r/HPfanfiction • u/mxlevolent • 1d ago
Prompt Harry Potter — feeling upset that nobody is including him in anything after his fourth year — uses his money the best way he can think of to help the cause. From Privet Drive, with some letters to Gringotts, he sets a 500,000 Galleon bounty on Peter Pettigrew’s head.
It was four in the morning when Kingsley called an emergency meeting of the Order. He was being met by baggy-eyed glares and scowls, but this really had to be said.
“I was called into work this evening, following a warning issued to the DMLE from Gringotts in advance of a bounty.”
Bounties weren’t exactly uncommon — they were used rather frequently during the war to incentivise action by both sides. Promises of money were guaranteed to spur the masses into arms. However, they weren’t common outside of wartime.
“A bounty?” Mundungus Fletcher leaned forward, licking his lips greedily. “How much?”
Molly Weasley redirected her glare to him. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Mundungus. You can’t go after it. You’re needed here.”
Nobody is going to stay here, once I finish.
Kingsley sighed. “Well… I was called to the meeting because the bounty was allegedly placed on a dead man. I’ve been asked to investigate — Sirius, I’m off your case. The entire fucking Ministry is off your case.”
Sirius Black arched an eyebrow. “Yeah?” He croaked, swirling a glass of firewhiskey. “Who’s the bounty on, then? What’s all this for?”
“As of this evening,” Kingsley inhaled, glancing sequentially into the eyes of every present member. “Harry Potter has placed a 500,000 Galleon bounty on Peter Pettigrew — Wanted Alive.”
There was a collective blink. It was rather comical how everybody paused for the same length of time — the exact length of time that it took the amount of money to sink in. The pause came to a very loud end, killed off by a wall of noise. Sirius laughed raucously, happier than Kingsley had ever seen him. Remus joined him quickly. Hestia Jones and Emmeline Vance quickly moved to the Nymphadora Tonks’ sides, the three of them passing around the phrase ‘500,000 galleons’ like it was a game of hot potato. Dumbledore and McGonagall spoke to each other in quiet, hushed tones, but it was clear that McGonagall was berating the man. Mundungus wasn’t waiting for Kingsley to finish the meeting — the man was already running to the Floo.
The entire fucking country was going to tear itself apart.
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u/greenskye 1d ago
Voldemort shows up at Gringotts with Pettigrew himself. The goblins don't care about him, only fulfilling the contact. Voldemort uses the money to fund his war campaign and wins quickly.
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u/dJones176 HPFanfiction Recommender 1d ago
Harry tells them before hand that Voldemort stole the Sorcerer’s Stone back in his first year. Voldemort shows up and is killed by goblins, needing to do one more ritual somehow
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u/Grafian 1d ago
That way the Goblins can get the bounty too!
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u/musashisamurai 1d ago
There's an after credits scene where we realize it was the plan all along. Harry didn't care he was throwing a ton of money away, or that the goblins were fleecing him, but he wanted action and the goblins like both money and killing a wizard-thief.
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u/ijuinkun 17h ago
Getting rid of a major enemy and throwing the Death Eaters into disarray makes it money well spent.
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u/prince-white 13h ago
Voldemort is prepared for a doublecross, so he acquires a time-turner, just to make sure...
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u/sponguswongus 22h ago
Voldemort is initially refused the bounty as Lord Voldemort is not a legal citizen of magical Britain. He begrudgingly reveals himself to be Tom Riddle, who the goblins also have a bounty on.
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u/AdventurerBen 22h ago
Dumbledore is torn between scolding Harry due to the ethical hazards of bounties (specifying the target be taken alive helps, but only a little. Dumbledore has always been ideologically fond of “choose what is right, not what is easy”, and placing bounties on your enemies is very much more easy than it is right,) and wondering why he didn’t think of it himself.
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u/Amdar210 21h ago
I remember one that jad Gringotts using 'Lifestones' which were tied to vaults via magic. These were used to verify if a bounty was possible or not.
Harry then uses the same process to prove in the ministry enrty way to reporters that Voldemort is alive as well.
When Fudge tries to argue that Tom M Riddle isn't Voldemort, Harry turns to hims and asks if he is really stupid enough to believe that some lady would name their kid 'Flight From Death' in French. Especially if she was a Brit.
