Once Astoria was off to her room in the girls' side of the Slytherin dormitory, Loki walked back out of the dungeons as he followed the signal of his trace that he'd left on Luna.
It didn't take long for Loki to reappear into the Ravenclaw Dormitory after he used the same trick to open it as he did with the Slytherin Common Room's door.
Loki simply 'confounded' the magical door into believing that he'd already given it the answer it needed no matter what he said.
The method to confound the doors was currently very complicated because none of the founders had skimped out on protecting the dormitories from anyone entering them to threaten those inside.
As such, it was ridiculously hard to open even the Slytherin Common Room door with a fake password and normal magic, if it were even possible, since Loki guessed that not even Dumbledore himself could do it without bringing out his Headmaster privilege or using some Beyonder means to bypass the door itself.
Loki opened the Slytherin Common Room door to entertain Astoria by manipulating the runes inside it by parasitising it using his worms so that he could make them 'tamable' enough that they'd open anytime he was present regardless of what he said.
Loki should've discovered this ability long ago, given that his senses as a Marauder kept informing him that he could very easily escape from even rooms with locked doors. But it wasn't the first idea that had popped into his head.
Loki assumed that his intuition informed him of such a possibility because he could use the Sequence 3 Mentor Of Deceit Beyonder Characteristics to deceive the door.
Yet, the intuitive observation remained even after he'd used the Beyonder Characteristic to keep Tom safe in the Astral World.
As such, Loki began to seriously examine the effect.
At first he assumed it might've been the Beyonder Characteristic before, but it could now refer to his ability to control Spirit Body threads since the door, although an inanimate item, had spirit body threads of its own.
Loki assumed that he could simply control the threads to get the door to open whenever he wanted.
But the castle was protected against being controlled should one attempt at doing such a thing.
How did they do it?
According to Rowena, they gave the castle a consciousness with the help of Mr. Error and directly left the defense regarding this aspect to this consciousness which could hide itself inside the castle and use its better judgement to stop malicious attempts at bypassing its security in this manner.
So as long as one did not have direct access to this consciousness it would mean that you couldn't really 'fool' it directly.
So Loki relied on his understanding of Rowena's runic knowledge and skill that he gleaned from studying the Room of Requirements to quickly and effortlessly parasitize the runic circuits of the doors of the castle itself, since they were a sort of pseudo mystical item.
As such, Loki could easily enter and exit any dorm at Hogwarts at his will.
But entering the Ravenclaw girls dormitory, Loki felt slight resistance from a few of the runes in the door and smiled.
'...so it still detected that I'm not here for pleasant business.' Loki thought as he used the worm of time parasitising the door to put more pressure on it to open for him.
Once the door opened, Loki walked straight up to Luna's room where the girl in question was already asleep. Loki watched her for a few seconds to make sure that she wasn't awake and wasn't going to stop what he did next.
Loki quickly used the dreams of a girl to get her to answer what they'd done to Luna's shoes by manipulating her Sea of Subconscious.
And the answer left him surprised but also a little frustrated.
'They tossed it into the Black Lake and weighed them down with stones while tying them in nets so that they couldn't be summoned using the Accio charm even if Luna somehow managed to picture the underwater scene around it perfectly...'
'...cruel.' Loki whispered but his face sported a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
Loki proceeded to sit by the window, staring at the black lake lit in the deep nightly hue of the moon hung in the sky as he contemplated what he would do to the 'Nargles' troubling Luna.
Loki watched the four other girls in the room, sleeping, as a devious idea emerged into his mind.
'They will serve as perfect teaching aids…'
Loki walked up to each girl sleeping in their beds as he snapped his fingers to create a crisp sound as he stole something from each of them.
Before he left, however, Loki divined the location of the shoes and summoned them back to Luna's side by simply stealing them from their position at the bottom of the lake, without any water or nets bogging them down of course.
But just as Loki finished his theft, he frowned when he noticed something strange.
Loki lost his control over the grey fog for a moment as it moved to the edge of his theft, hiding the 'act' of stealing for some reason.
It spooked him for a second but he managed to calm down when the grey fog did nothing else. Loki remained frozen in place for a few seconds as he analysed what had just happened.
'...the Grey Fog moved on its own?'
'Goddess of Fortune?'
'No…it can't be her…I would've felt her gaze over me. And I didn't feel myself losing control over the grey fog…no it felt more like a 'coincidence' that the fog just slipped in to cover my theft…'
'Could it have been done by my subconscious to protect me?'
'From what?'
Loki's brows furrowed since the only answers were probably all too dangerous for him to explore freely outside the mysterious castle above the grey fog itself.
'Is there an outer deity living inside the lake or something?'
Loki's frown only deepened before he vanished from Luna's room, leaving behind no trace of his presence as he teleported back to the Room of Requirements to quickly check his theories.
...
Hermione and Harry sat in the common room of Gryffindor as they discussed the events that they'd been through tonight.
"Are you sure Harry?" Hermione asked with a soft frown.
"Is it a bad idea?" Harry asked back.
Hermione sighed mentally, knowing that she couldn't reveal to Harry just who Dumbledore really was. And remembering that he could know everything about you if you simply spoke his name out loud or even thought about it, Hermione wasn't very eager to discuss 'Him'.
As such, she explained using fear-
"...what if Mr. Error does something?"
"I trust Dumbledore's skill."
Hermione nodded but provided a counter point, "What do you think will happen if he uses the lives of all the other students who signed the contract as leverage? What if 'He' kills some of them, like me, just because you talked to 'Him'?"
Harry fell into thought as he nodded, "So we need to figure out how to get out of that contract then?"
Hermione nodded but then spoke once again with a sad frown.
"That will not be easy. A Saint notarized the contract…so it won't be easy to solve the problem without suffering permanent damage. And that's leaving behind Mr. Error's modifications."
Harry nodded with furrowed brows as he spoke out the meaning hidden in Hermione's words, "So I have to at least be a Saint to break free."
Hermione shrugged and slowly nodded to show her helplessness.
She wanted Harry to grow.
Grow strong enough that he wouldn't be stuck being a pawn in the hands of an old 'deity' that had remained past its time.
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A/N : This chapter is not very good. But fear not. Things will get better from here. The chapters will also slowly get longer from here. Only a little at first, but soon roughly about four or sometimes five times the word count.