Chapter 9: Progress
January 1967
<Veronica POV>
The door of the veterinary clinic opened with a chime. The doctor for the clinic looked at me and smiled," Hello there Veronica. Here to get young Aaryn checked again?? It is good to have regular checkups for pets but you came here just 3 days ago. I know nothing bad happened otherwise you would be here crying like last time.".
I groaned at the reminder of the memory of me running into the clinic with Aaryn in my arms and tears in my eyes. I had picked Aaryn on that night and had cleaned and bandaged him. After that I came back to home in Brighton. I was going to take him to the clinic next day but he came down with a high fever and kept whining the entire night while cuddled up to me. I was scared about something happening to him and could not stop tears from dropping when I came to the clinic.
I sheepishly smiled at the doctor teasing me and replied," Actually I was here if you could check him up for his possible breeds. I tried to find books on dogs but can't identify his breed. ".
The doctor took Aaryn from my arms and placed him at the doctor's table. She took out a magnifying glass and pressed and prodded him with her finger. I saw her surprise in her eyes though she made no mention of anything. She however, started turning him over and run her hand through his silky black fur. "How much are you feeding him?? He seems to have gained a lot of pounds from the last time you brought him here. He is also fitter than before.".
"Well, I usually feed him thrice a day with meat, some grain and some milk in all 3. He goes jogging with me everyday in the morning and in the evening. I also play with him in the park nearby in the evenings, so he is getting a lot of exercise.", I replied.
She nodded and then gave Aaryn back to me. Then she said," Well I had an idea about his breed from the many times you had brought him for checkups but I checked him specifically just now and confirmed my theory. Aaryn is a half dog. Newfoundland breed to be exact.".
"And what of the other half??", I asked to which she replied," The other half is a wolf. I cannot tell what breed without taking his blood but it is a wild wolf for sure since even I cannot fully identify its traits as of now without taking his blood. I will give you a book about half-breed dogs and how to handle and train them. He will never be as tame as other dogs since he has a half of wolf in him, but he will be loyal to you atleast.".
As I paid the good doctor for her services and left, I thought,' Do I need to train Aaryn to hunt?? After all he is a half wolf. He will need to learn from both the wolf and dog traits. Food for thought. Anyway, lets go back home soon, I need to finish that book on Occlumency. It is one of the only books out of the 20 books I stole that night.'.
<Samuel POV>
"8...huu...9...huu...10"
"BANG"
"Huuu, wow, that was amazing. I might be the only 8 year old kid that can benchpress 50 kgs. That book really helped. Too bad there were not many that I could use.", I mumbled to myself as I stood up from the bench. 'Too bad there are only 5 books that I can use as of now out of the 100 books that I took from that library. All the others either need a wand, or need magical materials to make potions, or are about divination that require very specific things or are rituals that ,again, need some magical materials or are about magical theory while the rest are just history and propaganda. Still finding the books on Runes was a surprise. Finding that I do not need a wand to use the runes was a pleasure. But I need to learn a lot about runes and magical theory before I can even attempt to create one. I don't want the house to explode because of my stupidity. Then there were the two books on mind arts. It was a surprise to see that I was already nearly initiated since I was already trying to build my memory palace. After reading the mind arts book, I found that I needed to use magic to make the memory palace as a permanent construct in my mind. Now I can keep building on top of that. Lucky I got the books when I did. But the biggest surprise was that of the book on physical magic.'.
' With physical magic I can lift upto 50 kgs. The only drawback is that the magic requires not only magical power but also stamina of the person. Using more and more powerful physical magic requires the use of more and more stamina. With my stamina I can only bench press 50 kgs, 10 times safely. Any more and I will pass out. This is also the reason this magic is no longer mainstream since people usually overestimate themselves and knock themselves out. Good thing none of the family members saw me or they will...'
"What was that??"
