Capítulo 16: Not even dust left behind
Around the same time, near a certain orphanage in London
"Laly, come to me!", he commanded. He was blissfully oblivious of anything happening in most of Europe, not to mention on another continent.
The elf showed up with a pop and he asked: "How good are you with illusions?"
"Laly is good-good with illusions!", the elf exclaimed, puffing its tiny chest as if it was supposed to prove a point. Truthfully, between her malnourished looking frame and the ragged-looking bedsheet that looked haphazardly stitched together that she was wearing, the gesture looked more pitiful than reassuring.
However, Gaude decided to just make a mental note to deal with the two issues as soon as he could, instead, he would take care of matters he found more pressing first.
"Alright, here's what I want you to cast on me as an illusion…"
Five minutes of explaining and checking with a mirror later, a certain unmistakable man with a black, wide-rimmed low-crown top hat, a business suit and sunglasses and a goatee without a mustache walked into Knockturn Alley. Now, that face or the choice of attire wouldn't be famous in the wizarding world, but in a certain parallel world, where Gaude had lived the most of his life, quite a few would either call the original of that look either as 'Walther White' or those that liked precision a bit more, would call it 'Heisenberg'.
Walking like he owned the place, he took a good look around. There were much fewer people walking around on the street than there were in Diagon Alley. Each of them were wearing wide-rimmed hats, deep hoods or other manner of headgear that would conceal their face at least partially, some were even downright wearing masks. There were, however, an odd few that were presenting their faces to the public while going about their business, as if they were quite alright with being seen on that particular street.
Gaude also noticed a few people that didn't seem to quite belong. They were holding bottles of what was quite possibly Firewhiskey inside paper bags and taking occasional sips, leaning against the walls of buildings or sitting on the stairs of the stores. Sure, their faces were dirty and scruffy and covered in a three-day stubble and even their hair all messed up under patched and ragged pointy hats, but somehow, it all looked fake.
It was all down to the eyes, Gaude suspected. Instead of looking this way and that shiftily, making sure that there wasn't anybody coming to cause them trouble, they seemed to be keeping a keen eye on the area as well, not to mention that the frequency at which they were taking sips from their bottles was far too regular.
Gaude suspected that he had stumbled upon an ongoing operation by the local equivalent of magical police, or even some sort of a special taskforce. Of course, they could've been a part of some sort of 'constant vigilance' policy, a phrase that had stuck with him from somewhere. He suspected that those few were paid quite well for their services, seeing as they had to stake out such a dirty, smelly and questionable looking street. Either that or they were the equivalent of foot patrol.
Confident in the quality of the illusion that Laly had cast onto him, Gaude calmly made his way to one of the stores that he had both some foreknowledge of and that was identified by a weathered-looking sign on it: Borgin and Burkes.
A few hundred paces later, Gaude entered the dusty store with various strange and occult looking items displayed on the windowsills and the counters. The room was dimly lit and the walls were mostly bare, except a few weapons hanging from racks. It seemed that it was one of those general store type of establishments that sold about everything, not caring about the inventory of the nearby establishments. Business on Knockturn Alley seemed to be truly cutthroat. Gaude wouldn't even be surprised if that could be taken in a literal way.
"Hello. You can call me Heisenberg.
I would like to make a purchase of a few pints of Polyjuice Potion.", Gaude declared in a bit of a muffled voice to a hunch-backed man who was taking his entire visage in with his constantly shifting, close-sitting eyes and with hair that were dirty wherever they were present. The man was about 5' 5'' tall, or that was what Gaude estimated he would be, if he wasn't hunched over the counter.
"We don't sell that here, it's restricted by the Ministry!", the hunchback replied quite loudly, no doubt he was heard by the nearby Ministry agent, or whatever they were called.
Gaude continued in a muffled voice, making sure that he wouldn't be outside by a 'random passerby' and gave his pitch: "Look, I don't have neither the mood nor the time for your silly little games. Here's how things will go down: you'll sell me what I asked for and I'll even add a little tip to my payment. Otherwise, I would be rather saddened if your establishment here were to run into serious legal trouble. I happen to be aware you do in fact have a storage of artifacts with questionable origins and that their properties are questionable at best and downright deadly to whoever owns them at worst."
