When Harry came to, he didn't think he'd been out for long because the moon wasn't much further across the sky. It was a little hard to tell for sure because his vision was wonky and he worried he had a concussion. But then a few blinks re-seated his contact lens and it cleared up. His head was a little sore, and his ankle still pained him, but he seemed to be otherwise whole.
Well, he was tied up and strapped to what was probably an immense grave marker, but at least nobody had stabbed him while he was out.
Once his eyes fully adjusted after his unwilling nap, he took in the space in the moonlight. The necropolis went on for what seemed like miles. Everything looked very weathered, at least near where he was, as if it was hundreds or even thousands of years old. He vaguely recalled a mention of a vast graveyard for the brave Vanir who'd died in the Jotun wars, and assumed this was it.
"I chose a nice tomb for you," a man's voice told him. It was a little plummier than Cedric's, even more British than what seemed common for Vanaheim. But when Harry glanced toward it, his head only having so much play as he was lashed, spread-armed against the wall, he was looking at Cedric. Well, he was looking at the last remnants of Cedric. His brownish hair was growing out into a dark black, he was putting on a couple of inches of height that strained against his tournament robes, and his face was shifting into something more angular. "You know, I think I actually went to school with one of his grandchildren."
"Loki," Harry gasped. Even without taking cultural studies, he knew what the wizard-prince of Asgard looked like. Hogwarts was full of art of the time royalty attended the school. "Everyone thinks you're dead."
The prince gave him a slightly-mad grin and half-bow, like a performer having amazed an audience. As the last of the semblance of Cedric faded away, Harry couldn't help but notice that he looked far less healthy than a member of the Aesir should. His face was drawn, bags under his eyes, a sense of profound exhaustion about him that Harry realized had been present even when he was pretending to be Cedric. "Don't worry, everyone shall know how wrong they were soon enough."
"It was you? You put me in the tournament. You controlled Fleur!" Harry realized.
"You were starting to figure it out. Or, worse, you were going to be a good suitor and let her win. Fear not. All I gave her was a script to give you the right impression. I don't wish her harm. I know what it's like to have a father like hers." Harry had been mentally kicking himself for getting tricked into "winning" the tournament anyway, for all that he'd been very distracted, but he guessed if the God of Mischief had been manipulating him, he could give himself credit for doing as well as he had. Loki paced idly, the cane tapping along as he talked. He glanced everywhere but Harry's direction, including the sky. "Where are they?"
"There had to be easier ways to kidnap me."
Loki smirked his way, and Harry was sure he caught a glimmer of the same blue that had been in Fleur's eyes. In Fandral's and Neville's. "The Boy-Who-Lived goes missing randomly, it's a tragedy. He disappears in the middle of winning an intergalactic tournament, and it focuses the minds of the populace. I admit, it was convoluted, but it worked out beautifully."
"Wait, you never made a shield or anything," Harry realized. Had nobody noticed? Only humans (and Vanir—who were close enough) could manage the orange personal-energy constructs. "How did you transfigure those dogs in the first task?"
"Illusion is a prodigious talent, particularly when no one thinks to test for it," he gave a wan grin.
As Loki paced and monologued, Harry noticed his bag of holding placed on a headstone far enough away it would be a challenge for him to get to it. He was really feeling glad that Sirius had talked him out of explaining his armor to his "friends." Presumably, his expanded pockets still held his stuff. The bag had been basically empty except for snacks and some "adventuring gear" like rope. Actually, he was probably tied up in that rope. "What happened to Cedric? You replaced him at the hospital after the World Cup?"
"We were going to replace the old auror, but he checked himself out too early. I would have enjoyed screaming CONSTANT VIGILANCE at the students. But Cedric played his part. I sort of liked being Cedric, these months. Easy enough to portray. So like my brother. Not an ounce of guile in anyone in that house." He frowned, admitting, "I haven't heard anything about him from his jailors in some time, since we stopped needing to wring details from him for my portrayal. I imagine he's dead."
