Harry Potter and the Physical Adept

Chapter 3: This Masquerade

It came out of nowhere, so he was not ready for it when it happened.

One moment, Harry was walking down the street, towards The Nomad Express; the next, he found himself being physically carried into a dark alleyway by something stronger and faster than he thought humanly possible, though still paltry compared to the full force of what the dragon he trained with on a daily basis could bring to bear, his surroundings blurring with the speed at which he found himself moving.

It all came to a sudden, jarring stop as he was slammed hard into a wall, feet dangling off the ground, and he let out a growl from the back of his throat as a jolt of pain shot up his spine, though this was nothing compared to the excruciating feeling of something sharp tearing into the right side of his neck even as he was pinned against the wall, though something was pressed against his mouth, stifling the scream of pain before it could leave his lips.

The boy struggled ineffectually for a moment against whatever it was that held him to the wall; then, he strained to reach the monoknife in his pocket with his fingertips, finally managing to snare it with the tips of his fingers just as he was beginning to feel the effects of blood loss.

Flipping the blade open with one hand, Harry was glad in the moment that the monoknife required very little effort to cut, as he weakly swung the knife's edge across whatever it was that was holding his mouth, drawing a cry of pain and surprise.

Crashing to the ground, Harry toppled over sideways and hastily clamped his left hand over where he could feel the blood flowing freely from his throat, brandishing his knife with his right as the shape that had attacked him stumbled backwards, revealing a humanoid figure that took him a moment to recognize behind his blurred vision and lightheadedness.

"Why...?" he barely managed weakly.

The woman, missing a hand, lunged forwards towards the boy at an impossible speed, and he angled his blade upwards and outwards with the butt of the knife up against his cheek, even as he turned away from his attacker defensively.

The attack never landed; there was a blur of motion, and then the redhead was pinned to a wall with one hand by a diminutive girl with mud-colored hair, her golden amber eyes seeming to glow with inner fury in the dark of the alleyway.

§Are you hurt?§ hissed the dragon-in-girl's-form, her back to the boy.

"I'm gushing," said the boy, releasing his neck would for a moment as he dropped his knife, sloppily forming the prana mudra in his lightheaded state, whispering "Creo corporem" as he weakly imagined his neck wound closing.

There was the familiar warm rush of Astral power as it forced his flesh grow and repair itself; only after the tear in his neck had knitted close did he feel usual feeling of magic restocking his body of lost blood, and only when he felt his sense of equilibrium return did he cut off the flow of Astral power to his body.

Surveying his surroundings, Harry saw the detached hand on the ground; not too far away, Liv effortlessly held the one-handed Patience pinned to the brick, giving the boy a look of concern even as the redhead struggled mightily but uselessly against the dragon.

Harry noticed that the stump at her wrist where he had severed her hand with his knife was not gushing blood as he would expect from a freshly severed limb; adding this to everything else he had previously noticed, only one thing made sense.

"You're a vampire," Harry stated flatly. "Makes sense, with your pallor, lack of body heat, extreme speed and strength, and lack of bleeding despite having a hand cut off."

At the statement, Patience struggled even harder against the dragon-in-a-girl's-body.

"What are you, a vampire hunter?" Patience snarled, both hands around Liv's wrists as she pressed both feet against the brick of the wall behind her, trying to manage enough force to free herself yet failing miserably, as she could not even budge the dragon despite the brick starting to crumble under her feet.

"I'd be a pretty shitty vampire hunter, seeing how I didn't even know your kind existed in the real until just now," Harry said. "No, I'm a Hermetic mage, and my friend here is both faster and stronger than you, as you can probably tell by now, so if you try anything stupid, she'll dead you for real."

Harry nodded to the dragon. "You can let her down, but be prepared to engage."

Without a word, Liv withdrew her hand from where it had been pressed against Patience's belly, and the vampire dropped lightly to her feet, with the two giving each other suspicious looks.

