Due to the incident the last night, many employees at the MACUSA had become understandably cautious, even paranoid. The sense of security that had permeated the building for decades had been shattered in a single night.
The wizards originally responsible for the night shift had collectively requested emergency leave, citing everything from family emergencies to sudden illness. In reality, most simply didn't want to be here in the dark hours when danger had already struck once.
Management had granted these requests with little argument, knowing that terrified employees made poor guards.
As a result, aside from some grim-faced Strikers standing guard duty at key locations and conducting patrol routes with tension in their faces, there were hardly any people to be seen in the entrance hall.
Amelia led the massive black dog that was Sirius toward the elevator. As she approached the elevator lobby, she suddenly rushed with surprising speed behind one of the massive marble pillars.
Pressing her back against the cold stone, she carefully peered around the edge to scan the area. After confirming with relief that no one had noticed her unusual, suspicious behavior, she gestured quickly for Sirius to resume his human form.
Sirius straightened up, brushing dog hair from his robes with automatic gestures while staying in the pillar's shadow.
"You're saying that vampire is actually downstairs? Underground?" Amelia asked in a hushed voice, her tone filled with surprise and growing unease.
Sirius didn't answer immediately. Instead, he first opened his palm, allowing Amelia to clearly see the fang resting there. The fang stood perfectly upright in his hand as if defying gravity, its sharp tip pointing straight toward the ground beneath their feet.
"What exactly is down below us?" Sirius asked.
"The execution chamber, for one thing—"
Amelia's expression showed both confusion about the vampire's motives and worry about what they might be walking into. Her brow furrowed deeply as she tried to puzzle out the logic.
"And the detention rooms, obviously. You know how it works—before criminals are officially sentenced by the council, before they face trial or punishment, the Security Department's Aurors need a quiet, secure place to interrogate the suspects and criminals they've captured."
She swallowed hard.
"The underground levels are the most suitable location for such work. They're isolated, soundproofed, reinforced. But here's the problem that's confusing me: the security down there is extremely tight. There are numerous Strikers specifically assigned to guard those levels, plus some of the most powerful protective enchantments in the entire building. Anti-Apparition wards, detection charms, defensive barriers."
Amelia shook her head, looking genuinely puzzled.
"Only those who know the correct access methods and proper authorization codes can bypass those enchantments without triggering alarms. I cannot understand why that vampire would voluntarily walk into what amounts to a trap. And how did he infiltrate such a secure area? He certainly couldn't have forced his way in!"
"He's wearing your superior's face, isn't he?"
Sirius said calmly. "I'm guessing Polyjuice Potion—that's the only explanation that makes sense. Only that could accomplish this level of deception. Ordinary human transfiguration, even performed by a master, can't fool Probity Probes and Secrecy Sensors."
'Polyjuice Potion?'
Amelia bit her lower lip hard, processing this disturbing possibility.
Yes, that was indeed plausible—more than plausible, it was the most likely explanation. But behind this seemingly simple solution lay a far more disturbing implication, a fact that made her stomach churn with horror.
For Polyjuice Potion to work, the vampire must have obtained biological material from Graves himself. Which meant the creature had been close enough to Graves to take samples.
Close enough to touch him and close enough to do far worse things.
"How exactly are we supposed to get downstairs to those detention levels?"
Seeing Amelia's silence stretching uncomfortably long as she wrestled with the thoughts, Sirius asked with rising anxiety obvious in his tone. "We need to figure out what this despicable dark creature is trying to accomplish down there, don't we?
Can we simply take the elevator down? If Polyjuice Potion can successfully fool all the security measures protecting the underground levels, then there's no reason Animagus transformation shouldn't work equally well for me."
"The elevator doesn't go down there; there's no connection at all."
Amelia shook her head definitely, her expression grim. "As far as I know from the briefings I received when I joined the Security Department, both the execution chamber and the detention rooms are located deep underground, far beneath the foundations of this building.
When they were originally constructed back when MACUSA first established headquarters here, security concerns meant absolutely no direct passages were built connecting the underground levels to the Woolworth Building."
She continued with the explanation.
