The moment they were whisked home by the Floo, Loren's first move was to pull Hermione into the small world and run a thorough check on her soul.
As he'd expected, he found forces on Hermione's soul similar to those wrapped around Mr. Weasley's. But in Hermione they were much weaker—no comparison to Arthur's—and Loren dispelled them with ease.
The instant that influence was removed, Hermione seemed to clear at once. All the recent, nameless negativity vanished as if blown away. She felt like herself again.
Loren explained the trick behind wizarding laws, and Hermione shivered. Then something struck her and she blurted, "Loren, you'd better check yourself. You might have a problem too."
He hadn't taken it to heart; his innate Chaos Mind kept his thinking from being swayed by outside forces. Still, since she'd asked, he ran a scan to reassure her.
Loren's soul wasn't the usual gray-white—it shone gold.
He found no trace of those forces on his soul. Dropping out of soul-sight, he felt again—this time tracing along his magic—and finally caught it: a residue riding his magic itself.
This one spread by magic—person to person, even object to person. A contagion hundreds of times nastier than any disease back in his previous life.
Once he understood the transmission and mechanics, he quickly forged an alchemical countermeasure and buckled it on Hermione. As he asked her to invite both sets of parents over for dinner, he began preparing a fresh set of alchemical tools for everyone. The adults had started easing into the wizarding world; if they kept recycling the same few spells, people would get suspicious. Better to give them more to "know."
Dinner was soon done. Beaming, the parents left with their new kit, clearly eager to "show off" their "newly learned magic" to wizarding friends.
During the meal, Loren had already scanned their souls. There were faint residues clinging there, but not much; after all, they had no magic of their own and relied on alchemy.
With that handled, he turned back to his small world. Mr. Weasley had warned him—the Department of Mysteries ran deep. He wasn't ready to pry at it yet. Grow first.
On the trip back, he couldn't help grumbling at the train's speed. Leave in the morning, arrive at night—fine as a ritual for term starts and endings, but during holidays it was a waste. Half a day thrown away to a vehicle? Painful.
So the first thing he did on reaching school was write to Mr. Weasley and Mrs. Longbottom, asking them to convert his first profits into a house in Godric's Hollow. With those two families' pull, it would be done quickly.
After sending Backup Food off with the letters, Loren didn't head to the dorm. He slipped into the hidden server room and set to work on Hufflepuff's Cup.
With the experience from Ravenclaw's Diadem, handling the Cup was easy. Soon the floor around him lay strewn with fragments of Tom Riddle's soul—like a very different kind of crime scene.
Once the cleanup was done, he pushed his magic into the Cup, imprinting it. Hufflepuff's Cup devoured magic far beyond the diadem—or even the Sword of Gryffindor. After draining a pile of blue potions, he finally met its appetite and reshaped the Cup to his mark, securing the permissions he wanted.
The sheer consumption surprised him. Quiet Helga Hufflepuff, it seemed, had hidden the deepest hand.
He sifted the data flowing back from the Cup—and his eyes widened again. Helga had built big: the Cup was a key to a fragment of space.
He also learned a buried secret: the original creator of house-elves was Helga Hufflepuff.
Helga had acquired that space shard and, using her own "charm," won over the spirits within it, asking them to help with household tasks—the first generation of house-elves. The wider wizarding world only began to see house-elves after the Goblin Rebellion of 1612. Loren figured the method had leaked from Hogwarts; digging deeper, perhaps that discovery helped spark the later rebellion.
He'd once assumed Helga had mastered permanent transfiguration or some power from nothing; the principle turned out much simpler.
Hogwarts' kitchen had been Helga's work, too—using the same method as the Cup. He'd been there many times and never realized. What's more, his scans showed house-elves still lived within the space linked to the Cup. The shard had always been hidden near Hogwarts.
Now that he'd mastered the Cup, Loren had become master of all house-elves in Hogwarts—for real, one of the castle's core forces. And the permissions Helga granted brought a further surprise: with three separate keys now in hand, he could nudge Hogwarts itself to do things without the headmaster noticing.
With that, he called Rona.
Up close, she'd grown—more solid, more natural. Her face was less stiff than before. Good. The magical "assistant" variant had room to grow.
"How's the latest sync, Rona?" he asked, watching her response.
No strong expressions yet, but her words weren't as wooden. Satisfactory. The timing was right: he could bind Rona to the server and, using his permissions, make her the castle's steward.
The work wasn't complicated; he'd only waited till now because his authority had been insufficient and Dumbledore might have noticed. Bound to the server, she could control and monitor every networked magical notebook and help Loren build new features, cutting his workload.
He could have launched the magical notebook any time—but he wouldn't rush it. He'd only mentioned it to Mrs. Longbottom; the release date belonged in professional hands.
When that was done, Loren left the chamber tucked deep under Hogwarts and headed to the kitchen.
"From now on, keep your work exactly as usual. And without my say-so, don't call me 'master.'"
That was his first order as owner—hold the pattern. No tells for prying eyes. And by prying eyes, he meant Albus Dumbledore.
Once all the house-elves had bowed to accept, Loren asked Dotty to take him into the space shard.
Dotty tugged at his sleeve; the room wavered—and the house-elf's magic ferried him through.
Eyes closed, senses widened, Loren suddenly understood the strange tug he'd felt.
This shard was a lawless zone—entirely outside the reach of the Ministry's enchantments.
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