Tanjiro Kamado and the Sorcerer's Stone

3rd Chapter: The Key Keeper

BOOM

It sounded like a bomb had been planted behind the door and the next second, the door swung clean from its frame and crashed to the cold floor. The fishy smell of seaweed immediately prickled Tanjiro's nose. The cold wind of the seastorm slapped all of the faces in the broken-down hut. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had woken up and stood in front of the bedroom door. The storm's sound filled every corner of the hut, neither knew what the others are saying.

Blocking the doorway... was a silhouette of a man. Pointing a long-shaped thing that looked like a stick, but neither of them knew what exactly it was. There wasn't any light produced from the hut, and the storm outside just made the room way darker. But then a lightning stroke in the sky, illuminating a slight part of the hut, including the man's face.

"GYAAAH, IT'S A MONSTER!"

Dudley screamed at the top of his lung while rushing as fast as his fat legs could towards his parents.

As much as Tanjiro didn't trust even the slightest of Dudley's exclaim, he felt great fear at the slight sight of the man's face. The man picked up the door and effortlessly put it in its frame. The cold wind instantly stopped slapping their faces, and the sound of the storm muffled slightly. Neither Tanjiro nor the Dursleys dared to move from their places. The redhead readied his stance, focusing on the man's scent, in case he made a sudden attack though he couldn't find any bad intention from his scent.

The man descended his way to the useless fireplace, which Uncle Vernon had tried to lit up with the result a big failure. Tanjiro didn't know what exactly really happened, but he knew the man mumbled something under his breath before the fireplace lit up out of nowhere.

The warmth immediately hit their faces. Tanjiro's shiver slowly decreased, and he realized that the man's "face" was –like Dudley said- a monster. Red-angry-face with a very long nose, Tanjiro knew what it was, he saw that face in one of the books in the local library, a type of legendary creature in Japanese folklore, the tengu. He almost thought that it was the man's face until the ropes that kept the "face" on the man's head showed themselves.

"Pardon the intrusion, have been knocking for seven minutes straight and nothing came for a reply." The man opened his mouth for the first time and turned around to look at them.

The man wore a dark brown overcoat that covered completely the clothes he used under it, strangely, he was completely dry, and even his silver hair dropped zero drops of water. Despite his silver hair that made him look like a man in his fifties, the man's body still looked like he was in his prime.

"I demand you to leave at once, sir!" Uncle Vernon's voice suddenly busted in the silence, "You're breaking and entering!"

The redhead jerked his head towards Uncle Vernon and spotted him pointing a rifle at the man. He didn't surprise though, he could smell the gunpowder since their 'adventure' started, besides, who wouldn't afraid of a stranger that successfully break through a sea storm and didn't even seem to give a slight struggle? The masked man just stared at Uncle Vernon before approaching him with a calm step, causing Uncle Vernon to back away slightly.

"I – I warn you, sir! I won't hesitate to shoot!"

The man stopped right in front of Uncle Vernon, pressing the mouth of the rifle to his own chest.

"You clearly never shot anyone before," was what Tanjiro could hear from the man before a blaring sound of a gunshot startled the entire hut.

The redhead widened his eyes, and the Dursleys stared in horror. The man had shot himself with the rifle that was still clasped between Uncle Vernon's fingers. The bullet, however, was nowhere to be found, or so Tanjiro thought until the man stepped back. Opening the mouth of the riffle, and coming out of it was the yellowish bullet. The bullet floated for a few milliseconds before it clattered on the cold floor followed by the riffle afterwards.