Thanks so much to all my readers, and all my wonderful reviews who's comments I read but almost never apply to! TTnTT Sorry guys!

Beta: Zerubel

Okay! So I have an extremely valid reason for dropping off the radar!...

Again.

We moved. And it wasn't some little move across town either. We've gone from Vegas to very near portland, ME! It was a rushed move, built on less than a month of packing and preparations, a very stressful four-day cross-country drive, and many many trips up and down the stairs of our new, upstairs apartment (it's like a fifth of the size of the house we were living in before and dear Mitera has that been an adjustment all its own).

On top of that, within like a week and a half of us getting out here I found a job! Which is good news, really! But it does have the unhappy side-effect of eating severely into my writing time, so between trying to adjust and settle in and the hustle and bustle of a proper job I just haven't been able to work on Teeth all that much.

That said, this chapter is finally done, and the next one has some progress even! It might be a while before it actually gets finished, but it's on its way!

I'm not gonna give any ETA's on coming chapters from here on out, what with the way things are. Sometimes it may be only a couple weeks, sometimes it might be longer, but at this time I still have no plans to abandon this fic! Don't you worry!

In other news, I can't wait till I get to see Civil War. I'm bouncing about it. Anybody else excited?

Ok. Here we go loves!

Enjoy!

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The underground Jotun city was unlike any place he'd ever been, divided into several districts spanning from a large dome-like structure, to the district he was currently housed in; which had been set aside for use by Jotunheim's Ruler, their family, guard, and company. It was composed of staircases in varying levels of steepness, winding hallways, rough stone walls, and those odd, glowing blue stones that served as lamps. There were several rooms like the one he'd been in, all of them more or less the same, an armory (that he wasn't allowed to see), several storage rooms, and a large room that served as a sort of kitchen and food storage, where animals were skinned and the meat cut up into servable pieces, the few hardy roots they could grow turned into spices, sauces, and teas. There was only one entrance into the underground city, at the start of the royal district (or that's what Unnur told him, but Harry would bet a hefty number of galleons it was a lie- because who would be stupid enough to build a city with only one entrance?), and all the hallways were built to be intentionally confusing- curling around and into each other, some leading to dead ends and the others and all eventually connecting to one main hallway. That main hallway led to the arena he and Skadi had fought in. The arena was, actually, just a gathering room for announcements and festivals and the like, and there were several openings he hadn't noticed before that led from it to the other districts.

The residential and market districts were connected, blending together in such a way that it was not immediately noticeable where one ended and the other began. There were four other districts that were abandoned, seemingly because there was no longer a large enough population for them to be necessary. The residential district was much more open, and when they reached it after a couple more hallways Harry found himself a little startled by the sudden space.

It was an enormous cavern filled with small stone buildings that looked like boxes of various sizes. They were staggered, going up and down, with stairs leading everywhere and occasionally bringing you up over someone's roof to reach where you were going. The ceiling above their head was made of a thick sheet of blue ice and he saw the hints of shadows passing over them that told him it was translucent, though it was too dark just then to see much of anything. The boxy buildings had no bricks, but were solid, if with rough walls. He imagined they had to have been made with magic of some sort, and wondered how it had been done. There were occasional breaks in the gray stone with more of those glowing rocks inlaid here and there, as well as the occasional mosaic and painting.

The mosaics were beautiful, and made of small stone tiles in surprisingly warm colors; reds and oranges and browns mostly. Jotunheim was filled with blue everywhere he looked, so they caught his attention right away. They depicted all manner of things; large creatures he didn't recognize, Muspel and Eldjotnar men and women, and various angular designs similar to the scarification marks the frost giants had on their skin. The paintings were mostly white lines, and they made him grin because they were very clearly made by children. Simple stick figures set in scenes of hunting and fighting and what he thought was dancing. Large shapes vaguely reminded him of the icy spires above ground, and there were more creatures, more primitive than the tile versions.

He found himself standing in a street that led down a slope into a marketplace, with frost giants coming and going all around him. It reminded him a little of the market back in Nizwa, but much less crowded. The Jotun city was large, but its population wasn't, and it showed. Most of the buildings on this street were in fine order, but casting his gaze farther out, he could see that the farther from this central area they went, the more neglected the various homes looked. There were no cracks in the stone, and it was too cold for dust, but the walls had frosted over, and there was a sense of abandonment to them that spoke of their empty state.

He frowned.

He-

Perhaps it was just that theory of his that was nagging at him. But the state of the city, beautiful as it was, disturbed him. There was something inherently wrong about seeing dozens and dozens of homes standing untouched and unoccupied. It made his skin itch and he could have sworn his ring warmed against his finger.

He shook it off and began walking, Unnur trailing silently behind him. Where the smaller paths and roads up through the houses were littered with staircases, the main street simply sloped downwards, so he wasn't forced to wiggle his way down any. Most all of the giants noticed him; some quickly turned away and went back to what they were doing, others all but fled, and some nodded respectfully at him, in which case he did so back. No one approached him, and for the most part they all seemed content to go about business as usual.

