Waking up the next day, Loki found himself facing Kreacher during breakfast.
"Kreacher, I have a question to ask you." Loki said with a little hesitance in his voice.
"Yes, Master Loki?" Kreacher asked looking up with his big elf eyes that looked innocent.
"...could you tell me why Sirius Black was sent to Azkaban?"
Kreacher's eyes widened as a prominent frown took over his expression.
An uncomfortable silence took over the room and just as Loki was about to rescind his question and let Kreacher be, he found him trembling a little.
Kreacher was clearly angry, but it seemed he was angry not by Loki's question, but by something he remembered.
"...backstabber…" Loki heard Kreacher mumble.
"Huh? What was that? Could you come again, I didn't hear you the first time." Loki requested.
"He was a backstabber, master.", Kreacher said with his hands clenched while grinding his teeth, his already pale skin appeared even paler and his eyes turned bloodshot.
"Backstabber? Who did he backstab and why?" Loki asked with confusion.
"The devil's spawn backstabbed another Noble. Oh, how shameful he has become!! If not for no one surviving in the Potter line, Madam Black would've had to lower her head in front of others! A backstabber!! One that killed his own 'friends'!!" Kreacher said in anger.
"He killed the Potters?" Loki asked with little confusion since he'd theorised as much, but he didn't understand why everyone in the wizarding world said otherwise if that was the case. 'Why does everyone think you-know-who killed them then?'
"What he did was as good as killing them with his own filthy hands!!!" Kreacher snarled and went off on a tangent, venting his hate, "He doesn't deserve the Black family name!! Madam should've tossed him out of the family long ago!! If only he weren't her son, she wouldn't have to suffer so much!!"
"Wait a second, what did Sirius do?" Loki asked since Kreacher's words led him to believe that Sirius did something else that was unforgivable.
Kreacher looked at Loki with anger glazing his eyes and said while he was fuming, "He was the Potter's secret keeper, he sold out their location to You-Know-Who and got them killed! And when his friend confronted him about it, he blew him up! Leaving only a finger behind! How shameful!!!" Kreacher lamented.
And before Loki could question him more he banged his head on the table leg while wailing.
"Oh, how disgraceful!!! *BANG* For a member *BANG* of the black house to lower their heads *BANG* and work like vermin under a mad tyrant!!! *BANG*"
Seeing how catatonic Kreacher had become, Loki slipped from the hall and went back upstairs to consolidate the knowledge he'd just learnt.
"So Sirius Black was a death eater?" Loki mumbled as he pondered on the implications. "Is he coming back to take revenge against me for defeating you-know-who in the first year?" Loki shook his head.
"No, that doesn't make much sense."
"Then why did he escape from Azkaban only now?"
"Is the Aurora Order planning to do something along with death eaters this year?"
Loki wondered about everything for quite a while but finally gave up and concluded once more that he needed more information about the incidents related to this mess.
'I don't want to ask Kreacher about it once again, lest he does something more drastic.'
The days beyond seemed to pass by in a blur as the days slowly turned into weeks and the weeks conjoined into a month.
Loki had a fruitful time learning under Randolph who imparted to him all the knowledge he could stuff into Loki's knowledge-hungry brain impartially as if Loki were his own family.
"I can hardly believe how that head of yours works Loki.", Randolph said as he stared at Loki's head while he was busy engraving runes onto a pendant that was fused with a Beyonder characteristic.
"Don't embarrass me, sir. I've been barely keeping pace with the learning schedule you've set for me to be taught all about crafting items." Loki said without lifting his head.
"Haha~ That was a schedule meant for when you drank the Savant Potion! Not when you were a Beyonder in the Darkness pathway!! If I didn't know any better and you didn't show me your Beyonder abilities, I would've accepted that you were lying in a heartbeat!"
'Phew, then I'm glad I did.' Loki thought with a puff of rising embarrassment as he remembered back to the time he'd disguised Sunny in invisibility using his illusions while he used his abilities of the darkness pathway to keep suspicion away from himself.
Loki had revealed himself to be a Sequence 7 Nightmare to the trio who were shocked that he'd already digested so much of his potion already.
"And there! Done!" Loki said out loud as he looked at the silver necklace that was glimmering under the light.
"Let me have a look." Mr. Fawley said as he introduced himself into their conversation and pulled the necklace off Loki's hands.
'I'm half sure he's a Sequence 4 Alchemist.' Loki wondered but kept quiet on the outside since he was being kept under the impression that Mr. Fawley was a Sequence 6 Artisan.
No one had directly told him that Mr. Fawley was a Sequence 6, but it was implied since in Loki's presence Mr. Fawley and Randolph acted as if they were the same and both were Sequence 6.
But Loki suspected that not to be the case since Mr. Fawley was always the one who worked on machinery dolls that worked all around the office, something that was a dead giveaway for Loki who knew the abilities of the Savant or the Paragon pathway by heart.
It was only a Sequence 4 Alchemist who could imbue life into their creations, hence Loki's suspicions.
But he didn't do anything like using divination to confirm the truth since everyone had their secrets, and if Mr. Fawley didn't want to divulge his Sequence, Loki respected him enough to let it be.
Mr. Fawley sprouted a smile on his face as soon as he picked up Loki's work and let out a soft *sigh* as he seemed to be remembering something from the past.
"What happened Mr. Fawley? Surprised by how good I am?" Loki asked confidently and shamelessly.
"Haha~ You're good boy. I was just wondering how things might've been different if I were as good as you when my teacher was teaching me."
"Your teacher?" Loki asked with confusion since he'd never been mentioned before and Loki assumed that Mr. Fawley's skills were part of family inheritance.
"Haha~ Some time else. For today, let's end here." Fawley nodded and patted Loki's shoulder, before leaving the room.
"Here, you can have this item." Randolph said with a smile on his face as he handed the silver necklace to Loki.
"Seriously!?"
"Haha~ yes, you can have it. We aren't shameless enough to take an item that you gave the materials to make."
"But you did most of the work to make it! I was just adding a little bit of flair to it!"
"Ha~ I still can't understand how you do it, how you're so good at arranging runes, but it was your Beyonder Characteristics so you get to keep it. Now bugger off or I will kick you out! And make sure you give it a good name!"
With the item in tow, Loki then exited the store and with Kreacher's help teleported back to the Black Mansion.
The item in his hand was a silver necklace that had been merged with the Beyonder Characteristic from the Twilight Giant Pathway that Loki had gotten from the soul in the Ring of Harvest he freed.
It did give Loki a little bit of strength when spirituality was injected into it.
But that was not all.
The necklace would allow him to summon a large golden-red ring of dawn light, about ten feet in diameter, that would protect him from curses and various other ailments physical or mental and always keep him feeling refreshed.
It would even purify any corrupted items placed in it.
Clearly an improvement over the first item Loki had crafted with it about a month earlier.
He chose to give it the name 'Necklace of Giants', to honour the pathway the Beyonder Characteristic was taken from and also because, after each use, the item required its user to talk to it about the greatness of giants by telling it a story that involved them.
With nothing else to do, Loki arranged his trunk which had all his stuff for the year and went to sleep. Tomorrow was the day he was going to board the Hogwarts Express once again after all.
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A/N : Crossed a hundred powerstones! Expect an extra chapter soon! Thank you for reading!
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