Heartstrings and Bloodlines

Chapter 5

The next morning, over breakfast, a huge, dark, dusky barn owl dropped gracefully to the Slytherin table.

"Huginn," Loki murmured. "What does the Minister want with me today?" He peeled open the excessively thick parchment his father always used. He read it, and frowned thoughtfully.

"Bad news?" Tony asked.

"Good... I think. My father" - and here he gave Tony a pointed look as if to say 'presumably the Falling Ruler' - "wants me to know that some lovely new books just to my taste have been delivered to the school library."

"Huh," said Tony. "A distraction?"

"Or a sop," Loki said with distaste, dropping the letter far away from his plate.

Tony frowned thoughtfully, but didn't ask. He'd had his own fraught relationships with fathers, biological or not, and didn't see much reason to prod at that sore spot.

Classes... must have happened, at some point. Tony's mind was churning away on more important problems. Cataloguing resources, calculating probabilities.

The Rhodes siblings cornered him at lunch, pulled him to their table.

"So, any thoughts on our problem yet?" Rhodey asked.

"Yeah, a lot," said Tony. "A lot of bad ones. You know how dangerous your father is? Do you really? A trained Auror of his caliber? We're up against whoever could take him unawares and cast an Imperius curse so strong he couldn't break out of it for days. And unless we're very careful, they'll get all of us, too."

Rhodey blew out a breath, putting an arm around Star, who had scrunched into his side. "So do any of your thoughts resemble plans at all?"

"They know we know, Rhodey. I think going to your house would be a fantastically bad idea. No, whoever did this needs your dad to run errands for them because it would be suspicious for them to show up at Hogwarts themselves." He took a breath. "Either we'll have an unusual visitor on the grounds soon and we can work that angle first, or your dad will show up again - and we'll be ready."

Tony put as much determination and confidence into his voice as he could muster, and Rhodey and Star seemed to believe him.

Merlin help them all.

"What can we do to get ready?" Star asked.

"Stick close to your friends. The ones you know you can trust. And work hard at your casting. This is what we can count on: Each other. Our friends. Our magic."

Star nodded, looking up at him worshipfully. Usually he tried to discourage his friend's bratty little sister, but today she didn't seem so bad.

Plans more or less set for ambushing Uncle Derek, after lunch, Tony's thoughts turned to his own defense, and his own personal array of tools.

At dinner, Rhodey stuck close to Star, who was ensconced in her circle of friends at the Gryffindor table. Tony thought about joining them, but it was Loki he wanted to talk to now.

"What is that invisibility spell you use?" he hissed at the older Slytherin. "Can you teach it to me?"

Loki frowned. "The spell itself is a family secret," he said. Then he peered at Tony thoughtfully. "But I can teach you how to counter it."

Tony nodded agreeably. It felt like tit for tat, after the revelation of what Jarvey was.

They found a quiet nook in the library, and Loki taught Tony the counterspell. It took a few tries, but Tony finally managed to cast it properly.

Once he did, he could tell that it had worked because the walls were suddenly crawling with spiders.

"Eugh!" said Tony.

They were maybe three or four inches in length, black as night, blacker, in fact. Tony couldn't see that they were reflecting back any light at all. Looking at them was like looking into the void.

"And what are those?" he asked Loki, pointing at them.

Loki made a thoughtful noise and performed the counterspell himself.

"Oh," Loki said, equally startled, if not quite as expressive about it. "Void spiders. What are they doing here, I wonder?"

"Moving fast," Tony commented. "Spreading out everywhere. From a central location, do you think?"

Loki narrowed his eyes at them. "Shall we find out?"

"Do they bite?" Tony asked.

"Not generally," Loki said. "But they do feed on magic. In time, conceivably, they could eat away Hogwarts' defenses."

"Well," said Tony, "then let's definitely find out where they're coming from."

