A little one-shot from the KTSA-verse for Valentine's day, written in response to a quotation sent to me by Ms Kitty Black. I had promised myself that I would leave Loki and Hermione alone for at least three months, but the Dawson's Creek quotation – Loki's definition of a soulmate – was too good to pass up.

As always, I have no claim on either JKR or Marvel's characters, and do this purely for my pleasure and your entertainment.

Enjoy. Merrick x

Loki was settled by the fire in his study that afternoon, a pot of tea by his side, happily immersed in a rare treatise on early Midgardian magic on his lap. He had already been there, in blissful solitude for several hours when a familiar tap came on the door, and his daughter slipped inside, not waiting for an invitation.

"I thought I might find you in here. You look very peaceful…"

He smiled, reaching out a hand to take hers, drawing her closer, until she perched on the arm of his chair, leaning against his shoulder. "I'm taking refuge from the chaos. Weddings in our family can never take place quietly. Your mother and I had the best intentions about not having any fuss, and just close family and friends, but Gamma and Uncle Thor still managed to turn it into a major production."

"It's very romantic though. Poor Aunty Sif having to wait all that time for Uncle Harry to wake up. She must love him very much. Gamma says that they are soulmates."

Her father smiled. "I hope so. It's a long time to be married to someone that isn't"

"What is a soulmate? Haldor says that it's just someone that you love, but it's more than that isn't it?"

Loki closed his book and huffed thoughtfully. "That's a big question little one. I hope you're not planning on looking for yours anytime soon. There's plenty of time for that…." He reached out to pull her down into the chair beside him, waiting until she had arranged her legs comfortably across him in her favourite position. "You see a soulmate... Well, it's like a best friend, but more. It's the one person in the world that knows you better than anyone else. It's someone who makes you a better person…. Actually, they don't make you a better person, you do that yourself because they inspire you.

A soulmate is someone who you carry with you forever. It's the one person who knew you and accepted you and believed in you before anyone else did or when no one else would. And no matter what happens, you'll always love them. Nothing can ever change that... Does that make sense?"

His daughter was quiet for a moment. "That…. That's very special. Lucky Aunty Sif to meet someone like that. Did you meet your soulmate Daddy?"

Loki thought back for a moment remembering his and Hermione's earliest years together, troubled, challenging times when it seemed sometimes that it had only been her love that had held his shattered pieces together. "Oh yes. I met my soulmate"

A small hand crept into his, green eyes turned to his, cautiously sympathetic. "What happened to her Daddy?"

"I married her sweetheart"

"Mama?" Loki nodded.

Lilja frowned, clearly trying to equate the romantic concept of soulmates with the more prosaic concept of her parents. To be sure they were fond of one another, but soulmates?

"Oh…"

Loki studied his daughter's profile with affectionate amusement. Aesir children grew quickly in the first fifty or so years of life, gradually slowing as they reached their first century. His daughter had just begun the vexed process of becoming a woman, a process that would take at least another four hundred years to fully complete. She wouldn't be considered truly mature until she was past her first millennia. Plenty of time to consider the complex questions of romantic relationships. "Are you alright little one?"

She nodded, turning the conversation to other topics, but the small frown between her brows remained.

ooo0ooo

"Gamma?"

Frigga had been discussing seating arrangements for the upcoming wedding with Thor's Steward when Lijya found her. Catching her Grandmother's eye, Lilja seated herself comfortably on a nearby bench and waited for her to finish her conversation, filching a handful of thornfruit from one of the platters already set for supper..

Dismissing the Steward, Frigga came and joined her granddaughter. "Were you looking for me sweetheart?"

Lilja nodded, leaning comfortably against her Grandmother. Next to her father, Gamma was probably her favourite person in the world. She was never too busy to talk, and when asked nicely, told the best stories, about Papa and Uncle Thor when they were little boys. It was hard to imagine them as two very naughty boys, causing havoc in the palace, but Lilja supposed that it must be true.

"Gamma, you know you said that Uncle Harry and Aunty Sif were soulmates…"

"Yes little one…"

"I didn't quite know what you meant, so I asked Papa, and he explained it to me…. But…"

Frigga smiled. Loki had mentioned the conversation to her over supper the previous evening, and she was curious to see what it was that had bothered her granddaughter so much. "Go on…"

"When he explained it, I recognised what he meant – from books and things. But then he said that Mama was his soulmate… And that doesn't seem right somehow."

Frigga stroked the glossy dark curls at her shoulder with a smile. "Oh yes. I would say that your parents are most definitely soulmates. Of that I have no doubt. Why that face?"

