"I hope you don't mind that I left Loki with Lily and James," Remus said, passing the soup bowls to Sirius and, for some reason, rubbing his elbow.
"Eh, he can take it," Sirius said. "Are you going to rinse those?"
Remus set to washing dishes. When he'd finished the first bowl, Sirius transfigured it into a large plate and levitated the chicken out of the oven.
He could hear the murmur of low voices in the other room and wondered what they were talking about. He could open the door, of course, but Remus had looked like he'd wanted some privacy.
"Not that I'm not thrilled and all," Sirius said, "but why did you follow me here?"
Remus frowned. "I want to trust him," he began, "But I don't think Dumbledore does."
The headmaster had implied something to that effect during their last, hastily arranged auror meeting, though he hadn't outright criticized the defense professor.
"Loki, you mean?" Sirius shrugged. "Let him worry. But I don't see the problem. If he fights with us, he's one of us."
"Well, he's not exactly with us, is he?" Moony pointed out, drying a dish with a flick of his wand.
"He's against Voldemort," Sirius said, letting the dark gravy flow down the chicken and pool at the bottom of the dish. "That's enough for me."
A crack sounded and Sirius's wand hand jerked, splattering gravy across the cabinet. He cursed.
He felt a pulse through the wards just as Moony's head jerked towards the kitchen.
"James," he said, and Sirius cursed.
Lupin slammed open the kitchen door.
"Go!" he shouted, gesturing at Lily and James.
The couple tore into the bedroom where Loki could hear them arguing about whether James should stay.
Sirius had followed behind, frantically waving his wand in elaborate patterns that Loki suspected was meant to resurrect the fallen wards."Get out!" he roared, looking over his shoulder.
Lily reached up to take James' hand and the family disappeared.
A blast of magic disrupted Sirius's delicate working and another smashed through the wall, letting death-eaters pour in.
"Go easy on the flat!" Black cried.
Loki grinned, summoning a blast of fire. He wasn't sure whether the death eaters had intended to target him or not, but they had made a fatal mistake. Falling into a formation, his opponents volleyed curses, but Loki was a master of evasion, flickering in and out of invisibility, his superior reflexes allowing him to dodge the bolts of light with ease. He created the illusion of himself between two death eaters, laughing as the green bolts passed through and the casters dropped. He threw columns of magical fire at the enemies, setting a robe ablaze. The rest of his opponents quickly muttered charms that seemed to neutralize the fires' effects. Several of the casters turned their wands towards him, and a chair flew past in a blurring golden tail before exploding into flames. Lupin had defended him.
"With me," Loki whispered invisibly to Black, making the man jump. He gathered Lupin too, letting the wizards cast shields and adding his own shielded illusion. Then, tucking himself out of the way, he prepared a more complicated working.
He could hear Black ask what he was doing and flapped a hand urging him to shut up.
The most complex spells were the most powerful, but their advantage lied in surprise.
The death eaters advanced, shooting straight passed him, putting Black and Lupin on the frantic defensive.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed their uncoordinated spellcasting with displeasure. He would have to train them better when assumed command.
The death-eaters had backed the pair into a corner nearby. Loki began to chant, ignoring a curse that slashed into his side with bright hot pain.
Loki murmured the last word of his chant and stepped back into his circle of allies, suddenly visible. A couple of feet outside their corner, the floor collapsed completely, spilling death eaters down into the floor below.
"Cast!" he ordered, firing knives out into the apartment below. Black and Lupin followed, shooting red and blue bolts into the crowd. Luckily for the muggles downstairs, no one was else was in the kitchen. To Loki's disappointment, the eight foot drop didn't seem to have injured any of the death eaters very seriously, though it gave them enough of a shock to make dispatching them easier.
Loki had seen their magic flare, seemingly instinctively, as they hit the ground and flung down workings more viciously, knowing that they were close to defeat. Lupin cast a spell that brought several wands flying up to him. With one last flurry of knives on Loki's part, the remaining death eaters disapparated.
