CHAPTER TWELVE
Hermione had just told him she loved him and it wasn't as if he hadn't already known, but... Well, it was something else entirely to hear it being said out loud.
Gabriel couldn't stop himself from brushing one of his mostly-intangible wings along Hermione's half-asleep form; it was the closest he could get to touching her with one of his own limbs, not those of the vessel he'd taken. In response to the touch, his little disciple's bright, beautiful soul reached out to brush against his feathers and he closed his eyes, wondering what in his Father's name he was doing.
The moment Hermione was fast asleep (helped along by a little bit of grace), Gabriel flew away so quickly he ended up halfway across the globe in a handful of seconds. He'd claim he wasn't running away except no, he was most definitely running away— if he was going to be honest with anyone, it may as well be himself.
As a rule, Gabriel did not love humans— as a species, of course he loved them and he understood exactly why his Father had loved them so much too, but he didn't love them as individuals and he'd never planned to. He'd decided to make the most of Hermione's short mortal life and the too-brief time they'd get to spend together, but he hadn't intended to ever love the bright, wounded child and it was suddenly dawning on him just how dangerously close he was to loving the little girl who'd sworn her life to him.
There was only one thing Gabriel could think of now to do— deciding to make the most of their time had obviously been a mistake and although he wouldn't abruptly remove himself from Hermione's life, he could and would minimise his presence in it, starting with setting up a bit of magic to transport the offerings she laid out for him to one of his homes instead of retrieving it in person. He didn't want her to think he was abandoning her entirely, but there obviously needed to be a distance created between them.
He wasn't her friend, he was her god and he'd blurred those lines which was his mistake to rectify.
And rectify it, he would.
(He was going to miss Hermione)
::
Hermione missed Loki.
It had been months now since she'd last seen him, and it had really made her realise just how often he'd been popping around to visit her before that. She knew that he must be busy, that he was a god and he had a life of his own, one that he'd been living for thousands of years before she'd even been born and would continue living thousands of years after she'd died, but—
She still missed him.
She'd been practicing her magic every chance she got, desperately wanting to show Loki when he returned that she hadn't been slacking off just because he hadn't been around to give her lessons, to prove that she was worth the time he took to teach her. It was difficult to get the privacy to practice without Loki stepping them both out of time to ensure there wouldn't be interruptions, so Hermione started to sneak out of the house at night— something made easier by the fact her Aunt and Uncle always both went to bed early, both having to wake each morning before the sun.
Other then the wharf, the ocean shore and the scattered houses, Fraserburgh was mostly rolling green fields and clusters of trees forming small pockets of wooded areas that provided perfect places for her to practice magic while concealed from the sight of any possible passersby. She had a favourite woods to practice in, one about an acre in size and barely fifteen minutes from her house at a brisk jog. It was dense enough that she could hide amongst the trees and was filled with wildlife— field mice, red squirrels, rabbits, voles, pine martens and more. Sometimes the smaller woodland creatures would creep over to watch her, which made her feel like Snow White.
When a squirrel actually hopped close enough to her that its whiskers tickled against her ankle she found herself turning automatically to where Loki would usually be, laughter bubbling up inside her only to be cut off at the knees before it could ever leave her mouth when she was once again faced with the reminder that Loki wasn't there.
I miss you she prayed quietly, blinking back the tears threatening to spill down her cheeks.
There was no reply and her chest felt cold.
Close to four months after Coney Island, Hermione was once again out practicing in the forest at night under the light of the waxing moon. The weather was mild with only a soft breeze whispering between the trees and rustling the leaves as she coaxed wild flowers into unfurling so she could change the colours of their petals to all the colours of the rainbow and more. She'd just finished turning the petals of one flower to a gold so vibrant it was almost glowing when her peace was abruptly shattered.
"What a clever little human!" A sweet, silvery voice like tinkling bells chimed. Hermione couldn't help the shriek that tore from her throat as she immediately jumped to her feet, heart pounding in her chest as she frantically scanned around her for the source of the voice— finding it, however, did nothing to lessen her panic.
The strange, fluting voice and the use of the word 'human' as a description should have prepared Hermione for the speaker to be something other then human, yet she was still shocked when she found herself staring wide-eyed at a small, winged being barely two-feet tall.
The fairy— for what else could it be, with those gossamer wings and slim ears curved into fine points?— was as quixotic as it was inhuman to behold; undeniably beautiful but too androgynous for her to comfortably label either male or female. Perfectly proportioned for its slight size, the fairy was luminescent with its moon-bright skin that seemed to soak in the glittering light of the night sky, long, tangled hair the colour of clear glass and glittering purple eyes that were unnaturally fever-bright.
