Where to put necroenergy

Frankly, we overdid it with the medicine for werewolves. We were flooded with werewolf mages and non-mage werewolves from neighboring countries. And even though we assumed it, their numbers were clearly excessive—more than the rate of production of the medicine. Although most of the foreign werewolves were detained, imprisoned, or deported by the Ministry, some made it to us. Then they were sorted by their level of value.

The most desirable were experienced wizards who were bitten in adulthood. Then came wizards with a decrease in their qualifications as magicians. After that, untrained werewolf mages. At the bottom were werewolves from Muggles who were not capable of magic. Everyone was looking for work according to their abilities. In addition to fighters, they needed suppliers, cipher clerks, zoo technicians for manticore crabs and other evil spirits, messengers, ingredient gatherers, spies, and even lab glassware washers. Yes, even the movers—since a werewolf can carry a lot with zero expenditure of magic.

Alas, there was not enough medicine. More than three hundred arrived per month. Therefore, the drug was primarily given to the most promising employees, although some was distributed by lot to maintain excitement. Dolokhov, after receiving a couple of Cruciatus curses, agreed to train two squads of werewolf wizards. Ollivander stamped out wands like a conveyor belt. Werewolves who had not yet received the medicine began to settle separately from wizards in the north of England, in sparsely populated lands, covered by some kind of magical protection.

From time to time, however, one of them fell into a rage, and the number of Muggles in the area became a little less. English Muggle newspapers were hysterical. After all, wolves in England had been exterminated long ago, but bodies with bites were still turning up. "It is better to monitor the import of large dogs!" I thought.

With the exception of a few dozen werewolves who were experienced mages before their conversion—mercenaries or government security forces—their combat value as reinforcement mages is low. The rest had neither experience nor strength. Throwing them into battle as a crowd is pointless. They need magical support. And I am not enough for everyone. Put werewolves in beast form, covered by magical protection, in the same line with the Devourer mages? The idea was good.

But first, we needed to use werewolves cured of madness. Such were now mages who were also quite good with a wand. It was easier to use golems. Secondly, the Devourers treated golems better than werewolves. No, they did not kill them on purpose, but they did not try to avoid hitting their own when performing area attacks. Or they used werewolves as master keys.

"Run over there!" the Devourer orders. The werewolf runs to comply, and upon returning, asks, "What next?"

"I told you, there's no magical mine there!" said a Death Eater to his fellow Death Eater.

"I didn't want my servants to kill each other, so it was decided to form separate squads of werewolves and wizards. The werewolf wizards in human form should cover the werewolf Muggles in beast form."

The bottleneck of this plan was the number of werewolf mages trained at an acceptable level. There were two possible solutions. The first was to train the most promising werewolves. This would require a lull of about five years. But the second option was more interesting—make werewolves stronger as mages.

From a classical point of view, it is impossible to make a mage stronger. But if you think about it? As I have established, the greater the volume of necrotic energy, the stronger Dark Magic becomes, especially with spells like Cruciatus and Antipatronus. So, you just need to select candidates for the constant use of Crucio on victims. It takes a long time and is too revealing. But it is quite possible to pump up someone's Dark Magic.

At the same time, I will make mage blanks for Horcruxes for Albus's decoys. As far as I understand, the volume of necrotic energy is important for Dark Magic, and for creating a Horcrux, something like necrotic energy pressure is crucial. If we build an analogy, then in the first case, we have a barrel of water, and the more water, the better. To create a Horcrux, we insert a long vertical tube into the barrel and, using a small amount of water, make the barrel burst. So, if you do not use the ritual of creating a Horcrux, then you should not fear the appearance of dozens of immortal competitors with spontaneous Horcruxes.

But this process is long and too revealing. Moreover, this means the actual beginning of a new project when dozens of others are not completed. However, a solution was found. Under the Muggle cottage village of Lestrange, they began to create a large cave. The idea was simple—among the prisoners, there are those who are expendable, and I try to connect them to the source of the Princes. Then I store them in an unconscious form. Ideally, they should draw necro-energy from the source—then I will get a source free of necro-energy.