"The detention levels are completely isolated by design. If Aurors or authorized personnel want to enter those areas, they can only use Portkeys."
"That sounds disturbingly similar to Azkaban's security philosophy," Sirius said with a slight grimace.
"I suppose these Portkeys aren't kept somewhere accessible where we could just steal one?"
"The location where the authorized Portkeys are kept is classified at the highest level, known only to senior leadership and those with absolute need-to-know clearance," Amelia explained with frustration obvious in her voice.
"And for additional security, that location changes frequently on an unpredictable schedule. Of course, the hiding places are all somewhere within this building, they're absolutely not allowed to be taken outside.
But we can't possibly find them quickly enough to be useful."
"Which means—"
Sirius narrowed his gray eyes. "There must be a second way to access the underground levels?"
"Exactly."
Amelia nodded slightly. "Besides the Portkey system, I've heard that the fireplace in Graves's personal office can also connect directly to the detention levels."
In other words, if they wanted to reach the underground detention levels and discover what the vampire was doing there, they would have to break into the office of the Director of Magical Security at the Magical Congress of the United States of America.
Sirius looked at Amelia with hesitation, studying her face carefully. It wasn't that he personally lacked courage for such a mission—he'd broken into far more dangerous places during his years as an Auror and certainly during his time as a fugitive. But he was genuinely worried whether Amelia could overcome the psychological barrier.
After all, entering a superior's office without permission was an extremely serious offense in any bureaucratic organization. If they were discovered, Amelia's entire career at MACUSA would be finished.
She'd be fired at minimum, possibly face criminal charges for unauthorized access to restricted areas.
"Let's go, we're wasting time standing here."
But to Sirius's surprise, Amelia didn't hesitate or agonize over the decision for more than a second or two. She said with remarkable calmness and resolve,
"Since we don't know where the Portkeys to the underground are currently hidden, we can reasonably presume that vampire doesn't know their location either. So, he could only have used the fireplace in Graves's office to access the detention levels."
Her voice grew harder, more certain.
"I think if he had the sheer audacity to impersonate Graves and walk right into MACUSA headquarters through the front entrance, past all our security, he must have already confirmed that the real Graves isn't currently in the building. More than that, more likely Graves has already fallen into his hands."
One human and one dog, boarded the elevator with tense anticipation. After probably only thirty seconds, accompanied by a crisp, musical chime, the doors slid open.
Amelia and Sirius appeared onto the floor where the Security Department maintained its offices and operational spaces.
The corridors and office areas here were actually even quieter than the other floors they'd passed. Under normal circumstances, dark wizards who had committed crimes would want to stay as far away from concentrations of Aurors as possible. There had never been a precedent of criminals voluntarily showing up.
Therefore, recognizing that this floor was at low risk of attack, all available personnel had been strategically dispatched elsewhere, sent to various other floors for coordinated defense, or assigned to maintain surveillance on Bryan Watson's hotel location, or positioned at key entry points throughout the building.
The vast floor stretched in front of them in darkness. Only the Director's office at the far end of the long corridor still showed light, standing out like a beacon in the surrounding gloom.
Pressing her lips together in a thin line of determination, Amelia worked to steady her erratic breathing. Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel her pulse in her throat, but she forced herself to move forward.
After a moment's additional hesitation, weighing the options, Sirius decided not to resume his human form. In his current dog state, he still possessed considerable combat capability.
If a fight broke out unexpectedly, if they were ambushed, he could still be of help. On the other hand, if someone recognized who he was in human form that would create a much bigger problem than they could handle. The entire building would go into lockdown.
They reached the office door. There were no shadowy figures moving in the interior visible through the glass. The office appeared empty. And critically, the door stood slightly agape, perhaps an inch or two of dark gap, as if someone had left in a hurry without bothering to close it properly.
Amelia approached cautiously and reached out to check the door handle with fingers, searching for the tingle of active magic. She discovered that the defensive spells that should have been layered over the entrance had not been breached or disabled.
What this implied filled her with deep worry and dread.
Most likely, based on all the evidence they'd gathered, Graves had already been kidnapped by these vampires. She didn't know how these creatures had the audacity to target someone so powerful, or possessed the ability to accomplish such a feat, but given the current situation, this seemed the most probable and horrifying truth.
