Death is a Sassy Grandma
May 2011
There are nine realms in the universe and Asgard was a part of it. It was the realm of the Norse Gods, where the current ruler, the great Odin, son of Bor have ruled for centuries alongside his wife, Queen Frigga. Under their ruling, Asgard has flourished and triumphant in conquering the other realms, besides Helheim and Midgard (Earth).
Together they have two sons, who were both a millennium and half old in age and only a few years apart in between. The oldest was Asgard’s warrior prince, Prince Thor Odinson, the God of Thunder. Besides being very powerful, he was handsome and charismatic as well.
The blonde-haired God was famous and infamous throughout the 7 realms with his love of hunting and adventuring with his companions. Asgardians loved their first Prince very much and hopeful that he would lead them to future glory.
His mighty prowess knew no bounds and he has the love of all Asgardians, which was almost the opposite of his younger brother, the second Prince of Asgard, Loki Odinson.
Loki was a very powerful sorcerer even among the whole realms, maybe not on par with harry, but he was quite there among Dumbledore and Voldemort. He loved to travel as much as his older brother, but with different reason. Quite the bookworm with how much he travelled to learn with scholars from almost all the realms. He was the black sheep of the family, since he liked to cause tricks and jokes among the rest of the citizens. On the other hand, he was better in politic and governing rather than his older brother.
He was also the heir to the throne of Jotunheim, the realm of Jotnars or Frost Giants. Adopted by King Odin and Queen Frigga after the big war between the two races was over.
Harry knew about the royal family, as much as he knew most beings’ backgrounds from the data Death has transferred into him the moment he became the Master of Death. So, mostly it was general based information and not exactly personalized.
It wasn’t a mere curiosity that got him to look into the profile of the Asgardian’s or Jotnar’s family profile. It was a necessity since Death asked him to help him, or at least that’s what he translated from Death’s words in her bored tone.
This little godling’s time has yet to come. And it would be a bother if HE succeeded in retrieving him. Such a bother.
The wizard didn’t exactly condone this behavior of dumping the so-called ‘little’ God onto his floor, in his townhouse in New York that they just moved into three years ago, where he was having a wonderful dinner with his children, hopefully, his-soon-to-be-daughter-in-law, wife, and grandchildren.
Her intruding on his family night was not exactly warm, literary of figuratively. The air was cold, borderline freezing and even though none of his family could see Death, Harry could certainly see and hear her, which he never enjoyed. She always loomed above him and creepy as bollocks with her bony fingers and unemphatic voice.
Then after she ‘asked’ for his help, a body suddenly appeared on his floor. And NOT just emerging with a snap. The God’s body turned up floating on air beside his dining table before dropping onto the floor next to him. The aesir was bleeding red and it was quite a lot.
Lily might not feel traumatic anymore now, but Harry was still feeling pissed off whenever he remembered hearing his daughter’s scream at the top of her lungs in fear and the way Pepper’s face looking as white as sheet with her hand on her lips.
On the other hand, the rest of his family were frozen with surprise at the appearance of a body in the dining room more so than the bleeding God himself, even his grandchildren. Although with their past history of experimentation and abuse, Harry wasn’t really baffled at the twins’ reactions or the lack thereof.
He still wished he could eradicate all HYDRA scientists himself for the pain his beautiful brave grandchildren have been through at their hands. But there’s no crying over spilled milk. They’re here now, save and sound with parents who loves them (Pepper’s practically their mother at this point, with how much she fussed over them) and family who would do anything to protect them.
Anyway, it was a completely a ruined Potter family time. Tony had to cast a memory charm at Pepper to erase her memory of tonight and let her sleep on it after Harry gave her and Lily calming draught potions to ease their hysteria.
The twins lied next to Pepper, each on her sides, holding to her like her life depended on them grounding her. The shock of Pepper’s trembling body and fear seemed to scare them more than the stranger lying bleeding on the floor. They seemed startled at the fragility their so-called unflappable mom had portrayed.
It was a good thing that Howard and mom weren’t here. They would be so shocked that Harry would be frightened of their health, even when Maria has taken the serum like Howard did, just last year. They were on a trip to find Captain America, on mom’s insistent. Howard has stopped the search two decades ago, but without SI or SHIELD to handle, he had grown a little bored.
There’s not much things a billionaire and his wife to do when their grandchildren had started school. So mom suggested father to start over with the Captain America search last year. The key was not to go on the trip on summer break or the big holidays, but they would be missing Tony’s birthday since they’d be going for almost half a year in the expedition.
Orion didn’t feel too sad that their parents couldn’t celebrate his birthdays. He was just happy that the senior Starks could stop harassing him to tie the knot with Pepper. It was cute how much their parent tried to insinuate them to hurry up with the marriage. It’s not cute on His son’s part though with all his grumbling about waiting for the right moment and his wailing of not needing his parent’s help to propose.
