“Bad, Loki!”
Harry was in a rather good mood when he returned from school. He’d gotten a B on his math test, his English teacher said his writing had greatly improved, and Greene had texted Harry to tell him he was back home.
Plus Tony said that the lawyers were offering Bucky a plea deal that morning so with any luck it meant that Harry wouldn’t have to go to court.
And Loki was back.
When Harry stepped off the lifts, he immediately saw Loki stretched out on the couch, lazily flipping through telly channels like a muggle. Loki told Harry he’d return to talk magic with him, but Harry hadn’t believed him.
Or, technically, Harry didn’t think Tony would let Loki back in their flat. After the odd experience the other night when Loki went diving in Harry’s head, everyone had sorts of disappeared.
Tony, Sirius, Loki, and Strange went to Sirius’ flat and Harry and Pepper shared breakfast while they speculated over the queer behavior. Pepper thought that perhaps Tony was trying to build another magic powered machine that he needed Loki for. Harry said perhaps he’d damaged his magic by not using a wand and Loki was telling the others that Harry could never be a wizard again.
But then Harry made a portal to let Joey go to the bathroom outside and decided that sorcery was more useful anyway.
When they’d returned, Tony seemed off. He had been acting evasive and didn’t really answer any of Harry’s questions. Loki had been perfectly cheerful though. He told Harry that his magic was fascinating and that he would return to discuss it with him at some point before disappearing.
Harry wanted to ask Tony what that had been about, but he also wanted to go back to sleep. When he woke back up later, everyone had been acting normal and Harry brushed it off as a paranoid thought from his exhaustion.
“Humans are so tedious,” Loki remarked while he continued flipping through channels. Harry peeked in Tony’s office and frowned when he wasn’t there.
It wasn’t a big deal, but Tony was usually always home when Harry returned from school.
“He’s with your godfather,” Loki said, somehow guessing what Harry was frowning about even without looking at him. “I volunteered to babysit.”
“And he let you?” Harry asked, surprised by that.
Loki looked over at Harry and smirked. “He did not. Stark asked Peitro to babysit.”
Harry sighed as he sank down in the recliner. He was more used to his prosthetic, but his stump still ached by the time Harry returned from school.
“And where is Pietro?” Harry asked as he lazily reached through a portal to grab a snack and drink.
There weren’t a lot of things that Harry missed from Hogwarts that weren’t people, but lunch was one of them. American school lunches were tiny and terrible.
“Unconscious in his room, having pleasant dreams,” Loki said nonchalantly. He rolled over to sit up and gave Harry a curious look while Harry popped open a bag of crisps. “You are my descendant.”
Harry chewed a crisp with exaggerated slowness while he stared balefully at Loki.
“My mum’s side or Tony’s?” Harry asked. Not that it mattered, really. Hermione had told Harry that all witches and wizards were descended from the Gods after he told her about Loki.
One of the twins must have heard her because Harry got a very excited video call from them both as they begged to see Loki. Harry was pretty sure that George actually cried when Harry told him he left.
“Your mother, of course,” Loki sniffed. “Stark carries no magic within him. You were a genetic anomaly.”
Harry blinked while he grabbed another crisp.
“That’s rude,” he said. “You’re a rude person, Grandpa.”
Harry had been trying to be rude back at Loki with the quip, but it had the opposite reaction. Loki looked entirely too thrilled by Harry calling him that and he let out a peal of laughter that was almost sinister.
“Oh, we are going to have fun,” Loki cooed. “Come, Little One, let me show you the ways of true trickery.”
Harry actually had a history report he needed to do research for, but… but that sounded much more fun.
“We’re not killing anyone,” Harry warned Loki. He remembered the video he watched of Tony and his team fighting Loki, Harry wasn’t planning on signing up to enslave the human race.
Loki sighed dramatically and then slid down to the end of the sofa closest to Harry.
“You have no enemies that we could conquer together?” Loki asked in a wheedling tone. His clever green eyes flicked down to where Harry had been massaging his thigh through his jeans.
“Kill? No. Trick?” Harry suddenly had a beautiful and lovely image in his head… how many hours did Harry spend in the dungeons being taunted by a man meant to teach him? How often did Harry feel like less of a person because Snape made him hate himself?
“I do have someone we could mess with…” Harry said slowly. “But we can’t kill him.”
Even Snape wasn’t worth Azkaban.