It was hovering in the air at about her eye-level and as Hermione stared it smiled at her, revealing a mouthful of razor sharp looking white teeth that ended in needlepoint-like tips. It was immediately obvious to her, upon seeing those teeth, those fangs, that the fairy was dangerous— much closer to the Grimm Brothers depictions then to Disney— and with that observation came the sinking realisation that she was in danger.
"Such pretty flowers!" Chimed the fairy, its words almost sounding like it was cooing at her. "What's your name, little witchling?"
Hermione may not have realised that fairies existed until thirty seconds ago, but she'd read enough fairytales to know better then to give any magical creature her name— names had power and the last thing she needed right now was to give the fairy power of her when she was so uncertain of the situation.
"You can call me Ness," she told it, her sister's name the first that came to her. The fairy laughed, the chiming sound cloyingly sweet, like rotting fruit— it was enough to set her teeth on edge.
"Such a clever little witchling," it cooed and Hermione took an uneasy step backwards. It immediately fluttered forwards, erasing the added distance she'd put between them and more. "In such a hurry!" It trilled, "silly little girl, hasn't anybody told you that you can't run from the fey?"
The fairy's words, how it had called her a 'silly little girl', brought to mind how Ness used to read Shakespeare plays out loud to her, specifically Midsummer's Night Dream ('Lord, what fools these mortals be!') and somewhat irrationally, Hermione suddenly felt furious— those memories were special, they were precious, and it felt like the fairy was tainting them. The thought enraged her, made her rash. The fairy claimed she couldn't run away from it?
"Just watch me!" She retorted with more bravery then she felt. But before she could do more then take another step away from it, the fairy swooped forwards, colliding into her midsection with the force of a cannonball— or that's what it felt like, anyway. Hermione was thrown back several feet and ended up on the ground gasping for the air that had been knocked out of her lungs.
For a brief, surreal moment, she reflected on the bizarre fact that she was being attacked by a fairy ('Though she be but little, she is fierce!') and then she turned her focus towards survival, staggering to her feet while her lungs fought to draw a breath, her eyes not leaving the now annoyed-looking fairy.
"You don't get to leave," it informed her crossly, "I found you and now you're mine, my little curiosity— but I won't hurt you, no need to fret, and everyone at Summer Court will love you."
"So you want to make me your prisoner?" Hermione demanded as fear started to sink its vicious claws into her. Fairies stealing humans was common enough in the old fairytales, the ones that were gritty with bloodstains, violence and shadows of madness. Fairies weren't nice, the old tales rightfully warned— quite the opposite in fact. Fairies were dangerous beings that ranged from capricious to downright wicked; they murdered children for petty grievances, cast lifelong curses of poverty, terror and ostracisation for the slightest of offences and abducted humans to take to their Realms and enslave— newborns for pets, beautiful young women for brides, new mothers for nursemaids and humans that managed to capture their attention; curiosities that they took and kept forevermore in their Courts.
The idea that she'd somehow gained the interest of a fairy was terrifying, the thought that it wanted to take her to the Fairy Realm was even worse— she had no wish to spend her life enslaved.
"You'll be happy," the fairy assured her, easily reading the horror on her face, "once you've dined in our Realm, you'll never want to leave— you'll be happy, content."
Not bloody likely, Hermione thought to herself furiously, even as part of her mind latched onto a random thread of Greek mythology, recalling how Persephone had been offered six perfect pomegranate seeds and after consuming them had then been trapped in the Underworld for six month of the year for the rest of time— apparently eating in the Fairy Realm would be just as dangerous. Not that she planned on setting foot there, ever.
According to the same old fairytales, iron was a major weakness of the fey— Hermione could only hope that that held true to real life fairies. She didn't have any iron with her, but Loki had taught her how to teleport objects away from her, out of her line of sight— it stood to reason, then, that teleporting a far away object to her was also possible and she knew herself, she knew that she had the tendency to do her best work while under pressure. Usually that involved tests— this time, however, it involved a fairy who wanted to abduct and enslave her and the weapon she would need to save herself from such a fate.
There was a fire-poker made of iron leaning next the wood-and-coal burning stove in the Macleod house; she'd seen it every day for as long as she'd lived with her cousins and could picture it perfectly, could feel her magic stirring inside her like a caged wild thing, eagerly pacing and ready to lunge the moment the doors to its prison opened— so she opened them.