There were stalls set up along the sides of the road, though not that many, and he stopped here and there and looked. One woman was selling spear tips of stone and black metal, her hands and arms covered in burns that suggested how she'd made the latter lot. A pair of young teenagers (and he wasn't quick this time to decide if they were male or female when he noted it was a little hard to tell) had a handful of meat at their stall, two small unskinned animals (they looked slightly like hares, but the ears were longer, the faces too flat and the mouths had sharp teeth) hanging from the top of it, and one furry pelt the size of a horse at their feet. They looked tired, and the shorter of the pair was eyeing the meat they were selling as though they would rather eat it themselves.

At the end of the small market was a man selling stones, or what looked like stones, small and black and round, and an old woman near him had a collection of broken bones. He paused at the sight of her, curious, and then noticed that no one paid with money. They traded whatever they had on hand, giving metal for meat, and beads for stones, trinkets for trinkets.

The entire place had the air of a close-knit community, and not one that was- poor, exactly-

But there was something in the air that reminded him of going to Diagon Alley after he'd first hidden away at Bogdon. Something heavy and stressed and a little bit sad. The people here weren't frightened or at war. But they were weary and struggling. All of them trying their best to make it, and perhaps some of them were failing. Something acidic like anger warmed in his belly and he pushed it away.

No use getting ahead of himself.

"There's not much else anymore." He twitched. He'd nearly forgotten about Unnur, and he turned to look up at her then. She had her spear in hand, and she was picking at the wood with her free hand (most of the others had stone spears, and Harry had yet to see trees- he wondered where she'd gotten it), looking out at the little marketplace and surveying her people like he had been. "We have the blackroot fields lower underground, and there's a school down the way and the temples on the surface, and the song dome farther in, but that's it." She fell quiet, and for a long moment the two of them just stood there near the wall of someone's home, stick drawings of a family on the side of it and frost creeping up from the ground, and watched the Jotuns go about their day and pass them by.

"The temples." She jumped a little, and he could see her look down at him from the corner of his eye.

"What?"

"I want to see the temples." He looked at her then, and she was biting her lip again, tension lines forming at the corners of her eyes. But she nodded jerkily and turned to lead the way up to them.

They were interrupted before she could.

"Unnur!" They both looked up to see a Jotun woman jogging towards them.

"Mamma!" Harry blinked at his companion, and then took in the woman as she stopped in front of them, smiling. She was-

She was short.

Or rather, she was still a good two feet and a bit taller than Harry, but for a frost giant? She was tiny. She just barely came to Unnur's shoulder when she got near to them, and Harry found himself staring. The androgynous giant wasn't even the tallest of her kind, maybe at or slightly below average, from what Harry had seen.

The woman grinned at Unnur, and he blinked. Her teeth were- they were sharp. Sharp enough that it probably wasn't natural. She had to have filed them (and dear Mitera the very thought made his own teeth ache sympathetically), or magically altered them somehow. Because while he'd noticed as they spoke that Jotuns had large canines and slightly pointed frontal teeth, this woman's even rows of sharklike teeth, and her long needle-like canines, were something else entirely.

Other than her teeth and size, there wasn't anything particularly striking about her features. She was pretty in the sort of way that Harry could appreciate but didn't find memorable, although there was something naggingly familiar about her angular features. She had short curly black hair and the same deep ruby eyes he'd seen on nearly all her people, there was nothing intrinsically unique about her facial scar marks-

But there was a sense of presence about her, a sort of quiet strength, and her relatively small stature alone was enough to ensure she'd stick in Harry's mind.

"Unnur! Where have you been wandering, my heart? You worry your poor Mother." She didn't look worried at all. If anything, she was holding back a wider grin, a hint of mischief in her gaze. Unnur flushed purple.

"I have not been wandering!" She protested. "I was given a special duty by her Majesty!" Then she flinched, glancing at Harry. He blinked. Had Skadi assigned her to- To what? Be his babysitter? Her mother waved a hand and scoffed.

"No duty is so important you cannot come and tell me where you are."

"Momma!" She looked scandalized. "I cannot-" She seemed to flail a bit, waving a hand with her mouth gaping, as though the suggestion that she take time away from whatever Skadi had assigned her, to let her mother know about it, was so shocking that it rendered her speechless. The woman ignored all of this, of course, instead focussing her attention on the animagus, her grin sharpening into something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

"You are the Home-Ruler, yes? The Death-King?" He nodded dumbly. "Small thing, aren't you?"

"Momma! Don't be rude!" Her daughter seemed stuck somewhere between shocked, embarrassed, and terrified. Her face and ears were violet, and she was looking between the woman and Harry with horror. The animagus laughed.

"I guess I am." As Tony was always so quick to point out, the hypocrite. The woman's expression seemed to soften a little then, going from almost predatory to pleased. "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage though." He gestured towards her.

"Farbauti." She held a hand out, and he reached up to shake it. "And you are not entirely disadvantaged. I know your title, as we all do, but not your name."

"Harry Black." She shook his hand.

