Disclaimer - I don't own anything. As the corporations say these days, you will own nothing & be happy. I don't, and have never claimed to, own Marvel or Disney or any of its characters. With that out of the way, let's goooo!
London
–Damian Hawthorne–
"Where is Harry?!"
"I don't know!" he nearly shouted with the same intensity, which seemed to snap Dumbledore out of whatever frenzy he had worked himself into, allowing him to relax, as he continued to speak, now without the threat of a crazy Elder Wand wielding wizard hovering above his head.
"Listen to me. Earlier today, I encountered three vampires, one of whom was most likely a pureblood."
Dumbledore's entire body seized up when he heard the pureblood word, which was understandable since they were known to be walking disasters, capable of actually performing rudimentary shadow magic and being notoriously difficult to kill without the sun shining directly on them, allowing them to become straight menaces in a straight fight.
Their ability to just create thralls en masse with even a scratch of their claw if they so willed had forced entire non magical cities to be quarantined and condemned simply because there was no one left inside who was not a thrall.
"I was not able to get much, but know this, one of the Elder Covens knows that you train Harry Potter regularly. They wish to have the blood of the Child of Prophecy."
And yup. He knew he should not have said those exact words but then again, how else could he convey the urgency here?
As expected, those words had a wand aimed straight at his face, the tip already glowing a sickly yellow, which was surprising because ol' Dumbles was not supposed to stoop low to such spells, which was ridiculous in his opinion because spells were spells, as long as they did not take something, mentally or physically, and could be used however they wished.
His hand snapped out, his magic flowing into the very air around him, as a purple wand that was only a forcefield construct appeared in his hand for appearance purposes, now aimed at Dumbledore, centre mass.
His words made the air vibrate due to a specific effect of magic that he discovered on accident; it made his words sound buzzy, as if spoken by a dozen different voices all at once, overlapped perfectly, "We can stand here and fight if you wish, but right now, I have sensed no less than 50 thralls spread throughout the city, and all of them have Harry's photo, general description, the location where you train him, and more, just waiting to kidnap Harry."
His words seemed to hit Dumbledore like physical blows, the glow on the wand dimming down, but the wand not going down at all, further incensing him, "Look! If you have some way of tracking Harry, then do so. I am leaving. I just wanted to warn you in case you can activate some Ministry resources. I can see you are incapable of working with me so good luck. I will drop Harry at Hogsmeade if I find him first."
With his words spoken, his magic receded, as his armour glowed a bright purple before he was launched into the air like a rocket, soon disappearing as he activated his stealth. Hopefully, Dumbledore could pull his weight and finally prove that he was not an incompetent nincompoop.
He kept his senses peeled and, to his slight relief, found the number of thralls in the same density, circling the bar still. Hopefully, it meant that the thralls were still waiting for further orders but he was not going to bank Harry's life on just that assumption. The only silver lining out of all this was that the Pureblood vampire had not ordered his thralls to just start chaos en masse.
That would have been…difficult. Not just because he would have had to put down dozens of vampires with prejudice but also because it would have spilled over into the non magical world and would have had the Hammer of multiple international powers drop on everyone involved in the situation.
A dark part of his mind told him that had that happened, then at least Kamar Taj would have gotten off their high horses and stopped this clearly supernatural and magical incursion into the city. For Merlin's sake, they had a Sanctum here!
He fumed to himself as he finally reached the Sanctum and unceremoniously dropped in, the stark difference between his exit barely a couple of hours earlier at the forefront of his mind, as the wards surged forward but allowed him to enter as they recognised his signature.
He felt relief for a split second as he felt someone coming, but that was short lived as the one coming to greet him was not Corven. It was an unfamiliar face, who was understandably startled at seeing a masked, robed, flying intruder into the Sanctum, since the Ancient One had not informed everyone of his existence.
Why would she? It was not like she couldn't see the future, see this exact moment unraveling, and the pressure it would put on him, and how just this single tiny action of keeping a person familiar with him at Kamar Taj would have helped him immensely.
"Where's Corven?" He asked, feeling the man, the temporary Sanctum Master, connect to the wards and feel confused as the wards did not recognise him as an intruder, despite his appearance.
"Master Corven is in an emergency meeting. Who are you? The wards do not recognise you as an intruder. You have clearance." The man stated the obvious, his posture relaxing as he realised that the Sanctum was not under attack, and he was probably an acquaintance of Corven.
"Shit!" He cursed before continuing, "Relay my message. Over 50 thralls have been spotted in London city. They are pursuing a child for his blood. I need help with containment. Once Corven or anyone helpful is back, use this to contact me." He threw a small square box at the man who caught it, before he hightailed out of the Sanctum.
It was clearly a clear emergency because the man guarding a freaking Sanctum was not even a Master. He was clearly experienced, and decently strong, but not a Master by any means. The most help he could be was using the Sanctum wards effectively to defend one of the three imminent points of failure of the Planetary Mystic shield.
