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Serpent of the World	By : TheLadyMiya Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 9486 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter and I make no money writing this story.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
Hello! New month, new chapter! March is also the international endometriosis awareness month. So to all people out there who have terrible period pain, look it up. it took me eight years to get the diagnosis, and it's not normal to have so horrible period pains every month that you can't go to school or your work. So don't let people make you think that you are just "overreacting" or "weak" because you have strong period pains. It's a common disease and it's horrible.
On the nicer stuff. I want to thank Ozzy for betaing this chapter! You are so awesome 3 Also want to thank everyone for reading, reviewing and rating!
Enjoy!

Chapter 14
When Hermione woke up, she was at first puzzled by the weight of another person's arm over her waist. Then the memories of the night before came rushing back to her, and she relaxed into Gabriel's arms.
In the light of day, however, she started to question last night's decisions. Was she stupid, having sex with him? He was a Dark wizard, after all, and just because she hadn't seen him torture or kill anyone, didn't mean he hadn't. That he seemed to know more about the Dark Arts than Tom Riddle didn't bode well either. Just because he didn't have the same ambitions as Riddle, didn't mean she could trust him.
And why exactly did he want her to spy on Riddle? Did he not want to tell her because he knew she would disagree, or was it just a matter of trust? Just as she hadn't known him for long, he hadn't known her for that long either. Maybe he was afraid that she would find a way to warn Riddle of his plans?
There simply was no way of knowing for sure, and the realisation left her with a knot of worry in her stomach. It had been rash of her to have sex with him, but now that she had, it was best to plan for all eventualities.
If she assumed that Gabriel wanted to do something she wouldn't agree on, she would have to come up with a plan to deal with him as well. If it was just a matter of him not trusting her yet … then it was nothing she could plan for. But trying to find out Gabriel's weaknesses wouldn't hurt. If worst came to pass, she could use them. If not, well, then she just wouldn't have to exploit them.
How would she find his weaknesses, then? Well, finding out more about him was a start. She hardly knew anything more than his claim to be from Iceland. But she didn't even know how old he was, just that he didn't age. Would he reveal more if she continued to have sex with him?
Don't think with your vagina, she scolded herself, embarrassed that one man could affect her judgement so. She was not some Mata Hari, she had only had sex with three different people, and had never read anywhere about how to extract information through seduction. It would probably be best if she kept her search outside the bedroom. Maybe all she had to do was ask him? It would be understandable if she was curious about him now that their relationship had changed.
"You're awake already?" a husky voice came from behind her.
"Yes," she responded, not sure what else to say.
"But you didn't leave the bed," he remarked, slowly dragging her back against his chest.
Hermione flushed as she felt his hardness against her arse.
"Eh, I guess not," she said, unsure of what she should do. On one hand, she was horny and whatever mistake she may have made by sleeping with him once probably wouldn't become worse by sleeping with him twice. On the other hand, she wasn't sure of what this meant and if it was a good thing. She didn't want to grow attached to him, since she didn't know him that well, and sex tended to complicate matters.
He pressed his lips against her throat, nibbling and kissing it, sending shivers of pleasure down her spine. His right hand moved from her belly up to her breast, fondling it.
She drew a shuddering breath and wriggled free from his grip. He didn't try to hold her back, but when she turned to look at him, he was watching her with a frown.
"I-I'm sorry. I just … I need to think."
"Think?"
"Well, about this. Us. What it means."
His frown deepened. "I wasn't aware that there is an 'us' to think of."
It didn't surprise her, but Hermione felt rather uncomfortable by the casual way he said it.
"Look, we clearly have different views on sex and … well, it's more complicated for me. I have to consider if I do want to have it just for fun, or whatever this is," Hermione tried to explain. "So until I've figured it out, I don't want to…"
She trailed off, looking down at her hands.
Gabriel chuckled. "Of course. You are young."
She looked up at him, annoyed. "My age has nothing to do with it. I just don't know if I want to have casual sex."
He sat up, studying her in silence for a moment. "Huh," he finally said.
"Huh, what?" she asked. For some reason, she didn't like the sound of that "huh".
"You and Tom are remarkably similar sometimes. You both take life way too seriously." He got out of bed, wrapping a dressing gown around himself. "You enjoyed yourself last night Hermione. You shouldn't think about these things, you should just throw yourself into them."
She scowled at him, but he had already turned his back at her and walked into the bathroom. The door closed behind him.
Growling, she got up as well, heading for the bathroom downstairs. It was clear Gabriel was not a man who took rejection well. Arse.
xxx
When Tom woke up, he was lying on his back on his kitchen table. He sat up, wincing. His head was hurting and he was feeling nauseated. As he yawned, he could feel something on his cheek. He touched it and looked at his fingers. Dried blood.
