There are worse places to spend eternity than Valhalla, though James Potter had to admit the perpetual celebration took some getting used to. Not the mead—the mead was spectacular. Not the food—always hot, always perfect, always somehow exactly what you wanted even when you hadn't known you wanted it. Not even the company, which was uniformly excellent because everyone here had died doing something brave and had strong opinions about honor that they expressed loudly and often.
No, the difficult part was the *relentlessness* of it all. The way joy became a kind of duty, celebration a form of combat. The Vikings, James had discovered, approached happiness with the same intensity they'd once approached warfare: completely, utterly, without reservation or restraint.
Also, no one had to do laundry, which honestly made up for quite a lot.
He sat at one of the long tables that stretched into distances that shouldn't fit inside any hall, divine or otherwise, nursing a horn of mead and watching Erik Bloodaxe try to explain something involving three daggers, a shield, and what appeared to be a theoretical opponent with questionable survival instincts.
Erik was all sharp angles and sharper wit, moving with the kind of controlled violence that suggested he remembered exactly how good he'd been at killing people and missed it more than he'd admit. His hands moved through the demonstration with practiced grace, spinning knives like they were extensions of his fingers, like violence was just another language he spoke fluently.
"—and that's when you realize he's left his entire right side exposed," Erik was saying, his accent carrying centuries of battlefields and mead halls and the kind of confidence that came from having been a king who'd earned his crown through conquest rather than inheritance. "Amateur mistake. Fatal, usually. Though in this case fatally stupid because he's somehow failed to notice the shield coming at his face from an angle that shouldn't be physically possible but is *very* satisfying when executed correctly—"
"You're showing off," Lady Brunhilde interrupted, settling onto the bench across from James with the fluid grace of someone who'd forgotten more about combat than most people would ever learn. She was all golden hair and dangerous eyes, beautiful in the way that apex predators are beautiful—lovely to look at right until they kill you. "That technique requires three hands, Erik. You have two. Basic arithmetic."
"I have two hands and *improvisation*," Erik corrected, spinning a dagger and somehow making it look both casual and threatening. "One of which is considerably more valuable in actual combat."
"Improvisation is what we call planning when it works," Brunhilde observed. "When it doesn't work, we call it stupidity. Often posthumously."
"Everything I do is posthumous," Erik pointed out. "I'm dead. Gives one considerable freedom to experiment with risky techniques."
"You were experimenting with risky techniques while alive," Brunhilde said. "How do you think you ended up dead?"
Erik grinned, all teeth and dangerous charm. "Spectacularly?"
James watched this exchange with the comfortable familiarity of someone who'd been listening to it, in various forms, for years. Erik and Brunhilde had been having the same argument since approximately the ninth century, and neither of them showed any signs of winning or stopping or caring that they were covering well-trodden ground.
It was comforting, in a way. Some things didn't change, even across millennia.
"You're brooding," Brunhilde said, turning those sharp eyes on James. "That's concerning. You're usually aggressively cheerful. It's one of your more annoying qualities."
"I prefer to think of it as optimism," James said mildly.
"Optimism is annoying," Erik confirmed, dropping onto the bench beside Brunhilde with casual disregard for personal space. "Especially in warriors. Makes them unpredictable. Can't tell if they're going to do something brilliant or something stupid because they haven't considered the possibility of failure."
"Sometimes the line between brilliant and stupid is just whether you survive," James observed.
"You died," Erik pointed out. "So we know which side of that line your final decision fell on."
"I saved my family," James corrected quietly. "Which makes it brilliant regardless of survival status."
Something flickered across Erik's face—respect, maybe, or recognition. The acknowledgment of someone who understood that sometimes death was just the price of doing the right thing, and arguing about the cost was missing the point.
"Fair," he said simply.
James turned his attention back to the scrying pool—not the official one in the Hall of Odin where important people watched important things, but the unofficial one in the corner that someone (definitely Erik) had figured out how to tune to the Nine Realms because Vikings were fundamentally nosy and death hadn't changed that.
Currently it was showing Asgard. Golden halls and golden light and Loki doing that thing he did where he gestured emphatically while making arguments that were simultaneously persuasive and completely mad.
