Asgard was a feasting society. It was the feasting society. It turned out that the second prince receiving light punishment was sufficient to justify a night of giant parties across the city. Rather than hosting everyone in Odin's palace, the royal entourage fell upon the city's… clubbing district? Enormous-but-dimly-lit rooms flickered with firelight and roared with noise, as the gods of Asgard mingled with their people.
Thor was mobbed by Aesir, so Harry found himself directed to a spot that seemed to be the Vanir contingent. Hogun the Grim was heading up the oblong table, Harry was seated next to Mr. Diggory and two others that he hadn't expected to be present: Amelia Bones, the aunt of Harry's former crush in Hufflepuff, and a dark-skinned auror that Harry might have seen in passing before, whose name was Shacklebolt.
Over the giant pile of roasts and other delicious-but-heavy foods, the whip-thin, iron-haired older woman apologized, "Mr. Potter, I wish I had been able to be present at your trial today, but we were needed here. How did it go?"
He shrugged, "Fortunately Thor showed up to say I'd been telling the truth. The kree lady was dead set on convincing everyone that I was running some giant plot to help Midgard take over, or something."
Mr. Diggory nodded, and he said, "She had me half-convinced."
"Blast it to Niflheim," Bones swore. "I need to find her something else to do than grind her axe against Midgard."
"She doesn't like us?" Harry checked.
"She claims to be perfectly objective," Shacklebolt said, sarcastically, clearly not a fan either.
"Hopefully we can convince Asgard to direct their warriors to assist us, and her presence will not be required for much longer," Bones agreed, turning her attention on Hogun.
The Vanir member of the Warriors Three merely said, in his more Mongolian-inflected accent (common to the Vanaheim regions that had closer ties to Asia), "I do what I can. But many worlds have no protections. The Allfather may send us to help others, first." He didn't seem particularly pleased by this, but it was clear he was not powerful enough politically to shift Odin's prioritization of the defense of the Nine Realms. "But, I have been away from home for so long. Perhaps if you told me stories, I could share them…"
Thus, most of dinner was spent telling tales of battles and other events on Vanaheim. Harry told a couple of his own, such as the fight near the train platform the previous winter. But he was distracted: he could see the table the Alfheim delegation was sitting at across the festhall, and kept catching glimpses of Fleur through the throngs of servers and other guests moving around.
They hadn't really gotten to talk on the way out of Odin's hall, other than brief pleasantries. And several elves of various stations seemed keen on monopolizing her attention through dinner, for all that she was glancing Harry's way just as often as he was looking hers. Eventually, at a break in one of Shacklebolt's stories, Hogun nodded his head toward one side of the building and said, "Porch over there is nice."
Slightly confused by that statement, Harry noticed Thor moving to sit with the elf delegation, somehow contriving to get Fleur to give up her seat for him. Her kinsmen distracted, she started to drift into the sea of partying Aesir, and caught Harry's eye. They both managed to weave their way out the door Hogun had indicated.
It was a nice porch. A well-made wooden railing looked over the city. It wasn't far to the street below, but the sweep of the buildings down toward the lake made it an excellent view nonetheless. In Asgard it was already getting on toward winter, so the air outside was crisp in the late evening. All of the lights were low to the ground and simple flame rather than the electrical light pollution of Earth cities, so, above, the view of the night sky was amazing.
"Are they right on the edge of a nebula, or is this just some kind of magic?" Harry wondered, the railing at the perfect height for leaning.
She put her hands against the wood just a foot away and stared up, "I believe zis world ees at ze center of a galaxy, ze space above slowly dropping into ze void." She turned her face back to him, the more adult glamour she usually wore falling away to her natural, youthful beauty as she did. "Eet's very pretty."
"Only because it's currently the background for you," he told her, awarding himself a point for smoothness as she smiled at the compliment. "I did tell you I knew Thor, I thought? I wrote to you that I helped stop Loki with a bunch of people including his brother."
"I zink you must 'ave understated zat on purpose," she allowed, admitting that he might have written something similar.
