"How do I take the test?"
After a long silence, Loren finally asked.
"Just drip a drop of blood onto it," Arthur said, his smile returning—he clearly believed Loren wouldn't refuse.
When Loren had examined the artifact earlier, he'd noticed specks of dark brown—old blood, most likely. He probed it again and felt no warning, so he set his hand above the dial, ready to draw blood.
Arthur tensed up, body leaning forward without realizing it.
Suddenly, Loren's outstretched hand paused. Arthur's heart lurched—had Loren changed his mind and decided to act against him? His right hand had already twitched toward his wand when Loren's voice came:
"Mr. Weasley, do you have anything very sharp? My skin's… a bit special. Hard to cut."
Arthur nearly slipped to the floor, catching himself on the table at the last second. Seeing Loren's sly grin, he realized the young man had done it on purpose.
He had. Partly as a joke—a small payback on Arthur—and partly because he'd never seriously considered having to break his own skin one day to draw blood. The modern equivalent would be someone who'd mastered "iron body" training and then died of appendicitis because the surgeon couldn't cut him—ridiculous.
Throwing the problem to Arthur was both a display of strength and a way to gauge the true depth of a pure-blood family. Given the toughness of Loren's skin, he reckoned it would take something on the order of the Sword of Gryffindor to slice it cleanly.
"All right—leave the blood-drawing to me."
Arthur lifted his wand and cast a peculiar cutting charm. Loren could feel at once that it was unusual—akin to Severus Snape's Sectumsempra in sharpness, though the core of the spell differed. Likely a Weasley family variant.
As Arthur kept pouring power into it, the charm intensified—so much that Loren felt the edge with his eyes alone. When Arthur had invested about half his magic into the charm, he drew the wand gently across Loren's fingertip. Light flared where wand met skin.
"…Ah—forgot to drop my ward," Loren said, and dismissed the rigid shield around him. That part wasn't a prank—he truly forgot. The static ward had so little presence day to day that he barely remembered it existed until danger woke it.
Arthur almost fainted. He'd never seen a wizard who carried a shield like that—one strong enough to blunt a family-grade cutting hex that had already been charged with half his magic.
Seeing the pallor on Arthur's face, Loren took out a small vial and set it on the table. "A restorative draught I brewed. Tastes… not great."
Arthur blinked at the vivid blue liquid—so blue it looked dyed. He wasn't wrong; Loren had tinted it deliberately. If you're replenishing magic, you drink blue—ritual matters.
Steeling himself, Arthur downed it in one gulp—and found it was actually sweet and tart, perfectly drinkable. As his magic returned, he focused, channeled everything into the cutting charm again, and touched wand to skin. This time a small cut opened beneath the wand-tip; bright blood welled up—and was caught in place by a holding charm.
Arthur whipped the Blood Orb Guardian beneath the wound, watching eagerly as the blood gathered… and then, to his shock, the pooled blood drew back into the skin, and the cut began to close.
He stared as the hard-won wound knitted, leaving Loren's skin as smooth as before. Loren's body, tempered by martial cultivation, responded to injury by reflex—tightening and sealing on its own.
Seeing Arthur's color drain again, Loren decided the joke had gone far enough. He pressed a nail to his palm, opened a neat line, and guided a single drop onto the dial. By the time it fell, the cut had already closed.
Arthur didn't spare the wound a glance. Every scrap of attention was on the dial.
The moment Loren's blood touched the metal, the pointer stopped aiming at him and began to spin wildly. No family record had ever mentioned such a reaction, and Arthur's gut tightened.
Under their gaze, the needle slowed, seesawing between Trustworthy and Safe. At last it settled on Trustworthy.
Loren felt a faint thread of mysterious force link itself to him, trying to drape a veil of protection over his soul. Weak, but there.
Arthur let out a long breath. However composed he'd looked, he'd been worried. Loren, noting the odd glint in Arthur's eyes, asked, "Mr. Weasley, if I have questions, will you answer them?"
"As long as I know the answer," Arthur said.
"You trust your Blood Orb Guardian that much? Aren't you afraid I'll change my mind?"
"Of course I trust it," Arthur replied. "Since you've passed its test, we will accept you without condition—as family."
Loren smiled. "Then can you tell me what secret lies in the Ministry of Magic? How can a single law influence all wizards?"
"Of course," Arthur said without hesitation. "There are seven departments in the Ministry: the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes; the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures; the Department of International Magical Cooperation; the Department of Magical Transportation; the Department of Magical Games and Sports; and the Department of Mysteries."
He paused to gather his thoughts. "The rest aren't the point. The truly important one is the Department of Mysteries—or rather, the others grew from the Ministry's needs, but the Department of Mysteries is the core. Family records and what I've gleaned at work say it contains several distinct chambers: the Time Room, the Planet Room, the Brain Room, the Death Chamber, the Hall of Prophecy, and a room that is kept permanently locked. Their exact functions aren't fully known—you can only guess from the names. But one thing is certain: the Department is under a powerful enchantment. If not for the work I had to do drafting—"
He shivered, as if remembering something dreadful.
Loren caught the key and pressed, "Why did drafting a law require help from… the Statute of Secrecy? Where did you encounter it?"
Arthur shook his head and fell silent.
Loren studied him, remembered what he'd said before, and understood: Arthur knew something, but couldn't speak it directly. So Loren reframed the question. "Then tell me the circumstances around drafting the law. Everything."
Arthur exhaled and nodded. "All right. Not long after I became head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office, the Minister ordered me to draft a law to stop wizards from enchanting Muggle items in ways that could harm Muggles. I used the Statute of Secrecy as a model and wrote what became the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Law—and left a small loophole: Muggle items altered by magic could be used in the wizarding world."
Based on his deductions, Loren judged the "permanently locked" room to be the one behind it all.
He asked, "Who works in the Department of Mysteries? What do they do day to day?"
"Bode and Croaker—those are two I know," Arthur said. "They keep regular hours. But the Department is the most secret organ in the Ministry. No one outside ever really knows what goes on."
With that, and the memories stirring in his mind, Loren set plans to investigate the Ministry itself. Yet remembering the strange things housed in the Department of Mysteries, he decided to grow stronger first. There would be time enough to pry open that door.
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