Summary: [HG/Loki] Dystopian What-if? Some would say the Aether was never meant for mortals or gods, having existed long before either, but what if it was simply waiting for the right vessel—someone broken just enough, betrayed just enough, to accept the bond that would make both of them whole again.

A/N: Like all my stories, there will be magical creature cuteness that may or may not involve helpful spiders. Oops!

Beta Love: The Dragon and the Rose, Dutchgirl01, and Flyby Commander Shepard

Disclaimer: Don't own Marvel. Don't own JKR's stuff. Just playing in the sandbox.

Warning/Trigger: Attempted Rape. It doesn't end well for them. Not graphic.

Citrus Warning: Last half of this chapter (well somewhere down there) is citrus scenes. *cough* Happy New Year?

Symbiosis

Chapter 1

Symbiosis is the living together in more or less intimate association or close union of two dissimilar organisms in mutualism (the beneficial association between different kinds of organisms) — Merriam-Webster

The end of the war went out like a whisper, even after the terror and violence ripped the trees from the ground of the Wizarding world and left it like the wake of both hurricane and flood with a chaser of tornado. When the dust had finally settled, Voldemort lay dead, his carcass quickly drying in the sun until it was completely desiccated and shriveled. Beside him lay the body of Hermione Granger, her chest just barely rising and falling as she struggled for each breath.

Yet the crowd that cheered and sent up brilliantly coloured streams of sparks from their wands as they swamped the area where Voldemort had breathed his last did not carry off Hermione and praise her name, no. They ignored her, instead swarming upon Harry James Potter, famed saviour of the Wizarding world. They swept him up in a sea of fame, dragging his best friend, Ronald Weasley along for the ride.

Trollop Hermione Granger Languishes at St Mungo's After Attempting to Take Credit for Defeating Voldemort! Good Riddance!

Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley Heroes of the Century!

Headmistress of Hogwarts Shamed By Rioters For Standing Up for Hermione Granger, Muggle-born Fraud!

Man-Who-Triumphed Harry Potter Marries Ginevra Weasley! Weasley Matriarch Ecstatic!

Ronald Weasley Insists, "Those Babies Aren't Mine!"

Harry Potter Named New Head Auror!

Wizengamot Forced to Allow Weasleys to Hold Multiple Seats

Dolores Umbridge Reportedly Missing After Suspicious Fiendfyre

Heroes of the Wizarding War Memorial Erected at Ministry

Hero Harry Potter Takes Over Estate of Severus Snape: Fiendfyre Trap Consumes Everything. Mass Obliviations in Cokesworth

Goblins Deny Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley Access to All Vaults Due to Refusal to Pay Restitution

Goblins Deny Heroes Harry Potter's and Ronald Weasley's Attempt to Garnish Wages of Hermione Granger For Fraud and Slander. Heroes State, "We'll Be Back."

Hermione Granger's Home Burned To Ground and Blasted with Dungbombs. "We Don't Want That Slyboots Mudblood In Our Town!"

Anti-Muggleborn Tensions Rise Again!

Muggleborn Citizens Denied Housing. "Go Back Where You Came From!" Angry Crowds Yell

Muggleborns Blame Hermione Granger For Ruining Their Lives

Hermione Granger Under Auror Protection After Attempt on Her Life Via Cursed Baked Goods—No Suspects Listed

Hermione Granger Injured While Under Auror Protection—Head Auror Harry Potter States: This Is All Just a Big Misunderstanding

Minister For Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt Forced to Resign After Initiating Investigation Into War Hero Harry Potter's Professionalism

Arthur Weasley Named New Minister For Magic

Wizard Wheezes Drives Competitors Out of Business in Twenty Cities. Superior Products Win the Day, States Founder George Weasley

George Weasley Denies Claims of Corruption

Quibbler Founder, Xenophilius Lovegood, Found Wandering Muggle Town in a Daze After Printing Article Supporting Embattled Hermione Granger. Neighbours, the Minister For Magic and Wife Molly Claim They Heard Nothing

Hermione crushed the latest issue of the Daily Prophet in her hand and tossed it into the fireplace, her brown eyes almost lifeless.

"Reading that ridiculous drivel again?" Hobnob asked, tapping on the latest magical device he was working on.

Hermione scowled and sighed, passing the small dragon hatchling a biscuit. "Sit up. There you go." She patted the dragon on the head, rubbing its horn nubs.

The dragon hatchling purred in pleasure and snuggled up to her sleeve.

"You've done such amazing work training those dragons, Hermione," Steelfoot said. "All the goblins think you're quite the gifted dragon whisperer."

"That would be Charlie Weasley," Hermione laughed, her face turning grim shortly after.

"He hasn't visited since the last time they tried to break into your vault," Hobnob said. "I'm sorry."

Hermione shook her head. "Bill hasn't either," she said. "He even works for Gringott's. I can't really blame either of them. Their mother makes their lives hell if they so much as say my name."

"You were only honourable one in that entire group, Dragonheart. We wouldn't have given you your own goblin name had that not been true," Steelfoot said.

"Did you guys name me, or did the dragons?" Hermione laughed.

"Naw, if the dragons had named you, you'd be known as Shiny Lady That Brings Me Food."

"At least Dragonheart is easier to say," Hermione mused. Hobnob bared his teeth at her, and she bared hers in return out of respect. It had taken her quite a while to get used to goblin customs and learn the language, but she had served five years paying her share of the damage done to Gringott's due to her infamous escape on the back of an Elder Ukrainian Ironbelly. After she paid off her debt in service without complaint, they offered her a real job, benefits, and a generous quarters in the goblin housing. She had earned her name after successfully training a family of dragons to guard the vaults without any unintentional deaths from staff. Even more importantly, the dragons recognised friend and foe without the rather brutal use of pain-sticks and pain-conditioning.

Gringott's was now her home, and like many of the goblins, she never left. She had never realised just how close the Ironbelly had come to destroying the living areas of hundreds of goblins as it crashed its way through the bowels of the vaults. At first she had grudging respect due to coming back to pay back the goblins, but now she was a goblin in everything but physical appearance—accepted by them all as the "tall goblin" and the "Lady Dragonheart."

Thanks to the exceedingly hostile climate outside of Gringott's, she had not been able to show herself in public for quite some time. Between the public shaming for even suggesting that Harry and Ron had "help" in defeating Voldemort, being a Muggle-born failure, and being painted as a shameless lying harlot by the likes of Rita Skeeter, no story was a good story for Hermione Granger.

Viktor had graciously offered to personally sponsor her immigration to Bulgaria, but the last thing she wanted was for Viktor's reputation to be sullied because of her own. He had stated he hadn't cared at all about the opinions of fools and bigots, but she hadn't wanted the career he loved to suffer because of her. She had been able to sneak out and visit him a few times while under an extensive glamour, lest someone recognise her.

She blamed her ever-uncontrollable hair.

The hatchling dragon headbutted her when she stopped scratching his head, and she huffed at him. "Really? I've only been rubbing you there for an hour now. I need my hand back."

"Skkrrrrk!" the hatchling said.

"I'm so glad Hagrid isn't here," Hermione said fervently. "He'd have the lot of them doing very bad things."

"What sorts of things?" Steelfoot asked, curious.

"Setting fire to everything, for starters," Hermione laughed. "Eating the patrons."

"Well, as long as they are on the blacklist… ," Hobnob said, trailing off.

"Hobnob!" Hermione protested, aghast.

He exposed his teeth at her, apologising, and Hermione bared her teeth in acceptance. "Though I will admit I have thought about it occasionally."

"Whenever you pick up the Prophet?"

"Exactly."

"You need to find yourself a nice goblin to settle down with," Hobnob suggested. "Someone who can accurately count your galleons and give you all the riches you deserve."

"What would I do with riches?" Hermione laughed.

"Send photographs to Mr Potter and Mr Weasley with the door of the vault open and gloat that you can actually walk into yours," Steelfoot suggested with an evil glint in his eye.

Hermione snorted, startling the dragon hatchling that had started to doze off in her lap. She walked over to the large nest she had constructed and placed the sleepy hatchling inside, tenderly tucking him into the warmed coals. The dragonet sighed happily and promptly fell fast asleep.

"You may think yourself lesser than the Weasley wizard, my Lady Dragonheart, but you have become your own master," Hobnob said.

An elder goblin with a series of notches in his ears shambled in carrying a tray of food and drinks. "Dinner time, you workaholics," he grunted, but his eyes were sparkling.

"Bless you, Garvsha," Hermione thanked the elder goblin. "I know you didn't have to bring us all that.

"Bah," Garvsha replied. "I know you three will work until you drop if someone doesn't come down here and Stupefy you."

Hermione grinned. She had been, surreptitiously, teaching the Goblins wandless magic. They were not, technically, supposed to have wands, thanks to the Wizarding law, but Hermione had come to be highly practiced in silent, wandless magic after years of learning goblin-magic to work in Gringott's. She'd found the two types amazingly compatible, and it had given her even more respect amongst the goblins for her willingness to teach when all others had seen their kind as below them.

"We let that stupid pair into 'your' vault in the upper levels, Lady Dragonheart," Garvsha said. "Well, the one they think is yours."

Hermione grinned toothily. She couldn't help it. "They would never, not in a million years, ever suspect that you moved all of my assets into the goblin-only vaults."

"We keep our Lady Dragonheart's secrets as we do those of all goblins," Garvsha snorted. "They can just go get bent."

"Garvsha!" Hermione laughed. "So what did they find in 'my' vault?"

"Floor to ceiling filled with issues of the Prophet dating back to—well, who knows?" Garvsha winked. "And one single galleon, broken up into a few knuts."

Hermione took a bite of her chicken sandwich after making sure her coworkers had tea. "Ah, I hope it was truly glorious, their disappointed faces."

"We have photographs," the old goblin said, grinning ferally.

Hermione grinned back. "You always know just how to make a gal feel better, Garvsha."

"You should marry him," Hobnob hissed.

"Hobnob!" Hermione exclaimed, blushing.

Garvsha shook his head. "He teases. I am a happily married goblin with more than enough goblets to spare."

Hermione smiled at the goblin term for children. Goblets made it sound like they were talking about drinking vessels, so humans always thought goblins were way too fascinated by drinking goblets. In Gobbledegook, the term was inflected very differently, but in English, well, things often got lost in translation.

All the dragons were taught in Gobbledegook, so the chances of someone who wasn't a goblin coming down and knowing how to pronounce the commands were incredibly low. The only humans who would know bits and pieces were the curse-breakers, and even Bill had privately admitted that he could barely ask where the bathroom was without accidentally insulting someone's mother. He'd known certain keywords like "duck" "stop" and "sorry" or rather "my deepest apologies for my lack of foresight, elder," which was the most common response to when you were being yelled at by Gringott's upper management goblins of all ages and ranks.

Dragon commands always started with "stop and identify me" which involved holding your hands out for the dragon to dip his or her head down and sniff you. All of them would immediately stop whatever they were doing to identify you, and dragons were very good about identifying strangers. Other commands came after you successfully passed the identification, but if you didn't pass the first, well, you probably weren't going to live long enough to worry about it.

Hermione had always been very proud of her work with the dragons. She favoured the Hungarian Horntails because they were very protective, but if you treated them right from the moment they hatched, they stopped trying to eat you and wanted to play with you instead. Playing looked a lot like wanting to eat you, but the difference was, they didn't REALLY try to eat you. There was that subtle line, somewhere. Hermione had actually forgotten what it was like to be knock-kneed and terrified when facing dragons.

Then again, if she ever had to face a dragon that Hagrid had trained, or untrained as it were, she would probably just Apparate somewhere and let the dragon do its thing until wizards were sent out to "deal with it." Hagrid was like the bad grandparents that undid all the great parenting you gave your children the rest of the year. Then, in the two days you let them spend with said grandparents, all the bad habits came back full force.

"Varko and Mundercoy both had emergencies come up, Lady Dragonheart," Garvsha said. "Would you mind cataloging the incoming Auror skid of confiscated artefacts and moving it into the Auror Vaults?"

"Of course, I'll help," Hermione agreed.

Garvsha yawned, showing all of his sharply pointed teeth. "There was some sort of drama at a warehouse somewhere. More artefacts than they've ever had to process all at once, so of course, when they run out of secure space—"

"They always crawl back to the goblins," Hobnob muttered. "Like we can simply conjure extra space."

"Well, technically—" Hermione started to say.

"Shhht!" Steelfoot shushed.

Hermione flushed, staring at her tea. "Goblin magic is for goblins to know and others to only wish they knew," she said automatically.

"Exactly," Garvsha said with clear approval.

The other two goblins shook their heads, rolling their eyes, putting on the perfect mask of goblin innocence when Garvsha gave them a fierce glare. Hermione grinned, twisting her face into stoic impassiveness when Garvsha looked back at her.

"Hrmmph," the old goblin grunted, tutting. "Up with you then, Lady Dragonheart. I don't want you up until the wee hours trying to catalog everything. Just take a count, extract memories of the inventory, and go to bed."

"Yes, Dad," Hermione said cheekily, scurrying off to the snickers of the other two goblins.

"Psh," Garvsha grumbled. "Goblets."

"You love her," Hobnob said, tapping on his project.

Garvsha bared his teeth. "Perhaps."

"Perhaps, nothing," Steelfoot muttered. "You're an old softy."

Garvsha muttered and waved his hands. "Finish your projects and go to bed."

"Yes, Dad," the goblins chimed together.

Garvsha bared his teeth and shambled off, muttering, "Goblets."

"What do you mean the Aether is GONE?!" Thor slammed his hands down on the table, and it cracked, falling into two pieces. The Asgardian stared down at the broken table. "Why is this table so shabbily made?!"

"Definitely the table's fault," Stark muttered, tinkering with a device with a pair of tiny tweezers.

A pitcher of something foamy went sailing by his head, but Tony dodged, not even flinching. Fury caught the mug of frothy beverage and set it down on another table. "The Collector was moving items into a different warehouse and was… bushwacked by scuffling people brandishing some kind of sticks."

"Fighting sticks?" Sif asked.

"Pain sticks?" Thor asked.

"Stick sticks," Fury said. "Twigs."

They stared at Fury. "We only have the half-security tapes before they went fuzzy. People dressed in bathrobes shaking twigs at people."

Thor's eyebrow twitched. "The Aether was taken… by mortals in bathrobes brandishing random tree parts?"

"It sounds distinctly less than plausible when you say it like that," Fury muttered.

"Has anyone informed the Supreme Pizza?" Tony asked.

"Sorcerer Supreme?" Fury corrected, arching a brow and tapping his eyepatch.

"Supreme pain in my ass," Tony muttered darkly.

"Just because he's as brilliant at what he does as you are with those gadgets of yours, Stark, that doesn't make him a pain in the ass." Fury sighed.

"He's not brilliant," Tony grumbled. "He's a showman. He's arrogant, and he's a pain in my ass."

"So are you," Thor grunted, thunking Mjölnir down on the remains of the table. The table crumbled even more, sending up a cloud of dust as the table gave its final death rattle.

"So, why is this Aether so special?" Tony said, tapping the gadget he had and it zinged through the air and conked Thor squarely in the middle of the forehead. "Oops. Come back here." The gadget came back, thumping into Tony's palm.

Thor glared at Stark. "The Aether is primordial power that can has the potential to unmake and remake the universe. It acts like a parasite, sucking the life from a host and casting them aside when it is done. The dark elves wished to use it to cast the world into darkness. They were attuned to it— or addicted to it. I am not sure, to this day, if the Aether served them or they were enslaved to it."

"Power, then," Tony said.

"Not just any power," Sif said darkly, her fingers drumming on her opposite arm. "Power that predates the creation of the Nine Realms."

"So it's seriously old, got it," Tony said. "You just stuffed this power into a vase and gave it to some crotchety old guy that collects things. Why not keep it up there in Asgard with the rest of your Tesseracty things?"

"Because we can't keep two insanely powerful artefacts so close to each other," Sif pointed out.

"I'm not saying you should wear them together," Tony said. "I am asking why you can't keep them in a vault."

"Odin was worried that keeping two immensely powerful objects together might encourage them to work together."

"We've been stuck in rooms together and we still have trouble working together," Tony muttered. "So, will we be able to track this primordial thingamabob before it—"

"Infects someone, drains them into a dead husk, and moves on to the next, leaving a trail of mayhem and destructions in its wake?" Sif asked.

"Oh, is that all?" Tony said, releasing the gadget as it slammed into Thor's face again, latching onto it like an enamoured octopus. Thor went crashing to the ground. "Oh, good. It works."

The skid of artefacts was very densely packed, and Varko and Mundercoy were shaking their heads as the Aurors insisted on moving everything in without the goblins interfering.

"Out of the way, knife-ears," the wizard grunted as he guided the skid in.

"Charming," Hermione said, coming up behind Varko and Mundercoy. They bared their teeth at her, and she did the same. She tilted her head slightly in deference to her elders. She had thrown on the drab green Gringott's robes and pulled the hood up and over her head to shadow her face.

Varko patted Hermione on the hand, and they stood out of the way of the Aurors as they struggled with the skid. Hermione watched in the back with the other goblins.

"Take the gravity well off this damn skid!" One Auror snapped, and one of the other rummaged around the pile.

"Can't find it, boss."

"Do better!"

The skid started to topple and the Aurors rummaged around, flinging artefacts in all directions as they struggled to get the one one they were looking for.

"Accio gravity well!" one of them said.

"No!"

Ting! Ting-ting-Ting tah ting TING tinghhhhh!

Artefacts flew out of the pile and slammed into the Auror who had recklessly cast the Accio. That Auror went tumbling back arse over teakettle, and the spell they had been focusing on the skid snapped. The artefacts went careening off the skid as it tilted abruptly and cracked in half.

Kasploosh!

Artefacts went flying in all directions. Big, small, and everything in between. The Aurors cursed loudly, stumbling over each other as they glared furiously at the one guilty for the careless Accio. The leader of the group, Dawlish, stumbled over a few artefacts and tripped. He slammed into the pile on the skid, sending even more artefacts tumbling off into the vault. Snarling with fury, he grabbed the Accio-offender, wrapping his hands around his neck and slamming him hard into the wall.

"What the FUCK, Stanley?" he spat into the other wizard's face.

The artefacts resonated with a strange vibration, and Varko and Mundercoy exchanged glances with Hermione with nervous grimaces.

"You really need to stop," Varko said. "The artefacts are resonating."

The objects were rattling together, crackling and shimmering.

Mundercoy looked around nervously. Cracks were forming in the tiles and stone. He swallowed hard, gritting his teeth as he contemplated something he did not wish to do. "Please, you must stop."

"Get off me!" Stanley, the Accio-wizard cried, throwing a blast of magic that threw Auror Dawlish off and sent him sprawling.

"Marcus!"

"Dawlish!"

Dawlish angrily pulled himself off the ground, and a splinter of one of the artefacts was embedded in his chest. He pulled it out and flung it aside, causing a fine spray of blood to splatter across the artefacts.

"Oh no," Varko and Mundercoy said together, visibly horrified.

Crack.

CraCK!

CRACK!

"GET OUT!" Hermione cried. She pushed the goblins behind her towards the door. "Get out of here now, brothers," she hissed insistently in Gobbledegook!

The goblins struggled to flee, but the two nearest Aurors slammed them into a wall. "What have you done?!" the one yelled, blaming the goblin he was throttling.

"Let him go!"

Dawlish flung Hermione against the far wall with his magic. "Incarcerous!" he hissed. "You—" He sneered at her. His face was quivering with rage, augmented by the countless magical artefacts. He waved his wand, activating the Auror-only wards around the room. "There will be no escape for you, Hermione Granger. We've found you at last."

The goblins were trying to get out the vault, but the wards flared up and trapped them all inside.

"Let them go," Hermione said, coughing and choking as Dawlish gripped her neck in a savage grip.

