Dracula crossed his arms, watching Snape raise his wand with a playful, almost predatory, expression.
'Do you mean to fight me, Professor Snape?' he asked, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest.
Snape ignored him, simply holding his wand upright in front of him with one hand, his dark eyes fixed unwaveringly on Dracula.
The standard duelling stance. It was unmistakable.
Seeing this, Dracula also put away his playful expression. A hint of reminiscence, a shadow of battles long past, flickered in his wine-red eyes.
'A wizard duel? It has been a while since I have seen such a ritual.'
Then, he also took out his own gloomy, dark wooden wand and held it upright in front of his body, mirroring Snape's posture.
During the traditional bowing before the duel, Snape was somewhat perfunctory, only bending his waist slightly, a stiff, almost resentful gesture. Dracula, on the other hand, simply inclined his head a fraction, a gesture of ancient, regal acknowledgement. And with that, the duel between the 2 Hogwarts professors began.
'Expelliarmus!'
Snape was the first to flick his wand, his movement sharp and economical.
A bright red light illuminated the dark Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom for a fleeting moment, reflecting in Dracula's wine-red pupils, turning them the colour of freshly spilled blood.
Dracula raised his wand and, with a casual, almost dismissive flick of his own, deflected the Disarming Charm to the side. It struck the surrounding desks and chairs, shattering them with explosive force.
As the red light faded, the classroom was plunged back into darkness.
'Stop testing me. Your strength should be more than this, should it not?' Dracula looked at Snape, his voice a casual, taunting drawl.
Snape did not reply. Instead, he constantly changed the direction of his attacks, continuously shaking the wand in his hand, sending a barrage of ordinary attacking spells towards Dracula.
Petrification Charms, Stupefy Charms, Disarming Charms… These basic spells, which had barely changed in hundreds of years, shot relentlessly from the tip of Snape's wand. And one by one, they were deflected by Dracula—smoothly, effortlessly, without any discernible pause or strain.
Faced with these rudimentary spells, the expression on Dracula's face became more and more impatient. In the end, he did not even bother to use his wand, directly reaching out with a pale hand to snatch those ordinary spells out of the air.
'Are you only capable of using these most basic of spells?' he said, his voice dripping with impatience. 'If your next attack is still this… boring… then let us end this duel here.'
Dracula raised his wand. Behind him, a dark, ethereal moon seemed to rise, a phantom luminescence that set off his silver hair like a dream, or perhaps a nightmare.
Next, a crescent-shaped blade of pure, dark light silently launched itself at Snape from within the spectral moonlight.
The classroom was utterly silent, but in this silence, the speed of the crescent moon was too fast to be captured by the naked eye. It was a whisper of deadly energy.
Snape subconsciously cast a Protego, the transparent barrier shimmering into existence in front of him, even as he pointed his wand forward—
'Sectumsempra!'
The next moment, the crescent moon struck the barrier created by the Shield Charm, instantly shattering it into a thousand glittering fragments. Snape, along with the remnants of the barrier, flew backwards, knocking over countless tables and chairs, before finally crashing heavily into the classroom door at the back of the room.
And the hidden wave of dark magic—the spell Snape had unleashed at the last possible moment—flew towards Dracula with terrifying speed.
Dracula's eyes flickered slightly, revealing a hint of genuine curiosity towards this spell he had never seen before. He raised his hand, intending to pinch this hidden, colourless wave between his fingers to examine its nature.
With a sickening thud, the door made a heavy, muffled sound as Snape's body impacted it. He fell to the ground, his face instantly turning an extremely pale, almost greyish, hue.
At the same time, Dracula's slender palm reflexively contracted.
He lowered his head slightly, looking at his palm. At this moment, a straight and narrow line of bright red blood was clearly visible in the centre of his palm.
The bloodline was healing, but unlike the highly efficient, almost instantaneous healing speed typical of vampires, this wound was shrinking little by little, like a slowly burning fuse or a trace of water gradually evaporating under a relentless sun.
'An interesting spell. Did you create it yourself?' Dracula moved his gaze away from his slowly healing palm and chuckled, a low, appreciative sound.
'It is none of your business.' Snape leaned weakly against the classroom door, clutching a deep wound on his waist, and said coldly, his voice strained with pain.
Dracula did not take offence at all. Smiling, he stepped over the ruins of shattered tables and chairs and walked slowly towards Snape.
'Professor Snape, I always thought you were a Slytherin to the core—not an impulsive person.' He walked slowly to Snape, squatted down, and a soft, white light began to glow in his hand. 'In any case, the most beneficial method for you would never be to come and duel me alone, let alone without knowing my background or true capabilities.'
Snape originally wanted to retort, but then he was stunned into silence. He found that the wound on his waist—which had just been viciously cut open by Dracula's crescent moon attack—was now healing at an extremely exaggerated, almost unbelievable, speed under the gentle white light emanating from Dracula's hand.
'If you ask me,' Dracula continued, his voice calm and measured, 'after you suspected me, you should have gone to the Headmaster to report your concerns. That is more in line with Salazar Slytherin's typically self-preservational, egoistic style.'
'But you still came to me in the end. Which means that Headmaster Dumbledore believes me, and he does not agree with your particular deduction.'
Snape remained silent, his dark eyes watching Dracula intently.
'Then another question arises here. Even if the Headmaster denied your deduction, it is still highly unlikely that you would recklessly run over here and duel me. Professor Snape is not as… bored… as I am, constantly wanting to find some excitement. Is he?'
In a moment, Snape's wound had completely healed, as if it had never been there. If it were not for a long, jagged slit in his wide wizarding robe, it would be impossible to see that he had, just moments before, suffered a very serious wound to his waist.
'You are thinking too much. I was merely upset about the embarrassment at the entrance of the Great Hall before. I just wanted to get back some face,' Snape said coldly, his voice regaining some of its customary iciness.
He flung his sleeves heavily and stood up from the floor, showing no appreciation whatsoever for Dracula's magical treatment.
Dracula was still half-squatting on the ground. When Snape flung his sleeves with such dramatic flair, he glanced up and vaguely saw, on Snape's left wrist… there seemed to be a tattoo?
With his excellent night vision and eidetic memory, Dracula vaguely recognised the pattern of the tattoo. The main body seemed to be an ugly, leering skull. And a sinuous python emerged from the skull's mouth, like a long, flickering tongue.
'This is… the Dark Mark?' Dracula was momentarily stunned, his mind racing.
In the newspapers that Nicolas Flamel had meticulously collected on an entire bookshelf over the recent decades, he had seen this very pattern.
Then, Dracula thought of Snape's highly unusual, almost reckless behaviour this time. His eyes lit up, revealing a sudden, knowing expression.
In the darkness, Snape did not notice the subtle change in Dracula's expression.
After standing up, he walked woodenly towards the door of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. But the scene of his conversation with Dumbledore in the Headmaster's office, a mere 20 minutes ago, involuntarily appeared in his mind, replaying with vivid, unwelcome clarity…
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