Harry and Merope Meets Percy Jackson

Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or series, only the plots that you don't recognize. Take note, besides the fact that it's a crossover, so it will be different anyway, this is going to get canon divergent, I've been reading the last few chapters of The Blood of Olympus as I'm writing this chapter, and am paraphrasing the portions that will remain the same, so this chapter will have mixes of the original ending and stuff I've made up to suit my purposes.

A/N: I'm so sorry for how long it's taken to get this chapter out. If you've read my profile before today, then you know what I've had going on, and I hope you all can forgive me for my tardiness with this update.

Chapter 8

Harry and Merope awoke to the tug of the wards giving them warning of the approaching enemies at the gate, which jolted them into action. Merope climbed out of bed and focused on summoning any and all supplies that would be needed, as she began dressing in her battle robes.

Harry leaped out of bed, cast a sonorous, then announced, "ATTENTION CAMPERS, INTRUDER ALERT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. I REPEAT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. GATHER YOUR WITS AND YOUR WEAPONS AND MEET ME AT HALF-BLOOD HILL!" Then Harry proceeded to march towards Half-Blood Hill, his battle robes forming around his body with every step he took. It was an impressive sight for anybody that had taken the opportunity to look, if the Roman legion forming at the gates had seen it, half of them would have wanted to turn tail and run.

Yeah, it would have been quicker for him to just apparate there, but then he wouldn't have been able to observe the campers and make sure they were taking his announcement seriously. He hit the ones that were lagging behind with a mild stinging hex to get them to move faster, ignoring the glares they shot his way.

The wards were flashing every time there was an attempt to get through, which lit up the entire camp in a multi-colored protective dome.

In all Harry's years of time travel, this would be the first battle he had experienced since the final battle at Hogwarts when he was 17 years old, but as like then, there was no time for him to panic, there was only time to act. The difference between this battle and the Battle of Hogwarts, however, was that this time, Harry had power to spare and he had Merope with him.

In talking about it during their downtime, Harry and Merope had determined that someone or something else was pulling strings and attempting to force the two groups to destroy themselves, which made sense if the enemy in question wanted to eliminate any chance whatsoever of the two groups working together to stop them, that entity just did not take Harry and Merope's interference into account.

So Harry and Merope's main goal while training had been to stress the art of defense and to disarm without harm. Yes, they still helped to train them how to fight offensively with deadly accuracy, obviously they would need that skill for fighting the monsters that still showed up in their lives when they were outside the borders of the camp's wards.

Harry knew with confidence that the campers would do their best to follow their training, as after he and Merope had stressed to them that they believed strongly that this group of Roman demigods were likely being used as pawns just as much as the campers of Camp Half-Blood, Harry told them the story of his origins. He explained to them about the war over blood purity and how the Death Eaters and the members of the Order of the Phoenix were nothing but pawns to the Dark Lord Voldemort and Albus-too-many-names-Dumbledore.

After each training session, Harry would spend at least thirty minutes during the cooling off time to tell them a specific part about the war he had been dragged into as a toddler and then subsequently forced into every year while at school. Obviously, there was only time in each thirty-minute segment to go over the main points, but he was able to impress upon the campers that there was always someone on the other side calling the shots and treating people's lives as if they were mere pieces of a chess game and that this battle was no different. Someone on the outside was there manipulating situations and forcing the specific outcome that they want.

So in the end, Harry was confident enough that he and Merope had explained it sufficiently enough to the campers the importance of disarming without harming, so that they could get to the root of who was trying to manipulate both camps into killing themselves.

Interestingly enough, the wards held strong and the Romans had not been able to breach the perimeter; however, when Gaea decided to show her face from the very ground that everyone stood upon, things began to take quite the turn. She brought with her giants, the likes of which Harry had never seen. They appeared to be just slightly more intelligent than the giants he had encountered in the past.

