Hermione sat down in the Hog's Head inn, waiting for people to show up. She had bought the bar, temporarily, to conduct her 'secret' meeting so that the owner, Abeforth, wouldn't interfere with what she wanted to do.
It hadn't taken much since the Three Broom Sticks was the popular choice.
But not a single person had shown up until now to justify her parting with so much of her money, apart from her friends, Harry, Ron (who she was still angry with) and Loki.
While Harry and Ron were normal and simply sipping on butterbeer, Loki was being strange, continuously casting a spell with his wand pointed at Hermione.
Hermione felt absolutely no difference from his spell.
Though maybe the nervousness she was feeling in her stomach did make her slightly suspicious that maybe Loki was trying to give her a stomach ache to distract her for some reason.
In actuality, Loki was trying to improve his skills in casting the spirit thread control spell.
It wasn't the simple one he'd made when he was experimenting on Helga, but this was a new spell that controlled the spirit body thread without taking full control of the person's body.
It was more a 'puppeteering' spell rather than a 'marionette' spell.
While it didn't seem to serve any direct benefits for Loki, he was trying it out because it was still challenging for him to control the spirit body threads.
And Loki didn't think leaving behind a trail of dead bodies wasn't exactly a 'nice' way to learn a new spell.
He had to keep his soul pure after all!
The bell on the door jingled and in walked the first batch of people who Hermione had invited. It was their colleagues at the Ministry, Cedric, Zacharias, Diego, Luna, Ginny, Astoria, and Susan.
They had just returned along with Hermione, Ron, Loki and Harry from the Department of Mysteries, but they'd just gone back to the castle to freshen themselves up.
Hermione quickly stood up to greet everyone who'd come.
"Thank you for coming guys, but we'll have to wait a little for the others to show up, is that alright?"
Cedric simply nodded, "Don't worry about it. We're free right now anyway." His sidekicks nodded and soon found themselves a spot beside Loki trying to see if they could learn more from what he was currently casting on Hermione.
"What's up with you?" Cedric asked as he sat down beside Loki. "New spell again? How do you even come up with so many new things? Even though I've read so many books as a reader I hardly have any creative ideas."
Loki frowned, finding it difficult to explain his spell to someone who didn't know about spirit body threads.
"I'm trying to make a spell to control someone without their knowledge."
An uncomfortable silence filled the bar, even Hermione herself was looking at Loki wide-eyed.
"Huh? What's up you guys? Why are you looking at me like I'm doing something wrong?"
Ron whispered, "Gods! He's using dark magic! Like the other Blacks!"
Seeing no one answer, Loki looked at Astoria.
Astoria gulped a little before explaining, "Well…it sounds an awful lot like the Imperius curse doesn't it!?"
"Oh my god!!! How did I not think of that!!!!! I'm so stupid!!! Of course, someone's done such a thing before!!! That saves me a ton of time with research!!!"
The awkward silence extended, causing Loki to frown again.
"What I'm making isn't like the Imperious curse…you can break it if you don't want to be controlled. It's a puppeteering spell." He clarified.
There was a collective sigh of relief around the room and everyone wanted to learn how it was different from a simple confundus charm-
But by then the doorbell rang again.
This time it was a large group of students.
It seemed like everyone had enjoyed their Hogsmeade holiday before coming to attend Hermione's 'party' all at once.
It saved them from having to wait any longer though so no one brought it up as Hermione quickly stood up and helped everyone find a seat for themselves.
Once they were all settled in, she spoke with a calm and serene gaze.
"Thank you for taking your time to attend this short gathering." Hermione started as everyone nodded politely when she made eye contact with them.
"Time is running out and I don't want to bore all of you with speeches, so let's get this over with quickly.", Hermione said and another round of nods spread through the room allowing her to continue speaking.
"We all know how poor Professor Umbridge is at teaching us. And some might know that she is worse than Flinch."
The people who understood all clenched their fists as they were reminded of the pain, especially since they couldn't speak about it for some reason, which they did not understand. While the others simply giggled at what Hermione had disguised as a 'joke'.
There was a strong sentiment of wanting to earn some sweet sweet revenge against Umbridge among the students who were 'punished' by her.
But Hermione didn't get to that. Instead she spoke calmly.
"I was hoping, since Professor Umbridge hasn't been very good at teaching us our syllabus, that we would come together as a class and teach ourselves that way? Can I get a show of hands about those that agree?"
Almost all hands went up, but a few stayed down since they had no interest in using their little free time to spend learning something that wouldn't even help them in the future. They were rather career oriented people and hoped to secure a desk job and weren't expecting to do anything adventurous like Aurors.
Hermione smiled at them and spoke softly, "I understand your choice. But I promise that this will help you in just DADA, imagine being able to ask your friends for help in all the various subjects? Perhaps some principles of manipulating your spiritual energy will also help you in the other subjects like charms and transfiguration?"
This did get the numbers up, but not by very much. Official source ıs 𝔫𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔩⚫𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔢⚫𝔫𝔢𝔱
As such, Hermione politely asked them to leave since they would just be wasting their time here.
They agreed and simply walked out of the bar, and as most of them didn't have any friends in this circle and had just come out of curiosity, they didn't even take anyone with them.
That was when Hermione pulled out a contract.
The Beyonders in the room all narrowed their eyes immediately when they realised it was a notarised contract from someone very high up in the Sun pathway since the contract was radiating a sense of suppression.
Loki had wanted to study the contract when he'd noticed Hermione carrying it around with herself everywhere, and he could've done it by simply stealing it, but Loki doubted he could learn anything too hidden about it that he couldn't just learn from Helga's spirit body thread.
"For the people remaining here, I would like for you to sign this contract in case you want to hear about the club we will be forming from here after."
The Beyonder's all secretly looked at each other, even Cedric was slightly tense.
But when his eyes lay on Loki who was yawning lazily in the centre of the room he relaxed slightly.
If Loki was going to sign the contract, it was probably worth it, Cedric assumed, before nodding to his friends who nodded to their friends and so on.
Hermione wondered if some kind of subconscious disease about nodding had secretly spread around the group.
A few more students left the bar, not sure that they would want to sign a contract that Hermione was being so dodgy about, when it was all about a simple club to learn from each other.
But the others that were slightly clever chose to stay since the more 'intelligent' students around them had all stayed since Beyonders were often better at controlling their spirituality and hence better mages.
What none saw, however, was how Hermione cleverly hid her wand movements in her robes as each student left.
She was using the steal spell to steal their memories regarding the contract.
Loki's brows raised when he noticed, but he said nothing, understanding that Hermione was doing all this so that she could lay the foundations for keeping Mr. Error a secret and not let his information leak to the authorities.
Since he'd figured out that Hermione was going to use this group to spread around Mr. Error's gospel!
'I see…so a part of the spirituality in the contract breaks off and enters you? Like before... Still don't know who made it though…why is there no Sun pathway Noble family if Helga's alive?' Loki noticed as he signed his name on the contract.
And so, once everyone who had to leave had left, and those that wanted to stay signed the contract, Hermione smiled at them.
"Why don't we get this started! I know you've all waited for this long enough!"
A/N : Four chapters have been delayed. One posted, three remaining.