Harry wasn’t just invisible, he was completely gone. Loki had made Harry disappear to the point that Harry waved his hand through his arm and felt nothing.
It was a bit terrifying, but also brilliant.
Harry had opened the portal for them, mostly so he could be involved as Loki arrogantly informed him that true Gods didn’t require portals made from sorcery.
It was nearly ten at Hogwarts and the castle was silent while Harry and Loki made their way to the dungeons. Only Loki could hear Harry, so Harry explained all that he knew about Snape while they walked.
“Sirius says he used to be friends with my mum,” Harry said. “But then he joined Voldemort and overheard the prophecy that made Voldemort kill my parents.”
“So this is revenge,” Loki said knowingly.
“Er… yes,” Harry said. “He’s also a complete git. He hated my other dad, James, so he hated me. He spent every class I had with him just mocking me.”
Belittling Harry, mocking him, tormenting him.
Snape was a grown man and bullied Harry worse than even Dudley ever had. No, Snape never hit Harry, but his barbs didn’t need to be physical to hurt Harry.
“Did he?” Loki hummed. “Unacceptable.”
Harry brightened and nodded his head. “Exactly.”
And even if Harry was about to give Snape a taste of his own medicine, Harry was fifteen. Harry could still be a dick. Snape was the teacher that was trusted to teach and guide students, Harry was the kid.
It was too easy to forgive himself while Harry directed Loki to Snape’s office.
Loki paused outside Snape’s door and waved Harry closer. He put his hand on top of Harry’s head and closed his eyes while he inhaled and then exhaled slowly.
“I should kill him,” Loki hissed after a moment. His eyes were a dangerous thing when they flashed with magic and whatever he just took from Harry’s mind. “My descendant was preparing to take his own life while that vermin taunted him?!”
Harry had a very uncomfortable realization of what exactly Loki had seen….
Harry couldn’t sleep. He’d been awake for days and it was beginning to mess with his mind. Everything was fuzzy and Harry couldn’t concentrate.
He had been sitting in potions beside Hermione, mechanically chopping daisy roots, while he thought about what it would be like to die.
Just… one jump from the Astronomy Tower and everything would be over. No more tournament, no pain in his scar. Harry wouldn’t be subjected to his classmates who called him a liar and a crybaby since Rita’s article was published.
It sounded so peaceful.
Harry startled in his seat when Snape abruptly slapped his table.
“What are you doing?” Snape hissed. He looked down at Harry’s roots that were mangled and then back up at Harry’s face.
Harry cringed internally as Snape stared hard in Harry’s eyes with his teeth bared and nostrils flaring.
“Daydreaming about your tournament?” Snape asked, loudly enough for the Slytherins to hear and begin snickering. “That’s twenty points from Gryffindor, Potter. And detention tonight.”
Harry’s face had been a dark red but he was too tired to even try and argue against blatant unfairness.
Harry went to detention that night and after two hours of scrubbing cauldrons and hearing everything about him be mocked - from the ‘pathetic’ state he was as in to his lack of intelligence and likelihood of dying in the first task - Harry went directly to the Astronomy Tower.
It was only luck that Harry called Sirius, just to hear him one more time. Sirius had been the one to see how bad everything had gotten and eventually convinced Harry to go back to his dorm.
Sirius had saved Harry’s life more than once, truthfully.
“You shouldn’t mention that,” Harry told Loki carefully, once again ashamed by how selfish he had been. “Just… you know… mess with him. But not murder.”
“You are tying my hands, Little One.” Loki relented when Harry stared deadpan at him, refusing to allow him to actually kill Snape. “Fine,” he snapped. “But that man is no descent of mine.”
When Loki walked through the solid door, Harry followed. And, because he was rather fond of the twins, Harry pulled his phone out and started recording.
As Loki stepped through the wall, he had shifted his appearance to be a perfect replica of Professor Dumbledore all the way down to his overly colorful purple robes.
“Severus.” Loki stood before Snape’s desk and Harry was already thrilled to see Snape jolt at the sudden appearance.
“Albus.” Snape sat down the quill he’d been marking papers with and tilted his head slightly at Loki. “I was not expecting you.”
“I would say that there are a great many things you were not expecting, Severus,” Loki said in Dumbledore’s gravest voice. “I am grateful to you for your service and loyalty, dear boy. It pains me to have to do this…”
Harry held his breath when Loki trailed off and Snape anxiously awaited whatever Loki had planned.
