webnovel

Chase.

Loki heard a loud *thud* that snapped his senses back into him.

"Riddikulus!" Loki shouted as he immediately pointed his wand at the man in front of him.

The man transformed as he turned comically small with two people coming over to beat him on his head with a baseball bat. The two people were Klein and a veiled woman with a scythe in one of her six hands.

Loki stifled his laughter seeing the small chibi Amon and calmly waved his wand, lifting the Boggart and sending it back into the cupboard it had come out from.

'Damn Professor Lupin, that was cold. Leaving a boggart out to scare anyone who comes inside? Crazy.'

Hearing the footsteps that had knocked him out of the grip of fear from before Loki moved toward the wall beside the door and covered himself with an illusion while also focusing on Salazar Slytherin's rune to keep his mind from being discovered.

Loki then held his breath and waited.

The footsteps paused outside the door as if analyzing the technique used to destroy the wards on the lock. Soon, given Loki's enhanced hearing he heard the swish of a wand.

With this swish, Loki felt he'd lost his sense of hearing but when he was able to hear the sound of his blood rushing inside his body he realised someone had blocked off all sounds on the outside.

The door slowly swung open but there was no *creaking* sound even though it and the hinges appeared to be as old as the castle itself.

There appeared to be no one behind the door, but switching on his spirit vision and focusing on his ability to see people's Body of Heart and Mind, Loki instantly spotted someone entering the classroom.

'Professor Lupin's weak?' Loki thought.

'Why does his Body of Heart and Mind look so fragile?'

'Is he sick with something?'

Loki instantly switched to spirit vision and saw exactly how poor Lupin's health currently was.

It was abysmal. The colours on his body were non-existent, they were all as black as the night itself.

Loki even felt like it was a miracle that Lupin was still alive.

But Loki didn't wait longer and grabbing the opportunity that Lupin had presented him with, Loki slipped out of the now open door that was beside him and left the classroom.

He eventually pulled out the Marauder's map and immediately began to scuttle through the dark corridors until he reached his room. His eyes focused on the name Remus Lupin the entire time since he was worried he'd use some Beyonder technique to follow him.

But everything seemed to have worked out fine and Loki found Lupin walking away from the classroom and back to the infirmary.

Just as Loki reached his room, however, his eyes paused on two different names. The first name was walking inside the Gryffindor Tower, towards a bedroom where six people were sound asleep.

The first name was Sirius Black.

But Loki's attention was grabbed by the second.

'Peter Pettigrew?'

'What?'

Loki froze in his steps.

And then a frown appeared on his face. The frown only deepened further as his mind thought about the situation in front of him.

'Peter Pettigrew? Is it someone just named like this?'

'But why would Sirius Black chase after him if he was a duplicate?'

'How does he even know about Peter still being alive?'

'Did someone inform him about it in prison?'

'Or perhaps he knew that Peter hadn't really died in the incident back then?'

Loki pondered for a bit before walking the castle corridors again, moving towards the Gryffindor Tower.

As Loki approached the tower his steps slowed considerably, until he found himself in a broom closet where he entered the sefirah castle to grab several items like the Cards of Blasphemy to interfere with any divination that might try and lock onto him.

Loki observed how Sirius moved towards Ron Weasley and then began to search around for Peter Pettigrew.

'How can he not find him?'

'Wouldn't a forty-year-old man be pretty easy to spot?'

The disturbance in his surroundings caused Ron to wake up after which Loki watched Sirius flee from the tower.

But along with Sirius fleeing, Loki even watched Peter Pettigrew fleeing.

Seeing this, Loki pulled out his whistle and blew hard on it causing Sunny to appear after tearing out from the spirit world.

"Sunny, I have a job for you.", Loki said flicking a gold Galleon in Sunny's direction which he caught without effort.

"What is it?" The little creature asked.

"I want you to go to this location.", Loki said pointing at the Marauder's map, "And see if a person walks by. Tell me how he looks if you manage to see him. And you can attack to capture him if you find him."

"Roger that.", Sunny said while dipping back into the spirit world since travelling through it was faster than scuttling around the castle corridors.

Loki on the other hand walked through the corridors while keeping himself covered under illusions as he tried to intercept Sirius's path.

'Damn! he's fast! How is he so fast?'

'And how is he picking corridors where there aren't any teachers patrolling nearby?'

Loki pulled out his wand and cast the levitation charm on his boots and robes, making them slightly lighter so that he could keep with Sirius.

Each time Loki got close to a corridor that Sirius was moving toward, he'd find Sirius immediately changing his direction.

'How does he know where I am?'

Loki looked at the Marauder's map, wondering if Sirius had a copy that was helping him, but Loki pushed it to the back of his mind and came up with a plan.

Loki rushed along with Sirius, both competing in what appeared to be a game of tag. Loki would strategically shift corridors, but Sirius would somehow recognise it and shift faster.

Eventually, though, Loki managed to reach a choke point faster than Sirius. It was right at the exit. Loki had used the other teacher's patrolling routes to trap Sirius and force him to escape through the single exit that Loki was standing guard at.

He hid behind an armoured knight statue and blended into the darkness by using his illusions to get the jump on him so that he could capture Sirius faster than he could retaliate.

'Any moment now.'

Loki patiently waited and calmed his breathing for a while until he heard the pitter-patter of feet coming from the distance.

'Why does his running sound like a four-legged creature?' Loki wondered.

But that was when a giant dog as black as the night appeared in Loki's view.

'Wha-'

Loki looked at the map to confirm what he was seeing. And when he found the dot representing Sirius moving just like the dog in the real world, he became dumbfounded.

Suddenly everything started to make sense.

Firming his gaze and tightening the grip on his wand, Loki locked his aim at the dog and mumbled, "Incarcerous!"

________________________________________________________________________________________________

A/N : Join my Patreon (p@treon.com/hooin_kyoma_au) to read 20 chapters ahead for just $3.

Chapitre suivant