"Auror wards don't drop until our superiors come to see why we've activated them, pet," Dawlish oozed, his hand roaming lazily down Hermione's body as she struggled. "Might be hours. Might as well make yourself more comfortable."

"I haven't done anything wrong!" Hermione said, straining to reach her wand.

Dawlish smiled wickedly, clapping a circlet around Hermione's neck. "No magic for you, Mudblood. Magic belongs to the pure."

"We won a war to stop such ridiculous prejudices!"

"You mean you just watched as the real heroes won, girl," Dawlish mocked her, forcefully jabbing his wand into her neck.

"I. Protected. Harry," Hermione said, struggling.

"You are nothing," Dawlish snarled, "but meat. His hand groped down her body, ripping her robes to expose her.

Hermione flushed red, struggling fiercely against her sneering captor.

"Suitable only for a good fuck, eh girl?" Dawlish made a little moaning sound, his tongue sliding over his lips as he stared down at her. "We have time."

"Get away from her!" Varko and Mundercoy cried, running up, but Dawlish flung another spell, blasting the two goblins into the piles of artefacts. Glass broke, wood splintered, and magic trickled like streams of shimmering tears. They struggled to get out of the pile, their bodies flailing in frantic desperation.

"Stupid goblins," the other Aurors laughed. "Come on, Dawlish, hurry up. We want our share too."

"Yeah they'll be coming to check on us soon enough."

Dawlish licked his lips and yanked Hermione down from the wall and threw her to the ground, her head slamming into the pile of artefacts.

Crack. Crackle. Shink!

The sound of glass shattering and crystal breaking was muffled by Dawlish's grunts and Hermione's screams as he inexorably forced her legs apart, ripping away her robes. His hand jerked to his belt, unfastening it and jerking it free of his trousers. "Scream for me, girl," he goaded her. "Scream for me, and maybe you'll survive your trial."

Hermione glared at him as he pressed her cheeks in with his thumb and forefinger. "Get. Bent."

Dawlish backhanded her, smashing her skull hard against the stone floor. Blood leaked out from her hair as her eyes went glassy. Dawlish smiled. So intent was he on having his way with Hermione's body that he did not notice the shimmer of black and crimson fire trickling down the rivulets of magic and into the wound on Hermione's head.

Hermione opened her eyes to find herself seemingly floating in space. She checked herself, and yelled as she realised she was quite naked. The sun blazed far away, and the cosmos spanned before her, nebulas and galaxies rotating on their paths as only Creation knew. Formless darkness lurked, but so, too, did the light. Beyond, celestial dragons glided on the tides of space, keening in a way that made whales seem like amateurs.

"Need a moment, Miss Granger?" a painfully familiar voice said.

"Master?" Hermione gasped, tears in her eyes.

Fathomless black eyes met hers as Snape took off his traveling cloak and wrapped it snugly around her. "I am not he," Snape said to her, almost sadly. "I take his form that we may speak."

Hermione touched his face, tears trailing down her cheeks. "I really wish you were."

Snape's hand touched her cheek. "You loved him."

"My master for three years," Hermione said, sniffling. "He taught me everything. Everything I wasn't ready for."

"Everything you were ready for," Snape's voice said.

"Fifth year he gave me the Murtlap essence to heal the cuts caused by the quills, well, he threw it at me," Hermione said. "By the time I figured out what he had done, I realised— he wasn't anywhere near as horrible as everyone said. He taught me so many things. Called me a fool. Taught me anyway. Comforted me when no one else would. And then one day he was gone. And I would give anything to hear him yell at me again."

"Your best friends betrayed you," Snape said.

"Swept away in the fame of the moment."

"Leaving you alone."

"I did not want the fame," Hermione said, pulling the cloak around her. "I just wanted them to remember we all had our parts to play. We all made— sacrifices."

"Your parents."

Hermione closed her eyes. "They tortured them— looking for me. They found them, and even though they didn't know who I was anymore— they tortured them still. They weren't even Death Eaters. They just wanted the reward for my 'justice'." Hermione closed her fist, her knuckles white with remembered anger and pain. Then, her face changed, reflecting total despair, and she slumped.

"There is no one left," Hermione whispered. "No one who understands."

"Your heart is broken," the figure who looked like Snape said sombrely. "The wounds still bleed freely."

"I miss him," Hermione said. "He died being hated. I live my life being hated. We had an… understanding. That has left a chasm that cannot ever be filled. Wounds that will never heal."

"Time has forgotten me as well," he said, tilting his head in a way that was so painfully familiar. "Cast away for other more malleable, easily tamed power. I have searched the span of Creation for countless millennia, seeking a worthy inheritor since I was first cast aside— betrayed."

"There was a reason you chose his face, wasn't there?" Hermione said thoughtfully. Her fingers closed around his as she searched his face for an answer. "You're much the same—hated, feared, yet respected. Misunderstood."

"Seeking a partner who understands," he replied. "One who can love not the power for the power's sake but the true essence of what has been cast aside by others who have not the wisdom to see beyond the surface."

He looked at her, his fingers spidered across her face with a gentle brush. "I have searched all the Realms and the cradle of all Creation for you. Say that you will have me, and we shall never be alone again."

Hermione traced his face with her fingers. "What will it be like?"

"Completion," he said softly, his black eyes reflecting infinite starfields.

"Why me?"

"Perhaps, we were always one," he replied. "And one day, we were broken and parted. Maybe, throughout the eons, me seeking and you from life to life, we passed each other, ever close but never quite touching. I have hungered, raged, rampaged, destroyed and built— hungering for you. Can you not feel it? Come—join with me, and we shall never be parted again. I will show you the heartbeat of countless worlds and you— you can teach me why after all that has been done to you, you can still feel."

He opened his arms to her, his star-filled eyes as fathomless as the expanse of space.

Hermione looked his face, staring intently into his eyes. "It's you," she breathed.

"Join with me," he whispered. "Let me adore you."

His body broke into particles, swirling around her in a lover's embrace, caressing her body as it hovered and supported her at the same time.

"Yes." Hermione's body spasmed as the particles surged into her body in a rush, wrapping around her like a cocoon as energy pulsed inside the forming membranes.

Badum.

Baaadum.

Ba-DUM.

The cocoon suddenly burst open, Hermione tearing free of its confines with a scream as a heated solar wind blew through. Wispy fabric swirled around her, seemingly formed of the dark of space and the shimmer of stars. Robes formed around her, fitting themselves to her body as silver, shimmering horns curved up from her wild mane of curls and twisted around into a pair of pristine dragon horns. Fine silver tendrils weaved around her head in an organic circlet, melding with her mane of hair perfectly. As her robes billowed in the solar winds, shimmering armour of seamless shimmering silver and green scales formed around her body. Fine lines of scales formed along her brow and across her skin, fading in and out like the imprint of an ethereal tattoo. Her pupils swallowed her eyes as the inky expanse of space filled the whites of her eyes until only two golden slits remained. Wispy chains of silver swirled around her fingers forming the shape of serpents that wrapped around her wrists like delicate gauntlets and curled lovingly around her fingers like the most elegant of rings.

Foooooom!

Raw magical energy blasted out from her core like the waves of a supernova, destroying and remaking as it traveled outward. Hermione stretched her arms out spread-eagle, letting the energy swirl around her and dance across her skin before falling back, back, back into the darkness of the abyss that was the physical world and the Realm of Midgard.

"What the fuck!"

The barriers and wards around the vault's inner chamber broke, and the two goblins cleared out as the remaining Aurors scrambled around the still body of Dawlish. His face was a rictus of horror, his frozen body unable to move save to draw enough air into his lungs to make a choking wheeze of terror and pain. The scream, however, seemed to be more than a mere physical thing. The men covered their ears, but it continued to ring over and over inside their heads.

A miasma of swirling red and black flowed around the witch's body.

Crack!

The collar that had been around her neck suddenly turned to dust. Her body was consumed in the flow of the alien energy and matter. It swirled around her like a living thing, entwining around her body as if to devour her, but then it shot out and pegged each Auror straight to the forehead, burning a magical rune of Uruz, upside-down, in glowing, angry magic. They stopped clutching their ears to tear at their own mouths, screaming as a magical rune carved itself into the bottom of their tongues.

Then the tendrils of magic seemed to slowly fade into nothingness, leaving the room with only the dim glow of torchlight and the remains of the destroyed magical artefacts. The remaining Aurors fled out of the vault, screaming while Dawlish remained frozen like a marble statue with his pants and trousers down in a perpetual state of embarrassingly wilted and shrunken masculinity— terror writ boldly across every line of his face.

Hermione Granger Comatose in St Mungo's After Attack by Ministry Aurors in Gringott's

We Won't Stand For This: Head Auror Harry Potter Says No One Attacks An Auror and Gets Away With It

[Picture of Dawlish Statue]

Breaking News: Auror Dawlish Frozen Solid: Caught With His Pants Down While DMLE Points Blame at Hermione Granger For Not Turning Herself In Long Ago

Ministry Aurors Confess to Heinous Crimes Authorised By DMLE: Head Auror Harry Potter Denies Allegations

Auror Team Breaks Into St Mungo's To Arrest Hermione Granger Only To Discover Comatose Granger Missing

Bulgarian Ministry Laughs Off Britain's Demands for Extradition of Wanted Fugitive Hermione Granger

Headmistress Minerva McGonagall Kicks out Meddling Aurors Says, "Get the Hell Out of My School!"

Daily Prophet Swamped With Written Confessions Detailing Corruption Rife in DMLE and Ministry

Truth-Tongue Plague Sweeps Britain. Kids Can't Lie, and Ministry Ablaze with Spontaneous Confessions of Criminal Activity and Wanton Misconduct

"Hero" Ronald Weasley Breaks Down in Diagon Alley, Confesses: I Abandoned Harry and Hermione When They Needed Me the Most. Hermione Saved Us All, and I Loved That No One Believed It!

"I Just Sign Whatever They Tell Me To," Minister for Magic Arthur Weasley Confesses

Hero Harry Potter Found In His Home Drinking Silencing Potions, Slams Door In Face of Our Reporter

I Hate Hermione Granger and I'll Write Anything To Make Her Look Bad! Confession by Reporter Rita Skeeter Shocks Nation

Skeeter Also Admits to Being Unregistered Animagus For Years!

Seamus Finnegan Confesses to Setting Hermione Granger's Home Aflame with Fiendfyre "Because Mrs (Molly) Weasley Makes the Best Biscuits in Britain (and She Asked Me Nicely)!"

Former Minister For Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt Reinstated: Arthur Weasley Forced to Resign! Over Fifty Unnecessary Employees Sacked!

Neville Longbottom Appointed New Head Auror for DMLE:

Harry Potter Gets the Sack! Must Pay Back Ill-Gained Spoils of War

Goblins Demand Restitution From Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley For Destroying Vaults During Rampage

Goblins Awarded Contents of Sealed Potter and Weasley Vaults by Wizengamot to Cover Costs of Gringott's Reconstruction

Molly Weasley Sentenced to 10 Years in Azkaban for Vicious Attack on Quibbler's Xenophilius Lovegood! Lovegood states, "I'm Retiring to Be With My Daughter and Her Husband. My Heart Can't Take It Anymore."

Harry Potter Spotted in Sweden, Then Disappears Into Crowd

"I Impregnated 32 Witches!" Confessed Ronald Weasley. "And I Have No Money!"

Loki woke to find out that all his careful planning to get the Aether out of the Collector's grasp had been bungled up by some street fight between mortals with lasers and mortals with wands. That had not been part of the plan. To top it off, he had to be very careful to avoid the gaze of Heimdall by making certain he wasn't anywhere he might be looking. It helped to be in any shape but his accustomed one, but Loki really wanted to get his claws into the Aether so he could remake the realms to his liking.

Somehow, after all the work he had taken to get the Collector to desire moving the Aether from his crowded starship to a supposedly secure place on Earth (which had been no small feat at all) chaos had struck as if to remind him that he may be a god, but life would continue to remind him that he was not as in control as he would like to believe. Loki slammed his palm down on the desk and shoved all of the papers he had been reading away.

Maybe he would get lucky and the Aether would possess another stupid human and leave a trail of death and destruction he could follow. The human would, of course, die having been drained of all life, but humans were so terribly useful in that they were conveniently disposable. They had spunk, he admitted, but they lived short, fleeting lives.

His brother seemed to find them all so fascinating, having learned to respect them— no, to respect all— and his mortal lover had already wrapped her hooks of whatever emotional weakness she could around him. Oh, true, she was brave, indeed. Perhaps she was even intelligent— but in the blink of an eye she would be dead, if not because she was useless to defend herself but her life was fleeting at best.

What use was having an emotional connection when the thing you had softness for would merely wither and die, just like the supposed love of his "family." The moment he had realised who and what he really was, he had been marked as lesser. No amount of proving could show his worth to rule. He would always be Jötunn. Forever less than any Asgardian.

But now, he was driven to find the Aether and make it his. With the sceptre gone, and the Tesseract squirreled a way under the All-Father's secret guard—Had he known his "father" had sealed it away so it could only be found by him, he would have taken another approach.

Worst of all— he couldn't feel the Aether anymore. The singularity's siren call had been strangely silenced. There had been a huge surge of energy and then nothing. It was like the Aether ceased to be, or had been shoved back into some nether-dimension as it once had by Bör. Loki crushed the container on the desk in his hand and flung it at the wall, and then all the objects in the room rose up in the air and smashed against the walls too, shattering and breaking into pieces.

Loki glowered out the cracked window into downtown London. The Aether would be his. He just had to find it. Again.

Hermione opened her eyes slowly and immediately regretted it. She closed her eyes quickly, moving her hand over her face with a groan and vowed to never, ever open them again. Realising she was just being silly, she tried again, and found that the world had finally stopped spinning around her, and the pounding horrible headache had thankfully ceased.

A plateau pika was staring at her with curiosity, its plump body seeming almost as comical as it was cute. It had plants stuffed in its mouth, but it seemed more interested in figuring out what she was doing than in eating or running away.

Hermione rubbed the space between her eyes and grunted. Her brain felt fuzzy. Her body felt strange, and—

"What the hell am I wearing?" She looked down at herself and saw her serpent gauntlets, rings she didn't remember having, and robes that looked like she'd borrowed Snape's traveling cloak and elven armor from the Lord of the Rings and smooshed them together.

Snow was falling lightly, but oddly she wasn't cold. She did wonder where she was though, save being on a plateau somewhere. The plateau pika had been a big clue. The snow falling on her was the second. Still, she wasn't exactly an expert on plateau pikas save knowing they were found in Tibet and vital to the ecosystem thanks to books she used to read from her father's library.

Tibet. Oh. Well, that sort of narrowed it down.

As she looked around, she realised the mental heaviness and world-weariness that had plagued her for the last few years was strangely missing. The raw, salted wounds of betrayal had faded into the background, and she didn't feel the raw, aching loneliness that had been her constant companion for so very long.

Her memory was in a sad state, indeed. Where had she acquired such oddly elaborate clothing? Why did she look like the poster-child for Slytherin? She was certain that Severus was out there laughing at her from the afterlife. At least he could laugh. The thought amused her, and for once, she didn't feel the stab of pain that usually came with his memory. In fact, when she thought of him, she felt warm, as if his arms were wrapped around her again as he let her wail upon him, clinging to his robes like child in desperate need of comfort. Later it had been for mutual comfort— he for the tasks he knew that lay before him and she for the work she knew would surely ostracise her even more.

A part of her had hoped that he would survive it, miraculously, and they could have tried their shot at a normal life both free of the teacher and student stigma and free of plans for some nebulous greater good. It hadn't happened. He had given his life to protect Harry's secret, or Dumbledore's as it truly was. And in the end, it hadn't even been Harry that had taken his wand to Voldemort. It had been her, desperate to save her friends' lives as Harry lay flat on his back in the rubble.

And then it had all gone to hell. Family lost—or the closest she had thought she had—disappeared in a virtual flood of fame and glory for the Boy-Who-Lived-and-Conquered. All of it had meant nothing in the end. In the end, the goblins had become more family to her than them. She was never truly one of them in her head, but she had been very close. They had accepted her far better than the ever-fickle citizens of the Wizarding world. They had protected her and sheltered her from the world that had no love for her, making it so Minerva hadn't had to fret and worry about her all the time.

Minerva had wanted to hire her on as a teacher, gossip be damned, but Hermione knew that Hogwarts needed less drama, not more, especially after the war. Minerva, and perhaps some of the other teachers, had not believed the Prophet's lies and industrious painting of her with a figurative scarlet letter. It didn't matter, though. No parent wanted her as a teacher any more than they had wanted a known werewolf on staff.

Yet, had this not been so, she wouldn't have had been able to reform the goblins' treatment of their dragons, and she had come to be quite fond of dragons. Charlie had said, at least before he had stopped visiting, that while he knew how a dragon was most likely going to act, she was the mother. Dragons looked to her like a gosling to its parent— only they never grew out of it. He had confessed to a little jealousy there, but Hermione pointed out that he wasn't going to get much done at the preserve if he had five hundred-some dragons trying to crawl into his lap. He had, begrudgingly, agreed.

Just before he had stolen the dragonet from her lap and cuddled it mercilessly.

A clean river ran nearby, and Hermione could smell the algae and sheer aliveness of it. It pleased her. No where around did she see any farms or smell livestock animals. There was just the crispness of the snow and the not yet frozen river. She could certainly do worse.

She felt her wand in her hand and puzzled a moment, wondering when she had pulled it out, but decided she shouldn't look a gift wand in the mouth. She busied herself, gathering stones and making cement, arranging stone and fibers to make herself a shelter— goblin-style. Years of learning their innate magic and combining it with her own had not gone without certain benefits. Stone-carving and crafting was as a natural to them as metalwork, and she'd "graduated" when she carved out her very first vault within Gringott's. She shifted the stones and earth to make it blend into the terrain seamlessly, sealing the spaces with breathable cement. She diverted a part of the river to flow through her her place, running along a rock channel she had specifically placed for that purpose. No matter how horrible it might get outside, she would always have running water that never truly froze.

She pondered what to do about a chimney, not wanting something gaudy that all but screamed "Hi, I'm living here, thanks." Deciding that smoke was detectable but steam was easily dismissed, she enchanted the stones to heat the water and channeled the water under the dwelling to both heat and provide water. No one would ever be the wiser. Still, hearths were useful for more than burning wood, and she crafted one in case she would need it.

As she stared in the empty dwelling, she decided she needed to be a little more creative. If she was going to live here, she should at least attempt to make it look lived in. She transfigured stones and logs into cupboards and a dining room table and chairs and grass into comfier couches. She lined the walls with nooks for books in case she managed to get her hands on them, and used a marsh reed to make bed to the envy of anything her parents wanted.

She tugged on her beaded bag, and emptied it, guiding all the contents to fill the shelves and make it look less spartan. Then, she enchanted some mage-lights to hover and bring a bit of light in the dimness.

"Well, this looks much better," Hermione decided. She realised that while she had intended to make a small shelter, she'd instead made quite a comfortable home. She smiled a little at that. Somehow, she had ended up in Tibet, and that made her think that there was still very bad things going on in Britain. It was probably for the best if she hunkered down and let things simmer down. She didn't want to get the goblins in trouble on her account. She didn't want anyone to suffer because of her.

Still, they might be worried, as much as goblins ever worried about anything.

She picked up a stone and pointed her wand at it, forming it into a perfect dragon scale. She carved the sigil they used to mark the dragons' living quarters and a tiny mark that she put on all of her work— something all goblins did and would instantly recognise. She concentrated on Garvsha and the little twitch his ears did when he was trying not to be swayed by her and the toothy grimace of satisfaction he would give when he was proud of his people.

Floop!

