8 Chapter Eight: Corrupt Magic

Two weeks into the summer holidays and I finally found Little Hangleton, casually arriving there by taxi.

It took me so long because I was a German in my past life and not really familiar with the UK, and the birthplace of Voldy was almost completely abandoned, with few people knowing about that place. Only a handful of stubborn old people still lived around here.

But I didn't bother to hurry much anyway since the Horcrux wasn't going to run away. I prioritized my personal improvement and was invested most of my time in honing my magical abilities, learning some new tricks from the books that Flitwick gave me.

One of my favorite spells from the 'easy' category, and the one I invested most of my practice time into, was called Flammarys. However, the version that I used was a modified version of the original because I cast the spell infused with my special fire, giving it additional properties of a very destructive nature.

Flammarys manifested as a scorching beam of super-hot fire that appeared somewhat liquid to the eye, and after hitting the target, it would engulf the victim with blazing, ravenous flames. These flames would sustain themselves by feeding off the victim's magic or by absorbing the ambient magic from the environment. The only way to put them out was to counter them with the natural enemy of fire, which was water.

It sounded like an easy thing to do, but tell that the guy that was burning alive.

In addition to its viciousness, Flammarys could be utilized to severely weaken magic constructs such as wards, or enchantments that protected doors, etc. The applications were only limited by my own imagination.

Still, any of my spells had the potential to become a so-called 'magic eater.' The nature of my fire made that possible without much of an effort from my side. I only had to cast my spells with some of my special fiery energy mixed along.

That said, I was currently traveling aimlessly around in the outskirts of Little Hangleton, searching for the Gaunt Shack. It took me about two hours to eventually find it, and only because the place reeked of the vilest sort of dark magic. The corruption in the air was so intense that I had the impression that the devil in the flesh squeezed out a big pile of shit around here.

There was also a dark voice whispering in the wind, attempting to lure me into the high grass surrounding the Gaunt Shack. But my fire luckily granted me a natural immunity to suck tricks. The enchantments aimed to draw me close to the snakes that were hidden in the area. These foul beasts created through the darkest arts would bite and inject cursed venom into my body, and then I would suffer a most horrible death and slowly die in agony before turning into an undead monster.

However, the moment the foreign and very malicious magic invaded my body, my fire mercilessly devoured it like everything else.

"What a bloody shithole," I commented with a scoff when I saw the Gaunt Shak in its full splendor.

Magical enchantments kept it 'pristine,' which actually meant it kept the ramshackle house from getting blown away by the wind. Even the poorest, most fucked up slum could easily offer a more comfortable housing than the Gaunt Shack – the ancestral home of a supposed Most Noble and Ancient Family. How ridiculous that exactly these people believed themselves to be above the muggles who lived in the area while literally living in a pile of dirt. Their extensive practices of incest must have seriously damaged their already rotting brains, and Voldemort was the apex creation after countless generations of abnormality.

Ignoring the pile of wooden planks, I closed my eyes and recalled the exact phrase I had to speak in order to deactivate the protections around this place.

*hiss*

"Open the path for Lord Voldemort, the greates-sss-t of all wizarding kind!"

After the last word was hissed, the tall grass that surrounded the house slowly transformed into an oily mass of black snakes. Below the pile of slithering snakes was a mass grave that was at least twenty human corpses big, containing everything from children to elderly people that sported expressions of pure horror and pain. Their gaunt bodies were dehydrated to look like mummies and were rotten to the point that they took an unnatural black color, while their wide-open eyes were glowing with an abnormal hateful glaring red light. They had wide gaping mouths filled with black spiky teeth, and hands that ended in long, sickly-shaped claws.

Such an absolutely inhumane practice of the dark arts was worthy of instant execution by Demento's Kiss. Killing Voldy wasn't like killing a human, but getting rid of some twisted demon-like thing. While born human, he totally lost himself in the madness that would corrupt everyone that played with magic fuelled by negative emotions. The more depraved and monstrous your mind, the stronger you were with the 'Dark Side.' That's why people like Bellatrix, who was notorious for her insanity, were so 'skilled' with dark curses.