Black let the shields fall, regarding the gaping hole where his living room had once stood. He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "Gryffindor… enough…?" and leaned against the wall dejectedly.
"You've been hit," Lupin said, looking back at Loki.
Loki looked down, surprised the man had been able to see the wound against his black clothing.
"Foolish of me," Loki said, pulling back his shirt. He'd been so caught up in his spell, he hadn't thought to duck. The white flesh was marred by a deep gash, like a slice with a sword. The rest of his body was beginning to feel chilled and feverish against the burning pain in his chest.
"Snivellus," Black said, his voice ugly with loathing.
Loki stiffened. "What?" he asked sharply, closing his clothes back over the wound.
"Severus Snape," Lupin explained, shooting him a worried glance. "I think we should go to St Mungo's. Can you apparate in this condition?"
"I'm fine," Loki said harshly. "I'm not going to your hospital." He felt like his chest was caught on a hook, bursting with pain every time he inhaled.
"Sectumsempra is a nasty curse," Black interjected. "You should go to Madam Pomfrey, at least."
"Fine," Loki said, resentful that they had made him speak and waste his painfully acquired air. He would go back to Hogwarts and sleep until his magic rendered him stable enough to return. No need to bother about with mortal physicians.
"Alright," Lupin said, taking his arm in a surprisingly strong grip. "Shall we side-along to Hogsmeade?"
Sirius nodded. Loki saw Lupin's magic reach out and seize one of the ley-lines out of place, before, with a sensation that felt like being squeezed into a tiny hole, the ruined apartment was replaced with Hogsmeade's streets.
"What was that?" Loki asked, wrenching his hand out of Lupin's grasp.
"Apparition, mate," Black said, looking concerned.
"Obviously," Loki said. "But why did you stand in between the lines and wrench at the them in the most nauseating manner instead of standing on the intersection—"
Loki coughed, new blood escaping his chest in a splatter.
Lupin and Black exchanged glances.
"No idea what you're on about, but can we discuss this at the castle?" Black said, trying, unsuccessfully to pull him toward the Hogs' Head.
"Fine," Loki said, once he had finally caught his breath. It hardly mattered anyway.
"You were right to bring him here," Madam Pomfrey said when Loki was at last seated, glaring, on a the white bed. "St Mungo's is no safe place to be these days, with that last Death Eater attack…"
Loki rolled his eyes. The wound was painful, sure, but he had been hurt far worse. He wasn't sure he trusted whatever passed for medicine on this primitive realm.
"Remus, could you get one of Wiggenwald's pain reducers from the blue cabinet?" the nurse asked.
"Sure, Madam Pomfrey," Lupin said with a smile that looked almost nostalgic.
"Alright, now let me see," Madam Pomfrey said, examining the gash. Loki could see some of the blood clotting already, but the nurse exhaled sharply. "Sirius, this man should have been portkeyed here immediately," she said. "Not mangled through the fireplace and apparition."
"My portkeys were destroyed with my house," Sirius complained. "And we sidelonged him."
"Nevertheless," Madam Pomfrey said, tapping a wand to the uninjured skin below the gash.
"What is that for?" Loki demanded.
"Disinfection," the nurse said curtly.
She cast another spell, sending hazy blue spirals into the air and finishing them with a flick of her wand. The magic dissipated into the air.
"And that?" Loki asked.
Madam Pomfrey was frowning. "That should have healed it," she said. "What curse did you say was used?"
"Sectumsempra," Sirius said. "I think it was meant for me."
"Are you sure?" Madam Pomfrey asked, frowning, as Lupin returned with the potion.
"I saw him cast it," Sirius said. "I wasn't sure it hit until the end of the battle, but nothing else got near."
"Here," the nurse said, pouring the draught into a wooden cup.
"I'd rather not," Loki said, leaning back onto the pillows with his hands on his lap.