"—absurdity," Loki was saying, his voice carrying through the scrying pool with perfect clarity, "is not necessarily a disqualifying factor. Some of history's most successful interventions began as ideas that sounded completely insane."
Odin stood with his arms crossed, looking like a statue of a god that had decided to briefly become mobile for purposes of being disappointed. "Name one."
"The Bifrost," Loki replied immediately. "A rainbow bridge that moves people between realms by violating several fundamental laws of physics. Completely absurd. Works beautifully. We use it constantly."
"The Bifrost," Odin said with that patience that suggested he'd had this conversation before and knew exactly where it was going, "was built by beings whose understanding of physics makes mortal science look like children counting on their fingers."
"Yes," Loki agreed. "Absurdly advanced beings doing absurd things that worked despite being absurd. I'm sensing a pattern."
Aldrif—Lily, James's mind insisted, she'll always be Lily even if she's a princess now—stood beside them looking older than he remembered. Not old, because gods aged differently, but there was something in her eyes that hadn't been there before. Something that came from disappointment that had moved in and made itself comfortable.
James felt his chest tighten watching her. She'd always been beautiful, but now she was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at—like sunlight on broken glass, lovely and dangerous and sharp with the kind of wisdom that came from having your faith in systems shattered by reality.
"Your wife is considering whether to trust someone who failed her," Brunhilde observed, following his gaze. "Always interesting to watch. The calculations involved. Whether second chances serve justice or merely enable repeated disappointment."
"She's not my wife," James said quietly. "I'm dead. She's... everything I'm not. Living, powerful, part of something larger than either of us understood when we were young and thought love conquered all."
"Death doesn't end marriages," Brunhilde said with the authority of someone who'd been officiating warrior unions for thousands of years. "Not real ones. Just changes the logistics rather dramatically."
"The logistics," James said with a hollow laugh, "being that I'm in Valhalla and she's in Asgard and there's approximately nine realms worth of distance between us."
"Distance," Erik said thoughtfully, "is just a problem that requires creative solutions."
"Also I'm dead," James added. "That seems like a significant obstacle to creative problem-solving."
"You'd be surprised," Brunhilde murmured.
On the scrying pool, Odin was speaking now, his single eye fixed on Loki with the intensity of someone who could see through lies, evasions, and approximately seventeen layers of carefully constructed argument to get at the truth underneath.
"You believe this tournament could serve as bridge," Odin said. Not a question. A statement of fact that Loki hadn't quite articulated but Odin had already extrapolated from tone, context, and the way Loki was standing—which was apparently very informative if you were the All-Father and could read body language the way normal people read books.
"I believe," Loki said carefully, and you could see him choosing each word like he was selecting weapons for a delicate operation, "that it provides legitimate reason for the families to return without appearing to admit that mortal institutions failed them. Which they did. Spectacularly. But appearances matter. Politics is theater, and this tournament provides excellent theatrical cover for what would otherwise look like retreat."
"And Dumbledore?" Aldrif's voice was very controlled. Very calm. The kind of calm that required conscious effort, like holding very still so you don't drop something breakable. "He promised justice. Delivered political compromise. Assured us the system would hold and then watched it collapse under the weight of convenient corruption. Why should I believe this time would be different?"
James's hands clenched around his mead horn hard enough that his knuckles went white.
"Because," Loki said, and there was something almost gentle in his voice—which was concerning because Loki was never gentle without reason, "this time he's not promising he'll fix things from within. He's asking for external intervention. Admitting he lacks the power to force change through proper channels. It's considerably more honest than 'trust the system' because it's essentially 'please break the system for me, I've lost the ability to do it myself.'"
"That's your wife?" a new voice asked.
James looked up to find Sigurd Fafnirsbane approaching with the casual confidence of someone who'd killed a dragon and never felt the need to be impressed by anything else ever again. He was all controlled power and quiet intensity, moving like violence that had learned patience without losing its edge.
Sigurd settled onto the bench across from James, studying the scrying pool with the focused attention of someone who'd spent his life identifying weak points in things that seemed impenetrable.