Focusing my mind again, I sneered at the manifestation of second-class magic before me. It was truly a sad thing that innocent people and children had to die and suffer because some raving-mad fucker decided to go fully crazy.

"Alright, this place needs to be burned down," I stated in a matter-of-fact tone.

There was no way that I would simply ignore such a vile death trap. One of the corpses was that of a little child. The magic would lure more people into walking in here to be bitten by the snakes, and amass a cheap army for Voldy that he can use to terrorize more innocent people. I would get rid of this place and burn it down until nothing was left.

"Fucking psychopathic piece of shit," I cursed with a shake of my head, thinking of the monster in human shape that created this trap, and then started walking on the S-shaped stone path that was revealed before me.

Obliterating the wooden door of the Gaunt Shack with a low-powered Bombarda, I entered a sparsely furnished room covered in a thick layer of dust and some kind of bright-green mold that thrived in the presence of necrotic magic.

I didn't waste much time and stomped my feet hard on the floor until I hit the right plank, breaking the half-rotten piece of wood into tiny bits. My eyes caught sight of a metal box sitting comfortably in a small hole in the ground.

Next, I crouched down to pick it up and opened it to reveal a crudely made gold ring with a large pyramid-shaped black gemstone – the Resurrection Stone!

It even showed the symbol of the Deadly Hallows, with the ring glowing the brightest.

However, I didn't touch the ring yet. My fire made me resistant against lots of stuff, especially the Mind Arts, but I decided to pick the save route and use Flammarys to destroy all the dark curses applied on the ring. Better be safe than sorry, recalling what happened to Dumbledore's arm in the original story.

I stood up and drew my wand from my holster before pointing it at the ring.

"Flammarys!"

Golden fire shot at the ring, engulfing it before beginning to feast on the magics applied to it. That made the Horcrux come to life and scream in pain. Voldemort's freakish face appeared over the ring, looking furious and terrified at the same time.

I cheekily stuck my tongue out at him and continued my fiery assault, ignoring the blabbering of the nose-less face.

"Cursed boy, I will hunt you down, kill your family, rape your loved ones, and turn your body into a vessel of agonizing pain!"

"Keep dreaming, old fart," I scoffed, giving him a look of contempt. "You will lose each of your beloved Horcruxes to me, and there is nothing you can do against it."

Voldemort's face twisted with murderous rage and hatred for a second or two before he began to fully comprehended the exact meaning of my words. His previous expression dropped, and I recognized fear and dread shrouding his inhumane features, but my fire did too much damage to the Horcrux at this point. He wasn't able to beg or plea with me anymore.

Not that he would ever have a chance to change my mind. Devouring his soul piece was simply too beneficial.

"Enjoy your time in hell, your freaking asshole," I mocked with a wide grin.

Focusing my mind, I pumped more power into my spell and continued to down the ring in vivid golden flames. It soon began melting completely and then slowly vanished into nothingness until only the Resurrection Stone was left.

I stopped my spellcasting when I saw that the stubborn Resurrection Stone refused to melt fast enough. So, I crouched down and picked the black gemstone off the ground and popped it into my mouth like a piece of candy.

"This should do the trick," I muttered to myself with a confident nod.

While sucking at my legendary bonbon, I felt a new influx of fragmented memories appear in my mind. They fused with those I gained from devouring the diadem Horcrux, and I felt somewhat smarter, but not in a direct way. The fragmented memories suddenly gave me a general understanding of how to cast a Bombarda Maxima properly. Half of the spells that I wanted to learn in the next few years became much clearer in my mind. I sensed that, if I wished, I could learn and master them with little effort.

"Bloody awesome!" I exclaimed with a big, fat grin.

Besides that, I also gained a small boost for both my magical and physical qualities. Consuming concentrated magic like that nourished my pseudo-elemental body greatly.

And lastly, I gained seven drops of Souls Essence from Voldemort's Horcrux once again. My wand reacted to that by vibrating with excitement. I shook my head with a fond smile before pushing the seven drops up into my arm and then into my hand. The draconic head at the endcap of my wand wolfed everything down, roaring with great satisfaction after munching each drop.

