A very long time ago - when I was still writing Keeping the Stars Apart - my beta, MKB challenged me to write her a story with no angst, no psychological trauma, and absolutely none of the lemony stuff. Just hearts and fluff and puppies and kittens. I did my best...
What I didn't know at the time was that this would be the ninth and final installment in the series. Harry's side of the story will continue for a while yet, but for now this is the end of Hermione and Loki's story. A huge thank you to all of you wonderful people who have stayed with me throughout. I hope it's been worth it.
This story takes place five years after the epilogue of "Of Oaths and Promises". Contains spoilers for earlier stories...
As usual, I do not own any of the characters from Thor or Harry Potter. Neither do I have any claim on Puff the Magic Dragon, or Norse Lullaby by Eugene Field.
For Miss Kitty Black - who is endlessly patient, but never fails to tell me how it is...
On a warm summer evening, Frigga ponders her legacy.
Summer evenings on Asgard, must be the longest in the Nine Realms thought Frigga as she strolled through her garden, enjoying the heady, almost overpowering sweetness that comes over a garden at the end of a long hot day. It was well past the supper hour, yet still the sun refused to sleep. From what she could hear, the sun wasn't the only one.
From the orchard beyond the garden, she could hear the crack of wooden swords, as the King of Asgard coached his two young sons with their toy weapons. Hellions the two of them Bjarte and Brandt, twins, born in the heart of winter six years ago, and a sore trial to their mother, but the best of friends. If nothing else, Frigga thought with a smile, lessons had been learned from the traumas of the past. From the start, her eldest son had made it clear. Both boys were equally precious, equally loved, but Bjarte was the eldest by a full half hour, and would succeed his Father when the time came. Knowing nothing else, Brandt would find his own path as he grew up.
From the apartments of her eldest son and his wife Jane, came the fretful wail of their youngest, a daughter, Lyra, born as spring turned to summer that year. She was generally a placid child - with her mother's dark eyes and her father's pale hair, she would be a striking woman one day. For now however, she was cutting her first tooth, and the whole palace knew about it... Frigga knew that the babe had been fretful and demanding all day, no doubt one of the reasons that Thor had taken the boys out to the orchard. Smiling, Frigga decided that it might not be a bad idea to drop in to see her daughter and granddaughter, to see if she could give the poor woman a rest.
Almost two hours later the sun was well and truly set when Frigga finally left Thor and Jane's apartments. All three children were finally in bed, and asleep, although three of G'amma's best bedtime stories and countless cuddles had been required first. She had sat for a few minutes taking a glass of wine with Thor and Jane, but exhausted, Jane was starting to fade visibly, so she had taken care not to overstay her welcome. Now the palace was starting to quiet, although she could hear in the distance, a group of the younger warriors becoming rowdy in their cups.
Jane and Thor were an odd couple, she thought. On the surface, one would expect that her eldest son loud, extrovert - brash in his youth - who's every emotion still played across his handsome face, would have a fiery and intense marriage. What else from a man who could summon thunder and lightning from the sky. Yet Jane and Thor rubbed along as quietly and as affectionately as a couple married for many centuries.
Now Loki and Hermione, they were an entirely different matter. Odd really, for fire and passion, one would not normally think of Asgard's cool, reserved Ice Prince, and his brilliant, bookish witch. But there it was. For good or ill their relationship crackled and sparked, and on the rare occasions that they truly fought, the entire palace shook with it. Their fights rarely lasted long though, and their reconciliations sometimes caused nearly as much disruption. Both family and servants had quickly learned that one knocked and waited before entering their chambers, no matter what time of the day or night t. But they were a wonderful couple, fiercely and passionately devoted to each other, and their children.
Frigga, not ready to sleep yet, wandered out onto one of the balconies that encircled the palace. Leaning against one of the pillars, she looked across the city and up to the vast, spectacular wheel of stars above.
Can you see them Odin? she thought sadly. Everything that you fought against, everything that you tried so desperately to control. All the damage that you did. You were so desperate to keep Loki in his place, to coerce Thor into marrying Sif – to stop him marrying a mortal at all costs. When all the time, the answer was here. These two amazing women, a family finally at peace with itself, and a palace full of your grandchildren. Perhaps, in spite of everything this will be your legacy to Asgard...
Odin had never awoken from the sleep which followed Thor's assumption of the throne. He had slept for almost two years, before, one night, slipping quietly into eternity. It was not the death he would have chosen Frigga thought sadly. Odin was always destined to die gloriously in battle - he would be so disappointed. Without a great deal of conviction, she hoped that their granddaughter would not be too hard on him in Hel.