"You killed my friend!" Harry realized. He'd been hoping that Cedric was just a captive somewhere, ready to be rescued.
"You barely knew the real Cedric!" Loki gave him his full attention, seemingly offended, standing stock still. "Was I not the friend you cherished?"
Nonplussed by the statement, Harry asked, "Were we friends?"
"No… of course, no…" Loki broke eye contact, suddenly afraid of the human connection. "A ruler doesn't have friends, merely allies of convenience."
"Doesn't your brother have friends?" Harry needled back, still reeling enough from the revelations about Cedric that he gave no thought to lipping off to a god. "Fandral had a lot of stories."
"Speak to me not of those lickspittles!" Loki was shouting, suddenly up in his face. "For centuries I tried to…" he trailed off, before admitting that he wanted to have friends.
"Fandral was going to apologize to you," Harry remembered. The blond swordsman had been very biased against mages, but Harry had brought him around.
"Well he didn't."
As close up as Loki had gotten, and with the clues he'd put together, he could almost feel the Stone hidden in the pommel of his cane. "Have you been sleeping at all this year?"
"What?" Loki stepped back, as if Harry had landed a hit with that comment.
"Feel an urge to tell me about Father? Damnit, the only time you looked happy all year was the first task, when you couldn't bring that with you!" Harry realized. "You're just as mind controlled as Fandral was."
"Lesser minds," the godling sneered, unwilling to admit the possibility that the Stone had gotten its hooks into him. "This doesn't control me, though it would like to." He waved the cane in Harry's face. "I understand it can't control you either, so we have that in common. It would have been much easier were you vulnerable."
"How'd you even get it? I kicked it into the void!"
"I was also dropped into Ginnungagap. I suppose we found each other, and then we were retrieved together." He shuddered almost unwittingly, recalling a bad experience. Harry couldn't tell if it was floating in the void or what happened to him after he was retrieved.
Something tickled the back of Harry's mind. "His treasure was cast to the void, where it was drawn to another. Tonight, before midnight. The betraying brother will be called to him." They'd thought Peter was the betraying brother, but if it was Loki…
"Betraying brother? Me!? I was the one betrayed." Loki was shouting, but he'd backed away from Harry as if worried, unable to truly argue the point. The kid was landing some telling blows on his confidence.
Before either of them could continue the argument, there was a pop of displaced air as a black-robed figure in a silver mask appeared in a ripple of dark magic, like smoke. Wand out, the new arrival regarded the two of them then sheathed it into his walking stick when he saw there was no immediate threat, making a half-bow and saying, "My prince."
Even echoing in the metal mask, Harry would guess that the Death Eater who'd arrived was Lucius Malfoy. He even had the same pretentious wand cane. "Evening, Mr. Malfoy," he said. If they were going to kill him, he was going to mouth off like crazy until they did. What did he have to lose? "Did you send the rest of the invitations out? I was surprised I didn't see you at the task, but I guess you had other plans." He realized that the absence of the man looming over the Minister's shoulder had been something he'd half-noticed as he was running into the convergence earlier.
"What have you been–" Malfoy began accusing the God of Mischief.
Loki cut him off, "The boy is perceptive. Do you have my things?"
"Of course, my prince," he handed over a bundle that Loki took and then moved behind the mausoleum, presumably to change.
"Guess since they got the Stone back, you still get to be chief minion?" Harry asked.
Malfoy was clearly about to retort, but simply sniffed and turned away, patently ignoring Harry. That lack of attention was what he had been hoping would happen sooner or later, and he started working on escaping his bonds.
When Loki returned a few minutes later, he'd replaced the orange tournament robes with a set of black-and-green leather armor with a robelike cut and metal adornments that looked Asgardian. He'd swapped his cane for an oversized bladed scepter, with the blue gem wrapped in the blade. Or maybe it had always been that weapon, and he'd just glamoured it. "Where is our guest?" Loki asked.
