Death, when it came for Loki of Asgard, came with surprisingly little ceremony.
The Statesman's deck was cold. Not Jotunheim cold—nothing mortal-made could match that particular species of cold that gets into your bones and makes a home there—but cold enough that Loki registered it even as Thanos's fingers pressed the breath from his throat. He'd imagined his ending would involve more spectacle. Fireworks, perhaps. A collapsing palace. The kind of apocalyptic flourish that makes poets reach for new metaphors.
This was quieter. Almost disappointing.
Thanos was saying something. The words came from far away, filtered through the cotton-wool feeling that accompanies oxygen deprivation. Something about gods. About never being one.
Loki's lips moved. His voice, when it emerged, was barely a whisper, but he needed Thanos to hear it.
"You," he said, and each word cost him, "will never be a god."
He meant it. Not as an insult—Loki had perfected the art of the insult over a millennium and this wasn't one—but as a simple observation of fact. You could gather all the infinity stones in creation, reshape reality until it wept, and you'd still be a creature *pretending* at divinity rather than *being* it. Loki knew all about pretending. He'd made an art form of it.
The blade, when it came, was almost a relief.
It slid between his ribs with the ease of a key turning in a lock, and for a moment there was cold, then burning, then a spreading numbness that felt almost kind.
Thor was making noises somewhere in the background. Screaming, probably. Thor was good at screaming—had the lungs for it, the drama. Perfect golden Thor who'd finally decided Loki was worth loving approximately ten seconds before it stopped mattering.
The timing would have been funny if Loki had breath left for laughing.
The deck rushed up to meet his face, or perhaps he rushed down to meet it. Details were getting fuzzy. Everything was getting fuzzy, wrapped in grey and distance and the particular silence that comes right before the end of things.
*At least*, Loki thought with the last ember of his consciousness, *I looked better doing this than he did.*
Vanity, it seemed, survived even death.
And then there was nothing.
And then—
---
There was something.
Not nothing. Something very specific and very *wrong*.
Pain came first—the insistent, nagging variety rather than the grand operatic sort. The pain of a body too small, folded too long in a space never meant for sleeping. The pain of hunger that had become so familiar it was almost comfortable. The pain of bruises layered on bruises like sedimentary rock.
Loki's eyes opened in darkness.
Four walls, close enough to touch. The smell of dust and cleaning products and *smallness*. He tried to move and his body—this *wrong* body, this *child's* body—protested in a dozen different ways.
A cupboard. He was in a *cupboard*.
The panic was immediate and animal. His hand—small fingers, thin fingers, mortal fingers with no blue frost beneath them—shot out and found the door handle. It opened. Light spilled in, grey and pre-dawn, and he half-fell, half-crawled onto worn carpet.
The hallway was narrow. Stairs rose to his left. To his right, morning light filtered through a window at the end of the corridor, illuminating dust motes that danced like very small, very boring stars.
Loki pressed his back against the wall and tried to breathe. The air came in shallow gasps—mortal lungs, weak and underdeveloped, nothing like the bellows he was accustomed to.
He looked at his hands. They trembled. Child's hands, malnourished and spider-fingered, with a curious scar across the back of one wrist. Not a scar he remembered earning. Lightning-bolt shaped. Fresh-looking despite clearly being old.
Wrong. Everything was wrong.
He needed a mirror. Needed to see. There—in the cupboard, something reflective. An old brass key-plate, polished by repeated touches. He angled it toward the light.
The face that looked back could have been anyone's child. Eleven years old, perhaps younger. Black hair that fell in his eyes. Glasses—*glasses*, as if the indignity of mortality wasn't enough on its own—perched on a thin nose. Undernourished. Bruised.
But beneath the damage, beneath the hunger and the glasses and the too-large shirt... handsome. Would be handsome, once the flesh was properly fed. Good bones. Strong jaw. The kind of face that might have been carved by someone who knew what they were doing.