In the meantime, the Resurrection Stone was almost gone by this point. I swallowed what remained of it and waited patiently for something awesome to happen.

"Oh?"

My brows rose in wonder when I felt one drop of Soul Essence after another appear in my body. That procedure continued until the drops eventually became fifty and still carried on to grow in numbers.

Furthermore, I instinctively became aware of the fact that I just gained a significant boost in my previously non-existent affinity for soul magic. It was a nice bonus, but knowledge about soul magics was probably as rare as a phoenix. The only pieces of soul magics I was aware of were the Horcruxes, the Fidelius Charm, and the stuff that I read in the books on sex-magic. But I wouldn't look a gifted horse in the mouth and accepted the unexpected gift without complaining.

'Hmm?'

My attention was drawn to my chest when I felt my skin tingle all of a sudden. I pulled my shirt up to see that the symbol of the Deathly Hallows appeared on the spot where my heart was. The ring was rich ink-black, while the triangle and the vertical line that ran through the middle were light-grey in color.

"Fucking hell!" I complained loudly, unwilling to have such a simple and stupid-looking tattoo defiling my beautiful, chiseled chest.

However, the symbol of the Deathly Hallows disappeared a second after I expressed my displeasure. I sensed that I could make the symbol reappear again if I wished it, but decided against it. Tattoos were nice and all that, but I preferred my skin to keep its natural appearance.

Anyway, my focus traveled to the whopping one-hundred drops of Soul Essence that were stored inside my body.

I felt my wand vibrate again in excitement, so I fed it until the draconic head munched 35 drops. Nothing much happened after that, but my connection to my wand told me that it was undergoing a qualitative change.

The words 'Dredragon, The Black Wyrm' appeared in my head. It was basically a message that my wand wished to be called like that from now on.

'What the fuck?'

Whatever just happened, my gut feeling explained to me that my wand must have developed a pseudo-sentience.

"Quite the cocky name, don't you think?" I scoffed in amusement, hiding my confusion and amazement as I inspected my wand.

To be honest, I somewhat expected that feeding Soul Essence to my wand would do some strange things to it. But still seeing it actually happened made me feel as if I just witnessed something legendary. I couldn't help but grin like a little child that just got gifted a new, awesome toy.

Sentient magical objects existed, but they were extremely rare. They were so damn rare that I actually didn't know of any. At least, nobody in the magical UK owned one. The cloak of Dr. Strange could pass off as a sentient artifact, but I only knew of that cloak because of my special knowledge.

"Dredragon," I mumbled, waiting for a reaction of my wand.

Instead of answering back, its tip farted a stream of golden fire before the wand lazily a dormant state. My expression sunk, but I could understand that it needed some rest after devouring so many drops of Soul Essence. My wand was still awesome!

Well, I still had 65 drops of Soul Essence inside me left to experiment around, but now was not the time. Before that, I had to burn down the Gaunt Shak and the cursed area around it.

"Time to get to work, Johnny," I told myself before pushing a furious Incendio through my wand, filling the room with raging fire before I left the ramshackle house.

When I exited the proximity of the cursed soil, I cast an overpowered Flammarys to flood the area with golden fire. The black snakes and the Inferi started to disintegrate into black smoke that was devoured by my ravenous fire. Everything was consumed by the small inferno. Nothing was left after nearly twenty minutes of intense burning.

The area where the shabby Gaunt Shak once stood appeared as if hit by an incendiary bomb. The dark magic was completely gone, and the highly unnatural, unwelcoming, and unclean aura that infected the air along with it. The area was safe again.

Now that I finished my business here, I teleported to the local graveyard before pulling a shovel out of my mokeskin pouch.

...

...

My expression was that of fiendish delight when I returned to the Chamber of Secrets a few hours later. Switching the bones of Voldy's father with those of his grandfather wouldn't fuck up the ritual, but they were a less potent ingredient.

