10 Chapter 10

Crystal had turned out to be an excellent investment. She had handled organising her parents to move and explaining why very efficiently. Since the house-elves would handle the actual moving, Crystal had her family out of the house two hours after waking up.

Since he was looking for a house for the Klere family and needed a starter company to launder his cash, Chad saved time and just started a real estate company. Elfin Incorporated was born, and the start-up cash was handed to Crystal for her to try and make it look less illegal. Luckily, she had two years of studying economics to give her a hint as to how to go about starting up a company with unexplained funds.

Chad had once again been reminded that he should start his training into Legilimency, it would solve a lot of problems if he could just Jedi mind trick people. Picking out a couple of run-down houses in a decent neighbourhood had been the next step. Acquiring property that was cheap because of the poor condition of the buildings was the trick to starting his legitimate money-making scheme. That and an army of house-elves to magically fix the place up!

With zero overheads involved in flipping the properties, they could even use fake expenses for tax writeoffs! Crystal's father was also an electrician and could be employed to claim more expenses while fixing his need for a job change. The only thing that couldn't be faked was the material costs.

But Chad planned to use the materials to turn his underground HQ into an actual comfortable base instead of just dirt walls. The only thing they had to be careful of was selling houses too quickly and bringing suspicion onto their fledgling company.

When Crystal moved her parents into one of the dilapidated houses she had just purchased under the company name, she was surprised that the inside did not match the outside! The outside of the building was a sorry looking affair, with peeling paint and a very weathered appearance, but inside looked as if it had just been built! There was not a speck of dust anywhere, and all the surfaces were glistening!

Since Crystal had already done all the paperwork and even somehow bought five houses with cash, Chad decided to introduce her to the workforce. It had gone surprisingly well, but he thought that mentioning how the two governments knew about each other was what made her finally accept magic was real. If the prime minister knew about it, then it just made it seem like a secret organisation, not a fairytale come to life.

With the statue of secrecy explained to her, Crystal now knew that both governments would silence any fuss she made publically, and she would be disposed of like an unwanted fart, quickly and with a lot of denials. But with a firmer grasp on how their company would operate, Crystal handled the business like a professional.

With the increase in workload for the house-elves, Chad had Boppy run another recruitment drive. Any elf that was on the market was to be bought, any free elf offered employment. He even had them search abroad for unwanted elves, the wizards seemed to be universally underestimating the greatness of house-elves.

House-elves have an average life expectancy of 200 years, breed infrequently but only with their Master's permission and are usually sold for two hundred Galleons. There was not actually any professional breeders for elves, and any sold were people just trying to make a few extra Galleons.

With there long lives and the struggle of regular breeding, their population had sharply declined over the years. It had become unpopular for any but the oldest of Houses to own one. Coupled with being undervalued, and treated as slaves, it made it quite easy for Chad to buy them from their owners.

Particularly when he was willing to pay up to five hundred Galleons per elf after the initial acquisition of all elves available. Chad even had Crystal be the one buying them. Having a bubbly young 'mudblood' ranting about house-elf rights and freedom while accompanied by a dressed up and sad looking elf made it all too easy for the purebloods to sell off their slaves.

Especially when they thought they were overcharging, in fact, it had become a bit of a running joke between the wizards. Chad had Crystal dress up like a typical muggle-born witch and set up a stall in Diagon Alley buying all house-elves available.

He made it seem like a protest and that Crystal was going to release the elves after she had taught them independence. It was pretty much a rip off of Hermoine's ridiculous S.P.E.W campaign. It also helped that Chad had started rumours of Hepzibah Smith's murder at the hands of her house-elf.

Everyone was laughing at her stupidity since everyone knew the cursed race would reject her ideals as vehemently as the wizards. So with a sneer, they sold their loyal slaves for a ridiculous price (to them) and sat back to wait for the return of their elves once she freed them. Of course, those with something to hide kept their elves, even wizards were not stupid enough to release an elf that knew all of their secrets.

Since the elves were still robbing criminals blind, a paltry £2,500 was worth it for a teleporting ninja. Even the Ministry got on board and sold all of their elves. Crystal did the same in every magical community in Europe, and where ever she went, muggle criminals suddenly woke up to find themselves robbed. By Dudley's fourth birthday, house-elves were as rare as rocking horse sh*t.

By his fifth birthday, Chad had pretty much mastered the mind arts. With the many, many test subjects to practice Legilimency on, he could read both surface thoughts and hunt for specific memories. With his Occlumency set up to store memories like a computer, it was easy to file, retrieve or delete memories at will. The only thing that worried him was that he had no practice at defending his mind.