"What is that—?" She vaguely heard the fairy mutter, but she was too focused on the way the warmth in her chest she'd always associated with her magic, with Loki, felt as if it had been stoked to an inferno, burning all the way through her as her magic leapt eagerly to her fingertips, practically begging to be used— and she had no intention of denying it.
Teleporting objects was something she'd done hundreds, if not thousands, of times now and twisting the magic around so as to summon unseen objects to her instead of banishing them was simpler then she'd expected or could have hoped for. Hermione felt her fingers close around the cold metal of the fire-poker, barely needing to concentrate to ensure her magic kept it hidden from sight, at the same time as the fairy let out an alarmed sound of realisation.
"What is this claim on you? You are Loki's get!?" It demanded in shrill disbelief, and its high voice suddenly sounded less like bells and more like the cringeworthy sound of steel nails scraping against a chalkboard, grating against her ears to the point she was surprised they weren't bleeding.
"I am," Hermione confirmed with fierce pride before she grasped onto the poker with both hands and swung. It caught the fairy entirely unawares, just as she'd intended, and it let out a scream of agony as it careened through the air until it crashed into a tree.
Hermione could see the bubbling of its skin where the iron had hit it, like she'd poured acid onto the fairy, and it took a stunned moment to wail loudly in pain before throwing itself at her with a furious shriek, wings fluttering madly. Hermione ducked its sloppy attack, the pain of what appeared to be its dissolved skin throwing the fairy off its game.
Before it could turn around and attack again, Hermione swung the poker a second time, aiming— and hitting— the fairy in the back of its head with as much force as her arms could manage. There was a wet crunch and then a meaty thud as the small winged being hit the ground.
Hermione had a moment to take in the gruesome sight of the half caved-in skull before she doubled over and gagged violently, vomit splashing against her shoes as her stomach rolled violently. She staggered backwards, still clutching onto the poker with white knuckles, and tears mixed with smears of bile as she started to cry.
What had she done? She'd killed it, she'd killed it—
Oh Loki Loki Loki, please, I need you, I need you, it's dead, I killed it, I need you, please—
A rustling sound like a bird's wings, except much, much larger, had her spinning around, gripping the poker with both hands, ready to swing at any fairy that might have appeared to avenge the one she'd— the one she'd defeated (killed).
Except it wasn't a fairy; it was Loki.
"Oh kiddo," he said with a deeply sympathetic look on his face, so real and standing right there in front of her. "This is a mess, isn't it?"
Hermione dropped the poker and stumbled straight into his waiting arms, burying her face into the softness of his stomach as she sobbed.
"Shh, kitten," Loki murmured, rubbing a circle between her shoulder-blades as his warmth burned through her, chasing away the cold dregs of sickness and the shivers that had started to work their way through her body after the poker had cracked open the fairy's skull like the bone was mere eggshell to be shattered.
"Don't call me kitten," she mumbled wetly into the material of his shirt— it smelt like burnt sugar and lightning storms. Or maybe that was what Loki smelt like. The little details didn't particularly matter to her, not right now at least.
"I can't help it," Loki said, and even though she couldn't see his face she could hear the smile in his voice. "It's not my fault— you're just so tiny and fierce, it's adorable." She made an annoyed huffing sound and he stroked one of his hands over the top of her head. There was a brief silence between them as Hermione soaked up his presence, and then Loki spoke again— and like she'd heard the smile before, this time she could hear how it had disappeared, replaced by something uncommonly serious and almost sad. "Why didn't you pray to me for help?" he asked her quietly.
Hermione felt her insides twist with a sudden anxiety and she bit her lip nervously, her arms tightening automatically around him. "I..." she wanted to lie, but she couldn't, not to him. "I wasn't sure you'd come." She whispered, closing her eyes in shame for having doubted him.
::
Gabriel felt frozen as Hermione admitted to him in a small voice that she wasn't sure he'd have answered her prayer for help.
"It wasn't that I thought you'd just leave me, to be hurt by the fairy," the little girl hastily tried to explain, her words muffled due to the fact she hadn't moved her face from where she'd pressed it against his stomach, her limbs still shaking slightly. "I just... you've been so busy, I didn't know how quickly you'd be able to get here, or if you'd get here in time to save me, so I couldn't just— I couldn't just do nothing and hope that I'd be saved, I had to try and save myself... I'm so sorry I doubted you!"
She sounded tearful and apologetic and ashamed— and Gabriel? Gabriel felt small— and considering his True Form was approximately the size of Jupiter, that wasn't an easy thing for someone to manage. Worse still, he knew that she wasn't trying to make him feel lousy; Hermione didn't expect things of him, she was just thankful for he did give her, treating him like he was granting her the most wonderful of blessings with his presence alone.