"A pleasure to meet you, Harry." He smiled at the informality, and beside them, Unnur threw up a hand, as though giving up on keeping her mother in line entirely. They both ignored her, and Farbauti put a hand on the wizard's shoulder, steering him down the street and beginning to walk. Her touch was a little warmer than he had come to expect for her kind, closer to the temperature of cool air than that icy feeling. "So tell me, what brings you here? Surely you did not come here solely to knock our Queen off her high throne?" Unnur followed after them, muttering miserably. Harry caught the words 'impossible' and 'give up'. "There is a rumor that you came with word from our brothers and sisters in Muspelheim?"

"That's part of it yes." She steered him down a side street, and he wondered if he could get away if he tried. Her grip was loose, but he got the feeling it would tighten if he tried to pull away. "I'm acting as a mediator between Muspelheim and Asgard. They're signing a peace treaty, and King Surtr wished for Jotunheim to sign as well." Her steps faltered slightly, and he looked up at her. Her expression hadn't changed in the slightest, but she was looking ahead of herself too intently, and didn't glance down at him when she spoke.

"A peace treaty with Asgard? And I suppose we're to take them at their word in any agreement they make." Her tone wasn't sarcastic, exactly, but-

"No. I have a way to bind all those involved to their word with m- seidr." They turned down another way, and then were walking down thankfully shallow (at least compared to the others) stairs. The animagus hoped they didn't have to go up any. He hadn't had to try that yet (though he was going to have to on the way back to his guest room. He supposed it wouldn't be too bad. He could always transform and go up them on all fours, after all). She actually looked down at him then, just for a moment, and he caught a flash of something in her eyes. Something familiar that was there and gone too quick to put a name to. She hummed.

"So you've a method to create peace and keep it? For how long?"

"The treaty being written is for the next five centuries." She raised a brow, and then let go of his shoulder, walking up to the tarp-covered doorway of one of the houses. It was a little ways away from the others (they'd turned and walked a bit), and the houses to either side of it were frosted over. So was the one above it, a staircase leading up the side of this one and over the roof to reach it.

"Come inside and sit with me. Surely a King has time for tea with an old woman?" The wizard held back a laugh. With the way she'd physically guided him here, and was only asking now, it wasn't like he'd really been given a choice in the matter. He glanced back at Unnur. She wasn't blushing anymore, but there was a long-suffering look on her face that reminded him of his own when Moo had been pushing his buttons all day. He followed her into the house.

"You don't look like an old woman."

"Careful, little King. That sort of flattery will get you everywhere you know." He'd half-expected her home to be as minimalist as his guest room, but that wasn't at all the case, and, really, it had probably been a fairly foolish assumption.

The walls had been painted with the same white paint (or whatever it was) that had been used to make the children's drawings on the outer walls in the town center. There was a mosaic, more complex than any of the ones he'd seen outside, that took up nearly the entirety of the wall to the left of the entrance. It didn't depict anything tangible, but the swirling flowery patterns immediately made him think of the glowing Eldjotnar tattoos. Most of the other walls had white furs and strings of round stone beads hanging from them. There were two other doorways to the right, one without a tarp, and stairs just beyond it leading downwards, the other with a tarp, the view beyond hidden from sight.

There was a small cauldron (small in this case meaning about the size of a large cooking pot) on a stand in one corner, with small glowing green stones placed around its base and a ladle poking out of the top; dark liquid sitting in it. Several spears and swords were hung up or leaned against the walls. There was a short desk of sorts with several gemstones and arrowheads scattered atop it, and a kitchen-like area with countertops and open shelves. There was wrapped meat on one shelf, a few roots, like ginger but gray, on another, and some plates and cups and bowls.

In the center of the room, which was relatively small for a giant's home (or the one room was anyways, he didn't know how much more space there was in the other room or downstairs), there was a short table, like Skadi's desk, shaped like a hexagon, with the familiar indentations in the floor around it. Farbauti gestured for him to sit there, and made her way to the shelves. He settled down and watched her bustle about, stirring at the cauldron and tossing a plant into it, getting cups down from a shelf and whatnot. Unnur sat down in the indent on his left, and Harry wondered at the number of them. The room looked much too small for six frost giants, but the indentations were worn down enough to suggest regular use.

He didn't have too long to wonder at it though, because Farbauti was quickly done getting the tea. She sat herself down on his right and divied out stone cups to each of them. The liquid was a violet-brown in color, with small reddish leaves floating in it. It was cold.

The Englishman in Harry balked.

He hoped the smile he offered Unnur's mother didn't look too much like a grimace.

Despite the sacrilege taking place, he accepted the cup she gave him (the size of a bowl really) and even took a small, polite sip. It was actually slightly sweet and not too bad, but he still put his cup down after that, without much desire to pick it up again. Beside him Unnur sipped at hers silently, her shoulders a bit slumped and a commiserating look on her face.

"So," He looked away from the young warrior to her mother. Farbauti was watching him over the rim of her cup in a careful way. "You've been to Muspelheim?"

"I have."

"I have heard stories of it. What's it like there?" He smiled.

"What little I had the opportunity to see was beautiful. The Eldjotnar and the Muspel use all manner of stone and metal in their architecture, and it's all very detailed and well-built." She nodded, looking interested.

"It's very hot there, yes?"

"It is. I had to use a few things to help protect me from the heat, and even then I could feel it."

