Bab 177: Cigarette Boxes.
At the end of the day after dinner when all was done, Loki leaned back into his bed and proceeded to close his eyes for a little bit.
'Ah~ Why am I feeling so tired nowadays?'
'Has the quality of food products at Hogwarts gone so low?'
'Is 'Adam' skimming so much money that Hogwarts can no longer afford proper breakfast, lunch and dinner?'
*Yawwn~~*
Loki forced himself off the bed and sat down on the only chair in his room after washing his face with some cold water to wake himself up.
Then slipping into the Sefirah Castle, Loki summoned to himself a paper lying in his pile of items scattered everywhere in the castle and began to read a portion of what was written on it.
'I've been avoiding this for long enough. I should do my best to look into it.'
Every positive circle you make,
While keeping in mind the trial you may take,
Will lead you to me to wake,
On the Magical floor, you can see the lake.
On the paper was Slytherin's letter to him which he'd picked up from the Chamber of Secrets.
'What is this about?'
'What does he want me to find?'
'Does all this lead to a treasure or something?'
"'Will lead you to me to wake.' Is he telling me that I've got to wake him up?"
"Why is he sleeping in the first place? Poor quality food in Hogwarts?"
'No, but the last line indicates that this place is somewhere inside the castle, somewhere from where I can see the Black Lake. Or can anything random where you can stand and view the lake be considered as a floor?'
'This riddle's too vague.' Loki thought with a sigh and then put down the paper in front of himself, ready to give solving it a real try.
"Alright. Let's see. 'Every positive circle you make.' Does this mean every positive circle I make with my wand?"
"And I have to do it while keeping in mind the trial I have to take. But what's the trial? Do I just think about something vague like Slytherin's trial? Or perhaps keep this letter in mind? Or the Chamber of Secrets?"
"The next line talks about waking him up, but could it be a metaphor for something? Like an object he enchanted that is lying dormant in the castle? Or his secret room? Probably not that but maybe some other secret room?"
"And the last line talks about the 'Magical Floor' from where I can see the lake."
"There could be several interpretations of this, but if we take the most literal meaning, I need to look for something special on the castle's third, fifth and seventh floors since those are the only floors that have rooms that give me a view of the Great Lake."
"Perhaps I need to find a window on one of the 'magical floors' and look at the black lake while turning my wand in the air in a clockwise direction as I think about the trial that Slytherin has set for me?"
'Is that it?' Loki thought with a puzzled expression.
But with no way to try it out immediately, Loki put down the letter and exited the Sefirah castle to catch up on some sleep his body desperately needed.
Waking up the next day, Loki slipped into the Great Hall for breakfast. But as he left the hall he found a box of smokes lying on the ground.
'Cigarettes?' Loki looked at the box with some confusion but he picked up the box to toss it into the garbage bin in some random class when he could.
Loki caught up with Hermione as they made their way to the Arithamancy classroom.
"Good morning, Loki.", Hermione said as Loki appeared beside her. She looked to be fixing her hair, which was already a mess so early in the morning.
"Huh? Yeah, good morning to you too Minoe." Loki said ignoring her fixing her hair since his eyes were locked onto her pocket.
Loki had an intuitive feeling that there was something valuable inside Hermione's pocket.
'Is it the new chain she's wearing around her neck?'
'No, I can feel there's already something around her neck. Is it another new chain?'
'When did she start getting the feeling of carrying around so much gold?'
'And why does the object in her pocket feel oddly familiar to me?'
Walking beside Hermione while the two continued talking about how they could improve their play when they performed in front of the entire school, Loki slowly slipped his hand into her pocket a deftly picked up what was inside using his fingers.
Except he was a little surprised to find that it wasn't a chain like he was expecting but an ordinary cigarette box.
'Huh? Did Mione pick up a box that someone had tossed around too?'
"Are there a lot of people tossing around Cigarettes nowadays?" Loki suddenly asked Hermione cutting the conversation they were already having.
"Huh? Cigarettes? Why would anyone toss them in the corridors? Did you see them anywhere?" Hermione asked with a frown on her face, her disgust for such behaviour clear.
"You don't know about people tossing cigarettes?" Loki asked confused since he'd just picked up a cigarette box from her pocket.
But Hermione shook her head, making Loki confused.
'Huh? Then does she smoke? No, Mione's not the type of person that'd do that.'
So Loki just pocketed both the boxes he had and stuffed them under his robes thinking he'd toss them away when he'd get to the class.
As soon as Loki reached class, however, he found he and Hermione were almost about to be late so they rushed to the only empty seats in the class, Herrmione took the front seat while Loki sat himself at the back.
Professor Septima Vector, a woman wearing her hair in a tight bun like Professor McGonagall was their teacher and she taught Arithamancy by giving the class an introduction about the course.
Having learnt quite a bit of Arithamancy himself while in Professor Flitwick's classes, Loki skipped listening to Professor Vector and cast a large illusion over himself to make it appear as if he was paying attention to her, while in reality he took out the two Cigarette boxes he had taken and began examining them.
'Hmm….?'
Almost immediately given his advanced vision and his ability to pay attention to details, Loki noticed something strange about the boxes.
'They are the exact same.'
'Down to the scratches, except this one has a little more.' Loki said pointing at the box that was in his right hand, the new box he pulled out of Hermione's robes.
'And it's got faint traces of my spirituality on it.'
'What the hell.'
'Did someone prank me?'
'Are they trying to fool me by transfiguring something and making me think I've lost my mind?'
'Professor McGonagall?'
'Is it some other weird test about me being a Mystery Pryer?'
Loki frowned, he didn't like what was happening at all.
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A/N : Extra chapter for crossing three hundred powerstones last week! Thank you for reading!!! Peace!!!
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