Curiosity getting the better of him, Sirius opened the folded letter to read what was inside it.
'Sirius Black is working with Gehrman Sparrow. He was the one who helped him escape from Hogwarts. He holds a powerful Beyonder item from the Darkness Pathway that helps him conceal his presence. A powerful seer at Hogwarts, Loki, helped me figure this out.'
Sirius became dumbfounded.
'Does he want me to get caught?' Sirius pondered the question seriously and shook his head slowly.
'No, if he wanted them to catch me he could've just revealed my location directly to them. There was no need for him to be sending the letter if that was the case.
But there was also another reason why Sirius felt he could trust Loki and send this letter. Specifically, there was a line in the short letter that increased his trust, 'He holds a powerful Beyonder item from the Darkness Pathway that helps him conceal his presence.'
It was clear to him that this was a lie since he had no such item on his person.
'So it's a trap?'
'But why reveal that I'm his ally in the first place?'
'And why is he writing about himself to the Aurora order in the first place?'
'....unless…he's using a different identity to communicate with them!?' Sirius immediately realised.
'Why does a kid have multiple identities?'
'Not even I and James had anything like it…it's much cooler to use your real names and make them fear it!'
'And then there's the question regarding how he got the ring that my mother should own. Did he just buy it from some Beyonder circle? But I doubt that wretched woman would've sold such an item.'
'Did he steal it from her?'
'But…I doubt he's that strong…'
'He seemed weaker than me back when he made a 'deal' with me.'
'*sigh* this kid is hard to understand.'
After a while, when he came out of his shock, Sirius slipped on the Black Family ring that Loki had given him to distort his features so that no one would recognize him.
He placed the parchment onto the altar and proceeded to light the candle with his spirituality, after which Sirius began to chant in Latin.
"
I,
I summon in my name,
The creature that roams the upper realm,
The creature that is the stealthiest,
The creature that has no shape or form,
The creature that is contracted with Mr. X
"
The room darkened as the candlelight flickered.
Sirius felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as he felt a chill travel up his spine. Not something that happened to him often.
As the flickering candle stabilized into a smaller flame, darkness began to creep up the altar from behind him. It was walking up the legs of the altar in the opposite way water would've dripped down if water had been splashed onto it.
The droplets of darkness coagulated on the letter that was lying on the altar and very soon, under Sirius's gaze the letter was swallowed whole by the darkness.
Sirius blinked and everything about the darkness vanished as if it never existed.
But so did the letter along with it.
In the Great Hall the next morning.
"Ooh~ Did you know Daphne has been excited to go to Hogsmeade this weekend?" Astoria revealed, causing Daphne to glare at her sister while she just smiled sweetly.
"Has she now? If our Ice Princess is excited for our first visit to the village I better be excited too." Loki said with a chuckle as he picked up a piece of the jam treat pie on the dining table.
"Would you like some Tory?" Loki asked after serving himself.
"Oh my gosh, yes, of course I'd like some too! You know how I love sweets!"
"Tory no-" Daphne started but Astoria interrupted. "I haven't had any sweets in a week Sis, I need this!"
Passing the tray with the pie to Astoria, Loki turned to look at Daphne, "What do you want to visit in Hogsmeade?"
Daphne glared at Loki and then at Astoria but after seeing them ignore her glare she spoke softly, "Honeydukes."
"Oh! Haha~ and you were angry at Tory for having sweets." Loki said with a snort and continued to eat his breakfast while having to deal with a fuming Daphne.
At the end of breakfast, Loki felt a ward he had set up trip and he immediately got up.
"You guys go ahead, I need to pick up an important letter from the owlery.", Loki said and waved his hand.
"Who's the letter from Loki? Your mistress perhaps!?" Astoria asked with wide eyes and a smile, ready for gossip.
"Haha~ Mistress? Seriously? Who'd like a bum like me? It's just a letter from an investor in the Hogwarts Honest Mill." Loki waved his hands once again and Astoria soon lost interest.
No one heard Daphne mumble, "A bum? Why would you be a bum?"
Loki reached the classroom he'd added the ward to and opened the door after changing his appearance to match Gehrman Sparrow's.