"It's mostly volcanos there isn't it?"

"I believe so. I didn't really get to see the land."

"And Asgard? I imagine you spent more time there." She looked away from him, eyes drifting towards the outer wall and the sounds of a small group walking by. He might have thought her not deeply interested, only-

"I've been staying in Asgard for a little while now yes, going over the treaty and speaking with King Odin and the like. It's also very beautiful. It's not hot there like in Muspelheim, and not particularly cold either. There's a lot of trees and greenery, and the buildings are very interesting."

"I'm told the palace is quite the sight to see." Her smile looked fake then, and he could see Unnur grimace from the corner of his eye. They would, of course, be familiar with the tale of where the palace's gold originated.

"It is that, yes." He kept his tone neutral, and the older Jotun eyed him for a long moment, taking a sip of her tea, before she went on.

"Have you made many friends there? You must have a few. I suppose the Liesmith is one of them, given your willingness to fight for him." Something prickled at the edges of his senses, a half-formed suspicion with no real meaning to it.

"Loki is a good friend, yes." He probably should have lied, but his fight with Queen Skadi really made the matter moot. It was quite obvious at this point that Loki was someone of importance to him. He didn't see any particular advantage in hiding that. It wasn't as if anyone was going to believe him now if he tried to distance himself from Loki, and, if anything, doing so would only succeed in making him seem more untrustworthy than he already was to the frost giants. "His brother Thor and a few of the others as well." Her eyes flashed with something he couldn't name at the mention of the god of thunder.

"Strange company you keep, for one trying to bring peace. The one who killed our King, and the one who threatened to kill us all." He knew, vaguely, the basic story of Thor's last trip into Jotunheim. It mostly culminated in what the thunderer called "arrogant foolishness", but he knew warriors had been killed, even if he didn't know all the details.

"The company I keep only made it all the more apparent how necessary peace is." She hummed.

"So you say." He frowned. "But I do wonder, how does one such as you become so close to one like Loki Silvertongue?" His eyes narrowed.

"The usual way I suppose." He answered slowly, suddenly of the opinion that talking with this woman about Loki at all might not be such a good idea. He wasn't sure what it was, exactly, about her questions that was putting him on edge. They seemed relatively ordinary and conversational. But all the same. She smiled at him, but there was a tightness around her eyes. Abruptly her face became more light-hearted, and she changed the subject, a cheerful tone to her voice.

"Do you have a big family, Harry?" He blinked, reeling slightly at the sudden change in her demeanor.

"I-" He was hesitant to answer.

"Oh come now. Surely you can speak of your kin? I'm a mother, so you understand that family is important to me, personally. I'm simply curious if that's a virtue we share."

"I do have a big family, yes. Many siblings and my parents. Aunts, uncles, cousins. Nieces and nephews." She beamed at him.

"Are you the eldest of your siblings?"

"Almost the youngest, actually. Only my sister is younger." He thought fondly of Ginny, and of her daughter Rose. He would like to see them, the next time he was on Earth. Farbauti cooed.

"Aww, the baby of the family, just like my Unnur!" Said "baby" slouched where she sat, as though, if she could make herself small enough her mother might forget she was there. They must be so proud of you, with your title and your success." He smiled falsely and nodded, sipping his tea instead of answering verbally.

"Do you have other children?" He asked, hoping to put the attention off himself a bit. "Or is it just Unnur?" Beside him said giantess snorted.

"I wish." Farbauti levelled a look at her daughter.

"Hush child. You love your brothers, and you know it." Unnur drank some of her own tea, muttering into the cup too quietly to be heard. The older Jotun smiled at Harry and answered. "I have two sons, older than Unnur here. She's my youngest. Byleist is my eldest. He's one of the Queen's personal guard, as he was for King Laufey before her. An accomplished hunter as well. He's brought back several frost beasts to us, not all of them dead." Harry didn't know what a frost beast was, but her voice held great pride, so he supposed it was some great feat to have captured one. "My other is Helblindi." She paused, hesitating. "He's a seer." Unnur's head snapped up, her eyes searching her mother's face with something like alarm. "Though I would thank you not to spread that around. A healer as well. He sees to the children mostly, as that's his passion." Her smile turned gentle. "They're good boys." Harry's own expression softened. She sounded like Mum when she gushed about Bill's important work as a cursebreaker, or how successful Fred and George had become as businessmen (nevermind her many early protests against the whole thing, their dropping out of school in particular).

But internally he wondered at Unnur's reaction. The younger woman had looked at her mother with the mention of her brother's sight as though it were a secret she should not have divulged. And even then, she'd taken to watching her mother with an odd expression. It reminded Harry of his own face, when he was trying to determine the motives of someone he knew well when they did something out of character. He didn't know what to make of it though, so he quietly filed it away inside his mind for later.

"You're proud of them." It wasn't a question so much as pointing out the obvious, but she nodded happily at him.

"One should always take pride in one's children. And one's family in general of course." She ran a long finger over the rim of her cup. "Though I find that family is rarely restricted to one's blood. Wouldn't you agree?" Her voice had an odd tone to it, and she had that look on her face again; like she was trying to pretend the conversation they were having wasn't very interesting to her. Nevermind that she'd been heartily invested in it a moment before. Her constant mood swings left him feeling a little unbalanced.

