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Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 131: The First Raid
On the next day, in the late afternoon, James activated his very illegal international portkey and appeared in a desolate alley in Paris.
After getting a few hours of sleep, he went to his tower and prepared the things he needed for this trip.
Luckily for him, his parents weren't the intrusive type and allowed him to have his space without bothering him.
He was very thankful for that, as he was not used to dealing with parents at all, and this made things easier.
Making sure that no Muggles were around, James stored the portkey for later use and took out his broom.
His first stop was on the outskirts of Paris, and it was too far to get there by foot.
Leaving behind the busy metropolis, James pulled up the hood of his dark grey cloak and conjured a black mask to put over his face. This time, protecting his identity was of utmost importance.
What he was going to do tonight was bound to get a lot of attention, and he could not allow anyone to link him or his family with this.
After making himself and his broom invisible, he took off into the sky.
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Leaving behind the busy metropolis, James continued to fly until he spotted a suburban area filled with very ancient houses.
Near the end of the neighborhood was a very large mansion that was surrounded by tall walls and trees.
James double-checked the address to make sure he didn't get it wrong.
'No, this has to be it.' He flew with his broom over the property a few times, while trying to find a way in.
The windows on the last floor appeared to be the best point of entrance, as well as the best escape route, in case he needed to fly away.
The creatures inhabiting this property were fairly dangerous, after all, and he was not sure of how many were in here.
Unlocking the window and sneaking inside was easy, just a simple charm did the trick. It was likely that the owners of this place were not too worried about being robbed.
With his wand in hand, James began to make his way through the property. There was some noise coming from the floor below.
He was currently in the middle of a hallway, surrounded by doors. His detection spells revealed the presence of people inside those rooms.
James carefully opened one of the rooms and looked inside. It was a bedroom, and someone was already fast asleep on the bed.
'This must be where the human workers live,' he concluded.
From what he knew about vampires, it was very common for them to keep a few humans around to take care of things during the day. And it makes sense to give them the upper floor since it had the best access to natural sunlight. Something that a vampire would like to avoid.
James activated his black ring. "Nyxaris."
The fairy appeared in front of him. "Master?"
"Our targets are on the floor beneath us. Do you understand what you need to do?" he asked, just in case his mental messages were not clear.
"Eliminate all undead creatures," she responded with her usual emotionless tone.
'It looks like she got it,' James thought.
"Let's get to work then," said James.
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10 minutes later
"Mmm… I thought there would be more of them," James spoke with disappointment.
He was standing in the middle of a fancy hall, and all around him were the bodies of dead vampires, thirteen of them, to be exact.
The four human workers were still sleeping on the upper floor. James had placed a spell on them so they would not wake up, no matter how much noise there was down here. He did not want to kill any more than was necessary, and there was a good chance that those humans were just victims of these vampires anyway.
James pulled out something he had kept tied around his neck.
It was not a necklace nor a pendant, it was a pitch-black stone.
"This is nowhere near enough…" This stone was the Philosopher's Stone he had created, using the Prima Materia and the piece of meteoric metal that Lady Rose had sold him.
Although it was still far from complete, the most important ingredient for the creation of the stone was souls.
Without them, the stone around his neck was nothing more than a very...very expensive paperweight.
'A lot of people believe that vampires have no soul, but that is not true. Their souls are just very corrupted, but still there.'
Pure Souls would have done a much better job at fulfilling the needs of the Philosopher's Stone, he was very well aware of this fact.
But that was a line James refused to cross. If he had to feed souls to this artifact, he would feed it the souls of those who, according to his own criteria, deserved to die.
Vampires had been his first idea, and this is why he brought information about the location of many vampire dens across Europe.
However, looking at how little progress he had made during his first hunt, James was starting to question his approach.
'I can only make a rough estimate, but if I keep feeding it only vampire souls… I'm going to need thousands of them. Perhaps tens of thousands.'
He concluded that this was because the souls of the vampires were so corrupted that they might as well not be there.
"That won't do. Even if I can find that many, it would take me decades. I'm going to have to use humans after all." He rested his body against a comfortable-looking sofa while taking out the paper given to him by Lady Rose.
He had already predicted that this could be the case, so he had preemptively requested the location of several criminal hideouts.
His eyes moved across the list until he found one that was here in Paris.
"A necromantic cabal… okay, that will have to do. And it's close by." He looked at his side, where a dead vampire was still sitting next to him.
Nyxaris had cut his head off before the poor creature even understood what was happening.
"Sorry about that. It appears that I have wasted your time and mine." James told the dead vampire and stood up.
This was going to be a long night, and it was time to work again.
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