Title: Magic and Myth
Song: Myspace Girl by The Afters
Rating: T for language and future chapters
Genre: Humor, Angst, Romance
Fandom: Thor and Harry Potter
Couple: Loki/Hermione
Inspiration: 'By My Side' by Blinded-Kit
Warnings: Pre-Thor, teenager!Loki, haggard appearances, first attempts at cooking, Loki's love for the color green, dangerous questions, Twilight reference, feel good moments, implying things, Mrs. Dubose, owls, unfair pillow fights
Loki had been offhandedly avoided the Granger house for a few days to which Hermione deemed smart considering she was sure she'd throttle him if he came within two yards of her.
That is, if her parents didn't get to him first. Then he'd be cushioned from her wrath with coddling and compliments and welcomed into the family. Oh, yes, since her parents caught Loki's kiss to her cheek she'd been holding her breath and counting back from ten.
"Who is he?"
"Where did you meet him?"
"Is he a friend from your school?"
"How long have you two been dating?"
She answered accordingly. "Loki. Outside the house. I think. And no, we're not dating."
Her mum and dad put their heads together and giggled to themselves and started to, jokingly, talk up plans for a wedding.
Day Three of a Loki-free World: Hermione had been on her way downstairs, sleepily rubbing her eyes and stretching her arms up over her head, unknowingly hiking up the bottom of the green Irish sweatshirt and fluffing out her bush of unbrushed hair still tangled from sleep.
It's been three days, she was Loki free and she was going to enjoy a quiet day of—
"Good morning, Lady Hermione."
—denied.
Hermione's head whipped back so fast she thought she'd get whiplash.
There he was like a beacon of hell reclining back in her father's chair with a cynical smile.
"Wha—?" She nearly tumbled down the last step, but caught the banister in time. Steadying herself she tried again. "What the bloody hell are you doing here?!" Mentally, Hermione mourned the fact that she'd just said Ron's favorite catch phrase, but quickly forgave herself and set her glare on the intruder.
Loki smiled. "Well, couldn't stay away too long," His evergreen eyes held hers and he replicated a look of innocence. "You might start missing me."
"Why would I—?" Suddenly Hermione's hands grasped the helm of her hoodie and pulled it down, Loki's eyes returned to her face. "Pervert."
"You're the one who walked downstairs this morning looking so . . ." He stared at her, eyes roving in a way that made her blush. He really seemed to be searching for a word though. His wrist twisted in midair and he looked about to snap his fingers to summon the thought, when he found the word. ". . . disheveled."
"Gee, thanks." Hermione picked at her wrist for a hair tie and quickly styled her hair back into a bun at the top of her head like any other teenage girl would have done. Well, most of them would have run upstairs screaming for the police by now. "Now, what do you want?"
"My body is weak, it needs sustenance." Loki stood and strolled towards her, quickly catching her wrist in one of his spider-fingered hands. "Or as you humans say: I'm hungry, let's make food." He tugged her down the last step and nudged her to stand in front of him.
"Food? What?" Loki took her shoulder, turned her to face away from him and gently pushed her by the shoulders into the kitchen area that was bright from the many opened windows. What she had planned on avoiding so early.
"The morning meal," Loki explained. "I know you humans partake in it, yet I know not how to use these contraptions nor am I accustomed to making my own food. You are definitely not prepared to face the public eye yet the morning—you'll have to prepare the meal."
"Hey!" Hermione barked, trying to turn to glare at Loki, his nose brushed her ear.
"By the way, Hermione, I believe green is my color."
Pancake batter. Everywhere.
That was the only way to describe this mess.
Hermione and Loki sat on the floor in front of the kitchen island, which had been their only shield from the flying blueberry filled goo. It had finally shut off, for whatever reason, probably Loki's spell, and Hermione would only stare at her kitchen in horror at the batter dripping from the ceiling, walls and counter top.
"My parents are going to kill me." She moaned, falling back against the cabinet of the kitchen island. Loki side glanced her curiously and quirked a brow.
"Parents on Midgard murder their own children for making messes? And you call my realm savage."
"It is a figure of speech." Hermione growled into her palms, moving her fingers to glare at him. "They're not going to kill me, they'll just be very mad."
