France offered a different kind of silence than England — elegant, organized, and filled with the hum of people who believed their government could protect them. That illusion made it the perfect veil for what I was about to build.
With Itachi now controlling the Ministry from the inside, I had access to resources, permits, and the kind of quiet cooperation that only official seals could buy. I began by establishing two containment camps in the remote northern countryside. Officially, they were Magical Containment and Research Facilities — created to "study the effects of uncontrolled magical exposure in non-magical individuals."
In truth, they were my laboratories.
The first camp was positioned near the French-Belgian border — a fog-choked valley with weak magical interference and plenty of old ruins to repurpose. I designed it for biological and alchemical experimentation. Using my mastery of life and death magic, I continued my studies on the interaction between Muggle life force and arcane energy. Dozens of Muggles were quietly "relocated" through falsified Ministry records, and the Aurors under my control transported them without question, believing they were handling dangerous magical anomalies.
The second camp, in the south near the Pyrenees, was more subtle — a containment and conversion facility. There, I tested rituals that infused lesser magical potential into non-magical bodies. It was inefficient but promising. My notes predicted that with refinement, I could create magically reactive soldiers from ordinary Muggles — crude, but useful for the future army I envisioned.
Every camp was built with layered magical defenses and illusionary wards, blending them seamlessly into the landscape. To an ordinary observer, they appeared as nothing more than abandoned estates or government testing sites. I used the French Ministry's funding channels to disguise the costs, hiding the resources under various "education and infrastructure" grants.
Meanwhile, I established five experimental bases and three personal safe houses across France — each serving a distinct purpose:
Marseille Stronghold: My southern base, heavily warded, built for potion-brewing and alchemical creation. A labyrinth of underground laboratories hidden beneath a noble's abandoned wine cellar.
Lyon Facility: Dedicated to magical creature research. I had brought several Chimaera embryos from my English collections, raising them with controlled runic inhibitors.
Parisian Safe House: Hidden in plain sight within the magical quarter — a luxurious apartment under layered Fidelius charms. No one but my core inner circle even knew of its existence.
The Bastion at Mont-Blanc: A high-altitude fortress, crafted with complex anti-tracking runes, invisible to both magical and Muggle detection. It would serve as my emergency command base.
The Silent Archive: Hidden beneath an old monastery near Bordeaux, it housed the forbidden grimoires I'd taken from fallen pure-blood families and my earlier research on necromancy and blood magic.
Every new base was a chess piece — another step in a grand web that would span Europe before the war even began.
My French Death Eaters — though I rarely used that name outside England — were the first to benefit from my new resources. I began training them under Itachi's oversight, shaping them into something beyond the crude fanaticism of the original Dark Lord's army. They were disciplined, educated in the arts of stealth, illusion, and subtle influence. My soldiers would not be beasts of chaos; they would be instruments of precision.
At night, as I walked through the containment camps under moonlight, the faint sound of weeping echoed in the distance — the cries of Muggles who could not comprehend what had happened to them. I felt neither pity nor hatred. Only purpose.
These camps, these experiments, these strongholds — they were not cruelty for its own sake. They were preparation. A future forged through necessity.
The world was changing, and I would not allow it to destroy us.
France was now mine in all but name. And when the storm came, it would be from both sides of the Channel.