"... I would." He answered honestly, but with caution. She'd been playing some sort of game with him since she'd brought him into her home, and he wasn't quite sure what it was yet.

"Would you be willing to die for your family, Harry?" He leaned back a little, eyeing her warily.

"Yes Ma'am."

"I feel the same." She told him, and then she met his gaze, an intensity in her red eyes that made him feel like he couldn't look away. "There's nothing I wouldn't do for my family. For my children, especially." She smiled lightly, but her gaze was still intense. "I wonder, little King, if Loki is one who you call family." He bristled, body going rigid and tail snapping upwards, but she grinned before he could speak, and suddenly stood. "You should leave now. I'm an old woman and I need my rest." She bustled to her small kitchen, having snatched up his and Unnur's cups without him noticing. "You're interrupting my naptime. Shoo." She waved her hands at them like they were bugs, and he blinked, a bit bewildered. Then she shuffled off, through the open doorway and down the stairs, leaving them to show themselves out. He blinked after her, and then turned slowly to look at Unnur. He raised a brow.

The young warrior sighed a sigh of one long-suffering.

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Unnur had apologized for her mother, in general. Or rather she'd apologized for her familiarity, then her disrespect, then her nosiness, then her mood swings, and so on, until Harry had gotten fed up and told her, in the most polite phrasing he was able, to kindly shut up. She seemed a little more comfortable around him after that, as though weathering her mother had inspired a sort of camaraderie between them. Harry thought it was hilarious.

But it wasn't something he'd thought too much about after that, because once they'd ushered themselves out of Farbauti's home, Unnur had led him to the surface.

To the temples.

He'd been forced to transform to make his way up the stairs, which had made Unnur all sorts of nervous. Her shoulders had remained painfully tense and her eyes wide with something very near fear up until he'd turned back. When they'd reached the top of the main entrance she'd led him through the many ice spires, twisting in and around them in something like a maze until the spires loomed on both sides of them without breaking, with only the gentle snowfall coming from above to remind him they weren't indoors. The rough edges of the spires evened out into something smooth and almost glasslike, but not as translucent as they'd been before then, and then they found themselves in something of a corridor with the strange walls on both sides of them. It was relatively narrow, only just wide enough for two jotuns to walk abreast. It was plenty of space for Harry, but he wondered at it.

The jotuns' homes and halls and stairs were large by his measurements, but really sort of cramped for them. Everything was just large enough to accommodate them, but no bigger; and the architecture was all old. They lived fairly humbly, and had done so for longer than their dwindling livelihood had demanded.

And then those thoughts were lost, when the corridor suddenly opened up into a grand space.

He had seen temples before. In India and Oman and China. Even a few smaller ones in Russia and Africa. Churches too. Most of what he'd seen of them had been from the outside of course. He wasn't religious, and he'd never really had any reason to go into a temple. So what he knew of them were large stone and clay and wooden structures, with fancy roofs and large windows, and detailed designs occasionally marked into the walls or carved into pillars or twisted into metal in fences around them. Sometimes there were statues or colorful tiles. They were beautiful, certainly, what little he'd seen of them, but this-

It was rare that a place felt special to him, in the sense of it being important or holy or sacred. Graveyards made him feel like that. Like he needed to step softly and remain in a serious mood. The cave in Africa where he'd worshiped Mitera alongside the men of the local clan had been special, and the stone ring in the forest on Asgard was like that, at least enough that he wouldn't camp in it or too close to it because doing so felt highly disrespectful.

This was far more so. Unnur walked ahead of him a few paces before she stopped, but Harry froze just beyond the hall. He felt almost afraid to enter here, as though his mere presence would somehow sully or lessen the space. The hair stood up on his neck, and he felt, keenly, that this was not a place he was meant to be.

It was incredibly beautiful.

The floor under them was black. He might have thought it was stone, and maybe it was, but it looked too smooth for that. There were no breaks in it, no tiles or grouting. Just one single expanse throughout the entire space. He could see everything, himself and his guide included, reflected in it nearly as clearly as a mirror, only a little darker, and anything beyond a certain distance from the floor became less detailed. The rest of the space was open, with a roof far enough above their heads that it would take four frost giants standing on each other's shoulders to touch it. Enormous white pillars lined the enormous room in rows. They had a slight blue tinge to them, like ice did, though he didn't think that was what they were made of. There were dozens of them, each carved with tiny intricate marks that could have been runes (but like none he'd seen before) from their base all the way up to where they met the matching white rafters above them.

The doorway they'd come through had an archway marked in the same manner, and was near the back of the temple, which was to his left. This side of it was lined with the same walls as the corridor, with various scenes and beings carved into it, but the other side in front of him, six rows of pillars away, was open. There were more pillars there, equipped with nothing but sturdy stone railings to separate them from the open world beyond. They were higher up than he had realized. The temple was apparently situated atop a cliff, with a sheer drop downwards just an arm's length across the railing. He could see mountains in the distance, and lots of ice and snow. To his right the temple went on to its other end, and he could see things in that direction, but not well enough from this distance to tell what was there.

