Chapter Text
Winter became spring as time passed quickly at Hogwarts. Exams were ever-looming, runecrafting magic items became an overwhelming use of free time, that time was limited by two nights each week spent learning occlumency and about his mother, and more than a few Sundays were spent teaching the rest of the students to defend themselves from Death Eaters in the Room of Requirement. More and more nights per week, Harry dreamed of Morag, where buildings were beginning to emerge from beneath the waters and Dumbledore's people played cat and mouse with Voldemort's to figure out when the time would be right to search for the next Stone.
With all those distractions, Harry barely kept on top of his correspondence with Earth.
Tony had gotten the machinery taken out of his chest, and was readjusting to a heart of flesh and blood (and considering a trip to Vanaheim, now that the loss of electricity wouldn't kill him). Natasha had served as guinea pig for the on/off Extremis treatment (perhaps the only human other than Tony and Happy that would get to experience it), and her short letters were somehow lighter. Even Steve noticed it, though he didn't seem to be sure exactly why she was a lot easier to go on SHIELD missions with.
Nobody was telling Harry specifics about the SHIELD missions, obviously, but there was an undercurrent of missing the certainty that Nick Fury lent to the proceedings. Even Clint's terse letters mentioned hoping that, when Harry was back for the summer, the Avengers could do something inarguably good for the world. Natasha, Steve, Clint, and even Sharon each seemed to miss the clarity of SHIELD under Nick Fury.
Harry wasn't totally sure how Sharon Carter had added herself to his JARVIS-moderated email list, but Agent 13 had been a value-add over the winter and he was happy to have her as a pen pal.
There was a reassuring stability to the letters from Aunt Pepper, Happy, and Rhodey.
After his operation, Tony had briefly considered just scrapping the armors that had been his Battle of New York trauma project, but had realized that they were extremely valuable Stark Industries assets. As long as he wasn't remote-piloting them while he refused to sleep, Pepper was thrilled to have the autonomous tech getting the company good press. JARVIS-controlled Iron Man armors showing up to lend humanitarian aid was staying just inside the world's tolerance for artificial intelligence. They weren't attacking anyone—they were shoring up failing dams, finding earthquake victims, and rescuing flood survivors from rooftops.
Rhodey kind of wished that Stark would license the US the tech to use them as weapons, but he understood why that wasn't happening.
Happy seemed to be recovering from his missing-Christmas funk. He'd come up with no fewer than seven different shapeshifter protocols, and his plan to teach every member of Stark Industries a different complicated card trick that JARVIS could validate was as genius as it was likely to crash and burn. He clearly missed being in New York. Harry still wasn't sure whether Peter Parker's aunt was single, but he could read between the lines that Happy wished she was.
Bruce had stayed with Thor and Loki after Alfheim, so the letters from the anti-marauder campaigns were as layered as those from Harry's pen pals at SHIELD.
There was so much talk of the "Nine Realms" that it was easy to forget just how many worlds Asgard protected. From Arbenth to Zaar, the royals of Asgard and the Hulk had been driving away marauders that had seen the destruction of Bifrost as an opportunity. Each world was in a worse state than Vanaheim, so took precedence. Most of the campaigns were just a bug hunt: find invaders and then drive off invaders. But some featured foes that had dug in even more than they had on Alfheim. Thor and Loki were still optimistic that they'd make it to the home of the Vanir by summer. It was unclear whether they meant Vanaheim and Earth's summer, or Asgard's.
From what Harry could tell from the three men he was talking to, the most amusing thing about the entire ongoing campaign was how Thor was basically throwing Lady Sif at Bruce. The rage-infected physicist was incredibly bemused. The crown prince of Asgard felt like it was going to free him up to reconnect with his own physicist on Earth. And Loki was, with Harry's urging, waiting for the inevitable catastrophe rather than instigating it. Would Sif survive a rendezvous with a Bruce Banner who suddenly turned large and green? She had a better chance than any Earth woman. No matter how it turned out, Loki was clearly going to be amused.
