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London
–Damian Hawthorne–
Trusting the man enough to keep him in the portal room, after making sure that he had enough water just in case he needed it, he disappeared from the portal room and appeared back in the air above London.
Without wasting any time, he spread out his senses and winced as he felt more than two dozen thralls appear in his range. Now, in his original plan, the optimal solution was to have two people who could use portals. One would ferry them from London to the portal room, and the other from there to the prison dungeon floor.
Alas, fate rarely danced to man's tunes, so here he was, with just a single portal maker and a ton of thralls.
Solution? The less than optimal teleportation method that he currently knew how to use, i.e., apparition. He was confident in taking at least three people at once, without any risks whatsoever, so that's what he was going to do. The good thing was that there were no gatherings that he could sense, where multiple thralls were working together to find Harry.
It reduced the chances of one of them panicking when he was taking the other ones out but it also increased his work as he had to move from one thrall to the other in a way that is within the deadline.
Floating mid air, he took stock of the things he had on hand and, after going through his repertoire of magic, chose the simplest option, to knock them out. Thralls were inherently more durable than regular humans, but that kind of durability took time to cultivate.
They were certainly not going to be a problem for his enhanced strength, provided he could easily get in close quarters with them. If he did not have that, a point-blank stupefy should do the trick, but that would not be his first option, as he wanted to keep his magic tank full for the dozens of teleportations he foresaw in his near future.
Even if the blow was not enough to keep them under for a long period of time, that was fine. He had the prison dungeon floor for that, to keep them sedated for extended periods of time. Not too extended, he hoped. Even thralls needed sustenance and he was not looking forward to sourcing blood for them.
As he flew down towards the highway, towards a car that was chugging along in the slow lane, his thoughts went to the fanon theories he read in his past life, about vampires having a hand in the majority of the blood banks throughout the world and how that was the agreement they had with the governments in exchange for keeping quiet and being essentially herded by the governments.
That was also a conspiracy theory that made sense in his mind because how else were dozens of vampiric covens, active just in Europe, sustaining themselves without being discovered? They either preyed on humans and the activities were hidden by the wizards, or they had a way of acquiring blood without disturbing the status quo, even if it would incite quite the backlash if the common populace came to know about it.
A decision that would be very easy to make for any career politician, to make sure that their image remained spanking clean whilst pushing the problem for later on, prioritising short term fixes that looked good enough instead of working on the long term fixes.
Short rant of politics aside, he located the car, hovering right above it in stealth mode and saw the glassy eyed look of the woman driving the car, dried tears easily visible because of the makeup. He wondered what orders the vampire gave them. What would she do once her car ran out of gas?
Shaking his head, he pushed his morbid curiosity aside and swiftly angled himself next to the window and with a single punch, shattered the window and cast the stupefy spell in a single motion, knocking the woman out who passed out on the wheel.
Now, at any other time, that would have been a very dangerous situation, but since it was him handling it, it went seamlessly. His magic, spread out around him and the vehicle, had already taken over the controls. Within a minute, the car slowed down and was safely taken off the road and into the median.
He placed a mild notice me not on the car itself before carrying the woman in his arms and disappearing from the spot, appearing in front of Lucien, who had conjured a chair for himself and was reading through a book that was probably taken out of his robe.
The man looked up from his reading, gesturing to the book in his hand, "Hope you don't mind. I already had it on me before we came here." Then, his gaze slid to the woman, pale and limp in his hands, "The first one, huh? Just keep her there, I'll make sure she is placed properly."
He nodded, thankful for that before moving out, appearing back near the bar where the whole thing began. God, it felt as if entire weeks' worth of action was packed within hours as he swooped down, as a thrall entered an alleyway which was also a shortcut, knocked him out with a light tap to the back of his head, disappeared and appeared in the portal room, in front of a Lucien who was now standing, ready to take the thralls, the book and chair having disappeared from the room.