From the ceiling above them hung long strings, with softly glowing pale blue crystals attached to their ends. They ranged in size from as small as his palm to as large as his head, all angular in shape. There were thousands upon thousands of them, swaying gently above his head and providing dim lighting for the space.

He took it all in and swallowed, that feeling of you don't belong here growing and becoming something more like get out now you need to leave- he took half a step back-

"Harry?" She didn't speak loudly, but her voice echoed through the space to a near-yell. And then the feeling was gone, whatever had overtaken him snapped away and settled and the whole feel of the place suddenly changed. He abruptly felt more like he was at the Burrow than in a sacred place. The crystals and pillars lost their cold elegance and became more enchanting and welcoming. The floor stopped looking like he was standing atop the surface of a bottomless lake and was going to fall in. It was just a floor. He shivered. What was that?

"I'm fine." She had an odd, almost worried look on her face that he disregarded, turning away to start walking down to the other end of the temple. "You said temples, but this is just one?" It was half a statement and half a question, and he heard her footsteps echo as she followed him for a beat before answering.

"This is the main one. There's a hall at the other end like the one we came in from that branches out to the others. They're all smaller than this one though, and more closed off." He nodded.

"How many are there?"

"Including this one there's seven." They made their way through the temple in silence, and Harry noticed, as he hadn't before, that there were lines of indentations all over the floor, like the ones at Farbauti's table and Skadi's desk; serving the same purpose as pews in a church. The temple was built to house very large numbers of frost giants to come and worship. Larger numbers than there currently were. They made disruptions in the reflections, warping them. They slowly drew closer to the other end, and it began to come into focus. There was-

"Rare." He jerked to a stop, head snapping to the side. There was a frost giant there, thin and androgynous, like Unnur, but older, with long black hair coming down around their face. Pale ruby eyes regarded him coolly, in a manner that reminded him of Tom, during that short while Harry had seen him as a human in the white world. "It's not often an outsider finds their way to this place." It was the paleness of the eye color that threw him off and made him look closer. Then, of course, he noticed the being's skin color was paler than he'd seen as well. And then the Jotun shifted slightly, and he realized he could see the pillars behind him. He relaxed. Just a ghost then.

"Harry?" She sounded worried that time, and when the animagus turned to look at her she was glancing between him and the space he'd been looking at, her eyes sliding right over the spirit. She couldn't see him? Didn't she have magic? The thought gave him pause. Maybe she didn't. It hadn't really occurred to him until just then that, like with humans, it was entirely possible that the Jotuns, or even the Eldjotnar, Aesir, and Muspel, could have magicals and nonmagicals.

Or maybe none of the frost giants could see spirits?

"It's a ghost." He told her, honestly.

"A ghost?" She frowned at him, the word clearly unfamiliar to her. He paused.

"One of the dead that hasn't moved on." She paled, jerking a full step back and putting a hand to her throat like she thought someone would cut it. Her eyes flicked rapidly over the general area where the ghost was. He turned and looked at them dead-on. The spirit tilted their head at him, and he considered what they had said.

"I suppose I'm a special case." Their eyes glowed slightly, and they studied him with care for a moment before responding.

"I suppose you are." The dead Jotun hesitated, and then dipped into a half-bow. "Welcome to my temple, Home-Ruler. I hope you will forgive me for not yet joining your kingdom." He tilted his head a little, frowning. Behind him his tail curled in something that wasn't quite irritation. Why would a ghost apologize for being a ghost?

"There's nothing to forgive. If you're not ready to move on, then you're not ready. There's nothing for it." He wasn't sure what response he was supposed to give, but that clearly wasn't the one the dead giant had expected, if the look on their face was anything to go by. He paused. "Your temple?"

"I was a priest here, in life." The spirit, he (priest, not priestess, he'd said) smiled ruefully. "And in death as well, I suppose." Harry hummed at that.

"I hope you don't mind our visiting?"

"I nearly did, until I realized who you were." His eyes turned to Unnur. "And my fellow children of the ice are always welcome here." He paused, and then bowed again. "Forgive me for trying to expel you from this place in my ignorance." The wizard frowned. Ah. That odd feeling when he'd entered? He'd heard of ghosts being able to inspire feelings in people. There were places haunted enough to make muggles wary of entering them, because of the sheer discomfortjust being in the presence of too many of the dead could cause. But it was the first time he'd experienced it firsthand. Even the Bloody Baron had never affected him in such a way. But then, Dumbledore probably wouldn't have stood for the ghosts going about making students feel unwelcome.

... Peeves notwithstanding, of course.

"You're forgiven. You protect this place don't you?"

"As much as I am able, given the state of things." He nodded.

"Then you were just doing your job. I see nothing wrong with that." He glanced at Unnur. She still looked frightened, but also curious. Wondering. He thought about how strange it must be, to watch someone talk to a person who couldn't see or hear yourself. Like when they'd fed thestrals in care of magical creatures, and those who couldn't see them only saw the food disappearing, and felt the scales and webbed skin beneath their fingers. Only worse, because you couldn't touch a ghost.

It was a wonder she wasn't looking at him like was mad.

