Bryan lay sprawled across the dining table in seemingly complete unconsciousness, pillowing his head on his own folded arm in what appeared to be an uncomfortable position. He snored softly like someone sleeping soundly, completely oblivious to any danger.
To all presences, he was completely unaware of the wand now pointed at his vulnerable, exposed neck.
The disguised intruder flicked his wand with a rapid motion.
Whoosh!
With a sound like rushing air, the bag that had been tucked in Bryan's loose embrace suddenly flew out as if yanked by invisible strings. It sailed through the air in a smooth arc and landed perfectly in the intruder's waiting palm.
"Fang, come forth!"
The fake waiter commanded, aiming his wand at the tightly fastened bag opening. His voice had a tone of urgency now that success seemed within reach. However, his spell designed to summon the specific object he sought failed to retrieve the fang as intended.
Instead, it triggered something unexpected.
A sudden burst of silver light exploded out from the bag's opening like a bomb detonating.
CRACK!
The tremendous force of the defensive magic struck the intruder like an invisible battering ram. He was sent flying backward through the air like a shot put thrown by a giant.
Yet mid-flight, demonstrating physical capabilities and agility that absolutely no normal wizard would possess, he adjusted his position in the air with impossible grace. His legs bent, his core was twisted, and his feet found the wall surface just before impact.
Rather than crashing, he used the wall like a springboard. His feet tapped lightly against the solid surface and he slid gracefully back down to the ground in a controlled fall.
But the defensive magic had exacted its price.
The hand that had been gripping the space bag when the protective charm activated, his left hand was now trembling slightly and was torn open by numerous vicious wounds from that silver flash of power.
The cuts were deep, some of them reaching all the way down to expose white bone beneath the torn flesh and muscle. Blood flowed from the multiple slashes like water from a broken dam.
Yet the intruder showed absolutely no visible signs of pain. His face remained cold and focused. He simply stared down at his injured left hand with detachment, as if it belonged to someone else.
Then something impossible happened.
The blood that had fallen to the ground suddenly reversed course like time itself flowing backward.
In merely a dozen breaths, perhaps fifteen seconds at most, the wounds had completely healed. His hand was whole again, unmarked, as if it had never been injured at all.
Tap, tap, tap—
The intruder approached Bryan again, but this time with more caution. His eyes were constantly scanning for any signs of additional protective measures. He carefully observed all three unconscious figures, checking the rise and fall of their chests, looking for any indication that the disturbance might have awakened them.
Finding no signs of awakening, he breathed a careful sigh of relief.
Bryan's enchanted bag lay on the ground, emanating a faint silver glow. Clearly, its defensive magic had been activated. Touching it now would not be a wise move.
After a moment's hesitation, the Muggle waiter raised his head to look at Bryan again. Pondering, he pointed his wand at him, and one of the sleeping Bryan's hands was pulled out and laid straight on the table.
The space bag on the ground floated up slowly under his control, and the moment it fell into Bryan's palm, the defensive magic's glow immediately extinguished.
The Muggle waiter controlled Bryan's hand to untie the bag's string, then made Bryan hold the bag upside down and shake it. The contents immediately poured out like rain falling from the sky.
After more than a dozen leather-bound magic books of various sizes and subjects, and dozens of gold Galleons that rolled and spun across the table with musical tinkling sounds, a single distinctive object finally emerged from the bag's depths.
A fang, smooth, lustrous, curved like a crescent moon clattered onto the table surface with a sound like bone striking wood.
The instant he saw the fang, intense joy made the Muggle waiter's breath catch. He instinctively reached for it, but his hand stopped abruptly mid-motion, his expression suddenly became hesitant. After pondering for a moment, his wand pointed at Bryan's hand again, making that hand reach for the fang—
Just as he had anticipated, the fang had indeed been tampered with by Bryan. When Bryan's palm made contact with the fang, a ghostly light flashed across his palm, then fell silent.
