A Dish Best Served Cold.

"Perhaps…this is it?"

Loki had an idea but he didn't know if the outcome would be how he expected it to be.

However, given the lack of time, Loki couldn't use the safe route of performing tests and divinations to ascertain his ideas.

With reluctance, Loki picked up the grumpy and angry Ring of Harvest, put it on his finger and started to move towards the nearest group of Dementors.

Under the cover of the darkness of the night and his illusions, Loki moved down the road that led to the Greenhouses and soon came across the two Dementors he'd met earlier while travelling to the Herbology class.

Activating his spirit vision, his eyes immediately snapped to the glowing orbs inside the bodies of the dementors.

But he didn't immediately rush into action.

On the contrary, he calmed himself, used occlumency to clear his mind, and then instead of creating various arrays of runes to protect his mind, Loki imagined the rune Salazar Slytherin had signed off the paper with.

The rune slowly materialised as a faint outline that slowly hardened into an opaque block not long after. It made his mind invisible and undetectable as if it were concealed by a veil.

Loki felt detached from his mind. It was like he could think and do anything he wanted to like normal, yet he felt like he no longer cared for whatever was happening in it.

He felt a little detached from his own identity as Loki but he managed to keep a straight head through all his dissociativity.

Taking a deep breath and then letting his shoulders loose to resemble the relaxed state of his mind, Loki walked toward the Dementors.

With each step closer, Loki felt fear, fear he was reminded of from his time on the train, but his mind remained calm and clear because of his detached view.

Slowly, however, the fear of dementors quietened down and he felt a new sort of fear.

His fear this time did not stem from the dementors. This fear was something he was familiar with, it was the same kind of fear he'd felt when he had stolen a wallet for the first time, it was the same kind of fear he'd felt when he'd personally killed his first enemy.

But it was also something he could control and ride over.

Sucking in cold air from the surroundings to fill his lungs, Loki walked with a relaxed posture as if on his way to pick the greens from a supermarket.

Within moments, Loki found himself standing in between the two floating sentinels.

'How do I steal the souls?' Loki thought for a bit as he eyed the glowing orbs of light inside the Dementors but then did something silly.

He walked closer to one of the dementors, extended his hand and tapped on its robes.

Loki was nervous as hell. But when he saw that they didn't respond to him poking their robes, he got bolder.

Loki moved on to pulling their robes slowly before violently shaking them around.

The dementors finally noticed someone shaking them but were just confused about what was happening.

Yet true to their strict routines, they never left their post.

'Perhaps they think it's the wind…'

'Whatever hehehe~ this is good for me.'

'But how do I steal these…'

'Hmm….wait I'm thinking about this in the wrong way…'

'Ha! I've got it!'

Bunching one of the sentinels' robes, Loki lifted it up like a skirt and brought his hand closer to the floating orbs inside its body.

A smile formed on his face and before the Dementors could do anything or react in any way, Loki spoke softly.

"Little guy, I've prepared a feast for you."

Almost as soon as Loki said that the ring on his finger opened up a large mouth whose inside was as dark as the abyss from which extended outwards a thin-long tongue that swallowed all the orbs without a sound.

Loki's eyes widened at this but he was satisfied.

'At least he won't rebel anymore…'

'For a while at least…'

The dementor was absolutely puzzled, and Loki knew that because it kept 'looking' all around itself to find out if there was anything around it that had suddenly emptied the contents of its 'stomach'.

But it found nothing since Loki was already calmly walking back to the castle with a smile on his face.

'Haha~ Did it!'

In joy, Loki walked down the dark halls of Hogwarts, his figure hidden under an illusion until he reached his room in the Slytherin dorms where he rechecked the ring.

'*Phew* It's finally calmed down.' Loki thought as he felt the negative and irritated aura of the ring vanish.

Only after he was satisfied, did Loki collapse into his bed while holding the letter Salazar Slytherin had written for him.

'I should've figured it out earlier.'

'Sirius Black was a part of the Black family. The family that follows the Drakness Pathway.'

