Three days passed like that, in the quiet contemplation of the forest and its denizens, which was followed by the intricate craft of guiding and bending magic. Freyja was a patient teacher; her tone never wavered from the kind, slightly mischievous voice in the slightest, even when it took him three hours just to feel the ants burrowing their way underground.
His lessons continued much the same way as on the first day, and sometimes, Harry saw other Vanir watching him study, their curious glances and furtive whispers catching his attention every now and then. Today, however, turned out to be different, for Loki joined them on their way out of the village.
The Trickster god had been silent most of the way, biting down on his apple and gently whispering to the snake he had picked up. Sighing as he heard the serpent comment on his hairstyle for the thirteenth time since they had set out, Harry paused and turned towards the pair as he dismantled Freyja’s latest illusion.
“If you don’t shut up about my hair, I will feed you to an eagle.”
Silence echoed between them all as everyone turned towards him with surprise. Loki’s eyes were wide, while Freyja looked like she was seeing him for the first time once again. But what delighted was the way the serpent jerked away from him, the momentary fear that radiated off the creature taking off some of that irritation.
“You speak serpent-tongue, impressive for a mortal,” Loki commented, his eyes glittering with thoughts unspoken as the god finally straightened up somewhat, “Where does a Midgardian go about finding such rare talents as you do, I wonder?”
“Out of gilded castles and friendly forests,” he shook his head, giving back some of the bite with his voice as he turned away, “Keep that snake silent, will you, it has eaten more of my head than frogs since this morning.”
“Did you perform a sacrifice for this power, Harry?” Freyja asked curiously, her eyes looking at him brightly as she took a step close, clasping her arms together, “Could you share such magic with us Vanir?”
“Would that I could, Freyja,” he sighed, giving her a morose smile, “But I got this power because of a course on my soul…which, funnily enough, did involve a sacrifice and a ritual.”
Perhaps she sensed his mood, or she had glimpsed some of his past, the same way she knew of Snape and Dumbledore, but Freyja did not push. Conceding to his unspoken answer with a nod, she stepped back and waved a hand to conjure another illusion as power gathered at her fingertip-
“Hah! You cow the mortal!”
Of course.
“If you speak another time before the sun sets, I will turn you into a slug and stick you to a tree,” he hissed, eyes narrowing at the smug and entirely too mouthy snake, “We will see then if a bird likes to peck at you like you have been pecking at my brains all day.”
The creature tensed as its tongue rapidly flicked into the air—perhaps to judge his intent—and Harry gave it as serious a glare as possible, letting the threat hang between the-
“Bold words, Midgardian,” Loki interjected, raising an immaculate eyebrow as he uncrossed his arms, “However, can you back them up with actions rather than bluster?”
“I have killed spiders that are ten times bigger than this little string of scales,” he stared down at Loki, and something passed between them in that moment, an unseen spark colliding between two sets of green eyes. Shrugging as he looked at the white snake, Harry continued, “A talking belt is probably the least threatening thing I have seen in my life.”
That earned him a sharp chuckle from the Trickster. “Then let us test it. A spar, here and now.”
Freyja sighed, long-suffering as ever. “By the Norns, must every lesson end with a contest?”
Neither so much as glanced at her, though. Loki stepped forward, and the air thickened, seething with the weight of his magic. In response, Harry braced, that old rhythm from battle sliding into place, the one honed against Death Eaters, dragons, and worse. In a way, Harry knew this had been coming, sooner rather than later…and he was thankful for it. The quietness of nature and this realm was getting to him after years of nothing but fighting.
Besides, the bragging rights would be insane if he got the upper hand on Loki.
The ground thrummed as Loki struck first, his arm lashing outward in a casual sweep, seiðr uncoiling like a whip of molten emerald that cracked through the clearing with enough force to topple a tree. Harry shifted his stance and brought his hand up, power bleeding through his fingers until it coalesced into a translucent wall of silver energy. The whip smashed into it, splintering the shield into shards of light that evaporated on the breeze, the impact driving him back a step, boots grinding into the grass.
