The Confectionary Chronicles || HP/SPN

Lollies and Loki- CH6

CHAPTER SIX

Hermione's days quickly settled into a routine. Mornings would be spent with Aunt Iona and her three daughters cleaning the house, darning clothes, fixing any broken fishing equipment and baking bread. The two younger boys would collect kindling, work in the garden, feed the hens and ducks and run errands on the wharf. The older two boys worked on the fishing boat with Uncle Arran and two of his brothers, along with their older sons. After lunch, the three girls, the two younger boys and Hermione would spend several hours on homeschooling. After the lessons, Aunt Iona would send them out of the house for the rest of the afternoon and her cousins would take Hermione with them to the wharf where it seemed all the children of Fraserburgh gathered.

At the wharf the children would all play tag and hide-and-seek in and about the piled traps and tubs of trawl, have competitions skipping rocks across the surface of the ocean and make games out of jumping in and out of any docked boats bobbing along the wharf. When the sea was still and clear as glass, they'd jump into the water fully clothed, splashing and swimming and diving down to the pale sand to scoop up rocks and seashells and even scallops and prawns if they could find any dropped by the fishermen the day before. Iona would fry up any brought back to the house in butter and the sweet, salty morsels would be served up to the ones who had found them, or divided among all the children if there were enough.

It didn't take long for Hermione to tan dark and brown like her cousins, her skin becoming wind-chafed and her hair lightening from the hours spent outdoors, lacing the chestnut with chunks of honey brown that drank in the sun and shone. Jeanie, who had inherited the same near-untamable hair as Hermione, taught her how to tightly braid the heavy, chaotic curls each morning, to hold them out of her face, keep the wind from making a mess of them and to stop the frizzing when they got wet.

When the fishermen returned in the late afternoons and early evenings, the boys would all stay at the wharf to help haul in the catch, clean and gut anything that needed it and carry any broken gear back up to the house. The girls, Hermione included, would help Aunt Iona prepare dinner and feed the ducks and hens for the evening, herding the fowl back into their coops. The meal tended to be a rowdy one, Uncle Arran and the boys smelling of salt and fish, tired smiles on their faces.

Most evenings, after dinner and washing up, Hermione would read at the table in the kitchen, her notebook and dictionaries open as she painstakingly translated the books from Loki. Sometimes Uncle Arran would give her Gaelic lessons, after he noticed her translating one of the texts written in Scottish Gaelic. Sometimes there would be gear that needed to be fixed and that would take precedence over her books. Hermione didn't begrudge the fact as her Uncle and Aunt's entire lives revolved around the boat and fishing; it was their source of income, their entire livelihoods. She was just glad to help wherever she could after they'd been so kind to take her in.

Every night, before she went to bed in the room she shared with Jeanie, Ina and Leana, Hermione would set up her altar, light the candle and pray to Loki, giving thanks to her god. She didn't have access to chocolate or lollies to give him in offerings, her Aunt and Uncle not having money to spend on the more unnecessary things in life. Sometimes Iona would bake cookies or hand out hard-boiled candies and Hermione would always save most of hers for Loki, leaving the offerings at the foot of her bunk, but most of the time she left out shells and pretty rocks she'd found, little pieces of embroidery that she'd practiced under Aunt Iona's assessing gaze and even once a necklace she'd made using twine that she'd braided and a shark tooth that had been washed up on the beach and Uncle Arran had drilled a hole in for her.

She thought Loki was pleased with her offerings because they were always gone in the morning and she would wake up feeling that warmth in her heart she associated with her god. She wasn't certain but she also got the feeling that Loki was responsible for the good fortune had by the fisherman of Fraserburgh that summer. There were few storms and Uncle Arran's boat was out nearly every day, seeming to lose a minimum amount of gear while bringing in the maximum amount of catch.