[HP] Chapter 101-103

### [HP] 101: Hermes in Action

This time, Louis came to the Room of Requirement in broad daylight for one reason—to craft a magical prop.

He had already chosen the core material: a piece of magician’s cloth he had brought to school but never once used.

The truth was, although sleight-of-hand tricks always relied on props to divert attention, a single illusion spell could crudely and brutally shatter all the romance and artistry of stage magic.

Distract attention? Use illusion.

Block sight? Illusion again.

Finger dexterity? Just use illusion.

In fact, with Louis’s current mastery of illusions, he could directly conjure dazzling and bizarre phantasmagorias to bewilder others, pulling them straight into his illusions.

But that carried no meaning. It had nothing to do with magic tricks at all. Even if such a method could earn him a mountain of Trick Points, Louis disdained it.

He still carried the pride of being a magician…

Well, truthfully—he just thought it was fun.

As for why he came to the potion-brewing chamber to make a magician’s prop, that was simple: whether it was Dark Qi magic or Pure Qi magic, everything began from one great bubbling “broth.”

Pure Qi magic was green. Dark Qi magic was purple-black. Dividing the schools of magic by color—very refined, very “proper.”

Louis found the largest cauldron in the room—big enough, by his estimate, to stew four or five Hasturs—then pulled out from his storage space a melon rind that radiated a purple-black aura. Channeling dark energy through his hands, he squeezed it twice over the cauldron.

The seemingly shriveled rind actually yielded liquid—copious amounts of it. In no time at all, the cauldron was filled.

Of course, that water didn’t truly come from the withered rind itself. It was drawn from the magic infused within it.

That melon rind was a vessel of the Water Demon’s magic. By stimulating it with Dark Qi, Louis could just barely control its power to summon out some pure water.

Still, this method was terribly wasteful. Louis already had plans for how he would properly handle this demon magic later, once Hermes was sent off.

“First, let’s make the soup base,” Louis muttered, lighting a small cluster of Explosive Flame beneath the cauldron. The dangerously volatile heat catalyzed the reaction within.

Hermes floated nearby, overseeing the process like a supervisor.

“Bat wings… octopus tentacles… pufferfish liver…”

Louis chanted as he worked, casually retrieving ingredients from his storage—materials he had quietly swiped from the Potions classroom. After a quick bit of preparation, he tossed them straight into the cauldron.

The strange assortment of items, coupled with Louis’s focused expression, made him look for all the world like some evil wizard brewing poison.

“Salamander eyes… toad skin… nettles… oh, no nettles. Guess mandrake roots will do instead.”

Louis was deft at substituting materials. Even if one ingredient was missing, he could always find a suitable replacement.

These were all common potion supplies, anyway. Even if some stock ran a little low, neither Professor Snape nor Professor Sprout would notice.

Before long, under the catalysis of Dark Qi and flame, the liquid in the cauldron had turned into a pure, viscous purple-black.

At this point, the brew had reached around two hundred degrees, yet its surface was as smooth as a mirror—like a flawless sheet of violet ice, utterly unperturbed.

Still not enough?

Louis thought for a moment, then took out some of Fafnir’s dried mice and tossed two in.

At once the mixture reacted, roiling violently. The liquid thickened, like molten lava or a bubbling swamp, occasionally bursting with purple-black bubbles that released ominous fumes.

Now, at last, the perfect “base broth” was complete.

This was the foundation for most Qi-based magical rituals. More specialized functions would require additional materials and spellwork.

With the first step done, Louis took his large red magician’s cloth and threw it into the cauldron to simmer along with the brew.

This process would have to last at least two full days, allowing the broth’s magic to transform the ordinary magician’s cloth into a proper vessel for magic.

At this point, the fusion of ingredients inside the cauldron was complete. Louis dispelled the explosive flames beneath it, leaving the brew to sit quietly.

“Finished?” Hermes asked. With his different system of knowledge, he couldn’t really follow Louis’s potion work, so he had to confirm.

“Mm. From here, it’s just a matter of time. About two days,” Louis nodded.

Two days… right, he’d better tell George and Fred. It would be a good chance to check how their little “hunting” operation was going, and more importantly—when they planned on giving him the map back.

Louis stood, intending to leave with Hermes as usual, but this time Hermes spoke up.

“Leave me here. You can’t let anyone else in while you’re brewing anyway. I might as well stay put for two days—it suits me just fine.”

“Stay here?” Louis gave him a glance.

“Sure. Don’t worry, I promise not to run around,” Hermes chuckled.

Louis studied him for a while, eyes narrowed in thought. To show his sincerity, Hermes widened his eyes with a look of honest earnestness.

“…Not impossible,” Louis said at last. “Fine then—stay here with Hastur. It’ll keep you company…”

Hermes’s smile froze. “Wait, hold on, you’re not trying to scare me, are you? That thing won’t eat me, right?”