"Should be arriving presently," Malfoy explained, looking to the sky. Harry followed his gaze and thought he saw a shooting star, but it was coming straight for them. Before long, it grew into a fireball, still moving faster than the speed of sound so it was only light approaching. Harry assumed it must be the same way other aliens had landed on Vanaheim: dropped from space on a trajectory that compensated for the electronics failing.
When it was almost on top of them, it suddenly slowed to a crawl, the roar of the fireball washing over them as it dropped below Mach 1 perhaps a hundred yards above. With no obvious source of propulsion, the craft dropped into an empty space too close to Harry for comfort, merely yards away. It was an escape pod in some black metal, barely big enough for a person, hissing as the heat of reentry turned the moist night air to vapor. In the fog of its own arrival, the nearly-spherical ship looked like a huge cauldron.
A few moments after hitting the ground, there was a cracking of locks, and the top of the pod opened. A tall, slender humanoid figure lifted itself free and floated into the air. "I have arrived," he said in a high-pitched voice from Harry's dreams. Shadowed as he was above the moonlit graveyard, Harry couldn't be sure, but he expected gray skin and no nose. Had his dreams been somehow accurate all year? "Robe me."
"Of course, my lord," Malfoy said, hurrying forward with another bundle. The figure descended and allowed himself to be cloaked in a fantastically-expensive black velvet robe. He took a golden mask from Malfoy and covered his face before turning to Harry.
"Excellent. Everything present. Where are the others?"
"Arriving at the stroke of midnight, lord," Malfoy confirmed. Harry guessed that meant it had only actually been a few hours since he'd started the task. Had they started looking for him and "Cedric" yet? Wait, would the other Death Eaters show up in a graveyard, see their supposed leader and what could be a cauldron, and just assume that he'd been resurrected in some necromantic ritual rather than having dropped in from space? That had to be the reason for the ambience, right? Not that any of them would likely believe Harry that their dark lord was just some alien with no nose.
"The ritual?"
"I personally performed the rites at sunset to initiate the connection. We will be ready to open the way soon."
"And you are prepared?" the alien pretending to be Voldemort asked Loki.
"I have been prepared for a year," the prince of Asgard insisted, clearly not intimidated by the figure.
"Your patience will be rewarded. As you claim your Midgard, we will conquer Vanaheim. Should Asgard be able to intervene at all, their forces will be split."
"Yes, yes. I understand the plan. The 'glorious purpose' you've burdened me with," Loki's face was becoming feverish. Harry almost sensed the Stone in the scepter working its programming on Loki, now that it was almost time for it to act. To conquer Earth? How?
Were the dreams about an army of sci-fi zombies also real?
More pops of air suddenly filled the space as other Death Eaters arrived via dark magic teleportation. Harry had to admit, that wasn't the worst possible choice, if you were going to make witchcraft deals. As usual, he bemoaned not having a sling ring. Huh. He guessed becoming an animagus was probably out, if Loki was alive, hostile, and about to try to conquer Earth.
As the Death Eaters noticed the gold-masked figure standing in front of what could be a smoking cauldron, they took a knee, bowing deeply to what they assumed was their returned master. Maybe he even was: Harry didn't think he was the Father that everyone had talked about, and who probably killed the Potters, but this noseless alien could have been "Voldemort" for the most part for years. What had the aliens in his dream referred to him as? Anthony Mauve? That didn't sound exactly right.
"Friends," the alien began speaking as the arrivals seemed to have finally stopped, "it is so good to see you all here once again. The call was made and it was answered. Soon, those that did not arrive on this night will bemoan their lack of place by my side. With the body of their Boy-Who-Lived, we will show them the need to capitulate.
"Such a fragile thing, this child champion," he cooed, finally paying attention to Harry. He waved his hand, and Harry felt an immense telekinetic force squeezing his whole body. Wait, no, it was grabbing the ropes around him and pressing down on those. A lot of movement spells had trouble grabbing a living being directly. Could whatever alien powers he had suffer the same limitation? That would be helpful.
It still hurt like crazy, and Harry couldn't help but gasp in pain. As soon as he had, his assailant relented.