An owl waited for him at the window that led into the classroom and Loki freed it by taking the letter that was tied to its leg.
'Good thing I made Sirius send the letter to them. At least now they don't have access to me or my location. Which means that they don't have a way to spill my identity until Sirius himself is caught.'
Making sure there was no one around using the Marauder's map, Loki sacrificed the letter into the Grey fog to read it later during the day.
He quickly walked up to his next class even though Loki was dying out of curiosity to read what was in the letter.
While sitting in class throughout the day Loki's mind was distracted, to the extent that Professor Snape knocked him on his head with a book for not paying attention to his cauldron when it was bubbling ominiously.
Only after the day was finished and Loki was back in his room did he do the Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth ritual to move above the grey fog where he read the letter.
On it were the simple words written in a jerky and sharp cursive, "Keep an eye on Gehrman Sparrow, figure out his location and if possible what he is planning to do."
Loki *sighed* deeply.
He was a little disappointed that this was all the letter said, but he was delighted due to something else.
'If they use divination and fall for the trap I've set up they should now be interested in the identity of Loki and their contact at Hogwarts.'
'They'll want to keep a close eye on both me and the person in contact with them. They will also possibly try and send the other spies on my tail to figure out everything about 'Loki'. After all, Loki has been the only person who has been able to divine any information about Gehrman Sparrow.'
'If I play my cards right they'll think that my divination skills are unique in some way…this will allow me to get closer to them since they will eventually want to use my 'special' divination skills to obtain information about other matters which are impossible to find out easily about too.'
'Ha! This is too easy.'
'And as a cryptologist, it makes sense if I am shrouded in a layer of mystery that makes it harder for people to figure me out.'
Miles away in a dark home where not even a flicker of light existed Mr. X haphazardly scratched his neck in the darkness.
*scritch* *scratch* *scritch* *scratch*
His hands lay hovering over a piece of paper.
A quartz pendant hung from his hands as Mr. X began to mumble something.
"This is the truth."
"This…truth."
"This…truth."
…
"This…truth."
The man slowly opened his eyes and looked at the pendant but much to his disappointment the pendulum wasn't moving, not clockwise and not even anti-clockwise.
*scritch* *scratch* *scritch* *scratch*
Blood began to leak out of the wound on his neck that was created from repeated scratching but Mr. X didn't even flinch, his flesh squirmed around to heal the damage done.
"Anti-divination?" Mr. X mumbled before pausing for a bit and then mumbling something else, "Strange…why use anti-divination to prevent the statement from being validated if you give out the source of your information?"
He closed his eyes after mumbling a new phrase for his dream divination, "What…source…information?"
"What…source…information?"
"What…source…information?"
…
"What…source…information?"
Immediately a scene appeared in front of him, he was inside a room filled with two people sitting across from each other on chairs arranged around a desk.
One person he was familiar with, the Beyonder who had attended his Beyonder gathering earlier in the summer. His face was hidden by a clear distortion field both times which indirectly gave away his 'identity' due to similarity in how he hid it.
But his interest was on the other boy. The boy appeared quite young and was speaking with some fear painted on his face.
"All I can know about Gehrman Sparrow from my divinations is that-"
"Wait." The Beyonder who had his face blurred cut him off and then walked off into the washroom for a few seconds before returning with a seemingly normal-looking card which suddenly distorted the divination and kicked Mr. X out of it.
"Another anti-divination item?"
"Interesting…" The man mumbled as drops of blood dripped on the side of his neck, his attention on the face of the boy he'd just seen.
"But is this a trap…?"
"...Something feels off about it all."
"How did this 'Loki' divine about Gehrman Sparrow if we weren't able to?"
"Hmm...I guess this person no longer has any use…it's time to get rid of him…"
Loki's potion immediately digested a little, bringing him up to thirty-five per cent digestion because he'd made it cryptic for Mr. X to figure out about himself by separating his two identities of Loki and the person who was delivering letters to the Aurora Order, all while keeping his own identity shrouded in mystery.
Loki at this time had a different thought on his mind.
'I wonder what Mr. X will do next…'
'I would probably send people to investigate the Seer that was able to divine this information…and initiate direct contact…'
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