Dominic's charm immediately grabbed the attention of every girl in the room. But he ignored them and walked up to Loki whose shoulder he grabbed and shook a little.

"Seriously? You found your way into this place even before officially becoming a member?"

"Hehe~ I'm just that much better than you."

"Oh please." Dominic said rolling his eyes, "I'm nine levels deeper than you are allowed to enter so don't even think about bragging about it in front of me."

"Really?" Loki asked with a smirk, "And did you come to the Unspeakables HQ when you were just in your fifth year too?"

Dominic's smile twitched and Loki happily slapped away his hand from his shoulder before patting Dominic's shoulder himself like he were consoling him.

'Feels nice to talk to Dominic again…I never was able to speak with him so openly in the Tarot club.'

Dominic simply shook his head and looked back at the rest of the gremlins he was surrounded by.

"Now I don't know each one of you, but given you're all his friends, I doubt you're any normal. My name is Dominic Shacklebolt." Dominic said, pointing at Loki with a simple head nod, which caused everyone to smirk in amusement.

"I am Loki's senior at Hogwarts by six years, meaning I was in year seven when he was waddling around trying to figure out the castle and its mysterious pathways. I was also the head boy and am from Slytherin. So I hope we get along well and become friends rather than simple colleagues."

Astoria looked at Dominic with shiny eyes, not because she admired him for his position as a Head Boy, but because Dominic knowing 'baby' Loki would mean she could get some dirt on him.

But not everyone was as happy as her, Ron for example, almost cursed out loud, 'Is he another git like Snape!?' but managed to keep his voice a whisper.

But everyone ignored him as Dominic continued after seeing everyone else nod.

"The Unspeakables have decided that personnel are wasted guarding the gates of the various glorified storage rooms since they're all well balanced by the negative effects of the artefacts inside anyway. As such, we hope to improve the quality of graduates who will attempt to join us in the future by training them while they are in school."

Dominic's words, although pointed in a way that reminded them that they weren't really members of Unspeakables, did lessen the burden on everyone's shoulders since they realised that they didn't have to do anything strange like what Loki had scared them about.

As such, everyone sent a winning smirk Loki's way before paying attention to Dominic once again.

"Are you familiar with the rules?"

Everyone nodded, grateful that they'd listened to Hermione's speech from earlier, except Ron who was confused.

"What rules?"

Dominic looked at Ron, and his eyes visibly went to his head for a second as he absorbed the fact that his hair was red, before he looked back down at him and spoke calmly.

"Time's of the essence so I'll keep this short. All you have to do is not move from your spot regardless of what happens. If you need to relieve yourself, use scourgify, if you see a dead person walking? Let them keep walking, your job is to see that the doors don't ever open. Neither will something go in while you're here, and neither will anything inside go out. Did you get that?"

Ron nodded, although unwilling when he heard Dominic talk so casually about dead people, he simply assumed that he was exaggerating.

"Good. For now, we'll all go along. But your posts are different. We'll drop you off one by one and when it's your time to leave I will personally come there to sign you off."

"How will we know if it really is you Mr. Shaklebolt?" Hermione asked politely.

Dominic smiled as he looked at Hermione, something about her eager questioning made her feel familiar to him, but he moved past it quickly as he tossed a coin.

"Good question, Miss?"

"Granger, Hermione Granger."

"Miss Granger." Dominic nodded, "The method is simple-" Dominic continued while tossing a coin her way and then at Loki too.

"-that coin will allow you to tell truth from lies. It'll always land on its heads for truth, while landing on tails for lies. Be careful not to tell lies while in the proximity of the coins though, your face will melt off if you do."

Ron froze when he heard that as he looked around.

'Blimey!!! How is everyone else so bloody calm about this!?'

'Face melting off!? That's clearly a dark magic item!!!!'

'Has everyone gone bonkers!?'

Ron then looked at Harry who he hoped would be his saving grace, but he too was looking at Dominic with a serious expression as if he understood the graveness of the situation on hand.

Loki examined the coin and felt a little surprised.

'These are items blessed by the Sun Goddess?'

'So melting your face off is essentially another way of saying burning it off?'

'Well, it is what it is…'

'I wonder if Luna will be able to bypass the effects since they're so weak…'

With everything set, each team followed Dominic behind its own team leader.

But with no other door in the room, everyone expected Dominic to summon another obsidian phonebooth box for them to all travel in, yet he simply walked towards a wall.

And under the slightly surprised gazes of everyone else walked right through it just like students did at the start of every term through the pillar at King's Cross station platform 9¾.

Everyone followed after Dominic with Loki being the first to follow Dominic this time.

It took until Loki vanished behind the wall for everyone else to snap out of their slight surprise as they all hurried to catch up with them.

The corridor behind them was made out of the same black obsidian as the room was.

It was empty of any trinkets or visible alchemical items, except Loki felt a deep sense of discomfort from the corridor they were in.

"We're being watched?" Loki asked Dominic after moving closer to him at which he simply raised his eyebrows.

"No one under a demigod should be able to sense that." Dominic replied, clearly intrigued but Loki didn't tell him the truth, instead-

"I didn't feel it directly. Prenelle blessed me with a charm that allows me to figure out when I'm being followed or watched."

"Prenelle!? As in-"

"Shhh…don't expose me."

"...I won't if you get me an autograph?" Dominic asked after a soft pause, causing Loki to suddenly realise something as he nearly screamed.

"I never got one! Oh my god!!! I could've sold it for tens of thousands of galleons!!!!"

Dominic stifled his laughter before pulling out his wand.

"Alright everyone, make sure you follow your team leaders at all times after this point. And team leads make sure you hold onto the coin at all times and make sure you don't do anything stupid without consulting it first."

Hermione nodded before Dominic tapped his wand lightly on the space in front of him.

And almost all of a sudden everyone became stunned, even Loki.

The view around them changed as if an illusion was suddenly lifted from their gaze.

What was until recently a dark and dreary corridor made out of glassy obsidian was suddenly a steampunk pseudo-technological marvel.

The gazes that Loki had perceived until recently were revealed to be hanging dolls, much like what Laura had pulled out on their first-ever mission as part-time Unspeakables.

Each straw doll hung from the ceiling, its hollow buttony eyes lingering on them which Loki guessed was because they were searching for an opportunity to die.

And they had deemed Loki to be of the biggest 'threat' to themselves.

But that was the least of Loki's worries for now.

'This…no way…how did I get fooled by illusions? And how did Harry get fooled by them when he has the ability to see the truth?'

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A/N : Hello, the world here is getting strange but the one writing is feeling even stranger. Are you strange too?

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