6 Hirudo

"BOY! How dare those frea-" he started shouting the moment we closed the doors of the house. However, I chose that moment to remove my glasses and stare dispassionately at them.

"What did you do to your eye?" Petunia asked with a disgusted expression on her face.

"Something beyond your measly comprehension." I stated. For a moment, they were stunned that I would talk back to them in such manner. Vernon's temper could not hold any longer and he took a step towards me.

Suddenly, the building started shaking and wide cracks began to form on the floor. Two winged demons rose from my shadows and flew towards them. One of them plunged their claws into Vernon's heart while the other ripped out Petunia's throat. Both the demons turned as one towards Dudley and growled, who promptly wet his pants. Vernon fell to his knees, clutching at his bleeding heart and gasping in pain while Petunia fell on the floor, gurgling something as her body kept twitching.

I dispelled the illusion and watched as they shakily got up from the floor, looking at their bodies in bewilderment while Dudley was standing in a pool of his own piss. If this was a 'real' illusion that the path was capable of, both of them would have been dead heaps right now. I wondered how much time it would take for me to reach that level.

"Now, I don't want to hear a word from you all, this fine summer. Am I clear?"

They were overwhelmed by fear and dumbly nodded their heads. Grinning broadly, I whipped out my wand. They flinched and backed away. I rolled my eyes and levitated my luggage to my room. There was no time to waste. I could mess with them later, I would be here for two weeks after all. I cast an illusion of my sleeping form and left a spider behind, so that I will be alerted if anyone came up here. For good measure, I also layered the door with an illusion that would repel weak minded people.

After stashing everything in its proper place, I placed an illusion over myself to make people think that I was someone else. Dobby arrived on my call with the trunk full of money and then promptly took me to Diagon Alley. We went inside Gringotts, where I stopped projecting the illusions to the Goblins. The wizards though, I kept under the illusion. I could see that the more I used the first path, the better my control over the illusions became.

The goblins were looking at me curiously, obviously aware of the fact that I was doing something to the wizards. They seemed to be on edge, but they didn't show any hostility so far. I placed my key on the desk and told the teller that I needed to talk to a manager regarding my vault. The goblins valued time, so they quickly took me to my vault manager for a discussion.

The next hour was a revelation to me. Apparently the vault I owned was the Potter family vault. It was not a trust vault or anything like that. Due to my age, they had put a restriction on yearly withdrawal, unless I had permission from my guardians. But apparently I could withdraw any money that I deposited without the restriction. It seemed that most of the wealth there came from Fleamont Potter's sale of the Sleekeazy's Hair Potion. How ironic that his own son and grandson have unruly hair. I must try the potion out sometime. Apparently he sold the company after retirement and it had netted him a massive profit.

Just the amount of money present in the vault alone would have been enough for me to live for decades without worries, but the additional amount that I deposited would help me for several more years. Moreover, the interest accrued over the years was massive. I did not make any investments now as liquid cash would be highly needed during the war. Fleamont had already made a few investments and they were netting quite a satisfactory profit already. On that vein, I upgraded the security of the vault. It was now a high level vault. They took back the key and now the vault could only be opened by goblin magic.

As for my properties, the house on Godric's Hollow was in disrepair, and apparently it was the house used by the Potters for generations. No other land was owned by the family. It should have been quite obvious since the graveyard had the Peverell and the Potter graves.

There was a family Grimoire which was a compendium by the generations of Potters before me. I was told that I would be given access to it when my OWLS were certified. Which meant that I needed to wait for a couple of weeks to get my hands on it.

I bribed them a bit to ensure that nobody would be informed of what I did. They created an account in a muggle bank that they had dealings with and would provide me a card in the next couple of days. For now, I converted the currency and filled up the trunk with both wizarding and muggle money for the purchases I needed to make today.

Right before I went outside, I modified the illusion to a few inches shorter than the projected height I was shown in the file that Cellarius gave me. I went to Madam Malkin's and got myself a couple of dress shirts, slacks and robes. She didn't have much of a selection when it came to muggle clothes, so I just paid her for what I picked and went to the next destination. I then went to the bookstore and purchased books up to the seventh year syllabus. Then, I got books relating to this world in general and the laws that govern the various magical communities. I also got the books from the list Hermione gave me. For now, this would be enough. Once I was well versed with these, I would send Dobby to get more.

Now for the difficult part, I looked at the address that Dobby had provided me where many dark artefacts were sold. Apparently Malfoy used to be a regular customer until he had a disagreement with the proprietor. He had then switched to Borgin and Burkes. I reinforced my illusion and walked into Knokcturn Alley.

This shop was quite similar to Borgin's, but the shopkeeper exuded an aura of power and confidence, as opposed to the sniveling nature of Borgin. As I reached there, Dobby fetched the trunk with the swords just in time. With the time I had, I thought hard and had come to a conclusion that taking the swords back to the goblins wouldn't be that beneficial to me. They will see it as me returning them their righteous property and would fleece me in return. The black market would serve me better.

