A/N: I just realized that I completely disregarded the fact that most of Voldemort's Inner Circle was arrested at the end of Harry's fifth year and they were all supposed to be in Azkaban during the time of my prologue… Oh well. Shit happens. Let's just say that they weren't arrested.

I hope you like my Gods! :D There's a lot of them here...

CHAPTER THREE: THE-BOY-WHO-WANTED-NO-ONE

Balor was standing in front of a picture-perfect, tall and thin english cottage with a rickety fence and small, smoky windows. The grass was green and multiple flowers were blooming in various shades of yellows and oranges all around it, with a few apple trees blooming off the side. It was the kind of an idyllic cottage which you could find in stories, the kind where it was summer and spring and harvest season at the same time, all the time.

But, unfortunately, to Balor this was not a story. He opened the squeaky, wooden gate and crossed the yard, with the multi-colored pebbles crunching under his feet. He stopped in front of the front-door and rapped his knuckles against it's dark wood sharply.

"Come in!" a cheery voice shouted from inside. Balor opened the door and stepped in. The cottage looked just as idyllic from the inside as from the outside.

A brownish-red haired woman in a red dress and a white apron was elbow deep in dough rolling it on the table covered with flour. She looked at Balor over her shoulder and her smile turned immediately sour.

"You again? Has it already been a lifetime?", she sighed with a frown and batted the dough harder, "You really shouldn't hope for anything much. Things like this just can't be changed in a moment's notice."

Balor bared his teeth and grounded out:

"In a moment's notice? It's been hundreds of years, tens of lovers! How is that a moment's notice to you, Branwen?"

The woman harrumphed and looked over her shoulder flippantly.

"It's gonna be another hundred years if you can't ask nicely. Maybe you should just talk to Filidh and see how it goes, huh?" she answered with a malicious smirk, turning the dough in her hands, over and over. Balor took a deep, calming breath.

"You know that's not possible, she hates me. Be reasonable now, Branwen. This whole thing began because of you two Goddesses and your fights. You owe me."

And boy, wasn't that the wrong thing to say. The woman flung her hands in an angry arch and suddenly the lump of dough was traveling towards Balor's head and smacking him in the face, dripping it's sticky sweet essence all over his beard and clothes and the floor.

"HOW DARE YOU COME HERE AND ACCUSE US OF MESSING UP YOUR LOVELIFE! WE OWE YOU NOTHING! NOTHING! IT WAS PURELY YOUR OWN DOING AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN SAY THAT WOULD MAKE IT DIFFERENT! YOU-"

"WHAT IN BLAZING HELL ARE YOU SHOUTING ABOUT YOU CRAZY WOMAN! In the name of Merlin's staff, just stop, Branwen!" a stern voice cut her off. Balor wiped the gooey substance off his eyes and looked in the direction of the sound. Another red-dressed woman, almost identical to Branwen in looks was coming down the narrow stairs. She wore a fierce scowl and her black hair up in a neat bun.

"I'm crazy? Looks who's talking," Branwen muttered nastily, "I'm not the one with three people in her head, Morrigan, the great queen of the mad!"

Morrigan lifted her eyebrow and flicked her hand dismissively.

"Need I dignify that comment with a response? No? I didn't think so." the Goddess said and finally turned her attention to Balor.

"And who's thi-…" her face fell slack when she watched the God trying to desperately clean his beard from the dough. The corner's of her lips twitched upwards and suddenly she let out a loud laugh.

"Hahahaaaahaha! You should see yourself! The fearsome God of Death covered in batter!" she snickered and laughed merrily (and not without some nastiness) at the other's plight.

Branwen folded her hands and added:

"Actually, it's dough, not batter."

Balor growled.

"ENOUGH! I didn't come here to be thrown cake-mix at! I wanted to ask for your help!"

"Dough, not cake-mix!" Branwen insisted with a frown and pressed her hands into fists, "How dare you suggest that I use that artificial dragon dung in my handicraft?"

Morrigan sniggered amusedly and cover her lips with her sleeve covered hand. Balor massaged his sugary-goo covered temples in frustration.

"I have come here to talk to you about Harry Potter. He is the next one in line I'm supposedly going to be bonded to," Balor insisted forcibly. Morrigan's snickers quieted to a frown and she waved her hand to pull a thick, old book from thin air.

"Harry Potter? Yes, I believe we have made quite a few people fall in love with that one. Let's see..," she flipped through the pages and stopped slightly off the middle.

"Mmm.. Two motherly loves, multiple obsessive loves, a few adoring loves, couple of angry loves, fifty-seven distant crushes… And all unrequited. That boy just doesn't want anyone," Morrigan frowned and shut the book with a slam and a cloud of dust.

"I'm sorry Balor, but there is nothing we can do," the dark Goddess said with an apologizing expression, "As you know, the only way to change your and his fate would be to change the bond's target from you to someone else. And just like I said, the boy does not want anyone. We cannot force love on the humans, we can only make it happen if there is a willingness for it."

"There is no-one for the boy? I find that very hard to believe!" Balor acclaimed in incredulousness. Branwen tapped her cheek in a pondering manner and joined the conversation.

"If my memory serves me correctly there is one person, but the boy and this man already have their fate bound together so strongly that nothing can be done about it. Their destiny is already decided. You are sixteen years late. There's no way," she finished with an air of smug meanness.

Balor's chest ached with the sliver of beginning despair. The air was filled with silence for a few moments.

"..Well, there is one way," Morrigan parted with a smirk. Branwen turned to look at the other woman sharply in accusing shock.

