A/N: Once again, I just want to assure that this story will be finished. I am having some issues with health and hours at work, but I am still working on it and will post when i can. I promise, I will not abandon this story! Tbh, I'm having just as much fun as you guys are figuring out where my muse is going to take me next :)

So, on with the next chapter.

Chapter 8: Meanwhile back in Asgard….

Time skip: 5 years later (2005)

Heimdall stood in silent sentry, as always keeping both eyes open for any trouble in the realms. Occasionally his eye would linger on Midgard, focussing on one particular household and an almost unnoticeable twitch of his lips would occur, as if he was holding back a smile.

On this day, Heimdall was taking a bit more notice than he usually would. The reason for this was that he was delighting in watching the chosen father throwing his adored son a birthday party.

He sensed movement nearby, turning slightly to find Thor coming to a stop beside him.

"How go the realms today Heimdall?" Thor asked with a quick smile.

"Hmm, things in the realms are quiet for once my Prince. One can only hope it will last for a little longer than usual," he said with a wry quirk of his lips.

Thor boomed a deep laugh, clapping Heimdall on the shoulder. "We will hope for the best then," he said in his usual easy-going tone. Slowly though, the smile dropped and his face became more serious. "Have you been able to check on Loki at all? Is my brother doing well?" he asked, almost begging for good news.

Heimdall cut his eyes sideways, glancing at Thor and giving what he hoped was a reassuring nod. "Yes, now that we know about the wards that the young magic user has erected around their residence, I have had no trouble watching over them. Your brother is currently experiencing a 6th birthday party with his new family. He appears to be enjoying himself immensely," he finished with a chuckle.

Thor squeezed Heimdall's shoulder, relieved to hear that Loki was faring well. He, along with the All Father and his mother, had high hopes that a different upbringing would make all the difference in how Loki behaves when he reaches adulthood again. "I'll let Father know that it's time for the first clue," he said, heaving a sigh and moving away, heading back to the palace to arrange a meeting with Odin.

Back at Harry's house….

Harry finished getting Lachlan cleaned up and into bed, a swiftly muttered switching spell changing the boy into his pyjamas. He heard a contented sigh from his son and ran his hand through Lachlan's hair, brushing the fringe back from his forehead.

He couldn't believe that Lachlan was already 6 years old, meaning over 5 years had passed since he came into Harry's life and heart so mysteriously. He hadn't needed more than a look to fall blissfully in love with the tiny baby. He honestly couldn't love him any more if he was his own biological child.

Hermione had suggested after a year or so to use a spell to attempt to determine who Lachlan's parents were, or failing that, an inheritance potion. However, Harry was still a bit reluctant to do any major tracking down of the parents of the boy that was now his. They had put their faith in Harry to keep him safe and raise him with the values that Harry was so very well known for. Harry's instincts were telling him to let this go. He knew from the letter that had been left with Lachlan that they would be given clues to help Lachlan figure out his own heritage. Presumably these 'clues' would show up when the time was right. Harry had decided to trust in the people who knew best and accept that they would get answers when the time came for them to know.

Harry sat there awhile longer, just listening to his son's breathing, enjoying the peacefulness of his (apparently) dreamless sleep. Lost in his thoughts, it took him a few moments to realise that something was changing. He could feel an indefinable something in the air, becoming more noticeable with each passing minute. There was a sense of something about to happen. Harry was most familiar with this feeling, always seeming to know when something life-altering was about to occur.

Just as Harry stood up, drawing his wand and placing himself between his son's bed and the door, keeping at an angle where he could watch both the door and the window and still safely defend his son, the feeling just….disappeared. He was at a loss to describe it, but generally speaking, when he gets that feeling, it's never a false alarm. He worriedly looks around the room, checking for anything that looks out of place. He notices nothing though, and his confusion rises again. He's honestly stumped as to what that whole thing was about.

Finally Harry holstered his wand again and went to return to his son's bedside. He picked up Lachlan's hand and noticed it seemed very cold, much cooler than it should be considering the house was well-heated and Lachlan's room and bed had heating charms on them to ensure he never gets too cold. He briskly rubbed his own hands over Lachlan's, warming them despite Lachlan not appearing to be disturbed by it at all.

