Loki carried on like that for a number of days, just letting the Midgardians bring him food and drink, while his mind wandered through various phases and spheres, past and present. He had very nearly taken up residence in what they called the back garden, despite the place looking as though it had never known a gardener's care. Bowers of wild overgrown vines, complete devoid of leaf or blossom, looked as barren as he felt, and the cold stone in the garden's center quickly became his favored resting-place. He would find himself out there, skin deepening to a richer blue from the definite chill in the air, leaning on the rock, awaking only to find he'd slumbered the daylight hours away.

Eventually one of the Midgardians would come find him, and lead him back into the house with a scowl or a nod or a sigh, and bring him down to the lower levels which held the cook-fire and the traveling-fire. There would be a dish of this or that in front of him, and Loki would eat, though he rarely recalled having done so afterward. The contents of the dish would vanish, and he would retire to his room, which they had begun to alter somewhat for his comfort. The threadbare curtains were drawn open, allowing waves of deliciously cold air to seep through the glass-paned windows thus revealed. The thick, stuffy blankets were removed from the bed, replaced with sheets of cool linen, made from cloth fine enough to gain his notice. There were intricate designs worked into the hems, as well: the most detailed scenes, of longships riding ocean waves, and underneath them many-armed creatures of the deeps.

Despite his long, inadvertent sleep in the afternoons, he nevertheless fell into slumber again in the darkness, while his thoughts pitched and rolled through his mind like barks in a tempest. He would wake in the night, then, as the light of the moon streamed in through the windows, falling full on his bed, throwing the rest of the room into sharp relief.

This night, it illuminated the pointed ears of a large, furred animal, lying curled into an oval, just inside the door. For a moment Loki tensed, but as his eyes adjusted and his senses returned to him, he leaned back onto his pillow and sighed. It was only the wolf-mage, who apparently needed to assume his animal form regularly, and for extended periods: an effort to retain the skill, perhaps. Quiet, canine breathing issued from the place where the creature lay, in the long, slow rhythm of sleep.

With another long exhalation, Loki turned onto his side, away from the slumbering intruder, to stare out into the brilliant night.

The scene that played out before him was a familiar one. He was in one of the palace gardens, his mother's, walking sedately under the laden boughs of an orchard. The sun was pleasant for once, merely a delicate counterpoint to the first true chill of autumn.

The fruit depending from the limbs above him was lush, grown fat with the warm rains of summer, but finally turning now a burnished orange with the coming of the cold. They had been his favorite treat as a child, one gotten by stealth and trickery as often as by permission. With a lurch he felt his stomach growl at the memory, a ravenous hunger overtaking him. A particularly fine specimen appeared directly in his path, as though the tree were itself serving his need.

Without suspicion or guile, he lifted his hand to pluck the fruit from where it hung, but when he gave it a quick twist, the fruit refused to be parted from the branch. Scowling, he tugged at it again, harder, and still it clung stubbornly to the tree. He stared at it in disbelief, then watched in growing horror as his hand, now thorny and clawed, scrabbled to gain purchase on the smooth orb of the fruit where he had previously held it fast in agile fingers. The fruit frosted over and turned as transparent as ice, and the surface crazed with cracks before shattering into dusty fragments which fell, glittering, through his fingers.

In the last moments of his distress, before darkness claimed him, he heard his mother's voice cry out to him, though whether her alarm was for herself or for others, he could not tell.

Loki awoke to an odd sensation: something warm, moist and snuffling was jabbing him in the neck. A warmer light of pale gold was streaming through the windows, and it was coming at him from an strange angle. He tried to sit up, but he only twitched a bit; the movement was somehow wrong. The blanket was...no. That was their strange woven floor covering on his face.

The snuffling intensified, and Loki blinked, twisting his head to the side. He came nose-to-nose with...a wet nose on a long furry snout. With a huff of disgust, he turned his head away, only for the miserable creature to lick his cheek. In an instant he was on his feet, staring daggers at the mage in wolf form, breath heaving from both exertion and rage. He narrowed his eyes, a gesture that would have had the citizens of Asgard treading very carefully indeed, but the creature had the audacity to look him straight in the eye and wink.

By the time the wretched man had resumed his Midgardian appearance, Loki had unleashed a torrent of maledictions upon him and his eventual progeny to the seventh generation.

"Sorry," the man grinned, without the least hint of remorse. On the contrary, he looked, if such a thought could be borne, pleased with himself.

"What could possibly have possessed you to do such a thing?" Loki seethed.

"Well," Sirius answered, pausing in artful consideration, "I was told to make certain you were up this morning." The lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled, obliterating any semblance of seriousness he might have been attempting. "And, well, you were down," he finished, with a meaningful, mocking look.

"For the sake of your realm and all you hold dear in it," Loki swore, "do not attempt such foolishness a second time." A moment's pause, and the Midgardian's words finally struck him, and he peered at the man. "You require my presence," he stated. "Why?"

Sirius's expression grew more sober, although his eyes yet held a twinkle that Loki did not quite like. "It has come to our attention," he began pompously, "that you are dragging about the house with a frequency that suggests you are ready to leave it."

A knot formed at the center of Loki's chest at this proclamation. While he found being among Midgardian mages tiresome, the thought of being turned out into this world in his current condition brought him, inexplicably, intense physical pain. At once the knot began to constrict, his vision shrinking, his lungs laboring to take in air.

In an instant the mage was at his side. Loki found himself being eased down to sit on the edge of the bed, Sirius shoving something into his unresponsive hands. "Drink," he insisted, and Loki's hand clutched at the slender vessel, lifting it to his mouth with shaking fingers.