I motioned Dobby to stay hidden while I went inside.

He looked at me curiously and said, "What do you want?"

I placed a parchment on the table and waited for him to finish reading it. He hummed happily and scratched his beard.

"The goods legit?"

"Yeah, cursed though."

"Can't make a deal without seeing the product," he said gruffly. I tried to send a legilimency probe, and it hit something. I knew that this was not occlumency, it did not feel like a mind defending itself. He must have worn some object that protected him.

"You do that one more time, and I'll curse your arse out of here. I'm already letting whatever you have done to your appearance to slide though. Can't be too careful these days" So he knew that I was under an illusion, but he did not know what the illusion was hiding. The sooner I learned to make the reality warping illusions, the better it would be.

"Ahh, forgive me. I don't want to get a bad deal is all. You know how valuable the goods are," I said sheepishly.

"That is only reason why I am still talking to you," he waited for a moment and then sighed. "Fine. So, two longswords, one spear and one mace. And you don't know what curse is placed on them?"

"Yes."

"Once again, bring in the goods. I will appraise and then see what can be done. If you don't want to, go somewhere else. I would like to see you go to the goblins with them, they would snatch it up in a heartbeat and not give you anything much since you were only 'returning' their possessions"

Exemplary customer service. But he was right though. I rubbed the bridge of my nose and called for Dobby, who was also under an illusion. Once the weapons were kept on the table, he started waving his wand and studying them.

He seemed to be done after a while and said, "So what will it be? If you want the curses removed, it would cost you quite a bit though. Not many curses that work on these things. The ones that do are nasty. The swords have quite an old curse that I am familiar with. But the mace and spear are completely foreign to me. It will take a lot of time too."

"Do you have any weapons I could exchange them for then?"

"Don't expect to walk out of here with four weapons, if that is what you are thinking. I would need to factor the cost of the curse removal. Moreover, buying price and selling price are not the same after all," he said with a toothy grin.

If it weren't for Dobby's assurance that this man did not compromise on quality, I would have already left the shop. Seeing my apprehension, he motioned towards a bookshelf and pointed his wand at it. The shelf rotated and on the other side was display case with various goblin made weapons.

"See what tickles your fancy, we will discuss once you pick what you want."

I took a long time admiring the beauty of the weapons that were on display. But what caught my fancy was a dagger. It somehow seemed to be calling to me. The handle was wrapped with deep crimson leather and the blade itself had some intricate carvings on it.

As I was about to pick it up, he stopped me.

"So, this one eh? Good choice. But you'd hurt yourself trying to handle it. First we need to know if it'll pick you. If it tolerates you, we can finalize the deal. Although I believe you'd be getting the better end of it"

"One dagger in exchange for four of these massive weapons. Even if you factor in all that you said, how is this in my favor? And what do you mean if it picked me?" I questioned.

"If it were an ordinary dagger then aye."

"What do you mean?"

"The one who had it made was some uppity warlord who fashioned himself as the best blacksmith of all time. 'Course, nobody else called him that. The goblins made the blade of course. The damn fool purchased it from them and then spent a lot of time trying to enchant it. He succeeded in the end, but what the poor bastard didn't expect was for the knife to gain semi-sentience or something."

"What?"

"Yeah. The thing doesn't like being handled by weak cunts. The owner's son was able to gain its allegiance, but after that nobody has been able to do it. It has been close to a thousand years since then. I got my hands on it decades ago, many customers tried it out. Picky little bugger won't pick any of them."

"So how do I know if it would pick me?"

"It's up to me to give you the precautions first. Customer service and all that. Do you see a scabbard for it?" he asked. I looked at the display case and saw that the swords and knives had sheathes for them, but this one didn't have any.

"This thing don't need sheathes, if you try to force it into something, it'll will tear it apart."

"What are the enchantments then?"

"Enchantments, more like a curse is what I'd say. Over the years, this blade gained a reputation and people think that it is cursed. Simply because it will shred your hand if it doesn't recognize you as its master. People have forgotten that it has some sort of sentience. It is said that the thing would sometimes help the owner in a fight, move on its own to cut and parry and all that. All this was the unintentional effect of the enchantment." I was floored upon hearing this. Even without the intended enhancement, this blade was mighty formidable.

Seeing my dumbstruck expression, he continued, "The actual enchantment is blood based. The cutting power of the knife becomes better the more blood it consumes. After it consumes a specific amount, it is said to be able to send out some variant of a cutting curse. And it always leaves some of its magic on the wounds which doesn't allow the cuts to be healed quickly. As it is right now, it is more effective than any other goblin silver blade out there. But once again, it won't allow you to use it that easily. Also, as I said, it doesn't need a scabbard. If it binds itself to a master, it will reside in the master's blood."

