Chapter 71: The Malik Family
George put the Tesseract back into the stone coffin.
He didn't take it. But he hadn't come for possession — not really. What mattered was that it reacted. The Tesseract stirred the Chaos Pearl, and that changed things.
Not immediately. But eventually.
As he levitated the lid back into place, sealing the coffin with a precise flick of his wand, George glanced at the unconscious man still slumped on the staircase. One more spell — "Obliviate" — and the priest would remember nodding off during a quiet afternoon visit from a polite antique dealer.
The Harry Potter world's magic was never overwhelming in raw destructive power. But it was tidy. Practical. George appreciated that.
He stepped out into the soft Norwegian dusk, nodded to his security team, and left without ceremony.
He was done here; his next stop was Germany.
No magical teleportation this time. No quick escape. He traveled like any other businessman — by ferry, then by train, slow and unassuming. A deliberate choice. Traveling this way made him look normal. Small. And that had its uses.
Four days later, he stepped onto German soil.
The first thing he did was check in with his people — a daily ritual by now. The post-war phone lines were unreliable, so his team left messages for him in London. He would return the calls from wherever he was, using hotel phones when he could.
Yes, there were magical ways to improve this. He could assign clones to act as intermediaries for each major group. It would streamline everything.
But that defeated the point of having people in the first place. Delegation existed for a reason. If he micromanaged through magic, his subordinates might as well not exist.
So he kept the system simple. Slower, yes — but grounded. Efficient enough.
The message waiting for him this time came from Berlin.
He booked a room and caught the next train.
The country outside the window looked tired. Fields half-sown, buildings scorched with old fire damage, towns that seemed permanently gray. Germany hadn't healed from the war. It had been gutted.
The economy was a mess. Inflation made the mark worthless. Families were paying for bread with wheelbarrows of currency. And amidst that ruin, someone had stepped forward offering a future.
George had read Hitler's early speeches. They weren't subtle. They weren't even particularly smart. But they hit the right nerves. And nerves, not logic, shaped history.
His think tank had already suggested investments here. American industrialists were doing the same. Loans, factories, technology transfers. Most of it is disguised as reconstruction.
George didn't argue. He didn't see the point in trying to alter what couldn't be prevented.
He wasn't here to fight history. He was here to plant anchors in it.
When he reached Berlin, the German-American Petroleum branch welcomed him in person. The staff was efficient, nervous, deferential — just the way he liked them.
He was set up at the Hotel Adlon Kempinski, right across from the Brandenburg Gate. Elegant, discreet, expensive. The kind of place where no one asked questions if your guests changed mid-dinner or if your luggage hummed when touched.
That evening, his head of security knocked once and stepped inside.
"Boss," the man said, keeping his voice low, "we found it."
George didn't turn immediately. He was sitting at the writing desk, staring at an old goat-headed sigil placed in the center of the blotter.
"Where?"
"The Malik estate. Outside the city. Underground room. We checked everywhere else — that's the only place it could be. Couldn't get inside."
George exhaled slowly through his nose. "Route?"
"Marked. Here's the sketch." He passed over a folded map. "Also, no word yet on the one you're looking for. The team's still sweeping the region."
"Then tell them to keep moving. I want it done quietly."
"Yes, sir."
The man bowed slightly, turned, and left.
The Malik name had come up before — in whispers.
Old money. Private. Not quite nobility, but entrenched in Berlin's undercurrent since long before the war. Ties to pre-Christian ritualism. Landowners, academics, occultists. Nothing that could be proved, but enough to interest George.
The goat sigil wasn't a surprise. But it still made the back of his neck prickle.
The next night, George hosted a banquet.
A necessary performance. Executives from German-American Petroleum and the United Steel Berlin branch were in attendance, sipping wine, trying to look confident despite the chaos swallowing their country.
George played the role of the uninvolved shareholder. Smiling, warm, distant. He complimented quarterly reports, praised supply chain recovery, and reassured them that his involvement wouldn't interfere with their operations.
The room laughed a little too loudly. Everyone relaxed.
This was the alibi.
While George raised a glass and politely nodded at a junior director's comment about crude oil margins, a shadow quietly slipped through the open window of his now-empty hotel suite. It moved through Berlin's night air without sound or form, gliding low across rooftops as it made its way toward the outskirts of the city, toward the Malik estate.
Officially, George had announced plans to open an art trading company in Berlin. That much was true. But it wasn't the full story—not with the Maliks, and certainly not with what might be buried beneath their land.
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