The Confectionary Chronicles || HP/SPN

Lollies and Loki- CH15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

After performing the ritual, life went on for Hermione. The intensity of the experience had been breathtaking, of course, and despite the pain it was one of the most magical experiences she'd ever gone through (she was definitely picking up Loki's sense of humour, which she was pretty sure was a Very Bad Thing considering how fond he was of awful, ridiculous puns). Channelling that much magic had been a thrill that she hadn't managed to replicate, but the memory of it had allowed her understand her magic on a deeper level which helped her learn how to increase the power behind the magic Loki was teaching her.

Time passed as time was wont to do, and before she knew it her ninth birthday was approaching. Unlike the misery of her previous birthday without Ness, this time Hermione found she was looking forward to the day— mostly because she couldn't wait to see what surprise Loki had planned. And he didn't disappoint either; on the day of her ninth birthday, her god whisked her off to the Biblioteca Malatestiana (also known as the Malatesta Novello Library), the world's first ever public library that had been opened over 550 years ago in Cesena, Italy.

The ancient library was everything Hermione dreamed her Heaven would one day look like; designed like a basilica with beautiful venetian windows, it was stunning architecturally and filled with more books than she'd ever seen in one place in her entire life, over four hundred thousand of them and some so valuable they were even chained in place. The old library was part of a complex that included a beautiful reading room, as well a modern library, a media centre and a small archaeology museum, though she hadn't been interested in the latter three, too lost in the ancient history preserved around her.

She spent the entire day there, just walking through the stacks and curling up with one of the precious books inside the reading room lit by a rose window— she thought she could probably spend the rest of her life in the Malatesta Novello Library and die happy. In the ancient library filled with sacred tomes and classics, codices covering various fields such as religion, Greek and Latin classics, sciences and medicine, thousands of manuscripts dating back to the Middle Ages, an interesting collection of miniature books, maps of local interests and illuminated chorals, she didn't think she could ever be bored.

Loki had even used his powers so she could hold the oldest manuscript in the library (without damaging it, of course), a copy of Saint Isidore of Seville's 'Etymologiae'— published in twenty books after his death in 636, the 'Etymologiae' summarised and organised a wealth of knowledge from hundreds of classical sources and was considered an encyclopaedia of all human knowledge. It contained everything the influential Christian bishop had thought was worth keeping, the subject matter ranging from grammar and rhetoric to the earth and the cosmos, buildings, metals, war, ships, humans, animals, medicine, law, religions, heretical sects, pagan philosophers, , , and the hierarchies of angels and saints. As she poured over the ancient manuscript, the very small part of Hermione that wasn't so enthralled couldn't help but feel proud of just how fluent her Latin now was.

It was past midnight when Loki finally had to take her back home to bed as, despite her stubbornness, her eyelids were so heavy she could barely keep them open and the words were blurring on the pages. He messed with time as casually as he always did, taking her back to the night before her birthday and tucking her into bed before kissing the top of her curly head and disappearing with a snap of his fingers.

When she woke up on her (second) ninth birthday, there was a gift on the end of her bed that she hadn't noticed in the exhaustion of the (sort of) previous night wrapped in bright green paper with a gaudy gold ribbon— she almost wasn't surprised when she eagerly tore open the wrapping paper to find a perfect replica (well she hoped it was a replica... except not really, there was definitely a part of her that hoped it was real) of the Etymologiae manuscript she'd been so entranced by the day before.