I whirled around to see grandpa Steve and grandpa Moritz standing by the door looking at me with wide eyes. 'Oh shit' was all I thought before schooling my expression and replied," What was what grandpa??", trying to sound as innocent as possible.
"Don't you 'What was what grandpa' me boy?? Tell me, since when have you been able to lift 50 kgs. Have you been holding out on us so that you can take it easy in your training??", said Grandpa Steve glaring at me.
"Umm, I just found out about this a few days back, and it is not like I have the strength to lift it for a long time. I can only do 10 bench press with the weight. Also, I cannot control my strength easily.", I had to give out only the smallest parts I could tell them without raising questions as of now. Ever since I read the mind arts books, I have been very careful of what I tell my family members.
Muggles do not have magic and thus are like an open book to Legilimens, magical mind readers. The known defense against mind reading or legilimency is Occlumency which is building defenses in your mind using your memory palace or any structure that you can build using your magic. There is a way for even muggles to be impervious to Legilimency which needs a wizard to create a medallion using runes that protect the mind. One of the reasons I am so into runes. But mind protection runes are some really advanced stuff. If there is a problem in any of the runes or your understanding and intent of the runes you just might fry the owner's brain. It will take a long time of learning and research before I can tell them things without endangering the information or their mental well being.
Grandpa Steve and Moritz looked at each other and then smiled at each other. "Hoho, if your strength has increased then you need to get experience using it as fast as possible. We can also start training you more intensively. You cannot control your strength?? You need more training. Let us go now.", and hearing that I could only sigh. 'Who asked me to do the tests in the house itself where anyone can just walk in on me. I will need to find myself a different place where I can do tests. It is still fine as of now since I was only testing physical magic but once I start with runes it is going to be difficult to explain where all those abilities came from. Haaa, looking at their smiles, it is going to be a tiring few months. Well, I guess I will stick to Occlumency and Physical magic for the next few months, while reading magical theory and Runes in the spare time. Legilimency requires actual targets and I don't want to do it to Grandparents or Mom, there are plenty of stories of a beginner Legilimens completely wrecking the minds of untrained wizards.'.
July 1967
<Veronica POV>
"AARYN GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN.", was what I heard from my laboratory in the basement and sighed. 'Looks like Aaryn stole something from the kitchen again. I really need to teach him not to enter it when Grandma is cooking. I am scared to think he would be made into dog soup if he continues at this rate.'. Looking at the ruined experiment on the table I sighed again,' Might as well go out and see what he stole. I am not getting any work done as of now. Who knew mixing magic into chemical solutions was so tough. The book on potions made it seem as if it was simple to just pour in your magic to the potion solutions. This magic mixing was a standard practice in the potionology book. It said that it was because of this that there were not many good potion masters in the world since a person needed to have extensive experience in this part to make more complex and customized potions. I will have to work more on this. Atleast, it is a good thing that I have attained beginner level in Occlumency by being able to enter an empty state of mind since I was already meditating before I got the book. Now I can start to properly build the mindscape to sort and safeguard my mind.'.
Coming out of the basement lab, I went to check on mom and dad. 'Still no improvement huh. Don't worry. There are a lot of healing potions and I have been studying the "Healing for Beginners" magic book as well. Once I get into Hogwarts I will be able to learn more about healing or find someone who can heal you.'
Coming to the dining table I saw Aaryn running towards me. He was already 35 cm in height which is impressive since he is not even a year old and he will surely grow some more. Average newfoundland dogs are 69-74 cms tall but even they are not as quick to grow as Aaryn. 'I guess his wolf ancestry is to blame for his accelerated growth.'.