"Then why didn't you just say so?"
". . . this is all your fault." Hermione blurted.
"I beg your pardon?" Loki's smooth, batter splotched face crinkled.
Hermione smiled a little and pointed at him accusingly. "You had to press the button, didn't you? You couldn't wait until I explained how to use the electronic whisk, couldn't you?"
Loki's mouth opened and closed like a fish. Hermione smiled in triumph.
Hermione: 1
Loki: 23
"Well . . . I do not know how to use these Midgardian contraptions. I made that fairly clear." He spat and glared detestingly back at the cause of this mess. "It looks like some twisted device of torture."
Hermione inwardly pace-palmed herself repeatedly. "You can say muggle, you know."
"This again?" Loki sighed, head falling into his fist. "Can you not just accept I'm from a different realm?"
"Nope." Hermione answered curtly and crossed her arms over her chest. She refused to believe a word of the seventh year's outrageous story of being the son of some Viking deity she'd read about in the mythology books at the library. His magic was advanced, but there were still many things about the magical world Hermione didn't know yet. His travel spells without port keys or floo powder could be a charm of sorts or the way he used magic without a wand . . . well, it was common to see when a witch or wizard was young, or when their emotions got the better of them, or if they were true masters.
In her mind, Hermione was still troubled over the last part herself.
"Tell me," Loki's smooth voice called her back, pulling her as if she were bound by rope. "Though you've told me 'a hundred times', what is your world full of?"
"Magic." She answered quickly.
"And, what sort of magic? White magic? Black magic? Can you use teleportation spells?"
". . .yes." Then she added. "And there are paintings that talk, staircases that move, trees that attack, beasts that come from story books, and ghosts."
"Ghosts. Afterlife. We call Valhalla, you call it Heaven. Other realms. Is it really that hard to accept?"
"Yes . . ."
"Why are you so hesitant to believe me?"
"Because you're crazy. . ."
He scoffed at her and his brows knitted. "I, Lady Granger, am not crazy. I am simply pleasantly mad." Hermione rolled her eyes in exasperation. "From my observation, my skills differ greatly from yours. I am different."
"Believe me, I know that. . ." Hermione droned, tucking a loose hair behind her ear. "What makes you so different?"
"I'll live a long time."
"What are you Edward Cullen?"
"Whom is this Edward fellow you keep mentioning?"
"Nothing! No one! So—live long time? That'll take too long to prove."
"My wounds heal fairly quickly." He offered.
"So does a wizard's."
"With spells."
"Which you can do without a wand or voiced spell, as you've so proudly proved, hundreds of times already."
"Hmm," Loki ran a finger over his bottom lip in thought. "Fatal injuries."
"Jump off a cliff."
"I'm not immortal. I have longevity, I can still be killed."
"Fine . . . Stab yourself."
He laughed. "Isn't the fact that I'm willing to hurt myself enough?"
"Maybe . . ." He did have a point. "Alright, so let's say you are Loki—shut up, let me finish—it says in your book that you can cloak yourself and your magic."
"I can."
"Are you using one now?"
He gave her a look. "Why do you think no one has dragged me home yet? If Heimdall saw me, the Allfather would already have me back in Asgard by now."
Hermione racked her brain for the names.
Heimdall = Gatekeeper = all seeing, all knowing.
Allfather = Odin = Loki's father.
Asgard = Realm Eternal = Loki's home
Okay . . .
"True . . . but could you use it on other things?"
"Depends on what you're implying, Lady Hermione." He purred mischievously.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Magic. I'm not allowed to use magic outside of school because I'm too young. When you're a seventh year, seventeen at least, you have free range to use as much magic as you want. If I do use magic now the Ministry can expel me from school."
"Why is everyone on Midgard so quick to give punishments? It's mockery of the place it was when I first visited." Loki trailed off, and smiled in realization. "You want me to cloak your magic so this 'Ministry' won't know your using it?"
Hermione stared. If he really could do that she could zap the pancake batter gone, fix her clothes (and possibly Loki's), have her hair cleaned and be ready for the day in a matter of seconds. The thought was tempting, but . . .
"Noooo." She stood. "I want you to clean up this mess while I take a shower and we'll go out for breakfast . . . and keep a cloak on it."