They followed the spiders backwards, Tony occasionally swatting one away from his arm holster, or Loki from his wand hand. But the background radiation of the castle, and the library, seemed to be enough that the spiders weren't insistent about those particular sources of magical energy.

The spiders led them back to a stack of books that stood on the checkout desk, waiting to be properly tagged and labeled.

Ice ran through Loki's veins as he read the titles.

"Potions of Deception," he read. "By Amora Incantare. Odin sent these."

"Your dad?" Tony asked, eyes widening.

"I suspected as much when our family spell was used to conceal these spiders. Thor wouldn't do such a thing. Nor would my mother. But the Minister..."

Tony sighed. "I'm sorry, Loki," he said.

"So am I," Loki said. "Clearly Odin is not at all to be trusted." His eyes fell on his wand, the tip shaking just slightly. "Must I take down my father? Is he truly my father? Are we destined to fight until one of us falls?"

Tony took his arm, pulling him away from the spiders. "Nope. We shape our own destinies and if you don't want to, it won't happen."

Loki looked around him like he could find the solution to his troubles among the spiders skittering across the floor. "I already know what you think of the whole affair," he told Tony. "But I need to know more. I must speak to Heimdall."

"He'll be up here for class in a couple days."

"Not in a couple of days. Now."

"He's in the forest, though. The Forbidden Forest. Normally I'd say rules are made to be broken, but I'm pretty sure going into the Forbidden Forest right now is a Very Bad Idea."

"I cannot rest until I know what he meant by that letter."

"This is a stupid idea. Beyond stupid. I'm coming with you."

"No, you are the one who someone wants to kill."

"Everything in the Forbidden Forest wants to kill us both. Better two of us to stand against it all than one."

"Better both of us get eaten by acromantulas?"

"You know what I mean."

Loki rather thought he did. There was comfort in having Tony by his side as they walked out into the cool blue light that blanketed the grounds.

Comfort, but also other things, less comfortable. Loki was suddenly incredibly aware of who Tony was, what he was capable of, not just his mind but the compactly athletic body that Loki usually only came this close to in the air. They'd been in proximity to each other for the last few days, and Loki felt an unidentifiable tension that was quickly becoming unbearable.

He fumbled for a topic of conversation.

"The moon is bright tonight," Loki commented, then immediately wanted to slap himself in the face.

Tony looked up. "Yeah, you think it's full?"

Loki thought back to the astronomy homework. "I think it is."

Tony stared up at it for a moment before saying, "I wonder what Bruce is up to right now."

Loki felt startled, and a strange little twist of disappointment, that Tony was not as caught up in this moment as Loki was.

"Probably sleeping," Loki replied bitterly, "not that anyone would care if he wasn't. It's a conspiracy. You see a Ravenclaw wandering the halls after hours, you think 'Probably got too wrapped up in a book and lost track of time.' Hufflepuff? 'oh, maybe they're going to go see to their sick owl.' But a Slytherin? A Slytherin has to be up to no good. It's no wonder we learn to be sneaks and liars. Everyone expects us to be anyway."

Tony looked at him thoughtfully.

"Dump enough expectations on one person," he said, "and you either learn to be all of them or start telling people to stuff it. And only one of those is sustainable."

Loki wondered what telling his father to stuff it would be like.

Loki called Heimdall's name into the dark woods. The centaur appeared as if he had been merely standing backstage, waiting for his cue.

"Young Loki Odinson," he greeted. "What business do you have with me?"

"You sent that note," Loki said. "You told me I am destined to become the Firebrand. I need to know more."

Heimdall's face was impassive. "I know only what the stars tell me."

Then Tony huffed. "So it doesn't have to be him. I mean you never said it was him, in the letter. In fact, all you said was that the stars told you to say stuff. So, the stars could have told you to lie."

"The stars hold only truth."

Loki's face fell.

Tony snorted. "Truth is flexible. Any good businessman knows that. And I'm pretty sure you know that."

"Perhaps so, young Anthony Stark."