“Not entirely pathetic,” Loki said, amusement lacing his voice as power surged through his fingers again.
Harry’s lip curled as his magic rose like a wave in response, heartbeating faster by the second as he felt Loki’s power blanket the area in a smothering, deceptive haze. “You’re going to have to do better than fireworks if you want to impress me.”
The Trickster grinned wider, runes carving themselves into the dirt at his feet. They flared blue-white, and at once a column of fire spiraled upward, twisting like a serpent and roaring down on him. The grass beneath them instantly withered to ash at the supernatural heat radiating off the flames, and Harry thrust both palms forward, cold surging to life, an arctic gale dragging water from the very air until jagged spears of ice screamed outward to meet the inferno. Steam billowed outwards as the clearing vanished in a hiss, and one spear hardened further, sharpened by his will, tearing straight for Loki’s chest.
It struck true, but Harry was turning before the blood even bloomed over Loki’s tunic. Illusions bloomed like petals in the mist, a dozen Lokis charging at once, every face smirking with identical malice and brandishing twin knives. In response, Harry spat into the dirt and stomped his heel, raw power rippling outward in a pulse that turned into blazing white fire. The fakes wilted and burned away in shimmers of vapors and golden magic, revealing the real Loki mid-air, a kick already too close to his body to avoid.
Harry twisted, dragging the earth upward. Stone surged into a serpent that lunged between them, and even before Loki’s leg shattered the barrier, Harry had apparated away. Alighting down on the ground with his magic already transfiguring the broken fragments into tiny explosives, Harry was taken aback when Loki just clenched his fist and crushed the shrapnel to dust.
“Clever,” Loki said, green eyes glinting with amusement as he dusted off his shoulder. “But not enough.”
Chains of golden light burst from his hand, rune-script writhing across the links as they hissed forward like striking vipers. Once again, Harry vanished with silence, reappearing above his opponent with both hands crackling. “Stand still for once,” he snarked as lightning split down his arms and forked into three jagged bolts that tore toward the Trickster.
“Lightning? Have you forgotten who my brother is?” Loki only laughed as his form flickered, splitting into three bodies. Two burned away in bursts of sparks as the bolts struck, the last remaining untouched, smirk intact, a sigil blazing into existence before him.
The runes detonated, a globe of force erupting from the center. Harry crossed his arms and took it head-on even as a shield blossomed between them—not quick enough, however. The impact hammered into him, blasting him across the clearing. Rolling with the momentum, Harry let a bit of his animagus nature play out, his fingers turning into claws that he jammed into the earth. Stopping within a moment, Harry glared up at Loki’s pristine, untouched appearance and spat blood into the soil with a feral grin.
Sparks crawled over his skin as he dug deeper, ringing forth a deluge of magic, and the air around him visibly wavered as he flooded the glade with his power. A moment later, the ground churned, the trees twisted into themselves as he crushed everything against itself. Loki’s eyes widened at the display, and golden runes appeared around him, as tons of rubble and matter shot towards him from all sides, intending to crush him. The necklace at his chest thrummed with heat as he waved his hand in a circle above him, remembering Dumbledore and Voldemort both as cursed fire appeared at the tips of his fingers, before it spread through the storm of wood and dirt surrounding Loki.
A moment later, he felt his victory dim as Loki’s power climbed another notch, and the god stepped sideways through all the burning debris and the fiendfyre, reappearing outside the trap with just a few scuffles on his clothes and his skin slightly red from the heat. Before Harry could make sense of the feat the Norse deity had just performed, the trickster’s grin sharpened as he cut another rune with a flick of his wrist, and the world shifted—the clearing dissolving into a wasteland of cracked stone and burning skies, the air thick with ash and iron.