"Now dragons live forever but not so little boys...
Giants rings and dragons wings make way for other toys..."
Frigga was jolted out of her musings, by a light tuneful tenor coming from the floor above. The choice of song though, was interesting. It was one of Hermione's Midgardian songs and a firm favourite with all of her grandchildren. She was unable to resist tiptoeing quietly upstairs. Entering the corridor where Loki, Hermione and their little family had their apartments, Frigga could not suppress an indulgent smile.
Those used to seeing Loki around the court, would be shocked she thought. Loki was happy, comfortable in his skin these days, but his formal persona as Thor's Chancellor and Mage still tended to be chilly and a little withdrawn, very different from the man that his family knew in private. The Lord Chancellor of Asgard was barefoot, and bare chested, dressed only in a pair of loose sleeping trousers. Wrapped in a soft fleece blanket that had once wrapped his father, Loki's infant son, Haldor was fussing softly into his father's shoulder. Gentle, practiced hands soothed him, as Loki sang. Now the song had changed though, and Frigga drew in her breath as nostalgia hit her. She hadn't sung that song in almost eight hundred years...
"The sky is dark and the hills are white
As the storm-king speeds from the north to-night;
And this is the song the storm-king sings,
As over the world his cloak he flings:
"Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;"
He rustles his wings and gruffly sings:
"Sleep, little one, sleep."
Frigga remembered with vivid clarity, singing that very lullaby to baby Loki well over a thousand years ago. Even as he grew older, and more independent he still loved it when he was sick, or hurt, or on the many occasions that his sleep was wracked with nightmares. Thinking about it, he had seemed particularly prone to nightmares as a child, and she wondered whether subconsciously he had been aware of having been abandoned as an infant. Maybe that was the root of the desperate insecurity that had so blighted his early life, and led to such disastrous consequences.
"On yonder mountain-side a vine
Clings at the foot of a mother pine;
The tree bends over the trembling thing,
And only the vine can hear her sing:
"Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;
What shall you fear when I am here?
Sleep, little one, sleep."
She would rather have died than admit it, Frigga thought, for mothers are not supposed to have favourites; but from the moment Odin had placed the tiny bundle in her arms, she had loved Loki with a fierce and protective devotion that had overwhelmed her at times. In the troubled years of his early adulthood, this love had brought her little pleasure, only tears, frustration and a stubborn, determination to protect him no matter what the cost. Seeing him now, relaxed, happy and fulfilled filled her heart almost to bursting point. Clearing her throat softly she sang...
"The king may sing in his bitter flight,
The pine may croon to the vine to-night,
But the little snowflake at my breast
Liketh the song I sing the best, -
"Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;
Weary thou art, anext my heart;
Sleep, little one, sleep."
Loki didn't so much as start as he heard her voice, he had probably known she was there from the beginning. He turned slowly, reluctant to disturb his warm and sleepy son.
"Little Snowflake mother – really?" his smile was warm, and welcoming. He indicated Haldor who was now fast asleep. "This is called divide and conquer. Lilja was determined not to go to sleep and so was this one. In the end they were just keeping each other awake, so Hermione got The Tales of Beadle the Bard and I got..."
"...Puff the Magic Dragon" his mother finished with a smile.
Lilja was their daughter, now just five years old and the absolute image of her father. She had been named for Lilly, the mother of Harry Potter, who had sworn himself to one hundred years of service to Hela Goddess of the Dead in exchange for the life of the mortally wounded Loki whom Harry had loved like a brother. His body now rested in state in an anti chamber of the Throne Room, under careful guard, both military and magical, for both Hermione and Loki had set powerful wards to protect him. It was unusual for a day to go past without at least one member of the family going to sit with him for a few minutes, and Lilja, who had known the tale from the very first, loved to go in every night to say goodnight to "Unca' Harry".
Like her Father, Lilja had inherited the Frost Giant appearance, but had been able to control it from the very beginning. There had been a great deal of concern when Hermione had announced her pregnancy, for there was no precedent for mortal women carrying half frost giant infants with any success, but their combined magical abilities, and the power of the apple given to her at her marriage, seemed to have protected her. She had carried and birthed both children with relative ease, and even now, Frigga knew that they had not ruled out the possibility of more children.
With a kiss for her son, and her sleeping grandson, Frigga left them, heading to her chambers.
She had been wrong.
The real legacy was the love that now permeated every wall of this building.
Her legacy...
THE END...