"You know me," he shrugged, since she was aware he didn't like to make a big deal about his fame. "You here like Bones is, to try to lobby Asgard to send troops?"
"Oui. My fazzer ees trying to teach me realpolitik. So far, zere 'as been a lot of standing around being nice. I zink right zis moment ees ze first time fazzer 'as actually gotten to talk to a royal, and only because ze Prince ees, 'ow you say, your man wiz wings?"
Harry had a moment thinking about her deliberate avoidance of saying "Thor" with her accent before his brain caught up and he explained, "Wingman. It's a term for a teammate that flies beside you to keep any enemy flyers off or something. But, yeah. Thor's a good guy."
"So, 'ow many ozzer battles 'ave you been in since zen you didn't tell me about?" she asked, jokingly.
"Well, did I ever tell you about Doctor Bighead? He built a giant robot armor and an exploding sculpture. And then a raccoon and a tree tried to kidnap me at the Market…" he trailed off as her look of amusement at what she thought was a joke turned exasperated as she realized he was serious. "So, have you been up to anything but politics? You said you got to fight marauders, too?"
Letting Harry's crazy exploits alone for a moment, she agreed, "Oui. We call zem Violateurs." Arbitrary French words in English sentences didn't always get caught by his implant. "I helped when zey got bold and attacked our capital. We 'ope for Asgard's aid soon." She thought for a moment and mentioned, "I 'ave also completed Lord of ze Rings." Harry had loaned her one of the Gryffindor copies of the fantasy epic back in the spring.
"What did you think?"
"I liked eet. I'm not sure, zough, zat I agree zat zis Elrond is very like my fazzer."
"You need to see the movies. I guess the guy that played him did it a little differently than in the book." He risked it and asked, "Any chance you could make it to Earth for a movie marathon at some point?"
She considered, "Per'aps I could find a day to slip zrough ze Market, eef Asgard agrees to 'elp soon. 'ow long until you 'ave school?"
"Ugh, only like three weeks," he realized. "Are you going to do that apprenticeship you talked about?"
"Oui. God's Burden ees one of our best battle-casters and agreed to train me for at least a season." Harry's implant had cut in on the man's name and substituted the English for the French title.
"Nice. Oh, yeah, I got a week earlier this summer to practice with the lady who kicked my ass in the third challenge. I should try to show you what she taught me at some point."
Before she could agree or disagree, a man's voice he hadn't heard in a while butted in, suggesting, "I'm also interested in seeing what you've learned!"
As they finally noticed Fandral striding onto the porch, Harry and Fleur let go of one another's hands, barely aware they'd gotten closer and let them overlap on the railing as they'd been talking.
The warrior had an entourage of drunk Aesir behind him, and had somewhere obtained a pair of blunted dueling rapiers. "What say you, young Potter: ready to show your old teacher what you've learned in the last two years?"
"Out here?" Harry asked, eyeing the porch. It was a fairly tight fit for a duel, only a couple yards wide and maybe four times that long if onlookers didn't crowd them. Though he guessed it wasn't too much smaller than a sport fencing pitch on Earth. "Okay," he shrugged out of his over-robes down to just his shirt and trousers, the chill of the night a little more biting as he freed himself up to move.
"Good man!" Fandral grinned his rakish smile, tossing Harry one of the rapiers.
"For your honor, my lady?" Harry bowed to Fleur, as she took his shed robes.
"Fight well, my champion," she gave a genial smile, though slightly crazed as she realized that, yes, one of the Warriors Three might pop up for a duel and that was just Harry's life.
Harry was barely in position, onlookers still exiting onto the porch or crowding the windows, when Fandral led off with some simple strikes. Harry easily parried them, using the novice forms his opponent had taught him. Seeing that he remembered the basics, Fandral smiled and worked through the higher-skill forms, gradually moving faster and faster but not really doing anything to throw him off, simply testing him for base competence.
"You've been practicing?" Fandral checked.
"Dean worked it into our daily routine," Harry confirmed, deflecting a thrust. Though that routine had moved on to mostly doing it with conjured blades.
