Baba Yaga's Boy
Haltia's prompt: Harry as a worshipper of Loki (either the Marvel-version, or the Norse mythology). Perhaps he could've found a journal of Marauders in his trust vault in his early years and they had been supporters/worshippers first, taking clues to their pranks from the God of Mischief.
(There are bits of Norse myth no one quite remembers in the face of Vanir and Æsir, one of them is that Loki's origins are in the imagination of the woods – and the sons of Fenrir were born in them, called Járnvidr, Iron-Wood, the woods of wolves and witch-giants called járnvidjur. Yaga Baba has her origins in woods as well and a connection with Ježibaba and if I play with the word Yggdrasil and see a connection where there isn't one, well, its fun to imagine maybes.)
Harry Potter lives in a hut on chicken legs with a witch that isn't nearly as wicked as the stories say. Those stories whispered from one muggle to the next, they say her name is Baba Yaga, the dreadful mother. One day, her daughter comes to the door – Harry Potter is five, and it's he who answers the door to her.
After all, the door opens to the woods -the woods others call Forbidden- for Baba Yaga is the most terrible being about. Her daughter is a lovely lady, with sharp cheeks and lush lips, her eyes narrow upon the sight of him – recognizing him, her hair is as black as shadow. She is silent for a long while.
"So, it is you." Harry knows she's talking to herself, for she's not looking at him when she speaks. She kneels next to the fire, and looks to Baba Yaga, who has hair as wild as the wind and as silver as sea foam.
Harry goes to the only mother he's ever known, settling sleepily in her lap.
"My dear Perenelle, how good to see you, and how is your Nicholas Flamel?" Bathilda Bagshot speaks, smiling as she runs knotted and thick fingers through the silky black hair of the boy who lays his head upon her knee. He was but five and she was the oldest witch in the world. All the others counted her as a sister, and kept to worlds of their own. There were as many worlds as the roots of the holy ash tree.
"He is looking for the boy, mother, he, and Albus Dumbledore." Perenelle settles by the fire side, keeping her mother in sight. Loving her mother is one thing, trust is quite another.
"He won't be found." Bathilda states and this is so. Perenelle only found them because her mother wanted her to, the legs of the hut would take her mother and her adopted child far – if Baba Yaga was so inclined to go. Baba Yaga's daughter nods thoughtfully.
"Why did you take the boy, mother?" That too, is a mystery to her.
"His mother feared for him." Bathilda Bagshot remembered, looking to the fire.
"Oh, Bathilda, I just don't know what to do." Lily Potter's green eyes are red rimmed, she has cried too much to start anew with crying now, although the pleading is plain to hear. She does not know that her neighbor is Baba Yaga , merely the old dotty witch Bathilda Bagshot who sips her tea, and keeps chickens.
Bathilda carefully studies Harry Potter as he toddles about after one of her prized rosters – the bird is nearly as big as he is. She hides her smile behind the rim of the cup, and when she looks back to Lily her face is all sympathy.
"Now, now, my dear, tell me all about it, maybe we two can think of something to do, hmm?" Bathilda murmurs, and Lily nods hesitating only a moment. What harm can it do, after all, to speak to the little old witch who has lived down the street since Albus Dumbledore was a teenager? No matter that Albus would not like all Bathilda has told of him, Lily thinks the old woman's memory isn't what it was.
Bathilda had told her host about two boys, Albus Dumbledore and her own nephew Gellert Grindelwald, she tells of their friendship and their tragedy. Lily Potter doesn't really believe a word of it, but that's alright, as it's less that Bathilda is telling her, than reminding herself of great and terrible deeds.
If ever there is such a time for such tidings, it is now. On Harry's first birthday she gives Lily a blanket for Harry, woven with hair (it's golden and catches the light very nicely, never does Lily ask what kind of hair it is, and Bathilda would not tell her even if she did that it's her own hair cut long ago, woven with spells to ward and warn her) and tucks him into his crib with it, and there it stays, for months.
"It's the Dark Lord; Bathilda…he, he's heard a…a. prophesy that might lead him here, to hurt Harry." Bathilda clicks her tongue, as if tsking a bad child. Lily thinks that James told her, once, that Bathilda is the oldest witch in the world – and it had something to do with her blood, for she is older than even the Flamels who have lived for six-hundred years – but Lily doesn't think of that as she takes comfort in a little old woman being so bluntly unafraid of the Dark Lord.
"Is there no hope for it?" Bathilda asks, looking to Harry once more and frowning, for she has grown so very fond of the little boy.
"I…I think there is another little boy who might fit that this prophesy, but Albus just can't say which it will be, for sure." Bathilda raises a brow, but says not a word against Albus Dumbledore.
