Even though Cohen argued that even old fogies in their sixties or seventies needed to mind their appearance, Voldemort still insisted on looking like he did at the very end – snake face, red eyes, no hair, no nose.
"Your... preferences are seriously weird, huh?" Cohen said, clicking his tongue. "No wonder you can't find a girlfriend..."
"I don't need such useless things..." Voldemort said coldly. "What I need is intimidation – child... people fear power. Only fear can breed loyalty..."
"I'll do my best to mould it that way. Good thing there are pictures of you in old newspapers, otherwise you'd have to stick around and be my model first," Cohen said. "By the way, what about the body after magical transformation? Are the parts of your body other than your face human-like? Do you have... certain bits? Do the internal organs need to be replaced with snake ones or..."
Cohen rattled off a string of questions about the body details, including but not limited to whether he should fully imitate a snake and add parts unique to snakes, like a gallbladder and two... well, certain parts...
"..."
Voldemort was silent for a while.
"Let's just make the other body parts human..."
If Cohen's line of thought kept going, the first body he got next week would turn into a monstrosity with two... certain parts, a scaled tail, and venom sacs.
"Meet me at the entrance of the Room of Requirement at four o'clock next weekend," Cohen nodded. "I guarantee I'll get it sorted out perfectly for you."
Cohen agreed readily, but Voldemort always had a nagging bad feeling. It wasn't really about whether Cohen was sincere; it was more about feeling uneasy about that peculiar rule: 'things involving Cohen never seem to end well.'
It was as if this kid was cursed.
But believing it or not wouldn't cost Voldemort anything. The body Cohen was making him didn't require any payment.
The date set with Voldemort was next weekend, while Sirius's trial was this weekend.
Meaning – Cohen had a whole week to get the Room of Requirement looking like an 'Alchemical Body Workshop.'
After all, he was using a flesh puppet. He needed to create the impression for Voldemort that 'Cohen worked really hard on this body, so if you don't take it, you're being rude.'
Waiting until this weekend, Cohen finally saw that dog in the Room of Requirement leave, taking that rat from Cohen's trunk with him.
Sunday morning at seven o'clock, in the eighth-floor corridor.
Harry had just said goodbye to Sirius. Watching Sirius walk into the Headmaster's office, he was terrified, afraid that all of this would turn out to be a dream, and he'd still have to go back to the Dursleys', to that place that was barely a 'home.'
"With Dumbledore himself seeing him there, it shouldn't be a problem," Cohen said to a worried-looking Harry. "Don't even think about following in your Invisibility Cloak; they'll be Apparating—"
"Harry, Dumbledore will win this case," Hermione also offered some comfort to Harry. "I've looked up some stuff. The Ministry of Magic has lost several wrongful conviction cases too. Almost all the plaintiffs won..."
"'Almost'?" Harry asked, his heart pounding. "Why did the others lose?"
"Because someone on the jury used an Unforgivable Curse on the prisoner – but with Dumbledore around, Sirius won't come to harm from someone trying something..." Hermione said.
"Stop jinxing it, you two..." Cohen said, pressing his lips together. "There wasn't anything wrong before. Now I feel like something bad's definitely going to happen after you said that..."
"They'll be back after lunch," Ron patted Harry's shoulder. "My dad once said the longest trial was only half a day. They'll be back this afternoon."
But the comfort did little to help Harry. He couldn't settle down to do anything at all.
After failing to comfort him, Cohen let Harry go back to the common room to just brood, because Cohen still needed to redecorate the Room of Requirement and bring Nicolas along. In the field of 'how to make a room look like it's used for alchemy,' Nicolas Flamel was far more skilled than Cohen.
"Equip it with a furnace, retorts, beakers – scales are also a must," Nicolas, whose portrait Cohen had leaned against the wall, directed, while inspecting the changes to the Room of Requirement. "Set up a thirty-six-inch cauldron on the south side. Don't use pure gold, that's not practical. You can have a furnace fire, but not so close to the cauldron – then add a shelf for storing materials on the west side."
"I don't see any of this stuff in your actual workshop..." Cohen frowned. "Won't it be too cramped—"
"From a practical standpoint, all this stuff can be replaced with simple spells or the instruments in my actual workshop," Nicolas said. "But you said you want it to look more like an 'alchemy place' in the eyes of an amateur. You need to hang a celestial model from the ceiling. Alchemy and astrology are very closely related."