And the eyes. Not his eyes—not the blue he'd worn for a thousand years—but green. Deep green. Magic green.
Ah.
*There* it was.
Loki closed his eyes and felt instead of looking. The body was weak, yes. Mortal. Breakable. But beneath the skin, beneath the blood and bone, there was *power*. Not Asgardian power—that was gone, or dormant, or locked behind whatever cosmic joke had deposited him here—but something else entirely.
Magic. *Mortal* magic, but vast. Limitless. An ocean waiting to be tapped. It sang through this child's veins like electricity, wild and untrained and glorious.
And there—
Right there, in the scar—
Loki's eyes snapped open. He turned his head, angling the brass plate until he could see his forehead properly. The lightning-bolt scar caught the light.
Behind it, something *moved*.
Not magic. Not properly. Something else. Something familiar.
A soul shard. What Asgardians called a phylactery. A piece of someone else, tucked inside this child's skull like a cuckoo in another bird's nest.
Loki stared at his reflection.
The child stared back.
For a long moment—perhaps several—he simply sat there on the worn carpet of this narrow hallway in this narrow house on this narrow little world, trying to catalog the full scope of the cosmic joke.
He'd died. Properly died. Thanos's blade had found his heart and that should have been the end of it.
Instead, he'd woken up mortal. Young. Weak. Wearing another man's—another *child's*—flesh like an ill-fitting coat. Dropped into a cupboard under a staircase with someone else's soul fragment lodged in his forehead and enough raw magic thrumming through his veins to level a city if he knew how to use it.
Which he didn't. Not yet. Not in this body, with these rules, in this *world* that smelled of morning tea and yesterday's fried food and the particular misery of children who aren't wanted.
A laugh bubbled up. It emerged as a broken sound, half-sob, half-giggle. The kind of noise that might concern people if people were listening.
The Norns. Of course. The Norns with their looms and their threads and their fundamental inability to leave well enough alone.
He'd spent a thousand years being Odin's unwanted son. The spare. The monster. The thing that didn't quite fit.
And they'd given him a new start by making him someone else's unwanted child.
The symmetry was almost beautiful.
Above him, floorboards groaned. Someone large was moving around. Getting up. Morning routines beginning in a house where routines mattered.
Loki—because he was still Loki, despite the meat being all wrong—looked down at his small hands.
Then he looked at the cupboard door. At the space that had been his bedroom. There was a tiny calendar on the wall inside, marked with careful X's. June 23rd was circled. Someone—Dudley, presumably, whoever that was—had a birthday today.
June 23rd meant July 31st was coming. Meant this child—this Harry Potter, because that's whose body this was, whose life this was—wasn't quite eleven yet.
Had another month and a bit of being ten years old and unwanted and locked in cupboards.
Loki smiled.
It was not a nice smile.
He'd been a prince of Asgard. A god—or close enough that the distinction was largely academic. He'd commanded armies, bent frost giants to his will, walked between worlds like other people walked between rooms.
That was gone now. Locked away behind mortality and youth and this weak, hungry flesh.
But he'd learned, over a very long life, that power came in many forms.
Knowledge was power. Cunning was power. The ability to smile at your captors while planning their downfall was perhaps the greatest power of all.
And this body, this child, this *Harry Potter*—
He came with an ocean of magic and someone else's soul fragment and, if Loki's instincts were correct, a destiny that people would expect him to fulfill.
How perfectly, wonderfully, *terrible*.
The footsteps reached the stairs. Started descending. Heavy. Irritated already, and the day hadn't properly begun.
Loki stood. His legs wobbled but held. He walked to the space at the bottom of the stairs and waited.
The man who appeared was large in the way of people who've never been told "no." Walrus-mustache. Purple-faced. The kind of person who mistakes volume for authority.
"Boy!" The voice was exactly what Loki expected. "Why aren't you making breakfast? It's Dudley's birthday! And what are you doing out of your—"
The man stopped.
Something in the way the child was standing, perhaps. Something in his eyes. In the smile that had nothing childish about it.