This would subtly weaken Voldemort without letting him know about it - just as I liked. Becuase nobody wanted a Dark Lord that was aware of his weakness. That would only fuel his twisted ambitions and make Voldemort seek out even more horrible ways to get stronger. And who knows what such a raving-mad individual would do to get his desired level of strength.

No, I preferred Voldy to continue thinking that he was the ultimate apex predator of the wizarding world. Such a mindset would make him overconfident and careless, and vulnerable to opportunistic ambush hunters like me that would wait until the perfect opportunity arrived.

*SKREEEEEE!*

My thoughts were interrupted by the furious basilisk.

"Silence, you stupid snake!" I cursed loud enough for the serpentine monster to understand me, causing it to erupt with a roaring hiss.

It was time to kill the basilisk since it refused to calm down, and I didn't want the beast to mutilate itself and bash its head to mush before I had the chance to feed it to my fire, so I decided to get me a rooster tomorrow and end its miserable existence. Nice and easy. Devouring a basilisk would be a big milestone on my path to power. Just thinking about it made my voracious fire heat up in arousal.

But first, I planted my arse on a comfy, throne-like armchair before I emptied the content of my mokeskin pouch on the black marble floor. This was necessary because I didn't want to lose all my stuff if my little experiment went wrong – since I planned to use a drop of Soul Essence to see what happened if I infused it into the mokeskin pouch.

I already realized that Soul Essence was a pure form of magic, and its main attribute was that it enhanced the quality of the stuff enriched with it. And based on my instinctive knowledge about Soul Essence, I could even infuse that stuff into a spell to permanently increase the overall potency of said spell. Not sure how such a thing was even possible, but magic made many things possible that shouldn't be possible at all – like splitting one's soul.

Having said that, I grabbed my dark-grey mokeskin pouch and started my experiment by feeding it one drop of Soul Essence. In response, the storage capacity of the pouch swiftly increased by about a half, gaining enough space to fit a car inside it. Furthermore, the exterior morphed from dark-grey silk to manifest overlapping blackish scales, and the opening of the coconut-sized bag grew small, sharp teeth that formed a zipper.

After the transformation was over, I let my hand approach the 'zipper' of my mag and saw it open for me without any resistance. Then I stuffed my hand into the mouth of my bag and breathed in relief when it didn't try to bite my hand off.

"Hmm, how very interesting," I muttered with intrigue. "Even a single drop of Soul Essence has the ability to do some seriously weird shit with stuff."

Just a single drop of the stuff had such a wondrous effect on my mokeskin pouch. That made me start to imagine what would happen if I infused a broom with Soul Essence – or any other magical device.

However, I wouldn't start to carelessly waste this wondrous recourse since it could be used to empower my spells, too. That was my top priority since it would make me more efficient in dealing with the dangers that lurk in the shadows of this world.

And because of that, I decided to grab the two books that I got from Flitwick.

The first one, Mastering the Inferno, was less useful for me since it assumed that the reader was a normal human. I didn't need to master fire since I was the Fire. But I still memorized all the techniques, theories, and philosophies since they had the potential to be applied to other elements as well if one was creative enough.

As for the second book, Maesters of Fyre, that one was written by a Fire-Elementalist that traveled the world to interview others of his kind. It was mostly a collection of stories and experiences. But it also offered some of the favorite spells of all the people mentioned in the book. And since we are talking about old pyromaniacs, most of these spells mentioned were of a highly destructive nature.

That made me wonder why Flitwick trusted me with such a book.

Well, most of these spells were highly advanced. And fire-magic was one of the most volatile kinds of elemental magic, right after the top spot – lightning.

Flitwick was probably just trying to motivate me and assumed that my success would be limited to the not so dangerous 'rookie spells offered in the book. At least, I seriously doubt he would have given me the book if he was aware of the fact that learning fire-magic came to me as easy as breathing.

"Very well, guess I study and practice until morning before I go to get myself a nice and big cock that I will use to fuck the basilisk to death," I announced myself with a stupid grin, ignoring the enraged hissing that echoed in the area.

…