"Princess Aldrif Odinsdottir," James confirmed. "Formerly Lily Evans. Then Lily Potter. Now... something bigger than I understood we were becoming."
"She looks angry," Sigurd observed.
"She looks *disappointed*," James corrected. "Which is worse. Anger burns hot and fades. Disappointment settles in and stays."
"The British magical government failed her," Brunhilde said, because apparently she'd been following this situation with the same attention she gave to interesting battles. "Promised justice for the families of those killed in their war. Delivered paperwork, delays, and carefully worded statements about how justice must follow proper channels. By which they meant the families should accept quiet compensation and stop making noise about proper trials."
"Proper channels," Erik said with disgust, "being the ones that let the guilty buy their way free while the victims get sympathy and small sums of gold."
"Exactly," Brunhilde confirmed. "So Princess Aldrif—who'd come to Midgard expecting to see justice done properly—discovered that mortal institutions are excellent at preserving themselves and considerably less excellent at actually serving justice when justice would be inconvenient for people with power."
"And now Dumbledore wants her to come back," James said slowly, watching Aldrif's face on the pool. "Wants Asgard to participate in this tournament. Why?"
"Because," Sigurd said, still studying the pool with that dragon-killer focus, "he's old and running out of time and he knows something dangerous is happening that he can't stop through normal channels. So he's inviting chaos. Divine chaos, specifically. Hoping that Asgard's presence will force changes he can't force himself."
"Or," Erik added with a sharp smile, "he's finally learned that sometimes the only way to fix a broken system is to let someone from outside the system break it harder. Vikings knew that. We were *excellent* at breaking things that needed breaking."
On the pool, Odin was nodding slowly—that terrible nod that meant he was making decisions that would ripple across realms in ways even he probably couldn't fully predict.
"If we participate," he said, each word carrying weight like stones dropping into water, "we do so on our terms. Not as guests. Not as observers. But as equals. A fourth school. A fourth champion. Full standing with these mortal institutions who've forgotten what accountability looks like."
"They'll resist," Loki warned. "The Ministry is enthusiastic about international cooperation only when it's cooperation they control. Adding Asgard changes the entire dynamic. Makes them nervous. Nervous bureaucrats do stupid things."
"Good," Odin said simply. "Comfortable bureaucrats do worse. Let them be nervous. Nervous systems make mistakes. Mistakes create opportunities. Opportunities allow change."
"We're spectacular at change," Loki agreed, and that smile was sharp enough to cut. "Though I should mention Dumbledore specifically requested our participation, which suggests he understands what he's inviting. Or he's more desperate than I assessed. Possibly both. Possibly something else entirely that will only become clear retrospectively when we're all wondering how we ended up here."
Aldrif had been quiet through this exchange, her expression distant in the way that meant she was thinking through implications faster than most people could track them.
"If we do this," she said finally, and her voice had that quality of someone who'd made a decision and was now committed to seeing it through regardless of consequences, "it's not for Dumbledore. Not for his redemption arc or his political rehabilitation or whatever story he's telling himself about second chances and doing better."
"No," Odin agreed. "It's for the families. For justice delayed but perhaps not permanently denied. For demonstrating that divine oversight isn't optional when mortal institutions prove insufficient."
"And," Loki added, because Loki could never resist adding one more thing, "it will be *interesting*. Which is really the most important consideration. Boring interventions are just interventions. Interesting interventions become legends. We're rather fond of legends."
James felt something shift in his chest—not quite hope, because hope was complicated when you were dead, but something adjacent to hope. The sense that perhaps being stuck in Valhalla wasn't permanent. That perhaps there were ways to help that didn't require being conventionally alive.
"You're thinking," Brunhilde said, and it wasn't a question.
"I'm thinking," James confirmed slowly, "that if Asgard is going to participate in this tournament, if they're going to bring divine oversight to a situation that involves my son and my wife and everything I died protecting—I should be there."
The silence that followed was profound.
Erik broke it first, naturally. "You're dead. That typically precludes participation in living world activities. Basic rules of existence."
