A Prelude To Greatness.

"What do you think about it?" Loki asked Hermione with bright eyes as he looked at her with a little expectation.

"I….did you really write this?" Hermione asked with a quiver in her voice.

"Why? It's not nice?" Loki asked with some disappointment.

"No!! No!! I just…can't believe it! It's perfect for us!!" Hermione said with an excited and surprised expression as she looked at him.

"You sure?" Loki asked becoming equally excited.

"Yeah!! It has only two main characters and almost no dialogue! It'll be easy to perform while also having depth to it due to the story!"

"Wanna get started then!?"

"Sure!"

Leaving Daphne who was once again busy working on the newspaper by herself, Loki and Hermione began to work behind closed curtains, trying to figure out everything before the last day of the week.

"Let's first start with storyboarding.", Hermione said with a pause as she picked a charcoal pencil and began to sketch out a few scenes in the rough they could use as a reference for their transfigurations.

"How about something like this? Would this suit the main character?" Loki asked transfiguring a spoon into a three-piece suit with a grey overcoat, an orange shirt, and a purple pant. "Looks good doesn't it?" Loki asked with a proud smile.

Hermione's eyebrows twitched as she stared at the disastrous clothes that Loki had transfigured and looked at him for a little while to figure out if he was being serious or not.

"Loki…erm…why don't you handle the animation of the characters, leave the clothes to me…"

"Oh? You want to handle the clothes? fine, fine, you can do it. I'll work on animating their bodies like you said."

Taking Hermione's sketches and his imagination as a reference, Loki began to transfigure small seven-inch figurines that they'd be using as the main actors of their play.

Once he was done with the figurines, Loki began to practice animating them according to the movements described in the short play he'd written.

Surprisingly, Loki didn't find it difficult to create scenes that were heavy with action, instead, he found the rather mundane things that everyone did unconsciously to become difficult. Things like walking, talking and subtle signs and expressions became a little difficult to animate since they felt uncanny.

No matter how Loki tried to frame the movements they looked weird and felt unnatural.

'Hmm…would using animation principles work? I mean, after all, this is an animation too, in a way, right?'

Loki started with a basic implementation of the squash and stretch, working diligently to lean into the animated feeling of the play and soon found his rhythm.

Hermione joined in soon after with her series of clothes and dresses that complemented perfectly with each other.

The dresses were an equally important part of the play since there were a few 'dances' in the play and the colours and flow of the dresses played an important role in framing the main characters.

Eventually, Loki fell into a trance with Hermione and the two worked together to learn and coordinate the movements of their characters, learning from their and each other's mistakes on the way to produce fluid and stunning animations.

They worked for two straight days, each day after classes, well into the night while holding back their work on the newspaper to finish learning exactly how the play they had prepared would go.

"Is that all we can do Loki?" Hermione said wiping off the sweat on her forehead that had accumulated over the last fifteen minutes during their final rehearsal of the play.

"Yes, that's probably it. I reckon we've gotten amazing at it, probably better than anyone else in school." Loki said similarly tired, dark circles outlining his eyes.

He'd spent a lot more hours than Hermione working on his animations to send the play to the next level by introducing various animated framing elements into the scenes.

And Hermione seemed to have noticed this.

"Now go sleep! You need it so that you don't make any mistakes tomorrow! I can't believe how you're able to split your focus to manage so many things at once!!"

"Haha…hahaha…" Loki laughed without energy, waved his hand and said, "Good night" to Hermione before leaving classroom 2-21 to go to his dorm room and collapsing into the bed.

"Big Brother will show you a surprise in a few days Elane! Be ready for it!" Loki spoke into the two-way mirror.

"Un! I will be ready Big Bwother!!"

"Good!"

And just like that, for the first time, Loki fell asleep before Elane, who just patiently watched him sleep and along with the rhythm of his breathing fell asleep herself while holding a stuffed toy that looked like him.

Waking up the next morning with a long *yawn* Loki became excited as he remembered what day it was today.

"Ha!!! I hope everything pans out well in the end! Hopefully nothing goes wrong. No!! Nothing will go wrong!! I'm sure of it!!"

In the great hall, Loki noticed the same thing again.

"Huh. It seems like everyone is very tired nowadays. Is it because of the cold caused by the presence of so many dementors all around the school? Well, I'm sure the professors would've warned us if there was anything particularly wrong." Loki mumbled and continued to eat his breakfast.

"Prepared for your presentation Loki?" Tracey asked with a smile while Astoria looked at Loki with a frown.

"Why the long dace Tory?" Loki asked casually with the nickname he'd given Astoria.

"Hmpf! I wanted to see the play, but I have classes during the time of your class!"

"Haha~ Don't worry, I'll try to get Mione to agree to do a private show, just for you.", Loki said with a smile since he'd learnt about Astoria's blood malediction a few days prior from Madam Pomfrey while helping her brew potions. It had made him sympathetic towards her.

So although he couldn't find a cure for her, he wanted to make sure he could keep her smiling in other ways.

'Although she doesn't particularly look sick…I guess it's just something that pains her and she's good at ignoring it?'

'But Daphne took that thing in the first year…'

'Perhaps it still couldn't cure her?'

'Hmm…I dunno.'

"Really!!?" Astoria asked, immediately excited like a dog hearing the word play or outside.

"Haha, yeah sure, I will convince her somehow, don't worry about it."

"You're the best friend I have Loki!!!" Astoria said with excitement causing Daphne to send Loki a scheming glare.

"Haha! Fine, fine, calm down now, or your sister will eat me alive!!!"

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A/N : This is a side quest I randomly embarked on since I was reading 'Advent of the Three Calamities' while writing this part of the book....so I ended up adding this...I hope you like the short story that'll come soon. Of course, this was also added to give Loki a few skills for later in the book, but those won't show up anytime soon.

Thank you for reading!

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