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0692 The Target
🕑 Added 2025-04-21 11:32:02 +0000 UTCAt the hazy twilight boundary, the fading sunlight divided the sky into two contrasting halves. One hemisphere was bathed in a melancholy, dull amber glow, while the opposing half remained in the pale icy blue of late winter's lingering grip.
The distant sounds of bustling traffic had been weakened by distance until they became nothing more than an indistinct blur of noise, as if perceived through the hazy filter of a half-remembered dream.
Meanwhile, the nearby streams did not contribute the expected poetic ambiance one might hope for in such a setting. Instead of melodious bubbling that might soothe the soul, it only provided a conflicting gurgling that seemed oddly out of place.
From time to time, massive shadows of unknown origin drifted silently across the landscape, and the zigzagging river released a toxic, rotten stench in the air becoming an invisible miasma that shrouded the residential area in its embrace.
"To think it would be here, of all places—" Surveying the tall industrial vents among the sea of dilapidated buildings in the center of this vast and chaotically arranged residential district, Bryan laughed with a note of genuine disbelief mingled with ironic amusement.
The Aurors had made thorough arrangements well in advance of their arrival. A large area surrounding their target had been carefully enclosed within an invisible but powerful magical barrier.
To any observer outside this place, all scenes within appeared unnaturally static and unchanging, frozen in an artificial moment of time. An anti-apparition spell was layered to ensure its effectiveness which made it impossible for anyone to escape or infiltrate by means.
Furthermore, the Muggle-Repelling Charm caused the scattered non-magical residents still inhabiting houses within the sealed perimeter to strangely feel an overwhelming urge to abandon their evening routines. One by one, they emerged from their homes, as they instinctively went toward the distant, glittering lights of the bustling city center out there.
With the target house serving as the focal point of their operation, teams of Aurors had positioned themselves in circles of vigilance, occupying strategic positions on the rooftops of nearby buildings, establishing both inner and outer perimeters of surveillance.
A raven with wings spread against the darkening sky, inadvertently breached the magical barrier, but upon instinctively perceiving the concentrated murderous aura emanating from these grim-faced human figures perched like gargoyles on top of the surrounding rooftops, the bird immediately released a piercing cry of terror and frantically beat its wings to leave with urgency.
"Have you been to this location previously, Mr. Watson?"
Kingsley attentively monitored the last straggling group of bewildered Muggles as they vacated their homes and went beyond the invisible boundary of the barrier. His vigilant observation was suddenly interrupted when Bryan Watson, standing thoughtfully beside him, unexpectedly broke the tense silence.
"Ah, haha, it should be somewhere over in that direction. I don't remember very clearly—" Bryan commented with an unexpectedly cheerful smile. He turned around on the spot, then pointed in a direction and said to Kingsley,
"This is the southeastern outskirts of London, a forgotten place called Cokeworth. What we see in front of us is an industrial area long abandoned by the Muggles. It was once a prosperous region decades ago, but as the Muggles shifted their development centers elsewhere and the surrounding environment suffered increasingly from severe pollution from the factories, it gradually fell into this state of decline—"
Kingsley listened with intense concentration, his expression showing nothing of his thoughts. Bryan paused momentarily, gathering his recollections, then continued with a nostalgic smile.
"Professor Severus Snape's personal residence in the Muggle world is here. During my student years at Hogwarts, one summer vacation—oh, I believe it was probably during my fourth year—I encountered some problems that I couldn't resolve by myself. Unfortunately, I didn't have an owl of my own at that time, so I made the journey here on foot, following the address Professor Snape had given me—"
"So that's how it is--" Kingsley nodded with some surprise, "This is an interesting coincidence. I bet, Severus must be proud of teaching a wizard like you."
"Maybe—" Bryan responded with a light-hearted laugh.
The sky grew darker and darker. In the chaotic residential area, the electric lights with dull yellow glow lit up in many dilapidated houses.
With a pop, the Auror who had previously reported to the Leaky Cauldron appeared beside Kingsley.
"The barrier has been successfully reinforced according to the specifications, Mr. Watson—" Egnisa reported crisply.
Bryan nodded slightly, thought for a moment, and asked,
"During your examination of the Muggle witnesses' memories, did you find any suspicious individuals making appearances in proximity to our person of interest?"
"No, Mr. Watson—" Auror Egnisa shook her head decisively.
"We thoroughly considered the possibility that the controller might have maintained physical proximity to their puppet, but our memory analysis revealed no concerning anomalies or recurring figures in those Muggles' recollections."
Bryan pursed his lips contemplatively and nodded again.
Including Kingsley himself, all the Aurors across the nearby rooftops had adopted postures and expressions appropriate for confronting an exceptionally dangerous opponent.
By stark contrast, Bryan appeared composed and unhurried as he went down gracefully to the ground.
CRASH!
With a violent shake of space, the area where the target house was located was suddenly elongated. The adjacent houses were pulled behind the approaching Aurors with a whoosh, isolating the house with boarded-up windows.
At this moment, Bryan finally set his gaze on this house. As his gaze deepened, he gradually narrowed his eyes, and his expression grew colder.
"Wait—"
Under Kingsley's leadership, the Aurors were about to break in and drag out the person inside, but at this moment, Bryan, who was on top of the Aurors, suddenly stopped their actions.
Many of the elite Aurors, including Kingsley himself, furrowed their brows in confusion. In the execution of a high-risk arrest, maintaining absolute silence was very important for success—even a softly whispered word could potentially alert a vigilant criminal to the impending danger, potentially resulting in the catastrophic failure of the precisely planned operation and even causing preventable casualties among the arresting force.
If anyone other than Bryan Watson had dared to disrupt their carefully orchestrated advance, these highly trained magical law enforcement officers might well have spun around and unleashed silencing spells upon the offender without hesitation.