As this grim realization appeared in her mind, confirming her worst fears, a lightning bolt of understanding suddenly flashed through Amelia's consciousness.
"I know why that vampire went to the detention levels!" Amelia blurted out, her voice rising with alarm.
"Woof woof!"
Sirius gave two low, urgent whimpers and pawed insistently at Amelia's leg, demanding explanation.
"Oh, no time to explain, we have to move now!"
Amelia suddenly became frantic with urgency. Without further concern for stealth, she pushed open the office door and rushed inside.
Her sharp gaze swept the spacious room in a rapid circle, taking in every detail in seconds. The office was indeed empty of human presence but a small fire was burning steadily in the fireplace set into the far wall.
Amelia rushed across to the fireplace. She grabbed a generous handful of Floo powder from the marble mantelpiece and threw the shimmering particles into the flames with a decisive gesture.
The fire immediately exploded into green, roaring higher and wider, ready to transport travelers. Then, reaching down with her free hand to grab Sirius's perked-up ear, she called out clearly and forcefully.
"Detention rooms!"
After a dizzying spin, the two had already appeared in the depths beneath the MACUSA building.
Before them stretched a silvery-white space. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all made of cold silvery-white metal that looked impregnable.
Moving cautiously around the room containing the fireplace, they discovered that wide corridors extended in all directions. At the end of each visible corridor, several additional identical passages branched off toward unknown destinations deeper in the complex.
The layout was deliberately disorienting, designed to confuse intruders. Anyone who ventured into this maze recklessly without proper guidance or a map would surely lose their way within minutes.
"Point me!"
Amelia placed her wand in her palm and recited the spell. However, her wand began spinning like a top in her palm, unable to provide a clear direction. Sirius also tossed the fang onto the hard floor, but the result was the same as Amelia's wand.
"There are very powerful interference enchantments throughout this entire area," Amelia said with a solemn, worried expression, picking up her still-spinning wand.
She wasn't genuinely surprised by this result, such countermeasures made sense for a high-security detention facility. You didn't want prisoners or their allies using tracking spells or navigation charms to map the complex or locate specific cells. But it did complicate their mission considerably.
Anxiously glancing around the eerily empty space, Amelia noted with alarm that the underground prison showed absolutely no signs of patrolling guards.
Everyone seemed to have simply vanished, as if the entire staff had abandoned their posts simultaneously.
This situation was obviously abnormal. Where had they all gone?
After a moment's thought, considering their limited options, Amelia pointed her wand at the metal floor beneath their feet and tried a different spell.
"Revelio Vestigia!" She commanded, casting a charm designed to reveal recent traces of magical passage.
After a breeze drifted by, the underground space returned to stillness once more.
Amelia's brow furrowed deeply. She considered whether they should just stay hidden by the fireplace, since the vampire impersonating the Director of Security would eventually have to return upstairs through the fireplace. But suddenly—
Sirius's perked-up ears and nostrils all twitched, and he shot like an arrow into one of the passages.
"Woof!"
Sirius barked lowly, calling for the momentarily dazed Amelia to follow him immediately.
One human and one dog ran frantically through the mirror-like passages. Unexpectedly, they burst into a corridor where a curtain of water hung from the ceiling. The slippery floor prevented Sirius from stopping in time. After passing through the water curtain, he rolled several times on the ground, then discovered in astonishment that he had uncontrollably reverted to human form.
"It's the Thief's Downfall!" Amelia called out, somewhat disheveled herself after being thoroughly drenched by the magical waterfall.
"It washes away all disguise magic. It's similar to the security measure Gringotts uses in their deepest vaults."
She looked toward the gate that had opened beyond the waterfall, her expression tense. "I'm guessing this area should have been heavily guarded?"
"I smell blood!"
Sirius brushed the water droplets off his body unconcernedly and stood up, supporting himself on the gate. He was about to say something when—
BOOM!
An intense explosion accompanied by flames burst through the metal wall more than a hundred feet away from them. As they watched in astonishment, a massive amount of water came surging through the breach in the wall!
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