He noticed something glinting out of the corner of his vision and looked to the side, noticing two of the charms from Lachlan's bracelet had detached and now lay on the bed beside and almost tucked under Lachlan. He picked them up; one of the charms was one of the miniature book charms, the other was the lightning bolt. He turned them over, looking for anything out of the ordinary but there was nothing unusual about them that he could see from a brief inspection. They looked the same as they had every other time he had found himself drawn in to checking out the bracelet, which was admittedly quite often. It was a mystery and Harry never could stand to leave a mystery unsolved.

He patted Lachlan's hand, returning it to the bed beside him, but noticed that there was an unfamiliar charm on the bracelet now, in one of the now open spots. This new one was a medallion that had an engraving of a serpent coiled around a wolf, with a raven flying above. He turned it over, noting some runes engraved into the back side. They were very small, he would need some kind of magnification to be able ot read them, and then he would need Hermione's help, since he didn't take Runes at school. He had studied them some since he had left school, but was nowhere near a level of being able to interpret something written using Runes.

He put the charms aside on Lachlan's bedside table, leaned over and brushed a kiss across Lachlan's forehead. Rising, he made his way out of Lachlan's room and down the stairs automatically, lost in his musings about what had just happened, or almost happened, in that room. He had never had that sense before without something dangerous or important happening immediately after. He knew to pay attention to that feeling, it had saved his and other people's lives more than once.

The only thing that was different was the charm detaching, but that seemed entirely too innocuous to have caused such a strong feeling to wash over him at the time. Having said that though, he had come to the conclusion some time ago that the bracelet appearing mysteriously on Lachlan's wrist could likely be connected to these 'clues' that Lachlan was supposed to receive during his childhood. Now that he had seen two of the charms detach and another one mysteriously appear in their place, he felt certain that they would need to decipher what exactly was so important about those two charms specifically. According to Hermione, the lightning bolt may have somehow alluded to Harry himself, given that so many people in their world associated a lightning bolt with Harry due to his famous scar. However, Harry didn't really think that was correct, given that these 'clues' were meant to somehow lead Lachlan and himself to discover Lachlan's heritage. It would make more sense if all of the symbols were about Lachlan's past, or people or events that were important in discovering that past.

Harry was broken out of his musings when he turned into the living room and Ron spoke. "Little guy go down okay?" he asked with a smirk.

Harry smirked right back at him. "Yes, as you would have guessed he was worn out. I didn't even get him out of his party clothes before he passed out, right in the middle of a sentence if you can believe it. I had to make do with cleaning charms and then a switching spell to change his clothes for pyjamas. He's getting a little big for me to manhandle like I used to," he said grumpily.

Hermione, Ron and Andromeda snickered quietly as Harry turned to glare at them amusedly. "Oh honestly Harry, he's growing so quickly and you're…not very tall to begin with. You had to know he was going to tower over you eventually!" Hermione said with a smile and a huff.

"Yeah, eventually, sure. Not like when he's 6!" Harry protested. He's almost to my armpit now, given another couple of years he'll be taller than me, and won't that be embarrassing," he sighed, before giving up and laughing with the rest of them. "I know, everyone's taller than me and I should be used to it, but this is my kid! It's not right for merlin's sake," he managed to get out around his laughter.

Ron simply smiled at him smugly. "I was taller than Dad by the time I was 15 mate, and not just by a little bit. And I've been taller than you for years now. I know you go on about how hard it is being one of the shortest people in our year, but really, do you have any idea how hard it is being the tallest? Not many things in our world are made for people of above-average height," he smirked.

"Well, at least you could always borrow things from Hagrid," Harry said, still breaking into soft giggles as he thought about it. "That would certainly help with making you not feel quite so oversized!"

"Yeah, well, you could always borrow from professor Flitwick! Might make you realise you're not as disadvantaged as some," Ron retorted without thinking.

Everyone else stopped to stare at him, Hermione and Harry both gaping. "I can't believe you just said that," Andromeda breathed out. She knew how sensitive Harry was about his…lack of height. She, like pretty much everyone else, was also taller than Harry by at least 4 or 5 inches. But then, the Black family members had always been quite tall. They all turned their attention to Harry, noticing the shocked look on his face. Ron braced for the tongue-lashing he just knew he was about to get.

Suddenly just burst into huge belly laughs, tipping over on the couch before rolling off onto the floor. He continued laughing uninterrupted, watched by Ron, Hermione and Andromeda, until finally he managed to stifle his chuckles and take some deep breaths.

