Harry Potter : Eldritch Horrors Chapter 7

Chapter 7: First Blood

The March rain drummed against the grimy windows of the pawnshop as Adam completed another successful transaction. Eight months had passed since his successful brewing of the Horrus Potion, and his operations had grown more ambitious.

The mental fortification provided by the potion allowed him to study increasingly dangerous texts, which in turn had improved both his magical abilities and his understanding of valuable artifacts in Merlin's collection.

Today's sale had been particularly lucrative—a set of five gold coins from the 12th century, their surfaces unmarked by age and their craftsmanship so perfect that the owner had needed nearly twenty minutes to convince himself they weren't forgeries. The forty-two pounds now tucked into Adam's jacket represented more money than he'd ever carried at once.

"Remarkable pieces, lad," Owner had said, counting out the notes reluctantly. "Your grandfather must have been quite the collector. If you've got more like these, I'd be very interested to see them."

Adam had smiled and given his usual noncommittal response about checking the family collection.

As he stepped out into the drizzling afternoon, Adam noticed two men loitering near the corner tobacco shop.

They looked away quickly when his gaze fell on them, but something in their posture suggested they'd been watching the pawnshop. One was tall and lean with prison tattoos visible on his hands, while the other was shorter but heavily built, his coat bulging in ways that suggested concealed weapons.

Adam's instincts, sharpened by months of survival on London's streets, immediately went on alert. He'd grown careless, selling too many valuable pieces to the same dealer.

The pawnshop owner might have mentioned his regular customer to the wrong people, or perhaps these men had been watching the shop independently, waiting for someone to emerge with a significant payout.

Rather than heading directly toward his current shelter, Adam took a long route through Bermondsey's narrow streets. The two men followed at a distance, confirming his suspicions.

Adam's mind raced through his options.

He could try to lose them in the maze of back alleys around London Bridge, but that would only delay the confrontation. He could seek help from authorities, but that would require explanations he couldn't provide about his circumstances and income sources.

His best option was to reach his shelter and use the ring to escape to Merlin's library, but that required getting close enough to activate the spatial magic without being observed.

The pursuit continued for twenty minutes as Adam led his followers through increasingly isolated areas. The rain had driven most pedestrians indoors, leaving the streets nearly empty. Finally, as he turned into a narrow alley between two abandoned warehouses, Adam heard rapid footsteps behind him.

"Hold on there, boy!"

Adam spun around to find both men blocking the alley's entrance. The taller one held a switchblade, while the shorter man carried an old wooden club.

"We saw you come out of pawnshop," the tall man said, his voice carrying the rough accent of London's East End. "Looked like you did pretty well for yourself. Why don't you share some of that good fortune with us?"

"I don't know what you mean," Adam replied, backing toward the alley's dead end.

His voice sounded young and frightened, which wasn't entirely an act. Despite his magical abilities and theoretical knowledge, he was still physically an eight-year-old child facing two grown men with weapons.

"Don't play stupid, lad," the shorter man growled, slapping his club against his palm. "We saw the guy handing out them notes. Forty pounds at least, maybe more. Hand it over, and we might let you walk away from this."

Adam's mind raced through the magical options available to him. The levitation charm could potentially disarm one of them, but it required concentration and control that would be difficult to maintain under stress.

The Curse Worm ability could transfer his fear and desperation to his attackers, but that would take time to manifest and might not stop an immediate physical assault.

Then he remembered a passage from one of Merlin's more dangerous texts—a section on combat applications of eldritch magic that he'd studied during his recent advanced readings.

The spell was called "Whispers of the Void," designed to temporarily open a victim's mind to the chaotic thoughts of the cosmic entities.

It was exactly the kind of magic he'd sworn to avoid—the path that had led to Merlin's eventual corruption. But faced with immediate physical danger, Adam's survival instincts overrode his caution.

"Last chance, boy," the tall man said, advancing with his knife raised. "Give us the money, or we'll take it off your corpse."

Adam raised his hands as if in surrender, but his fingers moved in a pattern described in Merlin's notes.