"It shows. Rare is the young warrior that can maintain fighting form without prompting." Though he was still dueling, Fandral lapsed into a slower pattern while he explained, "Why, just a few decades ago I took on a new squire named Wulfric who…"
"Are we fighting or storytelling?" Harry made an aggressive slash to force his teacher's attention back to the fight.
Managing to parry, Fandral smirked, "Still full of cheek. Very well." He then doubled his speed again, making a fusillade of strikes that Harry was hard pressed to keep his blade ahead of. Almost too fast to follow, the Aesir warrior made a switchover while Harry's blade was offline to his right.
The crowd gasped as, instead of hitting an unguarded shoulder, it slid off of Harry's newly-manifested magical buckler. The orange geometric disc cast new light into the otherwise dimly-lit porch. "Of course, we don't just practice swords." The shield might not have worked on Fandral's magic-deflecting main sword, Fimbuldraugr, but the practice blades didn't seem to have the same powers.
"Well, perhaps it's cheating, but learning to cheat is a practical fighting skill." Fandral was having difficulty getting anything else through, with Harry's offhand protection. But he was just waiting until his superior reach paid off. Using his longer arms, he managed to get Harry to overextend and tapped him on the right shoulder. "Like so. I receive the point, but one hard-earned."
The crowd clapped at the show. Fandral settled back to see if Harry wanted to take a second run. Thinking about it and dismissing the shield, he tried an usual stance and then moved forward.
"You're leaving yourself wide open…" the Aesir insisted, but was surprised when his target for an easy thrust suddenly wasn't there. He barely parried the return swing, because he was so surprised at how deftly Harry seemed to flow out of the way. "I didn't teach you that," he accused.
"Been learning to account for being smaller," the young sorcerer explained. He had only done a couple of tests with Dean and Hermione to see if the Ta Lo style would work with weapons, but so far it seemed to mesh. The Kali-like style Gamora originally taught them provided a strong basis for adapting the same moves between armed and unarmed. Fandral was struggling to adjust to his strikes missing Harry by inches or barely skating off of his blade.
Finally, himself off balance, Fandral felt a hit to his belly. Nonplussed, he stepped back to the silence of the crowd as they realized the man had taken an honest hit from a student. "One point each," he acknowledged, then his goatee bristled as he announced, "Final point!"
The crowd was utterly silent at the speed that was suddenly in evidence. That shock rippled further into the building as more heads popped up to get a look at what spectacle was occurring on the porch.
Fandral was faster than even Harry could match, but the boy had the better reflexes for surprises. The older man made up for much of that with skill, able to instinctively parry strikes that would have worked against a lesser swordsman, but he was having trouble adjusting to Harry's ability to dodge.
To the crowd, it was just a flashing web of fire-lit steel in a cloud around the two duelists. There was no speech, only the sound of metal sliding against metal: Fandral had to concentrate enough on the fight that he actually shut his mouth completely.
Finally, worried at losing face, he tried a strike that he'd never use outside of practice, because it left him too open, and managed to touch Harry on the side. The teen checked his own return strike dead to the torso as soon as he felt the hit, just barely.
"And two points, hard earned," Fandral announced, all smiles again since he'd won. The crowd went nuts. Realizing that he'd have actually lost if that had been a fight with live steel, or at least taken the worse hit, he graciously announced, "I promised the Boy-Who-Lived an Asgardian blade should he account himself well when next we met, and he's exceeded even my lofty expectations! I'll see that he has a sword fit for the defender of Vanaheim and Midgard!"
Harry simply bowed in thanks, hoping to get back to Fleur, but the excited crowd dragged him into the festhall.
There were at least three hours of furious partying after that, where Harry barely got two minutes to talk to Fleur alone amidst all the Aesir who'd suddenly figured out that he was the Boy-Who-Lived, who had slain a Nidhogg serpent with Fandral two years prior. He got his over-robes back, at least… eventually. He may have had some of what he thought was buttermead but turned out to be actual mead. He was pretty sure that Volstagg was prevented from challenging him to a drinking contest. He met the lady Sif, who managed to corner him in a semi-private conversation where he had to apologize that no, he'd never met Jane Foster and didn't know much about her. He at least remembered Thor talking about his relationship drama and didn't point out that all he knew was that the prince was really in love with the astrophysicist.