I sat on the dining table and while petting Aaryn I took the newspaper. The moment I saw the headline I was shocked. "Massacre at the McGraw Mansion". As I kept on reading my anger only kept growing along with my horror. 'I had killed James and this was the D'Antonio family's retaliation to the most obvious suspect, the McGraw family. Looks like they did not go without fighting and killed the D'Antonio's second son. So now only the third son Mark and fourth son Cassian are left. They will undoubtedly be kept under heavy guard. Anyway, I should accelerate my training. Too bad I don't know where I can get a wand or I could practise the spells from the book "101 spells to remember in a fight" and follow the dueling steps in "How to become a Dueling master". Wait a minute, if the McGraws were killed yesterday, then the D'Antonios must still be in the process of finding and moving their stash of money, people, weapons etc. With my numistomancy I should be able to find the location of the ones taht will have enough weapons and cash. I will need to go to London by the afternoon. Just need to find a reason for it.'.
A soft yip brought my attention to Aaryn. I had stopped petting him in my pondering. Then it clicked.' Of course, I can simply say that I am going to get some toys for Aaryn. He badly needs them and I can bring the extended pouch with me. It is only a small one but it can still keep a decent amount of things. Let's get on that. Once I come back I need to train Aaryn to be a combat dog as well. He is harmless for now but he keeps growling at grandparents. The doctor had said that his wild wolf side will make him aggressive. He needs to let out all of that bloodlust, and once I have him trained properly I can channel that bloodlust into more productive things, like helping me take down the D'Antonio family goons. There will be plenty that will be roaming alone. I can kill them with his help until I find a better way.'.
<Samuel POV>
"SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS", the moment I heard that sound I knew that it was a failure and threw the little stone to the corner of the room where it disintegrated into dust. I expected as much since I was using the most common stone to practice runes. In the book about the runes, it mentioned that people should first practice with normal everyday materials since these materials can be easily replaced and will not result in loss. Only when a person has significant practice should they move to better materials.
'After the last 3 months of grueling physical training, I have gotten better at physical magic, but the greatest benefit of these 3 months is that my Memory Palace is complete and I have been able to sort all of my memories into it. Thanks to that I am able to not only retain what I read better, I am also able to focus on my tasks easily. Good thing I started on practicing runes after I was able to complete my Memory palace, since the added focus and concentration has reduced the amount of mistakes I would have made a lot. Now all I need for the Occlumency to be considered complete is to create safeguards for the fortress that I created'.
The construction of Occlumency shields was simple but very time consuming. First you need to create a space for your memories. The space will not be very big since there is not much memory or magical power that a person has that can fill the space. For example, one cannot have a memory palace the size of an island. If the palace is that large they will need to have lived for over 1000 years. Thus your memory palace must be just appropriate enough that it can keep your memories. Once all the memories are stored the memory palace or Mindscape as it is usually called can be expanded with time as more and more memories are created. This is why most people choose something like a house or a castle or a fortress, although the last is rare. Also, the memory palace is fixed in place and there are no such things as flying or swimming of the palace, thus you can create something like a spaceship but cannot have the spaceship fly or even move. Then there are the defenses. unlike the memory palace itself, there is a lot of flexibility for the defenses. You can create living beings like men, robots, dragons and every other creature existing or non-existing. but each new defense creation will consume the corresponding amount of your magic. Also, there is a limit of the defenses that can be created in the mind without burdening the mind. This is also why, most people have a small memory palace so that there is a smaller area to cover while building the defenses. I did not separate the defenses for myself. I simply created a dome like shield all around the small memory palace that I had created. i used the model of our two story house in London as the memory palace and sorted everything in there. This gave me enough power to create the strongest shield for the Mindscape. This shield will stop everything. Mental attacks are represented usually in some manner of attack in the mindscape. For example, some people are better at physical fights, they can use the mind to create a physical representation of themselves and then fight the defenses. The shield I have created, will stop everything, physical attacks, magical attacks etc. I used 75% of all my power to create the shield, thus even if I do not have any impressive defenses, or a giant mental palace, my mind shield are far stronger than the average. They are further improved by the fact that I made a small cheat. I created a set of industrial batteries of magical energy where I can store magical energy. Since it is my mindscape, I can decide that the batteries are for the magical energy and not electricity. I had read that the past attempts to make such a storage had limited success. Probably because they did not know the concept of the batteries.
