HPxDXD: The Essence of a Devil - Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Lord Corvus Lestrange

"Is Young Master Corvus truly wishing to do this now? Perhaps it would be better if Young Master waited a few more days… yes?"

The voice was small and squeaky — nervous in that particular way only house-elves managed.

I didn't slow down.

She was thin, almost painfully so, with skin like wrinkled parchment stretched over fragile bones. Her oversized bat-like ears drooped anxiously, twitching at every sound, while wide, glassy eyes tracked my every step with a mixture of fear and absolute devotion.

Exactly what you'd expect from an old servant of House Lestrange. Broken by a family that made clear they were superior to any house-elf.

"It'll be fine, Silvi. There's nothing to worry about. This is what he would've expected of me."

Honestly, that old elf worried too much.

"But does it truly need to be done now, Young Master? The Old Master has only just passed away… it is not right for Young Master to be troubling himself so soon. He would not want that! And Young Master has not even finished school yet, no?"

Her voice wavered as she hurried to keep up.

What does she mean by " just passed away? Finally! That old ass took his bloody time. What exactly was she so worried about? Did house-elves really live in that much denial?

As if that old bastard had ever cared about me.

My grandfather hated me. If he could've gotten rid of me, he would have — long ago. After all, how could a near-Squib with pathetic magic reserves ever be worthy of inheriting the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Lestrange?

And that feeling? It was mutual.

If my Hogwarts letter had never arrived, I wouldn't be alive right now. He made sure I knew that. The Lestranges weren't the type to quietly dump their Squibs into the Muggle world and forget about them. No — they finished the job. A half-blood Lestrange would already be a stain on the family name. A Squib was simply unacceptable. If I hadn't shown even the faintest trace of magic, I'd be dead. Simple as that.

Honestly, he would've let the entire house die out before allowing someone like that to inherit it.

And yet — here I was.

With my parents and uncle locked away in Azkaban after blindly following Lord Voldemort, and every other branch of the family wiped out during the war, I was the last option. The only option.

Lucky me.

Kind of ironic, when you thought about it. To him, the rest of the family had been just as disappointing as I was — if not more. My only sin was being born weak. They had willingly thrown everything away to follow a half-blood son of a near Squib — someone my grandfather looked down on — straight into prison.

He had actually known Voldemort. Or rather — Tom Marvolo Riddle. Back in their school days, he'd been part of that inner circle. "Friends," Voldemort called them, though followers would've been more accurate.

Riddle didn't have friends. Back then, they called themselves the Knights of Walpurgis — a school club, of all things — and somehow, that little group had grown into a terrorist organization powerful enough to threaten all of Britain.

Even the name "Lord Voldemort" was just something he'd invented: a dramatic anagram of his own full name. An edgy schoolboy turned into a villain.

How did I know all of that?

Dark magic takes its toll. If you don't lose your mind chasing a twisted version of immortality, your body eventually gives out especially if it gets a bit accelerated. My grandfather must have felt death creeping up on him — given how often he'd needed a Healer these past few years — and decided to transfer every secret he had to his only heir before he went. His way of strengthening and preserving the family.

Not that it mattered. I already knew most of it.

Sure, knowing who had cursed or poisoned whom in the past or having some blackmail was useful. But the larger secrets were nothing new to me. Perks of growing up with the real Harry Potter books — and I don't mean those ridiculous in-universe children's stories where Harry rides dragons and rescues princesses. I mean the originals. The ones written by J.K. Rowling.

That's right. I'm a reincarnator.

Reborn into the wizarding world — or something very closely based on it.

At first, it had been exciting. Ending up in one of my favourite fictional settings felt like a gift. That excitement didn't last long. Not after I realized who I was.

My name is Corvus Lestrange, and I am the son of Bellatrix Lestrange and Rodolphus Lestrange. Two infamous Death Eaters. Members of Voldemort's inner circle. Complete psychopaths.

That had put a bit of a damper on things.

Not because they were evil. Not because they were blood purists or dark wizards — I could work with that. The dark side has its perks. Technically, it wasn't even because they were Death Eaters.

No. That wasn't my problem.

Truthfully, I wouldn't describe myself as a particularly good person. Though I'd argue that just makes me human. I want things — power, wealth, comfort, safety. And I'm willing to do what it takes to improve my position. The only real difference between most people and me? I'm honest about it. Especially to myself.

In my previous life, I wasn't one of those people who envied billionaires while pretending some perfect system would magically fix everything — the type who barely paid any taxes but expected free social care funded by everyone else.

I worked hard every single day, and I expected my taxes to go toward keeping society running, not subsidizing parasites. You can lie to the world all you want. Lying to yourself, though? That's just pathetic.