His palm opened, and the white fang lay quietly in Bryan's palm. The Muggle waiter observed carefully for a while, then gently prodded the fang with his wand. Everything was normal—no anomalies appeared. The protective magic on it seemed to have vanished.
Snatching up the fang, the Muggle waiter whose face had somehow changed to a different appearance revealed frenzied delight in his crimson, sinister eyes. Clutching the fang tightly, he turned to leave, but taking only a few quick steps, he paused and turned back.
He couldn't leave obvious evidence of theft. That would alert Bryan immediately upon awakening.
His wand moved in a series of gestures, pointing at the scattered galleons and books that lay scattered across the ground and table in disorganized chaos. Under his magic, they began moving of their own accord, floating up and returning to Bryan's space bag, re-entering the enchanted storage space one by one until the room looked undisturbed.
Then, as he prepared to complete the deception, a flash of malicious inspiration appeared across his inhuman eyes. A cruel smile twisted his face. He reached up to his own mouth and deliberately opened it wide, revealing teeth that were far too sharp and pointed to be human—
"Mmph!"
Extreme, shocking pain suddenly flashed through the vampire's crimson eyes, making them water. The agony of tearing out one of his own fangs, even for someone with supernatural regeneration was obviously significant.
He covered his mouth with one hand, gasping deeply through his nose, his entire body went rigid with the trauma of the injury.
Blood filled his mouth, but he forced himself to continue. After using wandwork and transfiguration magic to modify his own freshly extracted poisonous fang, he reshaped it, resized it, and altered its appearance to make it perfectly identical to the one he had just stolen from Bryan's bag.
He made the fake fang fly through the air with a flick of his wand. The fake fang sailed across the room and disappeared into Bryan's space bag, replacing the object he'd taken.
The enchanted bag then floated back to Bryan's body and settled once more in his loose embrace, returning to its original position as if it had never been disturbed.
After carefully checking everything one final time, the vampire moved toward the door with quick, silent steps. He pulled it open, slipped through, and closed it behind him with a quiet click that seemed unnaturally loud in the silent room.
"Heh heh—"
In the room now empty of threat, in the quiet space that had been left undisturbed, a soft chuckle rang out.
Bryan, who had been "sleeping soundly" throughout the entire intrusion, who had appeared completely unconscious and vulnerable, sat up without making a single sound of movement.
His sharp gaze followed something invisible to normal eyes: the magical outline of the vampire's aura as it moved rapidly through the hotel.
He tracked the intruder's progress as they reached the elevator, ascended to the top floor with supernatural speed, abandoned the food cart they no longer needed, and then Disapparated from the roof with a crack of displaced air.
Only when that magical signature had completely vanished from his sensing range did Bryan withdraw his attention and return it to the hotel room. He reached into his coat and pulled out his bag.
With a casual crook of his finger, the inferior counterfeit fang that the vampire had left behind flew out from the fake bag and clattered onto the table with a sound like dice rolling.
Glancing at the sleeping Amelia and Sirius, Bryan crooked his finger again, and a small glass vial containing purple liquid floated out.
The cork popped open, and Bryan first guided the vial beneath Amelia's nostrils. As the purple liquid in the vial vaporized into several wisps of purple smoke that entered her nostrils, Amelia's relaxed brow immediately began to furrow as the antidote took effect.
Using the same method, Bryan had Sirius inhale the purple smoke as well.
About ten seconds later, both their bodies began to twitch slightly, and then—
"Damn it!"
Suddenly, Sirius leapt up from the ground, drawing his wand and scanning the area with fierce eyes. Amelia also wore an icy expression, her teeth clenched, gripping her wand tightly.
"No need to be so tense—the danger has already passed," Bryan said with perfect calmness, as if discussing the weather rather than a recent attack.
"Oh, Bryan, you're alright? You're conscious?"
Sirius finally noticed Bryan's condition, sitting upright, clearly awake and aware, showing no signs of the drug that should have kept him unconscious.