"We agreed that we wouldn't tell him! We agreed!" the Goddess screamed. Morrigan only looked away in disregard.

"Shush. He just looked so pitiable I couldn't resist it. Go away if you don't want a part in this."

Branwen folded her hands in protest and harrumphed but stayed put, frowning at the two angrily.

"What? What must I do?" Balor asked with narrowed eyes. Morrigan spread her hands dramatically and proclaimed:

"You just have to beat Filidh, the Lady Fate, at her own game."

Balor shuddered. He had once already met with his ex-lover in battle and he had hoped that that would've been the last and only time.

"You're joking," he deadpanned.

Morrigan smiled at the God smugly and twisted a lock of her hair slowly around her fingers.

"There was this prophecy. Maybe you could change it?" she suggested almost offhandedly.

Balor frowned and spoke in a frustrated manner:

"How can you change spoken word? It's not possible if the knowledge of it is already in a human's mind. Not possible."

Morrigan's eyes lit up and her smile widened.

"Ah, but this prophecy was not heard. It was written. Or more specifically carved on the side of a rock, using a very particular magickal alphabet," the Goddess looked at Balor under her brow and smiled wickedly, "Do you understand what I'm suggesting?"

After a moment's hesitation Balor's lips twisted into a calculating grin. Oh Merlin's balls, he'd like to see the face of that bitch when she got to know of this! He turned to Branwen.

"Brannie, you wouldn't mind sending a message to Aife that I'm coming to see her, now would you? I can never find her in that tree when I need to and I know you have that handy bird here somewhere."

Branwen pursed her lips.

"That 'handy bird' happens to be my son!"

"Yes, yes, whatever you say. Please?"

The Goddess folded her hands and tilted her head thoughtfully.

"Hmph. Well, only because you're begging," she finished, turned around with a flourish, went to the slightly open kitchen-window and pushed it open.

"Gwern! Darling, I have a job for you!" she twittered out of the window and waited until a bright colored starling landed on the windowpane.

Balor turned back to Morgana and crossed his arms.

"Now, tell me, what exactly does this prophecy entail?"

Morgana smiled at him, took his arm and led him to the table. She sat down and motioned for the other chair.

"Actually, there are two. But you really needn't worry about the most recent one, just focus on the first. That other one speaks of all this 'living' and 'surviving' dragon-dung that could be taken in soooo many ways if you had the imagination."

Balor grunted impatiently and Morgana hurried on:

"Aaanyways, love, here's the deal: You change the meaning of half a sentence, and that Potter boy is all yours," she shrugged, "Or reverse-all-yours. You know what I mean. It's only a small tweak, really."

"I can't believe that it would be that easy," the God said suspiciously. Morgana smiled at him and looked at her nails.

"There's one problem."

Balor groaned.

"The prophecy has already been translated. So, there are quite a few people who know what it says. If you go and change the meaning of those words, all those people will carry on thinking they know it, even if what they thought they knew would be technically wrong. So, what you need to do is make someone believe they got it wrong, re-translate it and, this is important, tell everyone about it. And of course there would need to be proof that would overrule all the other scripts that have these specific words in them, because we can't go and change anything physical. Just the meaning. Which would, of course, then be mumbo-jumbo. And remembering time-travel-rule number one: 'If you do the travel, you gotta do it without splitting the Universe in half', we shall keep in mind that none of this can happen before the time of right now. …Might be tough, I know. Oh, and you have..about three months before the bond with the kid becomes solid, I'd guess," she ended with a smirk.

Balor's head hit the table in despair. He swiped some dried dough off of his cheek. It fell down in flakes.

Before any of this he needed a shower. A long one.

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A/N: I decided to cut it off here, since that part got longer than I thought and I got a bit of a block about the Harry-part.. But rest assured, the next chapter is only gonna be about Harry, Mundungus and Maddrow and no Gods, if you're already getting bored of my OC's. :D

If you wanna know more about the Gods and Goddesses I have incorporated into this story, here goes:

They are all people described in the Mabinogion, the Welsh epic. They have their own stories and families and battles, which are almost totally different than they are in this fic, but all of the Gods have some common ground with their exemplars. (For example Branwen (her name meaning White Crow) is a woman who tamed a starling to send a message to his brother across the Irish sea about her abusing husband. Her illegitimate child's name was Gwern (who was drowned by his uncle Efnysien), and in this story, Gwern shall be the starling. Balor was associated with death and everyone knows about Morrigan, the Goddess of war and love, and her three other facets: Badb, Macha and Nemain/Anu).

Filidh (Fate) is the only one of my God(esse)s that does not have an actual singular role-model in the Mabinogion. The filidh were actually poets and seers.

Also, my Gods have all one specific purpose that they serve; they are not all-powerful Gods who can do whatever they please. They have rules and skills. Balor collects the souls of the dead and brings them to the Underworld's first layer, the Afterlife. Branwen and Morrigan give people the capability of loving and are somewhat experts in bonds. Aife holds the keys to the one magical language that she stole. Brighde and Cailleagh make the seasons go forward and can twist time. Filidh makes prophesies and speaks through seers, and so affects how the world goes. She cannot affect human decisions, but she can do whatever in her power to make people do what she wants. She is a sorceress, and as such can affect nature. She also holds some power over beings that are very susceptible to nature. Almost anything you can think of has a God/ess in the world of this fic, but I'll be introducing only a handful.

And finally, please review! QAQ;; Push that gleaming button! You know you want to!