"Mister Heisenberg, I do happen to have something special stashed away in the storage room. How about you go right that way, I'll just get the keys.", the man who should be labelled 'untouchable' solely due to the fact how unpleasant to behold he was, replied.
Gaude kept his hands by his sides, but his left one clenched into a fist in a twisting motion, then moved forward towards his back a bit and became a 'finger gun' pointed at the creep that runs the store. The gestures he had made were something he had discussed with his first ever house elf, Laly. He had come up with quite a few combinations while planning his visit to that particular store, to cover all the possible outcomes that he could think of.
In short, his gestures had meant something like: stealth, follow, prepare to strike at the first suspicion of hostility. Certainly, the interpretation had nothing to do with military hand signs, but instead they were tailored for the unique properties of a house elf, namely their ability to go become invisible and cast offensive magic even without a wand.
A few moments later, the store owner had already pointed a wand at Gaude and fired off a chantless spell. Of course, due to the fact that Gaude was 'wearing' an illusion that was ten sizes too big, the spell passed over his head with no harm done and hit a wall in front of him.
A moment later, a *thud* was heard, the sound of someone rather heavy hitting the floor. That wasn't the result of the creep's wand backfiring on him, instead it was the result of Laly successfully helping him to take an impromptu nap as a result of, if Gaude counted the flashes of light correctly, the same offensive spell cast twice in rapid succession, just like Gaude had instructed his elf.
The moment the man had hit the floor, Gaude flipped the shop sign on the window from 'Open' to 'Closed for business' and levitated his first ever proper victim into the back room. He wasn't really counting the people that had 'been so kind as to donate for the cause'. Then both him and the elf started using levitation and downright telekinesis on everything that wasn't bolted down or stuck on the walls with the magical equivalent of superglue and stashed the loot into the Mokeskin pouch.
Gaude was going to browse through everything later, at his own pace, once he was sure that the items weren't being tracked. Right now, it was grab everything, get some Polyjuice if he was lucky and get the hell out of there.
Two minutes later, the back room, and even a basement room were both clean as new, Gaude had Laly wipe away the dust and cobwebs as well, it simply wouldn't do to leave anything behind. Besides, the dust of a magical house as well as the cobwebs might just have some mystical application, you never know.
The only thing that was left was one rickety chair and a good length of rope, along with the tied-up store owner.
Gaude wasn't aware, that both the rope and the chair were dark artefacts, the rope was a hangman's rope from the London gallows that had been in use since the dark ages and would keep slowly constricting around anyone, squeezing the life out of them. The chair had been the favorite of a wrathful man who had ended up killing his entire family and finally hung himself with the help of the chair. From then on, anyone that ever sat on the chair would die due to unfortunate coincidences.
Gaude, blissfully unaware of the fact that he had possibly sentenced a man to a slow and agonizing death, said to Laly: "Remove the illusion from me and take me back to the orphanage. I believe we'll have a lot to do in the coming days."
Fortunately or unfortunately, however, the hunchback had managed to come to after a while and his cries of distress had summoned the Aurors staking out the area. He had been freed of his restraints and had somehow managed to convince them that it was actually the assailant that had brought both of the dark artefacts into the store as he was giving the place a proper cleaning. It had been a story he had come up with after rushing through the place the moment he was liberated and taking a few minutes to come to grips with his new situation of a fresh start.
A wanted poster was created from the man's memories, something that had Borgin scrambling to create a small cutout of the events that had transpired. As he wasn't a suspect of anything and his privacy was to be respected, he was allowed to choose the most identifying moment of his encounter with the stranger, which Borgin had chosen to be the short time between when the stranger had entered and had started speaking.
---
Once Gaude returned to the orphanage, or more precisely, to the attic of the orphanage where his trunk could be found, he entered and made his way to the house inside. He emptied the Mokeskin pouch into one of the bedrooms that he decided to repurpose as temporary storage until he would have the means to create proper storage rooms for future loot – he had no doubt there would be more coming, as there was a lot of scum with dangerous possessions in the wizarding world. That and honestly, who wouldn't want to humble a few stuck-up nobles by reminding them that nobody is truly safe when the opposition is determined enough?