Lucky for her, he did what she asked.
Hermione never thought she'd be so forward as to invite a boy into her room—especially when her parents were away at work—but Loki . . . well, was Loki so he didn't really count. Moreover, he'd already paid visits to her room without her permission before.
This time, however, he seemed a little reluctant to her demand.
"Hermione,"—did he just whine?—"Why?"
"Because I need to fix the mess you left my bookshelf in when you decided I was your personal library." Now it was Hermione's turn to shove the reluctant teen up the stairs and into her powder blue bedroom.
Loki smiled in mocking innocence. "I would do no such thing."
"Riiiight," Hermione gave a final shove at Loki's back. "Okay, so you sit here . . ." She nudged him over to her bed and then turned back to her bookshelf that was once jam-packed with books, now had place spaces where the stolen books had once been. "Look! See you stole some!"
"I believe the term you earlier used was 'borrowed', Lady Granger." Loki said, easing down onto her bed, it fell under his weight and his elbows rested on his knees. "Don't be a hypocrite; it is rather unbecoming of your character."
Hermione rolled her eyes and turned her back to him to continue rearranging her bookshelf.
"Why are your quarters always a mess?" Loki asked, sprawling like a cat across her unmade bed. "Do you not have any servants to clean it for you?"
Hermione's eyebrow twitched. Of course, the one day she decides to relax and leave her bed unmade, Loki has to comment on it.
"No, some of us have to clean our own rooms." She answered with as little malice as possible.
"Really? Magic wielders aren't held in high regard on Midgard?" He asked, threading the strings of her baby blanket through his fingers thoughtfully, picking apart each individual string, taking great care in unknotting them.
"Some are."
"Who?"
Oh, did he really have to ask?
She gave a particularly hard slam of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale into the shelves between The Taming of the Shrewd and Romeo and Juliet. Loki had shanghaied her copies of Hamlet and Henry V and was refusing to tell her where he hid them. He promised she'd find them eventually.
Why'd her parents give her so many Shakespeare works anyway? Is it some British stereotype they have to follow?
Turning around on the wooden floor to face him, her hands grasped her knees trying to feel like she was holding onto something unmoving and not talking about something that struck home. "You know," she began. "You told me yourself that you couldn't sense any magic from my parents?"
Loki nodded slowly. He hated her giving him recaps.
"Well, to most wizards that's highly unlikely. I'm what the stuck-up, silver-spoon-in-their-mouth, 'pureblood' wizards with rich lifestyles and aristocracy call a 'Mudblood' because I have magic and my parents don't. It gives me immediate second-class citizen status just because of who my parents are."
Loki stared.
And stared.
He could hear the bitterness in her voice, the anger. How much she hated the name and how those Pureblood Slytherins threw it around so casually and whispered it behind the backs of their hands and wrote it on unkind notes. Etching it into her memory. Carving it into her memory.
"If it's any consolation, I don't think there's anything wrong with your blood."
Hermione stared ahead unseeing.
No one had ever said that. Just told her to disregard the truth behind the remark. So she was a Mudblood, so what? The comment barely bothered her anymore, if anything it made her angry, but everyone felt as though they should dance around the truth and tell her she wasn't what she was. That's where she started warring with herself on her borderline of acceptance and disregard with the topic.
Didn't that just make her more accomplished? She had the best grades in her class and read more books than any of those stuck up 'purebloods' in all their 'glory'. Treating her like a disease was second nature to them.
But still, Loki outright thought nothing was wrong with her.
That's all she wanted.
". . . thank you . . ."
Hermione's favorite part of summer was always getting letters and postcards from her friends and family, staying in touch was important and the boys promised her that they'd all get together before the new term started. That was a letter she was anxiously awaiting.
Loki had been mildly amused to find owls circling her house with letters clutched in their talons when they just arrived back from another trip to London—Hermione, admittedly broke, allowed Loki to use whatever form of magic he had to get them there and back safely.
"Those birds deliver your letters?" Loki asked.
"Uh-huh, the white one is Harry's her name's Hedwig and the dark one is—"
She was cut off by an appalling shriek from the house they were passing.
Mrs. Dubose.