"Rules," James said, meeting Brunhilde's eyes because she was watching him with an expression that suggested she'd been waiting for this, "are more flexible than people admit. Especially divine rules. Especially when Valkyries are involved."
Brunhilde's smile was slow and dangerous and absolutely delighted. "You've been paying attention."
"I've been training with einherjar for years," James said. "Learning things about combat and magic and the way power works across realms. Listening to stories about Valkyries choosing warriors, opening gates, bending rules about who goes where and when. And I'm thinking—if Valkyries can open gates for Ragnarok, if they can choose who's worthy to fight when the end comes—"
"—then perhaps," Brunhilde finished, "they can open gates for other situations. Other battles. Other moments when heroes are needed and conventional rules about life and death become obstacles to necessary action."
"That's heresy," Sigurd said mildly. "Violates fundamental principles about the separation between living and dead."
"Is it heresy," James asked, "or is it just unprecedented?"
"Often the same thing," Erik observed. "Right until someone does it successfully. Then it becomes precedent and everyone pretends they knew it was possible all along."
Brunhilde stood, moving around the table with predatory grace, studying James like he was a puzzle she was solving in real-time.
"You understand," she said quietly, "what you'd be asking for? The Einherjar are bound to Valhalla until Ragnarok. That's the covenant. The rules. You train here, feast here, prepare here until the final battle when you're needed to stand against forces that threaten all existence. Leaving before that—even temporarily—would require..."
"Would require a Valkyrie to open the gates," James finished. "Would require someone with authority over Valhalla's doors to decide that this situation qualifies as necessary. That divine intervention in a mortal tournament serves purposes that transcend conventional rules about who belongs where."
"You're asking me," Brunhilde said, "to break rules that have stood for millennia."
"I'm asking you," James corrected, "to interpret rules that were written before anyone imagined situations like this. Before Asgardian princesses married mortal wizards and had children who bridge realms. Before tournaments became opportunities for divine oversight. Before—"
"Before everything became complicated in ways our ancestors couldn't have predicted," Brunhilde interrupted. "Yes. I follow your reasoning. It's compelling. Also completely mad."
"Madness," Loki's voice drifted from the scrying pool, perfectly timed as though he was somehow aware of their conversation across realms and dimensions, "is just sanity that's ahead of its time."
They all stared at the pool.
"Does he do that often?" James asked.
"More often than is comfortable," Brunhilde confirmed. "Trickster gods have odd relationships with causality. Best not to think about it too hard."
Erik was studying James with renewed interest, like he'd just realized James was more than the affable warrior he pretended to be. "You've been planning this. Thinking about this. How long?"
"Since the day I arrived," James admitted. "Since I realized being dead didn't actually change how I felt about protecting my family. Just changed the logistics significantly."
"The logistics," Sigurd said, "being impossible."
"Impossible," James agreed. "But impossibility is just difficulty without roadmaps. And I'm good at navigating without maps. Had friends who were excellent at it. Learned from them."
Brunhilde was still watching him with that calculating expression. "There's a complication."
"There's always a complication," Erik said cheerfully. "Life is complications. Death too, apparently."
"I'm not the only Valkyrie," Brunhilde said. "Technically. There's one other. Sort of. It's complicated."
"How complicated?" James asked.
"Her name is Brunnhilde," Brunhilde said, and she pronounced it carefully, emphasizing the double N. "Two Ns. Very important distinction. We're not the same person, though mortals get confused about that constantly. She was—*is*—a Valkyrie. One of us. But she had a disagreement with Odin about the nature of duty and the cost of warfare and whether choosing the slain meant participating in systems we found unjust."
"What kind of disagreement?" Sigurd asked.
"The kind that ended with her abandoning Asgard and going into exile on Sakaar," Brunhilde said. "Which is a garbage planet at the arse-end of known space run by a being called the Grandmaster who collects interesting things and makes them fight for entertainment. She's been there for several thousand years drinking and fighting and pretending she's not a Valkyrie anymore."
"Pretending," James said slowly. "But she still is?"
"You don't stop being a Valkyrie," Brunhilde said with absolute certainty. "Any more than you stop being a warrior or a parent or any other fundamental thing that defines you. The bond exists. The power exists. The authority to choose who goes where, who's worthy, who needs to be in the right place at the right time—all of that remains. She's just been refusing to acknowledge it for several millennia."