The stone disappeared, and Hermione stared at her hand hoping that meant it got to where it needed to go. She never remembered anything like that ever happening before…

Deciding to make use of the hot spring she had created, she moved to wriggle out of her layers only to have her robes, what could only be called armour, and under-armor silks move off on their own to hang themselves on the nearby robe hooks. Her gauntlets unwove from around her arms, rings slid off her fingers, and circlet christened the stand of disembodied mannequins that she hadn't remembered making. She slid into the steaming water and sighed softly, feeling herself relax at last. As her eyes closed, she felt the current of the water around her, the trails of heat, and the tickle as it burbled around her skin. The wind began to howl outside, making her wonder what sort of blizzard was attempting to bury her and her new home.

Yet, she could still feel the fresh air coming in from the outside, just enough to vent the stale inside with the fresher outside, so she wasn't too worried. She realised with some horror that she hadn't refreshed her stash of soap and shampoo since she had had to do an emergency bath of one of the older dragonets that had gotten himself literally tarred and feathered by one of the more mischievous goblets. There had been some worry that the dragonet would be attacked when the other, older dragons thought he was food. She had planned to replace it, but it had slipped her mind.

Now what?

Pop. Thump. Pop!

Soap and shampoo appeared by the springs.

Uhhhh…

"Is someone here?" She waited. "Um, thanks for the soap."

Pop.

"Hello?"

A fuzzy ball of fluff and whiskers peered out from behind the shampoo bottle. It was the pika.

Hermione held out her hand, and the little creature came up to her and placed its hands on her fingers. She looked again. No, they truly were hands and not paws. "I've never seen anything like you before," Hermione confessed.

The little creature seemed to be concentrating hard. Home? Its voice seemed very small in her mind. Unpracticed. Want home.

Hermione frowned. "Did you lose your home?"

The pika drooped. Need home. Die. The little creature's whiskers twitched. Make home you?

"This isn't much of a home," Hermione replied. "I just got here myself."

Make home together, the small creature said. Want home you.

Hermione's heart melted as its eyes stared into hers with such soulful longing that she couldn't bear to deny it. "If you really want to. Okay."

Mean it? It asked hopefully.

"I mean it," Hermione assured the little creature.

The magical pika radiated a warmth and magic as it rubbed against her hand. Family! It squeaked, filling her heart with undeniable gratitude.

Hermione stepped out of the hot spring, and a towel moved to surround her head and her body, wrapping around her without her asking. She carried the pika gently in her hands and took out her wand, making a stone niche in the wall close to the steaming hearth. She lined the inside with soft bedding and made a little stairway, charming the nest to be self-cleaning. The pika zoomed into it, squeaking excitedly and moving the bedding around to its personal comfort. Hermione couldn't help but smile at the little creature's obvious happiness.

Hermione found a soft nightgown lying on her bed, frowning that she couldn't remember conjuring it, but just shrugged. She exchanged the towels for the gown and buried herself inside the warm blankets, pulling the fluffy duvet over the top as her head burrowed into the pillow.

Days or weeks later, and Hermione wasn't sure how long it had been, Hermione woke to the sound of an avalanche, or at least it sounded what she would have imagined an avalanche to sound like. She pulled her duvet down just a bit, peering out into the room. The inside of her house wasn't in ruins, and the walls weren't shaking.

Good sign, she thought. She still smelled the fresh air coming from the vent and yawned. That was also a good sign. She curled back under the duvet, mumbling, "Just a few more minutes, Mum."

Hermione's eyes drifted closed and her breathing slowly evened out again. A fluffy fur ball climbed up the side of the duvet and dove under the covers with her, but she didn't notice.

Thump.

Rumble. Rumble.

Thump!

A strange creaking and sliding sound was followed by the sound of something heavy crashing into solid rock.

A line of terrified pikas scurried in from the springs inlet squeezing through the tiny crack, desperate to flee from the outside world. They made a bee-line for Hermione's warm bed and burrowed under the covers with piteous squeaks of fright.

Hermione's arm reached out to blindly smash a non-existent alarm clock but bapped one of the poor pika instead. It squeaked in terror, running around in frantic circles only to fall off the bedside table and onto the floor.

Hermione's arm just dangled out of the top of her duvet cocoon, completely slack as she fell asleep again.

Rumble. Rumble. THUMP!

"Grmmffphf… What is going on out there?!" Hermione groaned, finally throwing back her duvet and sitting up. A dozen terrified pikas dove back under the covers, shivering.

Hermione blinked blearily. "How does anyone sleep in Tibet? Does everyone sleep with a silence charm?"

She groaned, her cold feet seeking her slippers automatically.

Pop!

Her pika-friend nosed the fuzzy slippers onto her feet and disappeared back into its warm nest with a soft pop.

She shuffled, zombie-like, towards the hearth and poured herself a cup of what she hoped was highly-concentrated campfire coffee— the breakfast of champions. She took a swig, had a muscle spasm, and sighed.

"Today's project is definitely going to be all about putting up some heavy-duty soundproofing wards. Who'd have thought I'd need them here?" She shoved her unruly curls out of her face and stared blearily into her coffee mug.

"Puny, spineless, bastard son of Asgard!" a rumbling voice bellowed.

Ker-ZAP! THUMP. Rumble. Rumble.

"I'll have you know that my mother and father were indeed married before I was born," another voice boomed in response. "Your legitimacy, however, does seems to be rather in question."

Bzzzttt! THUMP!

"I am royalty!" the other voice snarled.

"I don't see a crown!" Bzzzttt!

"You are an entitled godling brat of Asgard!"

"Did remembering my address hurt you? You could commit suicide going from your ego level to your true IQ."

Blam! Rumble. Snow was sliding somewhere, and ice was raining down from above.

"Ah, it would be wonderful to take you seriously, but I fear in order to do so, I would affront your intelligence."

Thummmmmm. A rush of ice and snow crashed down nearby.

"I'm sorry, are you actually trying to smother me… in snow and ice?"

"Thou art such a vile lump of deformity that even your own blood cast you aside as defective! I know the truth!"

"Who are you, really?"

"This one is but mine servant! Do you not know your own impending death?"

"I'm not really feeling it, no," replied the other voice, oozing sarcasm.

"You're out of clever illusions, Asgardian," the other voice snarled.

Hermione threw on her cloak and stormed out of her door, wanting in that moment just some peace and quiet. As she stepped out into the snow, a green and gold body slammed into the side of her home, a flaming sword protruding from his gut. The body did not move from where it had been cast, and Hermione took one look at the messy spill of long black hair over a pale face and was instantly reminded of someone else. Her hand clenched into a tight fist as her wand flew to her hand from places unknown. She stared up at the malformed creature that looked to be caught somewhere between man and something resembling a flame demon but did not flinch. "Get. Off. My. Garden."

"Mortal insect," the flame-creature snarled. "You stand between me and what is MINE!"

Hermione leveled her wand, her hair whipping around her head like sentient, writhing serpents. "You threw it on my house, you flaming egomaniac. That makes it mine."

"You DARE?!"

"Obviously," Hermione replied with a derisive snort, narrowing her eyes at the offending interloper. "I placed my claim on this piece of abandoned rock before you decided to come traipsing through like a drunken mammoth with a severe sand flea infestation, so I would kindly request that you leave."

"Arrogance," the creature replied in a low growl.

"Do not confuse my having found a spine as arrogance," Hermione replied grimly. "I do not know you, so I will give you the opportunity to leave here in peace."

"Please," the creature scoffed. "Peace is only for the likes of your puny philosophers and other weak-minded fools."

"I assure you I do not have a retaining staff of philosophers or fools, puny or otherwise," Hermione said. "Look, whatever you are looking to find here, you're looking in the wrong place. Please leave."

The flame-creature held out a polished lens, peering through it and to her. "You stole it."

Hermione frowned. "I have stolen nothing, least of all something of yours."

"You don't DESERVE it!" the creature roared, flinging itself toward her in a gallop— half run, half four-legged bound.

"Petrificus Totalus!" Hermione yelled, sending a spell slamming into the running creature. It hung in the air for a moment before slamming into the ground with a resounding, earth-shaking thump.

"I am so bloody tired of bullies and entitled prats," Hermione said with clear disgust. "I am tired of monsters leading the blind to war. I'm tired of being blamed. I'm just— tired. I can't even get a full night's sleep without someone or something crashing into my home. Just get out." She let the spell drop and she turned to walk away.

As Hermione continued to walk back towards her house, the creature labouriously pulled itself off the ground and growled. It rose up and bounded towards her—

SHINK!

A flaming dagger protruded from Hermione's abdomen.

Hermione stared at it as the creature pulled it back out of her and seemed eager to plunge it deep into her again, but this time Hermione turned around and her eyes had gone from warm brown to a field of stars.

"I tried polite," Hermione said gravely.

Black and red particles streamed out of her wound, swirling around the dagger blade and crumbling it to dust. Her hand touched the wound oddly, perhaps expecting it to hurt, her fingers going into the hole and exploring it. Her hand closed around the creature's neck, her eyes as black as the yawning abyss. Two glowing slits, blazing like the sun, narrowed as she touched him.

"I will burn you to ash!" the creature yelled, eyes glowing and a hint of horns ghosted over its face. Strings of power from a greater place connected this creature to something bigger— something hungrier, angrier, and even more arrogant. Flames swirled around Hermione, pouring over her as one would pour gravy over food. Her skin charred and blackened, smoking as it consumed her, freezing her in place.

"Hmph, mortals," the creature chided, flames wreathing around its head. "I will take what doesn't belong to you, and no beings born in and out of Asgard shall ever imprison me again." He passed his hand over the ash and charred form as red and black particles surged up and over his arm with a crackling sound. "Yes! Yes! Come to ME!"

A wheezing sound came from the ash-covered, charred woman.

"Still alive in there, mortal whelp?" the creature gloated. "I can make it all go away. He wrapped his hand around her neck and squeezed until the ash fell away.

"Did you think I came this far just to watch you kill her?" a low voice growled from the very air. "Did you think I would not protect her?" The cloud of black and red matter swirled angrily around the creature of flame and formed into a figure that cradled the woman and gently lay her down in the snow. The black and red cloud formed into a taller, masculine form, hints of cloth billowing behind. "You would be wrong."

Lanky black hair draped around a pale face with eyes as black as pitch. A delicate vine wand lay against his fingers. "Sectumsempra."

Cracks formed all over the creature of flame.

"Be careful what you wish for Surtr," the pale man said, placing the wand back in Hermione's hand as he brushed away the ash and char to expose a pristine face. "Anchoring yourself to Mordo was amateur and foolish. You want me, Surtr? So many have wanted me. So many have craved that which came before. That was existed before them, wishing to bend it to every whim. Every carnal desire. Destroy this. Make that. Make me a world fit for my rule."

"I will have you!" the creature raged, grasping around the "man's" body and squeezing. The body burst into particles and swarmed into the creature's every opening— mouth, pores, nostrils. The beast roared in triumph. He gestured with his hands, clacking rings on his fingers to form a portal in which to walk through.

"Master, Surtr, I come!" the creature bellowed in triumph.

But as the beast stepped forward, it suddenly froze, particles bursting from cracks in the creature's skin as its body began to shrink. The Aether shot through the portal, pulling on the magic from the other side and forcing it through.

"NO!" a bellow came from the other side. "Impossible! IMPOSSIBLE!"

Power came streaming out of the portal and out of Surtr's thrall, and the Aether devoured it, as it devoured entire worlds— no regret, no restraint, no remorse. The thrall convulsed as its body, still connected to his master, was magically burned— all of the channels of magic cauterised as his master's essence burned him magically and physically. His body shrank, twisting, convulsing, and reforming. The magic poured out of the portal, linked in a downward spiral thanks to Surtr's desire for the Aether's power.

For a moment, the creature looked human— the dark skin and pained, human eyes staring out into nothingness. Thick brows creased of the eyes with a furrow as ghosts of a three-o'clock shadow made his face look almost scruffy. The sigil of Surtr blazed like fire between the eyes, the last evidence that human he may have been, but he was "owned" by Surtr, body and soul.

Then, the body seemed to collapse in on itself, as the last tendrils of flame and fire condensed within the body of a very terrified-looking marmot. The last wisps of flame faded away as the aether drank in the power and used it to feed Surtr-Mordo's final, humiliating transformation.

"Enjoy your new life," the pale man" said, his body shimmering, somehow both solid and ethereal. An eagle was diving down towards the only fat marmot around, its talons outstretched to seize its prey. The marmot gave a terrified squeal and ran across the snow-covered plateau, desperate for cover. "However long it might last."

He leaned down and picked up a piece of ornate metal with two loops for fingers in the crushed snow. His eyes narrowed as the portal that had allowed Surtr's magic to pour through it flickered, shrank, and collapsed. "Amateurs." His fist crushed it, turning the object to dust as the magic within was devoured.

He knelt in the snow and picked up the woman, cradling her in his arms as he carried her back to their home. Tendrils of Aether moved around the fallen victim of Surtr's temper tantrum and carried it behind them. The body glided easily, but was floating the wrong direction, causing his head and knees to slam into the doorway. Snow fell from a ledge and covered the body. The tendrils of Aether paused a moment and then rearranged the man's body so it could pass through the door, pulled him in, and then closed the door behind them.

Hermione woke to the soft snores of cuddly pikas, all of which were sleeping soundly snuggled up to her face. She opened one eye blearily and realised she was cuddling an assortment of fluffy Ochotonidae curzoniae magicalis under her arm and the rest were keeping her back warm. Big ones, round ones, some the size of a cantaloupe—they were all snoozing with her. Some had spots. Some had the type of colouring that she would imagine was "normal" for a pika avoiding predators on a plateau, and some were stunningly extra-fluffy. Regardless, the first one that had met her was the most "average" in appearance, yet all of the others seemed to make mad detours away from normal. Long, winding detours, if she was to be perfectly frank.

"Mrrrff?" she managed to croak, peeking out of the slit in her duvet.

She poked her fingers out to test the air like a snake would use its tongue. Making a low groan she hunkered deeper in her cocoon of warmth. She realised that she really needed a nice cup of tea, though. Sighing in defeat, she pulled back her covers, grabbed for the nearby robe, and slipped both into it and her fuzzy slippers. She picked up the tea tins, sniffing each one to find the one she was looking for. Finally she settled for the Ceylon tea, deciding to scoop a few more leaves extra into the pot to make it stronger than usual.

Soft skittering sounds alerted her to the waking of the pikas, and they either disappeared with soft pops or dove into nooks and crannies in the walls. She had the vague feeling that somehow in adopting one homeless pika she had actually adopted an entire colony through a spokespika, and she wasn't quite sure how she felt about that. At least her bed would never be cold.

She decided to set some pieces of salt pork out on the griddle to cook with some seasoned potatoes, and when she couldn't find a tomato to save her soul— pop! A hamper loaded with them showed up on her counter.

Effective little buggers, Hermione thought admiringly to herself. Looking in the hamper, she found eggs and sausage as well as butter and bread, so she set to work fixing that too. "Might as well make a proper breakfast," she said to herself. "Mum would be utterly appalled by my diet lately."

Thinking on how Severus used to force her to sit down and force her to eat a proper breakfast, even if he had to force it down her throat, before taking on the day, she had to smile a little. He had taught her how to cook well, and he hadn't exactly been a bad chef himself. Had Harry or Ron known that the real reason she and their dreaded Professor Snape didn't eat much in the Great Hall, they probably would have had convulsions on the spot, perhaps even going into cardiac arrest. Maybe even both.

A black and grey pika brought her a bundle of fresh mushrooms, and she habitually waved her wand over them to check if they were edible to humans. For all she knew, pikas could eat anything. Humans, however, not so much. The pika gave her a slightly disgruntled look, projecting his feelings that he would never allow his beloved mistress to die, and she scooped him up and rubbed noses with him, apologising. He licked her on the nose and then promptly dashed off.

A jar of beans arrived much like the mushrooms, looking like one of her pikas had found itself in a supermarket. She shook her head, thanked them, and busily fried everything up.

Pop!

A carafe of ice-cold pumpkin juice arrived on the counter.

Starting to feel like the Hogwarts house-elves had nothing on pikas, Hermione busied herself making a few more comfy pika-dwellings around the house so they had places where they were welcome to burrow, nestle, and hoard their haystacks for the winter months. Whether the magical species were like the Muggle kind or not, she wasn't totally sure, but she didn't want to be the type to not offer such amenities just in case they did. Checking on her potatoes, she realised she had a bit more time, and she decided to make her pika-friends' lives a little less stressful by starting an indoor garden. She took the seeds from the vegetation they had already started hoarding, and did a little terraforming out of the elements— putting in transparent prisms to bring in light and warmth to the growing areas, mage-lights for the rest, and water channels to make sure the plants were suitably watered. With a few growing charms to get them rooted, a prayer of thanks for Professor Sprout's many lectures on plant propagation and terraforming small spaces, the inside of the house looked like a greenhouse worthy of her old Herbology professor. The pikas gathered to gaze in awe, chittering and squeaking as they looked around the house. Mission accomplished.

Hermione tilted her head. Did house-elves have stacks of hoarded objects like pikas did with food? Kreacher had seemed to, but she had dismissed that as missing his masters and hating that all he had was Sirius Black. What would Dobby have had? Piles and piles of socks? Winky would have had endless mugs of butterbeer, that's for sure, and no liver left at all. Despite the low level of alcohol, she was pretty sure Winky had gone through enough to both drown herself and kill off her liver a hundred times over. It was only a miracle or the will of some torturous god that was keeping her alive.

She moved all the food to the warming area and stared at it for a long while. "Why did I make so much food?"

A soft groan came from her couch, and Hermione's eyes widened as she realised she had a houseguest… the man who had been injured by the obnoxious flaming demon-creature she had encountered earlier.. She rubbed her temples, trying to remember exactly what had happened after she had turned her back on the bully and tried to walk away.

"Never turn your back on an enemy, Miss Granger," Snape had cautioned her often.

Yet, she had, as she so often did. She had exposed her back to the enemy she hadn't even realised she had, and he had driven the blade in deep, right up to the hilt. Strange that it didn't hurt anymore, she thought. She felt okay again. She felt— not numb— at peace.

Hoping that she didn't have a psycho-murderer on her couch, she rushed over ran a few scans. Well, even if he is, she thought to herself, he was the one with a sword coming out of his abdomen…

Healing magic had never been a particular talent of hers. She had been far more apt with potions, charms, and transfiguration, but she did know a few thanks to Poppy pulling her aside after her countless stays in the Infirmary to give her a few pointers. It had often come in handy while on the run from Voldemort, and she had planned to come back and learn more from the mediwitch. It hadn't worked out, though. People tended to frown on Mudblood healers just like they frowned on uppity Mudbloods daring to think themselves heroes.

There was a collection of pikas gathered around her guest, some snuggled against his neck, and one perched on his sternum, rising and falling with his breaths. She was happy to see the wound didn't appear to be bleeding, and the dressing was clean and dry despite how it had seemed the other day. His leather and metal body armour— and she was positive it was armour more than simply casual wear— lay in a clean and neat pile on the nearby chair, a black and white spotted pika laying on top of it, snoozing.

Hermione flushed, trying to refocus herself as she examined him. If Poppy Pomfrey could professionally examine naked injured bodies, surely she could figure this one out. It was only from the waist up, she thought. She took off the dressing, cleaned the wound, repacked the poultice, and put a new, clean dressing on top, binding it securely around his abdomen. Whoever he was, he was healing much faster than a Muggle or even a wizard. That was good, at least, she thought. I don't really want to go to Mungo's with him at this point. He seemed quite stable, and stable was vastly better than bleeding out in the middle of a virtually uninhabited area of Tibet— if that was where she really was.

She pulled the quilt over him, unable to stop staring at his long black hair, pale skin and lean, yet muscular frame. Yet, even as she did so, his skin took on a vivid cobalt blue colour as deep runes manifested across his exposed skin. Her fingers lightly touched his hand to tuck it back under the quilt, and his fingers locked tightly around hers like a steel trap.