"Let's introduce ourselves properly this time," Harry said, picking up the severed hand and tossing it to the redhead, who caught the severed limb and pressed it against the stump; after a moment, she flexed her fingers as though to make sure they were working properly.

"Patience Leigh Madison, Caitiff," Patience said begrudgingly.

"Harry Potter, Hermetic mage," Harry said.

"Olivia Baldursdóttir," said Liv, using the cover name provided on her passport and other official documentation. "Nothing you want to fuck with."

"That's ominously vague," said the vampire, eyeing the girl she didn't know was a dragon. "I'm still very hungry."

"Any dietary restrictions?" Harry asked.

"I can only have blood; everything else I've tried, I've thrown back up after a few hours."

"You could have picked any drug dealer or vagrant," Harry said.

"I didn't think you'd fight back," Patience admitted. "If I had known, I'd have picked an easier meal."

"Well, whatever it is, I hope you can control your hunger for a bit, because we're going to talk about this," Harry said. "It's the least you can do after attack me out of the blue."

"I'm really hungry," the woman reiterated. "And you just stopped me from having a bite to drink."

"Does animal blood work?" Harry asked.

"I've only had it once," Patience admitted, almost shamefully. "It was filling."

"In that case, I know a place," Harry said.

~ooOoo~

"M goi, sam bong ju hung," Harry said in Cantonese to the man behind the meat counter; he had been to the shop once before with one of the Cantonese cooks during an emergency shopping trip when the restaurant had run out of some specialty ingredients.

"M goi sai," said Liv, as the man handed her the plastic container wrapped in a produce bag.

"Ha chi gin," called out the man with a grin, and the two children waved back.

"What is this stuff?" Patience asked, as they walked away from the meat department.

"'Ju hung' is pig blood curd or blood tofu," Harry said. "It's basically pigs' blood and salt."

"I didn't know this existed," said the vampire.

"I wouldn't either if we didn't have that run on lap cheong fan a couple days ago that cleaned us out of lap cheong and we had to get some more for the dinner rush," Harry said, as they came to the registers; once the cashier scanned them through, the boy paid for the purchase with a crumpled ten dollar bill, the last of the money he had taken from the sex trafficker, then passed shopping bag of blood curd to Patience while thanking the girl who had rung them up.

Once they stepped outside the store, Patience tore through the bags to get to the container, ripping the clear lid off the carton before reaching in and taking out a cube of jiggly, dark red substance; after looking closely at it for a moment, she popped into her mouth, chewing for a moment before swallowing.

A tense silence hung in the air for a long moment. Then, Harry thought he saw a droplet of red run down the vampire's cheek.

"Are you crying?" asked the boy.

"A little bit," admitted the vampire, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. "It's just that it's been almost a year since I've eaten anything solid. Or seasoned with salt."

"That's good, then," said the boy. "We really should talk about this, though."

"I could eat," remarked the dragon.

"Didn't you just leave a party with food?" Patience asked.

"She can always eat," Harry said, and Liv nodded in agreement.

"The Nomad Express is open."

"We'd probably be better off going to a buffet. She can eat a lot."

"Whole cow sometimes," the dragon added lightly.

"In that case, there's a Golden Corral not far from here."

"That'll do her."

~ooOoo~

"So, you're telling me you just woke up one day and you were a vampire?" Harry asked, incredulous of the claim.

Liv was away, getting her fifth plate of food; as always, she could just pack it away.

"Shh!" Patience shushed. "Please don't be loud about it."

"Why, though?" Harry asked.

"Masquerade breach."

"You mean that's real?"

"I don't really know, but I don't want to risk it," said the redhead. "I mean, I had a one-night stand with Jacob from my Vampire group right before I became one, so I think he's my sire, and I can't help but think he'd only be in the game because it's accurate to life, since he was always talking about how realistic and visceral playing it felt.

"And, also, I woke up one night and was kindred; I literally slept through my shift, and when I woke up, I was starving. Tried to eat what I had in the fridge, but the hunger wouldn't go away and I threw it all back up in about an hour; that's when I had Pepperoni, and I knew what I had become."