Next up, Gaude did something he hadn't even imagined doing just a week earlier, he went to Gringotts and exchanged Galleons for British Pounds. The reason was simple – there was a large plot of land in the Scottish Highlands on sale for cheap.
Nightfall wasn't far off, and Gaude snuck out of the orphanage, to catch a night train to a station close to the land he had bought. The ride lasted six hours, most of which Gaude spent asleep. While the train wasn't very comfortable, that changed the moment his very first employee, also known as his personal house elf cast a bit of house elf magic onto the seat.
Once he got off the train, there was still ten miles left to go. Fortunately, there were two ways one could choose the point they apparated to: either they had to have visited it before, or they had to see it. With a house elf's ability to see in the dark, there was no issue at all getting where they needed to go. Gaude even regretted not having his elf do continuous apparation to get there faster, not realizing that such a request would've drained his elf's magic and ended up with them having to take long breaks.
Once he had reached the area, Gaude felt that the location should be quite good, there was an excellent view to a meadow with a deep-looking lake below a hundred- and fifty-foot sheer cliff and the parcel itself was located on a rather spacious plateau. There was also the matter that the land itself was cheap due to its remoteness and near impossibility to access without a lot of investment in infrastructure.
However, different from Muggles who would see the place as more trouble than it was worth, Gaude saw it as it actually was, a natural fortress. After confirming that the plot of land was exactly what he needed for his intents and purposes, he was about to buy the land first thing in the morning, but hit a tiny bit of a snag – he remembered that legally, as an infant, he wouldn't be able to perform any transactions.
That was why Gaude decided to create an alter ego with full documentation.
As Gaude returned to Gringotts to get some more spending money, he noticed a Daily Prophet forgotten on a bench. On it, there was an article: 'The crack strikes again! A residence disappeared in New Zealand!
Death Eaters spotted near Blackpool and Buckingham!
Minchum's policies too lenient?
Gaude wasn't really interested in that. However, he did go through the paper, hoping to get a glimpse of a good opportunity to make a small profit or something more interesting at least.
In the end, there was actually an article that involved him, in a manner. 'Attempted murder of a store owner! Mr. Borgin, of Borgin and Burkes, was found by patrolling Aurors in his own store, with two dark artifacts used to slowly kill him. By the time the victim was able to call for help, the suspect had already fled the scene. If you have any information on this man, we urge you to contact the Auror department. Following is a memory of the man's appearance, graciously given by Mr. Borgin.'
Under the short article, there was a large picture of a certain man speaking, and underneath it, there was the line said by the man in writing: You can call me Heisenberg.
Gaude had only one thing to say: "Perfection!"
Time didn't wait for anyone. It took Gaude three months to finally track down a man that was in the business of forging passports and other documentation and was actually good at it. He had the man create the identity of 'Charles Vywin', a man in his early seventies, with an appearance that made him look like he had been damn handsome in his earlier years and had aged like a good wine.
In other words, Charles Vywin was a slender man with some muscle showing through the sleeves of his shirt on each movement, more salt than pepper in his hair and a face that was just a tad robust, speaking of a strong character, softened by a seemingly ever-present slight smile.
Once Charles Vywin had 'migrated to Britain from the US for retirement purposes', he was finally able to legally buy the land parcel he had chosen for himself.
Next, he had investigated the diet of Laly and found out that the elf was supposed to either hunt for food in the forest or scavenge Muggle trash cans, or even steal food when she got hungry, unless her master was kind enough to allow her to eat leftovers, he had ordered the elf to buy ingredients and cook herself three meals a day with plenty of meat in it, with the explanation that it wouldn't do if his elf got sick from not enough food and too much work.
The elf's eyes had become quite bright at the mention of 'too much work', but Gaude had decided to ignore it, as it seemed to be something characteristic to house elves and quite possibly it was the key to their happiness to give them tasks that would take more than a day to accomplish, as they would go to sleep knowing that they could continue giving their all to serving their master the next day.
There was also another piece of land he bought a short distance away from what he intended to make his 'main base', an area where he decided to store anything that was stolen until a few months passed, in hopes that if there was any tracking magic attached to the items, him or his elf that was meant to enchant everything with alarm and surveillance magic would notice people snooping about in the area.