Harry swore and stretched his senses, feeling for the discordant hum. There—off-beat against the rhythm of the world. Loki may be the master at illusions, but the fiednfyre had clearly shaken him if he could find the shatterpoint so easily, he thought with a smirk and clenched his fist. “Break.”
The wasteland shattered, the forest snapping back into place as Loki clicked his tongue in mock annoyance.
“You learn fast.”
“War does that to a man,” Harry shot back, creating his own illusion—not the Vanir way, for he knew it was a fool’s hope to confound Loki with it. A dozen copies of him shimmered off his body, and each of them raised its hand, magic rising in tandem inside each of the copies.
Spells shot in from every side towards the god. Bone breakers, blood-boilers, blasters, and things that would give nightmares for weeks to come to any human.
However, Loki was no mere human.
His hand snapped up, shields appearing in the air with runes inscribed on them, and blocking every spell successfully. Yet, Harry took note of the small grunt that left the god at that, and Harry roared with it, silver fire surging from his arms in reply. The flames swirled upon themselves, the two torrents colliding in the middle of the clearing. The impact ripped the ground apart, stones cracking, trees bowing, air bending under the pressure as the already ruined glade was further destroyed in the show of power.
For a heartbeat, only the fire was visible where Loki had stood, and Harry grit his teeth as he felt the magical barrier resisting his fire, Loki’s presence still lingering past the protection. Then, every bit of the ground and debris around them flash-froze, and Harry gasped as he felt the frozen air enter his lungs. Directing the flames to surround him as the temperature sharply dove below freezing within a moment, reaching well past that the next, Harry cast a warming charm upon himself as frost crept up his legs.
Glaring at Loki as the Norse deity stepped out from behind his cracked barriers, Harry held his ground, chest heaving, sweat freezing across his body as even his fire failed in front of the absolutely ludicrous amount of magic Loki was pumping into the atmosphere. Loki’s smirk burned brighter as their eyes met, and another rune circle spun into life, sigils layering into a spear of condensed light that thrummed with killing power.
As his body finally unfroze from the thin layer of frost upon him, Harry wrenched slabs of rock from the soil and the destroyed glade, sending them in a barrage towards Loki at speeds that almost broke sound. In response, Loki just teleported away, appearing to his right with a spear of ice forming in his hands, the water around them rising to meet to the god’s demand. The weapon was thrust towards his face an instant later, its end sharp and jagged enough to rend flesh from bones. Grunting as he bent sideways, Harry reinforced his arm and grabbed onto eh weapon, sending thousands of volts of electricity down the thing, and a grin came over his face as he heard Loki grunt as the man was blown back, the spear shattering unde the stress of too much magic and energy coursing through it.
As they both straightened up, emerald eyes met jade ones, and Harry’s bloodied lips spread into a smile as he saw the smoke rising off his opponents, the blistered right hand slowly healing before his gaze. Loki’s eyes narrowed in distaste, and he blurred forward, suddenly within arm’s reach, hand glowing with seiðr. He met it head-on, pure magic flaring along his palm, and the two energies slammed together in a blast that rattled the bones of the earth. For an instant, they were locked, green eyes clashing, power grinding and sparking between them as the very air distorted with the raw, untamed power erupting between them.
“Not bad for a mortal,” Loki murmured, half-laughter, half-threat, eyes aglow with emerald light as his voice shook slightly.
“Not bad for a god,” Harry growled back, wild grin splitting his bloodied face.
As if on cue, the air between them became supercharged with magic and heat, and the backlash hurled them both apart, skidding across the dirt in opposite directions. Before they could do anything else, though, a familiar power buffeted their senses in a tsunami of controlled might.
Golden light shone through the area as Freyja’s hand rose, wards blooming across the trees—those that remained at least—like a dome of sunlight, sealing the fury in place. Her voice cut clean through the smoke as Loki and he both straightened up, realising that arguing was futile now.
“Enough,” her stern voice rang clear and loud as Harry healed himself and cleaned his tunic, while Loki dusted his sleeve with exaggerated calm, smirk untouched.
