Loki almost laughed at how clear-cut Luna's analysis of the situation was, and since he wanted to make sure that his 'juniors' didn't go into their first mission 'depressed' anyway, he leaned in to make the situation funnier.

"I mean, you aren't wrong Luna…I did return alive from all my missions since I haven't angered Ethan…"

"Really? Was it that easy?" Ron asked softly.

"I mean…as long as you don't count the time when we fought a High Sequence Demon where a Saint was required to rescue us, the time when we were kidnapped by a high sequence Beyonder to be used as hostages by 'Him' for an 'evil' ritual done to please an 'evil' god which ended with us fighting death eaters....or the time we fought the dark lord, it was pretty easy." Loki shrugged casually causing Ron to shiver.

"Aghhh….grow up Ron." Ginny said boldly as she elbowed Ron as Loki turned around and walked away into the room. "He was obviously just joking.", Ginny said, but then Harry interrupted.

"Ehh…I don't know about the demon one…but the one about being taken hostage and the Voldemort thing...was real…" Harry said, causing Ginny and Astoria to freeze and look at him with surprise.

"Seriously!?" they asked with their eyes wide.

Harry nodded while brushing his hair in embarrassment as he pulled Ron along with him and rushed into Ethan's office.

The girls followed behind them.

Once inside the room, Ethan's gaze scanned each student in his office, which felt a little overcrowded now that there were eight people in it excluding him.

Once he was satisfied with his scan, Ethan smiled. The smile of the mutilated man was enough to raise hairs all around the room among the newbies.

Luna was the only one who simply smiled back, which Ethan promptly ignored for his own sanity.

"Your mission for today is simple."

"Oh?" Loki's brows raised. He had never heard Ethan describe a mission as simple. His intuition rang alarms so he paid close attention as Ethan's smile widened.

"Your job is to guard the various entrances in the Department of Mysteries."

Among the newbies only Astoria and Ron even had any idea what they were.

Well, even Luna if you considered her 'knowledge' about Fudge experimenting with combining rainbow unicorns and death eaters to reach the secret source of magic to be true.

And so most of them were confused.

Ethan tossed over the file to Hermione who grabbed it out of the air and ushered the newbies over to the next room where she would discuss everyone's jobs with them just like Daphne would do when she was around.

Loki casually followed behind everyone as he thought about why Laura had allowed students to guard something as important as the Department of Mysteries.

'Is it because there's a shortage of Unspeakables for some reason?'

'Or because I asked her to find a way for me to be able to experiment with Time-Turners?'

'Hmmm…if it was for me she would've informed me about it…unless she thinks I don't need to be informed about the opportunity? Or she hasn't informed me so that she wouldn't have to leave behind a trail of our connection regarding the matter if someone else were to investigate?'

So before moving into the other room, Loki turned to Ethan and asked him a question when everyone was out of earshot.

"The Unspeakables are busy with something?"

Ethan looked at Loki and after a short sigh nodded since he knew Loki was close to Laura.

"Something terrible hass happened, or rather is about to. We received news that the Acolytes are making a move. We don't know what their goal is yet so we're spread out thin, trying to figure out what's happening. The Department of Mysteries is still guarded by actual Unspeakables, but-"

"-we're being sent as bait? To see if the Acolytes try and take advantage of the situation when they see much weaker Beyonders guarding the gates?"

Ethan nodded silently.

Loki too nodded in understanding before he spoke, "I'll keep an eye out for any strange things happening."

"Much appreciated.", Ethan said, going back to his paperwork as Loki left him for the room everyone had gathered in.

Hermione was already mid-way through explaining to everyone what the mission entailed.

"-will be guarding two points for today. Both are gates to dangerous rooms that we are absolutely not allowed to open. Ignore any sounds from inside or calls for help since they are likely to be made by the items inside in an attempt to trick you into escaping."

Ron raised his hand.

"Items will attempt to trick us to escape?"

Hermione rolled her eyes with a sigh, "Who turned you into a Beyonder?"

Unsure of what she was getting at, Ron answered truthfully, "Headmaster Dumbledore."

Hermione's eyes widened, but then they narrowed as she got even more annoyed.

"Did you sleep through his explanations!?" Hermione scolded, but before giving Ron a choice to respond, she chided him with her explanations, "Ok, I won't waste much time, but the short version is that mystical items are usually made from the Bey- remains of Beyonders. So sometimes these items take on the characteristics of the living. Which is why they 'seem' alive, but they really are not."

Ron grew pale.

"Understood that?" Hermione asked when Ron remained silent.

Ron nodded but when her gaze shifted away from him he leaned towards Harry and whispered, "She's not serious is she, 'arry? 'Cause that sounds bloody lot like dark magic!"

Harry bit his tongue in an attempt to stop laughing at the fright of his friend who had clearly stumbled into being a Beyonder.

He'd heard from Professor Dumbledore that Ron had wanted to become involved in the affairs of the Order of Phoenix but since he wasn't a Beyonder he was rejected each time.

That was when he finally caught Dumbledore at an awkward time when a meeting had just ended and just wouldn't leave him, according to Dumbledore Ron had hugged his leg and wouldn't budge because both his friends were Beyonders and part of the Order of Phoenix's operations and he felt left out.

And so Dumbledore gave him the Spectator Potion.

But when Dumbledore told Ron about cogitation…Ron fell asleep after performing it for the first time.

Dumbledore had explained everything in that time, but since Ron was asleep he heard none of it.

With no time to repeat his explanation again, Dumbledore was forced to let Harry take care of Ron who thought it would be hilarious for him to embarrass himself for a while since he had argued with him for nearly the entirety of the first half of the last year because of jealousy.

So Harry just enjoyed Ron's plight since he knew Ron just needed time to adapt to whatever was going on.

Loki noticed it all but frowned when he noticed something new about Harry.

Harry had good occlumency defences.

So good in fact that Loki found himself in disbelief for a few moments.

'This…is it something better from last time?'

'Did Dumbledore do it again…or is it Harry's own skill?'

'Or the effects of some mystical item or spell?'

Loki didn't see any physical item on Harry's body, but he couldn't peer into his Body of Heart and Mind to see if he had some kind of special item without risking tripping any of his runes since he didn't know if the mind dragon had done some secretive work here.

'Tsk…if only I had the Mentor Of Deceit Characteristics…'

With no way to look into Harry's mind, Loki was forced to abandon his efforts as he focused on Hermione once again.

"So we will take the two spots as individual teams. We will switch spots every few couple of hours to follow the duty-shifting protocol the Unspeakables already follow-"

"-,but remember none of us must shift from our spots or even think about shifting as long as one of the Unspeakables doesn't come to inform us about it. This is marked as a very important rule so make sure to follow it! Is that understood?" Hermione asked, looking specifically at Ron.

Ron just nodded diligently even though he'd missed much of what she'd said in his one-sided discussion with Harry about dark magic.

***

A/N : Hello. Late chapter today. Very sleepy.