Fandral wrote Harry letters with advice on training with his new sword, and seemed completely oblivious to the pairing that Loki was referring to as Sulk. Parvati was thrilled that Harry had taught Loki about pairings.
The relationships at Hogwarts had remained dubiously stable since the winter break. It was probably fortunate that Parvati was the Patil sister doing evening trainings with Dean. Somehow, Ginny wasn't at all worried about Parvati the way she was Padma. As far as Harry knew, both sisters were still single (though, admittedly, he tried not to find out who they were dating, as long as it wasn't someone that would screw up his life if a breakup happened). Lavender and Ron continued to hang onto each other, possibly simply by virtue of how happy Hermione clearly was with Viktor, but their fights were becoming as much drama as Harry could stand within the friend group.
Thank Frigga for the islands of stability that were Neville/Luna and Seamus/Theo. Harry could comfortably hang out with any or all of them (plus Hermione) without worrying about hearing about their relationship issues or mediating a fight.
His own issues remained back-burner. Despite the rawness of the memory that Snape had unearthed of his encounter with Rivière Vers l'Été, Harry wasn't worried about Fleur being into the elf prince. She couldn't stand him, no matter how handsome and cool he was. What concerned Harry was simply the inevitability of them marrying despite how Fleur felt. Before he'd met the young elflord, he could hope that Fleur's father's plan to marry her off was entirely a Delacour affair. That Rivière clearly thought of Fleur as his betrothed and had shown up seemingly to warn the Boy-Who-Lived away from her spoke volumes that Harry wasn't interested in reading.
He was just holding out hope that being friends with Thor and Loki would win out in the end. It wasn't like he could do anything about it until he was out of school anyway.
Other than his overwhelming schedule and the drama in his friends group, the biggest problem at Hogwarts was the quislings. Somehow, Dar-Benn, as unlikable as she was, had begun to accumulate a whisper network across the school. They'd eventually worked out that it had been Draco that told her about their foray into the Forbidden Forest, and he had only been the first to avail himself of the ability to inflict the pink menace on his foes. Dar-Benn was an Accuser—she specialized in getting people in trouble.
She also specialized in soft power, it turned out. It had just taken her half a year to really start to figure out what made Vanir teens tick. For some, it was inconveniencing their rivals. For others, it was her ability to selectively ignore infractions (i.e., blackmail)—the famous incorruptibility of the kree's judiciars didn't extend to rules they didn't have control over, so she was willing to let mischief go at school if it suited her. But, overwhelmingly, there was her growing insinuation about the value of an alliance, no matter how limited, with the kree.
A non-trivial portion of the student body suspected their parents were wearing masks and fighting the government, and realized they might need all the powerful allies they could get.
She'd gotten her hooks into fully half of Slytherin, a wide mix of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and even, it was rumored, a few Gryffindors. Nobody could prove anything, but Hermione was feeling really good about using a blood magic contract to protect the Room of Requirement. Even if some of the members of their practice sessions were connected to Dar-Benn, they (so far) feared the punishment clause that would fall upon them for giving everyone else up. Hermione hadn't even told them what that punishment would be, just hinted it would be bad.
It wasn't like they would be punished for using the Room. They'd checked. There were no rules against it—the place was considered a myth, so there was no reason to make any bylaws about its use. The Accuser might try to do something, but having failed to befriend the other professors, and with a strong Dumbledore in power, there wasn't anything she could do officially without a huge reach. But it wasn't like she had responsibilities. She could almost certainly take the room over herself, locking it up and denying it to the students out of spite. The same lack of rules to punish student use would make it challenging for Dumbledore to say she had to leave it alone for the students to use. And what if she bent her mind to doing something with it that enhanced her powers somehow?