So yes — being reborn into a wealthy, influential, powerful family was a relief. Being born poor, or somewhere miserable, would've been its own kind of hell. And I had zero intention of squandering what I'd been given. If anything, I intended to build on it.

What actually bothered me about my identity wasn't the wealth, the status, or even the dark reputation.

It was my parents' fanaticism. The way they acted as Death Eaters. That blind, feverish devotion. For once, my grandfather and I had actually agreed on something. My parents didn't just follow Lord Voldemort — they worshipped him. They let themselves be branded like cattle and threw everything away for their so-called master.

My grandfather, by contrast, was smarter. Sure, he supported the pureblood agenda — but he treated Voldemort's rise as an opportunity, not a calling. Push favorable laws. Buy up property during the chaos of war. Crush business rivals while the Ministry was too distracted to notice. He didn't fight in the war. He invested in it, and he profited.

My parents? They lost everything. Gave up their freedom, their future — everything — for a half-blood Dark Lord who wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice them the moment it suited him. And where did that loyalty get them? Locked away in Azkaban. The worst prison in the wizarding world. The worst prison I can think of. All for someone who would discard them without a second thought.

Realising who my parents were — and that they would eventually escape — that had been my first real headache. The first problem I knew with certainty was coming for me. I had almost no memories of them; even with an adult mind, early childhood had been a strange, blurry haze.

The second problem appeared a few years after my birth, once I truly got control of my body and discovered just how weak my magic was.

Like any sensible reincarnator, I had tried to get a head start. Train early. Build strength before anyone else. Trying to control my accidental Magic and everything else you read in fanfiction.

That hadn't gone as planned. I wasn't a Squib — but for a while, that possibility had been very real. My grandfather certainly treated me as one. He pushed me to the brink, trying to force my magic out. The only reason he stopped before going too far was that I was the last heir he had, and I hadn't proven myself a Squib yet. I haven’t missed my Hogwarts Letter yet.

Even so, turns out my magic reserves were small. Pathetically small. A single Stunning Spell was enough to leave me needing a break, and it wasn't just quantity. The quality was lacking, too. My spells hit weakly, inconsistently. Instead of practicing advanced techniques, I spent most of my time trying to understand why.

At one point, I'd wondered if it had something to do with my past life. I was a Muggle before, after all. Most theories hold that magic comes from the soul — if that were true, then my soul should still be the same: an ordinary non-magical human soul, reborn into a wizard's body.

But that didn't fully add up. I had some magic. So perhaps it was more complicated. Perhaps magic came from both the soul and the body, and I had only inherited half of it. That would explain the weakness. After years of research, though, I still had no real answer.

Weak magic was still enough for my grandfather to let me live. What a loving family. If anything, it just made him push harder during our "lessons."

As a pureblood heir, early education at home is tradition — and there's plenty you can learn without touching a wand. Herbology. Potions. Magical Theory. Occlumency, thankfully, is unaffected by small reserves. And, of course, resisting the Unforgivables. Yes, plural.

The Imperius Curse was the obvious one — learning to resist mind control is simply good practice, especially alongside Occlumency. But my grandfather had a particular fondness for the Cruciatus. Or rather, for teaching me not to react to it. "Pain is temporary. Hesitation is death." That was his logic: if an enemy cast it during a duel, freezing up would get you killed. So naturally, the solution was to make certain I didn't freeze. It had absolutely nothing to do with him venting his frustrations about my weak magic. Obviously.

On a completely unrelated note — did you know that most poison detection charms only work on magical poisons? Even the more advanced ones only react to strong non-magical poisons. Not the subtle, slow-acting compounds from the non-magical world you can discover in everyday household products.

The kind whose packaging advises consuming only in limited quantities or warns against consumption at all. Especially those that build up quietly over time, gradually destroying organ function from the inside.

It makes sense, I suppose. In the Muggle world, truly deadly poisons are heavily regulated. Hard to get hold of without raising flags.

In the end, my grandfather died after spending a year slowly wasting away from some unidentifiable illness. His body failed one organ at a time, and the Healers never managed to identify the cause, no matter how many times they tried.

Turns out even magic has its limits. At a certain point, the body simply stops keeping up — cells can only regenerate so many times before they don't anymore. The same scientific effect that makes our body fail at old age just accelerated through magical healing. A rather mundane way to go, really.

Which left me as the new Head of House Lestrange.

The good news: I was already considered of age, even without completing my O.W.L.s yet.