“Relax. You’re not to its taste.”

Louis beckoned with a hand, and the little cluster of Volumen Hydrargyrum drifted back into his palm, curling gently around his fingers.

“Then I’ll leave this place in your care,” he said, setting his top hat on. “See you in two days.”

“See you in two days,” Hermes replied cheerfully.

He floated in the air, watching as Louis walked to the door of the Room of Requirement. As Louis drew near, the door appeared.

Hermes didn’t move.

Louis pushed it open. Hermes didn’t move.

When Louis stepped outside, the door closed again. Hermes still didn’t move.

Once the carved patterns on the wall faded away, Hermes floated toward where the door had been.

Nothing appeared—just a smooth, blank stretch of wall blocking his way.

“Why’s that?” Hermes tilted his head, glancing at Hastur. Even the cat could activate the door, yet he couldn’t.

“…Guess I’ll stick with the old method.”

He drifted back to the cauldron. The purple-black liquid roiled faintly, a darkened magician’s cloth bobbing up and down within it.

To avoid knocking the cauldron over with what he was about to attempt—something that might arouse Louis’s suspicion—he chose his position carefully.

Closing his eyes, Hermes let loose a surge of immense power from his tiny head, channeling it in a precise rhythm to resonate with the room’s very core.

After all, he was Hermes, the progenitor of alchemy. A room like this? Two or three days of study and he’d have it completely unraveled.

“First, I’ll split off an auxiliary sub-space. Then I can slip into it. Once anyone else uses this room, I’ll have my chance to escape,” Hermes muttered with a sly grin.

He knew well that Louis wasn’t the only one who used this place. There was also a pair of twins. And unlike Louis, they weren’t nearly as formidable.

Easy to trick. Weak in strength.

These were little details Hermes had picked up here and there, slipping questions in when Louis least noticed.

As the patron god of tricksters, he could sense the tremor of lies and sift out the truth hidden beneath layers of deception.

What truly surprised him, however, was that Louis had never lied to him—not once. That left Hermes both startled and uneasy.

Because some of the things he had asked about were clearly secrets that should never be spoken aloud. Just like the fact that Louis was a Muggle.

And knowing too many secrets… would Louis really let him walk free?

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### [HP] 102: And Then Hermes Was No More

Hermes had no intention of placing his hopes on Louis. A body? If he couldn’t get one, so be it. Compared to that, his own survival was far more important.

That was why he suggested staying behind—why he asked Louis to leave him in this seemingly flawless room that, in Hermes’s eyes, was riddled with loopholes.

This way, he could hide himself at any time while making Louis believe he had already escaped.

Now this is true trickery, Hermes thought smugly.

But perhaps it was just his imagination—he couldn’t shake a faint feeling that he was the one being tricked.

What had Louis done before leaving?

Hermes drifted off in thought, though his work on altering the Room of Requirement never stopped.

The chamber began to tremble. Hastur, who had been lounging in the corner, sensed the anomaly at once. Its fur bristled, and it sprang up, hissing at Hermes.

Hermes glanced at it, then smiled. “Goodbye, little monster.”

Using the cauldron’s position as the pivot, the surrounding walls and floor began to flip and shift. Hermes seized the moment, slipping through the turning wall.

Hastur leapt, intending to swallow Hermes whole, but the suddenly rising floor flung the beast aside, tossing it back near the cauldron.

By the time it scrambled back to its feet, the chamber had returned to normal—except Hermes was gone.

“Meow?”

Hastur looked left, then right, letting out a puzzled sound.

Hermes, meanwhile, was already inside a concealed chamber—one he had created as a hidden annex to the Room of Requirement, entirely under his own control.

He surveyed it with satisfaction.

“Now I just need to wait,” Hermes chuckled to himself.

The thrill of escape was intoxicating, so much so that even the mental sluggishness he had suffered from being trapped so long in the darkness of the Volumen Hydrargyrum began to fade. His mind felt sharper than it had in ages.

Then, suddenly, unease struck him. That faint sense of being deceived was swelling, like some fraud aimed directly at him was closing in fast.

An unreal sensation enveloped him. His eyes widened—everything around him felt like a dream, fragile and illusory.

That feeling had been there all along. From the very moment he saw Louis leave the Room of Requirement!

“So illusions count as deception too? Heh… never thought you’d be able to sense that.”

Louis’s voice came from everywhere at once, echoing as if he were omnipresent.

The sudden voice rattled Hermes. He whipped his head around, searching desperately for Louis’s figure. But there was no one there. The room was empty.

Illusion… it’s an illusion!

The realization struck him. In that instant, his surroundings shattered like glass, the false dream crumbling away to reveal reality.