Really, these were all stories they told each other to hide the very real chance that even the legitimate school staff would take the room away from them, if revealed. It would be so useful for so many educational ends that it would be hard to schedule it for any time at all as an unofficial club. The study group had more than a little secret guilt that they weren't sharing it with the staff.
But just the sheer utility of it to study for exams was making it worthwhile.
"I don't think anyone is going to have a problem on the practicals for Flitwick's class," Harry told the assembly of three-dozen students that had shown up for the last big meeting before exams. "I can't help you that much on the written, but that was some great casting today, everyone." They'd run the original Death Eater simulation from the first meeting with nobody even getting seriously injured.
"Remember that Mordo really cares about clean martial arts," Dean chimed in.
"Not that defense seminar really counts for exams," Theo countered.
"McGonagall throws in stuff from there, sometimes," Cho argued. She was a sixth-year, and had taken her big exams the year before. "At least Moody's class really helped us for her. And on Flitwick's."
Harry concluded, "Right! Anyway, everyone, good job. Good luck on the written. I don't think you need it on the practicals. See you all around. We'll decide after the break if we need this kind of practice next year."
The core study group was eager to get done with the demonstration and back to their own essays and studying. None of them had even gone home for the spring holidays a few weeks earlier, deciding to stay and work. In their private time, the Room had been ideal for practice with potions brewing and astronomy, in addition to practical casting, but it couldn't help them get through Binns' history exams or arithmantic diagrams.
"Everyone at least got your armor done?" Harry checked, before they left the Room to go to the library.
"Not us, mate," Ron grinned, gesturing to himself and Seamus, who were the two fifth-years in the group that weren't in runes class.
"But we gotta make kit for a helhest," the Irish boy groaned.
"I had to do both," Dean grumbled, the only one in both runes and husbandry. "Runes did make it easier to get a bridle that would work on one of them."
"Is working on two big projects why you haven't made us go running for three weeks?" Parvati asked.
"You haven't been going running?!" he boggled.
"When would I have the time? Do you have the time?"
"Of course."
She gasped, "When? We're together basically every moment of every day!"
"Before breakfast. You just have to get up at a reasonable hour."
"Is everyone else getting their cardio?"
There was a lot of looking away and mumbled excuses. Dean frowned and insisted, "We better get back on it as soon as exams are over. You'll lose it faster than you think if you don't keep it up!"
"All this time with Mordo is really rubbing off on him," Parvati told her sister, quietly.
"No, he's always been like this," Padma disagreed. As his ex-girlfriend, she would know.
A few days later and Dean was true to his promise to return them to heart health.
"Why?" Luna wheezed to Neville at the back of the pack, jogging around the grounds the Sunday afternoon after exams. "Pretend I said something whimsical and upsetting that let us stop running."
"I know," he agreed. "I thought, after exams, I'd have some time to get back to combat practice."
"How much combat practice have you even been getting, Nev?" Lavender asked from the next row up.
"Considering the kind of people that are out there," he said, thinking about the Lestranges, "not enough." It was hard to say things with dark conviction while a couple of miles into a brisk run, but he tried.
Closer to the front, but behind Dean and Ginny leading the pack, Hermione explained between breaths, "I'm worried I didn't put in enough context for the fire-and-frost war. I remembered just now that there was a whole conspiracy from the jotuns to steal Surtur's crown!"
"Isn't it basically nailed to his head and that conspiracy didn't actually go anywhere?" Harry asked. "I'm sure it's fine, Hermione."
"What did you get for the fourth arithmancy question?"
"Eighty-three degrees over the apex," he said.
She almost stopped running as she was surprised by how quickly he'd answered. "That's what I put, too. But how did you…"
"Remember what question four was? Same way I remembered the answer. Regurgitation is easy when you have a mind palace." While Snape was still able to get past his defenses, it was a lot harder than it had been early in the semester, and he was starting to gain the memory benefits of occlumency. He didn't think the chemistry professor would ever really get over looking at him and seeing his father, but they were managing to get along well enough that Snape would actually teach him. He'd even offered some constructive corrections on Harry's classwork that had probably helped him in his exams.
