Bab 166: A Puppeteering Task.
In the end, Loki chose to trust his instincts and only perform a divination once he knew more about the situation.
Waking up the next morning, Loki found himself feeling a little lazy.
'Damn, it's so comfortable inside the blanket, do I really need to go to classes?'
But then remembering Professor Snape's arrogant look Loki forced himself off his bed as he dragged himself to the washroom to get ready.
Sitting at the Slytherin table in the great hall for breakfast, Loki noticed something strange in the air around the tables.
All the students appeared a little tired, most were yawning and some were even outright dozing away at the tables.
But since no one was making a fuss about it, Loki chose to remain quiet and pretend like he was feeling lazy and sleepy too, not that he had to do much since he really was feeling like that.
The potions class was fun for Loki since he spent time trying out various experiments during class to improve on Snape's recipes, but he mostly failed, even then he learnt a lot from his failures.
Snape could see what Loki was doing and since he knew of Loki's exact skill in potion-making, he let him do as he pleased. Also, since the students were feeling lazy, most of them started making mistakes which Snape had to keep correcting continuously.
After the potions classes finished Loki finally found time to pull out the Marauder's map to search for the secret pathway that Hermione had mentioned yesterday.
'Hmm…so it should be on the second floor.'
'A pathway that connects the second floor to the first floor where the transfiguration classroom is.'
Loki searched for a bit, moving the map around and looking at it in different ways but he found nothing.
'Huh?'
'Did she lie to me?'
'But why would she lie about how she got to the class?'
'Eh…maybe it's some new pathway that she figured out and it's not on the map?'
Loki closed the map with 'Mischief managed' and continued to go to his next classes.
In the Transfiguration class, since he hadn't read anything new from the course textbook just yet since he spent his time studying under Randolph over the summer, he found himself lagging behind a little more than he would've expected but he was still faster than the rest of the class.
Seeing Loki's talent in making his transfigurations animated, given Loki was basically applying the skills he used to make his illusions super realistic, McGonagall gave him a special task to improve his skills further.
"Mr. Loki, that is a fantastic cat. Ten points to Slytherin." McGonagall said as she passed by Loki's table, his cat was black like the night and was sitting like a loaf while swinging its tail hypnotically as it eyed the rest of the students.
"Thank you, professor.", Loki said humbly.
"I would like you to animate a puppet play for us by the end of the week, if you can pull it off I pledge to add thirty points for Slytherin."
Several student's eyes widened including Loki's as he heard McGonagall's words and with a smile on his face Loki agreed, "I promise to have something ready by the end of the week Professor."
"Good. I shall look forward to it."
Hermione looked at Loki in disbelief as Loki smirked at her and showed her a thumbs down, igniting a competitive fire within her with intensity that she didn't know existed.
And by the end of class, Hermione was assigned to work with Loki on the same play with him.
Walking out of the class, Loki nodded at Hermione as he spoke while they walked side by side for a little bit, "I'll leave it up to you to select the story of our play." and when he got a swift excited nod from her he walked away since they had different classes to attend.
Later in the evening when Loki and Hermione met up in classroom 2-21 along with Daphne, they began to debate about their upcoming play in a heated fashion.
"What do you think!? Should we go with a story from the tales of the Beedle and the Bard!?"
"No, they're too popular and most of them are cruel, not suitable for a class show, how about we choose a story from the muggle side of the world?"
"Hmm…" Hermione thought hard and asked, "Snow white?"
Loki's face scrunched up a little and he said no, "Too fantastical. And people will think the dwarfs are goblins and boo us out of the stage. If they like it, it might make Professor Flitwick feel out of place and bad if he learns about it."
"Then, how about Cinderella!? That'll be a good test of our transfiguration skills too."
"Hmm…it'll be hard to do all that dialogue, but let's keep it on hold for now."
They continued arguing about it until the day ended yet they couldn't stand together on a single story.
Meanwhile, Daphne continued to fix up the newspaper and finished her job for the day, before casting one last glance at Hermione and Loki before rolling her eyes and leaving since they were so engaged with each other that they were almost shouting.
Yet nothing worked in the end.
Loki returned to his room and began to brainstorm about a suitable story by thinking about everything he'd seen in his previous life, except everything was too grand for them to be able to easily pull off while simply using transfiguration.
'Damn it. There are only four days remaining. Where will I get a suitable story from?'
The next day when Hermione, after classes, pulled Loki to help her search for a good story in the library, Loki refused.
"I need a little bit of time Mione." Loki said shaking his head.
"What will you do with your extra time? I'm going to the library, why don't you come help me out!?" Hermione asked with a frustrated expression.
"I have an idea I want to try out and I need a little bit of time for that. I promise if it doesn't work out, I'll help you out from tomorrow."
Hermione looked at Loki with a frown on her face but seeing his firm eyes broke out into a tired *sigh* before speaking with a patient tone, "Alright, I'll be waiting."
Loki smiled, "Thanks, Mione. I knew you'd understand me!"
"Hmpf. Don't think about escaping and leaving me to do everything alright!? I'll make sure to drag you around if you don't join me tomorrow."
"Haha~! Alright."
With that Loki left Hermione after giving the angry girl a few uninvited headpats that annoyed her as she swiped them away much like a cat and moved to his room where he shut himself up for the rest of the day with no one knowing what he was doing inside.
As the sun rose and the watch Snape had gifted Loki at the end of the year changed colour from a shimmering black to a golden red to depict the morning sky, he looked at the rolls of parchment in his hand and said with a satisfied smile-
"Finally! I have it! A perfect play!!"
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A/N : You guys crossed two hundred power stones!!!! Expect an extra chapter tomorrow!!! Thank you for reading!! Let's goo!!
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