If everything works, I will repeat it with the source of Slytherin for myself. In addition, there is a secondary goal. I had to try to drain so much necro-energy into the mage that he would be sane at the level of Bellatrix and become a powerful Dark Mage. But at the same time, he wouldn't writhe in pain and whispers in his head. And at that moment, I would cut him off from the source, getting from the creature that apparated with splits, the owner of the Bodily Antipatronus.

True, since apparation is not Dark Magic, he will still apparate with splits. There was only one problem—too high a mortality rate when connecting and disconnecting from the source. Every third mage survived when connected to the source, and every third survived when disconnected, even with the ointment from Snape's homunculi applied before the connection ritual. This was acceptable for research on death row, but for strengthening your fighters—even if not the most valuable—this was not the best idea.

I have already tried everything I knew. It's good that I didn't collect necro-energy—after all, I didn't kill them, they themselves died from the consequences of an unsuccessful ritual, which they themselves carried out under a powerful Confundus. The method clearly needs calibration. My only hope is that I can steal something from the Department of Mysteries that will help me solve the problem.

I also tried connecting a Muggle and a Squib to a magical source. I hoped that they would become wizards. The Muggle died immediately. The Squib survived, but I didn't notice any difference in him. And I still need to find a normal source and practice marriage and divorce (under the Imperio and Crucio analogs) before arranging Bellatrix's divorce from Rodolphus...

So, the plans to stamp out Dark Wizards from werewolves are postponed until I visit the Department of Mysteries. In the meantime, I once again laid out on the floor of the Lestrange Great Hall a diagram of the ritual that I want to go through myself in the near future. The diagram was the size of the entire floor, written in small handwriting and tiny symbols. I will need to take the Brains out of the Department of Mysteries and let them check this diagram. And I will pay them for it with the Fourth Unforgivable.

I will use my own blood—Bellatrix or someone else will assist. There is no need to rush; I will have time to complete the rest of the preparations. There is a lot of preparatory work here, and I think it will take about a year. You can't perform such a ritual hastily. The blood and other things are needed only at the very end. I doubt that any wizard has ever thought of attaching an echo of someone else's necroenergy to themselves to become a more powerful Dark Wizard. But water in the dam helps ensure that Muggles have TVs at home, right?

It is clear that an analogy is not proof, but I do not rely on analogy. I rely on the curves of the relationship between the volume of necrotic energy and a number of Dark Spells, as well as the connection of the soul and necrotic energy when creating a Horcrux in a ritual. The second goal of the ritual was even more ambitious and less likely: if Bellatrix and Crouch truly love me, will their love allow me to somehow work with Light Magic? "The blood of one who loves you." Or maybe I should become a rock star, gather crowds of hundreds of thousands, and shout: "I need your love!" We'll see...

For some reason, my imagination only paints one picture: "I can't see your hands!" Voldemort mocked at a concert for disabled Aurors. One ingredient, however, confused me. It was something related to a traitor. I had already examined three dozen traitors—wizards and Muggles, Aurors who took bribes, Death Eaters who turned on their own, Muggles sitting in prison. None of them fit. The ingredient was supposed to be the hand of a hanged man. It was so simple. Just give the servants a sign, and they hang the prisoner. In a minute, the hand of a hanged man is ready. Although, next time I should order the morgue to search for suicides…

I was incredibly sorry that Pettigrew had already been killed. Maybe he would have fit the ritual requirements? After all, he was an epic traitor—he betrayed the Order, Lily, James, Sirius, Lupin… But there was no point in grieving. After thinking it over, I decided to check Snape—he was a traitor too. First, he betrayed me, then Dumbledore. Maybe he would fit?

The next day, I met Snape during our classes with homunculi. To be honest, I really didn't like Snape. No, from the point of view of the "teacher-student" relationship, he was ideal, infinitely better than Lily. He was obedient, polite, and assiduous, not at all squeamish. Neither dried slugs, nor human eyes, nor the more disgusting ingredients for homunculi bothered him. And when he knew the ingredients were non-toxic, he could work without protective equipment and gloves—any slaughterhouse would cry for him.

Since homunculi are somewhat akin to potion-making, with processed ingredients being poured into flasks, Snape quickly achieved results in the production of homunculi. I also taught Snape several spells of increased lethality, in the unlikely event that Albus would suddenly be lying at his feet—wounded, unconscious, and wandless. Then he would be able to kill him.