Relief flooded his face, quickly followed by confusion. He frowned deeply, his brow furrowing as he tried to piece together what had happened.
"What exactly just occurred? Were we ambushed while we were eating? That wine—was it poisoned? That waiter who served us, was he actually a wizard in disguise?!"
The questions tumbled out rapidly, as Sirius's mind worked to fill in the gaps in his memory between taking that last sip of wine and waking up on the floor.
"It was Draught of Living Death, added to the red wine during the decanting process," Bryan explained unemotionally.
"A very potent version, actually. The dosage was probably calculated to keep all three of us sleeping soundly until tomorrow evening at the earliest. Quite a large amount for three people."
He paused, then continued with a smile.
"As for that Muggle waiter who escorted you in when you first arrived... the first time, he was indeed a genuine Muggle employee of this hotel. But the one who delivered our meal later, who performed that wine service that was someone else."
"Who exactly was that person—"
Amelia started to ask, but halfway through her sentence, she froze completely. Her voice died in her throat as her eyes fell on the object lying on the table between them.
The fang—she recognized immediately.
It was the same one that had unleashed incredible destructive power that night, the one that had absorbed and devoured an entire sea of blood when she and Bryan had gone to meet Haruto Lee at his invitation.
With sudden, crystal clarity, Amelia exclaimed with certainty, "It was a vampire! The intruder was one of those vampires. They came to steal this fang!"
Sirius, who had already heard the full story about the vampire conspiracy during the long briefing in Dumbledore's office, nodded in understanding. His own gaze also fell on the fang.
"So... you've already taken care of the problem? Dealt with the vampire?" he asked.
"Oh, not quite in the way you're imagining—"
Bryan lifted his hand with a casual gesture and removed the illusion charm that had been concealing the fang's true nature. He was smiling slightly.
"I was awake the entire time. I pretended to pass out just like you both, and then I deliberately let the vampire take my fang. Meanwhile, this one—" he gestured to the fang on the table, "—is actually the vampire's own fang that it physically tore from its own mouth."
Bryan's smile widened at the memory.
"It pulled out its own fang and used transfiguration to disguise it as mine, intending to place it in my bag so I wouldn't immediately notice anything amiss when I checked my belongings. Quite clever, really. Naively adorable in its assumption."
"But why would you do that?" Amelia asked, while Sirius looked equally puzzled.
Bryan's gaze lowered, smiling faintly. He didn't immediately answer the question.
By this point, the truth behind everything had unfolded before Bryan. All that remained was the conclusion.
"Because I want to see exactly who's been giving orders to these vampires," Bryan finally said.
He snapped his fingers with a sharp crack. The fang on the table immediately levitated and vibrated rapidly. Finally, after a flash of ghostly blue light, it became still. Bryan made the fang float before Sirius.
"I've already placed a tracking charm on the fang that was taken. As long as you follow this one, you can find the mastermind. I believe my wand is also in that person's hands. Sirius... and Amelia, I'm entrusting this fang to you both. Can you help me find it?"
"Of course!" Sirius said without hesitation. "That's exactly why I came here."
With that, he looked at Amelia, and the girl across the table nodded decisively as well.
Sirius clasped the fang in his palm. After spinning a few times, the fang's tip immediately pointed in a specific direction. He was about to set off when something suddenly occurred to him. Looking at Bryan with some confusion, he asked, "Aren't you coming with us, Bryan?"
"Oh, you know—" Bryan smiled. "I'm currently being monitored by the Aurors from the Security Department."
"If you wanted to leave, Bryan, those fellows couldn't possibly keep an eye on you—" Sirius raised his eyebrows. "Unless you have some other plan."
"If you're asking about my plan—" Bryan leaned back in his chair, fingers interlaced, his expression carrying a leisurely smile. "My plan is quite simple. I'll stay right here and wait for the MACUSA to apologize to me."
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