Not that the dour professor wasn't still hard on Harry and all the Gryffindors in class. He had to keep up appearances for his job as a spy, and that meant making the Slytherin students think he was fully on their parents' side.
Speaking of Slytherin students, they were surprised when Theo waved them down as their run took them back near the castle. While he'd become more and more part of the group the longer he dated Seamus, the tall, dark-haired boy had never had any interest in the more physical side of their studies. "Did we have a date on, t'day?" Seamus huffed, surprised as any of the rest of them to see his boyfriend.
"No. And you're all sweaty," Theo waved off the Irish teen coming in for a kiss. "Just thought you lot might want to know that Malfoy, Parkinson, and Grimmet left our common room with Dar-Benn about an hour ago. They were saying something about a jotun at the school. I think they might have actually gone into the forest, which seems pretty ironic, considering."
"Maybe special rules for prefects?" Hermione considered, since Nicholas Grimmet was the Slytherin prefect in sixth-year.
"If they left an hour ago, they could be there already!" Parvati realized. She had actually managed to keep most of the details about the giant in the forest secret, surprising everyone, but she'd dropped a lot of hints.
"On brooms we could catch them!" Ron figured, feeling a twinge that an adventure was in the offing and he could be part of it.
"I don't think you want to try to fly through all those trees," Dean disagreed.
"Just have Harry astral project," Luna half-wheezed, matter-of-factly, thrilled that they'd all stopped running and she was able to catch her breath.
A bunch of heads turned toward Harry, who nodded and found a place to sit on one of the low stone walls around the castle. "Everybody keep my body safe, obviously."
It wasn't exactly harder to meditate after that much physical exertion, just different. The endorphins and tiredness compensated for the elevated heart rate. It only took a couple of minutes for him to release his astral body from his corporeal one and start racing in the direction where they'd found Greip earlier in the year. Fortunately, the wards on the school boundaries weren't designed like those on Kamar-Taj, and he was able to slide through and fix on the minds of the students and kree woman. Within seconds of leaving, he was close enough to the clearing (still showing signs of frost even in the Vanaheim spring) to witness what was happening.
Dar-Benn was standing by one of the trees that anchored the giantess' chains, declaiming, "So we are agreed? In exchange for your life and freedom, you will take word of the Kree Empire to the rest of your kind? By the time you have done so, I should be free of this assignment and able to be embassy to the alliance of our peoples!"
"Wasn't she supposed to get the jotuns to help us?" Draco wondered, quietly, to Pansy, from where the three prefects were hanging a little ways back, wands out but lowered.
"We're also going to ally with the kree, so they will," his girlfriend explained, thoroughly taken in by the Accuser's professed schemes.
Greip narrowed her eyes like she was considering, then gave a half-bow in seeming agreement, chains rattling as she moved. It didn't look to Harry like she was enthusiastic about the plan, but presumably Dar-Benn was offering it instead of killing her in her chains. She turned the bow into a crouch, getting as close as she could and tilting her head so there was a clear path to the collar around her neck.
"Very well!" the kree woman decided, then smashed her massive hammer into the restraint.
"No! Don't!" Harry said, a moment too late. Dar-Benn wasn't even magical enough to see him, but the three wizards startled at his shout from astral form. Whatever power the universal weapon lost on Vanaheim, it still retained enough heft that it and kree strength were sufficient to shatter the frost-weakened magical collar in one blow.
Faster than anyone would expect, Greip rose to standing, her right hand surging with frozen might and forming a boxing glove of foot-thick ice, which she used to deliver an uppercut that took Dar-Benn in the torso and sent her flying back into the tree with the chain anchored to it. Harry didn't have time to even be pleased at the Accuser being incapacitated with one sucker punch, since Greip was already moving toward the prefects.