"Why?" James asked.
Brunhilde was quiet for a moment, something complicated crossing her face. "Because she lost all her sisters. Watched them die in a battle that shouldn't have been fought, for a conquest that shouldn't have been attempted, serving a vision of Asgard she no longer believed in. And afterward, when the dying was done and the victory was hollow and Odin wanted to move forward like nothing had changed—she couldn't. So she left."
The silence that followed was heavy with understanding.
"So you're saying," Erik said slowly, "that the other Valkyrie—the one who could potentially open Valhalla's gates and let James out—is in self-imposed exile on a garbage planet, drinking her way through grief that's thousands of years old, and hasn't acknowledged her Valkyrie nature since before most mortal civilizations existed."
"Yes," Brunhilde confirmed.
"And you think she'll help."
"I think," Brunhilde said carefully, "that she might. If approached correctly. If reminded what she is, what she swore, what still matters underneath all the grief and anger and disappointment."
"How do you remind someone of something they've spent millennia trying to forget?" James asked.
Brunhilde smiled, and it was fierce and beautiful and slightly sad. "The Valkyrie bond. It's a connection that transcends distance and realm. All Valkyries are linked through it—were, when there were enough of us to make the plural meaningful. Now it's just me and Brunnhilde, which makes communication easier in some ways and more complicated in others."
"Complicated how?"
"Complicated in that she's spent thousands of years specifically NOT using the bond because using it would acknowledge she's still connected to something she walked away from. Breaking through that takes—"
"Takes a message she can't ignore," James finished. "Takes reminding her what she is in a way that makes pretending impossible."
"You're perceptive," Brunhilde said with approval. "Your whole 'affable warrior' routine is convincing, but underneath it you're considerably sharper than you pretend."
"I had a friend like that," James said quietly. "Sirius. Played the fool, the charmer, the one who didn't take anything seriously. But underneath he was one of the smartest people I knew. Taught me that sometimes the best disguise is letting people underestimate you."
"Smart friend," Erik observed.
"The best," James agreed. "Died too. Protecting people. Being heroic. We're consistent that way."
On the scrying pool, the conversation in Asgard was winding down. Odin was making those small gestures that meant he'd decided things and was now moving into implementation mode. Aldrif was nodding slowly, still skeptical but committed. And Loki was already scheming—you could see it in his eyes, the way he was calculating angles and opportunities and exactly how to turn a school tournament into the kind of intervention that changed everything while technically operating within established rules.
"They're doing it," James said. "They're going to participate."
"Which means," Brunhilde said, moving to the scrying pool with purposeful grace, "that we need to send a message. We need to reach across space and time and several thousand years of deliberate isolation to remind Brunnhilde—two Ns—what she swore. What she was. What she could be again if she chose."
She placed her hand on the pool's surface, and the water rippled with light that existed somewhere between reflection and reality.
"How does this work?" Erik asked, leaning forward with the interest of someone who'd never seen this particular magic before.
"Valkyrie bond," Brunhilde said, and her voice was taking on harmonics that resonated in frequencies most people couldn't hear. "It's woven into what we are. Not magic exactly, though mortals would call it that. More like—we're all strings on the same instrument. When one vibrates, the others feel it. When one calls, the others hear, whether they want to or not."
"Can she refuse to answer?" Sigurd asked.
"She can refuse to acknowledge," Brunhilde said. "Can't refuse to hear. The bond doesn't care about exile or grief or stubborn commitment to pretending you're something you're not."
She closed her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice carried across dimensions:
"Brunnhilde. Sister. Valkyrie. I call across the bond that binds us. I call across distance and time and your stubborn insistence on pretending you've stopped being what you are."
The light in the pool intensified, spreading in patterns that looked like wings, like lightning, like the paths choices leave through reality when they're significant enough to matter.
"I call because there's a warrior here who died protecting his family and wants to keep protecting them even though death usually ends that particular career path. A father who needs to stand with his son. A husband who needs to help his wife navigate complications that require the kind of divine intervention only we can provide."
