Cute Vampiress

The group of three landed in the Firepit's reception area. Currently, it was empty of any other clients – early morning wasn't exactly the best time to conduct business for them.

They continued into the hotel part of the area and took the elevator to the tenth floor. The door to the room was right next to the elevator, which was rather convenient for being stealthy. Unbeknownst to Linda, the receptionist had also disabled elevator access for all the other floors until Amanda was safely delivered to the room.

Once they reached, they discovered that the door was ajar. From the doorway, a red-robed figure in a wide rimmed hat emerged.

"Good, you have arrived. Please place the client on the bed inside. She will receive a proper medical checkup and get treatment for any lingering conditions. You may return to reception for your payment."

Linda took the being's advice and, taking Gaude's hand, making sure that he followed her. While she didn't care much about what happened to the client after the contract was completed, she wasn't going to leave Gaude alone with that faceless thing.

She looked into the room once more, but both the red-robed being and the client were nowhere to be seen. Linda shrugged it off and they returned to the reception. A stack of Galleons was presented to her by the receptionist.

"It was a pleasure doing business with you. We hope to see you here again soon.", he spoke.

"Thank you, I'll be passing through here eventually."

Gaude wasn't done with his daily chores yet. There were house elves to command, deals to strike and contracts to sign.

However, all that came to an end eventually, and Gaude was down to his last errand, making sure that the beginning of his hopefully quite numerous collection of oddities was settling in alright. Naturally, he couldn't treat her as such. He felt that a bit of mind games could be beneficial for luring her in.

Now, that might make Gaude sound like a lolicon pervert, but that couldn't be further from the truth – he figured he'd collect individuals with unique positions and accomplishments from all over the world. The only issue so far was finding a way to preserve his collection in mint condition indefinitely, something that would not be too urgent when it came to the vampires, at least according to what he knew of them.

As Gaude entered the room to hand over the potions and a few pints of blood to the vampiress who he thought to be in bed and still suffering from her injuries, he found her curled up into a ball under a blanket in the bathroom instead.

"Oi little missy, you were supposed to stay in bed and try to recover. It won't be good at all if you heal wrong, alright?", Gaude asked, sounding quite worried for the former client's wellbeing. A little bit of voice acting was always a good idea to build some trust.

"So, you really do want me to just lie down and die? Am I not good enough to dirty your hands?", Amanda asked, feeling wronged – while Gaude had been running errands, the sun had done half a circle around the house and shone in through the window and she had no idea how to close the mechanically operated curtains.

It took a while for Gaude to figure out the reason why Amanda would even think that he intended harm to his first client. He realized that her being a vampire in a world of magic, perhaps the sun's extremely harmful effect towards them would hold true.

"Do you mean the sunlight? Since you were able to move about, you could've just closed the curtains if you're that afraid of it."

"Humph!", Amanda huffed, not willing to admit to her own ineptitude.

"Well, it's not that important. I've brought potions to heal you and a few more bags of blood if you get hungry in the process.".

"I'll have you know that I'm perfectly healthy. I had a very good meal. Any vampire heals quickly on a full stomach."

"Well, since you're alright, I'll just close the curtains for you and get back to my daily chores, you can just ask Sele for anything you need.", Gaude said, pointing at a house elf in a maid's uniform.

"Take responsibility.", came a very small voice from the girl that was huddled up in the corner.

"What was that?", Gaude said, not sure about what he heard. There was simply no way that such a combination of words should come out in this situation.

"You'll have to take responsibility.", she said, just a tiny bit louder. Gaude looked back at her. Her face was already covered by the blanket but Gaude could see small wet stains spreading from her eyes.

It had been a long time since Gaude had been surprised, but that moment was now. Seeing a vampire cry was enough of a stimulus to awaken a long forgotten emotion, however.

"Eeh? What do you want me to take responsibility for? Did I do something wrong?"

"You killed my husband, you have to take responsibility!", she finally yelled out. Gaude could finally see her teary-eyed face that was a mixture of fear and uncertainty. There was also just a twinge of sadness in it.

'This seems to be coming along nicely. A little more and I'll have her eating from the palm of my hand, like a good little pet- ahem, collectible.'

---

Since it was no longer possible for Gaude to accelerate his own growth through just channeling magic into his body, there had been no progress at all in his growth, yet he was still taller standing than Amanda was sitting down on the floor. He crouched down, took out a handkerchief and wiped Amanda's face.

"Fine, I'll take responsibility, whatever that means."

After a few more sniffles, Amanda's tears dried up. Somehow, Gaude felt that there didn't seem to be that much difference between a vampire and a human, something that he didn't really expect. There was the possibility of her just acting like that, but Gaude decided to not find out if Veritaserum worked on vampires for the time being. Showing no faith from the start would be a bad move.