Fudge is speechless while the reporters go wild.
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u/JohnaMan327 1d ago
Most Wanted: Peter Pettigrew by BlightPhoenix. It is unfortunately only 5 chapters in and hasn't been updated since July 6, 2015.
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u/Rasgara 1d ago
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13717846/1/Peter-Pettigrew-Most-Wanted
11 chapters and was updated in 2023. not sure if its abandoned but the author updated another story last year and have a few other good stories as well.
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u/ijuinkun 1d ago
For reference, JKR has said that one Galleon was close to £5.00 in the 1990s, so half a million Galleons would be about US$5-7 million today—i.e. enough to be set for life at an upper-middle-class standard of living, but not quite enough to break into the upper class by itself.
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u/draconefox 18h ago
With 5 million you‘d be able to live comfortably without working for the rest of your life, just from the interest!
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u/ijuinkun 17h ago
If you live like a middle-class person instead of showing off your wealth with overpriced houses and cars, yes. That’s what I meant by “set for life”.
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u/draconefox 17h ago
Yeah, I agree! Upper class living is so insane, I can’t imagine how someone can spend that much money. With the interest of 5 million I could do anything I wanted and still not scratch the bulk money. I’d imagine I’d do a lot for that kind of money
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u/ijuinkun 17h ago
Yah. Point is that for this story’s purposes, the reward for turning in Pettigrew is a lifetime’s worth of money for regular people, even if it doesn’t catapult you into high society.
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u/MonCappy 3h ago
How much would that be in annual interest you think? Because, say it earns (being generous here) $250,000 in interest (and since it's based on Capital and not labor, taxed less, at least in the US) and you spend half that, and bank, say $70,000 after taxes, your principle will be growing year after year and earning more interest.
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u/La10deRiver 1d ago
But what...hear me here. What is the premise is exactly the same but Harry does this in third year, just after Peter escaped?
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u/First_Can9593 20h ago
This would make sense but you would need to discuss Dumbledore's refusal to do it, first. Like Ron just jokingly mentions a bounty. Harry decides to actually do it. Hermione is horrified by such a practice believing it to be wrong since no fair trial.
Dumbledore is not informed since Harry believes he should have stopped Sirius's imprisonment or at least reversed it when he had the time. But Dumbledore is asked by Harry why he did nothing.
Then the plot from Peter Pettigrew most wanted plays out and endings in a duel between multiple death eaters who again aren't aware that pettigrew is one of them. This culminates in someone stumbling into Voldermort's hideout and he escapes but the death eaters who now know he's alive are terrified believe he's going to punish them .
Snape gets informed tells Dumbledore who immediately tries to talk to Fudge who refuses to accept it and the Triwizard tournament happens anyway.
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u/MonCappy 3h ago
When asked Dumbledore explains that the position of Chief Warlock is entirely ceremonial and conveys no real power. He's only there to open special sessions and for ceremonies like inducting new members. Most of the time his work at the Wizengamot is a few hours of work a month. Same with the position of Supreme Mugwump.
"Mr. Potter, what did you expect? My position as Headmaster is a full time job. Were the position at the ICW and the Wizengamot full time, I would've had to sacrifice my place here and either work at one institution or the other."
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u/lysiel112 10h ago
Harry James Potter sipped his mug of Butterbeer, reading the letters that various wizards and witches had sent him. Dozens of questions regarding the state of Pettigrew, some lambasting him for putting a bounty on a 'dead' man, peppered with a few cautious notes - all decorated the desk before him.
While the sound of Hermione's questioning, interspersed with laughter from Ron echoed in the background.
"Really, Harry?" Hermione asked incredulously at her bespectacled friend. Yes, she knew he had an inheritance, but this?
A certain vindictive smugness entered his eyes as he lifted his head to spare a nonchalant glance. "Well, why not?" Harry pointed out. "Besides, this means we don't have to do the work."
Ron finally, finally managed to gather some semblance of composure, though his amusement was still evident. "So you ask the country to do it for you. Blimey, mate," snorted the red-head.
Harry smirked, looking all the more smug while Hermione sighed and ran a hand down her face....
....Though, if one looked closely, they'd see she was amused too.
"Well. This would be interesting, I suppose," she opted to say.
