Mayor Lewis's gaze was glued to the gemstone—or rather, he froze because he caught glimpses of moving images inside it.
He saw himself dying under a flash of green light, eyes bulging wide. The key detail? He was dead.
But revealing themselves right now clearly wasn't what this Chimera beast had in mind. It reacted instantly.
The lion head's gaze swept over everyone in the room, its once-golden eyes turning pitch-black, like staring into an abyss.
The mayor, Tom, and Jerry were all caught in that magic-charged stare.
Their expressions dulled, then grew confused, before their eyes finally shut.
A moment later, they opened them again.
The mayor, holding onto the three of them, shook his head slightly.
He felt like he'd forgotten something, but…
Maybe he was just dizzy from whatever they'd been up to.
Cohen, though, wasn't affected—spells like Obliviate didn't work on him.
The Chimera beast was still trailing close behind Cohen. Only now, the lion head wasn't licking him anymore—probably because the goat head had butted it earlier, setting off a chain reaction that ended with the horned serpent tail failing to stay invisible.
Wait, were these three heads seriously fighting each other?
"What are you lot up to now?" the mayor asked again, as if he'd forgotten he'd already asked once before.
"There's something following us!" Jerry said, his voice trembling with fear.
"Then you'd better hope it swoops in to save you," the mayor snapped viciously. "Behave yourselves, or you'll be in for a rough time!"
With that, he dragged them into the farm's interior. Once inside, Cohen realized the Silver Key had completely transformed the place into a research lab.
What used to be a living room was now crammed with rows of shelves, neatly lined with little labeled bottles. Inside them swirled a silvery liquid, spinning slowly—almost like memories extracted for a Pensieve, but not quite. These were dimmer, murkier, like they'd gone bad.
Still, Cohen felt a familiar pull—he could eat this stuff…
Not memories—he didn't eat those.
So it had to be souls… or maybe emotions? Was the Silver Key researching emotions here?
Cohen recalled a book he'd read once, The Power of Sorrow, which argued that emotions were the root of magic. This Silver Key crew seemed to be digging into the essence of magic itself.
If they were so into research, why join a shady cult? Why not just work at the Department of Mysteries and do some high-end studies?
Or… maybe their N.E.W.T. scores weren't good enough to get in, so they had to find other ways to keep experimenting…
"Why're you showing up this late?"
An irritated male voice called down from the top of the stairs. It was a wizard in a gray robe, bald, and looking every bit the research nerd.
Though right now, this bald wizard—Rupert, apparently—seemed half-asleep, probably just about to hit the sack.
"We've got plenty of test subjects already. Five's enough for a while—yawn—grabbing more will just draw the Ministry's attention—"
But it looked like he was the only one here. This "Silver Key group" wasn't even a group—just one guy causing trouble.
"Rupert, these kids definitely know something. We can't let them go," Mayor Lewis said, nervously wiping sweat from his brow. "One of them's even a friend's kid—a prosecutor's kid. He'll blab for sure. Can't you use that… magic of yours? Wipe his memory?"
"Oh," Rupert said, giving the three kids a lazy once-over. "A prosecutor? Muggle one?"
"Probably…" Lewis replied uncertainly. "Sent by the county…"
"Where's our dad?!" Tom and Jerry shouted in unison, mustering up some courage.
"Noisy brats!" Rupert flicked his wand, and their mouths sealed shut instantly. "Now I get it. These two don't have any family left, right? The inspectors already came by once, didn't they?"
"Of course, of course!" Lewis nodded eagerly. "No one's onto us! They probably won't come back—it's just a standard missing persons case…"
"Hmm…" Rupert squinted at Lewis suspiciously.
"Or, y'know, if you'd keep your promise…" Lewis hinted, sidestepping the issue. "If I could use magic myself, you wouldn't have to deal with these little problems personally anymore…"
"You?" Rupert burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Hahaha! You? Use magic?"
"But you promised me!" Lewis's eyes widened, desperate. "You said if I helped you, you'd let me use that amazing witchcraft—conjure endless money, control people…"
"Muggles can't learn magic," Rupert sneered. "Not in this lifetime—or any lifetime. A lowly thing like you, touching magic? Keep dreaming."
"But you clearly—you—"
Lewis felt his veins pulsing with rage.
"He played you. Isn't it obvious?" Cohen said, peeling off the magical tape that'd briefly sealed his mouth. He shot the now-dazed mayor a look of disdain. "Kidnapping your own townsfolk just to learn magic? Even a Dementor would think that's low."
Rupert smirked at the mayor, waved his wand, and a dull silvery substance drifted out of Lewis's chest, hovering steadily in the air.
The scene looked familiar—Cohen thought it resembled emotion extraction from ancient magic, like a cutscene he'd seen in Hogwarts Legacy in his past life.
But this Rupert guy probably didn't know real ancient magic. If he did, he'd be absorbing those emotions himself, not bottling them up.
Rupert conjured an empty vial and scooped the extracted emotion from Lewis into it.
"What did you do to me…?"
Lewis felt hollow, like he'd just run miles nonstop. His body was empty—nothing left.
"Just showing you the most powerful magic there is," Rupert said with a smug grin.
A blinding green light struck Lewis square in the chest. In the split second before death, his memories flooded back—the chaotic monster, the horned snake, the gem on its forehead.
He'd seen his own death after all.
Tom and Jerry stared blankly as Mayor Lewis dropped dead with a single spell, a sight far too horrifying for two kids.
"You scared them," Cohen said, glaring at Rupert with disapproval. "If you're gonna kill someone, at least do it out of sight of the kids. We're only thirteen or fourteen!"