Thankfully for his blossoming temper, Madam Pomfrey did not contradict his decision.
She tried the spell again, with similar noneffects, then a darker, more complicated version that looked to Loki like an older variation of the same spell.
"I have never seen…" Madam Pomfrey murmured, casting another spell over Loki's chest. He rolled his eyes and tried to hear past her to the Black and Lupin's whispered discussion across the room. Luckily, his tracking spell was still in effect.
"…how they knew," Black was saying.
"It might have been a coincidence," Lupin said wryly. "You're not exactly a low profile target yourself, and Loki…"
"But the one night the Potters were here," Black insisted. "And remember, just last week, the Dursleys— he's obsessed."
Voldemort was obsessed, Loki mentally translated. But with the Potters?
"I don't understand why he would be," Lupin said, and Black fell silent.
"I don't think they knew about Loki," he said at last, "or they would have sent more people."
Loki grinned, causing Madam Pomfrey to snap, "What, exactly what do you find so funny, Professor?"
"Your incompetence," Loki wheezed, dissolving into quiet gasps. He missed the beginning of Lupin's next words.
"…all the people who might have betrayed them…" Lupin said.
"He was fighting on our side!" Black hissed.
Lupin's voice dropped even further, and Loki strained to hear over Madam Pomfrey's mutterings, "…unintentionally, or…"
"He couldn't," Black said. "I didn't tell him about the Potters when I invited him. Moony…"
Loki raised an eyebrow at the strange pet name. Were they lovers?
"Then I don't think anyone could have betrayed them," Remus was saying firmly.
"Perhaps not," Black said, sounding dissatisfied. He stood up. "Look, I'm going to find Wormtail. Kip by him for a few days, maybe see if he knows anything about all of this."
Lupin laughed. "I'm sure Peter will be thrilled," he said. "I assume you haven't told him this yet?"
Loki was revising his nickname theory. It seemed they all had them, which was either curiously suspicious or a weird cultural quirk.
"What are you casting now?" he asked. At some point, Madam Pomfrey had retrieved an old, green tome, and she was muttering a spell that sent thin tendrils straight through his skin.
"A diagnostic spell," she said, and Loki narrowed his eyes.
"To diagnose what?" he asked as she shut her book abruptly.
"Take this," she said, handing him a potion with an unsettling red tone. "It's a blood replenisher."
Loki reluctantly complied, swallowing the slimy concoction in one gulp.
"I'll be back shortly," Madam Pomfrey said. "Do not, and I repeat, do not move or you'll have worse than a chest wound to worry about."
Black whistled.
"Hey, remember when she used to say that to us?" he asked.
"You mean every single month?" Remus asked dryly.
"You have it easy here, prof," Black said, nodding at Loki.
Loki opened his mouth to ask what reason they could have for seeing Madam Pomfrey every month, and Remus shot Black a glance.
"I volunteered here when I was a student," Remus said, though Loki thought he looked a bit shifty about it. "Sirius and James liked to come mess around."
Not a complete lie, Loki thought, but perhaps not the whole truth.
"We were helping," Sirius said, putting on a wounded expression.
"Right," Lupin said. "If we leave you here, do you think you'll be okay?" he asked Loki.
"It's fine," Loki said, flapping his hands at them. He didn't need one nursemaid, let alone three.
"See you," Black said, raising an arm in a lazy farewell as they walked out of the infirmary. "Sorry about dinner."
A moment later, Pomfrey walked in, followed by Dumbledore. Loki suppressed a groan. Of all the people he would have see him in a moment of weakness, the headmaster ranked somewhere just above Lord Voldemort and Odin.
"So there have been some difficulties with the wound?" Dumbledore said, looking thoughtful.
"My spells were designed to work on humans," the matron said. "I'm not a Magical Creatures expert."
Loki bristled at the implication. "I am no creature—" he got out before falling into a horrendous bout of coughing.