"Who is it?" She asked him.

"A priest. Though I didn't get his name just yet."

"Knut, your majesty." He repeated it for her, and her eyes lit up.

"I've heard of him! Ah-" She looked hesitantly in his general direction. "Of you, that is. You were the priest before Steinar. He had to learn his duties from the old scrolls because you passed before you could teach him properly."

"Aye. He was young yet when death came to call me home, and I young myself, and too stubborn to heed the call."

"He says he remembers him." Harry told her, without repeating what he'd said. Knut looked amused at that.

"There is little I can do for you, the way I am now, but I could show you the grounds of the temples, if you'd like?" The wizard nodded and turned to Unnur.

"You can go back if you like. He's offered to guide me." She opened her mouth, as though to refuse, and then paused and nodded sharply instead.

"I'll wait for you in the corridor, so I can show you the way back when you're done." She hesitated a moment longer, and then turned and stiffly began walking back the way they'd come. Harry watched her go for a few steps, and then cast a wide privacy spell around himself.

This way his voice wouldn't echo back to her as he spoke with the priest. Perhaps it was just paranoia, but he didn't care for the thought of her being able to listen in on the conversation, even if it would only be his side of it. Knut eyed the spell with interest, but didn't ask about it. Harry continued walking, and the spirit fell into step beside him, choosing to walk rather than float. His steps made no sound.

"The temple is not used as often as once it was. People come here only for the festivals now, and for bondings and burials and markings. They worship in their homes." He sounded sad.

"Why's that?"

"The memories of this place overwhelm the older lot I think, so they don't want to come. And the younger ones simply follow their example without knowing why."

"Memories?" The spirit hummed but didn't expand on it, and within a moment they were close enough to the front of the temple to see what was there properly, and so Harry became distracted.

There were three short steps leading upwards onto a wide dais, with a long stone table flowing up in the middle. It was rectangular in shape and the same material as the flooring. It flowed into it, and was smooth all over, not a mark or carving on it. It had a sort of dip in the center, almost like a shallow bowl, that ran the length of it. Across from it, set against the wall, was what looked like an enormous altar.

It was made of gold (or at least covered in it), the only bit of it he'd seen in this realm so far, and was shaped like an enormous flower when looked at from the side. It reminded him of a lotus, but the ends of the petals curled into themselves. At the bottom of it were twisting gold vines with thorns. They framed the flower and curled around a rectangular indent in the center of it. It was a sort of shelf, with smaller indents upon it like something specific was meant to be placed there, and at the back of it was a little stand with something brown on it.

He came up the steps to get a closer look, and eyed it. It was a piece of bark, rough edged and more or less in the shape and size of a piece of copy paper. It was reddish brown and almost looked fresh, like it had just been peeled away from whatever tree it belonged to. It didn't look particularly special or noteworthy, except-

Magic rolled off of it in waves, old and powerful and warm, and even several feet away he could feel it wrapping around him, around his own magic, enveloping him like a hug from a friend and making him feel like he was home. He stared at it in wonder.

"What is that?" He asked, voice barely a whisper. He looked to the Priest, barely able to tear his gaze from it. Knut smiled at him.

"It's a piece of bark, taken from Yggdrasil itself. Or so it's been told. There is power in it, if nothing else." Harry nodded at him, and stared at the piece of bark a moment longer, poking at it with his magic, but hesitant to get a proper feel of it. It felt welcoming. He had no other word for the sensation it instilled in him, though it felt like a pitiful description. He moved a little closer, until he was close enough to reach out and- "I would not touch it, were I you." He pulled his hand back from it.

"Why?"

"The bark has been known to instill visions in those who touch it directly. Sometimes pleasant and sometimes not. Regardless, it would leave you weakened afterwards." Visions. He'd had quite enough of those from his years of being able to see into Voldemort's head. He eyed the bark, taking in every detail of the rough tree skin, every splotch of lighter and dark color, and then he turned away, feeling an aching disappointment he wasn't willing to let show.

"How did it get here?" He asked as he turned his back on it, approaching and studying the unusual table.

"The tale is such that the Norns themselves gifted it to one of our Kings, long past. It was offered as a gift to him when he presented himself to them at Urd's Well, though whatever reason they had for gifting it, if there was one, has been lost to time."

"And who are the Norns?" He knew, more or less from Tom's tales about Ymir and the beginning of the universe and all that that they were deities of some sort, maybe the ones who'd supposedly made the universe or something like that, but no one had ever explained the concept to him in-depth.

"How under-informed you are, for one of your station." He didn't respond to that comment, and after a moment Knut explained. "Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld. These are the three Norns. The three old wise women who act as weavers of fate. Their names to us mean what once was, what is coming into being, and what shall be."

"Past, present, and future?"

"Yes, but not as you likely know those concepts. Time is a cycle that is ever-changing. The present and future influence the past, the past influences the present and the future, and the future influences the past and the present. What happens now affects not only what will be, but also what once was." Harry tilted his head at him.

"You're saying what happens right now has the power to change things that have already happened?"

"Just so."

"That... Doesn't really make sense."

