The Witch's Familiar

Chapter 36

The team decided to celebrate Christmas together on Christmas Adam, since everyone was leaving Christmas Eve to spend the holiday with their other friends and families. You and the Asgaridans were going back to Asgard in the morning to spend Yule there. You were still giving the boys their presents tonight with the rest of the team's.

You spent the morning making cookies with the 'help' of Sera and Lokitty. Neither of them were helpful. At all. Until you gave them a batch of brownie batter to share and leave you alone while they ate it. They thought that was very helpful. At least they were out of your way after that. They others came through and added their own cookie recipes and soon the entire common floor of the tower was filled with cookies. Clint made homemade hot chocolate for his contribution and had both a cat-dragon and a Loki bothering him the entire time he made it, both wanting to know what it was and why it smelled so good and begging him to let them taste it.

"Y/N, save me!" Clint begged you.

You just laughed. "Not a chance. They were bothering me all morning. It's your turn," you teased him in reply. He rolled his eyes and dealt with his annoying 'help'. Loki promised he could help. Clint almost lost the entire batch of hot chocolate by taking the god up on his offer. It was only through quick thinking and recalculation that it was saved.

After all the snacks were made, the entire team sat around the tree in their pajamas with plated piled high with cookies and mugs of hot chocolate. It was silly and ridiculous and perfect. You passed out your squashy presents to everyone and lit up when they pulled out their handmade scarves and cooed over them and received lots of comments about how awesome the scarves were. Nat got everyone her, apparently, traditional scrapbooks of pictures of the team throughout the year. The rule was no one was allowed to ask here whereshe had gotten the pictures. Stark upgraded everyone's phones for the year. Thor gave everyone weapons; he gave you a slim blade that apparently the noble ladies on Asgard carried. Loki cooed over the dagger's quality and if Loki approved of a dagger you could be sure it was of excellent quality. You gave Sera a green ribbon that tied into a bow at the back. It would stay with her as a necklace when she changed forms. She cooed over it and nuzzled you in thanks for the gift.

Loki gave you a beautiful black stoned necklace in a gold setting. It matched the magical gem in the handflower on the back of your hand perfectly. "It's beautiful," you told Loki as he clasped it around your neck. You leaned over at kissed his cheek.

"Not nearly as beautiful as you, my love," he told you and kissed you to the cheers of the rest of the team. They were getting silly, even though the hot chocolate wasn't spiked. That you knew of.

After the presents were opened, you spent the rest of the evening curled up with Loki in the company of the team watching Christmas movies together until you all had to go to bed.

*

You spent a couple weeks in Asgard visiting. There were dances every night and a huge Yule celebration. Frigga was as happy to see Loki as ever and she and Odin both loved you. Odin had taken awhile to come around, but he had. You had weapons training with Sif in the mornings and she showed you some tricks for the blade Thor had gifted you for Christmas. Loki helped too. He wanted to make sure you were well prepared to defend yourself with more than magic if necessary.

You also spent a few afternoons flying with Sera. She hated not being able to fly as often as she liked on Midgard and was taking the opportunity to fly across Asgard with you and a very unhappy Loki on her back.

Before you left Asgard, Frigga passed Loki a small box and kissed his cheek. "I have a feeling that will come in handy as some point in the near future, my son," she told him brightly.

He flushed when he opened the box and shut it quickly without letting you see what was inside. Especially as you weren't really supposed to see the interaction. You and Thor were already at the entrance to the Bifrost and just waiting for Loki to finish his goodbyes to Frigga.

*

Things remained quiet back on Earth. Hydra and the witch hunters had seemed to have given up in the face of a dragon.

Or so you thought.

It was the middle of summer before anything happened. You had to go out to the store and decided to go after you got out of classes for the day. You had left your Loki at home that day. The heat was killing him and he couldn't be outside very long without a huge drain on his magic. Frost Giants didn't do well in the heat, and Loki was no exception to that. So you left him in the nice air conditioned tower and promised to be home soon. You left Sera at home to keep an eye on Loki. You didn't trust him in this heat wave, even in the air conditioning and Sera would look after him and call you if she needed help with your frost giant. He swore up and down that he'd be ok, but he was lethargic even in the air conditioning and you were worried about him.

You rode your broom from the school to the store to get some specialty potion ingredients they didn't keep at the school. You'd found an old spell book with a cooling potion and thought it might help. You just had to find the ingredients, which is what led you to the wizardry shop.

"Greetings, Sister," one of the shopkeepers greeted you at the door. You didn't recognize him, but that wasn't terribly surprising. You didn't come here often since you could get most of your supplies at the school. "Would you care for a lavender cookie?" he asked, which is when you noticed the basket of cookies he was carrying. That was one of the perks to coming to this particular store. The lavender cookies were to die for.

You couldn't help lighting up in delight. "I would, thank you!" you replied brightly. He gave you a warm smile and handed over one of the cookies in a napkin. You noticed that he had a tattoo on his hand, but couldn't make out what it was since he was hiding it under an illusion. Once you realized it was an illusion you pointedly stopped looking at it. It was rude to try to see through his illusion and he probably just had to hide it for his job.

You ate your cookie as you wandered the store and made a note to yourself to buy some for Loki. You hadn't been able to get him to eat more than ice cream in the last two days. Maybe you could bribe him with cookies to eat something. Your Lokitty loved his sweets. You tracked down all the potion ingredients and a dozen lavender cookies to take home to Loki.

You found yourself yawning as you wandered the store and nothing sounded as nice as a nap cuddled up with your dragon and your Lokitty. You wondered where that came from; you'd slept the previous night and hadn't even done a lot of magic recently. You made your purchases and touched the jewel on the back of your hand with your mind, tapping the reservoir of power there. And noticing it was empty. It shouldn't be empty. You shouldn't be running low on power.

Something was wrong.

You had to get home now.

You tried to teleport, but just didn't have the power for it.

You tried to contact Loki or Sera, but couldn't even manage that little spell.

You had to get home.

Now.

You weren't even thinking clearly enough to call home with your phone.

Instead you walked out of the shop, and directly into a pair of Witch Hunters. You could tell by their formal official robes and the tattoos on their hands. The man in the shop, he was working for them. The cookie must've been laced. They grabbed you by your arms and cuffed your hands in front of you before you could do anything. "You are under arrest for corruption of magic and breaking the statute of secrecy. You will come with us to present yourself before the Witch's Council," they told you formally.

You couldn't form words to protest before they disappeared with you to who knows where.