"I am not the only lord returned this evening," he picked up the monologue, gesturing at Loki. "The prince of Asgard himself is part of our movement! Soon, he will go forth to Midgard, to conquer. From these worlds, we will claim the Nine Realms themselves!"
That elicited cheers. It seemed that, in the dark, most of them hadn't realized who the unmasked figure was standing near Harry. "Your acclaim is unnecessary," Loki sneered.
"Of course," the alien continued, "I wonder whether, in my absence, you have abandoned the mission. Is this world ripe for us to seize, or have you hidden and frittered away the advantage I brought you? How many of your fellows rot in the Dark Dimension?" Several people began to mouth objections, and their leader screamed, "Silence!" With a wave of his hand he forced them all down, prostrate on the ground. Harry wondered whether something about their robes allowed him an easier time grabbing onto them. "You all have so much to prove. I will not hand this world to you on a plate. I expect loyal service and initiative in my cause!"
While the guy pretending to be Voldemort (was it easier to just think of him as Voldemort?) terrorized his minions to show he meant business, Harry tried to plan. The guy was probably building to killing him dramatically. It was honestly weird he hadn't just done it, but all of these assholes seemed to want to grandstand where his life was concerned.
Once he got loose, what were his options? He wasn't sure how far Loki had moved him from where they'd come in, and even if he could find the night road again, he knew from cosmology class that they might not always be open: like, say, if the sun had finished rising on the other side. That left trying to get out of the graveyard, playing cat and mouse long enough to call Sirius and hopefully get some help. But Sirius was at Hogwarts, where nobody could teleport, so there was a logistical issue with getting aurors sent to him quickly. He had his cloak, but did a couple dozen dark wizards have some way to track him down anyway? Hell, was the alien's telekinesis good enough that he could basically "feel" for an invisible person nearby?
At least planning his escape was keeping him from having to process Cedric's death. It wasn't even like the boy had died in front of him: he'd probably died, tortured, in some Death Eater dungeon. Harry hadn't actually even seen Cedric since the previous school year: all his memories of his new "friend" were just Loki playing a role. Oh, gods, how was Cho going to feel?
"Lord, we have control over the marauders," one Death Eater was insisting, to try to break out of the barrage of abuse. "They stand ready to move with you as their leader… or to continue to make strikes so that you may lead Vanaheim's kingdoms against them. We have deniability either way!"
"And you've had little success with them so far, I understand," their leader said, snidely. "Defeated at every turn, often by this child." Harry wasn't thrilled to have his attention again.
"They simply lack leadership and organization, lord, we didn't want to make a strong move before you had returned," the man argued. "Also! The groups near Hogwarts have reported a possible alliance. They've made contacts within a secret organization on Midgard. Perhaps they could help in the conquest there!"
That was interesting news to Harry. Maybe some cabal of witches on Earth? It seemed a little weird that the marauders would be able to contact people there, but he guessed if they'd gotten hold of a post owl, coordination between realms wasn't that hard.
"Interesting. Likely too late and unnecessary once the prince here has taken power, but make contact and find out," the alien ordered.
For his part, Loki hadn't said anything for several minutes. Harry glanced over and watched him sweat. His hand was clenched in a death grip on the scepter, perhaps in some contest of wills. The very fact that he hadn't abandoned it when he'd had nearly an hour of freedom on another planet during the first task made Harry worry it had its hooks in deep. With a whole year of constant contact, it was probably going to take more than knocking him out to free him of its influence, especially if he didn't realize that it was winning. He might go along with the plan on his own without ever questioning his motivations, if the programming was subtle enough.
"My lord," Malfoy cautiously interjected, "the conditions are right to begin the ritual to send the prince to Midgard."
"Excellent. Forge a convergence for me. I shall… entertain our guest while you work."
Malfoy nodded and then began organizing the other Death Eaters to lay out a hexagon on a patch of ground that he'd left clear. "Voldemort" floated over to Harry, lowering his voice to have a private conversation. "This is the part where I offer you a chance to live."