"What have you observed, Mr. Watson?" Kingsley nimbly withdrew to Bryan's side while his wand was still glowing and pointing at the surrounded room.
"There are no living persons present within that room—" Bryan's expression was calm, but his words caused Egnisa to look puzzled. She was about to explain to Mr. Watson, but then heard Bryan say lightly,
"There are no living inhabitants within the room because the only inhabitant is an Inferi—"
"An Inferi?!" Kingsley's lips compressed into a tight line of tension. He raised his eyebrows sharply and his expression showed a mixture of shock and anger.
"Not a victim of the Imperius Curse?"
While the Aurors were mostly not unfamiliar with the concept of Inferi, their visible expressions of surprise and shock showed how rarely such abominations were encountered in current magical law enforcement.
Since the fall of Voldemort, these kind of dark magical creatures made from human corpses had largely vanished from wizarding Britain. Most of the younger Aurors present had never faced such a monstrosity outside of theoretical training scenarios.
"I believe I won't misidentify it--" Bryan's tone was solemn. His wand slid into his palm and waved at the house.
Responding to his silent command as if it were constructed of nothing more than a folded parchment, the four solid walls of the house began to separate slowly along their connecting seams. With surprising gentleness considering the power required for such a feat, they gradually fell to lie flat upon the ground, finally exposing the interior of the dwelling completely to the eyes of the surrounding Aurors.
The messy room was not worth much attention, but the overwhelmingly pungent smell made the Aurors to suffocate for a moment. They frowned in disgust and looked at the bed in the room.
DING-A-LING!
Without warning, the sound of an urgent telephone ring sliced the oppressive silence from somewhere within the surroundings. This unexpected intrusion even startled Bryan. His eyes shifted slightly as he located the source of the sound which was a storage box, placed at the foot of the bed.
A black telephone cord emerged from a gap in the container's side, looped several times around a leg supporting the sagging bed frame, before disappearing into the darkness of the space beneath the bed.
The Aurors all looked at Bryan Watson, asking for instructions on what to do next.
The persistently crisp telephone ring conveyed an unmistakable sense of desperate urgency tinged with barely contained fury, as if the intense emotions of the unknown caller on the distant end of the connection were being physically transmitted through the ordinary Muggle telephone line.
After a moment's thoughtful consideration, Bryan separated himself from the group and cautiously approached the storage box that continued to emit the increasingly anxious ringing. And At the precise moment his footsteps crossed the invisible threshold where the original wall of the house had stood before his spell had dismantled it, a terrifying anomaly suddenly manifested!
CRASH!
The Inferi, which had been maintaining a convincing pretense of lifelessness on the bed with its eyes tightly closed, abruptly launched itself up from the bed with inhuman speed in front of the horrified gazes of many Aurors.
Powerful waves of malicious magic erupted from the Inferi's cold, gray flesh like a toxic miasma. The violently swirling magical wind that instantaneously appeared around the creature forcefully blew away the storage box at the foot of the bed, sending it tumbling across the exposed floor.
Under the influence of the overwhelming dark magic, the Inferi was instantly suspended several feet above the ground, looking down upon Bryan Watson and the gathered Aurors from its higher position.
"BE CAREFUL!!!" Kingsley only managed to roar these two words of desperate warning before his voice failed him. He watched with helpless horror as the whites of the eyes of the levitating Inferi rapidly transformed from murky green to black like an abyss!
Simultaneously, the Inferi's gray-white dried skin erupted with countless dense, pulsating red swellings that emerged with a whoosing sound. In the blink of an eye, it had transformed from a human form into a hideous and terrifying large fleshy ball.
The turbulent magic power, like a volcanic eruption, gave all the Aurors present a feeling of imminent catastrophe. In the final seconds before the inevitable explosion, every Auror instinctively began to retreat. They watched helplessly as the red fleshy ball became larger and larger with each breath-like contraction and expansion.
Dozens of pale white light beams broke through the red skin of the fleshy ball from the inside out, clearly preparing to ignite the night!
BOOM BOOM BOOM!
'We're too close!'
The desperate thought flashed through Kingsley's mind.
In the precarious moment when the explosion began to manifest, Kingsley had the surreal impression of witnessing a miniature sun suddenly birthed in front of his very eyes. Although he and his subordinates had immediately begun their retreat at the first indication of this abnormality, they were still too close to the epicenter of this imminent magical explosion that seemed ready to obliterate everything within its exploding radius!
The veins on Kingsley's broad forehead bulged with tension, and an overwhelming flood of bitter regret surged through his heart.
He had never feared personal sacrifice in the line of duty. But the realization that nearly half of the Ministry's elite Auror Office personnel were gathered here in this forgotten corner of Muggle London... if they were all to perish simultaneously in this unexpected catastrophe...
In this critical juncture suspended between life and imminent annihilation, the unfolding events around Kingsley seemed to slow down, as if time itself had been partially suspended by some merciful enchantment.
He could perceive the violent magical fireball expanding inch by inch, could physically feel the temperature rising with terrifying rapidity against his skin, and experience the air molecules pounding against his eardrums. And just as he resigned himself to the inevitable approach of death with a heart emptied of hope, his gradually dimming vision swept across the figure of Bryan Watson...
Everything in his field of vision slowed down, but Bryan Watson's movements were very normal. Kingsley saw Bryan Watson casually scoop up the Muggle telephone that rolled out of the overturned storage box in midair, hold the phone to his ear with his left hand, and suddenly point his right wrist's wand at the split fleshy ball.
A flood-like milky white radiance gushed out from the tip of his wand--
"Hello there, how are you? —" In the surging gale, a hand firmly suppressed the explosive wind and waves while Bryan picked up the phone and said leisurely with his head tilted.
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