The Confectionary Chronicles || HP/SPN

Lollies and Loki- CH10

CHAPTER TEN

About a week after rescuing Hermione from the selkie, Gabriel decided it was about time to fulfil his promise to the little witchling and teach her some magic. The only problem was that, in his usual style of leaping without looking, he actually had no idea how to teach her magic.

The very brief amounts of time he'd spent with Merlin and Morgana had been spent much more focused on other things, not how they used their magic, and he'd only spent a few hours in the company of the Founders of Hogwarts, which basically left him with a little natural-born witch he'd promised to teach and no idea how to do it.

He spent an hour or two puzzling over it then decided fuck it. Hermione had been blessed with magic by him, not Hecate— he didn't need to teach her what she'd be learning when she attended Hogwarts, it would be a waste of both their time; no, he was going to teach her how to use her powers trickster style.

Not to mention, there was a lot of useful magic and supernatural knowledge out there she could learn; he had no intention of stunting her potential growth, and pagan tricks were just the start— his girl was going to be better then Hecate's Blessed in every single way he could teach her.

::

Gabriel waited until Hermione was alone before approaching her (and no, that wasn't as creepy as it sounded). She was cleaning out a chicken coop and he announced his presence by clicking his fingers and vanishing all the yuck, replacing it with fresh straw.

Hermione jumped, gasping in shock as she spun around. The moment she realised it was him, however, she immediately dropped to her knees, looking up at him with the same reverence as the last time he'd seen her.

"Loki," she breathed out, her wide, chocolate-brown eyes shining.

"Miss me?" Gabriel asked brightly and her cheeks went pink as she nodded shyly. How adorable. Resisting the urge to keep teasing her, which was no small feat, he grinned at her instead and asked, "Ready to learn some magic, sugar?"

Hermione nodded her head frantically, her entire being radiating excitement— even her soul seemed to have lit up at the prospect of being taught magic.

Shifting them both out of time only took a moment of concentration; it was much easier then travelling through time, though it provided its own complications— while it didn't affect Gabriel due to his status as a primordial cosmic being of unfathomable power, stepping out of time for too long was Very Bad for mortals.

(...which reminded him, he really did need to check on Grindelwald at some point. He had no doubt the Dark wizard he'd stashed out of the time stream would be a drooling, tortured mess of insanity at this point and letting him die would be a mercy that Gabriel had no intention of delivering)

Taking Hermione out of time just for a couple of hours at a time, however, wouldn't do her any harm and it meant there wouldn't be any distractions or interruptions for the lesson ahead.

"Let's get comfortable," he said, snapping two squashy cushions into existence and sitting down on the obnoxiously orange one. Still on her knees, Hermione carefully shuffled forwards so that she was kneeling on the blindingly bright yellow one. He knew he really should be telling her not to worry about all that old-fashioned, traditional kneeling before a deity shtick, but the pagan part of him was positively preening at the show of worship and respect and Gabriel had never been good at denying any part of himself what he wanted.

"Right," he declared, clapping his hands together. "Lesson time! First thing you need to understand is that it's not going to be 'abracadabra'— and voila, magic happens! Unfortunately, that's not how it works. To use the powers inside you, you need to be aware of them and then train them to respond how you want them to. Eventually using magic will be a mostly automatic process that requires very little concentration, like tying your shoes. Before tying your shoes became an automatic process, though, you had to learn how to actually tie the laces and then practice doing it again and again until you didn't have to think about it anymore— and it's the same with magic. Magic takes focus, repetition and effort when you first start out learning, and you, sugar, are most definitely a beginner."