Meeting Hermione during the morning before classes, Loki gifted her a book from the library that she would like, it was the Ancient Runes book that Loki had been reading all of last year.
"Don't you want it?" Loki asked after seeing Hermione puffed her cheeks and turned away to ignore him.
"No.", Hermione said blankly.
"Come on, I know you might not like it in here but you could make it easier for yourself by reading a book."
Hermione only turned around, glared at Loki and then spoke angrily, "Why did you send me to the Hospital Wing? I could've finished working on the newspaper in these two days! Now I'm stuck here all thanks to you."
"Mione, come on… you know I couldn't let you work while you were looking like a panda with huge dark circles around your eyes. It's fine to take a little bit of rest to keep your body in top condition."
"Hmpf." Hermione was still angry and glared at him before turning her face away and not looking at him.
"Fine. I'll leave this book here so you can read it in your free time. I have to go and meet someone else today for the advertisements. See you later!"
Loki placed the book on Hermione's bedside table and left the room after nodding a thanks to Madam Pomfrey who was smiling as she watched the two of them interact.
Talking to the owner of Hair King, a store opposite to Honeydukes in Hogsmeade that was a saloon, Loki got him to advertise in the paper so that more students would get a haircut from him.
The store owner agreed since he wasn't going to have customers from other than Hogwarts which made advertising in the Daily Prophet meaningless and costlier. So he immediately agreed to directly advertise to his target audience which was the main focus of Loki and Hermione's newspaper.
Several other stores like Madam Puddifoot's tea shop, the branch of Madam Malkin's robes for all occasions, and Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop all chose to advertise in the paper for similar reasons. Loki didn't even have to use his abilities to get them to sign a deal that was profitable to him since they all trusted Professor Snape who was acting as the impartial witness to their trades.
All in all, using Professor Snape as a witness made it a little harder for Loki to sneak in sneaky terms that would give him dividends in profits in cases like when a certain threshold of students visited these shops with his coupons. But he managed to do it somehow.
And the best part was that Loki had created an ARG that was related to the secret project he was working on with Bilton Blimes, the owner of Zonko's Jokes shop, so that he could encourage the students to use these coupons to get more benefits while they enjoyed it.
Days passed and Hermione went back to working on her articles along with Loki who decided to share the burden with her and they were soon ready for launch.
"I still can't believe it."
"What can't you believe?" Loki asked looking at the first printed copy of the newspaper in his hand.
"I still can't believe that we're writing a newspaper."
"Haha~ I find it strange as well, but it's beautiful isn't it?", Loki said with a proud smile.
The paper had Miss Norris at the head of the paper, while fanciful borders on each page had a dragon chasing around a giant to cuddle with him. It was Loki's tribute to Hagrid and Norberta.
Hermione had worked hard to properly arrange the articles in the newspaper so that they looked more like an art than a wall of text. This was important since there weren't many pictures in the paper since neither Hermione nor Loki were any good at taking them so they were left to a minimum.
"It is." Hermione nodded along and then asked a question as she peered from beside Loki, looking at the various articles she had written and had published in the paper. "How long do you think it'll take for us to print all the copies?"
"About half a day, if I'm right."
"So we leave it running tonight and then sell it tomorrow with the help of Professor Snape?"
"No, I don't think Professor Snape needs to help us now. We can do it ourselves, I made several boxes that will dispense the newspaper when the right amount of money is injected into it."
"How did you do that!?"
"I used the knowledge in the book you were reading in Hospital Wing.", Loki said with a silly smile.
"How did you- Madam Pomfery told you!?"
"Haha~! Yeah. She told me you were so engrossed in reading that you forgot to eat lunch and dinner so she had to scold you."
"Hiss~~!! I didn't read anything!" Hermione complained.
"Haha~ Yeah, I'm sure you didn't.", Loki said sarcastically.
Fast forwarding through the night, Loki moved everything into the right places overnight with Hermione who couldn't sleep due to excitement as she eagerly waited for people to purchase their newspapers and read them.
"Do you think it'll be successful Loki?" Hermione asked with slight worry as she bit on her nails.
"Who knows? But I can say that we've done our best." Loki said, squeezing Hermione's arm to calm her down.
The following morning, Loki camped in the great hall waiting for his first victi- customer who would purchase their paper.
Several students walked by the seemingly innocuous red box that looked like a vending machine for newspapers but none of them purchased anything from it.
'It seems like the students are in a hurry, do we have to wait till lunch?'
'Huh? What's Hermione doing!?' Loki wondered as he saw Hermione walk up to the newspaper vending machine where she pulled out four knuts and dropped them into the machine and picked up a newspaper that had been dropped into the pickup area.
'Ah…that's intelligent.'
'Monkey see, monkey do.'
Understanding what Hermione was doing, Loki got up from the Slytherin table, walked up to a machine close to him and picked up the newspaper from the vending machine after dropping four knuts into it.
Walking back to the Slytherin table, Loki held an immaculate posture as he flipped open the newspaper titled, "Hogwarts Honest Mill." and began to read the various articles that Hermione had written.
The first article was about Lockhart's tips and tricks that he explained from the time he'd fought a banshee, several students at the Slytherin table noticed Lockhart's appearance in the newspaper causing a few of them to walk up to the vending machine and imitate Loki getting a paper for themselves.
Loki turned through the pages and made sure to open each page to display its surprising contents. Since the paper was directed towards all the students at Hogwarts, it had something that would interest each one of them.
The article on Lockhart would interest everyone since it had an adventurous story along with tips and tricks for spell casting that would help make them better than their previous selves.
The second page contained adventurous stories from the ghosts at Hogwarts which would interest the Gryffindors since the stories were true and had occurred sometime in the past.
The third page was chock-full of information about the latest news on various shops and stores in Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, targeted towards investing galleons in those stores, to interest the crafty and ambitious Slytherins.
The fourth page had various new magical recipes from around the world that would surely interest the Hufflepuffs.
Finally, the Fifth page had a series of puzzles and short games like crossword and sudoku that would interest the Ravenclaw.
But Loki was most interested in the second section of the newspaper, which wasn't printed using the printer Snape had bought for them but was made using special alchemical techniques that Bilton Blimes had prepared along with Loki.
It was a rather inexpensive system that would help runic circuits be etched onto the paper for a one-time use project.
Loki turned around the pages to reach the second section of the newspaper where he found the title of the section and smiled.
'Arcadia Royale.'
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