It made him feel... he wasn't quite sure. He liked that she didn't pray to him expecting him to just snap his fingers and solve all her problems— she didn't treat him like some wish granting genie she could freely use, that just because he had phenomenal powers he owed her the use of them; no, Hermione treated him like a god, like his existence alone was worthy of her worship and respect and there was no greater boon he could possibly give her then to have accepted her as his disciple.
And yet, he'd been avoiding her, spooked off by a child's sleepy confession that had sparked a realisation he hadn't been ready for. He'd been avoiding her because he was a coward— a coward who always ran. And Hermione could have been stolen away by the fey, could have been killed, even, if the faery had lost its temper, all because she hadn't been sure that he'd have answered her prayer for help in time, not when he'd been ignoring her other prayers. Not that she actually knew he'd been ignoring them, which was at least a small consolation to him in this shitty situation he'd landed himself in.
Gabriel hadn't realised just how much it had meant to him to be the god that she saw when she looked at him, the god she believed him to be, her god, until that belief was threatened— threatened by his own stupidity.
"I will always answer your prayers, Hermione Jane Granger," he told her, letting enough of his true voice to leak through into his words to give them weight, to turn the air heavy with his holy presence and power; a trumpeting of horns audible within each syllable, words ringing with undeniable authority. Hermione gasped under the sheer onslaught of his promise and he had to grab hold of her when her knees gave out ('For the word of God is living and powerful' and runaway or not, Gabriel was still God's Messenger, His mouthpiece on Earth).
Hermione, only kept upright by his hold, looked up at him in wide-eyed wonder, her expression awed and dazed and reverent, and Gabriel vowed in that moment not to let her down again.
Seeing that her legs didn't look like they were about to start supporting her again any time soon, Gabriel lowered them both down so they were sitting on the slightly damp ground. Hermione immediately curled up in his lap like the kitten she tried to claim she wasn't and he tucked his chin over the top of her curly head and let her seek the comfort she needed from his closeness while pretending he wasn't doing the exact same thing.
The corners of his mouth curled up slightly as he took in the rainbow wildflowers around them. He wasn't surprised the faery had been drawn to Hermione— his little stray's magic was thick and charged in the small clearing amongst the trees; she had clearly spent a lot of time here, practicing her magic, and the fey were drawn to power.
It was actually fortunate it had just been the faery she'd attracted to her— or perhaps there had been others who'd been drawn to the clearing, but they'd recognised his claim on her and left her alone, so as to not risk his wrath.
Not liking the thought that he'd unthinkingly left her vulnerable, Gabriel's hold tightened protectively. "You did well, Hermione," he told her, glancing proudly over at the faery with the caved in skull and vanishing it with a thought— she didn't need to see the evidence of what she'd done, not when it distressed her so much. "I will admit, though, that the presence of the fire-poker is confusing me. You weren't carrying it around with you, were you?" He asked, mostly teasing but also curious.
"Fairytales say that iron is a weakness of fairies," Hermione mumbled, suddenly sounding very nervous. "And I know you said when you first started teaching me that I shouldn't experiment with my magic unless you were there to watch and help me if I needed it but I was desperate and I've teleported objects from here to the house before so it made sense that I'd be able to teleport an object from the house to here."
"A fire-poker is significantly different from the lollipops we started you off at, when you first began learning to use your powers to shift objects through space away from you," Gabriel said dryly, though with no small amount of pride at what she'd managed to achieve through her instincts and understanding of her magic alone.
"I'm sorry," Hermione said miserably and he made a scolding sound.
"Don't be sorry, sugar— never be sorry for saving yourself from danger. Because you did; you saved yourself and I could never be angry about that. If you were messing around experimenting with your powers without me there to keep an eye on things just because you wanted to then sure I'd get mad, but not when you're in danger."
"So... you're not mad now?" Hermione asked in a small voice.
"I am mad," Gabriel admitted, "but not at you, at myself. You, Hermione, I'm proud of. Me? Not so much, considering I've apparently completely overlooked the need to teach you both how to defend yourself and what you'll need to defend yourself from."
"Does that mean more lessons?" Hermione asked hopefully, looking up at him with those big chocolate-coloured doe eyes.
"That it does, kitten." Gabriel confirmed, grinning back down at her. Hermione looked so thrilled at the prospect that she didn't even complain about the nickname and he wondered, amused, just how long that youthful exuberance would last in the face of what was no doubt going to be a truly gruelling training regiment— Hermione needed to know how to defend herself against supernatural threats and he was going to make damn sure that she had every trick possible at her disposal.