What the…?
He blinked and looked around the kitchen. Oh. Right. The memory of the previous night came rushing back to him.
"So I guess that's what happens if you pull all the energy from a person," he muttered.
His head throbbed as he rose, but he needed to take care of this mess. The whole kitchen was covered with blood and entrails. It looked as if a lot more than one person had been killed. It had been a long time since he had done something so messy.
Thankfully, a couple of useful cleaning spells was all he needed to get rid of the evidence of his nightly experiments.
Once it was done, he stumbled to the bathroom. He put on the shower, got rid of his clothes and then sat down in the shower stall. He wondered if Pepper-up Potions would help. Somehow, he doubted that. It felt like a hang-over, but it was not alcohol-induced. It was magic-induced. The high had been exquisite, but it was clearly not meant as something to get high off. Storing the magic clearly didn't work, it had to be used at once.
It was a disappointment. Tom would have liked to be able to store the energy he took for later usage. In a fight, it could take valuable seconds to reach others, grab their energy and convert it to magic.
Ah, well. At least it would be useful in other types of magic which took concentration and power. He would have to try that … some other time.
He made it out of the shower, clean, and decided that he should try a Pepper-up Potion. It couldn't hurt at least.
A cup of coffee on top of that, and he started to feel somewhat like his old self. At least, he would be able to hide his pain when he went to Gabriel again.
Just before he could Apparate, he heard a knock on the window. Walking over to it he saw an owl waiting to be let in. He opened it and the owl swooped in, dropped a letter on the floor and then flew out again.
Tom picked it up and saw that it was addressed to Granger. He opened it.
Dear Hermione,
Despite what you said in your letter, I can't help but worry about you. How are you feeling? I understand that you want to get away from everything that reminds you of the war, but it seems so strange for you to leave with that Dolder boy. I guess I'm just paranoid, but if you are in trouble, please let us help!
Now Harry is standing over my shoulder and reminding me to tell you that we are not judging you. If you are happy where you are, then we are happy. It all just happened so suddenly, so I hope you understand my confusion. Especially, after Luna told me that she had slept with Dolder just before you left.
Anyway, if you want to come back to Hogwarts, then that will be okay too, even this close to the beginning of the year. Professor McGonagall asked about you, but when I told her what you said about wanting to get away, she was very understanding. So don't worry about her. I'm sure she'd let you in even if the year has started.
But if not, is there any chance we can see you for Christmas? Mum has already made Harry promise he'll join us at the Burrow, and you are welcome too. Don't worry about Ron, he will have cooled down by that time, and if not, I'll just smack him in the head.
I hope you are okay and that I'll hear from you soon.
Love,
Ginny
Tom considered the letter. Somehow, Granger had managed to send a letter to her friend behind his back. Well, it didn't matter, it was clear that she hadn't shared any information about their arrangement with her friends. Thus, it was probably best to give her this letter and make sure she responded to it. He didn't want Potter to show up looking for her. She may be able to lie in a letter, but he had no faith in her acting skills.
Yes, he had better give it to her later on.
Leaving the letter on the coffee table, he closed his eyes and spun around, on the spot. Apparation made him feel even dizzier than he usually felt, but he gritted his teeth and forced it away, as he walked down the path to the house.
Walking inside, he found Granger sitting at the kitchen table, staring unseeingly into a cup of tea. She seemed to be deep in her thoughts, and didn't even hear him come in. Tsk, tsk, that was very reckless of her.
"Good morning," he greeted her.
She jerked. "Oh. Morning."
He opened his mouth, about to ask what she was thinking about when Gabriel came up behind him.
"Tom, good, you are here. Let's go to the living room." He steered Tom away from the kitchen.
Tom studied him as they sat down on the sofas. As always, he seemed to be freshly showered and dressed in clean clothes. He wore the same air of confidence as he always did, and yet, something had happened. Gabriel hadn't acknowledged Granger in the kitchen, and she had looked away when he spoke. Something had happened between them the other night.
"So you finally fucked her," Tom stated, making a calculated guess.
The slight curving of his lip told Tom that he had been right. But Gabriel didn't bother to deny or verify. Instead, he went straight to business.
"We should start by analysing the content of the wand. I want every single particle down on paper," Gabriel said.
Tom repressed a sigh. He had done this the day after Gabriel had told him he wanted to analyse the wand, but no matter. He would do it again.
Analysing the wand took all of the morning, and it was after noon when Gabriel called the session off, claiming he had a lunch meeting. Thus, Tom went to find Granger. She would no doubt need sustenance and he wanted to find out more about what had happened between her and Gabriel.