"Because what he spoke of is true love. And to love like that – a love to sing songs of, is to burn for love, to love against the whole world. Like Juliet, or Eloise, or Isolde. Not to kiss each other on the cheek over breakfast, and squabble over stupid family stuff. How can that be true love?"

Frigga laughed. "Oh my dear child. Before you were born, your parents' love story would have provided enough romance to satisfy even your favourite Midgardian storytellers. Have they never told you the story of how they met?" Lilja shook her head. "Maybe you are still a little young, for not all of us come out of the tale well – at least at first. No doubt they will tell you when they're ready"

Lilja pondered this for a moment, clearly still unconvinced. "What about you Gamma, and Grandfather Odin?"

Frigga shook her head. "There are different kinds of love child. There is the kind of love which hits you like one of your Uncle's thunderbolts, and is over as quickly. That is infatuation, and you should beware it for it is the curse of the young. Then there is the love to sing songs of as you so beautifully put it, a love that abides and endures against all odds, enriching all that it touches. The kind of love that your parents, and your Uncle Thor and Aunt Jane found – for they too had many obstacles to overcome in their early years." She turned the marriage ring on her finger. "But there is another kind of love. The love of two that come together – not by their own choosing, but by the will of others.. But building a life and a family together, standing beside one another for thousands of years makes a different kind of love. Quieter, steadier, less intense. I was very fond of your Grandfather child, but no. He was never my soulmate. When the moment came… When he forced me to choose between him and my sons, I did not hesitate, although it was a choice that I wished I had not had to make."

Lilja looked up into her grandmother's face and rubbed her cheek against her shoulder.

"I'm sorry I made you sad Gamma"

Frigga smiled, straightening her shoulders. "Bless you child, you could never make me sad… Now run along, for your mother will never permit you to sit down to supper dressed like that."

Lilja looked down at her rumpled leather tunic and trousers ruefully.

"Oh I wish I'd been born a boy like Bjarte and Brandt"

"Now why would you want that. As a girl you can be both boy and girl as the mood and circumstance dictate. Bjarte and Brandt and your brother can only ever be boys…. No, it is much better to be a girl. Now, run along…. You don't want to be late for supper do you?"

ooo0ooo

Lilja hadn't meant to pry.

She was putting a book onto one of the shelves in her parents chamber when something at the back blocked its way. Puzzled she adjusted the books on either side to try to widen the gap, but the book still refused to take its allotted place.

Hearing Lilja wrestling with her books, Hermione looked up from her desk, where she was working on what would probably be the first book on potion making ever written in Asgard. "Are you alright there sweetheart?"

Lilja was reaching to the back of the shelves, a look of intense concentration on her face. "I think there's something at the back here, a smaller book that is blocking this one. Ah! Got you, you little bugger."

Hermione rolled her eyes disapprovingly. Since Harry had awoken her children appeared to have acquired a distinctly Midgardian element to their vocabulary that she wasn't entirely happy about. Seeing the small book in her daughter's hand, she put down her pen and rose from her desk. "Oh my goodness, is that what I think it is?"

"Mama, are these yours?"

Hermione took the small fat sketchbook from her daughter's hands in wonder. "I haven't seen this for over a century, I must have put it there when we moved to Asgard, and it got pushed to the back."

"I forget sometimes, that you haven't always lived here. That you had a whole other life before Asgard and Papa and Haldor and I. You were a teacher weren't you. Was that why you came to Asgard. To be a teacher?"

Hermione looked perplexed. "I must have told you the story, surely?"

"You've told me bits and pieces, but never the whole tale."

"Well, it's a long story. Let's have a look at this sketchbook shall we, and I'll tell you some more."

Mother and daughter curled up together in the big armchair by the fireplace. Lilja loved these moments when she didn't have to share her mother with the rest of her big, loving, chaotic family, or her role as Master Potion Maker, or wife of the Lord Chancellor and Royal Princess of Asgard. Leaning her head on her mother's shoulder, she looked at the myriad of faces, crying out in delight when she caught sight of a familiar one. "Is that Uncle Harry? Is there something wrong with his eyes? He looks so young."

"He was young sweetheart, he must have been twelve years old when I drew that – in our terms, that's about your age, or a little younger, and his eyesight was terrible in those days. He wore glasses for years, until he had it fixed magically when he was older. The other boy on the page is Ron Weasley. It's funny - when I left school, I thought we would marry."

Her daughter looked at the sketch and pulled a face. "I'm glad you didn't Mama, I don't think I would have cared for him as my Papa."

Hermione laughed. "I saw sense in time thank goodness. I don't think I would have cared for him as a husband either."