"Pepperoni being…?"

"My cat."

"Don't animals usually flee from cainites?"

"Not for me."

"Huh… So, what clan are you?"

"I don't know; I never saw Jacob again."

"What about other Kindred?"

"I never found any, but that doesn't mean they're not watching."

"That explains why you identify with Caitiff then. How about disciplines? From your strength and speed, you must have a little bit of Potence and Celerity."

"Like I said, I don't know what clan I am, so I don't know anything clan-specific, but I do have Celerity and Potence, and Auspex; I was actually wondering why you have a bunch of sparkles in your aura and Olivia's just feels oppressive to even look at."

"Like I said, I'm a Hermetic mage, so you must be seeing that," said the boy. "As for Liv, it's not my place to tell you her secrets."

An awkward silence sat for a moment. Then, Patience spoke.

"You know, I was surprised when you fought so hard after I gave you the kiss," said the redhead. "Everybody else I've given one to almost goes limp from the pleasure."

"I've got a permanent thing that prevents mental tampering," said the boy with a shrug. "Guess it must be a kind of psychic effect and not a physiological one."

"Must be."

"What about the Beast? Do you ever have problems Frenzy? What about Rötschreck?"

"When you cut off my hand, I did Frenzy; would probably have drank you dry too."

"In the case, I'm glad Liv saved my ass," said the boy, as the dragon sat down with another plate of heaped high with food.

"Glad to have helped," Liv said, before biting a chocolate-covered piece of fried chicken thigh clean in half, bones and all, the sounds of crunching accompanying her chewing. Seeing Patience's cocked head, she added, "Don't judge me, it's really good."

"So, do you miss anything about being kine?" Harry asked, ignoring the dragon's response.

"I miss being able to go out during the day, and everything that entails. I miss eating solid food. What I really miss, though, is any kind of physical pleasure; while it hurts when I'm injured, things that used to feel good, like a massage, don't feel like much of anything anymore."

"I guess that's code for bumping uglies," said the boy.

"What's 'bumping uglies'?" Liv asked between bites.

The vampire cocked her head to the side, a quizzical look her face.

"We go to a private school that doesn't have sex education," Harry said with a shrug.

Then, for the benefit of the dragon-in-girl's-form, he added, "It's sexual intercourse."

"Oh, that," the dragon said dismissively. "I don't see what the big deal is."

"Sounds like you miss being alive," Harry said, ignoring Liv's comment.

"I really do," Patience agreed. "But that's neither here nor there."

"Actually, I might have a solution for that," said the boy thoughtfully.

"Really? You can cure me?" Patience asked excitedly.

"Maybe," Harry said. "It's just a theory, so it's untested, and it'd only work back in Britain, because I left the materials there."

"I don't have a passport," said the redhead, slumping in defeat.

"Neither did I, but that hasn't stopped me from traveling."

"Then how did you...?"

"For legal reasons, you really don't want to know," Harry interjected. "Point remains, though: if you're willing to give it a go, I can get you across the Atlantic."

"In that case, I'll take you up on your offer."

"Pack what you need and meet us at McCarran International, in front of the check-in desk for British Airways, at 8 PM sharp."

Patience checked her watch. "That's twenty hours from now."

"I know. You better hurry if you want to do this."

"I'll be there."

~ooOoo~

As Harry had expected, sneaking somebody onto a trans-Atlantic flight was laughably easy; all he had to do was get the vampire to climb into his haversack and then conceal the bag itself under his coat, and he walked through customs without being spared a second glance.

Of course, this only meant it was just as easy to sneak his recently-acquired arsenal, kept hidden in a safe he had purchased and then secreted behind a bunch of his food stocks, onto his flight home; in this way, his haversack made smuggling child's play, and he cursed himself for not acquiring even more contraband to take home with him.