He was still in the Room of Requirement, in the little annex he had created. But the Louis who should have been gone was standing right before him.

And Louis’s fingers—index and thumb—were pinching Hermes’s tiny head, holding him as if he’d been caught all along.

“Didn’t think you had this trick up your sleeve. Impressive, impressive… worthy of the name Hermes.” Louis smiled.

The starry halo in his left eye dimmed, extinguishing as the illusion dissolved.

His “departure” just now had been nothing more than an illusion, a fabricated trick. When Hermes suddenly insisted on staying behind—an excuse riddled with problems—how could Louis possibly overlook it?

What Louis hadn’t expected, however, was that Hermes was capable of manipulating the Room of Requirement itself. He had nearly lost track of him. Fortunately, his stand-in—the Faceless Phantom—was reliable, and the stand-in of his stand-in was even more reliable.

No matter how fast you run, can you outrun stopped time?

“No matter how amazing I am, I can’t compare to you. To think you actually used illusion… you win,” Hermes admitted helplessly. “But can you let me go? Being pinched like this is rather uncomfortable.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if you explained everything first? Otherwise I’ll just have to waste more effort catching you again,” Louis replied.

“How rude. Don’t forget, I’m your teacher,” Hermes said indignantly.

“That’s your trump card? Hoping I’ll let you go out of respect for a teacher–student bond?” Louis asked.

“Why not? I taught you everything without holding back. You can’t just turn your back on me now,” Hermes said in a tone of shameless resignation.

“Sounds reasonable,” Louis said with a faint smile. “But… do you really believe you’re Hermes?”

Hermes froze.

“To be honest, I never thought my clumsy little tricks could fool you. So why don’t we both be honest? How about that?” Louis’s lips curled, and Hermes felt a very bad premonition.

“Then… forget it. I won’t run anymore. I’ll keep teaching you. You want to learn how to control the Room of Requirement, right? I’ll teach you—guaranteed to succeed,” Hermes coughed lightly.

“No need. I already learned it just now—you demonstrated it right in front of me,” Louis said, his gaze fixed on Hermes. “Besides, you don’t need to run. You were mine from the beginning. Something I crafted with my own hands.”

Hermes fell silent.

“Looks like you’d already guessed,” Louis said calmly, unsurprised.

“Of course. Who in their right mind only has a single head? Never heard of any curse like that,” Hermes muttered bitterly.

“And when I examined your body, I discovered that active energy inside you—the one capable of waking stone statues. When I mentioned it, your expression shifted ever so slightly.”

“So you’ve been suspicious of me since then?” Louis asked. “And yet you still taught me?”

“I was hoping to build some goodwill. That way I could beg you to spare me later,” Hermes admitted. “After all, I’m just a false god. Letting me go wouldn’t cost you anything, would it?”

“I’ll have to think about that,” Louis said casually.

Hermes blinked, then sighed. “Even that was a lie. Looks like you already decided how to deal with me long ago.”

“Then take a guess how I’ll handle you,” Louis said.

Hermes glanced at him. “You hate it when others see through your lies. So you won’t keep me. Especially since I know too many of your secrets—your unusual powers, your identity as a non-wizard.”

“Exactly. My original plan was to let you experience my results as my teacher, then allow you a peaceful end. But since you tried to escape, there’s no point anymore,” Louis said evenly.

“Like you said—if you’d kept up the act, I would’ve let you leave with some dignity.”

“Heh. You learn quickly,” Hermes sneered, then suddenly roared, “I curse you—!”

But before the words were finished, pale yellow wood spread over his head, encasing him in an instant. His form twisted into a grotesque wooden carving, a snarling head frozen in rage.

“Thank you for your teachings, Mr. Hermes,” Louis said softly. With one hand, he crushed the wooden head to pieces.

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### [HP] 103: The Theft of the Marauder’s Map

Hermes hadn’t gone peacefully—anyone could tell that if he had the strength, he’d have gladly flayed Louis alive.

Unfortunately for him, he didn’t.

Still, even though Hermes was gone, he had left Louis with a head full of knowledge.

That knowledge couldn’t possibly be false. Hogwarts’s library might not contain the detailed methods behind it, but it certainly held the verified results.

Besides, Louis relied more on ordinary magic and his own unique powers as substitutes. Those were the kinds of things that, once exposed, could be understood clearly. There was no complex technical trickery Hermes could have slipped past him.

In addition to knowledge, Louis had also gained something far more practical—the method to control the Room of Requirement.

Not only could he open up an annex beside an existing room, he could now open a door into that room from anywhere within the castle.

“Hermes can be said to have died a worthy death,” Louis remarked, giving him a small moment of respect before cleaning up—burning the wooden shards and transferring the still-boiling cauldron into the annex room.

That way, he wouldn’t have to worry about the brew being disturbed inside the main Room of Requirement.

