HP X LOTM : Please Call Me Mr. Error.

Entering the village, Loki brought from Joseph the list of all villagers who had fallen into a coma and handed it over to Ethan.

Once he had the list, Ethan started to walk through the village and came to a stop in front of one of the houses.

"Let's begin from here." Ethan said 

*Knock* *Knock* *Knock*

Ethan tapped his staff on the door, causing it to rattle a little but no one responded. Not even after they patiently waited in front of the door for a few minutes.

Ethan frowned but said nothing else, he pulled out his wand and simply magicked himself into the house, causing the man living inside much distress.

"Who are you!? How did you get inside!!!??" The man with stubble shouted while wielding a kitchen knife.

"Please calm down, the bolt must've come loose, we mean no harm, we're only here to investigate.", Ethan said with as soft a voice as he could but his cold disposition and hawk-like gaze only further unsettled the man in the house.

"Go back from where you've come! Or else I'll have the entire village on your heels!! We don't take kindly to people like you! Like you outsiders-!!" 

"-I know you've only come here to take us to hell!!!! We won't come with you!!! We will never succumb to your cruel plans-"

The man shouted, almost hysterically, but Ethan just sighed and waved his wand.

The man was frozen stiff before he fell onto the floor like a piece of dried cardboard.

"One of you make sure he doesn't wake up anytime soon.", Ethan said and walked to the room from where the man had arrived.

Diego nodded to Cedric and stayed behind with the man while the rest of the people followed Ethan.

In the room was an old rotting bed upon which lay a pale woman who looked like she'd become one with her eternal slumber.

Loki instantly activated his spirit vision to check the woman but he became shocked.

'What?'

'How's that possible!?'

Ethan and Cedric similarly frowned while Daphne became confused too.

"What's wrong with you guys?" Hermione asked and Loki responded, "Turn on your spirit vision you'll see."

Hermione did as Loki asked and became similarly dumbfounded herself, "She has no spirit body?"

Loki nodded because it was the same in his spirit vision too. The woman although looked fine physically, did not have a spirit body at all.

It was as if it had vanished.

"Well, at least we know why they're in a coma.", Ethan said with a frown.

He walked closer to the woman on the bed, pulled down her collar and examined the back of her neck. There were several scratches on the back of her neck which had begun healing but there were no other marks otherwise.

"She was the first victim of the ritual wasn't she?" Ethan asked Loki.

"Yes. She's Mrs. Rose, fifty-two, she was a maid in the mansion and worked to keep it clean. The rest of the people all worked in the mansion too. Mr. Erick, forty-two years old was the gardener and trimmed the hedge, and Mr. Smith, fifty-seven, worked as the cook and Mr. Rosier, thirty nine, was the aid."

Ethan did not say anything for a few minutes before he spoke again after having considered something.

"Let's visit the other houses too."

They went around the village and forcefully broke into more homes, including the home where Loki had spoken to the little girl earlier about the dog Roxy.

Everyone was dealt with in the same manner with a stupefy charm while their memories were vanished using obliviate when Ethan and his group left.

With no spirits for the spirit medium to channel everyone was stuck. They arrived back at the mansion to search for any clues they might've missed but they found nothing.

Having reached an impasse, Ethan pulled out a mirror from his pocket.

"Laura, are you there?"

"Oh? Old man? You called? Did you finally meet the evil god that killed your son? Is that why you need me?" A feminine voice asked various questions in rapid succession causing the muscles on Ethan's face to twitch a little but he didn't shout at her.

"Come here as soon as you can. I think an evil ritual has compromised several Aurors and villagers." Ethan said calmly while looking into the mirror.

There was a slight pause in their conversation before the feminine voice spoke up with an uncharacteristic seriousness that wasn't there before, "I'll be there Ethan."

"Who was that?" Loki asked with some confusion.

"Laura Drake. My daughter…." Ethan said and Loki could see he'd aged visibly just by uttering that statement.

'I guess there's some history to him…' Loki thought as he recalled what Laura had just said on the call earlier about the evil god killing his son.

"I called her, because it is best we get checked by someone else before we leave from here because this is out of our handle. We haven't entered the site of the ritual yet but everyone else on the property including the aurors who've gone inside need to be checked thoroughly."

There was a soft silence before Hermione asked Daphne a random question, "By the way what department do we fall under?"

"None." Daphne said calmly but Ethan expanded as they all waited inside the corridor.

"We are closer to the Unspeakables, a department that handles things related to Beyonders. But unless we take their help in a case it's the aurors who handle our expenses, which is also why they do not like us very much since we eat into their budget."

Hermione nodded slowly as she absorbed the information that was just given to her.

Meanwhile, Loki had a different question.

'If this is a suspended ritual what entity was it targeted towards?'

'That dog was corrupted by 'Her' so was it targeted to 'Her'?'

'Why would the man inside the room perform such a ritual in the first place?'

'Is he a death eater?'

Loki forcefully stopped his thinking at that point and did not dare think anymore in that direction while he was outside the Sefirah Castle.

Instead, Loki voiced out a different question.

"Is there no mystical item that we could use to look inside the room?"

Ethan looked at Loki for a few seconds before nodding.

"There are many that can let us do so, but it is under the jurisdiction of the Unspeakables to bring an item. We are only preliminary investigators."

"I see."

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