"Don't talk!" Pomfrey admonished. She turned back to the headmaster. "Do you— have you ever seen anything like this before?"
"I'm fine," Loki hissed, as the door swung open and a first year Hufflepuff walked in, covered in pink spots.
Her eyes widened into near perfect circles. "Professor Loki?" she squeaked.
This time, Loki did groan, though it put him into a coughing fit so consuming that his vision blacked and his fingers splattered with blood. When he could open his eyes again, Dumbledore was standing over him with a grave expression, casting a spell that cleared the blood away from his chest. In the corner, he could hear Madam Pomfrey talking to the girl in a soothing tone.
Dumbledore waved his wand and a flood of colors fell, like tiny bubbles, toward Loki's chest, where they bounced off and disappeared.
"I confess, when I learned this spell, I had never expected to use it for anything more than alchemical research," Dumbledore said cheerily. "It seems you possess some degree of magical resistance that prevents certain spells from reaching you, similar to the hides of dragons and giants."
Loki had already come to that conclusion, seeing the way the mortals worked their magic. There was no flexibility in their memorized codewords to account for someone like him. Of course, Loki thought bitterly, the knife spell seemed to have accounted for him just fine.
"In the case where a more efficiently designed spell cannot do the job, in many cases the solution lies in base transfiguration," Dumbledore continued, "of which I can, humbly, claim mastery. I am going to carefully regrow the gaps in those organs which have been breached. The magic-aided sutures will break down over time, allowing your native magic to heal you gradually."
"What… will they break down to become?" Loki managed to ask, slowly.
"Nothing," Dumbledore said. "May I?"
Loki spread his arms wide. Go ahead.
Dumbledore did quiet, quick work, and Loki was reluctantly impressed by his skill. He seemed to have both the control over raw magic necessary for delicate detail and a medical familiarity Loki had never bothered with. He supposed he was lucky that the inside of his Asgardian form was not too different from that of Midgardians.
A few careful minutes in, something righted in his chest, and Loki felt his breathing ease once more.
"Why did the Sectumsempra spell succeed where other spells failed?" he demanded.
"I am not sure," Dumbledore asked. "The student who designed it was very talented, and very angry at the time. Perhaps he envisioned a knife that could cut through anything, regardless of species."
"Who designed it?" Loki asked.
"I'm afraid I cannot say," Dumbledore said.
"Snape," Loki guessed, and was rewarded with a flash of concern on Dumbledore's face.
The headmaster fixed his gaze back on the healing wound, and Loki glanced down, refusing to acknowledge the nauseating pain of his organs being slowly melded back together.
"You're very resilient," Dumbledore noted. "Most wizards would find such an injury remarkably debilitating."
"Are you done?" Loki asked, irritated to find himself slightly flattered by the mortal's claim. But on Asgard... Loki forcefully tamped down on that thought. No resentment- not here.
"Almost," Dumbledore responded pleasantly. Loki had almost forgotten he'd asked. "If you don't mind a rather crudely phrased question, what, exactly, are you?"
Loki watched his skin zip back together, leaving nothing but faded scar.
I am a god, he thought, touching a finger to the edge of the scar. I am a monster.
He stood up, magically mending his robes.
"I'm a schoolteacher," he said, raising an eyebrow, and Dumbledore chuckled.
Loki rose to leave, casting the Dumbledore a backward glance. The headmaster was absently clearing blood off the sheets, a thoughtful expression on his face. He could almost see why the wizarding world respected the man so much.
He could be helpful, Loki thought, Or he could be very, very dangerous.
Hello, Readers!
A big thanks is owed this week to my new beta, Prevaricator's Penchant, who has been instrumental in helping me pick apart Loki's motivations and patching up some sly but crucial errors. (Case in point: you almost read a fic in which Madam Pomfrey cures stabbings with firewhiskey).
As always, I love to see reviews, so if you have some time and a thing to say, drop one in the box.
Cheers!