Looking around the cave in which I had hidden myself I sighed, 'I need to get started on getting my own place. I can't keep practicing in caves like this. Sooner or later I will cause a cave in and then I don't know what I would do. Hmm, I should start with that slimy bastard that has been trying to flirt with Mom these past few months. He even tried to approach us when Mom and I went for shopping. She clearly refused him and threatened him with Police yet the guy just did not take a hint. Let's see what I can dig up on him.'.
Coming out of the cave, I started moving towards the farmhouse where we were living. It was a one and a half hour walk where I try to use Legilimency on the passing people. 'Too bad everything is quiet these days. Even after I went to London to check out both the previous safehouse and our house, I did not find anyone. I could have had unwilling volunteers that I could have used to practice Legilimency without worry that I would break them. As it is I can only try to use the weakest Legilimency on the passers-by, that is to initiate Legilimency by looking at their eyes. Still, I am atleast good enough that I can get some surface thoughts of the people, sometimes, so I guess there's that.'.
As I kept on moving to the path I caught something very interesting. Two goonish looking guys were walking by and I happened to read their surface thoughts.
Goon 1: 'Damn it, to think we would have to use our own smuggling routes to escape D'Antonio family's hunt. We need to disappear as fast as possible. The D'Antonio's are the new rulers of the London underground. Everyone is going to be kissing their feet. If we get caught we are going to be sent to the D'Antonio's for sure. They have taken over most of our smuggling routes and have already caught most of them. Thankfully, I was able to find the existence of this person in the harbor after I eavesdropped on the family head that one time.'.
Goon 2: 'To think that even with the wealth of the McGraw family they would be wiped out in one night by the D'Antonio family. So the rumors must be true. Something had gone wrong some months back where a few people who had been smuggled into London a few years back had died and the family had to pay reparations to an angry client. This must be what had weakened the family to the point that they were betrayed by many of their closest guards on the night D'Antonio family attacked.'.
Reading the thoughts of the two goons, I was now very interested. As Mom usually said, if you want to find someone, the best way is to follow the money. It will take time and there will be a lot of filtering you need to do, but in the end the money will lead you to the culprit. 'These two are from McGraw family and the family smuggled a few people some years back and they just happened to have died a few months back. It could be a coincidence, but I think not. After all, Benjamin had said that they were working with muggles and the Hollow Cores organization must have had to smuggle the people into London since they do not have any muggle presence in London. That means they must have made a deal with a family in here that helped smuggle them. Those weapons and equipment were also the kind that cannot be brought into the country without smuggling since owning most of them is illegal. They could have used a magical means but if that was the case they would have something like a magical pouch in the house. I had checked the house and did not find anything of the sort, so the only option is smuggling. This McGraw family must have smuggled everything into London. Now that they are gone, this must be the main reason that the organisation cannot send anyone here since they need to setup a new deal with the new smuggling kingpin. And it seems that it is the D'Antonio family. Let's follow these guys to their contact. Maybe I can also acquire something.', and with that I started to follow the two to the port.
October 1967
<Samuel POV>
Looking at the squirming body on the ground I sighed for the 10th time today and then walked away from the back alley towards the street. 'This is already the 10th guy whose mind I have broken and I still do not have any proper information. This is the problem with these rank and file goons. They know nothing. Well, atleast I got the location of the head honcho of the D'Antonio family, so I know who to shadow for the foreseeable future. The organisation will need to cut a deal with the D'Antonio family if they want to be smuggled in since they control the entire underground of muggle London now. Otherwise they will need to come using magical means like apparition. God, I want to learn apparition as soon as possible. I mean, who does not want teleportation. I do have books on the topic but I have no confidence in going through with it since I don't want to splinch myself without a magical healer by my side. I don't want to lose my body parts to that.'.