The incantation was brief—only three words in an unknown language—but speaking them felt like swallowing broken glass mixed with ice.

"Ygnaiih... thflthkh... ngah..."

The effect was immediate and horrifying.

Both men staggered as if struck by invisible hammers, their weapons falling from suddenly nerveless fingers. The tall man began screaming—a sound unlike anything human vocal cords should have been able to produce. His eyes rolled back until only the whites showed, and his body began convulsing.

The shorter man lasted longer, his mind apparently more resistant to the cosmic intrusion. But within seconds, he too was writhing on the wet cobblestones, clawing at his skull as if trying to dig out the foreign thoughts.

Adam watched in horror as the spell took hold. The men screamed in unnatural tones that made the air feel wrong. Their bodies began to change subtly—skin taking on a grayish pallor, fingernails growing longer and sharper, and their eyes gleamed with a dark, oily shine.

But the transformation was incomplete. Unlike the entities described in Merlin's notes, these men lacked the spiritual resilience to survive contact with cosmic consciousness. Instead of becoming something new and terrible, they were simply being destroyed by forces their minds couldn't contain.

The tall man died first, his final scream cutting off abruptly as his heart stopped. His body lay twisted in an impossible position, limbs bent at abnormal angles.

The shorter man lingered for nearly a minute longer, his convulsions gradually weakening until he too lay still.

Silence fell. Even the rain seemed to pause, as if the world itself recoiled from what had appeared. Adam stood frozen in the alley, staring at the two corpses, slowly realizing what he had done.

He had killed them.

The spell had been more effective than he'd expected, and far more brutal than necessary. A simple levitation charm to disarm them, followed by a strategic retreat, might have been sufficient. Instead, he'd chosen the most dangerous option available and watched two human beings die in agony.

The worst part was how natural it had felt. The words had left his lips with ease, and watching his enemies fall had stirred a dark satisfaction that felt inhuman. The prolonged contact with cosmic forces weren’t just giving him power—they were reshaping him and dulling his concern for suffering.

Adam forced himself to approach the bodies and search them for identification.

The tall man carried a wallet containing seventeen pounds and a driver's license identifying him as Thomas Garrett, age thirty-four, resident of Whitechapel. The shorter man had no identification but possessed twenty-three pounds and a set of brass knuckles that explained the bulge in his coat.

Neither man appeared to have family photos that suggested close relationships. They were likely career criminals who wouldn't be missed immediately, but their deaths would still attract police attention. Adam needed to remove any evidence linking him to the scene.

Using techniques learned from Merlin's notes on evidence elimination, Adam inscribed a small circle around each body using chalk mixed with powdered bone from his skeletal finger.

The symbols he drew were simple but effective—designed to accelerate decomposition and scatter any lingering magical traces that might attract supernatural investigation.

Within minutes, the bodies began to dissolve into a gray, oily substance that seeped into the alley's cobblestones without leaving visible stains.

The process was disturbing to watch but undeniably effective. By the time Adam finished his cleanup, no physical evidence remained of either the men or their deaths.

But he couldn't eliminate his memories or the changes the experience had wrought in his thinking. As he made his way back to his shelter, forty pounds richer and permanently altered by his first act of magical violence, Adam realized that he'd crossed a line from which there was no return.

The frightened child who had awakened in an orphanage storage room was gone, replaced by something more dangerous. He was still human in appearance and largely in thought, but the foundations of his moral reasoning had shifted in ways that would have horrified his previous self.

That night, as he lay in the darkness of his tunnel shelter, Adam found himself planning more efficient ways to eliminate future threats.

He was beginning to understand why Merlin's final notes had carried such desperate warnings.

The path to power in this universe didn't just demand sacrifices—it gradually redefined what sacrifices seemed reasonable. Each step forward made the next step easier to justify, until the distinction between necessary action and casual cruelty became meaningless.

Adam told himself that he would be more careful in the future, that he would find ways to avoid situations requiring lethal force. But even as he made these mental promises, he was already considering how his newfound willingness to kill could solve other problems in his life.