Back to the previous topic, Tony was furious, as much as Harry was, but Death was Death. She did what she want without thinking of the consequences or impact on their lives and emotional States. He apologized to his family though, informing them that the God was an injured fellow wizard that he knew and apparated here because he had come here before and possibly the closest safe-haven that he recalled.
Of course it was a poor excuse and neither Tony nor Aria believed his story. They couldn’t just forget about the sudden drop in temperature they all felt before the Asgardian appeared in the dining room. But they let it go, since the both of them could guess that it had something to do with Death and talking about her was always so frustrating and complicated for Harry since he himself couldn’t comprehend her actions sometimes. Piss posh title of the master of Death he has. He felt more like her servant or figurehead most of the time rather than the other way around.
The whole excitement was enough to cut their dinner short. Harry reluctantly apparated away from his house and family to bring the aesir to his old apartment. He never once had the intent to let their old apartment sold. It has too many memories of his and Aria and Lily here; moreover, it was a gift from his adopted parents. It would be rude to sell it and he didn’t need the money with his Lord Title and riches in Gringotts’ vaults.
His wife even conceded to let the apartment be empty and used it as a safe house instead. So that’s where he took the aesir to. For a week he nursed the God back to health.
It’s not easy since the physicality and body structure of the Aesir was different from a human, but the surprise lied when he turned into a blue icy being. Imagined Harry’s surprise when he got frostbite from touching his suddenly transformed patient. Fortunately with a simple potion, the frostbite ceased to exist.
That’s why he searched for the God’s family history. It was a necessity read to heal the As, which led him to obtain books about Jotunheim. One of the perks of being the master of Death was acquiring books from Death’s unlimited library. It has a lot of things besides information and data about dead beings.
With the information obtained of how to cure a certain Jotnar from dying, Loki was back to being healthy as he could be.
Lord Potter was curious as to what made Death wanted to save this person. He speculated that Loki was an important god and it was very rare for one of them Aesir to be dying when there’s no war. Furthermore, it would certainly never warrant Death herself to save a being even if he was an Asgardian Prince.
He would very much get the story from the young Prince (young in terms of maturity and physical age from how old his race saw him as, *eye roll) because an explanation would not be a hardship for him to give what with Harry healing him and gave him an accommodation to stay and even fed him.
Additionally, it would compensate for him interrupting Harry’s family dinner even if he blamed Death the most. She has not answered him regarding Loki’s appearance in his dining room, at least not with clear answers. Death was more frustrating than Dumbledore at being vague.
Five days into Loki’s arrival on Earth
“Please explain to me why you need to dump him with me?” Harry asked Death in his living room at the apartment after casting a silencing spell, making sure that Loki couldn’t hear him. The God was currently resting in his bedroom.
“Vacation is always good for oneself, especially for him,” Death inclined her head (or the hood of her robe) to the side.
The wizard pinched the bridge of his nose, considering what sins he had done in his past life to have to deal with Death and become her master. These days, he’s considering that it was more of a pain in his arse most of the time than good, being the master of such an ancient being.
He still treated the being cautiously most of the time, even when he’s supposed to be her ‘master’. Master, his arse, he groaned in his mind.
“Can you at least elaborate?”
“Relaxing one’s body could do wonder to one’s mind,” she said this with a sigh, as if Death was trying to explain it to an unruly child.
As if he was one. The nerve!
“I’m sorry,” he smiled thinly, trying to curb his frustration. “I don’t understand.”
“In due time, you will,” the ancient being loomed over him. “And you are forgiven.”
The wizard was speechless as Death left him with his jaw hanging at the complete dismissal. Harry swore he could feel the smile on her voice when she ‘excused’ him.
“If there’s no more you would like to ask, master, I shall depart for there are more imperative matters at hands that I have to deal with.”
With that, Death left as if she hasn’t been summoned in the first place. Harry wasn’t chuffed at all for being dismissed. Gaffer, his arse!
And to ask Loki himself would be like asking a broom to speak to him. The god has refused to talk, not in so many actions. All that he did all the time was eat, sleep and going to the toilet (after Harry taught him how to use those things daily).
Harry was confused at this almost catatonic state, but there’s Mopsy, one of his house elf to take care of Loki in the apartment, so the wizard was relieved to let him alone in her small capable hands. Well at least until he talked, which he asked his house elf nicely to report to him daily of what his house-guest occupied himself with.
Thank God that all of his living places has been equipped by Orion to be magic-friendly. If not, he was scared to find out what would have happened if Loki had done what he done and what would have been left of his apartment.
The blasted Prince ruined his television when he was watching a movie. It’s not even a movie; it was a bloody Disney Movie.