It was the afternoon of the next day when they landed in London; immediately after returning to the safehouse, Liv wanted to go to the bank to change her hard earned American dollars into pounds sterling, and Karen offered to chaperone her, wanting bonding time with the dragon, leaving Harry to his own devices.

With his training from the program, Harry decided to break into Romy's home; the deadbolt proved no challenge for a bent paperclip, and when he let himself in, he was assaulted by the smell of a living space rarely cleaned. With a few hours on hand before Romy would return home from her job at the laboratory, Harry decided it was time to once again clean the dorm that neither Romy nor her flatmates seemed willing to.

By the time the front door clicked unlocked again, the boy had taken out the trash and properly mopped the floor, first with water, then floor cleaner, and finally with floor wax he had found under the kitchen sink; he had also started cooking an evening meal with ingredients he had purchased before boarding the plane, so the dorm was filled with the scent of chili powder, tomatoes, cumin and cilantro.

"Smells good, 'Squeak," said Romy as she closed the door behind her. "How'd you get in?"

"Picked the lock," the boy called back from the kitchen. "How'd you know it was me?"

"Who else would break in, then clean the place and cook dinner?" asked the university student.

"Fair point."

"So, what're you making?" asked noirette as she walked into the kitchen.

"Carne asada, pico de gallo, arroz rojo and frijoles negros," said the boy without looking up from the food he was cooking.

"I'm sorry, I didn't get any of that," Romy said, running her fingers through her hair and pulling it out of her face.

"Grilled skirt steak, fresh salsa, red rice and black beans," Harry reiterated in English. Gesturing to the plate of tortillas next to him with a moist towel draped over them, he added, "Burrito bar."

"Sounds delicious," said the graduate student. "So, why are you here?"

"I need some of the Stone, for an experiment," said the boy.

"How much?"

"Just a tiny bit. Can be leftovers from testing as long as they aren't contaminated."

"What are you planning to do with them?"

"Figured I'd try making some Elixir of Life; I've got a theory on how to make it, but I'd have to test it."

"On who? Yourself?"

"Funny you should ask. I picked up a vampire in Las Vegas."

"You what now?"

"Her name's Patience, she's Caitiff, and has Potence, Celerity and Auspex. Also might be Thin-blooded, from the way she describes being able to hold down food for a couple hours before vomiting it back up and animals not reacting negatively to her."

"Wait, the Masquerade's for real?"

"Don't know. She's never found any other vampires post-embrace, she's not even sure who her sire is, though she suspects it's somebody from her old Vampire group, and she didn't want to risk breaching the Masquerade to find out."

"Where is she?"

"In my haversack. It's funny how laughably easy it is to smuggle things through airports."

"You kept a woman in your bag?" Romy snapped suddenly. "Harry Potter, you let her out right this moment!"

"She was sleeping," the boy protested, but otherwise didn't resist, going over to his haversack, flipping open the flap before reaching inside and snapping his fingers. A moment later, the pale, freckled woman emerged from the bag, her red hair looking slightly messy.

"I'm hungry," she declared casually, before nodding at Romy. "Hi, I'm Patience Madison. Friends call me 'Pace'."

"Rosemary Davies," Romy responded automatically. "'Romy'."

"So, about the Stone," Harry interrupted.

"I've got a couple scraps," said the graduate student. "They're in my room; I'll go get them."

"Food should be done by the time you get back," the boy said.

"What's that about?" the vampire asked.

"The cure I was telling you about," said the boy, as he began to cut rested flank steak into thin strips with a chef's knife. "Again, don't know if it'll work."

"Still have to try, though," the redhead said, and Harry shrugged, taking a tortilla and filling it first a scoop of arroz rojo, followed by a spoonful of frijoles negros, then a few strips of carne asada and a scoop of sprinkling of pico de gallo before rolling it up tightly and wrapping the resulting wrist-thick cylinder of food in a square of tin foil.

As the graduate student returned to the kitchen, a small, capped vial in hand, the boy rolled the burrito across the counter towards her; catching it with one hand, Romy set the vial down, and Harry took possession of it.