Of all the times something had to happen at Kamar Taj. It was just his luck, he thought to himself as he flew through the air, heading to known points, then known shopping areas, then restaurants.
It was like finding a needle in a haystack, further compounded by the fact that he found at least a single thrall everywhere in his range. He found multiple wizards, even groups of wizards, enjoying food and drinks at restaurants, pubs, and even food carts, but no sign of the Dursleys.
In the middle of all of that, his mind could not let him forget the worst complication of the night. Even if he managed to find Harry or Dumbledore managed to find him, even after that, there was still the problem of close to or maybe even surpassing a hundred people whose lives were irrecoverably ruined.
He had no idea what could be done about them and had a sinking suspicion that most authority figures of the magical world are just going to wash their hands off the entire thing, not even sparing a second to think of those lives.
He shook his head, banishing those thoughts from his mind for now. First, Harry, then these people.
After what felt like an eternity, he finally came across a strong magical signature that he hadn't encountered all this while, in the middle of an average looking car. The car not being fancy dimmed his hopes a bit, but even so, he floated down, almost parallel to the car, and sighed in relief as he found Harry, sitting in the back seat, eating ice cream, as did Dudley in the front.
Petunia was nowhere to be seen but that was fine. He had the main target now. First things first, securing Harry, and the Dursleys for that matter. He spied the roads ahead, and saw a signal turning red, thankfully. That saved him the trouble of stopping the car safely. Unfortunately, the traffic signal also probably had a camera.
So, before the Dursleys could fully take a stop, he flew ahead, took out all three of the cameras, and, just for safety, flew ahead a bit and took out a private security camera that was facing the road for some reason. A bit of property damage but he was fairly certain it was worth the guaranteed secrecy of what he was going to do next.
Once he was back, he slapped his hand on the roof of the car, and cast a strong notice me not charm on the car itself, the action needing two seconds because he wanted to do all of that while maintaining stealth.
Once that was done, he just simply lifted the car because it was a shitbox, and also because the car behind them was inching forward, not noticing the car in front of them, so he quickly lifted them and flew them to a nearby median, because the car did not have the necessary structural integrity to survive miles of flight.
He heard the screaming and winced, because he did not want to scare the children but saw no other choice. Dropping the car, he had to use his magic telekinesis to hold the tyres in place, as Vernon had pressed the throttle probably all the way, whilst screaming like a little girl.
Well, the fear was understandable. Understandable but not helpful, so he hijacked the pedals as well, rebuffing Vernon's effort to further exert pressure on them. It was, surprisingly, a manual car, which meant putting it in neutral helped.
Turning visible, he opened the car door, and spoke, "Vernon Dursley. Harry Potter is in danger. You need to come with me." He resisted the urge to do a Schwarzenegger here("Come with me if you want to live")
He leaned back from a haphazard swing, kind of surprised that Vernon would defend Harry, but he supposed that hysteria and fear could make people do unusual things.
"Stop!" He commanded and with a bit of flex of his magic, Vernon paused mid swing, almost falling due to how he had overextended himself, only held upright with his magic.
"Listen to me. I am not your enemy, but people are coming—" He stopped mid way, his neck snapping behind him, as the telltale blazes of magic signalled the arrival of Dumbledore. "Oh, thank Merlin."
Knowing his tendency to point his wand at people he deemed a threat to anyone, let alone his golden boy, he pulled away from the car, maintained his hold onto the neutral gear, and stood watching as Dumbledore came with Fawkes. Only this time, it was not just Dumbledore. Minerva and Filius Flitwick had both come along for the ride.
The time between them appearing in the median and Filius' spell hitting his shield was impressive, almost as fast as Dumbledore himself who stopped Filius after the first spell, likely realising that he had located and isolated Harry to keep him safe.
Dumbledore slumped in relief as Harry came bounding from the car, and hugged the old wizard. Hmm, their relationship was much closer this time around. This time though it had put Harry in danger.
He wondered what the old cook would do to protect Harry. It was clear that the Blood Wards worked, because even now, the thralls were having difficulty locating Harry, but it was also clear that they were not as strong as they were in Privet Drive 4. Maybe they had used cameras or some other non magical means to track them down, but were only able to keep track of Dumbledore reliably, and worked off of that information.
As far as he could tell, non magicals were at least partially excluded from the Blood Wards' warding off feature, so maybe some variation of paid off non magical actors were used to subvert the protections? He did not know, but Dumbledore should look into that. That was his job for now.
As for him? Now that Harry was safely secured, the much more pressing concern came to mind. The matter of the thralls. They had been given orders, and the more time passed without fulfilling that order or getting new orders, the more the consequences of the thralls fulfilling that order were going to become visible
What a clusterfuck.
If you would like to support me, read ahead(12 chapters rn) on this & other stories, commission more stuff like this, or vote in Snippet Polls, you can head on to my P*treon.