Snape was never good with brooms. After spending an inhuman amount of effort, he learned to sit on a broom tolerably well, but compared to James Potter, he flew poorly. Perhaps this is why he seized the opportunity to learn how to fly without a broom. Unfortunately for him, this was not yet possible. He could only fly by partially transforming his body. So, the students who called him a "bat" weren't so wrong.

Tom's memory demanded that Snape be killed in the most brutal way possible for betraying and deceiving the one who considered himself the best Legilimens in the world. My mind also longed for Snape's death—it was so unusual to see someone who could slip me any misinformation. Despite my training with the Mirror of Erised, I was still far from mastering Legilimency. I constantly wanted to eliminate the unknown variables in my plans. But how had I ever lived without Legilimency?

Moreover, Snape shouldn't risk his Lily. Or his life, for that matter. After the lesson, Snape was lying unconscious, and I was waving my wand over him, checking if he was suitable for the ritual. In front of me was another traitor, but he wasn't suitable. I was in a quandary. If I didn't find a suitable traitor within a week, I would order all the traitors they found to be dragged to me for testing.

I brought Snape back to consciousness. First, I worked on his oaths, then talked about espionage, and sent him to Dumbledore. He didn't ask any questions—neither what I did to him nor why I needed it. Still, I had to be very careful with him. Soon after, I was at home, petting Nagini. She could have at least laid an unfertilized egg—but no, nothing. Oh well, at least we got rid of Fawkes.

Then Bellatrix came to see me. She was chattering about Neville. I nodded at the right moments. Then she dragged out the Pensieve. I watched it out of politeness. Neville had a spontaneous release of magic. He threw seeds of something into a bathtub filled with water, cast a spell, and the seeds immediately sprouted. If Petunia Dursley's son looked like a bun, Neville was more like a bullmastiff—big and wrinkled.

Bellatrix then apologized and ran off to "conduct self-defense courses" for Narcissa. She was happy that Narcissa was pregnant. (She got pregnant quickly—probably a potion, and they had good early diagnostics.) I have to remember: children and relatives are remedies for Bellatrix's excessive attention.

Lucius Malfoy gave me, or rather Elena, everything he owed and a little extra. Except for the Time Turner, but he said that even that would come to me. Apparently, I overdid it a bit with the Malfoys that day. I feel like Dumbledore—doing things for their own good, but they didn't appreciate it.

I wonder who else I can test for suitability for my ritual? Where else can I find a traitor? After some thought, I gave my house-elf a sleeping pill. That evening, I was already standing over the sleeping Lily. After all, she betrayed the Order of the Phoenix, didn't she? Let's see if this traitor will do.

And then the wand waving began. It was necessary to take Lily's parameters and compare them with the required values, to check if they would suit the ritual. Half an hour later, I was forced to admit that the results looked promising. Another hour later, I realized that I had found it. Now the question is, what have I found?

Some part of Lily must be used in the ritual. Which one? How offended will Snape and she be? It's one thing if it's her nails, another if it's her nose. I moved my wand along her body. Soon, I realized that the signal was amplified in the head area. This is bad. I hope I don't need a brain. Maybe it's her hair?

After an even more thorough examination, I got the maximum response from the eye area. Eyes are bad; it's not for nothing that Snape liked them. But where does it say that they need to be removed with a Dark Curse? A simple operation, an eye transplant. The only thing is, it's better not to use a Muggle's eyes for the transplant; otherwise, there will be problems if she tries to develop magical vision.

Tom Riddle's memory demanded that I grab the ritual knife and start gutting, but I decided to check a few more times, increasing the detail of the spell. Soon, the answer was ready—tears are needed. Lily, you have no idea how lucky you are tonight.

I conjure up some special gas that causes tears. I fill a small vial. This will do for now. Although, what if I need her to cry on her own? Okay, at the next Occlumency lessons, I will bring her to tears: I will break through her Occlumency and show her memories of a happy childhood with her sister and how they parted. The death of her parents. The death of James. Then, I will casually offer her a handkerchief... And then I will compare two samples of tears.

Soon, I was making adjustments to the ritual scheme and the book I borrowed from the Lestranges. The quill moved by magic and wrote in a handwriting that was not mine.

Ingredient number 287/03/DR-14. Tears of an unwitting traitor.