As the first drops passed his lips, Loki felt the squeezing ache in his chest release, his breathing eased. He saw the object in his hand for the first time: a delicate phial of glass, nearly half-full with a slightly cloudy pearlescent liquid. "What was that?" he wondered aloud.

"The potion is a Calming Draught," Sirius replied, all hint of playfulness gone from voice and face. "And a much-needed one, evidently."

Loki realized that the man had an arm around Loki's back and was, indeed, physically supporting most of his weight. Shrugging off the man's assistance, he pulled himself as straight as the trunk of Yggdrasil, shoulders thrown back, chin lifted.

Although his rejection had been almost violent, Loki had not knocked the man back as far as he ought to have. Instead, Sirius remained where he had been, watching Loki intently. He sat there for a while, with a number of thoughts he obviously desired to share, but, much to Loki's relief, he refrained. "I think we'd best start with breakfast," he said finally, "and a professional opinion."

The professionals, as it turned out, were gathered around the long, wooden table in the lowest level of the house. Loki had, at first, expected to find a dungeon down there, as dingy as the place seemed to him, instead of a kitchen and general meeting-room.

The crowd was mercifully small: only the healer-mage and the stern, dark-skinned witch were in attendance. As they descended the stair, Sirius kept a firm grip on his arm, though whether to prevent fall or flight, Loki had no idea. He didn't particularly care, at present, whether he fell or fled.

Once they entered the room proper, the dog-mage released his hold on Loki's unprotesting arm, and took a seat next to the healer. The witch fixed her gaze on Loki before giving him a subtle nod. Neglecting to return the gesture, Loki took the chair closest to him, which was also furthest from their conversation. He would not volunteer for an interrogation; if they wanted something out of him, they would have to work for it.

"So," the healer began, ostensibly looking down the table in his direction, if the direction of the Midgardian's voice was any indication, "how are things with you?"

Loki didn't bother to look at the man, or say anything. Someone placed a plate of food in front of him, which he likewise ignored.

"It was good you sent me up with that potion," Sirius supplied eventually, when it was clear to everyone that Loki would not be participating. "It was quite useful."

"Why?" the healer interjected with an urgency Loki hadn't heard from the man before. "What happened?"

"Well," Sirius said, "I woke him up once it was light, told him that since he seemed able to get about, there was no reason for him to be trapped in this house. Then he went into some sort of fit, and he started to topple over."

Loki felt the weight of their concentration fall on him suddenly, and the panic began to rise in him once more. It was less pronounced than last time, but he longed to be hidden from their scrutiny. "It...it was nothing," he heard himself mutter, unconvincingly, a desperate attempt to divert their attention from him.

That desperation produced nothing but failure. The witch was before him in an instant, outstretched hand lifting his stubborn chin, the brown warmth of her fingertips shocking against the chill blue of his skin. Though the touch pained him, he did not look away, and she removed her hand almost as soon as he met her eyes. She stood there, as before, at the doorway to his mind, and waited.

Rather than admit her to his thoughts, Loki spoke. "I could not breathe. It has passed," he said haltingly, without looking away. "The draught helped," he admitted after a long expectant silence from the three mages stretched past the point of comfort.

"A panic attack," the witch prompted, only half a question, but one that was aimed more at the healer than Loki himself. The mage simply nodded his head, frowning, while she continued. "You were right then, Harry," she said, going back over to sit down next to him, leaving Loki alone. "There is much more going on than we'd first realized."

At this, she turned back to Loki again, but with less intensity than before. "If you can tell us what happened this morning, we will be better able to help you." Her dark brown eyes were on him, wearing an expression softer than he'd ever seen in them. "If you do not wish to articulate it in words, you may also show me. I should be able to read it well enough if you simply remember, and the Calming Draught you took should keep you from reliving it totally. It is your decision."

"My decision," Loki scoffed, in spite of himself. "As it was when I arrived here?"

At this, the color in her cheeks deepened, reddening somewhat. "Yes," she said, "it is entirely yours, now. It was peevish of me to intrude upon your mind to prove a point, and when I knew you were injured, though I did not realize at the time how severely." She examined his face, and her expression shifted, eyebrows lifting. "I was wrong, Loki. I should not have done that to you."

He watched her for a long time. His suspiciousness was born out of long experience, and honed into habit. Everything he knew told him he should not trust, it was too high a risk, he had no reason to believe a word she said. He was in no position to allow these people to have any more power over him than they already possessed. Without his magic, he had no advantage over them, no way to defeat any attack on his person, if they were determined to injure or subdue him.

Which they could easily do now, if they wished, whispered a thought.

The reality he'd been avoiding since he'd agreed to come to this miserable Midgardian residence rang through his mind, clear and penetrating as the ring of a sonorous bell.

There was nothing stopping them from doing whatever they wanted with him. There was no reason for them to ask his permission for anything.

And the last traitorous phrase: If they wanted to, they would have by now.

The room had remained silent for the entire interval while Loki deliberated. He could not trust that last thought, not yet, but it was enough to tip the scales of his mistrust away from absolute certainty.

When he looked up from his contemplations, all three of the mages were sitting in their chairs again, in positions of complete repose. Even the usually energetic Sirius was quiescent, hands folded on his chest. The healer, Harry, was holding a steaming mug in front of him, and the witch, Hermione, had her hands folded sedately in her lap.

Looking from one to the other in turn, he searched for any sign of duplicitousness or malicious intent, of callousness or indifference, but there was none. None at all.

"I think," Loki said, hearing himself speak every measured syllable, "that might be acceptable."