She froze, unsure of what to do, but then he took in a deep breath and adjusted himself in sleep, snuggling into the quilt and releasing his grip on her hand. She stepped away and realised he was not human— not a wizard— and not anything she had ever heard of. Yet, as he made pained murmurs in his sleep, she filled the basin beside her, dipped a towel in, and soothed his head. As she did, the blue of his skin returned, ripping across his pale and more human-looking countenance.

She brushed a strand of his black hair from his blue skin, realising he was quite beautiful to look at, if one could truly call a man beautiful without him freaking out over it— or, if they were like Lockhart, becoming utterly obsessed with himself. As her fingers gently brushed against his cool skin, his face pressed into her palm, and his lips ghosted across the fleshy part of her thumb. He looked so content, just lying there, but she knew there was nothing there. If he was awake, he would surely not find her nearly as attractive. There were no more tender moments left for her.

She pulled away, ashamed that she would project such feelings on an injured guest in her keeping. There was no excuse for it, and she knew there was no such thing as tenderness and affection for one such as her.

"You are far more than what you think," Severus' voice broke her thoughts, and she looked up to him him standing there as in life, his robes hanging just so, his pale face and hooked nose, dark eyes, and soul-deep regret mirrored in every crease of his face.

Hermione, suddenly remembering her fall into space, rushed up to embrace the Aether-form of her once-master. He held her to him, letting her weep her emotions onto him as he stroked her hair.

"I am not him, Hermione, but I am here for you whenever you need. We are one, you and I. You need not be alone anymore."

Hermione looked up at him both sad and yet content. "It is okay that you look like him. I know you are not him, but you are like him in many ways. His memory lives in you."

Aether-Snape touched her cheek and brushed away the hair from her face. "He lives on within us, my dragonet. We shall remember the truth long after this sun has gone cold." He pressed his lips to her forehead and broke into shimmering particles, reabsorbing into Hermione's body once more.

Hermione moved a plate of food and a mug of pumpkin juice over to where her guest was, putting a stasis charm over it so it would remain perfectly fresh for when he was able to partake of it. She rubbed her temples, idly wondering what she could be forgetting.

Her recent addition, friend, ally, conspirator— she had no idea what to call him, it— she trusted with her life. It was hard to explain how, but she knew he wouldn't lie to her. He wouldn't mislead her, but she would have to ask the right questions, otherwise they'd be in conversation for years just trying to answer all of the questions she would come up with to cover all possible angles.

Part of her wanted to do a little freaking out on how easily she was taking it all, but he— the Aether— was there within her like a warm hearth in the dead of winter. It filled the emptiness that had been growing inside her for years, the wounds that had never healed until then. She would never be truly alone, and that felt more comforting than she cared to admit. For now, she knew that the aether was doing its best to integrate itself slowly, allowing her to take things at her pace. It was willing to wait as long as she needed. They were already bound— but the full awareness would come along in due time.

The Aether had waited untold eons for her. It would give her as much time as she needed.

But, what was the Aether? A singularity, it had said, but what exactly did that mean? She didn't know. For now, at least, she was quite ignorant of it. For once she didn't want to Apparate to a library and figure it out. That was new. Patience had finally come a courting.

Summoning her plate of food to her with her hand, she sat down at her writing desk. Worrying on the quill with her teeth a little, she dipped it into the ink and began to write.

Dear Minerva,

Before you worry, I'm fine. I woke up in Tibet, but I'm fine! I swear to you, Minerva, I'm fine.

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but my last clear memory is of being thrown against a wall by Auror Dawlish. Then, I woke up here. I set up a shelter up on a plateau, which sort of became more of a home. It's smack in the middle of nowhere. No livestock, no humans as far as I have noticed, and you can hear a pika fart from across a room.

I've made friends with a few. They look a little different than the ones in the books.

[Sketch of handed-pikas]

I'm not sure what the laws are here when it comes to magicals, so I'm hiding myself like people are still looking for me, keeping as low a profile as possible. Are they still searching all of Britain and beyond for me? I really hope they give up soon. I'm tired of them bothering you and the goblins every time a shoe falls and someone gets a tip that a bushy-haired witch was spotted in Diagon Alley.

Minerva, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could I get the name of a good basic book on magical healing from Madam Pomfrey? I had meant to catch up with her after the war, but as you know, things did not work out satisfactorily. No, I'm not injured. I swear, I'm fine. I just want to be prepared out here. There is very little of anything out here.

I really don't remember anything from after Dawlish attempted to force himself on me. I remember being on the wall, then I think he pulled, no threw, me down on the collection of artefacts. Beyond that, I know nothing other than something in those artefacts saved my life. Something chose to save my life.

There is nothing else I can say other than its nature is different from what it once was. When it decided to help me , it changed. I won't say it isn't dangerous, but it's no longer waiting to rain destruction down on everyone. I can't help but think that is a very good thing.

Please give my regards to the other professors who aren't Trelawney. I sent a token to the goblins to let them know I was still alive, so they should know. Next time you go to Gringott's though, could you make sure old Garvsha knows? He probably does. I hope he does, but my magic was a little wonky when I sent him my token. I'd really appreciate it if you could.

I hope— I really hope that my not being around anymore helps things settle down for you, Minerva. You and Viktor always believed in me, but I never wished to bring either of you grief because of me.

Your humble servant,

Hermione

Hermione sealed the parchment roll with wax and a seal and then beat her forehead with it. "I don't even have an owl."

Pop!

A red-orange pika wiggled his whiskers at her, extending his hands.

"Oh! You can— I had no idea!"

The pika gave her a long-suffering look, squeaked, and disappeared with a pop, scroll and all.

"Sorry!" Hermione apologised to the empty space the pika had left behind.

She wrote "Find book on Tibetan magical pikas" on her mental list of things she needed to look for on her next jaunt to a library or bookstore. She then underlined it about ten times just to be thorough.

"Well, now that that was sorted," she said, eating the last of her sausage from her plate and making the last slice of tomato disappear. "Now, maybe I can just sit down and relax."

She plucked a book off her shelf, flopped in a comfy chair, and began to read.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Hermione's eyes narrowed as she moved the ribbon on Magic in the Space-Time Continuum: Are We Alone? She placed the book down on the nearby table and got up, walking to her door.

How did anyone other than Minerva and the goblins know she was here?

She opened her door to find a man dressed in blue robes cut in a pseudo-Asian style. He had a series of belts wrapped around his waist and just as many wraps around his arms. Buckled boots hugged his calves up to his knees, and a crimson high-collared cloak hugged his neck. Yet, as she stood there staring at him, the collar of the cape seemed to reach out and wave hello to her as part of it extended as one would give a hand in introduction.

"Hello," she greeted the cloak, taking the tip of it in her hand and bowing her head slightly while the rest of her brain was questioning her sanity for greeting someone's cloak over them.

The figure sighed, jerked his cloak back. "Stop it," he admonished. "I at least— Just let me—"

The cloak covered his head and yanked him back from the door.

"Arrhghhhaaa! I'm— Dr—" the man said, flinging out his arms, and the cloak fell about his shoulders like a normal garment. "Strange."

Hermione arched a brow. "You are at that."

The cloak was wiping his face and adjusting his hair a little to make him have less of a cow-lick on one side.

"Staaahp!" the strange man commanded.

Yes, Hermione thought, he is definitely strange.

The two stared at each other.

"I am Dr Stephen Strange," the flustered man said. "May I come in?"

Hermione looked him over carefully. "Would you actually go away if I said no?"

The collar of the cloak smacked Strange upside the head. "Um, probably not."

Hermione rolled her eyes and shrugged. "Fine, come in. Just please don't break anything." She turned and walked into the house, and Strange's cloak floated in after her without bothering to wait for Stephen.

Strange sighed. "Wonderful. My Cloak of Levitation has a crush on someone."

"Wherever did you get the charming cloak?" Hermione asked as it poured the tea for her and handed her the cup.

"Would you believe it chose me?" Strange said, frowning slightly as Hermione handed him a cup of tea since his cloak was ignoring him.

"I guess wands are not the only things to chose their people," Hermione said touching the cloak with a pat. "Mind you, my wand never tried to serve me tea."

My cloak never served me tea," Strange said with a mildly disgruntled sigh.

"Oh," Hermione said. "Well, thank you," she told the cloak, and it rubbed its edges like a person crossing their legs and going "Aww, shucks."

"You're taking being confronted by a sentient cloak quite well," he said after a long, evaluating look.

"I thought I had lost my ability to be surprised about things when an insane, megalomaniacal snake-man tried to take over Britain," Hermione said, sipping her tea. "Whatever capacity might've had left I lost entirely after my best friends turned on me and decided to paint me as the reason everything went pear-shaped to begin with."

Strange arched a brow, running his fingers through a streak of grey in his hair. "Anything like encountering a power-hungry extra-dimensional energy being born of pure Magic of the Faltine Dimension?"

"Perhaps," Hermione said without flinching. "With somewhat less magic and a bit more bigotry and bloodshed."

"Sometimes bloodshed and bigotry comes hand-in-hand," Strange said grimly.

Hermione set down her teacup. "Manipulation of fear to gain power from the masses. At first there was a clear evil, but somewhere along the line it became less clear and more blind."

"For someone so young, you speak as one who has lived through war many times over," Strange observed, running his hands thoughtfully over his beard.

"I have seen far more than I wish to remember," Hermione confessed, her hands stroking the comforting levitation cloak without realising it. "Yet, to forget it all would surely mean repeating it."

"Did you realise you have a god sleeping on your settee?"

"I've had worse sharing a tent with me." Hermione arched her fingers together. "With much less peace and many more ugly accusations. Though, he has yet to wake. I am fairly sure that the chances of him remaining so quiet and polite will be much lower once that ends."

"How do you take such things in stride so easily?"

Hermione just shrugged. "I woke yesterday to a creature who was something more than a man but clearly less than his master shoving flaming weapons into someone on my front garden. He attempted to drink in my magic after— stabbing me in the gut. That was my very first morning after finally feeling like I'd settled in— if you call that settled. While I am not sure what to expect when my guest awakens, I would at least hope he is at least polite enough to refrain from sticking a knife in me."

"And if he does stick a knife in you?"

Hermione snorted. "Then I do to him what I did to the flaming man and his master."

Strange leaned in curiously. "And what was that?"

"I do not… remember exactly." Hermione shrugged. "It probably did not end well for them, as I woke up this morning from a sound sleep in a comfortable bed rather than in a hospital bed or in the afterlife."

"Yet you were stabbed?"

"I believe so."

Dr Strange fidgeted somewhat, seemingly unsure about how to proceed. "You have healing magic?"

"Some," Hermione admitted. She frowned. "I do seem to be a bit harder to kill than I recall."

"Most people aren't so calm after being stabbed, I will admit," Dr Strange replied.

"Experience with that, have you?" Hermione asked.

"Only if they were stabbed in the head."

Hermione stared at him. "What are you a doctor of, Dr Strange?"

"Neurosurgery," he said, drumming his fingertips together.

Hermione tilted her head. "What brings a neurosurgeon to my door out in the middle of nowhere, doctor?"

"What brought you to the middle of nowhere?"

"I woke up here, and I think it's your turn to give information."

The levitation cloak seemed to cross its "arms" and glower at Dr Strange.

"Whose side are you on anyway?" Strange accused.

"No one's," Hermione replied.

"Not you— it!" he said, frowning and pointing at the offending cloak.

Strangle mumbled and crossed his arms. "I'm here to find Mordo," he said. "He was a friend, but—I think he's been attacking sorcerers around the world and stealing their magic."

"And you think he's here?"

"I had, but," Strange rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You're still here."

The cloak smacked Strange.

"Hey! It was logical! She's not a sorcerer!"

"I think you may need to seek therapy," Hermione said. "Couples therapy, perhaps."

Strange sighed. "Look, if I showed you one of these, what would you think?" He held out a piece of ornate metal with two loops for fingers.

"I'd say you are missing two rings to make a set of brass knuckles, Doctor," Hermione said.

"And if I said with that you could transport yourself anywhere in the world?"

"I'd say you must've failed your Apparation certification," Hermione answered with an arched brow.

Strange boggled at her, jaw working silently as his eyes refocused. "If I said that cloak could let you fly?"

"I'd say I prefer to have my feet on the ground."

The cloak slumped, its end brushing against Hermione's hand as if to beg her to change her mind.

"I supposed I'd let you try and convince me otherwise at least once," Hermione mumbled, and the cloak embraced her, wrapping around her in a hug before happily hovering next to her again. She tilted her head, listening carefully. "I don't think he'd like it much if I charmed his cloak away."

"I'm sorry?"

" Sorry," Hermione laughed. "Your cloak is very convincing."

"You… can understand it?"

"It's very loud," Hermione commented, and the cloak slumped. "Sorry, clear. It's very clear. Silly thing. Tell you what. Teach me how to make another of you, so Mr Strange doesn't leave here all alone."

"Doctor."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Hnn. You're not helping me to want to help you. Doctor. Strange." She clipped off each word with a curl of her lips. She stood up and the cloak followed her, settling about her shoulders with a soft thump.

Dr Strange's eyes widened as he realised Hermione's eyes had darkened from a warm brown to the endless depths of space— the blackest of black lit only with the glitter of stars. Dark particles moved off her skin and down her fingers, swirling in front of her. Her eyes were open, but they seemed to look beyond everything.

She extended her fingers and glistening strands of magic cast off of them, forming a strong, silken web. Plump, fluffy celestial spiders formed on the web and promptly made themselves busy. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, busily worked over the web, thickening it until it formed into shimmering silk fabric. Her wand moved through the air, and scissors clipped, needles threaded multiple strands of spider silk, and a measuring tape glided to Dr Strange, measured him from top to bottom, and glided away. Hermione hummed, the particles of red and black swirling around her.

Stephen gasped.

A figure— pale skin, dark eyes, and even darker hair gently guided her movements, his face pressed against her as he whispered to her. Hermione moved to his guidance with the kind of absolute faith that Stephen had sorely lacked when he first began training with the Ancient One. While he had questioned everything, Hermione was not fighting anything, least of all what was helping her. The figure splayed her fingers just so, and she began to levitate in the air, the Cloak whipping around her like a flag.

Fibre by fibre, strand by strand, the cloak took shape as an ethereal tapestry, and he could see the surge of magic moving down every silken strand. Countless magical spells moved across the fibres as though she were pouring liquid on the fabric. It danced around her as she cut, extended, and whispered magic into every nook and cranny.

Hermione's eyes opened, and she cupped her hands to her face, and she sang. She sang a note that caused his heart to flip flop and his mind to resonate. He felt drawn to it as a moth to the flame. She blew out of her hands and stars seemed to hang in the air and then take their individual places on the fabric. She extended her hand to him. "One drop of blood, freely given, Stephen Vincent Strange."

Dr Strange gasped. "How—"

Her fathomless eyes stared at him, waiting.

He held out his hand. "Freely given," he said.

She pressed her wand tip to his finger, and a scarlet drop of his blood gathered in a perfect circle. It floated off his finger and touched the fabric. The crimson colour spread across the cloak, dyeing it a rich red completely from top to bottom. Hermione reached out her hands, and the black and red particles formed a golden clasp shaped like interlocking dragons. She opened her hand to release them, and they drifted to the cloak, taking their place on the finished product of magic.

Hermione's black eyes stared into him as the cloak drifted over to him and settled on his shoulders without hesitation, the tips of the collar wiping the tears of astonished wonder from his face. Hermione's eyes turned back into a warm brown as the cloud of red and black particles withdrew, and she wobbled, staggering. She fell backwards, still partially suspended due to the Cloak of Levitation, and suddenly—

Loki was there like a flash of quicksilver, gently cradling Hermione to his body as he stared balefully at Strange. "Do appreciate what has been made for you this day, Dr Strange. You will most likely never see its like again."

Loki gazed down at the sleeping face of Hermione. "You will never see the like of her… anywhere in this Realm or beyond."

"What are you doing here, Loki?" Strange said, giving the Asgardian an evaluating look.

Loki stared down at the woman wrapped up like a pupae in a cocoon of the Cloak of Levitation. "To find the Aether— something once hidden by Bör. It escaped in the body of Jane Foster, my brother's mortal weakness, and it both protected her and drained her to her almost to the point of death. Before this could happen, however, Malekith coaxed it out to bond with him, though my brother did his level best to destroy the Aether— it cannot be destroyed. It and Malekith became one, and he attempted to unmake all of the nine Realms. Now, as much as I would like to see people writhe in the horrors of their own making, I am quite partial to the Realms."

"So you can rule them," Strange said.

Loki tsked. "Humans and other races like to follow. They like being told what is good and what is bad. They like doing what they have been doing for years. They don't want to know better ways because they fear the change. And you, Doctor? You cling to your name and title like it truly matters. Do you think that being called "Doctor" makes your magic any more potent? Do you think it matters to her? To anyone of your peers that sling magic around?"

"I earned my title," Strange said with a scowl.

"And your neurosurgery means so very much to archdemons and alien interlopers, does it?" Loki suddenly looked more weary than antagonistic. "Tell me, before you have your magical epiphany, all you wanted was to fix your hands and go back to how things were. You, soaking up all the fame of being someone who fixes brains. Obvious. Yet, if you were take one of your high profile cases and throw them under an Asgardian healer, they would make a few passes with their version of everyday technology, and make all of your fine work seem childish and prehistoric. So, you did not truly wish to help people as much as you wished to look great doing it."

"I became a doctor to help people."

"But, that wasn't really what you were doing, were you? Making all that money. Feeding that all-important ego— shunning your lover by burying yourself in your arrogance. You weren't teaching others to help other people, no. You were basking in how great you were. You didn't take normal cases. You didn't help patients lacking wealth and fame. You took only the very cream of the crop, so when you lost the one thing that you could do, the only ones left were the ones you had ostracised, stepped on, snubbed, ridiculed, and looked down on. I'm sure they all came rushing to help you when you destroyed your hands, hrm?"

"And you made so many more when you decided to let frost giants invade Asgard? To play the hero?" Strange accused angrily.

"Did your homework, did you?" Loki snarled. "You know nothing about me."

"And you know nothing about me!"

Loki's mouth turned up in a cruel smile. "Unlike me, your history is quite literally written everywhere. Oh sure, Loki tried to take the throne of Asgard, that's what people talk about now, but where were they when I had to transform into a mare and lure off a giant's super horse Svaðilfari so they didn't have to pay the agreed sun, moon, and oh— the goddess Freyja—for building a wall worthy of the gods. No? Never heard about that? That's the thing about gods. People like to glorify what they want and villainize the rest. Sure, All-Father is the great one who sacrificed his eye so he could spew poetry on mankind and learn the runic alphabet, but he is also the god of battle and death, sorcery, frenzy, royalty, and knowledge. The list goes on. His sins and glory has spanned human lifetimes, while yours have only spanned a few years. It's much easier to brush up on a few decades."

Loki sneered at Strange, and they glared at each other as they both thought insults at the other man in front of them.

"Could you tone it down a notch?" Hermione groaned. She clutched her head. "Your thoughts are very sharp."

Suddenly, Strange became quite serious, and he nudged Loki out of the way, pulling out a pen light. He flicked it across her eyes, having her follow the light, checked her pupils, and even checked her ears, nose, and throat. He ran his fingers over her head, checking for lesions and bumps and then sighed with relief. "No concussion. Good."

Hermione yawned and winced at the light in the room. "Thanks for, um, checking," she said, chuckling.

"I was worried," Strange admitted. "You said our thoughts were sharp. That is not a normal descriptor for thoughts."

"There really wasn't another word to use, trust me on that," Hermione yawned through her reply. "It was like every thought you had was about wanting to kill each other."

Loki and Strange exchanged glances, flushed, and turned away from each other.

