The Confectionary Chronicles || HP/SPN

Lollies and Loki- CH35

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE:

As time continued to pass, just as time had the unfortunate tendency to do, the air in Norway gained a sharp bite and the days started to turn colder. The afternoons were still sunny and pleasantly warm, but the shift in weather was an unwelcome reminder that autumn approached, bringing with it Hermione's eleventh birthday– and the delivery of her Hogwarts letter.

From what Gabriel had learned in the time he'd spent observing the Wizarding world, because Hermione was a 'muggleborn' Hogwarts would send a representative to her home (so he was going to have to take her back to her neglectful parents soon too, a thoroughly unpleasant prospect) to introduce her and her parents to magic. Gabriel didn't think Helen and Richard Granger would react very well to this revelation, he was actually fairly certain that they'd end up sending Hermione back to Fraserburgh in an attempt to once again distance themselves from their daughter, but that wasn't his main concern.

No, his main concern was that the time for Hermione to go off to Hogwarts, where she'd be beyond his reach, was approaching much faster then he'd wanted. He'd examined and re-examined the warding blocking him from Hogwarts, and it was both thorough and frustratingly powerful. Whoever had created the wards hadn't done so accidentally– they'd very intentionally assured that Hogwarts was impenetrable to angels. Gabriel was confident he'd be able to break them if it was a case of Hermione's life or death, but there was no chance he'd be able to do it without using enough grace to broadcast to even the lowliest cherubim exactly who he was and where he was. It was the very definition of a last resort, and the idea of Hermione getting hurt while he was unable to protect her had him both wanting to destroy something and order his son and grandchild to step up her training, even though it wasn't really physically possible for them to do so.

Maybe he could tweak with her biology a bit? Increase her healing, strength, speed, endurance and agility? She had enough of his grace in her that it wouldn't be hard, and human bodies were very malleable, very simple to meddle with... if he told her not to, Hermione wouldn't even ask before giving her consent– as uneasy as the thought sometimes made him, he knew  if he asked his young priestess to jump, she'd be in the air before even asking 'how high?', that if he told her to step off the side of a cliff, she'd do it without hesitation (perversely, it also made him both proud and smug, but he tried not to indulge those cruder, wilder parts of himself).

He'd feel (and rightfully so) like he was tricking her if he told her not to ask what she was consenting for, like he was taking advantage of her devoutness when he knew how she felt about cheating– and to Hermione, it would be cheating. She believed in hard, honest work, and he was already cringing in preparation for the day (by his Father's grace, may it never come) she realised he'd tweaked her brain slightly to help her pick up languages, movement sequences, and information more efficiently.

He was also cringing in preparation of having to inform her that she was going to have to go back to London. He'd put it off as long as he possibly could, he really had, but in early August, just over a month until Hermione's birthday, he finally broke the news.

Hermione... well, her whole form drooped, shoulders curling forwards as her face fell in dismay. "I guess I've been waiting for this for a while now," she said miserably and with no small amount of resignation.

"It sucks, I know," Gabriel didn't bother to pretty up his words, instead just stating it as it was. "But it's not going to be forever. You know better than that. And before that dickwad Odin, you were actually beginning to get into a good routine in London."

2"I'm going to be ahead of all my classes again," she muttered and he shrugged.

"So take the tests to skip another year. We both know you can do it." What went unsaid between them was that she'd been fully capable of skipping the year before, but had refrained for the sake of her good friends 'Hugo' and 'Muriel'– also known in his head as McChicken and McNuggets. Or at least that's what he intended on doing to Huginn when he caught the feathery asshole. It could join Muninn in whatever part of the Empty animals twisted by pagan magic that had just been smote by pissed off angels ended up in. Nowhere good, he hoped.