"Pestle and mortar?" asked the boy.

"Cupboard to the left of the stove," said the noirette, peeling the foil from the food before taking a large bite. "This is good."

Harry grunted as he retrieved the tools he was looking for; emptying the vial into the bowl of the mortar, he began grinding the shards and shavings into a fine red dust. Passing Astral power through the resulting powder made it glow faintly, and Harry fetched a glass, filling it with about a centimeter of water before pouring the pulverized Philosopher's Stone into the liquid, stirring it with a spoon until it formed a thick, glowing paste.

"What the hell is that?" Patience asked, staring at the glass as Harry added more water and continued to stir it. "Why is it glowing?"

"It's a bit and that," said the boy vaguely, continuing to stir for a moment before swirling it around in the cup to check its thickness; satisfied with the result, he pulled the spoon from the liquid and tapped it on the rim of the glass, then offered it to the vampire.

"What is this?" the redhead asked again.

"Theoretically, a cure to being Kindred besides walking into the sun."

Patience studied the contents of the glass for a moment, then quickly closed her eyes and downed it in one quick swallows.

Silence, punctuated only by the sound of Romy's chewing, hung in the air for what seemed like an eternity even though it was only a long moment. Then, the vampire retched violently, rushing over to the kitchen sink and immediately heaving, regurgitating a goopy, dark red sludge with the viscosity of pancake batter.

Patience continued to vomit nonstop for the better part of a minute, before finally straightening up, wobbling slightly as tears rolled down her cheeks and she panted for breath, her face flushed from exertion while the rest of her skin displayed a soft, pink undertone.

"You might want to check for a pulse," Harry said casually

Two of Patience's fingers immediately went to her wrist, and her eyes slowly widened.

"I'm alive," breathed the woman, surprised but seemingly relieved. "I'm really alive!"

Suddenly, Harry found himself being crushed in the redhead's embrace.

"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" exclaimed the American repeatedly, planting kisses on the boy's face.

"Please… let… go… before… some… thing… breaks...," Harry barely managed to squeak out, and Patience immediately released him. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he added, "I see you still have Potence."

"Auspex too," the American added. "I can still see your aura, sparkles and all. It's beautiful." Then, seeing the spread of food strewn across the kitchen, she asked, "Mind if I eat?"

"Go for it," Harry said, before looking to Romy. "I guess that's how you make the Elixir of Life."

"Say what now?" Patience asked, a spoon in her mouth as she heaped a mountain of meat, beans, rice and salsa onto a plate.

"A bit of magic stuff," Harry said.

"That's a lot of food," Romy added, changing the subject. "Are you sure you can finish it all?"

"I haven't had any real food in almost a year," Patience countered, between bites of beans and rice. "Oh god, I can even taste food now… It's soooo good..."

"What is this stuff anyways?" asked Romy, gesturing to the large glass bowl of diced red, green and white vegetables.

"Pico de gallo," Harry said simply.

"Why's there so much?"

"Normally, I hate raw onions, but with pico de gallo, I can eat a big bowl of it on its own and not have to reach for water."

The side conversation was interrupted by the sound of sobbing; turning towards Patience, the two saw that she was crying as she continued to shovel food into her mouth with a spoon in one hand and a fork in the other.

"Are you all right?" Romy asked, concerned.

"I'm fine," said the redhead, still crying. "I just never thought I'd be able to eat food again."

~ooOoo~

Patience was bouncing up and down like a rubber ball when Harry came to her door first thing in the morning; she had spent the night in a rented room at The Footman, reading a travel guide book for the greater London area Harry had purchased for her from Tesco.

"Good morning," said the redhead cheerfully, greeting the boy and the dragon with him.

Harry winced at the woman's enthusiastic greeting; he was still adjusting to the change in time zones, and the only thing the night's sleep had done was make him even more tired.