I started to move towards the location of the new headquarters of the D'Antonio family. A large three storied office building. According to the last guy I broke, the legal business on paper for this building is to provide consultation services to people in various fields. What the papers don't tell is that the clients of the building are usually of a dubious nature. The D'Antonio family's business of kidnappings, extortion, murders etc are now all done via this building. Once I reached the place, I moved towards a new cafe that has been opened on the opposite side of the road. The moment I enter the place I scan the place to confirm my suspicions and soon enough I find what I am looking for. 'As expected, this cafe is just a front for the security of the building opposite. I knew that the underground kingpin is not going to let go of the plot in front of it. By opening a cafe on the opposite side of the road, they can not only provide meals for the people in the building, but they can also launder money through the cafe. And if I am not wrong, the same is true for the laundromat, beauty parlor and shoe repair shops that are adjacent to this cafe. They really have locked down this place. Someone is smart and paranoid.'.
One good thing about Legilimency for me is that as long as someone makes an eye contact with me while in the range of my detection, which has grown to be over 70 meters, I can easily read their surface thoughts. For more intensive mind readings I will have to do it when I am near to them. So, I can read the surface thoughts of the D'Antonio's head, Alexander D'Antonio's mind from here without moving and I can get any information that I miss in between my visits from some other goons inside this cafe. From what I have read of their thoughts in this brief time I have been here, they are higher up the chain. This should be enough to monitor them in case the organization makes contact with them.'.
I ordered the full English breakfast consisting of bacon, fried egg, sausage, mushrooms, baked beans, toast, grilled tomatoes, and accompanied with milk and honey. I asked for extra slices of toast and sat down for the wait. I will have to search other places as well since the D'Antonios have not yet fully expanded the smuggling business but I am confident that even if the D'Antonios do not smuggle the organization's people, whoever does will have to inform them of it. Even if the information I get is a little late, it will still be better than searching the entire London for it.
'Now if I can just combine runes and guns, I will be set. The last two experiments exploded in my face. Good thing I only tried it on one bullet each time or I might have been injured far more heavily'. Pulling out my dad's journals and some other books, I settled in to pass the time while reading high school level physics.
<Veronica POV>
Looking at the blue solution in the test-tube I was feeling euphoric. "Finally after months of trials I am able to imbue magic into these solutions. Now I just need to perform testing on these babies. How to use it effectively and efficiently. Good thing I completed the construction of the Mindscape that allowed me to file away the results of my experiments in a separate folder to view later. Who knew Occlumency gave you the perfect research notes collector. No need for writing on paper. I can simply name the file with the date and the experiment and keep it safe in the fortress I have designed. I can even go back and view my memories and then compare them to the other experiments. Far more effective than writing on paper. Not to mention it is faster, I can view the memories at the speed of thought and make split-second decisions for my experiment in real life to make changes.".
Good thing I modeled the Mindscape as a seven storied Hi-tech Tower with state of the art and futuristic experimental facilities. The only ones who can read anything in here are people who have knowledge of muggle science at a deep level. I used the Periodic table, Chemistry reactions and Biology terms to create an encryption code that allows to view my memories. Only someone who has all 3 sections of knowledge will be able to view and see my memories. I spent the rest of my time filling the entire Tower with defenses. I used a combination of muggle weapons, occult fictions and comics to create a mishmash of defenses along with several traps where my solutions will start to pour down the intruder if they do not give correct answers. The reason I made loopholes in the defenses is because with these loopholes in place the result is that the defenses around these traps are far more powerful than if I just placed the defenses and be done with it, giving them an extra oomph. And since the questions are from almost all the fields like Botany, Chemistry, Physics, History, Psychology, even passwords and phrases of Muggle personalities. The tower itself, I have been reinforcing and will start to create an iron dome around the entire field filled with defenses. I have not gotten around to fill any live persons for active defenses since they act as programs and need far more magic than normal. Another thing I noticed is that anything that I am able to make in real life will have its power boosted to ridiculous levels in the mindscape.