"So you'll protect me?", she asked, making the most adorable baby bat eyes she could manage.

Gaude felt that he was about to hit home run on this one. Just a little bit more and he'd have her voluntarily stepping into a cryogenics pod or whatever other method he could come up with for preservation.

"Of course, I will. In fact, how would you like to become a member of my family?"

Suddenly, Amanda's heart started thumping loudly. A mild blush appeared on her face and her eyes became a bit unfocused.

"I mean, you'd make a cute little sister.", Gaude continued.

"Huh?", Amanda said, confused. 'I really shouldn't have read so many romance novels.', she admonished herself. It turned out that her mind had been lead astray by just a few words.

"Why do you want me to be the little sister? You're obviously much younger than me!"

"Oh, are you finally going to tell me how old you are? But, you know, since your kind ages very slowly, wouldn't it be weird if I still called you big sister ten years later?"

"What about your own kind? You don't smell like a human and those eyes definitely aren't human." In her mind, she added 'your blood tastes much better than a human, too.'

Gaude wasn't about to go spilling his secrets before she was firmly in his grasp. He replied noncommittally: "Honestly, as far as I know, I'm the only one of my kind around, at least I haven't heard about others."

"So, you won't even know how fast or slow you grow up and you still think that I'll grow up slower?"

"The time it should take for me to grow up should be between three to ten years."

"How do you know that?"

"That's a family secret. If you want an answer, you'll have to become my little sister first."

"Fine. What do you want me to do?"

Gaude took out a phial of bloodline merging potion and another of his own purified blood, drawn before he had performed the Dragon bloodline ritual. The thought of what he was about to do amused him somewhat. He had read from the family Grimoire that fusing with beast bloodlines would among other things, cause infertility. Amanda would become a vampire variant backup bloodline, if the beast thing didn't pan out.

He dripped seven drops of it into the phial of potion and spoke: "Take this. I don't really have the other ingredients, so let's just hope the rudimentary ritual will be enough."

Amanda took the potion and gulped it down, seemingly trusting Gaude enough not to poison her.

"I, Gaude Vywin, head of House Vywin, hereby accept this Amanda Lestoat into the Vywin family as my sister. So mote it be."

Suddenly, Amanda's golden blonde hair turned black and her yellow eyes turned steely gray.

"What did you do to me?", she shouted in panic. She had noticed the change in her hair color and felt a strange sensation spreading throughout her body.

Seeing that irreversible changes had already taken place in her, Gaude decided to put a few more pieces of information on the table.

"I've accepted you into the family. You are now as close in blood to me as you could safely be. I'm afraid it would be a very, very bad idea to try and make you into what I am, since I'm part Dragon myself."

"Part Dragon? How is that even possible? Did your grandmother find a small species dragon that was into humans or something?"

"No, nothing like that. This potion I gave you, it had my own blood in it, from before I took one mixed with Dragon blood. There were some unexpected side-effects and I'm not going to let anyone else risk their life before I find out what brought them on."

"So, I'm a part-human now, or whatever your family was?"

"Part-wizard, to be accurate. You should try your vampire abilities to make sure they're still all there."

"Oh, ok. Kneel!" Amanda said, not even looking at Gaude.

Gaude, however, felt a sudden and very strong urge to do as the little vampire loli had just told him. It was only thanks to Occlumency that he managed to resist halfway through performing the action.

"Not cool, little sis.", Gaude said.

"You told me to try my abilities. I did. What's wrong with that?"

There was the tiniest smirk in the corner of her mouth. However, Amanda's expression didn't remain unnoticed by Gaude, especially since so far, it had mostly been either a pout or a deep pout. Still, it was best to keep her in an amicable mood. He wasn't going to call her out on every little thing.

"Since you don't like it up here, I just happen to have plenty of rooms where the sun never shines. The elves can get you anything you need, and there's plenty of animal enclosures that you can visit. Most of the enclosures are underground, so you can go play with them anytime."

"I don't want to."

"Oh, then you want to stay up here, hiding when the sun comes out?"

"No, you'll close the curtains for me, isn't that something a big brother should do for his little sister?", Amanda said, once again with those baby bat eyes, made even more adorable by the now black hair that matched her dress.

"Alright, I guess I can ask the elves to close the curtains for you every day, it shouldn't take them all that much effort."

"No, I want you to do it.", Amanda protested once again.

"Alright, alright, fine. But, I might not be able to do it every day, and then it'll still be the elves that'll do it."

"That's alright.", Amanda replied, the corners of her mouth curving upwards ever so slightly, the former baby bat eyes had already turned into crescents.

Gaude had a feeling that he may have overdone it a little, or Amanda was particularly vulnerable to baiting tactics. Either way, he had gained a pet to take care of.