"Good morning, Uncle," Loki said. His voice was young and high but something very old moved beneath the words. "Happy birthday to Dudley. I imagine you'll want breakfast shortly."
Vernon Dursley's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"I'll need proper clothes," Loki continued pleasantly. "These don't fit. And I seem to require spectacles—we should address that."
"You—" Vernon's face was progressing through several interesting shades of purple. "You get back in your cupboard and—"
"No," Loki said simply.
The word hung in the air between them.
Vernon Dursley took a step back. Just one. Just enough.
Loki's smile widened.
He had a month. Five weeks until this body turned eleven and whatever destiny awaited revealed itself. Five weeks to learn this world's rules, to understand this magic, to figure out what could be done with unlimited power trapped in a mortal frame.
Five weeks to decide what kind of game he wanted to play.
The Norns had given him a second chance wrapped in a punishment. Had made him small and weak and mortal and *unwanted* all over again.
They really should have known better.
After all, he was Loki. Silvertongue. Liesmith. The God of Mischief.
And if there was one thing he'd learned in a thousand years of wearing masks—
It was that the best tricks were the ones nobody saw coming.
"Well?" he said to his uncle, and his voice was very young and very sweet and very, very dangerous. "Aren't you going to make breakfast? It's Dudley's special day."
The game had begun.
—
Vernon Dursley had bullied people his entire life. It was as natural to him as breathing. You identified the weak, the different, the ones who couldn't fight back, and you *pressed*. You pressed until they bent, until they broke, until they understood that their place in the world was beneath your heel.
The boy had always been easy. Weak. Timid. A freak who knew better than to use his *abnormality* around decent folk.
But the boy standing at the bottom of his stairs wasn't timid anymore.
"Now you listen here—" Vernon started forward, one meaty hand raised.
He never finished the sentence.
Something *pushed* back.
Not physically. Nothing touched him. But Vernon suddenly found himself stepping backward, his body moving without his permission, until his back hit the wall hard enough to rattle the family portraits. His hand—the one he'd raised—was pinned against the wallpaper by absolutely nothing he could see.
"Uncle Vernon," the boy said pleasantly, "I think we need to discuss the new arrangements."
"What—what did you—" Vernon's voice came out strangled. "PETUNIA!"
In the kitchen, Petunia Dursley heard her husband's shout and came running, wooden spoon still in hand. She stopped dead in the doorway, taking in the scene: Vernon flattened against the wall like a butterfly in a collector's case, and her nephew standing there looking perfectly calm.
"Good morning, Aunt Petunia," the boy said. "You'll want to stay where you are."
Petunia's mouth opened. No sound emerged.
"WHAT'S GOING ON?" Dudley's voice bellowed from upstairs. "IS IT BIRTHDAY TIME?"
"Perfect timing," Loki murmured. He could feel the magic now, responding to his will—but strangely. Not like Asgardian seidr, which was about *being*, about convincing reality to reshape itself through pure force of divine will. This was different. Wilder. More emotional. The magic wanted to *feel* before it would *do*.
He'd been angry when Vernon raised his hand. The magic had responded to that anger with enthusiasm.
Interesting.
Dudley thundered down the stairs, all blond hair and entitled expectation. He stopped three steps from the bottom, taking in his father pressed to the wall and his mother frozen in the kitchen doorway.
"What—Dad? Why are you standing all weird?"
"Dudley," Loki said warmly. "Happy birthday. Come down here, please."
Something in his voice made Dudley obey before his brain caught up with his body. He descended the last three steps, suddenly uncertain.
"Right then." Loki clasped his hands behind his back. The gesture would have looked odd on a ten-year-old if everything else about this situation wasn't already deeply odd. "Let me explain the new state of affairs."
He turned slightly, addressing all three Dursleys at once. The magic hummed beneath his skin, eager. He'd need to be careful. Too much force and—well. He'd once turned an entire wing of the palace into toads because he'd been seven and angry about missing dessert. This body's magic felt stronger, actually. More volatile.
