At his words, after a moment of silence, the robber listlessly stepped aside, slumped down by the roadside, and burst into tears.
Su Ming merely shook his head and continued leading Snape toward Magical Congress headquarters. They only needed to cross one more street.
Snape turned back to look at the man. He was undoubtedly still alive, but it was as though he had lost every last spiritual support. Even his gaze had gone unfocused.
"What kind of magic was that?" The professor in black leaned closer to Su Ming and asked softly.
"It wasn't magic. It was psychology." The Sports Professor shook his head and showed Snape the finger he had used to block the gun barrel. A small clump of black mud clung to it. "That man was filthy and reeked like a homeless vagrant, but the fabric of his clothes had originally been high-quality, and so were his leather shoes. There were marks from glasses on the bridge of his nose, and the calluses on his fingers came from typing on a keyboard, not handling weapons."
"So?" Snape had no idea what that was supposed to mean.
"This is Broadway. Ordinary Muggles wouldn't come here even if they wanted to drink themselves senseless, but that man only knew this was a place where he could drink. So we can infer that he once worked somewhere near the Lower District. And what nearby jobs require extensive use of the keypad section of a computer keyboard, enough to leave calluses on the first four fingers of the right hand? The answer is a job on Wall Street."
Su Ming rubbed his fingers together as though he had already said all that needed saying and simply could not be bothered to spell out the answer.
"?" Snape's face was full