"Left hand of death?" Harry asked, remembering the voice of the Norns from that long-ago sorting. "You going to try to sell me on 'Father's' righteous cause?"
The alien's golden mask shifted enough that Harry could feel the smirk, but he answered, "Left hand is a bit presumptuous, with the troubles you've caused in your young life. But perhaps if you were to reveal the location of the Soul Stone, it would go a long way towards that goal. And the cause is righteous. We are saving the entire universe."
"You're going to save the universe with these assholes?" Harry quipped, not having realized until then what leverage it gave him to know about the Soul Stone's location. Of course they'd still want it. "Let me guess, somehow killing a whole bunch of innocent people makes that happen?"
"Half the universe, chosen as fairly as possible, yes," the alien shrugged. "Surely even a child as young as you understands the constraints of resources? Would not your planet benefit from fewer mouths to feed?"
"Fairly includes letting Lucius Malfoy kill everyone he doesn't like?" Harry asked. That number—half—suddenly reminded him of Gamora mentioning that he only had a fifty-fifty shot. These guys were actually going to try to murder half of the entire universe?
"In the early phases, some concessions must be made," he waved off. "So, make your decision. Living ally or dead symbol of our power."
"One last question," Harry stalled. He could see that the ritual was getting close to completion, and had a dumb plan. "I guess 'Father' is the guy who actually killed my parents. Bigger than you, deep voice? But who's the 'Mistress' that he's working with?"
That actually got a head tilt, confusion evident behind the mask. "We have no mistress."
"Might have swords all over her head, if the sculpture was literal?" Harry pushed. "In charge of the Nidhogg serpents down in Niflheim? Really seemed like they thought your boss was working with her." Honestly, maybe Harry had just made some incorrect guesses about the crazy things the giant snake was saying, but if he could keep the conversation going…
"There is no such being. Frankly, I barely believe there is a whole planet full of the dead. It's some Vanir myth."
"Yeah, it's weird. Our cosmology teacher isn't willing to totally undersign that either. But the real Voldemort was down there. He wasn't happy about you stealing his political movement just to kill a bunch of people. Guy was a dick, but he really just wanted to be Minister, or something."
The alien's eyes narrowed behind the slits in the mask, small and beady, before he snarled, "Clearly, you've discovered enough to be dangerous. I appreciate your use of leverage, and perhaps I can show you my own." He clenched his fist and Harry suddenly felt like he was about to explode, pressed back by the telekinetic shove against the tomb. "Make. Your. Decision. It shouldn't be that hard."
"My Lord! My Prince!" Malfoy called. "The ritual is ready. The portal is opening!" Harry glanced over and saw misty blue light congealing in the hexagon as the Death Eaters chanted around it.
Immediately forgotten, Harry was allowed to slump against his bonds, and had to scramble to keep his arms up to make it seem like they were still held in place. "Very well! We send our ally onward, to conquer! First Midgard, then Vanaheim, then the Nine Realms!" his tormentor played to the audience. "Prince of Asgard. Go forth and become King of Midgard!"
Shaking himself out of his war with the scepter, face still red and drawn from the battle, eyes crazed, Loki gave a manic grin and strode forward. "Gentlemen! Like me, you are burdened with glorious purpose!" He looked like he might actually give a whole speech, but the alien gave a subtle shove, telekinetically pushing the prince into the manufactured convergence. In a blaze of blue light, he was gone.
"And now! Perhaps we shall dispel any misapprehensions about the power of the Boy-Who-Lived to defeat the great Lord Voldem…" Ebony Maw began grandstanding, only to notice the pile of cut ropes at the base of the empty mausoleum. "Where is he!? He can't have gotten far! After the boy! We must have a recognizable corpse!" The Death Eaters began casting detection spells and spreading throughout the graveyard to hunt the escapee.
Nobody had noticed the second flare of blue light right after Loki went through, as an invisible Harry Potts dived in behind him.