As they worked their way through the book, Lilja listened fascinated and wide-eyed to the tales of her mother's early life. She found it very hard to imagine her elegant, scholarly mother, who rarely had a hair out of place, as a young freedom fighter, living wild with her friends, battling to defeat the forces of darkness against terrible odds. She ran a finger over the picture of the ruins of Hogwarts castle sadly.

"I remember this place. You took me there once, when I was very young. It didn't look like this then though."

Hermione shook her head. "No, this was just after the great battle, the defeat of Lord Voldemort. They called us The Golden Trio, the saviours of the wizarding world. But I wasn't that interested in being famous. I wanted to finish my education and go to work for the Ministry of Magic, help to put things right in our world."

"I thought you were a teacher?"

"I spent five or so years with the Ministry, before I realised that I was in the wrong place, which was when I went back to Hogwarts to teach, but even then I wasn't entirely happy."

"You were alone?"

"Yes. The Headteacher, and my great friend was a wonderful teacher, and had done great things in her life, but she had only ever been married to her job, and to the school. Much as I loved her, I dreaded the same fate would be mine. Then it all changed."

Lilja turned over a page and drew in a sharp breath, seeing the sketch of a young black haired man lying on a bed, clearly very sick. "Mama… is that… is that Papa?"

Hermione touched the page gently eyes soft with her memories. "It was so long ago now… I forgot what a terrible state he was in when we first met… the story is not mine to tell, but your father had a difficult young life, made some bad decisions and got into some dreadful trouble. As a result, your Grandfather Odin sentenced him to a terrible, terrible punishment – more so than he deserved"

Lilja's voice was barely more than a whisper… "Is that what happened to his back Mama?"

Hermione wrapped an arm around her daughter, pulling her closer. "Your Uncle Thor found him, rescued him, and brought him to the one place where he would be safe, find healing. To Hogwarts School."

"He brought him to you?"

"That's right. He was terribly sick, in mind and spirit, not just in body - and he had been stripped of his magic."

Her daughter paled, gasping in horror. "Stripped of his magic! Is that even possible?" As though seeking reassurance in the face of something so unimaginably dreadful, she conjured a small golden flame in the palm of her hand, watching it dance for a moment. Returning to the book, she turned another page, seeing her father, sleeping once again, but now clearly free from pain. Turning the page she read the words written on the back in her mother's careful hand and smiled in wonder.

"You were in love with him even then… That's so romantic". Continuing to look through the pages, she listened wide eyed to her parents' story from the world of Hogwarts, to the death of Odin and their first visit to Asgard.

"That must have been so hard… For you both. You gave up your whole life to come here… a different world, different culture, for love of him. I'd never really thought about it before. And so hard for Papa, coming back here after everything that happened to him. But you did it because you had each other."

Hermione sat quietly for a moment, watching her daughter, who was watching the flames dancing in the hearth."

"Does that answer your question sweetheart?"

"I don't … what do you mean?"

Hermione laughed, her eyes bright and happy. "Darling, your father and I do talk you know." Hearing the supper bell she rose, pulling her daughter to her feet. "Think of it this way. If a fire continues to blaze as fiercely as it does at the beginning, it will soon destroy all of its surroundings, and eventually burn itself out. She smiled wickedly. "Just because your father and I have taken a break from fighting the odds and battling the bad guys through the Nine Realms, it doesn't mean the fire has gone out…. we can still generate a fair amount of… heat when the moment arises."

Lilja pulled a face of utter disgust, pretending to reach…. "OH ewww… really Mama… must you? That's a mental image I could well do without – especially just before supper"

Hermione laughed, ruffling her daughter's curls. "I'm sorry darling. Sometimes the urge to mess with your head is just too good to resist." Picking up the sketch book from the chair, she pressed it into her daughter's hand.

Lilja looked up, wide eyed. "Mama?"

"Keep it Sweetheart… my gift to you"

Her daughter opened the front cover and gave a start. "How… how did you…?"

Written on the first page, in her mother's hand was a brand new inscription.

"For Lilja. Find the one that makes you realise three things:

…That home is not a place, but a feeling

…That time is not measured by a clock, but by moments

…And that heartbeats are not only heard, but felt and shared."

More Author's Notes:

More information on Hermione's sketchbook can be found in "Warning", part of "One Hand One Heart" in the KTSA-verse

Lilja's question to Loki about what happened to his soulmate was from my daughter, who asked me the same question when she was about six… she couldn't believe that her Daddy could be anything as romantic as my soulmate.

The final quotation is from one of my favourite Facebook pages – Wordporn, and is uncredited, so I hope that whoever said it will forgive my using it.

Happy Valentine's Day.

M x