"Trust me, I've had quite enough of that, what with it being around me ever since I turned eleven," Hermione said, rubbing her head. The Cloak of Levitation brought her a hot cup of tea, stirred it for her, and held it out.

"Bless you, my friend," Hermione said, accepting the proffered tea without question.

Strange's jaw dropped in astonishment. His cloak tugged on him, perhaps to remind him that he still had a cloak, and if he kept it up, it was going to start getting jealous. Strange promptly snapped out of it and stammered, "I— I'm sorry. I am far newer to mysticism than I was but a year ago. Before that, I was a surgeon— a doctor. I am still coming to terms with the things I have seen, done," he said, trailing off.

Hermione tutted as one of the celestial spiders crawled out from under a nearby pillow and waved its legs at her. She extended her hand, and it gratefully crawled up her arm and disappeared into her hair. "Don't let Lavender know I have spiders in my hair," Hermione said with a smile. "I'll never hear the end of it."

"Wait!"

"Wait for us!"

"No fair!"

A row of celestial spiders waved their legs on the edge of the pillow, having just caught up to the first.

Hermione snorted, lowering her hand, and they crowded on it. She lifted her hand to her shoulder, and they all disappeared into her hair. "Celestial Weavers," Hermione said with a wink. "Who knew?"

"Have you ever made anything like that before?

"Technically, the spiders did the making," Hermione replied. She tilted her head as if listening to something. "And— they have apparently adopted me."

She seemed to boggle at her growing amount of life companions, but shrugged.

"See?" Strange said. "You did it again."

"Hrm?" Hermione asked.

"You just… simply accept what is."

"Hah," Hermione said. "Perhaps I am making up for my childhood where I questioned everything, and you can see how well that worked for me through life."

"Seems to be working for you now," Strange observed.

"Life's lessons learned, tempered by no shortness of malice from those around me." Her face became grim, harder. "I am used to betrayal. I am used to being lied to, Dr Strange. I am used to being hated because of my blood and what it isn't, where no amount of work and deed could prove me better. No matter how much I studied. How much I worked. How much I sacrificed. I was always… never good enough."

"So, yes," she continued. "I think I can accept being adopted by a rampaging horde of spiders or small fluffy magical pikas because I couldn't accept that house-elves would truly want to serve people. I thought it was slavery. I thought it— cruel. I have grown since then, realising that some things are a calling that brings order to chaos and peace to strife. So, what's a few celestial weaving spiders?"

"So, to answer your questioning look, Dr Strange, I must confess that I have no real idea," Hermione said. "I simply feel at peace now with a great many more things than I have before."

"Stephen," Strange said after a moment. "Please, if you would."

"Stephen," Hermione repeated. "So much better than titles, hrm? I am Hermione. Granger to the majority of the world. Dragonheart by the goblin nation. I would prefer Hermione, since I doubt even you could wrap your tongue around my goblin name without at least seven shots of Ogden's firewhisky to numb your vocal cords. No offense meant, Doctor… Stephen."

"Who's the love of your life?" Hermione asked.

"Wh—wha?" Strange gasped, startled by the personal question.

"The watch," Hermione said, nodding. "You caress it when you're insecure. Like the gentle touch of comfort of one to another. Forgive me, I do not wish to make myself a pest."

Stephen shook his head. "Doctor Palmer. Christine. We— we are not together anymore, but— the watch reminds me to be more grateful for what I have rather than heedlessly pursuing what I believe I want."

"A very wise woman," Hermione said.

Strange fidgeted, perhaps realising he had said more than he had intended and had no idea why.

"Hermione, how did you make— don't get me wrong, I truly appreciate what you did— but how did you make the cloak?"

Hermione tilted her head. "I asked it how it was made. It showed me."

"We make tea too," one of the spiders said. "One lump or two?"

"Two," Strange said and then froze in place.

The celestial spider dropped two lumps of sugar into the teacup and used its legs to stir the spoon. "Job's done. Enjoy!" The spider scurried off do whatever celestial spiders did when they weren't serving drinks.

Strange sipped his tea, deciding that being quiet and drinking his offered drink was better than whatever alternative his conventional brain might come up with.

"You like tea?" a line of spiders asked Loki.

"Biscuits?"

"Tea and biscuits?"

"Maybe he likes bacon butties?."

"Fish and chips?"

"Strawberry trifle?"

"Egg souffle?"

"With asparagus?"

"Ooo, what about spinach?"

"Both?"

"Crab curry?"

"He's looking at us funny, maybe he likes fried sweetbreads."

"One of those?"

"Could be, I mean, he's staring at us."

"We stare at you all the time."

"That's different. We have multiple eyes. We're built to stare."

"True."

"Hrm…"

"I'm actually good with the small platter she left me here," Loki said awkwardly, pointing at it with his fork.

"You sure?"

"Okay, if you say so—"

"He needs more sausage on his plate!"

"You'll ask if you need anything?"

A group of pikas chittered at the clutter of helpful celestial spiders and drove them off the back of the couch.

"Eee!"

"We were just helping!"

"Ahh! Stop nipping my arse!"

"No, not the spinnerets!"

An orange and white pika chittered and gnashed its teeth, refilled Loki's juice glass, gave him a new napkin, and disappeared.

Hermione chuckled, pinching the bridge of her nose. She stood, shuffling over to her kitchen area. "Well, seeing as I have guests, I should probably start dinner."

"It's not even noon yet," Strange commented.

"Really good food takes time," Hermione said with a chuckle. She waved her wand and various kitchen utensils came to her call, swirling in the air, but they did not make the food for her. Instead, she plucked what she needed out of the air— knives, cutting board, bowls, and more.

The pikas appeared, bringing her everything from soup bones to assorted vegetables. She set the bones on a platter and stuffed it into the stone hearth, allowing them to brown as she chopped the vegetables. She browned various seasonings in a small skillet and tossed it in a stockpot with the vegetables. She took the bones off the platter and threw them into the pot as well. She sniffed the pot, pondering, then picked up various small jars of spices, sniffing them, then throwing a pinch in here and there, stirring, and repeating until she was satisfied. She hummed to herself, and red and black particles swirled around her. A tall figure formed behind her, and she smiled, leaning into "him" with a content smile on her face.

His pale fingers wrapped around her hand, releasing her hold on the wand she carried, letting it fall to the counter. Her fingers splayed, and the kitchen promptly set about cleaning itself as the pot of soup positioned glided over the hearth to simmer. She looked up at him, smiling broadly, and he gazed at her fondly, pressing his lips to her forehead before disappearing in a swirl of particles.

She chopped up a large pile of greens, adding sprouts and mixing in something that looked like flowers, and with a wave of her hand all of it filled a long trough that ran along the counter. Pika after pika popped in, chittering excitedly as they took to the greens with joyous abandon. Hermione smiled at them, nudging a tiny one to his own little piece of leafy green paradise. He squeaked adoringly, shoving his face into the trough so deep that his head disappeared.

"Hey now, little one," Hermione laughed. "It's not your last meal, I promise."

The little pika didn't seem to hear her as he was far too intent shoving food into his mouth with his tiny hands.

"Silly thing," she said fondly, scritching the little pika on the rump since it was the only part of him sticking out from the mass of vegetation.

A larger pika with red and orange spots grabbed the little one by the neck and dragged him out of the pile and back to the nest, and the smaller pika looked forlornly at the trough full of food, even as his mouth was full of flowers and shoots.

In an amazingly short time, the trough was clean and a line of magical pikas took turns rubbing against Hermione's hand before disappearing with a pop!

"Wherever did they cram all that food?" Hermione boggled, grinning from ear-to-ear. "And I thought Ronald was scarily efficient in packing away food like it was his last meal on Earth."

"Who is this 'Ronald'?" Strange asked, passing her a cup of tea. "Hope you don't mind, I made you some tea while you were busy cooking."

Hermione accepted it gratefully. "Thank you," she said, sipping the tea and sighing happily. "I grew up with him. Once, he and I were what kept my friend Harry from running headlong into danger, face-first. Though, I think sometimes we were all guilty of being short-sighted children. Ronald was known by his siblings as 'Ickle Ronnikins', for wolfing down everything near him at the dinner table, for his love for and inability to talk about anything but Quidditch and the Chudley Cannons, and an extreme fear of anything with eight legs."

Hermione tilted her head. "And being a complete obnoxious prat."

"Sounds like someone I know," Loki said darkly as he brought his breakfast platter to the kitchen, looking a little baffled as to what to do with it.

Hermione took it from him, automatically dipping it into the basin of soapy water, washed and rinsed it, and set it on the drying rack. As she turned around, a pika appeared, grabbed the platter, and vanished with it. Hermione stared at the wand she had dropped on the counter. She looked at it with a puzzled expression and then tucked it away inside her robes in a habitual motion.

"Well, I suppose I should make you both rooms, unless you wish to share couches," Hermione said after some pondering. "Stephen, you have that look about you that says you aren't leaving until you feel I can defend myself, and Loki— I would prefer it if you didn't leave until I'm fairly certain that your guts aren't going to spill out all over my floor. After that, you are, by all means, free to leave. I'm sure this place pretty boring for one such as you."

"One such as me?" Loki asked, curious.

"Normal folk do not arrive on my doorstep impaled with flaming weapons. Even wizards and witches tend to shun the use of such barbaric tools to kill each other. Most, anyway," she said, one hand idly scratching her arm. "Some will use any tool at their disposal to make it as cruel and as unusual as possible."

"Flaming weapons?" Strange said, perking with interest. "Do you still have it?"

Hermione gave the sorcerer a look that seemed caught somewhere between curiosity and tolerance. "It is in the fireplace, providing perpetual fire." She gestured to the hearth.

Strange tried not to run, but he was eager to get to the fireplace to examine the weapon.

"You pulled a flaming sword out of me?" Loki asked quietly, touching his abdomen with a wince.

"You would have preferred me leave it in?" Hermione asked.

Loki looked like he was going to say something, stopped, and gaped a little. "No, I think I'd have much preferred it out of me. I thank you for your kindness."

Hermione's eyebrows furrowed a moment, but then she just shrugged. "You are most welcome. Care to tell me why you happened to end up here getting yourself impaled versus some other random plateau in the world?"

"I was following the lure of great power," Loki admitted quietly. "That which carved a tremendous swath of destruction across many realms— harnessed only fleetingly— and killing those it used to leave the prisons that had been set aside for it."

"And you thought it was here," Hermione asked, "in the very seat of Buddhist Shamanism?"

Loki gave her a gallant shrug. "I simply followed the trail."

"And what would you have done with this great power?" Hermione asked. "Had you found it?"

"Saved the mindless mortal sheep from the dangers of their own blind incompetence," Loki said darkly. "Mortals need direction."

"And you would be the appropriate person for such a task?"

"I," Loki replied in a steely tone, "am a god."

"Oh, I'm sure that makes it all right and proper then," Hermione said dryly. "Taking away free will is the dream of every would-be dictator. Every psychopathic megalomaniac that wants to take over a world and make it better in some way."

"I am no mere weak-minded human with ridiculous delusions of grandeur," Loki snarled. "I was born to be a king, unlike you."

Hermione pulled back, a sudden coldness in her eyes. "That's right. I was born to be nothing. Never good enough. Never skilled enough. Never magical enough. My blood was not pure enough. Hair was not controlled enough. Teeth were not short enough. My skin wasn't thick enough. Too naive to even suspect that my best friends would one day turn their backs on me. Too compassionate to let some red-eyed blue-skinned man die on my very doorstep. I. Am. So. Sorry."

Hermione stood up perfectly straight, the cloak standing stiffly at attention even as part of it seemed to be gently rubbing the back of her neck in comfort. "You may remain here until your wound is healed, Loki, then I expect you to leave this place and never return."

She turned on her heels.

Crack.

She was gone.

Doctor Strange stared at the empty space Hermione had just been a second ago and then at Loki. "You know, Loki, people would be far more endeared to you if you didn't end every conversation by telling them how you deserve to rule over them all."

Loki pinched the bridge of his nose. "You know, you'd be a lot more endearing if you shut that overly pretentious mouth of yours."

"Pot meet kettle," Strange snorted.

Hermione really wasn't quite sure what she expected to find on her return "home," but somehow finding an odd spell-casting ex-neurosurgeon making nice with a man who had wanted to shove entitlement down her throat like it was his job hadn't quite made it on the list. As she looked around, she realised she had gained three fully-furnished guest rooms, two for her unexpected "guests" and one that was presumably a spare. The house was beautifully decorated for Christmas, which she had completely forgotten about what with all the drama that had taken priority over the festive cheer of the holiday season. Celestial spiders wove shimmering garlands for the tree, which had been seemingly grown directly out of her floor. The pikas were placing a blazing star at the top of the tree, and the spiders were anchoring it with countless strands of spider silk as she walked in, and the spiders waved their legs at her in greeting before going back to industriously weaving lush garlands.

"This way!"

"This way!"

"Pull it tight!"

"Perfect!"

The spiders were pulling together pine boughs to make a wreath, complete with silk ribbons and jingle bells.

"Your snowflake is lopsided."

"You're lopsided!"

"Well, yes, but so is your snowflake!"

"Psh," one spider replied, tugging on the snowflake to bring it back to symmetry. "Fixed."

The other spider tugged on the lopsided spider, and it popped back into position. "Now, you're not lop-sided anymore."

"Yay!"

The spiders heaved up the wreath while the pikas squeaked commentary that sounded suspiciously like, "Little to the left, too far, go back right a little!"

"I'd completely forgotten it was Christmas," Hermione said wonderingly as she walked through the door.

"She's back!" cheered the clutter of busy spiders.

"Yay!"

The pikas and spiders lined up on the rim of the couch and looked up at her expectantly.

"Does she like it?"

"I dunno, she hasn't said anything yet."

"She's just standing there."

"Uh oh, what does that mean?"

"Does she hate it?"

"What if she hates it?"

The spiders fidgeted, clearly nervous, and the pikas chirred, whiskers twitching worriedly.

"It's beautiful," Hermione said.

"You like it?" the spiders asked.

"I love it, thank you all so much for your hard work!"

"Yay!"

"YAY!"

The spiders held up their legs and waved them joyfully.

Hermione closed the door behind her, and her cloak shuddered to rid itself of the coating of snow that had settled on top of it. Hermione tugged the cloak off, and it was floating in front her, seemingly reluctant to leave her. "Go get yourself warm and dry off, my friend." She gave the cloak an affectionate pat as it glided off to dry by the fire.

Both cloaks bumped into each other at the hearth and seemed to look each other over, poking each other, mirroring movements, and then finally hovering together in the heat of the hearth.

Hermione glided into the kitchen and boggled as far more food than was there when she left was sitting in warming platters by the hearth.

"I hope," Loki's voice said from the guest room doorway. He toweled off his long black hair and tossed the towel back into the room. "I hope it all meets your expectations for dinner," he said softly. "We were unsure about what you would like, so your familiars did a bit of fetching for us."

"We both had to apologise and swear to them that we had never meant to hurt you," Stephen said as he entered with a towel around his head. "Or intend you harm." He gave a tired sigh. "I will confess that the pikas had to teach me how to cook. It was a very humbling experience."

Hermione opened the lid that was nearby and sniffed. "Well, it smells absolutely delicious."

Stephen gestured to Loki. "I was not alone in preparing all of this."

Loki gave the sorcerer a strange look.

Strange shook his head. "You spend so much time trying to prove you are better than everyone else, my friend, but when someone does give you credit for work to which you contributed, you look at them as though they are trying to get you to gargle broken glass."

Loki grimaced but straightened his shoulders. He pulled out a planter containing a bright yellow orchid with even brighter orange inner sepals and a glowing, vibrant stigmate.

"An Oris Venusta!" Hermione cried excitedly. "Wherever did you get it?"

"I, uh—" Loki flushed and stared down at his feet, looking very much the emperor penguin.

"Did you know that this is the rarest carnivorous orchid in the world? Its sap knits together any wound which is great because it has over a hundred teeth that it likes to sink into its prey!"

"I'm so sorry!" Loki blurted out, looking horrified.

"What? For giving me a carnivorous flower? It's beautiful!" Hermione cooed, scratching it under the chin, and the flower purred at her, leaning its flower against her chest. "Neville would be so jealous."

"Yes! I mean no! I mean… Wotan-cursed Poetic Edda—" Loki stammered. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being a grit."

"Git?" Hermione asked, an eyebrow rising in curiousity.

"I am not used to being taken seriously," Loki admitted. "I am not used to genuine kindness. I am used to having to scrape and claw my way into being noticed, and I am profoundly sorry for my appalling behaviour."

Hermione just stared at him, struck speechless.

"I am well and truly sorry," Loki said, looking flustered.

"Hn," Hermione said. She turned on her heels and walked away to put the orchid with the other plants. She cast a pika-barrier around it to keep her new friends from suffering the humiliation of predation in their own home. "You are forgiven," she said after a while, plucking a piece of meat out of a the stewpot, blowing on it, chewing it a little, and then offering it up to the orchid. The orchid scarfed up the food, purring and rustling in obvious pleasure. "That's a good orchid. You're marvelously well behaved. Not at all like that horrible one at Abernathy's Apothecary."

The orchid purred and rubbed against her, rustling its foliage.

"Need water?"

The flower nodded.

She aimed her wand at the soil and whispered, "Aguamenti." The flower shivered slightly and yawned, going dormant.

Loki stared at her with no small amount of wonder.

"Well, I guess I should set the table," Hermione said with a chuckle, realising it was the one task that hadn't been given any love.

"Rut-roh!" the spiders cried, wringing their legs.

The pikas chittered excitedly as the spiders spun silk napkins, then darted about placing the food and wine on the table with the appropriate cutlery, teapots, dinner and glassware, along with a carefully filled gravy boat.

Hermione laughed. "You little guys are so sweet," she said with a warm smile. She waved her wand to harvest the inside plants, guiding the cuttings into the counter trough that fed her pika friends. "At least allow me to feed you properly, hrm?"

The smaller pika that had to be dragged away from his meal by his parent earlier had already dived into the trough, his wriggling tail the only indicator he was even there. The other pikas shook their heads, cradling their faces with their tiny hands.

Sorry, one pika said, looking up to Hermione. He was born hungry.

Hermione gave the pika a lift up to the counter. "It's fine," she assured him. "There is plenty to go around."

The three of them gathered around the dining table, passing around the serving dishes and taking what they desired from each.

"What on earth is this?" Hermione asked, eyeing what looked suspiciously like a tentacle and appeared to be covered with some sort of glaze and sprinkled with something that resembled sesame seeds.

"Not from here, no," Loki said. "In Asgard it is a much-prized delicacy. If I may?"

Hermione eyed Loki and the tentacle somewhat suspiciously. "Please do."

He demonstrated how to shave the suckers off the tentacle and cut the rest into thin slices, placing them neatly on her plate.

Hermione tapped her fork nervously against her plate for a few seconds before deciding to bite the bullet and try it. She tentatively put a piece in her mouth and chewed. "Wow, it tastes a bit like spicy glazed prawns." She grinned at Loki with genuine amazement.

"Ye of little faith," Loki said, smiling back at her. "I'm not quite sure how your familiars managed it, but they seem to be able to bring back just about anything. Though, I do have to wonder if a cook somewhere in Asgard is missing their dinner Cthullaephae."

Hermione looked rather horrified at that.

"Actually, knowing these industrious little fellows even for a short time," Strange commented, "I'm thinking they stole it right out from under the living beast itself."

"Talented little buggers," Hermione said with a grin.

They passed around the salad, roasted potatoes, and steamed asparagus.

"Goodness, is this filet?" Hermione beamed with pleasure. "Whoever made the hollandaise sauce gets a hug, and so does the one that made the dessert, if the glorious sight and smell of it is any indication."

The sorcerer and the god exchanged glances. "Can we split the difference?" Stephen asked, smiling.