"Not if you think about it in the manner of past, present, and future as a journey down a single, never-ending road. It is more like a road that loops back upon itself again and again and again." The animagus thought about that for a long minute, frowning. "The Norns live at the Well of Urd, and they look after the well, and write the fates of all beings upon the tree of Yggdrasil, which grows from the well. This is the past. The tree grows and stretches through all the realms and worlds they hold, and the space between them. This is the present. The leaves of the tree then leak dew down into the water, which feeds the well, and changes the water, and the changed water again makes its way into the tree. It is a cycle, history being rewritten over and over again constantly."

"I... see." He did, a bit, but it was a little bit of an odd concept, and the more he tried to think about it and what it meant, what it could mean, in the grand scheme of things, the more his head hurt.

"The Norns guide and watch this cycle, writing and rewriting the fates of all things upon the tree, creating and destroying all that is, again and again without end."

"So they- they're fate? They decide everything that happens?" The dead frost giant chuckled at him.

"Yes and no. They wrote the very first fates, if ever time is said to have had a beginning, but what those things did in life and death altered the stream of time, and so when the dew of their lives reached the well, their fates were changed and rewritten."

"So people control their own fates?" He laughed again.

"Both. All things have some power over their lives, and the Norns in turn have some power over their lives. Your fate is chosen for you, but you also choose it yourself."

"That's... Complicated." He nodded.

"It can be that yes."

"But the short version is that the Norns are the guardians of fate and time?"

"And the creators and destroyers of all things. They are all these things. And more."

"So they're goddesses?"

"Yes." He nodded. They were goddesses. That bit was simple enough. The rest was a little complicated for him to wrap his head around without some further thought. And some meditation as well maybe.

Not that it mattered really. These were things the Jotuns believed. These were things that were part of their religion. But that didn't necessarily make those things fact.

... Of course, the universe had to come from somewhere, didn't it? Why not from three old women sitting around a well? There were so many different religions out there and so many different explanations, Harry had heard of stranger things.

"There are seven temples, right?" He changed the subject. "Why so many?"

"Because each serves its own purpose."

"And this one here? What purpose does it serve?"

"Worship, mostly, of the Norns and Ymir. Or at least it used to. And the marking of infants, as well." Harry stilled.

"Infants?" The spirit nodded.

"We mark our babes when they are but a few days from the womb." He gestured to the markings on his own face, and his bare arms. Harry hadn't really noticed before, for some reason, that all he wore was a simple white cloth, tied around his waist with lengths of it hanging in front and in back. "The marks may hold any number of meanings." He gestured at the table. "The infants are lain there, and seidr and prayers are weaved over them, to keep them calm and minimize the pain, and then they are marked, upon their head and face, their neck, shoulders, arms, and the backs of their hands, with seidr again, by the priest or priestess of the temple."

"You have more marks than that though. Most of the Jotun do."

"There are other markings, past the first. For many occasions. When a child comes of age, for becoming a hunter or a warrior or a healer, for bonding, for the birth of children." He waved a hand as though to say 'etcetera'. Harry hummed.

"And each mark means something right? Like words?"

"Something like that, yes."

"So if you were to see someone's marks, you could read them?" He nodded, and Harry thought of Loki, and the odd look on his face while they'd done what little research they could on his marks. Conflicted about their friendship as he currently felt or no- "I don't suppose you have anything that would teach me how to do the same." The priest eyed him carefully, almost with suspicion. But if he felt any hesitance in helping the wizard on the matter, he didn't state it.

"There are tablets, in one of the smaller temples. You cannot take them, but there is nothing to stop you from reading them."

"Lead the way then. I suppose you can show me the rest of the temples as we go."

"Just so."

wawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawa

Eyes the world-building and plot looming on the horizon~

A few interesting things in this chapter. I wrote most of this while very tired, and the characters pretty much ran amok with the whole thing. Farbauti wasn't supposed to pop up until much later, but she barged her way in here, and Priest Knut was created the moment I wrote the temple seen. No idea where he came from, but he's there.

Poor Harry has no idea who Farbauti is yet, but he will! Probably by the next chapter even!

Also the stuff about time being cyclical, with the present and future affecting things that have already happened, is pretty much canon as far as real Norse mythology goes. There's a lot of stuff in this fic that I pull from the real mythos, and a lot that I just sort of make up to mesh well with the Marvelverse or the Potterverse, or my own little thoughts and headcanons.

I kind of really dig the idea of that actually. It makes me think a lot about how, all through my life, there's been moments where I really wished certain things would happen, and then was hecka disappointed when they didn't. And now, I look back at those days and my younger self and I'm beyond thankful things didn't work out how I wanted at those times, because my older and wiser self recognizes that I'm better off or that I would have been in for a shitfest I wasn't ready for at the time. I like to think the me of now, mentally screaming at my past self, has in some way influenced younger-me.

He was an idiot, so if any of my screaming has gotten through the barrier of time to reach him, the Norns have my eternal gratitude.

Ok folks, that's all I got for now. I'm too out of it to remember if there was anything else I wanted to address, so if there was, I'll hopefully remember and address it next chapter.

Love you guys! Thanks so much for sticking with this! See you next time!

Sincerely,

Mr. Hate