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London [A week later]
–Damian Hawthorne–
He took a deep breath, still paranoid that Wakanda had somehow put a tracker on him despite him going through the magical equivalent of an industrial scrubber to get any magic off of him, and then turned around, teleporting across the country to London.
As soon as he did that, he was hit with the sounds. Of people walking, talking with each other, stores opening and closing. He had to consciously dial that down, because he had spent the last week in a safe, closed container with basically zero sound leakage on top of the excellent sound insulation he put in place.
The books he read about construction explicitly told him to build conduits and run wires for days, before putting in the walls, because doing so later on would be expensive and tedious, so he went a little overboard and built everything up to the highest standard possible.
It was only towards the end that he realised that he had magic on his side, and with magic, he could just wave his problems away.
Sighing, he realised that he was just letting his thoughts stray further away, as he slowly lowered himself to the ground, and walked into the notice me not bubble that was present near the entrance of the Leaky Cauldron, seamlessly turning off his invisibility enchantment as soon as he entered that bubble of not being noticed.
Unlike the last time he was here, there were a lot more people in the bar, with Tom working behind the counter. Not wanting to talk to anyone, he just walked towards the newspaper, swiped one off for today and yesterday before settling down near the entrance, since it was a single's table, which was exactly what he needed.
As he read through today's newspaper, he realised that there was nothing regarding that incident there, which was fair since it had been over 10 days since that incident. The last day's newspaper actually yielded him some news, good or bad, he could not tell. It was just a little snippet, full of legalese, basically telling the citizens not to panic and go about their business in Diagon Alley with no fear because the entrance to Knockturn Alley has been moved permanently, which would now be monitored by the Ministry to make sure that the mishap that happened earlier would not happen again.
He scoffed at that. As if the Ministry was not already monitoring them constantly anyway. Still, after all that had happened, that day did not feel significant anymore to him. It just felt like an event that happened because even during that fight, he never felt as cornered and vulnerable as he did in Waskanda. He always had the nuclear option, the upper hand in the fight against Dumbledore.
Yes, that thing put him in a bad spot, capable of applying pressure on his soul itself, but even then, he had been able to use his stuff. In Wakanda, he just lost all his stuff in one fell swoop, which had put some ideas, dangerous ideas in his head. He was going to make sure that did not happen ever again, and if he needed to build overpowered armour for that, so be it.
Going through the newspapers, he just sighed and went out, activating his invisibility enchantment as soon as he crossed the threshold and teleported out of the city, back into his base. He had a lot of stuff to do, to make, and very little time. For all he knew, Wakanda was out there somewhere, hunting for him, and he needed to be ready to face those Vibranium tipped claws of the Black Panther if the day came.
__xx__
He was in the middle of a library, one hidden in plain sight. A public library in Oxford somehow holds onto magical tomes, exuding faint traces of magic, so small that had it not been for both, his satellite network and his extremely sensitive senses, he would not have been able to pick them up.
"Ancient Ruins?" He whispered to himself, going through the book at an insane pace, the dim light coming from his sleeves more than enough to make it legible. His first instinct was to just steal it and read it later but recent happenings made him learn that remaining hidden and leaving behind no traces of his existence was way better than just stealing it.
It was a book depicting events that happened hundreds of years ago, detailing the entrance of a magical enclave or a pocket dimension, the author wasn't sure, that was exactly like a magical dungeon, full of dense magic that either gave birth to unique flora, fauna, or had stuff inside it that emitted that dense magic.
His mind flashed to that relic Dumbledore used against him, a very potent attack on the soul, allowing him to just subdue most wizards with ease, en masse if need be. It must be from those Ruins.
"What the…" He murmured to himself as he continued reading through the book, vague and incomplete as it was. How Ancient Ruins formed out of nowhere, or the more likely truth being that they were discovered out of nowhere, after their magical signature was leaked.
The ICW was primarily responsible for the Ancient Ruins, how to handle them, who could go in, and where the recovered items would go. All of that, run by the ICW, where Dumbledore was not just the Supreme Mugwump but also held tremendous influence because of his fight against Grindelwald.
Wizards, especially powerful nobles, lived very long lives, and he would not be surprised to know that many of them who held positions of power 50 years ago, also held onto them today, which meant they were that much more likely to have immense gratitude towards Dumbledore and treat his words like gospel.
"Yup," He shut the book carefully. It all but confirmed it. Dumbledore used a freaking relic against him, and they were just out there, waiting to be discovered. He wondered what the exact mechanism for them was but it was probably just Mother Magic shenanigans, just like the existence of wizards and how their powers would not work in space because they were powered by the Earth herself.
