the words for a moment before Hagrid softly called, "Isaac?"

Isaac waved a hand.

In his previous life, when Isaac had first seen those words, he had thought Gringotts seemed pretty badass.

Especially since robbing a bank in the real world was a serious crime, and far from easy.

After growing up in his previous life, he had barely even heard of bank robberies happening back home.

Putting himself in their shoes for a moment, shouldn't a magical bank's security be even tighter?

Yet not long afterward, Gringotts got robbed in the later story.

And it was Vault 713, supposedly Gringotts's highest-security vault—no, seriously, man...

After pulling something like that, Gringotts had lost all its mystique. Warnings and maxims everywhere, yet they were just bragging?

Now that Isaac had personally come to the Wizarding World and gradually deepened his understanding of wizards, he finally realized it belatedly.

That made sense. If Gringotts truly had vaults that no wizard, however powerful, could breach...

Then how had the goblins lost to wizards in the war?

"Let's go, Hagrid. Let's head inside." Isaac withdrew his gaze and entered Gringotts.

As they entered Gringotts, a pair of goblins bowed to them and led them through silver doors into a vast marble hall.

Over a hundred goblins sat on high stools behind long counters, scribbling in enormous ledgers.

They weighed coins on brass scales and inspected gemstones through spectacles.

Isaac and Hagrid walked toward the counter.

"We're here to retrieve something from Vault 713. This is Dumbledore's handwritten letter."

Isaac handed Dumbledore's letter to the goblin at the counter. After examining it closely, the goblin said, "Very well. I'll have someone take you to the vault."

"Griphook!"

A goblin immediately hurried over.

"Take them to Vault 713," the goblin at the counter ordered.

"Yes, sir," Griphook replied in a shrill voice, hopping along as he led them through the hall to a small door.

The door opened onto a narrow stone passage, brightly illuminated by burning torches.

The passage sloped steeply downward, with a small railway at the bottom.

Griphook gave a whistle, and a cart glided toward them along the tracks.

They climbed into the cart, and Griphook climbed in as well, slamming the door shut with a bang.

The cart immediately shot through the pitch-black tunnel.

At first, they could still see torchlight flickering along the walls, but the tunnel soon became completely dark.

The cart raced at an astonishing speed. As far as the experience went, Isaac thought it was inferior to both the Knight Bus and Apparition.

Vault 713 had no keyhole.

"Stand back," Griphook said solemnly.

He extended one long finger and lightly tapped the door. To their surprise, the door slowly began to vanish.

"If anyone other than a Gringotts goblin did this, they would be sucked into the door and trapped inside forever."

Isaac nodded. Maybe that was true if all someone did was knock, but what if they followed Old Tom's example and smashed their way in directly?

Man, you couldn't expect a bank robber to be polite while robbing a bank, could you?

When I crack open bank vaults in games, I use bombs.

Inside Vault 713 was only a grimy little package about the size of a shoebox, wrapped in brown paper and tied with thin string.

Isaac entered the vault, took the package, and then rode the Gringotts Cart back the way they had come.

Under the goblins' watchful gazes, Isaac and Hagrid left Gringotts.

After leaving, the two did not rush to find Professor Vinda. At Isaac's suggestion, they instead went to the Leaky Cauldron and rented a room.

Inside the room, Isaac opened the box and saw what was inside.

The Sorcerer's Stone had quite the reputation, but it looked rather ordinary—more like an uncut ruby.

It was blood-red, the size of an egg, with a rough surface.

It was hard to imagine that this thing had allowed Nicolas Flamel to live for centuries—if he had not wanted to die, he probably could have lived even longer.

"It's the real thing." Isaac nodded. He had seen the Sorcerer's Stone in his prophecy, so he could verify its authenticity.

That only referred to the Sorcerer's Stone's appearance.

Isaac was actually itching to try out the Sorcerer's Stone's effects. Turning stone into gold! It was not that he was greedy; he simply wanted to see how a stone became gold.

Really.

Unfortunately, Hagrid had clearly been instructed by Dumbledore. At the moment, he was staring at Isaac without even blinking.

After silently grumbling about old Dumbledore, Isaac handed the gemstone to Hagrid.

"Give it to Dumbledore, Hagrid."

Hagrid bent halfway over and thumped his chest with loud bangs.

It was not because Hagrid respected Isaac all that much. The room at the Leaky Cauldron clearly had not been magically expanded; the ceiling was too low for Hagrid to even stand upright.

At the entrance of the Leaky Cauldron, Isaac watched Hagrid leave.

Then, as he walked into Diagon Alley under the gazes of a crowd of wizards, Isaac realized that whenever he was in Diagon Alley, he could effortlessly draw attention.

It could not be helped. He was already quite well-known in Diagon Alley, and the Daily Prophet had been sparing no effort in publicizing Minister Fudge recently.

As a result, Isaac's own reputation had risen as well.

The Order of Merlin, Second Class... Lockhart probably dreamed of getting one.

Put bluntly, Lockhart's Third Class Order was awarded in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the Wizarding World's entertainment industry—the Ministry of Magic had practically said outright, Lockhart, you really are an excellent clown.

Yet Lockhart himself had stubbornly treated it as an honor.

But in the end, those things were merely icing on the cake. The core reason Isaac was famous was still "Dumbledore's suspected illegitimate son."

Isaac took a look through prophecy, then found Professor Vinda trying on clothes at Twilfitt and Tattings.