He has no problem with Disney cartoons, but how could something as simple as Lilo and Stitch could prompt someone to blast his telly to the wall and the whole bloody living room to a crisp.
Thank Morgana the magic outburst could be contained inside the living room only.
Flopsy was quite frightened by the sudden outburst of magic; thus, he called Harry to report of this sudden progression.
Harry knew Loki was powerful, but at least he thought that the God could control himself when he’s watching a mere animation movie. So, he fixed the whole room with a simple reparo and before he could rant Loki for being a most misbehaved guest, the god spoke quietly,” I apologized. I didn’t mean to demolish your box of moving pictures.”
The healer was taken aback for a second. He looked towards Loki, who was sitting on the couch, still keeping his whole focus fully on the now repaired telly. It’s still playing the same animation from before. Maybe the theme of the movie was the problem, he thought.
“Um, alright,” Harry blinked a few times. “Maybe I should change the channel for you?”
“Yes, that would be most appreciated,” Loki loosened his straight pose a bit.
So, he took the remote and changed the channel to the ones he knew showing old comedies. They’re currently playing the three stooges. Harry never watched it before, so he settled himself to sit next to Loki on the long couch.
It was a week of watching comedy together whenever he could visit before Loki started opening up. The godling mostly just comment on the tv shows they’ve watched, but Harry was more than happy to answer his questions or comment alongside of him.
There are times, rare times when he talked about his times in Asgard and when he spoke, it was mostly to rant about his brother’s friends. He told him that Thor was usually accompanied by the lady warrior, Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, Fandral the Dashing, Volstagg the Voluminous, and Hogun the Grim or more known to Harry as the three stooges, courtesy of the youngest Prince of Asgard.
Harry couldn’t help but notice that Loki would stop himself from saying ‘my brother’ every time he ranted about his companions. It didn’t take Harry long to find out that the god has family issues. He was after all very tight-lipped about his family. Usually he would stop talking for the whole day every time the wizard brought up questions about his family.
Oh well, it’s still a very wonderful progress for these past two months considering his catatonic state at the first fortnight.
***
It was after midnight in his bedroom when his son called him. Aria was currently busy on SHIELD project, a project that needed her to stay at an unknown location (very secretive and hush-hush). Fury demanded her full-time for the past week and Harry was annoyed enough to want to go to the one-eyed man’s office and demanded him to let his wife have a day off.
He would have done it, if only he wasn’t afraid of what his wife would do to him if he really did storm her boss’ office. He still remembered that time when he told Aria about him being the Master of Death. No repetition needed thank you.
Harry fumbled through his nightstand in the dark, searching for his phone. Having JARVIS at this moment would be oh so wonderful, but Aria put a stop to it, stating that she felt creepy being watched by the AI whilst sleeping, even if she got along well with the computer program.
“Hello?” Harry mumbled through his cell phone after succeeding in finding it.
“Dad, dad, the permit is through,” his son’s voice sounded excited through the call.
“Huh?” Harry scrambled to sit on the bed, only half-awaked.
“MACUSA approved my permit. You know, it’s the PERMIT,” he could practically see his son’s eye rolling him. “I can tell Pepper about my wizarding status.”
“Even Rhodey?”
“Yeah,” he said it in a similar tone as ‘duh’. Then he chided on his familiar in the background. "Mia, don't eat that. That's not for eating, you silly thing."
Tony got along so well with his familiar, much better than his (Jarvis' familiar most likely) old familiar, Malcolm. Although, like Malcolm, Mia mostly only like to be around Tony and usually go invisible around others.
Ignoring Tony's rants, he elaborated the question. "They really approved of your frateriate towards your best friend?”
“Yes,” Orion huffed. “There’s a letter of approval and all the formality shit telling me that I can tell Rhodey about me being who I am. They had sanctioned and declared platypus as my adopted brother.”
“That’s good,” Harry smiled, woken enough to turn on the light, but not enough to put on his glasses. “Then supplying all that memories of your time together in pensieve was worth it then.”
“The time it took for me to extract them were a pain in the ass, but it’s all worth it,” Tony sounded happy. “It’s not exactly a walk in the park to blur the part where my identity as Tony Stark could be compromise, dad.”
“I know son, but now you can finally tell them the truth, “ he covered his mouth to stop himself from yawning out loud.
“I can’t wait to see the look on their faces when I use magic in front of them,” Orion informed him cheerily.
“Or imagined their reaction when you bring them to New York’s wizarding district,” the older wizard added helpfully between yawns.
“Merlin!” Orion gasped. “If that’s not magic, what is right?!”
Harry shook his head at his son’s boisterous laugh. It’s a wonderful thing to hear one’s child joyful voice, but when it’s 2 AM in the morning, all Harry wanted to do was hang up and be done with it since it’s. 2. AM. IN. THE. MORNING.
So that’s exactly what he did.
***