"Oh Merlin Ron, thank you! I needed that," he said, around a few stray giggles. "I have to admit, I never really thought of it that way, but now that we have things in perspective again," he said, shooting Ron a wicked look, "there's something I wanted to let you know that happened while I was getting Lachlan settled."

Harry went on to detail the sense of an indefinable 'something' coming, then that sense withering and his subsequent finding of the charms that had detached and the new charm now on the bracelet. When he finished, they all sat quietly, contemplating what their next steps should be.

"Oh Harry! Well we certainly didn't expect this just yet. I must admit, I thought we had a few years before this type of thing started to happen. Did you bring the two charms down with you? Which ones were they? What was the new charm? Did anything else happen when the charms detached or the new one appeared?" Hermione got out in a rush.

Harry blinked at her, well used to the speed by now but having to run it back in his mind to make sense and answer correctly. "OK, let's see if I got that right. No, I left the charms on Lachlan's bedside table, I felt like they needed to be with him at the time. The two charms that detached were the lightning bolt and one of the little gold book charms. The new charm that appeared on the bracelet is a medallion of some sort with an image of a wolf, raven and snake depicted. On the back of the medallion are some characters that look like they could be Runes. I'll leave that to you to look into tomorrow Hermione, since I know I won't be much use with that. And no, nothing else happened while all this was going on. Oh! Actually that's not quite true. Just before all of this started, I had picked up Lachlan's hand and noticed it was very cold, like icy cold. I was trying to warm his hands when I caught the glint of the charms that had come off his bracelet," Harry said, surprised he had not mentally linked the two anomalies at the time. "Yes, I think that's about it," Harry said slowly, tapping his chin with a finger while he went over everything to make sure he hadn't missed anything important. "Nope, that's it. Nothing else to add for now," Harry said with an impudent grin aimed at Hermione.

Hermione, for her part, was just glaring at Harry, before the look softened into one of indulgence. She really couldn't stay mad at Harry for long. "We'll get into all that tomorrow, Hermione said. " For now, I think home and bed sounds like a brilliant idea. I had no idea how exhausting a 6 year old's birthday party could be!" she said with a look of quiet confusion on her face.

Harry had a brief thought that it was quite a becoming look on her, before he shook his head to clear it. Those types of thoughts had been creeping up on him for the last year or two. He had a couple of thoughts like that back when Ron and Hermione first split up, but he knew the rules of brotherhood, you don't date your best friend's ex. The only problem was that Hermione was the only person he connected to on any sort of romantic level that he was both he was fond of and could stand to be in the same room with. He was surprised and completely amazed that she hadn't yet dated anyone else since she broke up with Ron, but was very glad that she and Ron got along so well now. The bitterness was there for a short time, but only in a very minor way. They both appeared to have got over whatever residual emotions lurk after a break up way quicker than harry thought they would. Considering how much the two of them liked to argue and snipe at each other, Harry would have been less shocked if they kept away from each other for a little while until the worst was over, but it seemed like life just moved on and before they knew it, things were back like they were before 4th year, when the attraction was first noticed between Ron and Hermione. The three of them were closer than ever, and Lachlan had only server to give them something to unite over.

Harry sighed, then looked at the clock. Almost midnight and he was exhausted. "Alright then, you guys are welcome to stay over if you want to. You know where your rooms are. If not, then just come over tomorrow if you've nothing on, whenever you wake up is fine. You have access through the floo and, if I'm not awake, Dobby and Winky will make you some tea and brekky if you ask nicely," he said with a grin. "I can't imagine I will be sleeping in, no matter how late Lachlan went to bed. I only hope he doesn't wake up all grumpy and overtired after such a late night!" he said, grimacing to himself.

Andromeda sighed. "Yes, he certainly does appear to have your temper when he's tired," she said, shooting Harry a very pointed look. Harry just blushed and shrugged. He kind of liked knowing that Lachlan had some of his mannerisms and behaviours. It made him feel more like Lachlan's father to have those things in common with him, which was quite ridiculous when you think about it.

Harry bade everyone good night, wandered up to his room and had a quick hot shower before waving his wand to clothe himself in loose fitting pyjama pants and a soft t-shirt. With that done, he finally fell onto the bed and sank gratefully into oblivion.