She was sitting in the backyard, talking to snakes, but when she saw him, she stopped.
"Let's go home and eat some lunch," he said.
She didn't reply, just rose and went over to him. He always Apparated them when they travelled together.
They landed in his now clean kitchen and he started to prepare the food. She looked as if she wanted to disappear into another room, but he stopped her.
"Sit. You know we will talk about this, there is no use trying to run away from it," he said.
Granger sighed, but sat down at the table. "Fine. What do you want to know?"
"Did you use protection?"
Surprise was evident at first, but then her face darkened. "Yes. Don't worry, your precious heir won't be his heir."
"Good. But why are you upset with him now?"
"Because he compared me to you," she muttered.
Tom laughed. "In what department?"
She sighed. "Something about taking things too seriously."
"Huh." Well, compared to Gabriel, they were both serious.
For some reason, Granger scowled at him, but he ignored that. Instead, he finished their lunch and set their table for them.
"How come you finally agreed to sleep with him?" Tom inquired.
"It seemed like the right time," she said, clearly not wanting to answer the question.
He studied her, but she pretended to be engrossed in her salad.
"Don't make me force it out of you," he warned her.
She took a deep breath and put her fork down. "He is teaching me Defence Against the Dark Arts, but a more advanced version. In return, we have sex."
Tom put his fork down too. "Defence against me, you mean?"
"Yes. After yesterday, can you blame me? You almost killed me."
He smiled. "Then by all means, continue. Let me know when you have finished the course, and I'll be happy to give you an exam."
Her eyes narrowed. "Okay. I will."
She resumed eating. He smiled and continued as well. Protection against him? Oh, it would be amusing to crush that notion. He was nothing if not creative. In fact, he didn't even have to use the Dark Arts to torture or kill someone.
"What will we do today, then?" she asked, after having finished her lunch in silence.
"We are going on an excavation."
She looked at him, surprised. "Why?"
"If I no longer will be able to torture you, I guess I need a new hobby," he replied casually, and cleared the table with a flick of his wand.
She ignored his jibe. "Does this have something to do with Loki?"
"Clearly. We'll leave in fifteen minutes, be ready."
On his way back to his bedroom, to pick up the things he needed, he spotted the letter on the coffee table.
"You got a letter from Miss Weasley. I suggest you answer it when we get back tonight," he called over his shoulder.
He heard her get up, but didn't bother to make sure she saw the letter. It was not a big flat.
When he came out with his things, the letter was indeed gone from the coffee table, and Granger was wearing more practical, warmer clothes. Good. He did like it when people didn't have to be ordered to do completely logical things.
He Apparated them to the place he had researched: Old Uppsala. They landed up on a hill, looking down on the ancient burial ground of Old Uppsala. Grass-covered burial mounds stretched out in front of them, all of them of different heights. Underneath some of them, Muggle kings had been buried, but others hid ordinary men and women. But the burial mounds that he was interested in were the biggest.
"Come on," he said, moving towards them.
"We are in Uppsala, right?" she asked.
He nodded. "Remind me, what did Gabriel tell you about this place?"
"That it was one of the last places where the Norse gods were worshiped. Muggles have started to show an interest in it and have dug out some of the burial mounds, but they know too little about that time to know for sure who was buried where."
Tom nodded. "Yes, Muggles in the past thought that gods had been buried here. Odin," he pointed at the one furthest to the east, "and Frey."
"But Gabriel said that the gods, or rather, wizards, hadn't been buried here," Granger pointed out. "Just some Muggle kings."
"Has he ever tried to find out himself?"
She shrugged. "He didn't say, but probably, since he is interested in it."
"Then he is either a lot less clever than I thought, or he is lying," Tom concluded.
Before she had time to question him, he waved his wand at the mound to the east, revealing that a ward was in place over it.
Granger gasped. "What is that?"
"Something I didn't have the power to break through the first time I tried," Tom said, with a smile.
She immediately stepped away from him. "You are not going to take my power again."
He snorted. "Don't worry, I won't have to."
He stopped in front of the burial mound and closed his eyes, searching for the wind around him. As he had the day before, he reached out for it, grasped it and used it to amplify his own magic.
This time, the ward around the burial mound shattered. He smiled in jubilation.
"Ladies first," he said, making a gesture for her to approach the mound.
Granger, however, studied him with suspicion. "Are you sending me in first so you'll see if there are any other wards around this place that can be triggered?"
"Not only for that, but you have many uses, dear sister," he said sweetly.
Granger sighed, but stepped forward, her wand ready. He could see that she was on her guard, all her senses out to detect any harm. He followed a few steps behind her.