Gaude had Laly carve out a chamber a few hundred feet below the ground, something made rather easy for her due to the disintegration spells existing that she utilized to turn the granite into dust and just dumping it on the outside with a bucket. Sure, it was still hard labor, but it was made easier thanks to magic that took the burden off her frail body.
A few weeks later, Laly finally announced that both the cottage and the vaults had been completed. When Gaude went to take a look, he discovered that the 'cottage' was no mansion, indeed, it was a single room with a roof over it, barely passable as a hunting post. Yet, that was all Gaude needed for the time being, a place to store his trunk without fearing that the weather would damage it somehow. Certainly, it felt like living in your car, but it was more of a luxury house-bus, not some old two-seater.
Next, he went to check out the vaults and after confirming their capacity and the fact that they would most likely be safe from any environmental factors, he moved quite a few items out from the house in his trunk.
They were the artefacts of questionable properties taken from Borgin & Burkes. He stored each of them in a separate glass case, at least three feet away from anything else. That was the best he could do at the moment, since he didn't know anything about wards or runes.
Finally done with getting rid of the hot loot, Gaude, in the shape of Charles, contacted a few architects and discussed with them the land parcel, not quite revealing the location or the nearby area. After a bit of back and forth, a plan was drawn up that satisfied Gaude's needs and would also end up looking quite pleasant once the landscaping was finished.
Gaude invested a good chunk of his newfound fortune to have greenhouses built on his land – not the tomato variety, but instead the magical kind, that required him to hire runecarvers. He wanted his greenhouses to have the properties of pinpoint climate control according to the regional conditions they were meant to represent as well as extending the internal space to ten times the original, the best a run of the mill runecarver could achieve, as anything more than that was a 'trade secret', well-kept by the companies that worked in the field of creating storage items, such as the trunks. That, however, cost more Galleons than Gaude was willing to pay, not to mention magically binding contracts that prohibited him from studying, copying or revealing the magic used.
He also spent a quarter of the funds in the trunk to buy another hundred house elves – he figured it would be an investment that would pay itself back quickly.
Gaude applied his now small army of house elves to dig out rooms deep under his newly-bought house and had the rooms made into extended spaces, then remodeled into different landscapes and conditions. Those spaces were naturally meant for his future all-encompassing zoo of magical creatures.
Obviously, the zoo of magical creatures wasn't going to be for petting purposes. No Sir! It was going to be an ingredient zoo where Gaude was planning to experiment with and establish sustainable methods of ingredient extraction.
On the background, there was an ongoing hiring process – Gaude was using Laly's illusions to look like Charles Vywin in luxury wizarding robes, coming off as just another wizard with quite a bit of funds that wanted to have other people making money for him.
To not let any of his house elves sit idly, Gaude had them construct a shooting range of sorts with training dummies that were animated with house elf magic. Every elf that didn't have an active task to perform was to practice offensive magic, and those that would get good at that, defensive use of their magic. While the defensive uses started from deflecting physical projectiles, Gaude did hope that his elves would also figure out a way to deflect spells.
He also set up a small potions shop in Diagon Alley, where all the potions brewed by his Potioneer hires were on sale.
Gaude quickly discovered that the potions created were, well, average. Nothing to write home about. Even the profits were meagre at best, only five percent after all the salaries and ingredient costs. At first, the ingredients still had to be bought in, as the herbs needed to be found and bought and then planted into the greenhouses. There was also a great need for special fertilizers, among them one made with Dragon dung, one with Mooncalf dung and a few others.
After a while, the greenhouses started taking off properly and the next bottleneck was the animal ingredients, as at first, the elves hadn't found all that great of a variety, and Gaude wasn't willing to increase the elf population through another bulk purchase, as his funds were finite.
Instead, Gaude decided to start increasing the profitability of his potions by increasing the quality.
Luckily, Gaude knew of a Potions Master, one Severus Snape, that was currently not officially employed by anyone, so he could easily sink his claws into that Potioneer. The only trouble was that this Potioneer didn't have a stable place of residence, travelling around with a bunch of miscreants.
Gaude summoned Laly, the elf he had bought first. Her position had been elevated to that of his Head Elf. She was in charge of the heads of the other teams as well as her own team.