Following Nicolas's instructions, Cohen asked the Room of Requirement to change its appearance bit by bit.
Finally, it turned into a small room packed with all sorts of metal lab equipment and sculpting tools. It was absolutely crammed with various instruments and equipped with a small bed in the corner.
It looked like Cohen had been slaving away in here for days.
"Got the right vibe," Cohen nodded with satisfaction, placing the flesh puppet on a test bench.
He had moulded it into the shape of a shirtless Voldemort, tall and thin, skin pale and bloodless. There were only two narrow slits for nostrils where the nose should be, his pupils were long and thin, and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot red.
To match his bald look, Cohen didn't add any hair to this body.
"Perfect!" Cohen said, crossing his arms and inspecting the details of the body.
It looked completely like a normal body.
"What's this? A puppet?" Nicolas, who had been moved to sit on the desk, asked. "But it looks more... pliable than a regular alchemical puppet."
"This is the body I'm making for Voldemort." Cohen grinned crookedly.
"But you're not wrong, it is a puppet."
Prep time is always much shorter than you expect, and waiting time is always much longer. Especially since the rest of Cohen's week passed with no new news after Sirius was cleared, not even the Earl had flown back.
But Cohen could still feel the magical bond with the owl was intact. The Earl must still be alive.
"Sirius said he'll have me stay at his house for my birthday!" Harry said, so excited, telling Hermione and Ron at breakfast the following Sunday. He had received a letter from Sirius Black.
"Number 12, Grimmauld Place – where's that?" Harry asked as he read the letter.
"Sounds like a street in London," Hermione recalled. "Are there wizards living there?"
"That must be the Black family's ancestral home, right?" Ron said. "I think the Black family was in London, but my family isn't really involved with them, just some distant relatives we barely see... But why would he wait until the end of July to have you over? I thought you were just going to move in permanently."
"Maybe he needs to clean the place up," Hermione guessed. "After all, no one's lived there in twelve years, have they?"
"Maybe..." Harry said, continuing to read the letter. "He says I can invite friends to visit— Cohen, do you want to come over this summer?"
"Sure."
Cohen thought of something— Voldemort's locket was still in the old Black family house, in Kreacher's hands.
But since Kreacher can't refuse Sirius's direct orders, the locket shouldn't be hard to get hold of.
Looks like a trip there this summer is on the cards.
"Look—what's the Earl carrying!" Ron suddenly looked up and spotted something odd.
The Earl had flown into the Great Hall with the other owls delivering mail and packages, but whatever it was carrying was clearly a lot bigger than the other owls' parcels.
It was a basket, inside which was a large ball of black and white fluff.
"Why did he bring Mr. Flurrendo here?" Cohen frowned.
Couldn't he have just delivered the report directly? Why bring the whole cat?
"Something's seriously wrong," the Earl said agitatedly. "This cat isn't moving – Cohen, take a look."
He placed the basket containing Mr. Flurrendo on the table in front of Cohen. Cohen had never seen him this agitated—
Mr. Flurrendo was curled up in the basket, his body rising and falling with his breathing. Looked like he was sound asleep.
"Is he sick?" Harry recognized Mr. Flurrendo. This cat had left a deep impression on him. But this was the first time he'd seen Mr. Flurrendo so quiet.
Cohen, being a Dementor, could tell at a glance what was wrong with Mr. Flurrendo.
Its soul was gone.
"He just looks like he's asleep..." Ron poked Mr. Flurrendo's backside – or maybe it was his head, you couldn't tell which was which on that fluffball.
"No," Cohen frowned.
He could distinctly feel the faint, almost invisible link between Mr. Flurrendo's soul and body. If its soul had vanished, that link couldn't possibly still be there.
Someone had captured its soul.
"Where's Von Braun?" Cohen asked the Earl in a low voice.
"He's gone, isn't that obvious?" the Earl said agitatedly. "What happened to Flurrendo? Can you tell? Can he be saved?"
"Saved?" Harry asked, confused. "I thought Mr. Flurrendo couldn't die—"
"But he is indeed effectively dead right now," Cohen looked at the cat.
The only thing connected to Von Braun is that silver key. But how could the silver key find a Dementor and make it attack a cat? Dementors don't have any interest in animals – Cohen, being part of the Dementor collective, had already asked around and found out a lot.
This lot seems to be gearing up for something big... Or maybe, they've been plotting something big for a long time now.
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