"Hugs to you both, then," Hermione chuckled.

Dinner flowed into dessert, and dessert moved to the couches by the hearth. Doctor Strange taught Hermione how to make smokeless, controlled fire, much to her delight, and Loki taught her how to make cold, blue flames that were so cold it froze things around them.

"That's amazing," Hermione said happily. "Blue is usually the colour of the hotter flames— at least the non-magical kind. It's so beautiful! I wonder if you could use it to preserve food!"

Loki shrugged. "I have never… thought about using it in such a way."

"Well, I was thinking, squibs don't have magic, but they often live in the magical world. If you made a kind of magical ice-box with the flames, it could keep the food cool or frozen and yet not require magic to be cast like a stasis spell."

Loki tilted his head. "Do you always think of how something can benefit everyone but yourself?"

Hermione paused. "Well, I do know a stasis spell so—"

Strange laughed, a deep, warm sort of sound that caused Hermione to stop. He waved her off with his hands. "I'm sorry, it's just— I could have used someone like you to inspire me back when I was conflicted on why I had been called to be a sorcerer. Back when I was first learning, it was like learning a new language and martial arts wrapped together with a shot of obscure and a chaser of cryptic. No one ever dreamed big around you or thought how wonderful it would be if a certain spell could help people preserve their food across the world. The connection was missing. I had to find my own connection back to humanity— a reason to succeed."

Stephen smiled. "The Ancient One was very wise, but she did not spoon feed, and I really needed both a spoon and a bib for quite some time."

"Were you not performing magic as a child?" Hermione asked. "Witches and wizards usually have some accidental magic. When they turn eleven, they get called to a magical school and are taught in various fields of magic until they are adults."

"No, Hermione," Strange said with a chuckle. "I was writing papers on the carcinogenic effects of pollution on lung tissue at that age."

"At ELEVEN?" Hermione gasped, staring goggle-eyed at him.

"I really wanted to become a doctor." Stephen gazed into the fire. "My sister, Donna, loved to skate. She fell all the time. That was normal, but she hurt herself pretty bad that one time. I wanted to help her. That is what inspired me to become a doctor."

"So, you ended up in neurosurgery?" Hermione asked, trying to connect the dots.

"Turned out I had talent there. I had originally intended to be a family doctor, but it didn't quite work out that way," Strange said wistfully.

Hermione looked thoughtful, the lines of her face furrowing as she concentrated. "Do you ever wish it could have?"

Stephen stroked his beard and shrugged. "Yes. I often wonder what could have been or if I'd have been happy patching up such mundane things as legs and arms or the common cold."

"What about you, Loki?" Hermione asked.

Loki startled, having been staring quite intently into the fire. "I and my brother had been raised since birth in preparation for the throne," he said. "I— had not even imagined a fate other than that."

"That must have been—"

"Privileged?" Loki said bitterly, cutting her off.

"Lonely," Hermione said quietly, gently touching his hand.

Loki stared at her hand as though she had just attacked him with a viper, his fast twisted in a conflict only he knew. His index finger slowly brushed against Hermione's fingers, and he nodded. "I was raised believing that we both had equal rights to prove ourselves worthy of the throne, but it was a lie. I never actually had a chance."

He stared into the fire. "Did you know the Norse believed I was actually the blood brother to Odin? Would you believe that would have actually been easier to take than being some foundling who was fated to die, rescued on a whim, raised as the child of a king, and then told he wasn't really their son. For the longest time, all I ever wanted was to make my father proud, then I wanted to prove to him what a bad choice Thor was. By the time Thor did what I'd been trying to get him to do for the longest time— do a little thinking before rushing headlong into the giant's ogre, our relationship was beyond repair. Now, no matter what happens, there will never be what I had wanted."

Strange frowned. "What did you want, Loki? What did you really want?"

Loki's lips pressed into a flat line. "To belong. To be worthy of notice."

Hermione looked down into her lap and realised she was petting a pile of pikas without having even noticed. They cuddled under her hand making happy, content noises. "Did you not have anyone? Anyone who—"

"My mother," Loki said, eyes darkening. "She's dead. Turns out she wasn't my real mother anyway."

"Bullshite," Hermione said, her first clenching.

Loki startled, surprised by Hermione's sudden wrath.

"Did she love you?"

Loki winced. "Yes."

"Did she wipe away your tears?"

Loki looked down. "Yes."

"Did you love her?"

"She wasn't my—"

"Did you love her?" Hermione asked, fire blazing across her eyes.

"Yes," Loki replied, turning his head away to stare at the wall.

"Then she was your mother," Hermione said bitterly. "I grieve with you and those you have lost, but I do not suffer your opinion that because she did not give birth to you that somehow she is less of a person. Less of a mother. Less. Worth." Her eyes flashed, and for a moment darkness flowed across them and then disappeared. "My parents were murdered because I was defective. I was Muggle-born— a Mudblood. They killed them to torture me. I will not dishonour them by making light of them being non-magical. They were not less worthy of love because they couldn't wield a wand."

The pikas piled up in her lap, purring, and the fury in Hermione's eyes faded as she scooped them up and cuddled them. "I'm sorry, this is my first Christmas away from Gringott's. Being around the more human element reminds me of— loss. Good thing these guys won't let you stay grumpy."

The pikas chirred at her, all fighting for equal pets and cuddles.

"You should try it," Hermione said, transferring a plump pika into both Stephen and Loki's lap.

"Chirrr?" the pikas said, wiggling their noses and ears invitingly.

Loki and Stephen awkwardly petted the pikas at first, but slowly seemed to thaw out, giving them more enthusiastic petting and attention.

Hermione's expression softened, relaxing a little more as the tension in the room simmered down to a level she could handle. Her head jolted up. "Oh! It's— OH!"

Crack.

She was gone, and the pikas that had been on her lap squeaked in startled surprise.

Loki and Strange exchanged confused glances.

"I'd ask if she left the kettle on, but she left home, so—"

Loki shrugged. "We didn't even get to the presents." He nudged the whimpering package with his toe, hushing it. The bow shook and rustled, but the parcel quieted.

Strange narrowed his eyes. "You didn't shove a member of some alien face-hugging species in there, did you?"

"Me? Please, it's Christmas," Loki muttered. "Besides, gifting a creature from an alien face-hugging species is for when you break up with someone."

Stephen arched a brow. "Hmmm…. 'Kay."

"Besides, from what I've seen so far, she'd end up befriending the alien, and she'd be the queen of the entire hive within minutes," Loki said.

"Wait, weren't you married?" Strange asked.

"Sigyn was… not my idea," Loki pointed out dryly. "And she divorced me after Odin chose to transform our sons into wolves and had them kill each other."

"He… what?"

"Asgardians like to believe themselves both timeless and superior, but when it comes right down to it, they still like to fight with swords and really large enchanted hammers. The hammer, Mjölnir, was actually crafted by a non-Asgardian on a dare. The walls of Asgard were created by a giant in less than a week— or would have, had the gods not decided it was my fault he was succeeding and bade me fix the problem."

"How did that end?" Strange asked.

"I got pregnant with an eight-legged horse," Loki said with a sniff.

Stephen gaped a little.

Loki waved him off with a sigh. "Believe me, giving birth to a horse is not as bad as what would've awaited me if I did not do what I did."

The sorcerer gave him an undecipherable look.

Crack!

Hermione returned, her arms laden with packages. "I'm so sorry! I completely forgot about Christmas!" She grinned as she pulled out a gigantic bowl of tiny gingerbread biscuits and set it on the counter. "For my little furry friends," she huffed, shrugging the snow off her shoulders. She pulled out another parcel and opened it, dumping them into a candy bowl on the table. "Fudge flies for my eight-legged friends."

"Eeeeee!" the spiders squealed with glee, all rushing to partake of the spoils. "Thank you!"

Both pikas and spiders sorted, Hermione tapped two tiny bundles with her wand, and they went from tiny to oversized boxes. She placed a brightly wrapped red and gold box in Strange's lap as the pikas dove happily into the gingerbread biscuits. She placed a brightly wrapped green and gold package in Loki's lap. "Happy Christmas!" she said brightly.

She sat on the empty couch and waited.

The two men just stared at her with wide eyes.

"What? Britain may hate my guts, but there are plenty of places that don't, and they were more than happy to take my galleons."

"You barter in sailing vessels?"

Hermione tilted her head. "That would be rather difficult to carry in your pocket."

"This coming from a woman who just made giant packages out of tiny packages."

"Well, that wasn't exactly hard. They started out huge to begin with," Hermione replied. "Come on, come on! Open your presents!"

Stephen picked at the parcel with his fingernails, meticulously taking the wrapping paper off in mint condition. Loki looked at him with disapproval. "Please don't tell me you are going to save the wrapping paper for posterity."

Strange eyed him. "My present. My way."

"I hope it isn't frozen candied butterflies because they will be a puddle of mush by the time you finally get the tape off."

"Get your own package opened, Loki," Strange muttered.

Loki tore his wrapping paper off like a crocodile performing a death roll with a wildebeest. Paper bits flew in all directions. Loki eyed the ornate box he had uncovered. "Sabrefang & Battleax Outfitters?" he asked. "I've never heard of them."

Hermione shook her head at him, offering no commentary with which to help him.

He looked at Hermione suspiciously and opened the box. "You… gave me back my armour?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Try again." She pointed to the neatly folded pile of his clothes he had been wearing when he had been speared. It was still sitting on the chair and had a pika sleeping on top of it all.

Loki looked confusedly from the pile to the box, brows furrowing in concentration. He lifted out the armour, his fingers roaming the fine leather and metal adornments. "What—" he murmured. "What is this made from?"

Hermione grimaced, baring her teeth in a very goblin smile. "Master Sabrefang owed me a favour. I trained a Nundu for him to guard a vault for a very special client."

"What is a Nundu?" both men asked simultaneously.

"Think a giant leopard that can breathe fatal disease when it is sufficiently pissed-off or exposed to hatefulness." Hermione scratched her head. "The client bought the cub, probably illegally, and wanted it trained after it ate his son. It was… complicated."

"He did not want it dead?" Loki asked, visibly astonished.

"Apparently the Nundu was worth more to him than the son," Hermione replied. "Pureblood families can be— let's just say they often have very different… priorities, and there was some rumour that the child in question was not quite as pureblood as the rest of the children, if you catch my meaning."

"Anyway, I trained the Nundu as a personal favour, and to a goblin— that means far more than what it would mean for most humans," Hermione said. "I get goblin fruitcake every New Year— secret family recipe handed down from great-great-great-great-grandmum Daggerclaw. It tastes like rainbows— or what I would imagine a rainbow to taste like if you could actually eat light. It's glorious. One piece the size of a pea is all you need. One cake lasts an entire year, and unlike most normal foods, it only gets better with age."

Loki eyed the fine-gauge chainmail that was hidden under the leather, and he hefted it up, thinking it would be heavy. The armour almost flew out of his hands, and he had to scramble to catch it before he threw it into the fire.

Hermione tried to stifle a laugh, but it only twisted her face into a maniacal grin.

"How is this possible?" Loki spluttered. "Surely this will just float away and leave me vulnerable to the very air?"

Hermione sighed, shaking her head. "You could always try attacking it."

Loki looked more than a little dubious. He grabbed the coat rack and flung his armor onto it. He glared at the armour turned, and then flung a giant ball of crackling blue magic at it.

The poor coat rack crumbled to dust everywhere that wasn't covered by armor, and the blast of magic ricocheted off it into about ten other directions. Terrified pikas went diving for cover. Celestial spiders fell out of their webs as others dove into Hermione's hair.

"Eeeeeeeeeee!"

"Run for it!"

"Dive, dive!"

"Danger, danger, Will Robinson!"

"I'm a spider, not a target practice dummy!"

"Noooo, not the face!"

"My spleen!"

"Put me out, put me out!"

A pika appeared out of nowhere and threw a goblet of water on the flaming spider.

Tzzssssss!

"Phew."

The celestial spider clung to the pika in gratitude as the pika scurried back into one of the many, many pika dwellings in the walls.

"I— was thinking more with weapons," Hermione said, frowning, a few colourful spiders cautiously peeking out of her hair in paranoid apprehension.

"Oh," Loki said, looking sideways somewhat abashedly.

"Reparo," Hermione muttered, and the poor, abused coatrack reformed and stood straight again.

Loki pulled out a dagger and stabbed at the armor, attempting to slice across the typically "vulnerable" belly area.

There was an ungodly screech not terribly unlike that of nails across a chalkboard.

Hermione and Stephen winced together.

Loki felt the armour up and down. "What is this made of?" he whispered, his eyes going very wide. "There isn't armour like this is all of Asgard. Not even the All-Father himself wears such a thing."

"I have a great many shed dragon-skins from the dragonets," Hermione told him. "Between that, the celestial spider silk for the lining, and the very best of goblin-metalsmiths— well, let's just say you're probably not going to get yourself stabbed any time soon. Unless they aim for your head, which I would hope you would have suitably covered.

"Dragonhide?"

"Once a dragonet realises you can help it shed, you become their new best friend. You can peel the entire thing off in about an hour, if they don't wiggle, and they won't if they know what you are trying to do— and, well, if they really trust you. After a shed, you oil their new skin and scales until they harden and you're good to go until the next shed." Hermione looked wistful.

"How do you know if a dragon trusts you?" Strange asked, curious.

"It doesn't actually eat you."

"What do you mean doesn't actually eat you?"

"The dragon will attempt to "eat" you, and clamps its jaws around you and then licks you to death."

Strange stared at Hermione like she was certifiably insane. "So you just pray it doesn't eat you?"

Hermione tilted her head. "So far they haven't." She looked thoughtful. "I wouldn't go flinging yourself into a dragon's maw if you didn't know them, if that is what you think I do."

"I won't be going near a dragon if I can help it," Stephen promised.

Hermione shrugged.

The floo suddenly sprang to life, glowing a strange, luminous green.

"What the—" Hermione sputtered. "I haven't even linked this Floo—ACK!"

Thump.

WHUMP.

Crash!

Hermione lay flat on her back as three ecstatically happy dragonets purred and bumped their heads against her chest.

"Rrrk!"

"Krirrrk!"

"SRRFfffff!"

"Hourig, Aedh, Fahjra? What are you— How did you—?"

"Squeeeerup!"

"Churrrrr!"

"Sssssssskar!"

Hermione fell back, unable to resist the enthusiastic dragon attack. "Gahh," she moaned.

"Hermione, are you okay?" Strange asked worriedly.

Hermione squirmed as the dragonets licked every bit of exposed skin they could find. "Ahhh!"

Loki snickered as he sat back down on the couch.

"You could at least help her," Stephen said disapprovingly. "You're right there, you know."

"I'm enjoying this far too much," Loki said, still snickering. "Merry Christmas!"

Hermione waved her hand. "Peace," she said and spat out some sort of strange, growling speech. The three dragonets immediately ceased their antics and lay their heads on her chest, crooning softly.

"Identify," Hermione said in Gobbledegook, moving her hand out in a specific gesture. "Remember."

The dragonets immediately perked and rushed over to Loki and sniffed him over. One tried to gnaw on Loki's head until Hermione clicked her tongue. Mollified, the dragonet bounded over to sniff over the sorcerer. All three then returned to Hermione.

"Remember friend," Hermione instructed.

All three dragonets looked up to her with nothing short of adoration and eager readiness.

Hermione signalled with her palm flat, and the dragonets lay on their bellies, heads down. "You don't mind if they take care of the leftovers, do you?"

Strange looked at Loki. "No?"

Loki shrugged. "I'm good."

The dragonets waiting, tails twitching and wings shuddering, hoping and waiting. Hermione clucked her tongue, and they ran up to her feet and looked up. She placed a piece of meat on top of each of their noses and waited. The dragonets trembled with excitement, struggling to maintain control.

"Okay!" Hermione said in English, and the dragonets snapped the meat up in a flash. She placed large bowls in front of them, having filled them up with all sorts of tasty dragonet-friendly things.

"Your present isn't going to unwrap itself, Stephen," Hermione said with a chuckle.

The sorcerer sighed dramatically and went back to picking at the package as Loki rolled his eyes at him.

"I do hope it's some sort of flesh-eating bacteria," Loki said with a disturbingly hopeful gleam in his eye.

"Wha?" Hermione gasped. "Why?!"

"It would be infinitely more entertaining than watching him pick that package apart all night," Loki muttered.

"You're so terrible," Hermione said, humour dancing in her eyes.

Loki leaned down and scooped up a package and, smirking, tossed it lightly at Hermione, causing her to catch it with a startled whoof of air.

Hermione eyed Loki with a mild look of suspicion.

The package let out a sad, lonely, little whimper.

"There's— Merlin!" Hermione immediately dove at the package and tore into it at once, sending bits of paper, ribbon, and box flying in all directions.

Icy, glowing eyes joyfully met hers as a four-legged "puppy" burst out of the package, tail wagging madly. Elongated canines stuck out from both gums, making his mouth seem impossibly large, yet the muzzle was short and strong. Two bony plate-tusks flanked both sides of its mouth, and tiny bumps went from top of head down to its long, spiny tail.

"Hrrrrowl?"

Hermione dropped the box and scooped up the happy little beast, pressing her face to his muzzle. "Merlin! You are so cute!" She snuggled the beast, and it whined, growled, licked her face, and wagged its tail madly.

She cooed at the pup in Gobbledegook, and it cocked its head, listening to her attentively. Then there was a sudden flash of warmth and light, and Hermione wobbled slightly, sinking down onto the couch with a glassy look about her eyes.

"Are you alright, Hermione?" Strange asked, concerned.

Hermione waved her hand. "I'm okay. I just— he's very loud and hyper."

She pressed her face to the pup's muzzle, closing her eyes.

"Harrrooo!" the pup howled, wriggling on his stomach.

Three curious dragonets peered over the arm of the couch. "Krrrrk?"

"Come over here and meet our new friend," Hermione invited them.

The dragonets didn't need any more encouragement, and they all clambered over the edge of the couch and shoved their noses into, on, and under the pup to get to know him more intimately.

"Harrrooo!"

"Krrrk!"

"You're being awfully quiet, Loki," Strange observed, still carefully working on his own present.

Loki, who seemed to be quite baffled by Hermione's response to the alien beast, shook himself and blinked. "I… wasn't expecting that reaction. I tried to give Sif a Jötunheim beast for her birthday once, and she— she didn't even give the poor creature a chance. Back then, I didn't know what it was. I couldn't understand why Sif had such a violent reaction, much less why it was not permitted in Asgard."

"Whyever not?" Hermione asked softly, getting mobbed by beasts all wanting their fair share of the pets and hugs.

"It was from Jötunheim," Loki explained grimly. "The land of Asgard's mortal enemy."

Hermione frowned. "Well, I'm hardly going to cast you out, am I, little guy?"

"Harroool!" the pup agreed enthusiastically.

"Well, let's get you outside so you can go about your business," she said, standing up. She wobbled a little, but this time, Loki was there, his arm instantly around her to keep her supported. She leaned into him for a long moment, eyes closing, her face pressed against his arm. She attempted to walk forward, but she remained dizzy.

"I'm so sorry," she apologised to Loki. "I'm not normally so dizzy."

"It is nothing," Loki replied softly.

When her hands touched his skin, it turned a deep, cobalt blue, and Loki startled, moving to jerk his arm away.

Hermione, however, simply grasped his arm for support and began to walk, completely oblivious to his surprise and discomfiture.

"Come along, Fonn," Hermione called out to the pup. "You too, you sneaky little reptilian interlopers."

The dragonets bounded after, happily chasing Fonn's tail.

"Fonn?" Loki asked curiously.

"It's his name."

"You named him already?"

Hermione tilted her head. "He told me." She looked at him with no little curiosity, seemingly debating with herself on if he had somehow missed out on a conversation that she fully expected him to have remembered.