'And Salazar Slytherin clearly has something to do with the pathway. Perhaps he is the true god of this pathway.'

'And perhaps Sirius learnt about Salazar Slytherin's symbol from a book in the family library or directly from Walburga herself.'

'He probably used this symbol like I did to completely conceal my mind from the Dementors so that he could escape Azkaban.'

'Yet…I still don't understand…why did he suffer in that tortureous place for so long?'

'He likes it? Or guilt?'

The moment Loki figured that out he felt a tangible change within his body.

'*Phew* That digested my potion by about five per cent, bringing me to a total of fifteen per cent.'

But Loki wasn't satisfied.

'This is slow. Remarkably slow. At this rate, even two years won't be enough for me to completely digest my potion.'

'But how do I digest it faster?'

Loki thought about it for a while before giving up because he couldn't come up with an idea that would involve him solving puzzles.

Going to bed in the same clothes, that he was just running around in because he was tired, Loki ended up falling into a deep slumber from which he woke up only the next day.

"*Yawn* is it just me or does it feel even worse to wake up nowadays."

"Is there something wrong with my bed?" Loki mumbled but no one heard him.

Washing up and leaving to have breakfast at the Great Hall, Loki felt like it was time to give false information about Gehrman Sparrow to the Aurora Order.

He wanted to bait out all the other spies and learn of their identities when they would be sent out according to Loki's information to confirm its validity.

The plan was simple and all Loki needed to do was figure out what kind of information he'd like to give out so that he could perfect his bait.

Sipping on fruit juice, Loki came up with an idea.

'How about I tell them Gehrman Sparrow was spotted working with an unknown beyonder organisation?'

'Wouldn't that direct their attention toward tailing Gehrman Sparrow and finding out which organisation is behind him?'

Loki was satisfied with his plan and he nodded to himself.

"Who do you think is winning today Loki?" Tracey asked Loki, pulling him out of his thoughts.

"Do you want me to perform a divination, Tracey?"

"Ooh~! I want to see a divination." Astoria squealed in delight while clapping her hands in excitement like a seal.

"No way! I'm not paying a sickle for you to only toss a coin once again." Tracey said with mock anger while folding her hands.

Today was a match between Slytherin and Ravenclaw and given Loki's sterling record of placing bets in the past and winning them all, something he did to show off to people that he was a seer, everyone hung on his words to see who he would bet for.

Except everyone had it wrong.

Although Loki could very easily use the Mystery Pryer soul inside the Ring of Harvest to divine who would win the match, he did not.

Using the Ring of Harvest meant that it would grow hungry faster, something that Loki was not keen on letting happen since he had a very limited supply of souls that he could feed to the ring to satisfy its hunger.

But Loki wasn't guessing.

He had a trick up his sleeves that no one in the castle would've guessed.

Without answering anyone, Loki put up a kind smile and walked away from the table to go to the Transfiguration class.

"Hello, Mione." Loki greeted the witch whose eyes looked like a panda's. She was clearly tired and not in the mood to talk, she barely glanced Loki's way and then continued walking beside him while frowning.

"How has the day not even started yet and yours has so obviously gone wrong?" Loki asked pretending to be completely oblivious to her secret.

Hermione just looked at him and *sighed*, but she continued to walk towards the classroom.

"Fine, fine, don't tell me. If you're unable to come to work this week, I'll excuse you. I don't want my employees dying because of overwork."

"...no, it's o-"

"Fine. I suspend you for a week." Loki said and walked ahead of her.

Walking in front of Hermione, Loki looked at the slip of paper that was in his hand which read, "Slytherin wins."

Despite not liking Slytherin and not being its die-hard fan, Loki had a smile on his face.

'Hehehe, I can make more money now. I wonder how much I should bet this time? Two galleons? Will the stands even be able to pay me back?'

'Well, I can just steal from them if they try to leave me hanging.'

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A/N : We crossed two hundred powerstones!!! Expect an extra chapter today or tomorrow!! Yaaayyyy!!! Let's Goooo!!!

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