To give Draco his due, the sixteen-year-old managed to get a couple of spells off to try to stop her. Neither Parkinson nor Grimmett did as well, simply screaming and freezing as the towering, blue-skinned woman rushed them. The jotun deflected the spells with her ice-covered hand, and then was among them. "No! Duck! Scatter!" Harry was shouting at them, but they weren't paying attention. An attacking giant right in their midst was something they'd never planned for, but they had heard enough stories to terrify them into uselessness.
It barely took six seconds for her to have knocked all three kids out. She did it almost gently. Magical enough herself to spot the astral interloper, she gave a wry grin and managed enough English to explain. "Harry Potter. No follow. Hostages. Hagrid… tell sorry."
She didn't actually look that sorry as she gingerly picked up her chain so she could lash Dar-Benn to the tree with it, then scooped up the three unconscious Slytherins under one arm, their wands fallen to the ground. As if she'd been planning it for months, she didn't even need to study her heading, confidently striding off into the forest, away from the school.
"Dar-Benn freed Greip!" Harry announced, as soon as he'd snapped back to his body. "Greip knocked them all out and kidnapped the prefects as hostages. She's running away!"
"I'll tell Snape!" Theo said, apparently having figured out who Greip was while Harry was projecting.
"I'll warn Hagrid!" Parvati offered, probably the one that had told Theo who the giant was and worried that Snape would hurt Hagrid's sister.
"And I'll get Dumbledore," Dean said, already running off to try to keep the other two professors from making different bad decisions without the headmaster's involvement.
At dinner, fully half the high table was missing, the headmaster having taken Hagrid, Snape, Flitwick, McGonagall, and even Mordo on the rescue mission into the Forest. Professor Sprout, as the last remaining head of house, announced, "Some students accompanied Dar-Benn into the Forest today and have not returned. I'm sure they will be recovered safely soon. Hopefully we have all learned a valuable lesson about why the forest is off limits to students!"
Harry wasn't so sure they'd be back quickly. Greip had a big lead on the professors through the dense forest, and much longer legs. They couldn't use portals within dozens of miles of Hogwarts, and would have trouble pursuing on brooms for the same reason that Dean had kept Ron from trying it. Even if they could track her perfectly, she might have to hit open terrain outside the Forest before they could start catching up to her. Best case, they'd be at it all night.
And he had a sense that crises like this at the end of the year didn't just leave him out of it.
Sure enough, as dinner was ending, Seer Trelawney approached the Gryffindor table with the walk that she thought looked like she was floating impressively but mostly just looked like she wasn't fully committed to a Naruto run. "Harry Potter! I come to you with tidings! My tea! The tea in my dinner cup! So distinct the lightning bolt within—the Sowilo mark upon your brow!" She fumbled a handful of bone dice from one of the pockets of her very gothy black dress, her many rings awkwardly catching on the fabric, shook them once, then slapped them down on the table in front of the Boy-Who-Lived. She squinted and arranged them into some kind of pattern that made sense to her. "Students? What do my bones suggest?"
Neville and Parvati were the closest ones that took divination class, and Parvati ventured, "Something long lost?"
"The need to move quickly," Neville added.
"Of course it would be tonight," Harry sighed in resignation.
"You really should have taken my class, young one," Trelawney smiled, magical torchlight flaring in her oversized glasses. "I would have loved to do a practical study on the Norns' investment in your life." With another nod of approval at her students, she swept up her bones and left the dining hall without another word to them.
Harry made a mental note to call Sirius, but with half the heavy-hitters from Dumbledore's crew out chasing down a giantess, he didn't much like the chances of the others on Morag. The lizard man alone had easily defeated three of them. It was probably a sad thing that the study group had more practical wandless casting and martial arts experience than any of the adult Vanir available. He looked at the expectant faces of his friends and made his decision.
"You can say no. But who wants to go with me to another planet to stop the Death Eaters from getting an artifact?"