"Morning," said Liv, surveying the woman with narrowed eyes. "I take you slept well."

"I haven't slept at all, and I feel great," Patience said brightly. "I've never had so much energy before in my life, and I've never felt so alive.

"I saw sunlight for the first time today since my embrace," the woman continued, clearly elated. "It was beautiful; I never thought I'd see it again.

"I haven't felt the hunger in the pit of my stomach that was there after I woke up as Kindred since I had that drink last night, either; I haven't hungry at all, in fact."

"That's good, but let's not get too excited, yet; we still don't know if you'll relapse or not," warned the boy grimly.

Patience shrugged. "So, what're we doing today?"

"Testing and documentation," Harry said. "We need to know the extent the Elixir changed you from before."

~~ooOoo~~

"What is this place?" asked Patience, looking around as she took a drink of water from the canteen Harry had supplied her with.

"Old abandoned warehouse converted into a private training facility," Harry said, without looking up from the legal pad of notes and the hardback book in front of him.

"Whose is it?"

"Mine."

"Yours? How?"

"I'm from money, and I've been working on earning more of my own," said the boy, frowning.

"But how?"

"A couple rental properties, for one," said the boy, before changing the subject. "This is very impressive."

"It is?" asked the woman.

"Without Celerity, you can run a sub-four minute mile, which is better than the world record Melinte set two years ago, and you kept that pace for a full twenty minutes, which puts you just over five miles," Harry said, consulting his notes. "With Celerity on full, you ran a mile in about a minute, and you did that for a full ten minutes without seeming to run out of vitae."

"When I used Disciplines in the past, I'd physically feel my reserve of vitae being drained, but this time, I felt it being drained and replenished at the same time, almost like by body was producing it as quickly as I was using it up," Patience said.

Harry scribbled a few things down on his legal pad. "You bench pressed four hundred pounds without any real effort, which is pretty impressive since you admitted to never having lifted weights before," he continued, as he thumbed through a hardback book. "Given what you've told me about your experiences in the night, it doesn't seem like you'd have invested so heavily in the Potence Discipline."

"What do you mean?" Patience asked.

The boy turned the book around to show the redhead. "If what you're saying is correct, you only have one dot in Strength, so, to lift four hundred pounds as effortlessly as you did, you'd need three dots in Potence, except it just doesn't seem like you'd have invested that much in it."

"You're right," the redhead said. "But what does that mean?"

"Some of the things in the book are probably correct, or can at least be used for comparison," theorized the boy. "Other things might just be made up or changed for the sake of balancing the game when it's being played."

"Okay, so what then?"

"Do you trust me?"

"Of course."

"Then, no matter what happens next, don't move."

The former vampire nodded, swallowing hard, and Harry put down his pen and legal pad.

Then, the boy drew a pistol from his waistband and fired it straight into the redhead's thigh, the weapon silent except for the sound of the mechanics of its action.

"What was that for?" Patience demanded, clearly angry.

The boy looked closely at the gunshot for a moment, then wrote something down. "You're not hurt," he said matter-of-factly.

The redhead blinked in surprise, then looked down at her own leg, only to see nothing interesting beyond a torn hole in her close-fitting jeans..

"I don't get it."

"You don't just have Celerity, Potence and Auspex," Harry said. "You also have Fortitude, which is why the bullet failed to penetrate your skin."

"Then how did you cut off my hand?" Patience asked.

"Monoknife," the boy said. "Edge is only a molecule thick. Cuts just about anything."

"That's impossible," the woman argued. "Technology hasn't reached a point where it manufacture something like that yet."

"You forget I'm magic," Harry countered. "Have you tried Obsfucate, Presence, Animalism or Dominate yet?"

"Excuse me?" the woman asked, uncertain what the boy meant.

"I'm guessing you discovered you had Celerity, Potence and Auspex and then stopped trying to see if you had any other Disciplines, which is why you didn't know you also had Fortitude," explained Harry. "Given those Disciplines would require you to actively try to use them, I could see why you wouldn't think to try them."

