Time skip 10 months
December 28, 1979
Over the darkness of the night, a dozen crows flew high in the cloudy sky... well... high enough to observe everything with a privileged view of the beautiful city of London and still manage to fly free and comfortable. At some point they separated, invading other people's houses, like a stealthy and silent thief.
These weren't normal crows, but the magical creations that Vincent called them Nightmare Crows.
This name came after gaining proficiency with his devour dreams and control illusions spells adjusted with astral magic.
Instead of personally going from target to target feeding on dreams, he used crows as an intermediary to suck out demonic essence, the cost of using this method was certainly higher, spending 20 to 50 essentials depending on the distance from the victim.
This way it wasn't feasible to use on ordinary people, an average person gave an average of less than 25 essentials per session, vicious criminals gave an amount of 35-60 depending on how corrupt their soul was.
But the thing was, magical creatures and mages were possible to spawn from 100-300 depending on how corrupt they are.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to invade vampire dreams, he did not understand how the process of becoming a vampire worked, but they were basically slaves without souls, they still carried a spark of their former self, but since they had no soul, it did not give essence or brought anything useful to hunt them down.
Since the werewolves were a big deal, the act of tormenting these poor souls became the main tool for collecting demonic essence.
93,147 Essences were collected during this period.
Also with this new method his information gathering proceeded like a domino effect, he knew names, places, leaders, suppliers, associated families.
He had information on major heads, related to the Ministry of Magic, he even had eyes and ears in the order of the phoenix thanks to his friendship with James Potter and the boys of the Order.
Using methods such as branding them with their demonic taint and tracking them, demonic power goes unnoticed by mages, if used in a desaturated way, places corrupted or saturated with this energy, become very chaotic and easily tracked.
It was surprising for Vicente, but at one time as Tom Vegas, he became very close to James and Sirius Black, to the point that almost every weekend they had Firewhiskey in some bar in Diagon Alley, or hogsmead… they were Assholes and clowns without any kind of shyness or notion, more like one of those assholes you like to be around.
Well, that was at least before the attacks started again, and they entered the Auror department, and Lily was pregnant, the "lucky" savior of the wizarding world was about to be born.
That leaves a question, should he interfere, without changing history, in fact Voldemort would be defeated without him doing anything, on the other hand he got a little attached to Potter, and to Longbottom.
Voldemort… As if to compensate, his violence and brutality increase, werewolf attacks becoming a commonplace incident.
And as many vampire families migrated to Britain, chaos was everywhere.
Every day came news of families being slaughtered or destroyed, both magical and Muggle.
Parents of Muggle-born Hogwarts students were hunted down one by one.
But it didn't come cheap for the army of the dark lord, With all the information, Vincent became a terrible "pain in the ass" of Voldemort and his army, he was always at the site of attacks and used his illusions, always in wolf shape, offering some kind of salvation to desperate families.
Of course he wasn't a hero, he was currently very far from it, all saves were charged in some way.
For some he charged small amounts of Galleons, interesting objects, books, ingredients, sometimes symbolic tokens, usually for innocent people or who moved him in some way.
The most common method was
Favor contracts, loyalty contracts, or even contracts in which individuals would sell their souls, the latter was "offered" forced to cruel sinful enemies, which were used for sacrifices, rituals or food)!.
He was like a hungry wolf, who preyed on death eaters and Voldemort supporters, the offenses against this were such that the Dark Lord must "love" him as much as he loves Dumbledore Himself.
In the beginning it was simple actions to track and sell information, thus selling legitimate information from leaders, places, clandestine prisons.
It was a feast for the Aurors, who achieved many merits in this war.
Desperate Voldemort broke out of a contained strategy, where he attacked specific targets, pureblood families that supported Dumbledore, Squibs, Muggles and strategic targets. For a ruthless strategy to spread terror, using vampires and werewolves as cheap cannon fodder to wreak havoc.
The effect was immediate, on the one hand many supported him for his strength or fear, growing the number of his followers, on the other hand the number of ordinary people joined the side of Dumbledore's or in small groups of resistance, some smarter ones simply abandoned their country, or hid among Muggles.
For Vincent this chaos made him even active, over time he realized that his abilities were connected to his soul and spreading them into crows and wolves, with at least a small fragment of such gave him incredible combat capability.
When he entered his astral form and split it, these fragments were not separated, they were connected as if it were a great hive of a swarm.
In this way he could summon more illusions of a raven using it as a host, and one of his deadliest strategies, are summon ravens bathed in hellish flames.
The only limitation is the amount of essence he wants to spend.
In general Vincent's influence spread, with his appearances and especially for the information shared, with many earned him a nickname in the wizarding world.
The Flaming Wolf Shepherd, the Raven that Whispers Secrets, and other titles were given to him.
Many heard of his deeds, deeds of his were recorded daily in the Daily Prophet. The Pureblood mages who followed the Dark Lord loathed him and shuddered as if he were the boogeyman.
Those who hated Voldemort saw him as a savior, a powerful wizard who opposed tyranny and acted in the name of justice.
Those who were saved I saw with great gratitude, some became fanatics.
Dumbledore, looking at all this with a back foot, An unknown wizard arrived in his territory and has been accumulating influence, popularity, and on top of that he had a lot of power, a dangerous combination in his eyes, he plans to find such a wizard.
What would they think if they knew that this powerful and deadly "Wizard" is a simple and small baby of almost 2 years living peacefully in an orphanage.
….
While he was rambling, one of the crows headed towards one of the areas where a family of magicians lived, the house was simple, it had no luxury other than a beautiful well-kept garden, and a well-kept apple tree.
The crow landed on the apple tree, looking at the incredibly beautiful fruits, looking at them made his mouth water, but he wasn't here to steal apples.
Soon a masked group appeared on the street, all wearing their iconic iron masks, and black cloaks to hide their identities.
Eater I "Our lord sent us here, do you know what our mission is?" He asked what appeared to be the leader of this attack.
Eater II "We are here to kidnap Ministry official Peter Hookwood and his family" he conveniently explained the second Death Eater.
"This is a mission that our lord has given us, it is of utmost importance, that we cannot fail, make protection against Apparition, and so that no one enters or leaves this space and so that no one can enter here or leave here" The Leader ordered so they prepared quickly.
Eater V "What are you going to tell me you're scared of wolf cubs?" he said sarcastically to his companions.
Everyone looked at him without saying a single word, their faces were covered, but anyone would know the meaning of that action, it was a simple idiotic shut up.
The Wolf Shepherd, as he was referred to among Death Eaters, was the executioner of many Death Eaters, they didn't want to be that lucky!
A few moments after " All done, no Wolf Shepherd will enter here, now we go to the mission " Eater VI, said excitedly they would enjoy the hunt, and who knows have fun with the beautiful Miss Hookwood, or one of her daughters.
A/n: Arthas here, I confess I'm playing Hogwarts Legacy, more than I should, sorry for not keeping the performance rate stable.