"You wretched girl!" The screen door of the elder woman's house flew open, slamming against the wall and nearly flying off the hinges. The wizened woman marched forward, grabbing tightly to the railing of her porch and then stabbing a finger up at the sky around Hermione's house. "What have you done now!? What sorcery is this!?"
Loki gave Hermione a small smile. "I told you people still use the word sorcery."
"Oh, shut up." She snapped back.
"Don't ignore me you impolite little rodent!"
"Good evening, Mrs. Dubose." Loki waved animatedly with a fake smile plastered on his face.
The old woman blotched. "You bimbo bird! It's afternoon! You say 'good afternoon'!"
"'Bimbo bird'?" Loki whispered to Hermione.
"No idea . . . its seven-thirty, Mrs. Dubose!" Hermione shouted back.
"Don't sass me, you jezebel. Get rid of those birds before I call animal control!"
"J—jezebel?" Hermione blushed and power-walked down the block and into her house, taking the stairs two at a time and stomped into her bedroom, all the while muttering to herself, "I can't believe that old bat called me a jezebel!"
"What's a jezebel?" Loki asked.
"Don't talk to me!" Hermione hissed, angrily grabbing a bag of owl treats Mrs. Weasley had given to her previous to the summer.
Hermione yanked opened her window to usher in Harry and Ron's owls and allowed them to perch on her bed frame.
Twenty minutes later she'd given them a snack and replies to their master's letters before sending them away again.
"Who's Ronald Weasley?"
She knew it! He could stay out of her things for two seconds!
"He's—" She turned, finding Loki sitting on her bed with her letters from her friends spread out around him. In his hands was one of Ron's letters to her, she could tell by the withered at the edges and had indents in the paper from where his owl's talons had dug too deeply into the paper.
In three quick steps, she was across the room and snagged the letter from his hand.
"You can't read that . . . it's . . . it's a Federal Offense!"
The look of shock crossed his features and then a slow smile. "Too bad I'm of your world." His fingers grazed across the eggshell white envelopes that were slipping out letters across her fluffy blue bedspread. "You're petty little mortal laws do not affect me." He seemed to singsong this.
"You—!"
"I must ask again, whom is Ronald Weasley?"
"A friend of mine," she growled. "One of my best friends, from Hogwarts."
Suddenly she had an idea.
"Just a friend? Huh?" Loki asked with a sly smile.
Hermione made a face at him and grabbed a box of letters off the bed and, after a little rummaging, managed to find the single moving picture she, Ron and Harry had taken last year in the infirmary before he'd gotten his cast taken off. "The redhead's Ron."
She carefully watched Loki's face for a reaction when his eyes set on Harry. None.
Even the stony Professor Snape—and every other bland to emotion person at Hogwarts—had reacted to seeing Harry. Loki, as it seem, truly didn't know his face. "And that's my other friend Harry Potter."
At this a slow smile spread over Loki's face.
"Both your friends are male? Oh, Hermione how scandalous."
She whipped him in the head with a pillow.
He was incorrigible.
I need help figuring out how Hermione will believe Loki's a God! Help!
And if you read the books and you have a favorite scene from book four let me know!
THANK YOU FOR ALL THE REVIEWS! This story was more of a success than I hoped! I hope you continue to give me feedback!
I love Loki when he's a jackass! And Hermione's reactions when she saw him in the beginning. That's how I look every morning. Uh-huh, this *gestures to self* takes work. Speaking of work I finally got my job at the candy counter in a hotel and I've been doing extensive work outs with my ex-cheerleader best friend because it just makes everything in my life a whole lot better if people can say that girl that works at the candy counter is skinny. XD
Happy Frigga's Day! Friday = Frigga. Thor and Loki's 'mother'. Yeah, I wanted to update on Thor's Day (Thursday) but I effed up.
Bimbo Bird= 1920s slang. Bimbo meaning "tough guy" and bird meaning "odd". It works, just go with what the Mockingbird woman says. And yes, Mrs. Dubose is from To Kill a Mockingbird which I loved!
-Song- I was thinking of the Mudblood comment and the songs "Use Somebody" and "A Team" popped into my head so I used them and when you think about it, yes Hermione could really use a sarcastic bastard like Loki -sorry Draco, love you~!
Tell me what you want to see here,
~QueenVamp