An alarm caught my attention at that time and I went out of the basement lab to the outside. It was time for the daily evening stroll with Aaryn. Grandparents would usually go meet their friends at this time while I would go and play with Aaryn. He has grown even bigger and stronger. I got Grandpa Alan, who was a cop himself previously, to ask people in the police force to help train Aaryn. They did train him for a few weeks and gave me pointers on how to keep him sharp.
I went to London several times during these few months and got myself a sizable portion of the McGraw family's wealth and weapons and luckily a few pouches of gems and diamonds. All in all, I have enough money to last a long time and I asked Grandpa Alan to train me in firearms. Those were some hectic months I had spent.
Suddenly, Aaryn jerked his face around and growled. Instantly I came to attention and looked around at what had spooked him.
" I would hold onto that dog if I were you Veronica. I would not want to kill it and you.", came a voice from the right side of the alley. I looked towards the man who had now come out from the alley holding a gun pointed at Aaryn. I froze thinking why is there someone here pointing a gun at me, not to mention he knows me and probably planned this meeting.
"Who are you?? What do you want??", I asked with as much calm as I could muster. The man smirked at me and then replied," You see, I knew about some of the places where the McGraw family where they had kept some things for emergency. Imagine my surprise to see that many of them had been emptied. I waited at one of the other ones and lo and behold, there were you emptying the bags. I would have killed you there and then but, you put those bags into your bag. Your bag which by all rights should not possess any space to keep all of those things without completely ripping out. I was interested and decided to leave you alive and followed you back. I found your house, then found your history. I was especially surprised by your history. See, when James had died, we could not find anyone who could have killed him. The McGraw family should not do it, or they should not have done it on the night of the wedding itself. Since we did not find anyone who could or should do it we had gone on to remove the McGraw family. But here you were, not only possessing means that should not be humanly possible, but also a person who had beef with the D'Antonio family. Which brings us to this point in time. I will not kill you girl, atleast not yet. I will get you to first tell me everything you know about that bag and anything else you know about such ways. Then I will be taking everything you have taken from the stashes and then we will see what to do from there. So now, tell me everyth - AAAAHHHHH", the man held his head and bent down. In that instant I released Aaryn who directly bit the man's hand and then before the man could look up I had already hit him with a spray of chloroform. He went down without a fight. I held him by his legs and started to drag him back into the alleyway.
"What an idiot. Do all wannabe bad guys keep yammering for a long time?? Good thing I remembered that I could use Legilimency as I am an Occlumens and every occlumens can also use legilimency, to a certain extent. Good thing I could distract him as this was the first time I used Legilimency or tried to anyway. A successful Legilimency attack would have allowed me to listen to his thoughts. Instead I gave him a bad headache. Still, I can live with that, still it saved my lie. I guess I can use this as an attack?? Hmm, maybe I will look into it at a later time.'.
I dragged the man into the alley and then brought out gloves from the pouch. After wearing the gloves I brought out duct-tape and then proceeded to wrap the man's hands and legs and also his mouth. I do not need him to talk. He is obviously from the D'Antonio family and I do not want him to scream. The better way is that I can practice Legilimency on this guy. Whatever I get out of him will be considered a bonus.
As I was a beginner at Legilimency, I did not expect him to survive mentally. Even if he does survive by some grace of God, I do have a lot of poisons and guns with me. I started to take apart the man's mind and surprisingly I was able to find a lot of information despite most of them getting destroyed soon. I guess due to my heightened senses captured the memories before they were getting destroyed. I found out where he kept the remaining stash of the McGraw family that he found and also about the current state of the D'Antonio family. 'So they have bought an office building and a series of stores on the opposite side. I guess the cafe is the best place to spy on these guys. But it will not be easy to get another chance to hit them so easily. I will need to be patient.'.
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Whew, this was a long chapter. I had to research a lot of things. Please let me know if you spot any mistakes.
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