The breakfast in the great hall was stifling, but only for Loki.
The three students he'd seen vanish into the whomping willow just the other day had reappeared in the great hall.
They laughed and talked to their friends like nothing was wrong and ate a hearty meal. One of them looked slightly more pretty, but Loki didn't find it noticeable.
'How are they so normal?'
'Do they not remember what happened yesterday?'
Loki's hands trembled as he remembered their eyes that had rolled to the back of their heads.
'If so what happened to them after they vanished into the tree?'
Loki wanted to turn on Spirit Vision and examine them but his mind warned him against it.
'They could still be holding the coin and I don't want to get affected by whatever is in it.'
Loki spent the day attending classes with a heavy burden on his mind as he continued to think about what could have happened to them.
'What does the coin do exactly?'
'How did it take over them and make them do things they don't seem to remember?'
'Does it contain the will of an evil god? Like the one One-Eyed Jesus planted on Klein while in the Forsaken Land of Gods to open the Giant King's court?'
'If it does, how do I confirm it and counter it?'
'Will using Salazar Slytherin's rune help in protecting my mind from it?'
Continuing to think about the same things throughout class Loki started to plan how he would protect himself from whatever was inside the coin.
Eventually, getting bored of the repeated thinking Loki pulled out the marauder's map and began to scour it for Peter Pettigrew's name.
'Oh! He's there! He's back.'
'Well, at least Sirius has some good news.'
Loki nodded and was about to put away the map but out of the corner of his eyes, he noticed something peculiar on the seventh floor.
There were three names on the corridor on the seventh floor.
Mary Jackson, Frank and Lewis.
Loki's blood chilled.
'....so they were turned into sentinels?'
Loki calmly closed the map and let out a *sigh* after stuffing the map back into his pocket.
"What happened Loki?" Hermione asked having heard him sigh.
The two of them were looking at Professor Lupin who was teaching them about the creature in the cage at the centre of the classroom, a red cap.
"I was thinking of a new story and the problem is the story isn't going the right way.", Loki whispered.
"...why don't you try and tell it to me? Maybe I can help you out?"
"...maybe that's what I will do. The main character in the story currently doesn't know how to fight the main villain. He's just too powerful. And he seems to be getting more powerful by the day."
There was a soft pause causing Loki to think even Hermione didn't have an answer for him but after a few seconds when Loki was about to give up and continue doing what he had planned, Hermione whispered.
"That's a simple situation, isn't it? All the main character has to do in that case is to do all that he can. I'm sure other people around him in the story would do their best to pick up where he's stopped. If the villain is much stronger than the hero, you just have to drag an even stronger character into the fray to protect the hero."
"...ah…" Loki while looking at the frantic Red Cap in the cage felt some of the fog in his mind clear up.
'Yes…I don't have to fight all of them on my own. I just have to give 'Adam' and the Professors enough hints so that they take up after me.'
'I just have to give them a reason to step into the fray after giving them all the information I have.'
'But how? How do I drag them into the fray? Trap a student? But they didn't do much when Ginny Weasley was captured in the second year. Even when Hogwarts was closing because of it.'
"Thanks.", Loki mumbled to Hermione and she went back to paying attention to the lesson with a smile on her face.
Eating dinner in the Great Hall, Loki glanced at the owls that were flying in with parcels and post and soon spotted Rowley.
The small fluffy owl dived and landed on Loki's shoulders pecking a piece of tuna on the fork while Loki untied the parcel and letter attached to Rowley's leg.
When Rowley flew away Loki put down the parcel and began to read the letter written with handwriting that looked like a toddler had scratched on it.
'Master Loki,
The package contains the item you asked me about.'
'Oh?' Loki's eyes widened and his eyebrows raised. 'Kreacher found the locket already? It's barely been a few hours since I wrote him the letter telling him about it….how?'
Loki felt a little dissatisfied with Kreacher since he hadn't written down anything else in the letter about the locket but chalked it up to his paranoid self since letters could be intercepted.
But just as Loki was about to put away the letter he spotted a small drop of water on one corner of the paper that lightened the yellowish colour of the parchment.
'Hmm..?' Scanning through the parchment more carefully after holding it up against the light Loki grew slightly shocked.
'....he cried writing this?'
There were several drops of water on the paper that Loki assumed were teardrops.
'...' Sitting in the great hall dumbfounded, Loki couldn't believe his own deduction. 'Kreacher crying…? But….why?'
Loki was suspicious about the letter and then thought-
'There's a hidden message?'
'I better check it out when I'm alone.'
But instead of spending more time thinking about Kreacher's out-of-character behaviour Loki first picked up the parcel and after saying a short goodbye to his tablemates walked away from the Great Hall to the Slytherin common room.
He had to walk back with a group of students being escorted by the prefect because of Dumbledore's orders to keep the students safe.
But as soon as he reached the dorm, Loki immediately created a wall of spirituality to isolate himself as he pushed a little bit of spirituality into the paper and watched as runes emerged into view.
'A hidden message!'
It took a few seconds but Loki immediately figured out what Kreacher was trying to do.
He was using the sound of the runes to spell out various words, a common method to encrypt information in the wizarding world.
Scribbling on a new piece of parchment, Loki quickly figured out what Kreacher was explaining.
'Master Regulus was the one who stole this Locket from the Dark Lord. It contains a piece of the foul man's soul in it.
Please, please destroy him.
Master Regulus gave his life for it and asked me to destroy it, but I have been unable to do so until today.
Only the destruction of his soul will allow Master Regulus to rest in his grave.'
Loki was shocked.
'....You-Know-Who's soul is in this?'
'What the heck…why?'
Suddenly Loki felt much more conscious around the package.
He could also swear that he could feel an unhealthy aura around the package that would attack him if he did something strange to it.
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A/N : We're pretty close to crossing two hundred powerstones!!!! Expect an extra chapter soon!!! Let's gooo!!!!
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