"Well, hold to hope dear Lily." Bathilda Bagshot finishes her tea and kisses little Harry, leaving behind her rooster, Fjalar which ruffles its feathers and he herds Harry into his home with Lily laughingly following after. She lets Harry cuddle the bird in his crib as he naps.
He is safe, until Fjalar cries out and Bathilda Bagshot comes too late to save Lily – who she had liked, who she would not have minded making her daughter, or calling one day a sister – nor James, but Harry…it is Harry who has the rune sign of the sun upon his brow.
A scar, the only scar that will mar her son; Yaga Baba claims him, and what she claims can not be taken away.
Perenelle Flamel sees in the fire her mother's memories, and taps her fingers along her wand. She gives her mother a book with a wolf, a stag, a rat, and a dog upon the cover. It is gold and red and has no title.
"What is this?" Bathilda Bagshot asks, with raised white brows. She does not yet take the book her daughter offers, but Harry's green eyes watch it, study it with eyes too wise for any five year old to have.
"This, mother, is a part of his history, the story of James Potter, the boy's father – and his friends and god. You may find it interesting – they called themselves Marauders. I think my husband and Dumbledore are not alone in looking for the lost boy." Baba Yaga takes up the book, and reads the runes written in it.
Those born with the blood Harry Potter has, mortal but magical - think nothing of writing a rune message to Odin, or one writ in blood upon stone to Freyja. They follow the paths of the gods and goddesses, for their power flows more easily when they have that favor. Like to like, for imagination is the sincerest form of flattery, and Baba Yaga thinks all gods and goddesses are too easily flattered to share power with mortals so simply.
She reads the name of the god that the Marauders gave reverence to, and she smiles. Hveðrungr is the name her people, those who are hardly mortal and hide their hearts, call him. Loki he is called by the Vanir and Æsir. It is fitting.
She gives the boy the book, and knows it will be the first thing she teaches him to read.
"Daughter, did I ever tell you how Hveðrungr birthed us?" Bathilda Bagshot wonders aloud, for it's upon stories that Baba Yaga thrives, and teaches, and tells, and all those stories, she says with a small secret smile, are true.
Harry grows up at her knee, listening keenly. What he learns, he doesn't tell half of. (Telling, after all, isn't as fun as showing.)
Baba Yaga turns her ring, with its red-gold stone.
"The war I remember, the first in the world,
When the gods with spears, had smitten Gullveig,
And in the hall of Hor had burned her,
Three times burned, and three times born,
Oft and again, yet ever she lives.
Heidi they named her, who sought their home,
The wide-seeing witch, in magic wise;
Minds she bewitched that were moved by her magic,
To powerful people a joy she was."
Perenelle Flamel watches her mother turn her ring once more.
"A heart ate Loki, in the embers it lay,
And half-cooked found he, the woman's heart;-
With child from the woman, Lopt soon was,
And thence among men - came the witches all."
The ring, now turned thrice calls, and from the fire steps Hveðrungr himself, who sees the boy at Baba Yaga 's knee and smiles with relief. Hveðrungr kisses all three upon their cheeks, for they are all of his family.
"Ah, good work! You can't imagine how pleased Sirius Black and Remus Lupin will be, for they've been howling so, I almost feared they had forgotten to speak." Hveðrungr traces the sun rune upon Harry Potter's brow, and frowns thoughtfully. He pinches between his fingers a soul the color of soot. At that, he sneers, and throws it into Baba Yaga's fire. It dies, the screams rising with the smoke.
"Hello there, little one." Hveðrungr greets the boy who stares up at him with wide green eyes.
"We are going to have such fun." Baba Yaga clears her throat protectively, and Hveðrungr's grin is charmingly sly.
"Well, when you grow up, call upon your god Loki, I'll be waiting." The god winks, and goes back the way he came, by a flare of fire. By the fire, like a cat, Loki had left a rat. Perenelle plucks it up by its worm-looking tail, a smirk upon her lips. There is now no need for her mother or the boy to hide.
"Do put the kettle on, Perenelle, I suspect we'll soon be getting company." Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, when they arrive, are greeted with tea and cookies patterned after rats - they carefully decline, wondering all the while if Baba Yaga had not baked Peter Pettigrew into them.
They never ask, and she never tells.
(I changed the wording of "joy of evil people/women" to "powerful" in the translation of Völuspá (which tells of Gullveig); and Hyndluljóð's wording to "witches" instead of "monsters". You really can't make exact translations between English, Old Norse, and Old English, because you lose either the old meaning or the flow of understanding. There is no official myth which joins Gullveig's burning and death/rebirth with that of Loki's eating of a witch's burnt heart which makes him give birth, but I've always liked to think the two connected.)