"I think I'm starting to understand Luna a little better," Hermione said a bit wistfully as she watched Fonn dig himself a pit and squat over it. Steam rose as the pup gratefully emptied his poor, tortured bladder. "Poor thing must have been holding it a long time."

The dragonets, much like cats, dug themselves a trench, relieved themselves, and then immediately buried the evidence. As the cold seemed to rise up from the ground, Loki's skin shifted again from the pale, pinkish human shade back to the cobalt blue.

Loki tried to turn his face away, fearfully shielding his changing eyes and face from her gaze.

Hermione didn't even seem to notice. She was cuddling the little beast pup and twirling him around before letting him go romp with the dragonets around the "yard" which was the entire plateau. Yet neither beast nor dragonets seemed at all inclined to leave her sight, always keeping an ear perked or head up to spot check where she was at all times.

Loki startled as gentle arms wrapped around his waist and he found himself caught up in a warm hug.

"Thank you so much," she said, smiling up into his crimson eyes and he was utterly astonished that she did so without even the slightest flinch. Then she tenderly kissed him on the cheek.

Loki froze in place, stiffening in total shock.

Hermione, reading his body language as discomfort, winced and turned away. "My apologies," she said quickly, stepping away from him despite her currently untrustworthy legs. "I did not mean to offend."

Loki's hand immediately shot out, locking around her wrist. "Please," he said hoarsely. "I swear to you that I took no offense. I am simply… unaccustomed to such open displays of affection." He winced, struggling with his words. "It was not unwelcome. It was simply— unexpected."

"Goblins are a very expressive society," Hermione began quietly.
"They are highly tactile beings with a multi-layered expression and language that the outside world does not get to see. When I was— more or less adopted, I felt myself in sensory overload at first. The touch of a finger against mine as a paper passed—a look, a show of fang, a grimace that was not at all what most humans think— You would never know it if you didn't truly know, and I am sorry if my expressions made you uncomfortable."

Loki shook his head. "No, I would far rather feel this awkwardness knowing you could touch this," he said, gesturing to himself as if it explained everything, "than never to feel it at all." Loki's eyes looked haunted, pained.

Hermione cocked her head in puzzlement. "You can't be serious."

Loki gave her an odd look. "What do you mean?"

"With your looks— your beautiful cobalt skin and crimson eyes and perfect almost-wild hair," Hermione said wonderingly. "You'd have every Avatar fan at a Muggle comic-con attempting to accost you, if not outright relieve you of your trousers right on the main floor in front of thousands of witnesses."

Loki just gaped at her in shock.

Hermione gently closed his mouth for him. "Careful, love, you'll catch flies."

Loki swallowed hard and shifted his weight awkwardly.

Hermione's fingers lightly traced his brows and the markings that crisscrossed his skin like the lines of map, or she thought, the intricate equations of Arithmancy. Loki shuddered, his breath hitching in his throat. He began to pant, his arms wrapping around her suddenly as he crushed her feverishly against himself, still trembling.

Hermione stilled in his embrace, confused as to what had suddenly changed, then her mind started to put two and two together and finally came up with pi. "Oh! OH! I'm so sorry!" she gasped. "I'm just mucking it all up!" She struggled to wriggle out of his embrace and restore whatever dignity either of them had before she had unintentionally felt up a visiting god.

Hermione, flustered, flushing, and fighting back her own body's visceral reaction to being in the warm arms of an extremely attractive and desirable male, alien god or otherwise, slipped out of his arms and called the dragonets and frost beast to her with a hasty, "Ishouldgoinandcleanthetablerightnow."

She beat a hasty retreat, hiding her very flushed face as her frantic heart tried to beat its way out of her chest and her nostrils flared as it tried to record the very scent of him in stone. "You are so beneath him!" she hissed furiously to herself. "You are nothing. You are plain, ordinary, nothing special. You could NEVER attract the likes of a god, Hermione Granger. You can't even get along with the people you protected in a war. Stupid. Stupid. STUPID girl." She vanished into the cottage and out of sight.

Minutes later, Loki's fingers moved, and his eyes shifted one direction and then the other as his range of motion slowly came back to him. His breath escaped in a heavy sigh, and a rather new sensation tugged insistently in his lower regions. He let out a ragged breath, and he could still smell her— her intoxicating scent of magic, sweet persimmons and the welcome hint of spring after a long and dreary winter.

The feel of her hands— her gentle fingers running along the runic circles that covered his skin—had taken away every single coherent thought he had possessed. There had only been the sweetest, almost agonising ecstasy imaginable.

As Loki worked his way back indoors, he saw Doctor Strange, buried almost waist high in books, give Hermione a tender hug. "Thank you, Hermione. You are too kind."

Hermione smiled at him. "You are welcome." Then she caught sight of Loki and flushed, drawing in a shaky breath. "I'm going to get ready for bed. Take your time reading them. They are yours now."

Strange mumbled something that might have been a yes as he cracked open a book, fluffed a plump pika, and cuddled with it on the couch as he read. Hermione blushed hotly and beat a swift retreat, avoiding all eye contact with Loki as the trail of dragonets, one frost beast pup, pikas, and a line of celestial spiders frantically tried to keep up with her.

"You are avoiding me," Loki commented quietly, close enough to her ear to make her shudder slightly.

"I am not avoiding you," Hermione said, her eyes safely lowered as she watered the row of plants.

"What, then, would you call it?"

"I'm avoiding an awkward situation caused by irrational, unthinking behaviour on my part," Hermione said, feeding the carnivorous orchid from her fingers and scratching it under its 'chin'.

"The only thing awkward between us, my lady, is that you left before I could reciprocate," Loki said calmly, leaning against the wall and watching her carefully.

Hermione flushed brightly, setting her jaw, and forcing herself to continue her walk down the line. "Please, do not mock my ignorance to your— erogenous zones— by feigning actual interest."

Loki let out a breath between his teeth. "Hermione, I do not mock. Not about something like that. And I would never mock you, much less feign interest that I do not feel."

Hermione shot him a swift look.

"Please let me rephrase. I do not jest or mock when something is serious."

"And how would a lowly mortal know what a god might consider serious?" Hermione asked, her gaze turning ineffably sad.

At first Loki was angered by her seeming to mock his claims to godhood, but then he saw her sadness. "You truly do not see yourself as being worthy of notice?"

Hermione closed her eyes in pain. "I am not. That has been categorically proven."

"Then pick a different category," Loki advised seriously, approaching her to close the gap between them. "Only the most ignorant of fools would believe that of one such as you."

"I believe it," Hermione said grimly.

"Then you are a fool!" Loki snapped and then immediately kicked himself. "I apologise. I." He squared his shoulders and faced her solemnly. "I— I simply cannot understand how one such as you would not have throngs of suitors beating down your door. Look at all you have done in the last week alone. You have convinced that sorcerer to leave his new library of books to go patch up an interstellar vortex. You weave him a new and improved levitation cloak. You charm his original cloak into following you about like a loyal hound. You recruit and are subsequently adopted by a clutter of celestial spider weavers. You inspire such love and loyalty that your dragonets figure out a way to use the hearth to spit them out here in the snowy peaks of nowhere. You have an entire population of rare magical fuzzy creatures whose only want in life is to serve you until you don't exist— not until they die, no, but until you no longer exist. You bonded to a young Jötunheim beast faster than my brother can get lost in his massive ego. And you even found beauty in one such as myself."

"That's not something suitors want. That's what some special task force wants to have around to patch up calamities whenever they crop up."

"Yes, and they would name it S.H.I.E.L.D.," Loki snarked bitterly. "It would be lead by a man named Fury, which would be appropriate because he excels at making many people furious."

Loki rubbed his temples. "Hermione. I am interested in you. Truly. I wish to caress and learn every curve of your body as I explore every intriguing corridor of your mind."

Hermione looked as though she wanted let loose an entire string of protests, but Loki pressed his body close to hers, his hands just barely alighting over her robes as his face hovered tantalisingly near her ear.

"Hermione," he breathed softly into her hair.

"Loki—" she said his name in a hushed whisper.

He lowered his mouth down to her neck, his breath lightly tickling her skin. She shuddered, her breaths coming faster. "Say that you will have me," he murmured against the juncture of her neck and shoulder. "Say that you want me too."

Hermione stared up into his eyes, watching as the crimson bled across them and the cobalt blue spread across his face. Her fingers traced his lips, and with a tender brush of fingertips, she traced the lines of his face, watching his eyes grow darker— more needful, more primal, and so very much more excitingly male.

"Please," Loki whispered, barely able to form coherent words at this point. He looked into her eyes and saw her at the threshold of decision. One step forward led to the unknown abyss of what could be; one step backwards would lead to the safety of what was known and terribly lonely, forever denied the touch of that one person who could truly understand.

Loki didn't want to be lonely anymore. He didn't want his only legacy to be forever hated by everyone. He was no longer content to rule if that meant— what would it mean? The answer suddenly came to him as Hermione's lips pressed against one of his markings and he knew… all he wanted was her.

"I want you," she said so quietly that it seemed to ghost across his sensitised skin in lieu of actual words. "But I am afraid."

Loki pulled her into him, wanting nothing more at that moment than to merge into one being so the exquisite pleasure of her touch could be felt everywhere at once. Instead, he slowly kissed her neck, his hands roaming up her arms and along the back of her neck. "I will never, ever intentionally hurt you. This I swear to you. You of all the people in the Realms can trust me. Trust me?"

Hermione gasped as Loki's breath tickled her ear. "I am such a fool," she said, her fingers rubbing the lobes of Loki's ears through his thick black hair. "But I do trust you."

Somehow, they had found their way into the bedroom, but neither of them paid any heed to which one it was. Loki peeled off Hermione's robes as one would peel the leaves from an artichoke, taking time between each movement to place his mouth on her skin to both pleasure and taste her. Hermione moaned, panting as her body surged up to meet his— eager, needful, and with a mind of its own.

He explored every curve of her body with his hands and almost as many with his lips and tongue, savouring the little whimpering sounds she made as he touched her. Her hands explored his skin as he explored hers, and it was only by sheer willpower alone that he didn't collapse with the ecstasy that her gentle touch brought to him. His mouth explored her breasts, and Hermione let out a throaty moan and a shudder. Heat seemed to rise off her body, and Loki felt his readiness rise stiffly at attention, leaving no doubt at all of his very real attraction and desire.

Hermione's eyes widened as she caught the look of him from head to his toes. Her heat called to him like a siren's song, and he moved his hand between her legs to ensure that he wouldn't hurt her. But she was ready, and so, too, was he.

They moved together, finding an intoxicating rhythm that was wholly natural, yet not too difficult to follow. Her hips moved in time with his, and he buried himself in the sensation of her warmth even as her hands moved caressingly over his back. They clung to each other desperately, perhaps thinking the other a mere illusion that would disappear if they dared to let go. Hermione made soft whimpering noises in the back of her throat as he moved within her, the two of them flying faster and faster toward their ultimate completion.

In that pure, glorious, transcendent moment, nothing in Loki's past mattered anymore. Power, rule, all of it was nothing if it meant he had to let go of her— Hermione, the woman who tamed the beasts. Let Thor have his golden throne in Asgard. Let All-Father keep trying to give it to Thor. Let Thor deny him again and again. It didn't matter to him anymore. The only thing that mattered was her.

He felt her body beginning to tighten around him, and he ground into her in one final thrust as a tidal wave of overwhelming ecstasy burst inside of him, inside her— her mouth was locked over one of the markings on his chest even as the tidal wave of intense pleasure crashed over them both. The combination of his frantic, passionate release, driving need, and the feel of her warm mouth teasing the sensitive markings on his chest sent him hurtling helplessly backward into the white expanse of Oblivion.

His arms wrapped snugly around her as everything around him faded into blissful nothingness.

Neither were awake to notice that the Jotunn markings on Loki's body had started to glow a bright, almost blinding blue-white, and they slowly slithered over to Hermione's body in a perfect, undeniable mirror image of his own.

As the two lovers remained thoroughly entwined, Fonn poked his nose in the door, sniffed, and padded in, circled three times at the foot of the bed, and flopped down to sleep. Shortly after, three dragonets sneaked into the room, curling themselves around Fonn, and after that, a bunch of fuzzy pikas curled up into the empty spaces around the sleeping couple. Glistening celestial spiders poured in from the hidden crannies in the walls and crawled up the bedposts, weaving gossamer curtains to shelter the new couple as they slept. The spiders tucked themselves away in the folds of the outer canopy and slipped out of sight.

And all was right with the world.

Loki woke to a number of sensations, but none as intoxicating as the seemingly endless warmth of a body pressed invitingly close to his. Somehow, during the night, they had gained a spider-woven blanket and privacy curtains, but his eyes focused on the eerie glow of of the markings on his skin. They were most definitely glowing, and to his horror and fascination, Hermione's skin had gained his distinctive pattern. Would she hate them? Scorn them as the badge of shame and loathing he had come to associate them with?

Yet— as he ran his fingers across the markings on her arm, watching the glow shimmer and grow stronger. Hermione gave a soft, throaty moan, and her arms slid around his neck as she pressed her body close to his, and their markings touched.

Loki gasped, his body spasmed as he pulled her against him, tightening his embrace around her body as the breath crushed out of his lungs as a wave of sheer ecstasy rolled over him— much like her touch had utterly undone him when she first innocently caressed his markings, only a hundred-thousand times stronger. He buried his face into her curls, feeling as though his very soul was being caressed and massaged. He groaned into her skin, desiring nothing more than to wrap himself around her every curve and descend into this strange and unexpected feeling of— belonging.

Never once in his time with Sigyn or Angrboða did he ever feel this, this perfect sense of completion. He had sired and given birth to both sons and beasts, and yet neither had done what this wild-curled Midgardian witch had done. She had awoken pieces of him he hadn't realised he had or had thought safely buried under his pain and wounded ego. Suddenly, he wanted to provide, to protect, and forever touch the wondrous creature that she was.

He lowered his mouth to hers, savouring the velvet feel of her lips as he breathed against them. Had someone told him what those markings were capable of invoking, perhaps he would have been less eager to hide them. Perhaps, Sigyn would have left him sooner. Angrboða may have thought him too sentimental. No, this was different. Hermione was… special, brilliant, quirky, wondrously open-minded and compassionate. Had be been bound to some other woman and then met Hermione— there would have been a special place in Hel for that sort of bitter anguish.

And yet, Hermione was… mortal.

Loki's face twisted in pain, remembering how he had mocked Thor's lover for having such a fleeting life. Thor had adamantly believed she was worth it— he still believed what they had was worth it. But Loki knew that Thor had not experienced anything remotely like this— the caress of her magic against his as their very souls hummed together to a chord of absolute perfection. Had he, Loki, known, he would have mocked him still, calling him a fool. Such intimacy did not truly exist. Such tenderness was but a shameful weakness,

Oh, but how he had been proven wrong.

The thought of the years wasted trying to take over the world and Asgard— all those years in which he could have found her sooner and shared in her life for a few more days, weeks, or even years. What would that have been like? Had he found her as a child— shown her universes and realms beyond her knowing and opened her mind to possibilities sooner rather than later? But had he not been around to discover his "faulty heritage" he would never have realised what he truly was and this— whatever this glorious bond that was forming between them— would have never happened. Even if he had shared such wonders with her, perhaps even sharing her bed, she would never have seen his true face and been able to accept it without question.

He would never have been able to accept it without her.

He would have remained arrogant, blind, and entitled, perhaps thinking he was doing a good deed in showing some poor fleeting mortal the wonders of the great many unexplored worlds that spanned the universe. He wouldn't have been able to appreciate her for the priceless gift that she was.

"Hermione," he said her name like a power word, a rune, and the total embodiment of being.

Hermione's eyes opened sleepily. "Mmmph."

"Hello, lover," he said, his voice trembling with the strength of his ardent worship.

He froze as she caught sight of the markings on her skin, fearful that reality would set in and drive her away with fear and loathing. Instead, she pressed her palm to his, lining up the markings in a perfect couplet.

Loki shuddered, and she gasped, her eyes rolling back into her head with the sudden rush of intense pleasure. "Loki," she whispered, his name seemingly nothing and everything.

His name, just his name on her lips, caused a warmth to spread throughout his body, and he knew he could have been standing in the biting freeze of Jötunheimr's iciest wasteland and still he would not feel chilled. He caressed her face, brushing his thumb against the runic circles. They glowed as he touched them, and her eyes drifted closed with the pleasure of his gentle brush of fingers.

"Any woman who left you was such a fool," Hermione said, her eyes half-lidded in enjoyment. "I beg of you, if this is only a trick, please allow me a few moments to remember what this feels like."

She thinks this a trick? Loki thought to himself.

"It is no trick," Loki said, pressing his forehead to hers in a flare of magic.

Hermione stared into his crimson eyes. "I want to believe you, but I can't help but feel I don't deserve this. Or you."

"If I could , I would find every single last pathetic imbecile that planted such seeds of doubt in your mind and take off their fingers one by one as I hung them by their puny testicles."

Hermione snorted, a small smile tugging insistently at her lips. "What if they don't have testicles?"

"I'd find something to hang them by," Loki promised darkly.

Hermione touched his face, tracing the lines of his mouth, nose, and eyes. "But you are so beautiful, and I am—"

"Beyond mere beauty to me," Loki assured her, cutting her off with a kiss. Their magic met together with the insistent mating of their mouths, and Hermione gasped as he drew his hands caressingly over her arms, her markings, her body.

"Lllllooooki," she moaned breathily. She panted, shuddering against him.

"That look in your eyes," Loki said with no little wonder. "Look upon me with that look, my sorceress, and I will move mountains in your name. But, for now, I would court you as befits an honourable woman, the lady that you are, that you may accept or reject me as being compatible to your desires."

Hermione stared at him for a long moment. "May I take a moment to contemplate an entire lonely lifetime without your touch?"

Loki tilted his head.

"Yes, Merlin, yes," Hermione said, placing her palms to his chest. The runes flared between them, and Loki pulled her tightly against him with a low, predatory growl of pure, primal need.

He clamped his teeth into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, laving his tongue against her even as his teeth grasped the skin, his hands clawing over her hips and dragging her up so she was completely mated to his body, bare skin against bare skin.

Hermione groaned heatedly, clawing at his back as her breathing grew heavy and deep. "I think we may have just skipped over courtship entirely," she said, gliding her hands tenderly across his marked skin.

"Good thing you said yes, then," Loki rumbled in her ear, pinning her wrists down to the bed as he moved between her legs. His mouth teased her already erect nipples and he listened to her make small whimpering sounds as her body struggled vainly to touch him. He restrained her just enough to keep her from freeing herself as he experimentally ran his tongue over her markings.

Hermione's body shuddered underneath him, a loud cry of ecstatic abandon escaping her lips. He smiled down at her, his crimson eyes glowing in the dimness as he slowly, deliberately pressed his cheek to hers. Hermione made a strange, howling sound, and she quivered and writhed with an all-consuming want and need.

Genuine, unfiltered need.

Loki's mouth covered hers as he slid into her welcoming warmth, and a wave of almost unbearable pleasure surged through them both, their twin markings glowing brightly as their bodies fully merged together. He thrust repeatedly, deeper and faster, unable to stop the continuous waves of what seemed like more and more heady pleasure with every thrust, and—

She was free, clawing at his back as her legs wrapped around his body, her multiple markings mating fully with his.

"Gaia's tits!" Loki cursed fluently as he simply could not hold back any longer. His hips thrust strongly, and her body seemed to lock around his throbbing manhood to keep it entirely sheathed and pulsing within her.

Red and black particles swirled around them like a hurricane as the magic of their mated markings melted and melded together. Two ancient magics pooled together as their passion climaxed together. Glowing red and black spread across their bodies, filling in the grooves of their markings, fusing to their mated bodies as a surge of their sexual gratification and magical release merged together and pulsed as a great, synchronised heartbeat.