He got pulled into being the center of attention at some table where Fleur prompted him to boast about Doctor Bighead and his run-in with the bounty hunters. Thor wandered by near the end of that story and the two of them shared the tale of the Battle of New York.
He didn't hate it, being the center of attention for things he'd actually done. And even though he didn't have a chance to talk with her privately, Fleur was there more often than she wasn't.
A few hours in, he wasn't sure how he'd wandered into a private room while switching tables, the noise of the hall suddenly quieter. The small dining room was nicely appointed, and the queen was sitting calmly drinking a flagon of something light-colored.
"Oh, sorry, ma'am. Your grace? I must have…"
"No, sit, Harry Potter," Frigga insisted, and he realized he must have been deliberately maneuvered to have this conversation. After he slid into a very comfortable chair opposite her, she noted, "It's rare for both of my sons to share a friend. Rare for Loki to have any at all."
"I would have thought he'd have his own Warriors Three or something. Hogwarts friends. Or did he outlive them all?"
"Perhaps. That was so long ago he must have, but I don't know that he kept in contact with many. He's always kept himself separate from and above others, truly," she explained.
"Yeah. I don't know if he thinks I'm his friend. Said we weren't, actually."
"With those so practiced in the arts of deception, what they say is often less important than what they do."
"My friend Nat said the same thing. She's one of the other Avengers. A spy. I wasn't sure how I could trust her… but I guess I do," he realized.
"My younger son doesn't like to admit to being either weak or wrong. And yet you seem to be able to get him closer to either than I've ever seen."
"I caught him at a vulnerable moment?" Harry shrugged.
"And that might be all there is to it," she agreed. "But if he seeks to maintain a friendship… will you?"
"I guess for being over a thousand years old he's not much more emotionally mature than the rest of my friends that are my age, huh? I mean, uh… your grace." Maybe he'd had a couple cups of mead and should try to be less familiar with royalty.
"You are not wrong," she agreed, letting him get away with the joke.
"But, uh, yeah. If Loki needs a friend, I can try to do that. Is it going to be bad if I'm friends with Thor, too? He doesn't seem to really get along with the Warriors Three?"
"He has had centuries to ruin their opinion of him. I believe he does that deliberately. But, no, I will not ask you to forswear friendship with my eldest. He, also, can use friends among the other realms that he will someday rule."
"But not girlfriends?" Harry probed, like any teen talking a mile where he'd been given an inch. If he was allowed to be forward…
"The stargazer? He knew her but for a few days. And she'll live but years. Love is not built on such fragile foundations."
"And maybe they'll break up in a year when they realize that. Or maybe they'll stay together and he'll learn something important about, you know, better to have loved and lost and all that. But if you tell him he can't… that he has to marry someone he doesn't love…" Clearly, Harry was projecting a bit about Fleur's situation. "All you'll get is him resenting it."
She regarded him for nearly thirty seconds, eventually admitting, "Heimdall counseled us similarly. Perhaps both of your eyes see further, given their gifts."
"I guess the Soul Stone went through here at some point too? Was that after the three brothers stole it from Death?" He'd eventually heard several versions of the story that involved his ancestors, the Peverells.
She frowned, parting only with, "I'm curious what you know about the truth of that story?"
On the spot, not loving the probing look, he explained, "I think it might have something to do with the Mistress of the Nidhogg serpent. He said I had her cloak. So maybe she was 'Death' and there's also a wand out there, too. She might have a headdress of antlers or blades or something, based on the carving in Niflheim. Fandral was supposed to ask about it? I tried to get the alien pretending to be Voldemort to tell me if his boss was working with her, but he didn't seem to know anything."
She sighed and explained, "You are at the edges of the dark history of the Realms that my husband declared secret. He claims it was so none seek to emulate or free her. Perhaps he also has some shame that he did not solve the problem earlier. But if her minions are moving and she is somehow in contact with the being behind the events of recent years…
"Do you know they claim that even I fear Voldemort?" she changed topics suddenly.