“Well then,” he said smoothly, “perhaps you’re not entirely dull after all, Midgardian.”
Harry snorted, ash smearing his cheek. “Glad I could keep Your Grace entertained.”
Freyja pinched the bridge of her nose, muttering, “By the Norns, the pair of you will bring this forest down before you learn to sit still.”
Loki chuckled and turned away, seiðr fading from his fingers. “Next time, Potter, we won’t stop at toys.”
Harry let his arms fall, power still humming in his veins, alive in a way he hand’t felt since the war. The old rhythm was back, dangerous and intoxicating, and he welcomed it. Freyja may have stopped their fight, but both Loki and he knew in that moment, that one day they would both pick it up where they had left it right now.
And it would be glorious.
“Now where do you think you are going, Harry Jamesson?” Freyja’s voice cut through his thoughts, and he turned towards his teacher, pointing towards the riverside.
“To bathe?” he half-asked, half answered, only for her to raise an eyebrow at him, daring him to continue that thought. Having learned his lesson about those expressions years ago with his Daphne, Harry sighed and dropped his head, “or not.”
“That’s right,” she nodded imperiously, before pointing at the clearing he had ripped apart in an effort to injure Loki, “You are going to right all of this, only then will you be permitted to leave this glade and return to the hall.”
“Yes, mam,” he sighed again, turning his head up to look at the evening sky, and cursing Loki with all of his being as he realized that the god had already made his exit—and left him to face Freyja’s command. Alone.
‘Fuck you, Loki.’
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“You have picked up our language relatively fast compared to most mortals I have known in the past,” Loki commented two days later, when they were somehow both sharing a canteen of mead, away from Freyja’s watchful, judging gaze. Sitting underneath Vanaheim’s evening sun and watching the crimson rays stretch across the horizon, Harry hummed and leaned back against the rough bark, one leg extended before him on the branch.
“Translation magic,” he answered after a moment, taking the container and drinking deeply. “It can help you converse, and with a minor tweak, imprint the language into your brain.”
“Fascinating,” Loki muttered, chomping down on some fried crackers he had smuggled out of the kitchens. “Sounds like a bastardized version of All-Speak.”
“Of course you would call it a bastard,” Harry sighed, shaking his head. “Do you really have some sort of problem with mortals, or is it just your personality?”
“Please, as if the mortals deserve my ridicule,” Loki laughed, and unexpectedly, Harry chuckled along at the words. However, even more surprisingly, Loki’s voice sobered for a moment as he continued. “It’s just you mortals keep finding stupid and stupider reasons to engage in conflict: resources, language, culture. Last I checked, your species was discriminating based on pigmentation. I understand the hatred based on one culture being problematic to everyone else, but pigmentation? That is why I regard Midgardians as nothing more than animals who can speak.”
“You care enough to feel offended by that?”
“By Father’s beard, no,” Loki made a face as if he had put Ron’s socks under his nose, and he gulped down the remaining alcohol like a man dying of thirst before glaring at him as he nodded his head back toward the village. “But for some reason, Mother tells me to find good in your species, and Thor keeps going on and on about Midgard.”
“That’s weird,” Harry nodded along, doing his best not to laugh out loud.
“Tell me about it,” Loki agreed, before looking at him. “What was the war on your planet about?”
“Not pigmentation, I can tell you.” He smiled ruefully, conjuring a mug of mead directly into his hands, imagining the dust-laden interiors of Aberforth’s bar. “We magicals had been in hiding from the non-magicals for centuries by the time I was born, and my generation got free from the shadow of war. One of my friends—sister, if not by blood then by our bond, really—became our Head of State. I distanced myself from politics for the most part, since my name carried a lot of weight behind it in magical circles… and she… she began to pass some radical laws. She had good intentions at the start, and certainly got some results… but with time, that path became warped. Long story short, before we knew it, she had exposed our existence to the wider world in an effort of cooperation and making the magicals more accepting and enforcing a joint effort for development and future cooperation.”