"Huh, I didn't think of it like that," said the woman. "Can I see the book?"

Harry handed the hardback to the redhead, who flipped through the pages for a moment before stopping on a page, reading it intently for a moment before putting the book down.

"Look away until I say when?" Patience asked, and Harry nodded, obliging.

It was only a few seconds later before he heard the woman call out, "Marco!"

Harry turned back, but the woman had vanished into thin air.

"Where'd you go?" Harry asked.

"She's hiding in the shadows over there," Liv called out from the stationary bike she was riding, pointing.

Harry's eyes narrowed as he looked in the direction the dragon had indicated, squinting hard as he tried to focus his eyesight behind his glasses. It took a moment, but then, umbral tendrils peeled away from the pale redhead's skin, revealing her crouched in the shadows.

"So, Obsfucate is a go," Harry said, and Patience nodded. "I guess you could try the other Disciplines on your own time, since Dominate, Presence and Animalism won't work here, and then report back your own findings."

"I would never use Dominate on somebody," the redhead said. "I can't stand the thought of using mind control on somebody and erasing their free will."

"Then you're a good person," said the boy. "Magical society has no problems doing that."

"Really? That can't be true."

"And yet it is, which is why we need your status a secret."

"What do you mean?"

"You basically have all the strengths of a vampire, and none of the weaknesses," Harry said, as he flipped back through his legal pad. "All the physical abilities to be a superhero, almost magical powers that let you do things which defy natural law as people understand it to be. Plus, we know for a fact you can walk into places without invitation, garlic has no effect on you, you can walk in the sun like a normal person could, and the only thing we haven't tried are stakes and holy symbols, but I don't want to stab you in the heart, and I'm not one of the faithful."

"What are you saying?" Patience asked again.

"You need to uphold the Masquerade, because, right now, you're a vampire daywalker who the government would probably love to get a hold of and dissect in the name of research," the boy said grimly. "Of course, that assumes there aren't other vampires out there watching you, or hunters who might want to kill you.

"I like 'daywalker'," said the daywalker.

"If you do get caught, you might lead them back to me," Harry continued.

"I would never do that," Patience said adamantly. "But you're right; if I continue to uphold the Masquerade, it'll make life easier for all of us. But to do that, I'm going to need a job and a place to stay permanently."

"Do you want to go back to Vegas? I could probably find a way to arrange something for you."

"No, I think I'd like to stay here in England; I've always wanted to travel around Europe, and I feel like, if I'm here, I'll have more opportunities to do so."

"Well, then, let's get you papered."

Author's Notes: Congratulations to everybody who guessed Patience was a vampire, but I do think I made that one pretty obvious.

A little basic wrestling booking 101; show Patience as much more powerful Harry, then job her out to Liv, to establish the pecking order in this little magical world as dragons vampires people.

I remember reading while researching for this book that vampires were apparently real in the Potterverse, yet they never really came up within the context of the books even with all the information regarding all kinds of other ostensibly difficult to find creatures, which led me to one conclusion: they must be maintaining the Masquerade. From then, integrating Vampire: The Masquerade made perfect sense to me within the context.

Let's just remember that, before September 11th, 2001, airport security was basically nonexistent; it took a black swan event to change that, so I wanted to highlight that lack of security in a story taking place in summer of 1992.

As I've said previously, things will come back around; unlike the original series, where the Philosopher's Stone was a McGuffin for one book and then promptly forgotten, it will keep returning in this series, because it's an amazing piece of magic.

I've always been curious how real life would be balanced in a game, considering there are some really below average people and some really, really excellent polymaths, and the discussion of game mechanics versus how Patience actually functions is a look at how I view balance a game versus reality.

A vampire, a dragon and a Hermetic mage walk into a Harry Potter fanfic. This is starting to sound like a really bad joke.

Thanks again to the amazing Romantically Distant for proofing and editing this chapter. Now you've read it, feel free to PM and review.