Chad had lately noticed his eyesight worsening, but he didn't think it was natural. Otherwise, it would be pretty simple to fix with magic. Why everyone in the wizarding world continued to wear glasses was another mystery for Mulder and Scully to figure out. Hell, even laser eye surgery had already been invented, but not yet approved by the government.

No, Chad thought it was something he had been putting off for a while now, Tom Riddle's soul parasite. It wasn't even a proper Horcrux as that needed a ritual to perform, this was just a piece of soul that took refuge in a baby's head. With his mind arts up to snuff, it was time to deal with the little leech.

Chad had yet to find any books on soul magic or something similar in his family's books and his discrete inquiries had turned up nothing. His last option was to hit up the only black-market dealer he knew, Borgin and Burkes. After meeting Crystal at Godric's Hollow HQ, they had a team of house-elves teleport them to Diagon Alley.

Chad was wearing a beanie to hide the famous scar and held Crystal's hand as they made their way to 13B Knockturn alley. Crystal had become something of a well-known person and received many smiles hiding barely concealed sneers of contempt along the way. Her reputation as a gullible muggle-born, spitting on wizarding traditions had spread quickly, even other muggle-borns found her annoying.

Seeing who entered his shop made Borgin rub his hands in anticipation of easy money. "How may I help you today, Ms Sterling?"

"I am told you are the man that might sell what I need. I am looking for books on soul magic to undo the curse on house-elves, can I take a look at your collection?" Asked Crystal, not even blinking at the use of her alias.

"I'm afraid that the books you are looking for are deemed dark by the Ministry and are illegal. I run a clean shop, nothing for the Aurors to find here!" Said Borgin loudly while looking at the door.

"I can assure you Mr Borgin, that I don't care that they are dark. I need those books to help the poor elves! If you don't want my money, then I will look elsewhere!" Said Crystal, making it clear she didn't care about the legality of his goods.

Giving the door one last look, Borgin turned his gaze to the plump sheep and her kid. She really was a tasty looking treat, maybe he should make this 'deal'. "Ok, step this way." He said as he cast a spell to lock the door and close the shutters on the windows.

As Borgin gestured for Crystal and Chad toward an unlit backroom, he suddenly cast a 'stupify' spell at Crystal's back when she walked in front of him. Watching her hit the floor, he pointed his wand at Chad. "Sorry kid, but your mother was asking for it. Sweet dreams."

Before Borgin cast the spell, he wondered at the kid's 'cat got the canary' smile before his vision suddenly went dark, he never noticed the ninjas behind him. As Chad watched Borgin drop to the floor with a thud, he motioned for his ninjas to revive Crystal.

"What happened?" She asked as she regained consciousness.

"Borgin was interested in more than your money." Said Chad, causing her to cringe. It had always bothered her how a toddler spoke so maturely.

After stripping Borgin naked and tieing him up, the team of elves looked to their Master for further instructions. "Loot anything of use or value and move it to the quarantine storage area. Call more elves if you need them." Ordered Chad.

In preparation for robbing wizards, Chad had the elves build isolated bases where they could store magical goods. He was unsure if the items could be traced or become dangerous if stolen, it was better to be safe than sorry.

After the shop was emptied of anything of value, even the secret underground storage, they had not been able to find a single book on soul magic. 'What was happening? Usually, the MC's plot armour found whatever he needed when he searched for it. Oh well, I guess I will just have to wing it.' He thought to himself.

When Borgin woke up an hour later, he found himself naked on the floor of an empty shop. As he moved to get up, he felt an uncomfortable invader in his back passage. Removing it, he found that it was a piece of parchment spelled to protect it from the damage it might have sustained in its human envelope. It held a single sentence written in blood, his blood if the cut he found on his arm was any indication.

"If you ever attack me again, I will kill you in the most painful way imaginable."

His first thought was to call the Aurors and have them arrest her, but then he remembered that he had tried to r*pe, rob and obliviate the woman. Not to mention that the goods he wanted to accuse her of stealing were questionably legal at best, mixed in with downright dark items that would guarantee a stay in Azkaban.

As he gave up on the idea of Aurors, his mind turned to revenge. But if the letter written in his own blood was any indication of her willingness to use his blood magic to curse him, he was at a bit of a loss. Now there were only two thoughts going through his mind.

How was he going to tell his partner Burke about this? And who the hell stunned him?