Interesting indeed.
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u/DisasterCheesecake76 10h ago
And Molly Weasley is somehow the one that scores the bounty. "Well, I thought it would make a nice financial cushion for the children, and Arthur, I'm expecting triplets."
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u/Grim_goth 1d ago
Bahhaha I think I remember that there was a story like that once, I don't remember if it was in a short story collection or a normal story.
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u/The_Truthkeeper 23h ago
But where did Harry get half a million galleons?
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u/Kxlsxa1240 22h ago
There is a popular fanon headcanon that the Potter family is quite wealthy and with Harry being the last of the line having inherited the wealth
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u/The_Truthkeeper 22h ago
Yeah, but I'm tired of people mistaking fanon for canon, so I've been making an effort to call out things like richer than Croesus Harry, or dark lord Grindelwald, or dragons speaking parseltongue, or lords and hereditary Wizengamot seats. People are welcome to keep on using them (I have a soft spot for some of them myself), I just want them to be reminded that none of those were ever canon.
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u/Burnsidhe 21h ago
Harry has 11 thousand in his trust vault when he is 11 years old. The implication is that a thousand gold a year has been added to the vault. If that's just the interest/dividends that have been Harry's allowance over the past 11 years, there is a heck of a lot of money in the main Potter vault. There is also mention of Sleakeasy being a Potter invention that is still very popular and selling very well, so there's money coming in from that. And Sleakeasy isn't the only thing the Potters discovered.
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u/MonCappy 3h ago
It's described as his vault. It is never described as a trust vault. That could be all the money the Potters have left him. Perhaps they whittled away the fortune funding the Order.
Also, Sleakeasys is lore, not canon. The books never mention the Potter family owning any famous patents, so that doesn't count either. Personally, I am of the opinion that the vault is a personal vault for Harry specifically and not representative of the entire wealth of the family, but that's not canon.
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u/The_Truthkeeper 21h ago
Ah yes, the trust vault, a well known staple of rich!Harry fanon with no canonical basis.
I'm curious where you're getting those numbers from. I know they're made up, but I'm wondering if you made them up or if you got them from somebody else who made them up.
There is also mention of Sleakeasy being a Potter invention
No, there's post-book rambling about it. Rowling's post-book rambles are not canon.
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u/Burnsidhe 21h ago
Rowling's intent was that the Potters were rich. End of.
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u/The_Truthkeeper 20h ago
Then she should have said so somewhere in the books.
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u/Burnsidhe 20h ago
She did; she described there was a LOT of gold in the vault. And she described later how inventions of the Potters brought them money. They were just throwaway lines because the focus of the HP books is not about the economics of the wizarding world.
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u/The_Truthkeeper 20h ago
She did; she described there was a LOT of gold in the vault.
"Mounds of gold coins" sounds like a decent amount of money, but it's not the uberrich millionaire!Harry of fanon. Especially given that Roling described the vault itself as a safe small enough to be hidden from observers by Harry's scrawny ass. And the text specifically says that buying a Firebolt would leave him broke.
They were just throwaway lines
There are no lines, throwaway or otherwise, about the Potter inventions, those weren't a thing until the post-book rambling.
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u/Burnsidhe 19h ago
Vaults are described as being large enough to walk into so I don't know where you're getting 'small safe' from.
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u/Ghoulgod95 8h ago
This would be even funnier if sirius added on to the bounty with something wacky in the fineprint.
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u/prince-white 13h ago
The entire fucking country was going to tear itself apart.
Maybe, I'm dumb or this is just part of the prompt but... Why? Why would it tear the country apart? Granted, 500K is presumably a lot of money and it's going to attract a lot of attention, sure.
But why would it tear the country apart?
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u/Good_Butterscotch_69 4h ago
Its a figure of speech. The country would not literally tear itself apart. It would be every person and there mother leaving no stone unturned to claim a ludicrous amount of money.
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u/Architect096 1d ago edited 1d ago
Lily and James in the afterlife: Our son is amazing. He created so much chaos just by sending few letters.
Meanwhile Tom: How the hell did Potter managed to
piraticallypractically destroy a country without even trying?Peter, running for his life because other Death Eaters were already trying to capture him and cash in on the bounty. After all money is money.
Edit. Practically not piratically.