"Gaia, huh?" He said to himself before carefully getting out of the library and teleporting back to his base.
He sighed as he moved to his kitchen to make a nice French toast for himself. It had been a hectic week for him, constantly jumping around the country and even some neighbouring areas, to look for magic that his network picked up on. He knew he would get something juicy when he saw the location being a library in Oxford.
Now, he would first have to find a Ruin somewhere, calibrate his network to look for similar stuff, and then go exploring. It would be dangerous, so he would wait for a while and be over prepared but he will have to go. It would not do to be caught unaware of someone like Volde getting his hands on some esoteric magical effect, on top of his already fearsome magic.
Speaking of Horcruxes, he really should begin getting to them. He had less than a year before he got his Hogwarts letter, and had his mobility drastically reduced, for at least a couple of years. Better to get the known ones out of the game sooner than that.
With that last incident, he understood that he was not yet ready to just butt into any important event happening, especially not without ample preparation, which is why he made sure to stock up on potent magical ordnance before heading to his first target.
The Gaunt Shack.
He went down to his teleportation room before teleporting to Little Hangleton, a quaint little town housing no magical families at the moment, with its most notable feature being its quite large and isolated graveyard, the same place where Voldemort would come back to life with his powers in full.
Hopefully, that figure would never come to pass. He knew how stubborn and nasty Fate could be, and depending on that prophecy, it might just become necessary to bring Voldemort to life before handing Harry a smoking magi-tech gun to just finish the guy off, once and for all.
The moment he went near the graveyard, following the old, rusted signboards, he felt it. Just beyond the forest, magic so bitter in taste that he could almost taste it. Learning from his past mistakes, instead of going any further, he just moved back, and flew upwards, to get a better view.
Alas, the forests were too dense for him to see anything. It was good that he came prepared then.
What was the solution to finding a target that cannot be seen by conventional methods but can be detected using alternative energy emissions, and then blasting it to smithereens with a good ol' explosion?
Heat Seeking Missiles! Or their magical equivalent.
Magic seeking Missiles. In this case, they were incredibly short range, and had a dial on them for sensitivity. Winging it based on what he could sense, he took out the three rocks in his hands, which did not look like missiles, and threw them into the forest, at a high enough angle.
Mid way through, he felt their enchantments come to life before little bursts of kinetic energy had them diving straight down towards the source of magic. If he recalled correctly, that house had some nasty curses on it, most of them geared towards killing any living thing that came too close.
No way he was risking it now. His ego had been kicked down sufficiently.
"Ah, before I forget," He muttered to himself before mentally activating the wide area sound curtain he'd erected around this side of the road, making sure that the very old and very few people in the town did not hear a house being blown to smithereens.
And just two seconds later, apparently the house was hidden behind really dense trees, he heard a loud explosion, with fires exploding past the high trees, giving him the exact location. He floated forward, ready to throw yet another volley of exploding rocks at anything that looked at him wrong.
He looked down, and saw a small clearing around the burning house, smoke rising in the air, but the taste of that Dark Magic still lingered in the air. Reduced? Yes. But still present.
"Well, nothing like overkill," He shrugged and dropped another six rocks that zoomed at the fire as yet another explosion rang out all around him.
He felt the heat recede as he finally began floating down. He maintained ample distance, obviously. No need to come close to a cursed object, let alone a cursed house. With a burst of kinetic energy, he pushed through the fire with pressurised air, and nodded in satisfaction as the house just crumbled, most of it turning to dust because the magic that kept it going was gone.
Magic could keep going for a long time, but it needed something to anchor on. A physical object that would hold the magic. If that object itself was gone, then the magic would eventually dissipate as well, another one of magic's laws. Enchantments cannot be woven on thin air, they need anchors. Destroy the anchors and the magic fades away on its own.
With the shack gone, he could now pinpoint the Horcrux quite easily. It made him gag, his senses telling him to just destroy it with everything he had. It was quite literally an abomination of magic, an anathema to Mother Magic.
Still, he had come far from the days when he had let his magic influence his emotions because of seeing a Baby Unicorn. He exhaled, let his emotions settle down before taking a small stick out of his jacket.
A claw unfurled at the end of the stick as he pressed on it with his magic and the stick extended.
He grinned as he operated the magical equivalent of a fishing stick, designed to just explode just in case a curse tried to travel through it.
Time to see exactly what it was that saved the Horcrux from such intense bombarding.
In true American Fashion, he was curious as to how much more FREEDOM! was necessary before it was killed.
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