"The telekinetic with the high voice, or the other one?" he checked.
"Perhaps both. Along with a whole Black Order that serves fanatically. When we would make direct attempts to stop the Death Eaters over a decade ago, usually they would flee so we had only shadows to strike at, not even Heimdall able to see their fortresses, only where they were attacking, and then too late.
"But sometimes, only sometimes, we would encounter this Order. And they would slaughter whole squads of Aesir warriors. Once, they were led by an immense man with a two-bladed sword, and he nearly slew me, so mighty a fighter was he. He told me to stay out of his business, and that he might not be on Vanaheim for much longer to trouble me.
"This was, I believe, shortly before you got that scar. Long enough to start the rumor that I feared him, rather than that I had retreated to wait for my sons, who had been off on another quest. Would that they had returned home earlier, and that we could have stopped him before he took your parents, but though we were ready to assault him the next time he appeared, he had quietly slipped into your home and been, we thought, destroyed.
"Do you know that some sorcerers may learn to open a channel to the royals of Asgard for magical gifts?" she once again asked something seemingly-unrelated.
"I know that it's possible to connect to Loki, to learn to transform into an animal," Harry agreed, reeling from the idea that the man that killed his parents had nearly killed Frigga. How powerful was he?
"I am called upon to bestow a gift more rarely, for mine are boons that can be given to wives and mothers, for the protection of the home and children…"
Harry got it, "My mom called on you that night?"
"Just so. She needed extra power to forge a connection across the stars to summon protection for her child. Little did I know, even so forged, the artifact she sought required sacrifice to release. In striking her down, our enemy completed the requirements. The Stone came to you, and she had marked you to channel its power. I believe he tried to take it, like a sweet from a babe, and was brought low for his impudence. For your mother's sacrifice and the magic she had worked with my aid compelled it to serve in only your defense."
"But it didn't kill him, just hurt him," Harry nodded.
"And now he moves once more. He tortured and mind controlled my own son. And, again, even I was powerless to stop it. I fear that he wields power far beyond what we have seen in the Realms, and that his goals are dark indeed."
"He plans to kill half the universe. All his minions keep mentioning it."
She nodded, tiredly, "I had feared it would be something so vast. And even we, godlike as we are, are but small seawalls against such an ill tide. Should so many souls be washed into the afterlife at once, I fear what power others might harvest from the waves."
He put it together, "Like a Mistress of Death, that the monsters of Niflheim serve?"
"Exactly."
"And you can't tell me anything else about her?"
She shrugged and said, "It is forbidden. I shall entreat my husband to reveal what he can. He will likely say that the knowledge of it will only increase the risk. Do you understand the evil of a person, that the only solution is to strike their very existence from history, lest their name become an oath on the tongues of those that would threaten the Realms?"
They'd been talking enough that his natural empathy had been slightly augmented by the Soul Stone powers he was only beginning to understand, so he blurted out, "She was someone important to you, before she turned to evil."
"I thank you for your efforts in helping us redeem my youngest," she said, in a way that seemed like a non sequitur but was anything but. "While young men are not my usual purview, you may call upon me at need should you have a working that falls within my domain." She produced a slim folio and slid it across the table to him. "These are the instructions for doing so, should your mother not have left them for you to find."
Still trying to put together the pieces of what she'd danced around telling him, he accepted the book and just said, "Thank you, ma'am. I mean, your grace."
She tilted her head and said, "Now, I believe you are needed outside. I fear something else has changed."
Reeling from the abrupt dismissal, he walked out into the room that, indeed, seemed to be a more anxious chaos than the previous few hours. "Potter!" Amelia Bones said, dragging Diggory and Shacklebolt with her through the crowd where they'd been looking for him. "Good, we suggest you come with us back to Vanaheim."
"What's going on?" he asked, trying to catch sight of Fleur in what looked like it would be a hasty exit.
"I've just received an owl. The Dark Dimension has forsaken its oaths to us. Azkaban has been emptied. The worst of the Death Eaters are free, and the Mindless Ones are our enemies."