Laly's team's purpose was espionage, listening in on the conversations of witches and wizards everywhere and trying to turn what they hear into actionable intel.
There was also an exploration team, looking for magical herbs, fungi and creatures, so that Gaude could save some on importing them. Additionally, they were tasked with discovering and mapping all the magical residences in Britain as well as bringing in any stray house elves that they encountered on their travels. Well, the last one was more of a task for every elf he owned, to be honest.
The construction team's task was, as the name said, to build things, or in some cases, dig deep and wide, the creation of underground vaults and the magical creature habitats was their task.
As Laly apparated before him, Gaude said: "I want your team to find one Severus Snape and keep your eyes and ears open near him. I'll be paying him a visit after we've got enough intel on him."
"Yes master. Will be done, master!", the elf squeaked, excited as ever.
Laly had donned black, loosely-fitting uniform that concealed most of the elf's scrawny appearance and allowed for a full range of free movement. The uniform was brand new and not quite a one of a kind item. After some convincing from Gaude that those were their working clothes and would improve the service of the elves, each and every one of them was wearing a uniform.
Laly's team, namely the maintenance team, was each wearing black loosely-fitting robes with the purple house crest on Laly's, as the team leader's, having a red border to it while the border of the rest of the uniforms in her team was dark grey.
For the construction team, the uniforms were navy blue with yellow crests. The common crests in the construction team were borderless while the team leader's was, once again, red.
As for the exploration team, the uniform was rather tightly-fitting to not catch onto anything sticking out of the environment they were exploring. The color scheme was forest green with a white crest, a red border on Lardy, the leader's crest.
As for the House Vywin crest itself, it had two dragons breathing fire at each other and two unicorns standing on their backs with hind legs, while their front hooves touched together. The horns of the unicorns were holding up a sideways hourglass, the symbol for infinity.
While the elves were scouring Britain for Snape, Gaude had started studying magic – it came as no big surprise to Gaude that the library he had found in the house in a trunk was rather well-stocked with all manner of books about magic. Gaude decided to leave the room with the books under glass cases alone for now, as it seemed like each of them would contain advanced magic, a good reason to store them in an environment that would likely preserve them throughout the ages.
Gaude had taken a cursory glance at the contents of a few of the books on subjects that were quite necessary if one wanted to make it far in the wizarding world. He quickly discovered that many of the finer applications of magic required the usage of Ancient Runes. Among them were Arithmancy, Artificing, Warding, and even Charms, if one wanted them to have more power behind them than you could achieve with a simple chant and wave of your wand. That was why Gaude decided to start his studies with Ancient Runes.
However, Gaude had quickly discovered that his memory was much too slow and weak in memorizing to learn quickly, so he had put Ancient Runes on hold and instead went for the mind arts. He studied the theoretical part of Legilimency and the practical part of Occlumency.
For weeks, Gaude only practiced Occlumency and read up on the theory for both of the mind arts, complementing what he had already figured out.
As to why Gaude no longer found it necessary to show his face in the orphanage – he had, in a sense, adopted himself. One sunny morning, 'Charles Vywin' had showed up in the orphanage, introducing himself as Gaude's long-lost granduncle that had returned to Britain after his escapades around the world, and had only recently heard of the 'unfortunate and untimely demise' of his parents.
The caretakers had been suspicious at first, but once enough proof was provided with even showing Adelaide the place they would be living – the newly built mansion in the Scottish Highlands – the procedures were completed without further issues.
Well, there was Irma, that, once she heard about the mansion had said: "So, you're really a noble now? Please just remember us once you grow up and become all high and mighty!"
A few months later
Laly apparated in Gaude's study and bowed deeply – something that the service instructors Gaude hired had taught them to do.
She spoke: "Master, Severus Snape has been found. He is currently being observed by one of Laly's subordinate elves."
"Excellent work, Laly. Where can I find him?"
"Master has praised Laly! Laly is happy!", the elf danced in joy for a bit. Gaude simply allowed it. A happy elf was an elf not looking for loopholes in the binding contract to screw him over.
"Master, Severus Snape is in the Hog's Head inn, in Hogsmeade."
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