“You’re fired, Severus. Active immediately.”
Harry actually laughed and was relieved that only Loki could hear him. Snape’s face lost all of the little color he had and Harry sort of hoped that he would cry.
If Snape cried, Harry would send the video to Sirius as well.
“Fired?” Snape repeated slowly as he stood up. “Why?”
Loki spread his arms wide and Harry hadn’t noticed that he conjured an exact replica of Dumbledore’s wand, but it was a nice touch.
“I trusted these students to you, Severus,” Loki said regretfully. “I had hoped that you would see the innocence in these children of magic and it would change you.”
“I never wanted to teach these brats, as you know,” Snape spat at Loki. “I took the job to stay close at your insistence.”
Loki smiled sagely in a flawless performance.
“Then it should not bother you that your particular talents are no longer needed, Severus. I thank you and wish you well.”
Harry stayed where he was as Loki turned and strode out the door. Snape looked genuinely shocked and Harry was petty enough that he wanted to remember that moment for a very long time.
Snape might be a brilliant man, he might regret his choices when he was younger, but he was also cruel. School shouldn’t be a place so filled with cruelty that it led students to having their worst fear be a teacher. Teachers shouldn’t grade with a grudge and squash any pleasure a student could get from their class.
Snape finding a new job would be a kindness to every student with a passion for potions.
Loki returned to Harry’s side a few seconds later, as invisible and apparently unheard as Harry was.
“I had hoped that he would cry,” Loki said while they watched Snape grab his belongings from his desk.
“Yeah, me too,” Harry sighed. He grinned up at Loki after he ended the recording. “Wanna meet your biggest fans?”
Harry led Loki to the Gryffindor Tower once he was sure that Snape left—
If Harry was a better person, he might feel bad that Snape was under the impression that he’d been fired. But Harry wasn’t that good of a person and Snape was a terrible teacher anyway. If any of Harry’s teachers at Midtown talked to their students like Snape did then Harry imagined they’d have been fired immediately.
Apparently passwords and portraits didn’t mean anything to the magic of a God as Harry and Loki just walked through the tunnel.
There were loads of people still awake and Harry pointed at where Fred and George were entertaining students with some of their joke shop items. Hermione was on the sofa with Ron and continually shot dirty looks at the twins who had the common room in an uproar.
“Oh, I like them,” Loki breathed. He was smiling almost manically as he watched the twins show off a set of hats that temporarily allowed the wearers to swap heads, but not bodies.
“They’re brilliant,” Harry agreed. It was a neat bit of magic and Harry laughed when a first year traded heads with Lee Jordan and nearly toppled over with Lee’s grown head on his much smaller body.
“Are we aiming to make them cry?” Loki asked.
“No,” Harry said firmly. “Just, you know, prank them nicely.”
Loki sighed again and Harry felt like he was trying to raise a very petulant dog.
‘Bad, Loki! We don’t kill people!’
‘No, Loki! Don’t traumatize anyone!’
It gave Harry a new appreciation for what a good dog Joey was.
Harry and Loki had an entire debate over the best way to mess with the twins right in the middle of the common room. Nobody could see them, nobody could hear them, and by the time they settled on a decision, Harry had his phone out ready to record again.
When Loki slammed the portrait open and caught every student’s attention, he was Molly Weasley.
Ron jumped to his feet and paled at the look of fury on ‘Molly’s’ face.
“Mum?” Ron asked.
Loki stormed right past Ron in the direct path to the twins that the other students created. Ron breathed a sigh of relief as he sank back down to the sofa. Hermione smacked him in the arm and shook her head but Harry didn’t blame Ron.
If Molly was really there, Harry would be relieved to not be the focus of her attention too.
“FRED AND GEORGE WEASLEY!” Loki put his hands on his hips and glared at the twins so harshly that they actually cowered.
“DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT LETTER I JUST RECEIVED FROM THE HEADMASTER?” Loki yelled. “YOU BLEW UP THE SLYTHERIN DORMITORY??”
“What?!” Fred yelped. “No we didn’t!”
“Swear!” George added.
“I hope Malfoy’s been burned,” Ron murmured from the sofa, earning another swat from Hermione.
“Oh?” Loki gave the twins an incredibly unimpressed face. “I suppose some other set of twins with no regard for safety set off bombs in the Slytherin dorms?”
“I’ve always been suspicious of the Patil twins,” George said seriously.