Of course, the easiest way would’ve been to throw it into his storage space. But since time was completely frozen inside that strange nowhere-dimension, the cauldron would simply sit there unchanged, leaving the magician’s cloth unaltered.

“This will do. But I still need to find the twins. They haven’t given me the Marauder’s Map yet.”

With that, Louis left the Room of Requirement with Hastur in tow.

It wasn’t until that evening in the Great Hall that he spotted the twins eating.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Louis greeted, striding over without a care for the astonished stares that followed him.

After all, everyone dined at their House tables—and Louis, in his Slytherin robes, walking straight to sit at the Gryffindor table looked like a deliberate provocation.

But the students wisely kept silent. Word had spread that Louis was a frighteningly dangerous wizard—so dangerous that even the dark-hearted Slytherins obeyed him obediently.

George and Fred, of course, didn’t see him that way. They welcomed him warmly.

That warmth, however, cooled somewhat when Louis asked about the Marauder’s Map and Peter Pettigrew.

“So… you lost the Marauder’s Map?” Louis arched a brow. “And you didn’t find Peter Pettigrew either?”

“Yeah… as embarrassing as it is to admit, we really did lose it,” George sighed heavily. “It’s all Fred’s fault—he brought up Pettigrew in front of Ron. I’d bet anything that rat was right there in Ron’s dormitory at the time.”

“Don’t pin it on me! You agreed with me when I suggested it,” Fred shot back.

“What are you two talking about?” At that moment, Ron and Harry, still buzzing with excitement, walked over. Ron exclaimed, “Do you know? Harry’s been approved to join the Quidditch team!”

Harry flushed in embarrassment. He was happy, of course, but Ron’s loud announcement made it feel mortifying.

“We knew ages ago. Wood told us.”

Fred and George grinned, mocking Ron for being behind on the news.

“You all knew already?” Ron slumped, then looked toward Louis. “Wilson, did you know?”

“I just found out. But I’m not interested in Quidditch.” Louis’s gaze shifted to Harry. So fate had given another push—Harry had still found the thing he excelled at.

“You’re not interested in Quidditch? Impossible! What’s more exciting than Quidditch?” Ron exclaimed in disbelief.

“There are plenty of things more exciting. It depends on personal taste.”

Louis spoke casually, then spotted the rat wriggling out of Ron’s robes. His expression twisted with disgust.

How in Merlin’s name could Peter Pettigrew shamelessly burrow into people’s clothes like that? Was he some kind of pervert?

No, this was unbearable. He couldn’t watch.

Turning back to George and Fred, Louis prompted, “Let’s continue our earlier conversation. And then?”

“And then? That’s it. The map’s gone,” George shrugged.

“Map? What map?” Ron asked curiously. Harry, beside him, looked just as puzzled.

“None of your business,” George and Fred said in unison, completely dismissing their younger brother.

At that moment, the rat in Ron’s lap narrowed its eyes slyly.

It was Peter Pettigrew—an Animagus, a wizard capable of transforming into an animal.

Becoming an Animagus was a branch of Transfiguration, one of the most advanced and perilous forms of the art. Students weren’t permitted to learn it, and even adult wizards were discouraged from attempting it by the Ministry of Magic.

In the entire United Kingdom, there were only seven officially registered Animagi. Peter Pettigrew wasn’t one of them. He had secretly mastered the transformation while still in school.

Since then, he had lived as a rat, lurking in the Weasley household—first as Percy’s pet, then eventually passed down to Ron.

But just a week ago, Ron’s older brothers had stormed into his dormitory, tearing the place apart and casting revealing spells everywhere.

When Ron asked what they were doing, the twins had told him they were searching for someone named Peter Pettigrew.

The moment he heard that name, the rat’s fur had stood on end. At first, he thought his cover was blown—that they had come for him—and he had nearly bolted in terror.

But soon he realized they didn’t actually know the rat was him. They didn’t even know who Peter Pettigrew really was.

So how had they learned his name?

The Marauder’s Map.

It had to be that. Those damn twins must have stumbled upon the map Harry’s father and his friends had created long ago—with Pettigrew, the traitor, among them.

How else could two third-years possibly detect his presence, even calling him by name?

The knowledge that the Marauder’s Map had fallen into someone else’s hands left Pettigrew sleepless for days. He couldn’t even bring himself to eat his beloved Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans.

Fearing the twins might soon suspect him, he waited for nightfall, then snuck into their dormitory to steal the map.

Now he was safe. Completely foolproof. And such a powerful tool would surely prove invaluable in the future. No matter how he looked at it, he’d profited.

Just as Peter Pettigrew was gloating in his thoughts, he suddenly heard the Slytherin-clad boy sitting among the Gryffindors say:

“How old is that rat of yours?”

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