That evening, a lower-level Stark employee handed Loki a basket and a flat box. He set the basket on the table and noticed a note taped to the flat box. Before opening the box or reading the note, he looked through the basket. In it were his clothes, all neatly pressed and folded, and under them, a series of seven books with colourful covers, every title starting with "Harry Potter and the...". Loki placed his clothes in the small dresser in his cell and set the books on top of it, hoping he kept them in the right order. He then returned to the flat box and the attached note.
"Hey, Loki,
"Tony's got me cornered tonight- apparently game night needs more ladies or else it's a wash or something- I think this is just his excuse to keep me from spending all my time down with you. Protective big brother, you know? Anyway, I've sent your laundry, the books I promised, and your very own pizza- just cheese this time, we'll get more adventurous with toppings later, OK? I would have just sent you whatever we end up having here, but game night usually ends up Chinese takeout and a lot of beer- enough beer to make sure we don't actually know what it is we're eating. I figured it was a better idea to be able to say you've already had dinner than to risk Tony deciding to send you leftovers without the benefit of all the beer before-hand to make whatever it is he's decided to mix into one container actually edible.
"See you tomorrow morning, though- I'll make up for it by bringing down breakfast. And no, it won't be oatmeal again.
"~Grace."
He carefully folded the note and set it on the small table beside his bed and opened the box. The smell of this new food was quite enticing and he wondered how he was to eat it until he noticed that Grace had drawn a little diagram using stick figures on the top of the box. He smiled, amused by her gesture. He found paper plates and paper napkins in the cupboard and served himself a slice, pondering just what it was that he liked about this woman- this Midgardian woman who would live far shorter a life than he would. He didn't entirely trust her, thanks to her brother, but he did like that she actually seemed to care about what happened in his cell. She made sure he ate, she told him how to use the bathing facilities without judging him for his ignorance, and she lent him her books. The last one, he thought, was the most significant. Books were things to be prized, precious repositories of stories and history. He went to the books and tried to figure out which one was first in the series based on the covers or the titles and neither seemed to give him any clues. Midgardian text, he had discovered during his first venture to the realm, was strikingly similar to the written common tongue of the Aesir, as though one had shared with the other. The runes in Odin's books were a formal written language reserved for scribes, scholars, priests, and the royal court. Commoners had their own writing that most of the royal family and court did not bother to learn to read, seeing it as beneath them. Loki, however, had been fascinated by the forbidden text and had slowly taught himself in secret. His mother had once found him reading a rather racy book and, while disappointed in his choice of literature, had understood that his curiosity would not allow him to simply not read something he could get his hands on, no matter what language it was in or how low or vile it was considered at court. He opened the slimmest of Grace's volumes and saw a small sticky note on the front page crammed with tiny handwritten text.
"Read this one first! The others are marked with numbers, too- the title of this one was changed for Americans because we're apparently too dim to figure out the British title...but you've got a copy of the original Brit publication in your hands. Yeah, British books! So enjoy, my fellow Slytherin, and don't be put off by our house characterisation in the first book. We are goddamned AWESOME."
He smiled and flipped to each of the other books, noting that their sticky notes all had merely numbers on them, a little dismayed there were not more of Grace's notes. He sat down with his pizza and opened to the first page, hoping that the book would be at least an easy read, if not an entertaining one, given he was not entirely sure just how different the particulars of Midgardian languages were from one another and if he would be able to understand the story easily.