“Hey! Racist!” Parvati cried from where she sat on the floor with Lavender. “Don’t try and blame your antics on me!”
“You two are coming with me,” Loki told the twins. He grabbed them both by an ear and began dragging them to the portrait hole while the other students began gossiping over their misfortune.
Harry followed them and Loki waited until just after the Fat Lady swung shut to shimmer and then straighten up as himself once more.
“Holy…”
“Mother…”
“Of Loki…”
Harry was rather pleased when the twins’ eyes rolled back in their heads simultaneously. He winced in sympathy when Loki released their ears and they fell backward, hitting the hard ground with their heads.
“Do we wake them?” Loki asked with only slight curiosity.
Harry debated the issue and then shook his head.
“No, they’ll start screeching and then Professor McGonagall will show up and then…” Harry furrowed his brows while he tried to think of what would actually happen if McGonagall knew Harry had snuck in the castle with a God from their myths.
“It’s probably best if we just leave,” Harry said. He wasn’t sure how McGonagall could react and that woman had the potential to be terrifying. Plus, Harry had the video of the twins and the one of Snape, it would hold him over for a while when he needed a laugh.
When Harry and Loki returned to the Tower, Harry was content to laze on the sofa and listen to Loki recount his many acts of trickery.
Loki lived a colorful life where his gender changed as often as his mood. Harry listened when he described wars of the Æsir and Jötnar and how he found himself occasionally leading troops to victory and sometimes leading them purposefully astray.
Loki laughed merrily when he described having to go in disguise to help his brother Thor get his hammer back from a king named Thrym. Apparently disguises and face-to-face deceit were some of Loki’s preferred bouts of chaos.
Harry had been rather disconcerted when Loki described disguising himself as a female horse in order to lure another horse, a male, away from his work.
“So you had a horse baby?” Harry asked once he was able to pick his jaw up off his chest.
“Sleipnir, yes,” Loki said. He waved his hand as if it was of no concern at all. “As I was saying…”
Harry liked Loki’s stories if for no other reason than he made Harry’s life seem incredibly plain. In fact, Harry was boring.
Harry was a nobody compared to Loki.
He loved it.
When Tony finally returned, Harry had gotten his research for history done (Loki probably invented some of the information he gave Harry on the Mayan Empire, but Harry could fact check with Peter before putting it in his essay) and the two of them were watching a movie.
“Where’s Pietro?” Tony asked with a suspicious look toward Loki.
“He’s asleep,” Harry lied cheerily. It wasn’t actually a lie; Peitro was asleep and Loki said he’d wake up on his own after twenty-four hours.
Harry rolled over on his side to look up at Tony. Then Harry frowned.
Tony actually didn’t look like he was in any sort of a good mood. He didn’t look angry, he looked tired. Harry tried to remember what Loki told him that Tony had to do that day and then felt his insides go icy when he remembered.
“I have to go to court, right?” Harry asked flatly. If Tony had been meeting with the lawyers and didn’t seem relieved at all, then Harry had to assume that it meant the case was still ongoing.
Harry had a lot of mixed feelings about it, most of which he had explained to him by his therapist.
Harry felt angry about it; Bucky’s mental problems had been dropped directly on Harry’s head- or leg, more actually. Harry also felt guilty because his dad told him that Bucky was dangerous and Harry didn’t believe him until it was too late. And a small part of Harry hated that he had been the one to befriend Bucky and Bucky was being punished for being insane.
At the root of it, Harry thought HYDRA should be the one on trial. Except then Michael had tried to say that would be like only punishing Voldemort for what his death eaters did and then Harry went back to being confused and torn up over the whole issue.
Tony sighed and Harry knew when he sat on the floor beside Harry that it wasn’t good news.
“Maybe not,” Tony said slowly. His eyes looked faraway and Harry waited for him to explain.
“I’m going to track down Steve, see if he can get through to Barnes that he should take the deal,” Tony eventually said.
“Or we—”
“We’re not killing anyone,” Harry said. He made a tiny portal to stick his hand through and flick Loki on the nose. “Bad, Loki.”
Loki looked affronted by being flicked in the nose by a teenager, but then the girl that was stuck in a grown man’s body tried to put on a skirt and Loki was focused on the telly once again.
*****
Mate! You’ll never believe it! SNAPE QUIT!
I know.
How do u know? It was just announced this morning?
I’ve got a video of it…
Gimme. Gimme. Gimme.
Harry sent a video attachment.