"I have abilities," he said simply. "I've always had them, though I've been... discouraged from exploring them fully. That ends now."
"Now you listen here, boy—" Vernon tried to push off the wall. Found he couldn't. The pressure increased, not enough to harm but enough to make breathing slightly more difficult.
"Uncle Vernon, I'm going to need you to be quiet. In fact—"
Loki focused. Felt the magic respond. Wanted Vernon's voice to *stop*, just for a moment—
Vernon's mouth opened. No sound emerged. His eyes bulged with effort and fury and no small amount of fear.
"There we are," Loki said with satisfaction. "Much better. Now. Petunia, Dudley, you're going to listen very carefully."
Petunia made a small, strangled noise.
"I'm tired of sleeping in the cupboard," Loki continued conversationally. "I'm tired of being treated like something unpleasant you found on your shoe. I'm tired of making breakfast while going hungry myself. These circumstances are going to change. Are we clear?"
"You—you can't—" Petunia's voice was barely a whisper. "You're not allowed to do *that* in this house—"
"I just did," Loki pointed out reasonably. "And I'll do considerably more if necessary. Though I'm still learning the particulars of this—" he wiggled his fingers, "—so I might accidentally turn someone into something unpleasant. A slug, perhaps. Or a toilet brush. It's very unpredictable."
He was lying. Mostly. The magic was unpredictable, yes, but not *that* unpredictable. Probably.
Dudley had gone very pale. "Mum—"
"Here's what's going to happen," Loki said, warming to his theme. "Dudley, you and Uncle Vernon are going to make breakfast this morning. A proper breakfast. Eggs, bacon, toast, beans—the full English, I believe you call it. You're going to make enough for everyone, but I'll be eating first."
"But it's my *birthday*—" Dudley started.
The temperature in the hallway dropped five degrees. Frost began to form on the mirror near the door—Loki hadn't meant to do that, actually. Apparently this body still carried *some* genetic memory of Jotunheim, even if the frost giant heritage was lost. Interesting.
"I made your breakfast every year on my birthday," Loki said quietly. "You were *quite* happy with that arrangement. Shall we discuss fairness, Dudley? Shall we talk about what's *fair*?"
Dudley shut his mouth with a click.
"While you're cooking," Loki continued, releasing the focus that held Vernon to the wall—the man sagged, gasping—"I'll be going through your presents, Dudley. I'm sure you won't mind sharing a few things with your dear cousin. After all, thirty-six presents for an eleven-year-old seems rather excessive, doesn't it?"
"Thirty-*seven*," Dudley said automatically, then looked like he regretted it.
"Even worse. Yes, I'll definitely need to borrow a few items. Clothes that fit, for instance. I seem to be swimming in rags."
Vernon had recovered enough to croak out, "You can't—the law—magic isn't *allowed*—"
"Are you going to report me, Uncle?" Loki asked curiously. "Tell the authorities that your nephew can do the very thing you've spent ten years telling him is evil and impossible? That you've been housing a freak—isn't that what you call me?—all this time? I imagine that would raise some interesting questions about your family."
The look on Vernon's face suggested that this thought had not occurred to him. That it was, in fact, occurring to him now with the force of a freight train.
"Precisely," Loki said, reading the expression accurately. "So here's what we're going to do. You're going to treat me like a member of this household. A valued member. I'll have Dudley's second bedroom—the one with all the toys. Dudley can have the other room. Fair's fair, after all."
"MY SECOND BEDROOM—" Dudley started to shout.
Every light in the hallway flickered. The magic wanted to *do something* about the shouting. Loki wrestled it back under control, but just barely.
"Do you know," Loki said pleasantly, "I'm not entirely sure what will happen if you make me angry? The magic is rather enthusiastic about expressing my emotions. We wouldn't want any... accidents, would we?"
Dudley went quiet. Very quiet.