"What does it mean?" I asked.

"What it means is that, when it bonds to the master, it will become a part of their bloodstream. It will only leave the master when the sod is dead."

"Like a parasite?"

"Aye, people don't think of it as a cursed blade just for shits, ya know? But it won't be constantly draining your blood or anything if it picks you. Enough about it. If you want it, we will do the trial. If not, this information won't matter anyway. But I have to warn you. If it doesn't choose you, the injury it will inflict on your hand will take months to recover from. Sadistic thing takes great pleasure on tormenting people who want to own it."

I thought long and hard whether this blade was worth the risk. In the end, I couldn't help but consider it as something that was worth the temporary injury. And I was banking on the fifth path for curing the possible injury later on anyway. Since this blade had enchantments that interacted with blood, it would be the best suited weapon for my sixth path. I needed to inject my magic into my target's bloodstream and there was nothing better than this. Normally I would have to saturate a blade with my magic for weeks until I would be able to perform that feat, but if this thing picked me, I would be able to start with the possession right off the bat.

The only thought that made me hesitate was the impending fight that was coming in the next couple of weeks. If I was injured, that would hinder me a lot. But it was not like I was too reliant on my left hand. Whatever blade I got, it would always be on my left hand since the wand was my primary weapon. And I had the eye to help me in the fight anyway. Moreover, I felt an unnatural pull towards the blade. Time to brave the risk then.

"What do I have to do?" I asked.

He gave a toothy grin and said, "Don't blame me when your palm's mutilated then. Which hand will you use the blade with?"

"The left"

"Hold it out then," he then started levitating the dagger towards my palm. His face crunched in distaste as the dagger seemed to be fighting him. It was a sentient blade wasn't it? I tried to sense if I could do legilimency on it, but I couldn't sense anything coming from it. I reinforced the illusion once and then switched to the sixth path. The illusion will fade away without constant input, but I would be switching back to the first path soon enough to maintain it. Using the sixth path, I tried to sense the blade's psyche, and to my happiness, I found something. I did not receive any thoughts from it, but I knew that it was there. So, instead, I focused hard and sent it thoughts about how my ability also interacted with the opponent's blood and how we would be complimenting each other's ability.

There was still no response from the blade, but I could feel that it was eager now. He made a vertical cut on my palm and to my surprise, the blade sung with elation. I could feel its response now. It was happy with my abilities and that finally it would have a master that would actually use it how it was meant to be used. Immediately, the cut on my palm began to glow and the dagger glowed with a blood red light. The next second, the dagger disappeared and the cut healed.

I looked at my palm and saw an intricate tattoo of the dagger on it, in a deep crimson color. I did not feel any difference inside me though.

"Heh, I thought I would never see this in my life. But I had a feeling that it would work on you. Out of the many cunts that tried it, nobody had went towards the blade first with an expression of belonging like you did."

"I suppose you wouldn't have bothered with the lengthy explanation otherwise."

"Aye. Now let me tell you why I think you got the better end of the deal. Hold your palm up and push your magic to that tattoo."

I followed his instruction, and immediately winced as blood gushed out of the tattoo. The blood formed into the blade the next moment.

I caught it and to my surprise, the grip was snug and the dagger was incredibly light. It felt like it was an extension of my hand, which, it technically was now, I suppose.

"Now, keep it over here," he said, pointing to the table. Shrugging, I kept the dagger on the table.

"Push your magic into that tattoo again."

A soft gasp escaped me as the tattoo and the blade glowed once again. The blade disappeared from the desk and I could somehow feel that it was inside my bloodstream once again.

"Makes for great throwing knives. So basically, the blade is bound to your blood. Only downside is that you have to sacrifice a little bit of blood every time you call on it. Don't try to be foolish and force it into a scabbard. Who knows, it might even decide to leave you then."

I nodded. I agreed with him now, it seemed like I got the better end of the deal. Especially considering the fact that I just pilfered the four weapons from the room of requirement. Dobby really does deserve a huge treat for leading me to this shop alone.

"And remember, don't let anyone try to use the knife. It will cut them without a thought."

"So, we good?" I guess it was too much to expect a receipt or something.

"Yea wait a second," as he went inside the storeroom, I noticed that the illusion was beginning to weaken slightly. I switched to first path and reapplied the illusion.

"This was written by the previous master of the blade," he gave me a battered scroll, which I pocketed. I looked at him and saw that he went back to the four weapons I had given him. He would make good money from them. And I was sure that he would have been hard pressed to sell this blade, but I was not complaining. My new partner would help me in more ways than one.

As I walked away from the store, I unfurled the scroll and quickly went over it with the second path. Interesting, this blade would be highly beneficial indeed. Apparently, the blade was called Hirudo. Latin for bloodsucker. How apt. We would have some good times indeed. I smiled as I could feel a wave of contentment coming from the tattoo.