Which brought me to the first thing that had tipped me off that this world wasn't quite what the books described — Hogwarts started later here. Apparently, someone had eventually concluded that letting eleven-year-olds run loose with what amounted to highly versatile reality-altering weapons wasn't the brightest idea, so the starting age had been raised a few decades back. Honestly? Fair. I could see that.

Still, it worked out perfectly for me.

I was free. No assigned magical guardian controlling my every move, with my fanatical parents behind bars, and no, my controlling and cruel grandfather is gone. I couldn't legally use magic outside of school quite yet, but that was temporary. Finish my O.W.L.s, and that restriction vanished. Not that it mattered under the Wards at Lestrange Manor. As for everything else, I was already a Pureblood Lord.

And as that Lord, I'd been seriously considering moving my assets out of the country. Perhaps transferring schools entirely. Because in a few months, Lord Voldemort was coming back — assuming the timeline hadn't shifted — and I had zero interest in being present for that. No interest in meeting my parents. No interest in joining the Death Eaters. No interest in playing the hero, either.

Let's be honest. I was a background character, and a weak one at that. No matter which side I chose, I'd end up a disposable pawn. My parents' place in Voldemort's inner circle wouldn't protect me — if anything, it painted a target on my back. And with magic this weak, I'd be seen as a liability at best.

The obvious answer was simple: leave. Stay out of it. Go live my life somewhere far away from a war that had nothing to offer me.

Unfortunately, there was a problem. A significant one.

I had just returned from Gringotts after handling my inheritance. The Lestrange vault was, as expected, extraordinary — gold, artifacts, potions, rare materials, family heirlooms. Enough wealth to live ten comfortable lifetimes. And yet, in all my planning, I had managed to forget one very important item sitting inside it.

Helga Hufflepuff's Cup. One of Voldemort's Horcruxes.

So much for a clean exit.

Because now I was caught in a lose-lose situation. Take the Cup with me, and I'd be hunted by my parents, possibly by Voldemort himself. Leave it behind, and they'd still come for me, if only to determine what I knew and why I'd left it. I wasn't delusional enough to think I could simply disappear while moving that kind of wealth around. Money leaves trails.

Which meant my only real option — if I wanted to keep both the Cup and my head — was to be strong enough to defend them. Which I was not. And I didn't see how that would change in any meaningful way before the timeline caught up with me.

As much as I hated the idea, the most sensible approach was probably to move only a portion of my assets. Enough to live comfortably elsewhere. Leave the rest until Voldemort and his followers are dealt with. From the outside, it would look like nothing more than a wealthy young lord enjoying life while wisely keeping his distance from a war. Nothing suspicious.

Even that carried risks, of course. The Ministry might confiscate everything in the aftermath. My parents might decide I owed them my allegiance. And I couldn't predict how either of them would react to my absence — I wasn't even supposed to exist, as far as anyone in their circles knew.

Occlumency was one of my few genuine strengths, thankfully. Mind arts didn't require large reserves, and I'd trained hard. But against Voldemort himself? If he ever got into my head, it was over. There was no scenario where that ended well. It will doom the entire Wizarding World, not just me.

Still, I had time. At least until the end of summer, before I had to return to Howarts, likely longer. Until my parents were broken out of Azkaban. And I am not even sure if the events will happen the same as in the books. They did roughly, with some changes here and there. But that didn’t make it a fixed thing. I existed for several years; the butterfly effect is real.

And this World changed decades ago from the timeline of the Books. Although it still remained remarkably similar in certain areas while being the complete opposite in others.

Anyways right now, my focus was elsewhere.

Among the items passed down with the Lestrange vault, the properties, and the title was a letter — written by my grandfather to the next Lord Lestrange — containing a set of instructions for the incoming Head of House. Most of it was exactly what I'd expected.

Preserve and strengthen the family. Expand our influence. Continue the bloodline.

He'd apparently already begun inquiries into potential engagements on my behalf, leaving behind a tidy collection of offers I would now need to sort through. Marriage contracts — because apparently that was still a thing among older families, and ignoring them outright would be considered an insult.

Pureblood politics. What a headache.

But none of that was what had actually caught my attention.

I had expected all of that. No — it was the third duty. One I had never heard of before. Not once in this life had my grandfather mentioned it, and it appeared nowhere in the original books either. Whatever this was, it had been kept entirely secret.

I stopped in front of the polished double doors leading to the family library, then glanced back at Silvi.

"Leave me. I'll be fine."

"Is Master quite certain, yes? There are very bad books in there, there are!" she whimpered.

I gave her a firm look. That was enough. She flinched — and vanished without another word.

That oversensitive old elf. If I could have found a replacement, I would have retired her long ago. But house-elves were expensive and increasingly rare these days; decades of abuse and casual cruelty had driven the mortality rate among Dark family servants to something quietly catastrophic. Most families no longer parted with theirs, and the institutions that had them in abundance — Hogwarts, for instance — wouldn't sell to a family with our reputation.