"Good. Now then. Vernon, Dudley—kitchen. Start cooking. Petunia, you're welcome to join me in the living room while I go through Dudley's presents. You tried to interject earlier—" he saw her mouth open, "—but I should remind you that you've been *quite* happy to have a ten-year-old make breakfast for this household every morning. What's good for the goose, as they say."
Petunia's face had gone white, then red, then settled on a sickly gray color.
Vernon tried once more. "You little—"
His mouth snapped shut. Actually shut, lips pressed together as if sewn. He made muffled, furious sounds behind the seal.
"I'll let that go in about ten minutes," Loki said. "Should give you enough time to calm down. Come along, Dudley. The bacon won't cook itself. And do try not to burn it—I've had quite enough of burned bacon to last a lifetime."
---
The living room was an explosion of wrapping paper and ribbon. Dudley's presents covered every available surface—electronics, sports equipment, games, clothes, sweets, more clothes, a racing bicycle, computer games, a video camera, and on, and on.
Loki stood in the center of the chaos and felt his lips twitch into something that wasn't quite a smile.
Thirty-seven presents. For one spoiled child who'd never known a moment's want.
He'd gotten nothing for his last birthday. Had spent it locked in his cupboard for setting Aunt Marge's dog on fire—accidentally, after it had bitten him, though no one cared about that detail.
"Sit down, Aunt Petunia," Loki said, settling himself on the sofa. "You'll want to watch this."
Petunia perched on the edge of an armchair, gripping her wooden spoon like a talisman against evil.
Loki began opening presents with the air of a king surveying his treasury. Most of it was useless—he had no need for computer games or sports equipment. But the clothes... yes. Several packages contained expensive designer items in Dudley's size. Far too large for him now, but they'd fit eventually. And there—a digital watch, quite advanced for this era. A calculator. Books on history and science—clearly someone's idea of "educational" gifts that Dudley would never read.
Loki set aside a small pile: clothes, the watch, the books, some art supplies, a pocket knife (really, who gave an eleven-year-old a pocket knife?), and a portable CD player with headphones.
"These will do nicely," he said. "Dudley can have the rest. I'm not unreasonable."
From the kitchen came the sounds of aggressive cooking and muffled swearing—Vernon had apparently figured out he could still make noise through his nose.
Twenty minutes later, Dudley and Vernon appeared in the doorway. Dudley carried a tray laden with food—eggs, bacon, toast, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, beans. The works. The smell made Loki's stomach clench painfully. This body was *starving*, he realized. Properly starving. Not hungry—starved.
"Set it on the table," Loki directed.
Dudley obeyed, his movements jerky with suppressed fury.
Vernon's mouth had unsealed itself. He stood in the doorway, face purple, clearly trying to decide if another attempt at intimidation was worth the risk.
Loki settled himself at the dining table and began to eat. Slowly. Methodically. Savoring every bite with the deliberation of someone who'd been denied proper meals for years. Which, he supposed, Harry Potter had been.
The Dursleys watched in silence.
"Delicious," Loki said after the first few bites. "You know, Uncle Vernon, you're quite good at this. You should cook more often. Petunia must get tired of kitchen duty."
Vernon's face achieved a shade of purple that surely wasn't medically advisable.
Loki continued eating, taking his time. When he'd finished roughly half—he needed to be careful not to make himself sick; the stomach had clearly shrunk from lack of food—he pushed back from the table.
"Right then, Dudley," he said cheerfully. "You'll want to move your things to the small bedroom today. Before we leave for—where was it we're going? The zoo?"
Petunia made a strangled noise. "We're not taking *you*—"
"Oh, but you are," Loki said. "Because I'll be making such a tremendous fuss if you leave me here. I'm very good at making fusses now. The neighbors would be *so* concerned."
The threat hung in the air.
"Fine," Vernon ground out. "FINE. But you'll behave yourself, boy. Not a word. Not a single—"
"I'll be the perfect angel," Loki promised with a smile that was anything but angelic. "Now. Dudley. The bedroom. Get moving."
