"Information beyond this point must stay a secret. Not just because it is vital to what we will be doing, but also because of the contract. If any of us become a leak, everyone else in the group that has signed the contract will know. So make sure you don't if you don't want to be kicked out of our circle."

Everyone shivered a little, but Hermione hadn't stopped. She'd only paused to let them digest the first point, after which she continued.

"Also, if any of you betray us, you'll lose your memories of all the time you've spent with us."

Everyone's eyes widened.

Loki was still yawning though since he hadn't caught up on enough sleep as he was studying the Room of Requirement's runes last night.

Hermione's smile started to look dangerous to everyone else, which caused them to frown since she'd caused them to be trapped in something rather dangerous.

But Loki spoke through his yawn.

"If you're afraid just walk away right now. yawwwnnnn~ You won't lose much of anything. yawwwnnnn~ She didn't tell you that cause a notarised contract is pretty expensive and she probably didn't want to have to renotarise the contract after she spotted this loophole."

Everyone deadpanned and they all saw Hermione blush before she glared at Loki who was already about to fall asleep on the table in front of him.

But it did its work.

The tone was jovial once again and no one had left, yet.

When the atmosphere turned normal once again, Hermione spoke up.

"I'm sure most if not all of you know that the Ministry has been trying to seal up any information regarding you-know-who."

There were short gasps but Hermione continued regardless.

"I want you to know that through some sources that I cannot currently disclose because of certain reasons, I would like to tell you that 'He' has not just revived, but is gathering a force to shake-"

"And who says that it's true!?" A random student Loki didn't even recognise spoke up, causing Hermione to stop and look at him.

"Harry's seen it-"

"So it's all word of mouth? Who says he's not lying to make this all up?!" the boy asked again.

And while those that worked in the Unspeakables all wanted to punch the boy, they held themselves back when Loki stood up.

But something was wrong…

'Why is Loki looking at the wall with such a shocked expression on his face!?'

Everyone was about to question Loki, but suddenly another person walked in through the wall that Loki was looking at.

The person was built like a kind boy, about their age, but he had a certain intoxicating charm around him.

Loki and Harry recognised him immediately, 'Tom Riddle!'

Nearly all those who could used Spirit Vision to ascertain if they were looking at some sort of illusion, used it to understand what had just happened, perhaps a ghost had floated in? A poltergeist? But to their shock, Tom looked completely normal in their view.

But in the time everyone tried to figure out how the boy had walked through the wall as if it didn't exist, the boy spoke calmly.

"Why are you here?" the Tom asked politely.

"What? Are you going to toss me out? 'Cause if you do my memories won't be wiped will they!? Since I never left voluntarily. I doubt she's taken that into account.", the boy stated with a sneer.

Everyone else's eyes shimmered at the information about this new loophole in the contract.

Tom however smiled.

"I haven't ever seen you before…but seeing you now…you're pretty clever…? Or should I say foolish…? You don't live up to the hype at all."

"Foolish? Why? Do you think you can kill me so easily?" the boy asked with his sneer widening.

Tom only smiled softly, "No. Not yet. Not when everyone's here. Especially when I barely noticed it given my skill."

"Oh?" The boy looked surprised for a second. "I was caught?"

"Clearly you were…or do you want to be a child and pretend that you never lost the game by flipping the table just like one?" Tom teased.

Although none of the other people could understand what Tom meant by 'flipping the table' they did feel a slight shiver run down their spine because of the way he said it, they didn't like it one bit.

'He's not going to kill us, is he?' everyone wondered, Hermione had her hand on her wand, her spirituality already primed and ready to fire.

Cedric and co all had their Beyonder abilities ready.

Even the other students who had worked as interning Unspeakables had their abilities ready.

Under their intuition, both the boys were starting to feel scary.

Students even cleared a small circle around them because of it, adjusting themselves in the small area inside the inn.

The staring contest between Tom and the boy continued for a few more seconds of silence until-

Tom spoke, "So? Are you going to try and control my spirit body threads? But I should admit…your skill with manipulating the sea of subconscious of all these kids…so effortlessly…even though it's just a replication…it's rather clean."

"I am tempted…but I have this feeling that it'll be bad to control your spirit body threads regardless of my skill…especially when this skill didn't get me past your eyes…." the boy said, his smile deepening as his tone chilled and turned emotionless.

Tom smiled and raised his wand and said, "Well it's time for you to leave now."

There was a tense environment hanging in the entirety of the bar.