The patterns shifted, twisted, reached toward something that existed so far away that distance itself became meaningless.
"I call because Asgard is going back to Midgard. Because there's a tournament coming that's going to matter more than anyone realizes. Because sometimes the rules about who belongs where need to be bent, and only a Valkyrie has the authority to do the bending."
Brunhilde's voice dropped lower, more intimate, like she was speaking directly to someone she knew completely:
"I call because I know you remember what we swore. What we were. What we're supposed to do when heroes need to be in the right place at the right time. You can hide on Sakaar. You can drink and fight and pretend you're just a person who happens to be good at violence. But you're not. You're a Valkyrie. And somewhere underneath all that grief and anger and disappointment, you remember what that means."
The light flared bright enough to make several warriors turn and shield their eyes.
"I call," Brunhilde finished, "because sometimes exile is just another word for waiting for the right reason to come home. And this—this father who needs to protect his family, this tournament that requires divine oversight, this moment when the living and dead need to cooperate in ways that break rules specifically because those rules are preventing necessary action—this might be that reason."
The light held for a moment longer, then faded.
The pool returned to normal—just water, just reflection, just a window to distant places.
Brunhilde stepped back, looking satisfied and exhausted in equal measure.
"There," she said. "Message sent. Whether she receives it, whether she acknowledges it, whether she remembers what it means to be a Valkyrie and decides this is worth interrupting her carefully maintained exile—all of that is up to her."
"How long until we know?" James asked.
"Could be hours," Brunhilde said. "Could be years. Time works oddly between realms. Messages can arrive before they're sent, after they're needed, or exactly when they're most inconvenient. Very unpredictable."
"So we wait," James said.
"We wait," Brunhilde confirmed. She studied him with those sharp eyes. "But while we're waiting, you should prepare. Train. Plan. Make sure that if the gates do open, if Brunnhilde remembers what she is and grants your request, you're ready to walk back into the living world and help your family."
"I've been training for years," James said.
"Train harder," Brunhilde advised. "You'll be walking into a situation that requires being better than good. Requires being impossible. The Triwizard Tournament is dangerous even for living champions. For a dead warrior walking on borrowed time with divine permission? It'll be considerably worse."
"Good," James said, and he meant it. "I didn't die easily. Don't plan to waste my second chance being careful."
Erik laughed—sharp and delighted. "I like him. He's mad in that particularly British way where they're completely serious about doing ridiculous things and somehow make it work through sheer stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality."
"That's not a British quality," Sigurd observed. "That's a warrior quality. Every great fighter I've ever known has had that same absolute refusal to accept that something can't be done just because it's never been done before."
"It's stupidity," Brunhilde said fondly. "Very useful stupidity. The kind that moves mountains because the alternative is admitting mountains can't be moved."
James turned back to the scrying pool, watching as Odin dismissed the meeting with that casual gesture that meant he'd made his decisions and expected reality to conform. Aldrif was already walking away, her expression thoughtful in a way that suggested she was making plans of her own. And Loki was lingering, speaking quietly with Odin about something that involved considerable hand gestures and that sharp smile that meant he was plotting something ambitious and probably dangerous.
"Lily," James said quietly. Not to anyone in particular. Just her name, spoken like prayer or promise or both. "I'm coming. I don't know how yet. Don't know when. But I'm coming. You won't face this alone."
"That's a dangerous promise," Sigurd observed. "The kind heroes make before doing impossible things that get them killed."
"Already dead," James pointed out. "Makes death considerably less concerning as a consequence."
"There are worse things than death," Brunhilde said seriously. "Failure, for instance. Letting down the people you're trying to protect. Discovering that your heroic gesture was meaningless because you weren't good enough or fast enough or strong enough when it mattered."
"Then I'll be good enough," James said with absolute conviction. "Fast enough. Strong enough. I've spent years in Valhalla learning from the greatest warriors in history. I've trained with einherjar who've forgotten more about combat than most people ever learn. I've died once protecting my family—I know exactly how high the stakes are and exactly what I'm willing to pay to keep them safe."