Tony thought of what mixing truth and lies led to, and where the blame fell in cases of ambiguity. The nearest innocent bystander, often enough.

"What are you thinking, Tony?"

Tony laughed joylessly. "Lots of things. None of them pleasant."

Loki lay awake in the big bed in his dormitory, different moments from the night playing over and over in his head.

"The moon is bright tonight," he muttered to himself. "What kind of idiotic twaddle..."

"You think it's full? ...I wonder what Bruce is up to right now."

Wait.

Loki couldn't believe he hadn't realized it before.

"So just don't go digging up my bones, and I won't bother yours."

There were so many possibilities to make use of this. Loki rolled out of bed and padded quietly one room over, to jab Tony in the shoulder and hiss at him.

"Jarvey has been telling you that Bruce is a werewolf. There's a werewolf at Hogwarts."

"You're too smart," Tony said, nose wrinkling, but not like it really bothered him.

"We could use this as leverage. We could gain the trust of the Ministry, get inside, with information like this."

Tony looked more awake now. "No. We can't do that to Bruce." Tony's eyes drilled into Loki. "You heard what I promised him, right? Do you go back on your promises? Do you out furry little geniuses to the Ministry to further your own goals?" He put a hand near his bag, where Jarvey, presumably, still slept.

"I never promised Banner anything. And how can we do anything else?"

"If you tell me it's just how Slytherins work, I'm gonna tell you to stuff it," Tony warned.

"Werewolves are unstoppable, Tony. And we need a foot in the door at the Ministry."

"We'll find one. And we'll do it without him. Maybe he's unstoppable, but that's just the kind of thing we need on our side. No, the best way to make use of a werewolf is to get him to trust you, and then aim him at people you don't like."

"How do you aim a werewolf?" Loki asked with a frown.

"Still working on it." Tony yawned. "Now let me sleep. My brain needs to reboot!"

"Needs to what?" Loki asked, but Tony had already fallen back asleep.

They all elected to visit Hogsmeade as planned the next day. Anything else would have been an enormous red flag that they were preparing for something big.

The Rhodeses weren't terrified, not at the moment, at least. Determined. Prepared. Anxious, certainly. But they didn't feel the need to all troop into the pet shop after Tony when he followed Loki in.

"Looking for anything in particular?" the woman behind the counter asked.

"An owl," Loki said immediately.

"Oh, we don't have many of those," she said, something reluctant in her tone. "We don't have the space. You'd do better to go to Diagon Alley for that."

"I'm not finicky," Loki said. "Are they healthy? Do they fly? Can they carry a piece of parchment to a specified recipient?"

"Yes, of course!" The woman looked a little affronted.

"Then I'm sure whatever owls you have will be fine."

The shopkeeper brought out a small cage, inside of which was a dark charcoal elf owl with angry-looking white eyebrows.

"He's a little foul-tempered," the shopkeeper said preemptively, as Tony's finger was straying towards the cage and nearly missed getting a savage nip.

Loki smiled softly at the creature. "He's perfect."

Tony remembered that feeling very well from when he'd first set eyes on You, an abused phoenix going through a premature molt who seemed to answer only to swears, many of which were preceded by the pronoun "you".

Dad had absolutely refused to have such a thing in the house. Mum had worn him down.

Focus, he told himself sternly. This is here and now, and it comes with its own set of problems.

"What're you going to name him?" he asked Loki as they left the shop. "I'd offer to help, but I think Pepper would flay me."

Still smiling, Loki looked at the little bird. "Ikol."

Tony snickered. "He is pretty ickle," he allowed.

"You're one to talk," Loki countered.

"Low, Lo."

"What can I say, I'm a Slytherin to the core."

They both thought about Loki speaking with the snake, the revelation of Loki's bloodline.

It wasn't as funny as he'd meant it to be, not anymore.

They headed into the Three Broomsticks for the comforting warmth. Many of the people of their years were already there. When Loki spotted Thor, he let out a deep sigh.