And I don’t like house-elves that much.

Entering the library, I walked past row after row of towering shelves, each packed with texts of every variety imaginable, until I reached another set of doors deeper inside.

The Lestrange library was massive — easily comparable to Hogwarts' own collection. But unlike the school library, this place held far more interesting material. Books you wouldn't find in Diagon Alley, or only behind the Restricted Section rope. Over the decades, the Ministry had banned, confiscated, and heavily restricted countless topics, effectively erasing entire branches of magic from public access — but they could only control the trade. Private libraries like this one were another matter entirely. Which was exactly why I'd spent so much time here growing up. Knowledge is power, and if I lacked raw magical strength, I'd simply have to compensate in other ways.

There was, however, one part of the library I had never been permitted to enter.

The Lestrange Restricted Section — our own private equivalent. Accessible only to the Head of House or those they personally permitted. Beyond advanced magic, rare texts, and Dark Arts volumes that some couldn’t even be found in the Hogwarts restricted section, it held what could only be called the true treasures: private records left behind by my ancestors. Their personal research. Their discoveries. The things they never shared with the outside world. Most could be classified broadly under the term family magic.

But behind that door, there was supposed to be hidden a different form of family magic. Not merely techniques or formulas kept secret from the public, but something older.

Something passed down through the blood itself.

The only examples I could think of were things like Parseltongue running through Slytherin's line, or the Blacks occasionally producing Metamorphmagi. Maybe Luna Lovegood with how she sees the world even if that is more a theory.

But Lestrange? Nothing. No mention in my memories. No mention in the family records I had already reviewed in the normal library I was allowed to enter — and I read through a large part of it. The private journals passed down through generations were silent on the matter.

I raised my hand slightly, glancing at the ring now seated on my finger — the Lordship Ring of House Lestrange, fitting as though it had always belonged there. I felt the wards stir and respond. Then, with a soft click, the doors ahead of me slowly opened.

The sight inside was impressive, I had to admit. If the outer library matched Hogwarts in scale, then this room exceeded it — and I knew exactly what the Hogwarts Restricted Section looked like, having procured access in third year via a permission slip signed cheerfully and unread by one Gilderoy Lockhart, who would apparently autograph anything placed in front of him. A useful man, in his own way.

The nearer shelves held titles I half-recognized — the more accessible tier of restricted material, most likely. But further in, the books grew unfamiliar. And probably more dangerous.

That was a project for another time. I wasn't suicidal, and Silvi was undoubtedly hovering just outside the door, convinced I was already neck-deep in a lethal dark ritual.

My goal today was simpler: the third duty.

At the far end of the room stood a single wall — bare stone, completely unadorned. No shelves. No decoration. Just an empty, flat surface, unlike anything else in the manor. According to my grandfather's letter, it wasn't a wall at all.

It was an entrance. A sealed chamber or something similar. One that could only be opened by a Lestrange capable of inheriting the family magic. Every Head of House had been required to attempt it, and apparently, no one had succeeded in nearly five hundred years.

That sounded promising.

Since it was never mentioned in the Harry Potter books, I doubted either my father or my uncle had ever unlocked it. I didn't even know what the Lestrange family magic was — only that it was supposedly powerful. Details were nonexistent. I wasn't certain my grandfather had known either.

For a brief moment, I was tempted to simply blast the wall apart and see what happened. But this was an ancient pureblood family. There was no way something like this came without serious protections, and I wasn't stupid enough to test that unprepared. Not that I had the firepower to blast anything apart.

So instead, I followed the letter's instructions.

Pulling the dagger I prepared from my robes, I paused for half a second, then sliced open my palm. I pressed my bleeding hand flat against the center of the wall.

Nothing happened.

I stood there and bled. Like an idiot.

Was this some kind of final joke from the old bastard? Had he really made me come all the way down here, cut my hand open, and press it against a stone wall — just for nothing?

Because if so, that was spectacularly cruel, even by his standards. Explicitly telling me to cut deep to spill enough blood.

Then, a faint prickling sensation spread from my palm. The pain evaporated. And the wall moved.

It rippled like a disturbed reflection, the solid stone surface distorting and shifting as though it had liquefied. Within seconds, it reshaped itself entirely — the flat grey expanse curving and flowing into a beautiful black archway, deep and perfect. Beyond it stood a heavy wooden door. Old. Far older than anything else in the manor, by the look of it.

That was not the reaction of being rejected described in the Letter.

Fortunately for my grandfather's grave, it wasn't.