The inside of the house looked completely different from the outside. While the exterior seemed rundown and neglected, the interior was surprisingly luxurious.
At the entrance stood a gold-trimmed umbrella stand. The walls on the first floor were covered with embossed wallpaper in a deep green snake-skin pattern. Every so often, there was a framed review or newspaper clipping of The Life and Lies of Rita Skeeter mounted on the wall.
In the sitting room, three crimson velvet sofas were arranged in a circle. A glass coffee table in the center was cluttered with parchment notices—Cohen caught a glimpse of a headline reading "Defamation Lawsuit Pending."
The entire place reeked of decaying roses mixed with the musty scent of old parchment—a combination Cohen found rather unpleasant.
But beyond that, he also sensed something else—something faint, but familiar.
Black magic.
Someone had cast the Avada Kedavra curse here.
"Dun-dun-dun!" Rita Skeeter exclaimed dramatically as she rushed upstairs, clearly heading for the sitting room to check on something.
Cohen followed her. The closer they got to the second floor, the stronger that lingering trace of magic became.
The corridor upstairs had several rooms, but Cohen quickly identified the source of the spell residue—it was the second door on the right. Rita pushed it open. It was her bedroom.
Creeeak—
Everything in the room seemed normal. No rumpled bed sheets. No shattered glass. No blood splattered all over the walls.
Only the faint moonlight from outside lit the room, and on the bed lay a figure. Loki. But his face was obscured by shadow.
"Loki?" Rita hesitated at the door, nervously swallowing before addressing the dark shape on the bed.
"Lumos," Cohen muttered. The tip of his wand lit up and cast a beam straight at the man's face.
It was a man with gray hair, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, face pale and drained of life. He had been dead for quite a while.
Rita took in the sight of the corpse but didn't scream or panic.
"Looks like someone was kind enough to move him onto the bed," Cohen remarked as he approached, lifting the covers. "Thoughtful, in a morbid way."
Loki was still wearing gray plaid pajamas. His hand was clenched into a fist—someone had clearly pried his wand from his grip.
This wasn't a robbery. The murderer had come here specifically to kill Loki—and left the body on Rita's bed, likely as a warning.
"What are you doing?" Rita asked, confused, as Cohen prodded the body with his wand tip.
"I dunno. Just feels like something a professional would do," he replied, withdrawing the wand.
"You knew he was with the Silver Key, right?"
"He told me the Silver Key had disbanded a long time ago..." Rita answered cautiously. "And honestly, he didn't seem like one of those crazy zealots."
"He was trying to mess with me. That's crazy enough," Cohen muttered. "Anyway, the body's yours to deal with."
"You're letting me go?" Rita asked, shocked.
"You don't seem squeamish about corpses—and yes, I'm letting you go. For now. You might still be useful to me," Cohen said. "But before that…"
He pulled out a small vial of potion that had been sitting in the Room of Requirement for over a year.
It was the same tracking potion he once used on Peter Pettigrew. One batch had only been partially used, and Cohen had bottled the rest for emergencies like this.
"What is that?" Rita backed away instinctively, but she quickly realized there was no way out.
If she ran, Cohen would devour her soul. If she refused the potion, Cohen would probably do the same.
She had no choice but to take it—she didn't even know what it did.
"As long as you behave, it won't harm you," Cohen assured her. "Drink it."
His final words weren't a suggestion. They were an order.
With gritted teeth and silent fury, Rita accepted the potion.
"The ingredients are expensive," Cohen added casually. "If you spill it, I'll take payment in the form of your soul and your emotional energy. You know, life could've been so much simpler for you if you hadn't poked your nose into my business. But now… well, things are messy."
Rita downed the potion like it was poison, gasping for breath and staring at Cohen in sheer tension.
"Is that enough?" she asked.
"I'll let you know if I need anything else," he replied. "Keep doing your tabloid nonsense. Focus on the Ministry this time."
"…Got it," Rita muttered.
Chapter first published on 69shu.net!
"Where's Loki's luggage?" Cohen asked. "I'm taking it."
…
Loki, former Silver Key member and now very much deceased, had only one piece of luggage. Still, Cohen figured it was worth checking out.
After retrieving what he needed, Cohen Apparated back to near Hogwarts, cloaked himself in invisibility, and soared through the night toward the castle. The Room of Requirement's window was still open, which meant the Count had returned ahead of him.
"I thought you were scouting ahead. You call ending up at Hogwarts 'scouting' now?" Cohen asked, raising an eyebrow at the feathery creature lounging in its cozy nest.
"Eh? Did I?" The Count flipped over lazily, wings sprawled as he replied, "Dunno. I went out, didn't find any lady owls to flirt with, so I came back. Did you find that Loki guy?"
"Yep," Cohen dropped into an armchair and began rifling through Loki's bag. "He's dead. Found in Skeeter's bed."
"That woman's that bold?!" The Count suddenly perked up. "Didn't think she had it in her…"
"Is your brain permanently stuck in the gutter?" Cohen said dryly. "I'm pretty sure this was Silver Key infighting—von Braun said there were different factions within their group."
"Infighting's as important as mating to humans, from what I've seen," the Count nodded solemnly.
"What's your take on it, little Dementor?"
"Loki's goal was the same as the other Silver Key agents—wreck my peaceful life," Cohen said while flipping through one of Loki's journals. "Ugh, no way. Was this guy into Dementors? His whole notebook's filled with anatomical drawings and… is this a breakdown of the Dementor's Kiss?! What a creep…"
Every few pages, the journal had detailed hand-drawn diagrams of Dementor anatomy, and even motion studies of the infamous Kiss. Any more suggestive and it would've looked like fan smut—honestly, it was hard not to wonder if a whole chunk of the Silver Key was made up of people with seriously weird obsessions.
That said, the notebook did contain in-depth notes on how to hurt a Dementor, even attempts to modify the Patronus Charm—though none had been tested in practice.
Ordinary Dementors had no real defense against a strong Patronus…
But the Silver Key probably never imagined that Cohen, a half-blood Dementor, could cast one of his own.
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