"The price," Erik said quietly, "might be higher than you think. Walking between living and dead, operating with divine permission in situations that weren't designed for your participation—that comes with costs that aren't immediately obvious."
"I don't care about the costs," James said.
"You should," Brunhilde told him. "Costs have a way of becoming relevant when you least expect it. When you're in the middle of something important and suddenly you realize the price you promised to pay is coming due and you can't actually afford it."
"Then I'll pay it anyway," James said. "That's what parents do. What heroes do. You pay the costs even when they're too high because the alternative is failing people who trust you to be there when they need you."
Sigurd was studying him with that dragon-killer focus again. "You really love her. Still. Even though she's not yours anymore. Even though she's moved beyond what you were together into something larger."
"Love doesn't stop," James said simply. "Not real love. Not the kind that matters. Death didn't end what I felt for Lily any more than it ended what I felt for Harry. It just changed how I could express it. Made it complicated. Made it require divine intervention and bending rules that weren't designed to accommodate dead fathers wanting to protect their living families."
"Love," Loki's voice drifted from the scrying pool again, perfectly timed in that disturbing way he had, "is the most dangerous force in any realm. It makes people do impossible things for terrible reasons that somehow work out well. Or catastrophically. Often both simultaneously."
They all looked at the pool again.
"He's doing it on purpose," Erik said. "Listening somehow. Commenting across dimensions just to be unsettling."
"Probably," Brunhilde agreed. "Trickster gods have odd relationships with linear time and conventional causality. Best to just accept it and move on."
James stood, setting down his mead horn with careful deliberation. "I should train. If this works—if Brunnhilde answers, if the gates open, if I get this chance—I need to be ready. Need to be better than I was. Better than I've ever been."
"The training grounds are open," Sigurd said. "I'll spar with you. Test what you've learned. Make sure you're not going to embarrass us all by failing spectacularly in front of mortals."
"I won't fail," James promised.
"Everyone fails eventually," Sigurd said. "The question is whether you fail in ways that matter or ways that don't. Whether you fail trying to do impossible things or fail to try at all."
"Then I'll fail trying," James said. "But I won't fail to try."
Erik stood as well, stretching in that way that suggested he was preparing for violence and looking forward to it. "I'll help train you too. Teach you some techniques that aren't strictly legal by any reasonable definition but are very effective when you need to fight people who have unfair advantages."
"Like being alive?" James asked.
"Exactly like that," Erik confirmed with a sharp grin. "Life is an unfair advantage. We'll teach you how to compensate."
They moved toward the training grounds—that vast space where einherjar practiced for battles that might be tomorrow or millennia from now—and James felt something settle in his chest. Not quite peace, because peace was complicated when you were dead and planning to break fundamental rules about existence. But something adjacent to peace.
Purpose.
Direction.
The sense that perhaps being dead wasn't the end of protecting his family. Just a inconvenient complication that required creative solutions and divine intervention and stubborn refusal to accept that death meant giving up.
Behind them, Brunhilde remained by the scrying pool, watching Asgard, watching as Aldrif walked halls that Lily Evans would never have imagined walking, watching as preparations began for a tournament that would require divine oversight and careful intervention and exactly the kind of chaos that happened when you mixed gods and mortals and put them in competitive situations.
And somewhere across impossible distances, on a garbage planet at the edge of known space, a Valkyrie who'd spent millennia pretending she wasn't a Valkyrie anymore felt something stir in the place where her oaths lived.
Felt the bond she'd been ignoring wake up and remind her what she'd sworn.
Felt the pull of duty she'd walked away from whisper that perhaps exile was just another word for waiting for the right reason to come home.
The gates of Valhalla remained closed.
For now.
But nothing stays closed forever when heroes are involved.
That's rather the point of heroes.
They open doors that were meant to stay shut and walk through them anyway, breaking rules that needed breaking, doing impossible things because someone needs to and they're too stubborn to admit impossibility is supposed to matter.
James Potter trained.
And waited.
And prepared for the moment when death stopped being permanent and started being negotiable.
Because that's what you did when you loved people.
You negotiated with death itself if that's what keeping them safe required.
---
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