Tony gave him a curious look.

"Now that I have a better way of communicating without the Minister knowing," Loki said, hefting Ikol's cage, "I should warn Thor that he might be up to something."

Tony smirked. "Good luck wih that," he said.

"Thanks," Loki replied acidly. He went to pull Thor aside and hiss at him. "I need to talk to you," he said.

"If this is about that serpent," Thor began. Loki interrupted him.

"Forget the snake, Thor. What's done is done."

"Then why do you look so sour?"

"It's not about you. I just thought you should be informed."

Thor waited.

"Heimdall gave me a message about the Prophecy. About Seidrok. And you know how everyone interprets it. As if the Firebrand is mad for doing what he will do, for overthrowing the Fallen Ruler and toppling Wizard society. But if I am the Firebrand..."

"Do you truly think you are?" Thor asked.

"I'm beginning to," Loki said. "Because the Minister may be the Falling Ruler. Thor, be careful. I fear he is up to something sinister."

"What?"

"I don't know yet."

Thor frowned. "What is this, a new Slytherin plot to distract us from Quidditch? I did not think you would sink so low as to accuse our father - "

"YOUR father."

Thor sighed deeply. "Accuse the man who raised you, then, of a conspiracy you don't even know the purpose of!"

"You used to believe me when I told you things," Loki said disgustedly. "What happened?"

"You had to go and be a Slytherin!"

Loki glared."And what exactly is wrong with THAT all of a sudden? I thought we were finally past that!"

Thor huffed. "It's not that it's your House. It's that you ACT like one!"

"Has it escaped your notice that I am at home in my house?" Loki said in a tone that was dangerously soft. "That I was sorted into Slytherin for a reason? Because of who I am?"

"You could change!"

"You know something, Thor? I like who I am. I like how I act. I like seeing opportunities everywhere, and not hesitating to grab them! I like being a Slytherin! Because Slytherins get things done!"

"Do you ever ask yourself what kind of things?" Thor asked.

"Every day, Thor. Every bloody day! And do you know why?" His eyes drilled into Thor. "Because everyone else who sees my colors is asking themselves exactly the same question! Including you!"

"Maybe there's a reason!"

Loki seethed.

Tony appeared in front of Thor, faux-casually encroaching on the Gryffindor's personal space, pulling his attention before he spoke.

"Yeah, and maybe that's because it's a question everyone should be asking themselves," Tony told Thor. "We Slytherins, we ask ourselves the same thing, time and time again. But you, Odinson, Gryffindor, prime example of those who dare to be 'brave' without stopping to think, how often do you ask yourself?"

Tony may have been a year younger, but as a Quidditch captain, Thor was inclined to listen to him as a voice of authority. He seemed more than a little taken aback, but he was listening.

"What kinds of things do you do, Thor?" Tony continued. "When you killed that snake, what kind of impact did it have on the world? When you mock and belittle and bully your brother for being what he is, what kind of an act is that?"

Both Odinsons looked shocked at Tony's audacity. Thor gaped, then frowned, then opened his mouth again.

He was interrupted by Ikol giving a loud screech, and attempting to launch himself at Thor through the bars of his little cage.

"Don't bother," Loki told the bird. "He's not worth it."

Tony took Loki by the elbow. "Come on, Loki. We've got things to do."

Loki followed willingly enough, but he raised his eyebrows. "I thought you didn't like the classic Slytherin profile."

"I never said that," Tony objected, shaking his head. "I said I don't like expectations. So good for you."

Why was it that it took so little praise from Tony to make Loki glow right down to his snow-caked boots?

A/N: Happy Thanksgiving, y'all! Have more of The Story That Came Back From The Dead! If you're enjoying this story, please please please check out my novelist blog (irenewendywode on tumblr) as well as my fandom blog (qwanderer on tumblr). Maybe even buy one of my novels! Thanks eternally! ❤Q