Tensions were so high that almost everyone had their nerves drawn tight.

Harry was almost ready to use all his physical force to snap the backs of whoever attacked first.

And with Tom raising his wand, everyone looked at him with focus.

Except Tom lowered his wand slowly without even using a spell, leaving everyone confused.

"Tsk. The old fool didn't even leave me a good bye." Tom said with a soft laugh as he shook his head in disappointment.

'Huh?'

Everyone looked at Tom with confusion until Nevelle in the audience pointed out the obvious-

"He's gone!!!"

Everyone's eyes switched towards the boy that was just arguing with Hermione and then had an impromptu fight with Tom.

The boy was truly gone.

He wasn't visible in anyone's spirit vision and neither was he available in anyone's normal sight.

The boy had truly vanished.

Except they heard Nevelle speak again-

"Even he's gone!"

Everyone looked back at Tom's position and he was gone too.

It left them all stunned and confused and quite possibly bamboozled.

Loki, however, realised something else, he realised that Luna had already seen through it all and had understood the truth of the matter.

So he quickly made eye contact with her and smiled.

Luna simply shrugged her shoulders and went back to staring at the beetle on her finger.

"You aren't supposed to be here…I guess I can keep you in my ant vivarium."

The beetle looked like it had received a sudden shock, but before it could do much else, Luna tapped her wand on it and caused it to freeze in place.

After which she stuffed it into a shell in her oceanic necklace.

But everyone else wasn't as chilled out as Luna was.

They were all looking at each other with wide eyes before all looking at Hermione who was just as clueless about the situation.

Harry interrupted.

"That was a younger you-know-who. He's a coalition of you-know-who's memories from school. I've met him twice before, once when he opened the chamber of secrets and once more last year when he declared he was going to fight against the current you-know-who."

A stunned silence gripped the entire atmosphere.

"This has to be a joke, right?" Someone whispered with worry but there was no response from anyone. It was clear that this wasn't an act that Hermione had set up.

"Are you serious!? No one knows who that was!?"

The Beyonders could verify that the people they'd seen were real so they didn't share the opinion lightly, afraid of making a mistake.

They knew whoever they had just seen was as real as people could get. Yet their silence turned the atmosphere dreary since they were supposed to be 'intelligent'.

Cedric and Co. looked at Loki, but he wasn't as calm as before. And if one looked carefully, they could see that his hands were trembling a little, spooking them a little.

Which left everyone else stumped about what to do.

Well, apart from Luna.

The situation was about to turn sour, but Hermione didn't let the opportunity slip by.

Instead she spoke boldly-

"As you've seen. There are secrets in our world that even we don't know about, regardless of where you come from! And these secrets are important enough that we need to learn them to be able to protect ourselves against them. I hope everyone can agree that we need to learn how to defend ourselves against such threats! So that we won't be so vulnerable anymore! I promise to you that we'll have answers regarding what just happened by our first meeting!"

But Hermione's words alone couldn't shake the atmosphere immediately.

So Loki weighed in.

"If you're wondering why we did nothing immediately and were leaning towards the fact that we might've been too scared to act. I can assure you that was not the case. Nearly thirteen people in the room had already pulled out their wands and primed them with spirituality to attack if things went wrong even slightly."

Everyone's eyes widened, but the thirteen people who had primed their wands with spirituality and their Beyonder abilities all froze at Loki's keen insight.

But no one was in the mood for that today so they let Hermione end it for today.

"Let us gather after dinner at the seventh floor of the Castle. I have found a place for us to be able to train in without having to worry about spying eyes, and since it is inside the castle, I'm sure such a thing will never happen again. I will inform you of the meeting dates."

Loki nearly groaned when he heard that Hermione knew about the Room of Requirements.

His brain fired up as he looked at Luna and it was her turn to simply shrug casually this time which infuriated Loki a little since Luna had used his own trait card against him!

'What will grandma think!?'

'I really hope two people can use it at once…'

'And I hope Mione doesn't tell people how to use the room…I don't want to have my nightly research time by a bunch of kids dating in the place!!'

"Agghhh….yuck!"

Loki groaned but everyone just walked past thinking that he was worried about having to climb up to the seventh floor after dinner with a full stomach each night since he was from Slytherin.

It did give them something to laugh about though as they all left the inn, yet looking from afar one could see just how they'd instinctively gotten closer to each other to protect their backs from any sudden attacks.

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A/N : Three delayed. One posted, two more to go.