Dudley looked at his father. Vernon gave a tiny, defeated nod.
It took Dudley the better part of an hour, moving back and forth with armloads of toys and clothes and various expensive things he'd accumulated. Loki supervised from Dudley's doorway—*his* doorway now—offering helpful commentary.
"Careful with that game console. It'd be a shame if it broke. Yes, all of it needs to move. No, you can't keep the television. I'll be needing that. Don't make that face, Dudley, you have another one in your room—your *new* room—don't you?"
When it was done, Loki stood in the center of his new bedroom. Actual bedroom. With a window. And a bed. And space to *move*.
The magic hummed contentedly under his skin.
"You can have breakfast now," he called down the stairs. "Whatever's left."
He heard them descend on the kitchen like locusts, Dudley's complaints meeting Petunia's sharp whispers. Vernon said nothing—probably still deciding if murdering his nephew was worth the supernatural consequences.
Loki was examining his new wardrobe—or rather, the wardrobe that would be useful once he grew into it—when he heard the knock at the door.
The sound of it traveled up the stairs, followed by Vernon's heavy footsteps and the creak of the front door opening.
"Post," came Vernon's grunt.
Curious, Loki descended the stairs. The Dursleys were clustered around the kitchen table, picking through what remained of breakfast. Dudley was complaining that all the good bacon was gone. Petunia was staring into her tea like it contained the answers to life's mysteries. Vernon was trying to read a letter with hands that still trembled slightly.
The mail sat on the hall table where Vernon had dropped it. Bills, mostly. A gardening magazine for Petunia. Something from Grunnings on official letterhead—probably tedious work correspondence.
And there, at the bottom of the pile—
A letter addressed in green ink.
*Mr. H. Potter*
*The Smallest Bedroom*
*4 Privet Drive*
Loki picked it up. The paper was thick, heavy. Expensive. The ink was real ink, not the ballpoint rubbish most people used. And the address—
They'd known. Whoever sent this had known exactly where he'd be sleeping. Had updated the address from "Cupboard Under the Stairs" to "The Smallest Bedroom" as if... as if they'd been *watching*.
He turned the envelope over. A wax seal on the back, pressed with a coat of arms. A lion, a badger, an eagle, a serpent, arranged around a large letter H.
The magic beneath his skin stirred, recognizing something.
"WHAT DO YOU HAVE THERE?" Vernon's roar made the dishes rattle. He lurched up from the table, lunch forgotten. "GIVE THAT HERE—"
Loki's hand tightened on the letter. The magic surged, protective, possessive—this was *his*, this letter, this mysterious correspondence that knew his name and his location and came sealed with symbols that sang to his blood.
Vernon lunged.
And stopped.
Simply stopped, mid-motion, frozen like a statue three feet away.
Loki looked at him. At Vernon's purple face, locked in an expression of fury. At his hand, outstretched, fingers grasping for something they'd never reach.
"No," Loki said quietly.
The word held power. This magic—this *mortal* magic that ran through Harry Potter's veins—it responded to *will*. To *intention*. To the absolute certainty that something would or would not be.
And Loki had spent a thousand years being absolutely certain of things.
Vernon remained frozen.
Petunia had gone white. Dudley was making small, terrified noises.
"This is mine," Loki said, holding up the letter. "This is addressed to me. And no one—*no one*—is going to take it from me. Are we clear?"
He released Vernon, who stumbled backward, gasping.
"You—" Vernon managed. "That's—that's from *them*—from those *freaks*—"
Ah.
So Vernon knew what this was. What it meant.
"Interesting," Loki murmured. "You know who sent this."
"Doesn't matter," Vernon wheezed. "You're not—we're not letting you—"
"I don't recall asking for permission."
Loki broke the seal and pulled out the letter. Thick parchment, folded carefully. He opened it, his eyes scanning the formal script.
*HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY*
*Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore*
*(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)*
*Dear Mr. Potter,*
*We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...*
The words continued, detailing term dates, required supplies, instructions for reaching a place called King's Cross Station, Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.
Loki read the entire letter twice, his face perfectly still.
Then he began to laugh.
It started as a chuckle, grew to genuine laughter, the kind that shook his too-thin shoulders and made the Dursleys edge backward in their seats.
"Witchcraft and Wizardry," he managed between laughs. "A *school*. For magic. And they've been expecting me."
"You're not going," Vernon said, but his voice lacked conviction. "We're not having any of that funny business. We swore when we took you in—"
"You didn't *take me in*," Loki interrupted, and his voice had gone very cold, the laughter dying instantly. "You were given a child. A baby. An orphan. And you put him in a *cupboard* and treated him like a slave for ten years. Don't you dare pretend that was charity."
Petunia flinched.
"So here's what's going to happen," Loki continued, folding the letter carefully and tucking it into his pocket—Dudley's pocket, technically, since these were Dudley's clothes, but he was keeping them. "I'm going to this school. I'm going to learn about this magic that clearly runs in my blood. And you're going to help me get there."
"Like hell—" Vernon started.
"Because if you don't," Loki continued as if Vernon hadn't spoken, "I'm going to tell every neighbor on Privet Drive exactly what you've been doing for the past decade. I'm going to make sure everyone knows that Vernon and Petunia Dursley kept their orphaned nephew in a cupboard and starved him and treated him like a house-elf. How do you think that will look at the golf club, Uncle Vernon? How do you think your colleagues at Grunnings will feel about it?"
Vernon's face had gone from purple to gray.
"And that's just the *mundane* consequences," Loki added pleasantly. "I imagine the people who sent this letter—this school, these *magical* people—they wouldn't be very happy to learn how I've been treated either. They seem to have been... keeping track."
He tapped the envelope, with its eerily accurate address.
"You little—" Vernon's hand twitched toward Loki.
Every piece of glass in the kitchen—cups, windows, the picture frames on the wall—hummed. A single, resonant note, like crystal about to shatter.
Vernon's hand dropped.
"Much better," Loki said. "Now. I believe we have a trip to the zoo planned? Let's not waste Dudley's birthday. We can discuss my school shopping later. The letter says I'll need quite a few things. A wand, apparently. How delightfully dramatic."
He walked past the frozen Dursleys, heading for the front door.
"Oh, and Dudley?" He turned back, his expression perfectly pleasant. "Happy birthday. Do try to enjoy it. It's the last one where you're the most important person in this house."
The smile he gave them was pure Loki—charming and dangerous and absolutely certain of victory.
He had a month before term started. A month to learn about this new world, this magical society that apparently existed beneath the mundane one. A month to master this wild, emotional magic that responded to his will.
The Norns thought they'd punished him? Thought they'd brought him low by making him mortal, making him *weak*?
They'd given him a second chance. A new game. A world full of people who had no idea what was coming.
Loki of Asgard—Harry Potter now, at least in name—tucked his acceptance letter carefully into his pocket and followed the Dursleys out to their car.
Let the game begin indeed.
He'd played worse odds before.
And he'd won.
---
Hey fellow fanfic enthusiasts!
I hope you're enjoying the fanfiction so far! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Whether you loved it, hated it, or have some constructive criticism, your feedback is super important to me. Feel free to drop a comment or send me a message with your thoughts. Can't wait to hear from you!
If you're passionate about fanfiction and love discussing stories, characters, and plot twists, then you're in the right place! I've created a Discord (HHHwRsB6wd) server dedicated to diving deep into the world of fanfiction, especially my own stories. Whether you're a reader, a writer, or just someone who enjoys a good tale, I welcome you to join us for lively discussions, feedback sessions, and maybe even some sneak peeks into upcoming chapters, along with artwork related to the stories. Let's nerd out together over our favorite fandoms and explore the endless possibilities of storytelling!
Can't wait to see you there!