They slowly circled the mound, both of them looking for an opening. They had walked almost all the way around it when Tom detected something.
"There," he said, pointing towards the mound. "It's an illusion. There is an opening there."
Granger slowly went forward and cast a few detections spells over the opening, but there didn't appear to be any traps. With an encouraging nudge from him, she stepped through.
"How does it look?" he called out.
"Seems to be safe," she called back, her voice somewhat muffled.
He stepped through.
The first thing that struck him was how it looked nothing like what the Muggles who had excavated the place had said. What he saw was a great hollow room. The walls weren't made of dirt as he had expected, but completely flat stone. In the light from Granger's wand, he could see runes and pictures on the stones. In the middle of the room lay a stone casket, also covered with runes.
"Now then, Granger. Let's see if you earned that O in Ancient Runes," Tom said, withdrawing a pen and a pad of paper from his bag and handing it to her. "Start by the opening and translate as much as you can."
He started to inspect the casket in the middle. The first thing he noticed was the name carved in at the head of the casket. Odin. It appeared the Muggles had been right, then.
Slowly, he started to translate the runes underneath the name.
Heimdall made this stone for Odin, Protector of Asgard, King of the Æsir and Saviour of Mankind. Let it be known that Odin gave his life for the world and his children. May he feast forever with Hel.
Tom examined the casket with his magical sense, but couldn't detect any magic around it. However, when he tried to lift the lid, it wouldn't budge. He considered trying to break in with the same power he had used on the outside, but decided against it. It could destroy the contents of the casket, and he didn't want that. No, it was best to translate the rest of the runes first and see if they could shed any light on how to open it.
"What have you come up with?" he asked Granger, and came to stand next to her.
"Well, it speaks of the final battle of Odin against 'the traitor', which I think must be Loki. But for some reason, they refuse to call him by name," she replied.
Tom smiled in recollection. "Yes, that's what happens when you scare enough people."
Granger snorted. "Right. The pictures show the battle. Odin is the one with just one eye, and Loki is the one with the weird mouth. I think it must be stitches, because there is a myth about how the gods sewed his mouth shut as a punishment. I guess they needed some attribute to distinguish the pictures."
"Yes, they weren't that good at artistry," Tom pointed out. If it weren't for the missing eye and the mouth, the two men would have looked the same.
"It says they fought for days, and for every day, more evil creatures would join Loki and the other gods had to join the fight. But that's as far as I have come," she said, showing him the writing pad with her neat handwriting on it.
Tom nodded. "Very well, we have a lot more to cover today, so let's get to work. If you find anything regarding the casket, call out. I'll work from the other end of the room."
As the hours went by, they covered more and more of the room. By nightfall, they had made it through the whole thing, but hadn't seen anything about the casket. Tom decided he needed to sleep on the issue. He also had to give Granger to Gabriel.
She, however, didn't seem to have any intention of leaving, as she was sitting on the floor, comparing two runes.
"What?" he asked. Despite the success of getting into the grave, he hadn't really found anything useful.
"It's just strange. It says here that Loki was slain by the king of Asgard. But then it says here that Odin was killed by Loki. Look. That doesn't make any sense. How can Odin be killed by Loki and then kill Loki?"
He crouched next to her, looking at the runes as well. "Right. That rune doesn't mean slain, it means defeated."
"But how can he have defeated Loki if he was killed by Loki? It doesn't make any sense."
"Well, in the myth is says that it was Heimdall who killed Loki by cutting off his head. The head then flew at Heimdall and killed him. But we know Heimdall was alive since he raised Loki's son," Tom said. "Maybe Odin just defeated Loki, dying in the progress, and then it was Heimdall that killed Loki? That wouldn't be written out here, this is a tribute to Odin, not Heimdall."
"Right," Granger said, not looking completely certain.
"If that is all, we have to go now," Tom said.
Granger looked up. "What time is it?"
"Gabriel-time," Tom answered.
She sighed. "Very well."
"I thought you'd look forward to going back to your boyfriend," Tom remarked smugly.
She grimaced. "He is not my boyfriend."
"Right, he is just your teacher that you happen to sleep with," he said, then added thoughtfully. "How many teachers have you slept with, Granger?"
She scowled at him, but got up and brushed off the dirt from her trousers. "None, which I'm sure you know."
They walked outside and Tom raised a new ward over the burial mound. He didn't want anyone else to enter it. At least not until he had managed to get that casket open.
"Why did you bring me with you?" she asked, when he was done.
"Because it would have taken much longer to translate those runes myself," he lied.
Granger, however, seemed to believe that explanation and actually appeared to be quite flattered. She was so easy to fool sometimes. He liked that about her.
- 13
- 14
- 15
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Serpent of the World