They collapsed together bonelessly as tendrils of black and red wove around them like the weaving of a great cocoon, binding them both in their intimate embrace. Their heartbeats sounded off as one as their magics infused to the other, and the Aether seeped into their very souls, finally claiming for itself what it had searched for countless eons to find. At last, finally Hermione's channels were wide open, and the Aether surged into every single one of the newly opened channels until it had completely fused to every fibre of her being.

Completion! It whispered. Blessed completion at last!

Foooooom!

A ring of power blasted outwards from the forming cocoon that was both unmaking and remaking those joined within. Tentacles of the great leviathan— some of the purest of light, some of the darkest of the Abyss— wrapped protectively around the pulsating cocoon, protecting the priceless contents within its monstrous coils.

Meanwhile, high above in Asgard, Odin impatiently waited for Heimdall to tell him where his wayward adopted son had squirreled himself away this time.

Heimdall's golden all-seeing eyes met his king's. "I am very sorry, my King," he said with a puzzled expression on his face. "He has somehow vanished from my sight."

Odin slammed down his spear. "What do you mean, "vanished"?"

"Either he had been transformed into something entirely new, or Loki is dead, my King."

"Dead," Odin repeated slowly, his eyebrow twitching.

"This changes nothing," Odin said, dismissing it. "Thor, take the containment down there and take the Aether back. We will make sure it is put somewhere that doesn't find a way to escape again."

" Father, is it wise to use such an untested prison? We have no idea if it will work." Thor asked, obviously shaken deeply by the news of his brother's possible demise.

"We have no choice!" Odin bellowed, slamming his hand down. "If the Aether is loose, it will kill and kill until it runs out of new hosts, and it will not stop until all of Miðgarðr is smoke and ruin. You will do as I say!"

Thor sighed, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. "Yes, father," he said reluctantly, grabbing hold of Mjölnir and striding out of the warroom.

Chirrrrrrrr?

Slurp.

Chirrrrrrrr?

Whine. Slurp.

Hermione mumbled something that sounded like a hiss and tried to burrow back into the comforting warmth of the bed and Loki's arms.

Chirrrrrrr.

Whine. Wet nose nudges.

A feminine hand snaked out from Loki's arms and pointed at Fonn's nose. "Back, demon-dog. I command it."

Whineeeeeee. He licked her finger, hopefully wagging his tail.

"You have to go out, don't you?" Hermione muttered.

A tail thumped steadily against the bed.

Ice-cold water splashed Hermione directly in the face, and she bolted out of the bed with a yelp.

She glared up at the bed where a dozen celestial spiders were pointing their legs at one spider in particular— a spider with a miniature bucket clutched in its forelegs.

"He did it!" the other spiders accused, immediately scurrying away to hide. The obviously guilty spider trembled, looking rather nervous.

"Come here, Bucket," Hermione said with an amused expression. She held out her hand. The celestial spider silk-glided to her hand and cooed as she drew her hand across his body. "Silly thing," she admonished, scratching his belly with one finger. "Come on, let's go out the puppy before he piddles." Bucket hugged her fingers, scurried up her arm and dove into her hair.

She filled the kettle and put it on the hearth to heat then walked to the door and opened it. Fonn zoomed out in a hurry, and Hermione pondered the wisdom of making a frost-doggy door. How big did Jötunheim frost beasts get? She could always charm him a collar so he'd always fit through the door, she supposed. That might even save her a few doors, too.

"Mum was always afraid of dogs," Hermione mused to herself. "I wonder what she'd think of Fonn?"

As she was daydreaming and creating an adaptable door, she tripped over something, and she stumbled before standing back up and peering at the ground.

A hammer was sitting in the middle of her doorway.

Fonn had apparently jumped over it as he ran out to do his business, but she didn't remember making a hammer. "I don't even remember having a hammer," Hermione said, boggling. She shrugged, picked it up and went back into the house, placing the hammer out of the way on the counter.

"Somewhere, my mother is screaming 'Don't put tools on the counters, Hermione!'." Hermione chuckled. "And my father will be handing me more tools to put there."

She looked skyward and sighed. "I'm sorry, mom and dad. I hope you know that, wherever you are."

After a quick check, she realised she was three dragonets short of a menagerie, and she should probably make sure they weren't out there terrorising the countryside. First things first— she realised with some embarrassment that she was quite starkers— clothes. How had she not noticed? That wasn't exactly something you would ordinarily miss living among the snow plateaus of Tibet!

There was a suckerfish stuck to her neck. "I'm not complaining," Loki purred into her skin, his hands rubbing up and down her arms as he grasped her, pulling her to his—

"Merlin!" she gasped. "You're—"

"Loki, and you're Hermione," Loki said, cocking his head and shaking it sadly. "Are you catching a fever?" He placed his hand to her forehead. "Do you need some mothering?"

"I can't think straight whenever you touch me!" Hermione whinged.

Loki purred. "And this is a problem how? I like it when you touch me."

"I know you— hey!" Hermione extracted herself from his warm arms and managed to look thoroughly flustered from all angles.

"Do you shun my touch, after all of what we have shared?" Loki said, pouting.

"Eeeiiggghhhsssss!" Hermione moaned. "Don't be like that."

Loki gave her the eyes and a lip quiver, and Hermione slumped, shuffling over into Loki's arms. Loki enfolded her victoriously, grinning as he pressed his face into her hair.

"I hate you,"Hermione muttered breathily as he attached himself firmly to her neck. She let out a soft moan.

"I don't think that means what you think it means," Loki murmured, pausing only to speak before his tongue slid over her markings, and her legs abruptly gave out on her. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her over to the hot spring. "You need a bath. You stink of sex and me."

Hermione sputtered at him.

"I would far rather you smell of you," Loki purred, "that I might rub myself all over you."

"But then I'd smell of you aga— MFFFPH!"

Hermione's rationale was abruptly cut off by the stealthy insertion of a tongue in the most distracting of places. She massaged his hair, shuddering and sighing as he did the most wonderful things with his tongue, sliding against every marking on her body. The heated water was enough to flush their skin and heighten their arousal. Yet Loki did not renege on his promise. He grabbed a nearby towel, lathered it, and gently rubbed her skin, washing everywhere from behind her ears to her toes. Hermione mumbled something incoherently as he laid a tender kiss on her neck, cradling her in the water as he gazed lovingly down upon her.

The celestial spiders arrived on the scene with spider-sized sponges, lathered up, and pounced on Loki, scrubbing him down as he held their mistress, even pausing to clean his ears, lather up his hair into a odd, foamy swirl, and then flung themselves off to wherever they had been prior to their arrival.

Hermione just grinned at him, having watched Loki's ordeal with considerable amusement.

Loki dipped down into the heated water to rinse his hair and began a low, rumbling croon as he focused his attention back on his mate. He rubbed her shoulders and drove his thumbs into her neck, watching her eyes flutter closed in rapture. Her body seemed conflicted between utter relaxation and heady arousal. He pressed a gentle kiss on her lips as he leaned her against the perfect incline of the hot springs. "As much as I would adore claiming you again, my lover, perhaps we should feed the beast."

"Which one?" Hermione chuckled as she brushed his hair with her fingers.

"Me," Loki purred. "But we can feed the others too, hrm?"

"So you are a beast, are you?" Hermione teased.

Loki pressed his mouth to the bridge of her nose. "For you, I can be anything." He climbed out of the hot spring and helped her up, wrapping a thick towel around her somewhat reluctantly. The Cloak of Levitation threw another towel at Loki and pushed him along, lovingly wrapping itself around Hermione with the rapt attentiveness of a jealous lover.

"That is hardly fair," Loki pouted.

Hermione stuck out her tongue at him. "Seduce your own Cloak of Levitation, lover."

Loki crossed his arms. "I would rather seduce you."

"Pffft." Hermione handed him a spatula. "You can make eggs, can't you?"

"I would better handling the sausage. Eggs and I are not on speaking terms unless I am stabbing them with my fork."

Hermione swapped out the spatula for the tongs. "Okay." She handed him the hamper of sausage and the cast iron griddle. "Do you like fungus?"

"Excuse me?"

"Mushrooms. Breakfast."

"Oh, um, sure."

Spiders sashayed by, carrying various cooking implements and a jar of beans.

"Better hurry, or the spiders will beat you to it," Hermione laughed.

"I will not be outdone by arachnids!" Loki proclaimed.

Hermione pointed her spatula at the pikas cheering on the cooking spiders, frying up some mean looking hashbrowns.

Loki grunted and put the sausage on the griddle, using his magic to create a fire.

"Hey," Hermione said, getting Loki's attention. "How's your stab wound today?"

"It aches somewhat," Loki said, his face serious, "but the wound is flawless thanks to you."

"I wouldn't thank me," Hermione said. "You are the god, after all. You healed in less than a week. That was no feat of mine."

"Oh, I wouldn't say you were entirely blameless," Loki said thoughtfully. "You healed far more than a mere wound to the gut."

Hermione caught his gaze and flushed, turning back to the eggs. "How do you like your eggs?"

"Fertilised," Loki said, staring at her straight-faced.

Hermione dropped the spatula and had to pick it up again. "Over easy it is."

Loki turned the sausage with a smug smile, his hand creeping over run along the underside of her arm.

Hermione flung the spatula clear across the room, and the spiders webbed it before it could fall.

"Got it!"

"Phew!"

They carried it back to her, and Hermione flushed crimson and rushed over to the sink to wash it off.

As she went back to the eggs, Loki pressed his mouth to her neck, catching her spatula. "I love what my touch does to you, lover," he whispered in her ear. And just like that, he was back tending the sausage.

"Are you sure you're the god of mischief?" Hermione spouted. "Because I think you're the sodding god of utter distraction."

Loki smiled, his long black hair falling about his face.

"Thank Merlin I didn't know you when I was studying for my NEWTs!" Hermione hissed, flipping her eggs expertly.

The spiders scuttled toward the dining room table, carrying a full plate of cooked hash browns and prepared beans.

"Job's done!"

"Hash browns for everyone!"

"Yay food!"

"We've been outdone by spiders." Loki frowned.

"Celestial spiders, love," Hermione said. " In a league of their own."

The pikas ran by with a platter of fried bread, heading for the dining room table.

Loki moved his sausages onto a platter. "I give up. I concede loss to your most talented and hyperactively helpful familiars."

Hermione snorted moving the eggs onto a plate and handing them to Loki. "Eat your eggs before they get cold."

"And if I don't?" Loki asked.

"You'll have cold eggs," Hermione replied. "Not to mention lacking the energy for any further… activities."

"You're no fun," Loki complained, gliding towards the dining table. And then her second comment registered. He hurried a little faster.

Hermione filled the feeding troughs for the pikas, filled the bowls for the dragonets, and put out a bowl of what appeared to be insects made out of a nebula. The moment the clank of the food hitting the feeding bowls rang out, the three dragonets plowed through the newly-made "doggy" door, followed by Fonn, who was carrying a very familiar hammer in his mouth.

THUNK.

He dropped it in the doorway and proceeded straight towards the food bowl.

"Fonn, you silly beast," Hermione chided gently, reaching down and picking up the wayward hammer. "Are you the reason I keep having to move this giant hammer around?" She hung it on the cloak rack by its heavy leather strap.

Loki eyed the hammer in question with an arched eyebrow but busily stuffed his face full of breakfast. Hermione sat down opposite of him and shared in the spoils, giving some thanks to all that went into making it.

The spiders cooed at her on their way back to hide in her hair, and the pikas rubbed up against her ankles before dashing off to do whatever chores they decided on doing.

"You know, my brother has a hammer like that one," Loki said as they finished breakfast. "Not to alarm you, but we no longer see eye-to-eye."

"You have a brother?" Hermione asked. "I'm sorry, if you told me, I've seem to have forgotten."

Loki shrugged. "We had a falling out when I let frost giants into Asgard to kill All-Father and start a war." Loki frowned. "I was very angry then. I had just found out my entire life was a lie, and my "father" was the cause of it. Then, I found my real father was the enemy "we" hated— a leader of a race that Asgardians all despised out of principle. My real father had left me as an infant to die by the casket of endless winters. Odin 'saved me' and raised me with Thor in preparation for the throne. I never knew any different until I realised because of what I was, I would never be king. I would never truly… fit in."

Loki's crimson eyes darkened as he returned to his human form. "My mother taught me magic, and maybe she somehow knew that one day I would need such magic. Spells, trickery, illusion— I used them all once, to protect Thor, Sif, and the warriors three, until the day Laufey grabbed me by the wrist and showed me what I really was. Now, too much has happened for forgiveness. Once my brother held the hope that the brother he knew was in there somewhere, but I made sure to kill that hope in him many times over. Deep down, I wanted him to end me because I hated myself that much. I wanted Odin to simply admit that he wished he hadn't taken me away from Jötunheim. I wanted him to say it to my face. To all of Asgard. I wanted him to be seen for what he was, and in that moment I didn't care who I hurt to make it happen. Mother paid the price for my bitterness. It was because of me that Malekith knew how to get where he needed to go. I set a Cursed One loose on my family while I wallowed in prison. She died, and I wasn't there to protect her. All she did was dare to love me, and I rejected her— claiming she was no better than All-Father. She died with the last thing I did being to tell her she was not my mother."

"I Obliviated my parents and stole their memories of me," Hermione told him quietly. "I wiped away every memory they had of me without asking, saying to myself that it was for the best. I told myself they would just argue that if the world was so dangerous that they needed to be there for me. So, one day, I stole their memories, rewrote their history, and sent them to Australia under different names. I prayed that one day I could go back and beg their forgiveness. After they lived. After the war. After I was sure the danger had finally passed."

Hermione clenched her fingers into a fist. "There was a wanted poster for me— a thousand galleons for turning me as a fugitive Mudblood and an "Undesirable". Allegedly, the official charges were for robbery, conspiracy and illegal spellcasting. I'd robbed a bank vault, you see. It didn't matter that the item was cursed and that the entire world would have fallen if we hadn't destroyed it, no. So, desperate people tracked down my parents, memories or no, and killed them in their zealous desire to torture them to death in hopes of discovering my location. I had protected them from Dark wizards, but not the people I was trying to protect. For nothing. The only ones who cared enough to take me in were the goblins. I paid off my debt and they hired me. Then, they adopted me. They protected me up until I came here— when an Auror tried to—" Hermione trailed off, trembling.

"That is when the Aether found you— " Loki surmised, gently caressing her shoulders in comfort.

"It has been very patient with me, even kind," Hermione admitted softly. "But last night. That was the first time I let go, really let go, and I let it in. We were already bound, but that last step was mine to make. It was only then that I felt whole— with reasons to live all around me. The pikas, the spiders, three plucky dragonets, one Jötunheim beast-puppy, and, most of all, you. I was finally ready to let go of everything I once thought was all I could have in order to discover everything I could be."

She stared at her hands, looking at the intricate runic markings. "Going out in public could prove to be an… interesting experience."

"Do they bother you?" Loki asked quietly.

Hermione shook her head. "Nothing a glamour won't fix. I am glad of them because they mean what we have together was not a mere dream. The runes have changed— he is with us both, now. It's incredibly comforting to me that he accepts you too."

Loki covered her hand with his. "I suppose we should go find my brother before I decide better of it and drag you back into bed."

"Loki!"Hermione gasped in the same way someone would follow with "Not in front of the children!"

"We should work on that,"Loki said with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

"Work on what?"

"Children," Loki purred. "You said that in the exact same way that my mother would admonish All-Father for kissing her in front of the children or in public."

Hermione flushed, her markings flashing with a heightened blue-white glow, which seemed to trigger something very primal in Loki. He growled, pressing his body firmly against hers as he rubbed his cheek against her face like a cat.

Hermione shuddered with pleasure, tilting her head to the side in open invitation, and Loki affixed himself to her neck without hesitation. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her over to the couch, laying her down gently as he began to coax the Cloak of Levitation to go float somewhere else.

"Loki," Hermione whinged with a distinct gasp as Loki's lips grazed a particularly sensitive spot. "This is not helping us to find your bother."

"I would far rather find you," Loki growled. "Under. Me."

"Yes, but—ohhhh," Hermione gasped as he demonstrated his skillful tongue technique on her ear lobe, and her hands instinctively clawed his back as her hips ground insistently upward.

Loki's low chuckle alerted her to imminent mischief just as he said, "You have markings on your ears, lover. Please allow me to… demonstrate."

"Wha-aaa--AHHHH!" Hermione's piercing cry of pleasure coincided with her pulling him down on top of her. She breathed heavily against his ear as he chuckled throatily, having thoroughly enjoyed her reaction to what he just did to her "Merlin, how did frost giants ever leave their homes?!"

"I think I'm beginning to understand exactly why they were always so cranky whenever we met them on the battlefield." Loki snorted into her ear. He nuzzled her, moving in to find some new place to provide her with the most exquisite torture, but Hermione suddenly stiffened under him and let out a cry of shocked surprise.

Hermione abruptly shoved Loki away, rolled off the couch, and had her wand in her hand as she pointed it up towards the ceiling. Loki instantly swirled into motion, a gesture summoning his body armour from the "coat rack" and it dressed him in seconds. He stood protectively in front of Hermione, despite her protests until she realised he was wearing armour and she was most decidedly not wearing anything but air.

She gave a terrified, embarrassed squeal, and clung to Loki, using his cape as a cover— her bravery dispelled with the realisation of her vulnerable nudity.

"Oh," Loki said, sounding somewhat disappointed. "There you are, brother. What in the Nine Realms are you doing up there?"

Thor, who had been skillfully hogtied and gagged with celestial spider silk and hung in the rafters of the dwelling, could only mumble and make highly expressive eyebrows at his brother.

"He tried to smash in the door with his hammer," tiny spider voices chimed. "You were both sleeping, so we took care of it."

"With silk!"

"Fonn fetched his hammer."

"He plays good fetch."

"Good puppy."

"In the rafters?" Hermione whimpered, hiding even as the Cloak rushed over to her and tried its best to cover her nakedness with an artful swaddle.

The spiders seemed to blush.

"Sorry!"

"We didn't want you to trip!"

"Tripping is bad!"

Hermione, who suddenly seemed to remember she was a witch, summoned her clothes and her fury and cut Thor down from the rafters with a slicing hex, or at least she tried to. Her spell didn't affect the silk in the slightest. Hermione glared at the spiders.

"Eeee!"

"Not the look!"

"Not that look!"

"Getting him down now!"

The spiders rushed up the walls and began to chew a line through the front of Thor's bindings.

Snap!

SNAP!

Stretch. Stretch. Creeaaaak.

SNAPSNAPSNAP!

Thor tumbled down from the rafters and landed groin first onto the back of the couch.

"Oops."

"Sorry!"

"So sorry!"

Thor gave a pained grunt as he rolled off the couch and fell to the floor behind it, groaning pitifully.

"Ouch, brother," Loki shook his head. "Not one of your ten point falls."

A/N: End of Part One— Hope you enjoyed it. Happy New Year!

Plush Spiders: Yay!

Celestial Spiders: Double yay!

Pikas: Would you like some eggnog?

Fonn: Grrrrooofff! *guzzle*

Dragonets: awww, we wanted eggnog!

(Helpful spider convention whispering)

Spiders: We'll make more!

Dragonets: yay!

Celestial Spiders: Anyone need a freshly woven blanket?

Fonn: Wrrrrrfff!

(Spider shruggging) Okay!

Spider Brigade: Happy New Year!

Beast and Dragonets: hic!

Spiders: Oh dear, we forgot to withhold the alcohol.

Pikas: chirrrr. (Pikas push Jötunheim beast and dragonets out the doggy door to drunkenly swagger around the plateau)

(Next morning)

Hermione: Loki, love, why does our front yard look like Ragnarök came while we were sleeping?

Loki: It wasn't me.