He placed the man on the ground before disappearing once more, appearing above London, ready for the next thrall. By his enough estimates, there should not be more than 50 of them, and he should be able to catch them all since they were given orders to just move inside the city, looking for Harry instead of heading out which made things a little bit easier for him.
On and on, it went.
He scanned for thralls through the skies, swooped them, knocked them out, sometimes waiting for them to move out of a high visibility zone, take them back to the portal room where Lucien was ready, standing by to receive them and take them back to the prison floor, where they were kept in a knocked out state.
Doing this for regular humans ran a medium to high risk of damaging their brains permanently, but thralls, even newly turned ones, had a much higher threshold for damage, especially from stuff like asphyxiation and starvation, because of their blood and hence, their entire biology now requiring less resources. Instead, the body morphed to rely more and more on the meager amount of magic that every single human had.
The problem came when thralls, who were not completely beings of magic capable of regenerating magic at higher rates, had a body that was mostly dependent on magic for sustenance. The next step, naturally, was to acquire said magic and the easiest way to do that, for them, was through blood, either of either non magicals or from wizards.
He wondered if they had some sort of wizard blood bank, for the higher ranking vampires who clearly had far more magical power than the regular run of the mill thralls who could probably make do with regular human blood.
As the numbers kept climbing up, he felt his magic drop in response, as the rapid teleporting sequences clearly took its toll on him. Time too was running out, so it was not like he could stop to rest, so he continued to knock them out and transport them, just being mindful of any magic being cast, instead using his fists to knock them out.
It was only once but even once was one too many, as he heard someone gasp and scream when he flew down into an alleyway to knock out a younger thrall, probably a teenager, and had to hightail it out of there. He wondered what would happen to that but other than that, he had no other instances of being spotted.
Before he knew it, he had already dropped 46 people in the portal room. The last one he brought in, he swayed and barely held himself upright as the thrall just slid to the ground, kept afloat only by Lucien who was also a pretty good wandless magic user.
He felt his magic deplete to dangerous levels, as he took deep breaths, drank water, and looked at the time, and sighed in relief.
Still an hour left. With that in mind, he decided to follow Lucien into the prison room and came face to face with the hastily designed enchantments working as intended.
"I only had to deal with a single thrall that woke up mid way, but other than that, no issues. You do good work." Lucien complimented him but he was just so exhausted, he could not reply other than just nodding.
After that, he just sat down, with his back against the wall, deciding to rest for a couple of minutes before moving to the other thralls.
Lucien, thankfully, did not say anything, ask anything, just kept quiet and waited patiently for him to rest before they moved into the portal room and then when he asked Lucien to open a portal to London, the man did not comment on the reason and just complied.
Man, he would love to have a competent minion like Lucien once he grew up and created an organisation of his own, because that's what the natural flow chart felt like.
Grow strong. Start facing issues. Realise that issues need more than just one person. Hire people/minions. Make minions strong. Care for minions. Defend Minions. Solve problems.
Chuckling at the frankly hysterical thoughts, he began his search once more, to have the last couple of thralls left still roaming around the city, trying to fulfill impossible orders.
____xx___
Ireland
–Albus Dumbledore–
He sighed, once again, reviewing the events that led to this choice today and found it to be the right one. It was a difficult choice, but one that had to be made and better it be him who made it rather than someone who had no hope of dealing with her.
So, with a heavy heart, he squashed all his reservations about it, all because of the words of someone who had recently gained notoriety as a wizard child killer, and then crushed the beating heart he had in his hand, the purple blood spilling over his hands and then dripping on the grass, as a chilling magical aura emanated from the pentagram symbol the purple blood carved on the ground.
As the area around him lit up in bright purple, he sighed at the difficult conversation ahead. At least, the demon, unlike the members of the Board of Hogwarts, could not directly lie to him while being in the pentagram.
He just wished that the thought of placing senior Ministry officials in similar restrictions had not occurred to him as an option that would be very popular with the common public. Even without any trace of mind magic, just the very existence of demons and their ways was enough to tempt him to do something that would spell his doom.
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