Tarot Club : Fear The White Lord.

Everyone looked at Loki with varying degrees of shock and horror since what he'd just said implied many things that weren't very believable.

Hermione took the situation the hardest. She was shocked, baffled and even bamboozled.

While not everyone was as shocked as her about the situation they still were a little terrified. 

With Crouch, Fleur and Snape knowing the dark side of the world, their personalities had been moulded to never fully trust another human, and so their emotions tilted more towards being confused rather than fear–

-but people like Dominic and Sirius were just as shocked and afraid as Hermione nonetheless.

Especially since Sirius and Dominic knew well about the second Wizarding War which involved the Order of Phoenix whose prime tenet was to never retaliate with lethal violence, it was always to aim for capture over killing.

Sirius's mouth hung open slightly as he looked at Mr. World and then at Mr. Error, trying to understand if either party was joking about the situation or trying to misguide them in some way but seeing them stay silent and maintain their seriousness he decided they weren't lying.

Being the one in the deepest shock, Hermione inadvertently let her thoughts lose as words slipped out of her lips while she looked at Mr. Error.

"But…but Professor Dumbledore is good…?"

Everyone looked at Hermione with varying degrees of pity but no one said anything, knowing that she had just been shown the mirror to the 'real' world.

Loki, however, looked at her and explained kindly, "Being a Beyonder isn't about 'good' or 'bad'."

Hermione snapped out of her shocked state when she heard that and she tried to argue-

"But it's Professor Dumbledore! He's hailed as the White Lord!"

Loki only shook his head and adopted an even kinder tone with her. His personal bias towards Hermione showed up as he spoke, but to the others, it only seemed like Mr. Error was speaking to a child.

"Albus Dumbledore is not as simple a man as you think he is. Firstly he holds the uniqueness of the Visionary Pathway, but secondly-"

Seeing Loki talking about something interesting once again, everyone leaned in a little closer, not wanting to miss out on any juicy information he was about to drop again.

"-Albus Dumbledore isn't his only name. He is actually more popular by his other name, even if people haven't heard his current name, it is more likely than not that a wizard has heard his other name."

"Other name…?" Hermione mumbled.

Mr. Error nodded.

"His other name is Merlin."

Loki's voice rumbled through the grey fog, causing a silence that not everyone could fully absorb and comprehend. His words had inculcated an immediate sense of disharmony and mental instability in everyone's minds.

The sudden information had caused them all to be so confused that they almost forgot about the new key term they'd heard from Mr. Error just a few seconds prior, the 'uniqueness' of a pathway.

Sirius's mouth opened and closed several times as he tried formulating words to ask a question to understand what he'd just heard while Hermione just frowned.

None of the people could reliably understand if Loki was only hinting at something deeper with his words or if he was actually being direct about what he was talking about.

But seeing Mr. Error no longer speaking, they all simultaneously turned towards Mr. World.

Seeing this Loki almost had the urge to laugh a little but he managed to control himself as he mentally controlled his puppet to speak up.

"Albus Dumbledore is a dangerous man. Or the more appropriate thing to say would be that Albus Dumbledore's ability to manipulate the future is his scariest ability."

"...manipulate the future?" Sirius asked.

Mr. World nodded and continued-

"The Uniqueness of a pathway is a physical manifestation of the domain of the pathway and is needed to become a Sequence 0. Imagine it as something like the Beyonder Characteristic that allows you to advance to Sequence 0."

"And this uniqueness allows him to manipulate the future?" Sirius asked with a frown, not believing what Mr. World was saying.

It was clear to Loki what question was on everyone's minds.

'Why then does Dumbledore have to do anything? Couldn't he just control the entire world to his liking by simply manipulating the future?'

As such Mr. World explained further.

"For your own safety, I won't disclose important details regarding the Uniqueness of this pathway, since the more you know about it, the more the uniqueness learns about you."

A small chill travelled up everyone's spine, suddenly making them uncomfortable regarding the topic.

But Mr. World continued nonetheless.

"Although the range of the Uniqueness is only about the size of a large city, anything caught in its range will be controlled by it regardless of what the person intends to do."

Everyone's eyes widened.

But it seemed like Mr. World wasn't done.

"The easiest way to detect that the Uniqueness has controlled your fate is that you will suddenly start coming across strange coincidences. Things like, you getting involved in incidents that people like you usually do not-"

"-or the number of incidents that you get involved in is greater than normal-"

"-but the biggest give away is that you recognise the patterns of the person using the Uniqueness-"

"-for example, all of Albus Dumbledore's attempts at manipulating someone's fate usually maps very well onto a three part play, there is always the beginning, the marking incident and then the end.-

"-The sections are cleanly divided and are often based on coincidences which unravel the plot of a well planned story."

While most people relaxed a little since they didn't recognise any such coincidences in their lives, Hermione's hands started to tremble as she realised that almost each year that she'd been at Hogwarts something strange had happened to her.

'Were all those years coincidences planned by Professor Dumbledore?'

'But how can he control our actions!?'

'No! No way was it all because of him!?'

But worse than her were Fleur and Sirius.

And Fleur was the fastest to ask her doubts-

"Iz zhat why you said that 'He' interfered with our fight against Mr. X? Because of zhe coincidence of us meeting?"

Mr. World looked at Fleur and after some thought nodded.

"Us meeting at the same time at the same place for the same mission was likely an orchestrated event. Albus Dumbledore likely has a plan for all of us in the coming future-"

And before Fleur could worry about that, Mr. World said something else-

"-It is likely that Albus Dumbledore was also behind Mr. Star's sudden change in attitude which caused him to ask to be assigned a mission."

Everyone felt chills traveled up their spine when Mr. World finished his sentence.

'This…!!!!' Hermione was suddenly shocked since this clearly indicated that the Uniqueness could also control other people's responses and actions.

The rest of the Tarot Club was spent in silence with each member trying to digest the information they'd just been given, with people like Dominic and Hermione trying to come to terms with an evil Dumbledore who could be the manipulator behind the scenes-

-while Sirius and Fleur feared for what was to come next-

-and Snape and Mr. Devil were each trying to figure out if they were part of Dumbledore's plans in someway.

'Is he also the one behind the curse on the Defence Against the Dark Arts position?' Snape thought while frowning.

Loki gave them this time and silence to think through because-

"Please don't think about Albus Dumbledore outside the Tarot Club." Mr. World spoke softly, causing everyone to turn to him as he explained further.

"While the uniqueness can control you the more you know about it, that is not the only thing you have to worry about regarding a Spectator-"

Everyone's grip on the handlebars of their chairs tightened since they felt a vague premonition of danger from Mr. World's tone of information delivery.

"Even thinking about his name will give him full access to all your thoughts, ideas, location, everything. He will know everything about you once you think about him directly."

Everyone froze.

Sirius on the other hand felt shocked because of something else.

'Mom knew!!!'

'Is that why she never used his full name!?'

'Because she wanted to keep the secrets of the Black Household!?'

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