“I am assuming you went into hiding because of these ‘witch hunts’?” Loki asked, his voice uncharacteristically devoid of the snark that had existed for the last week.
“You assume correctly,” Harry nodded, sipping at his conjured mead before passing it to Loki.
“Then your friend was foolish,” he worded the thoughts that Harry had thought a thousand times before.
“She was,” he added one more to the count, “the war before changed us all in many ways. Her, moreso than others, I guess. But I think, somewhere, she believed that the muggles—the non-magicals—would honor their word. She gave them access to our society, ministry, forests, sharing knowledge about our culture, land, economy, heritage, and even the types of magics we could perform. Before cooperation could even be uttered at the United Nations, outrage erupted at the perceived “betrayal”. They realized then that Muggles only held sway over a fifth of the world, while we had hidden the other four. Skies for the dragons, seas for krakens, mountains riddled with goblin mines, entire valleys and forests warded for creatures their science had never named. To them it wasn’t coexistence—it was a revelation that we had fenced them into scraps while keeping the rest for ourselves. Within days, an ultimatum was given. Either we surrender ourselves in full, or we would be eradicated.”
“What happened to your friend?”
“She tried mediation, but by then it was already too late,” he sighed, “She had invented and given away enough advancements for them to see and know about our warded areas. Inspired by her, muggleborns who had faced discrimination across the world joined hands with muggles, not caring that public processions and ritual killings were being carried out by the faiths that decried magic. Coordinated raids, attacks on the fringe communities were carried out with impunity. Those who were captured…they suffered a fate worse than death. Experiments were carried out, and Muggle technology rapidly advanced under the guidance of the magicals who had defected or were captured. They had bombs, we had dragons. They had nuclear arsenals, we had fiendfyre and other apocalyptic spells. After the initial setback, once our own army was properly formed, we started to push them back. Within days, half the Earth was ruins…and then…he arrived.”
“The World-Eater.”
“Aye,” Harry spoke, anger burning inside his chest at the thought of the cosmic vampire, “He was attracted to the excessive amounts of energy released on Earth, and before we could even think of something that could save us, everything was turned to naught but dust and energy by him.”
“To be visited by that fiend,” Loki shuddered for a moment, “There is a rumour on Asgard that Father once fought against a weakened Galactus. Even then, it is said that he could only divert the monster away, not defeat it.”
“Even gods fall short of such power, then?” he asked, and Harry stopped right after that.
He had aimed for bite, but only bitterness slept through.
And Loki caught that instantly, the Trickster turning towards him with a frown as he crossed his arms, “Do not think of challenging Galactus even in your farthest dreams, Harry Jamesson. He has devoured entire star systems into extinction, leaving husks and death in his wake more times than there are leaves on this tree.”
“Would you stay silent if someone destroyed Asgard?”
“I would, because survival is not victory,” Loki’s voice was cutting. “A graveyard does not care that you found another sky to breathe under.”
“It’s not like I am going to attack him,” he muttered, turning toward the sky. “I was planning to go to Earth, maybe travel the stars someday. Life’s long enough for that.”
“Are you magicals, long-lived?”
“The strong ones last a couple of centuries,” he shrugged, smirking at Loki. “But I’ve been breaking expectations since day one—I’ll outlast that.”
“Curse be upon us should such a day come to pass,” Loki snorted, and glaring at the god over the rim of his mug, Harry silently changed his hair color to a hot pink while creating a glob of water over his head at the same time. Loki swatted the water aside with a barrier and gave him a flat, really? look—then reached up, finally realizing his hair was flaming pink.
That night, Harry went to sleep happy. Knowing somewhere, in some afterlife, Sirius adn his father were having a mad laugh at him pranking the God of Tricks.
Of course, he was unaware of Loki’s revenge.
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