When the giants began attacking the Romans, Harry couldn't just sit there and let them be crushed under the onslaught, so he cast a sonorous and told his campers, "I'm going to drop the wards, hopefully when the Romans see us trying to help fight the giants, they will not try to attack us. But in the event that they use this as an opportunity to try to attack you anyway, do as we trained, do your best to disarm. The runes on your armor should protect you from anything they attempt to fight you with, but stay vigilant. Remember, the Romans likely don't understand they have been manipulated into this battle."

When Harry brought down the wards, a few things happened at once. Percy and Annabeth arrived with their new team on a flying ship, carried underneath was an ancient statue called Athena Parthenos that had been stolen from the Greeks by the Romans years and years ago.

A small faction of the Romans attempted to fight the campers of Camp Half-Blood, but the majority of the Romans seemed to be relieved that when the wards came down, the Greeks were helping them to fight the giants.

Harry watched proudly as his campers quickly subdued the small faction of Romans that were trying to fight the Greeks rather than fighting together to defeat the giants. In a matter of moments, they had fallen into slumber due to a sleeping gas that had been created from a potion, and they were carefully transported away by portkeys to a safe location where they would not be harmed while they were unconscious.

Harry's attention was quickly diverted to Gaea when it appeared that her part in the battle seemed to be the act of trying to swallow people whole. Harry and Merope exchanged looks from across the field and held a brief, silent conversation before they both plunged their hands into the earth, into Gaea herself, and began to send ice into the earth, in order to force her into a frozen-like coma. While it didn't eliminate her, it did seem to slow down her attempts at swallowing the children into the earth. It would also buy them the time they needed in order to fight this battle towards its end.

Suddenly, a noise from the skies caused Harry and a few others to look up.

Harry, for all the disdain he had begun to feel for the gods and goddesses of this world who had slept with mortal men and women in order to create a race of demigods was given a complete shock when the heavens opened up and the gods of Olympus came charging down to the earth in defense of their children.

Zeus came riding into battle in a golden chariot, with a huge lightning bolt crackling in one hand. His chariot was pulled by horses made of wind. Zeus then made his way down to fight one of the giants with his son, Jason, who simultaneously appeared shocked and awed and relieved that his father had actually shown up to help him in battle.

Hera flanked Zues, riding a chariot pulled by enormous, rainbow-colored peacocks. As a general rule, this particular goddess hated the demigods on principle, because it was just a glaring reminder that her husband and children could not be faithful to their spouses and she was the goddess of marriage and family, it wasn't in her nature to have children outside of her marriage. But Harry noticed she had chosen to join the battle anyways and could be seen helping the healers pulling the injured Roman demigods out of danger. The Greeks had been thoroughly protected by the armor that Merope had Harry had designed and Harry was pleased to see the armor worked better than planned.

Ares came thundering down on the back of a fire-breathing horse, glistening red spear in hand, and made his way over to his shapeshifting son, Frank, who was currently fighting a giant while in the form of an enormous elephant.

Athena could be seen making her way to her daughter Annabeth, joining her in the fight with one of the giants.

Hecate could be seen near Hazel, setting fires to their enemies with two blazing torches.

Hades was not visible, but whenever one of the giants stumbled and fell, the ground that was not being controlled by Gaea seemed to just open up and gobble the giants whole.

Poseidon could be seen fighting alongside Percy, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and wielding his trident that had been morphed into the shape of a fire hose that sprayed out water shaped like wild horses.

Aphrodite's idea of helping her daughter, Piper, was admittedly less impressive than that of the other gods and goddesses, but then throwing rose petals into the eyes of the giants and calling out words of encouragement to her daughter that was doing the actual fighting might be something one would expect from the goddess of love. Then again, the doves that seemed to be transfigured from the rose petals were a bit more impressive when they were dive bombing and trying to peck out the giants' eyes.

Hephaestus could be seen wearing his mechanics clothes and helping his son, Leo, to keep the flying ship in the air, while Leo was running around the deck grabbing anything and everything he could get his hands on to throw down on the giants' heads and using a blowtorch to light their loincloths on fire.

Hermès and Apollo were seen helping their own children as a whole, from both Camp Half-Blood and the Romans, and not anyone in particular.

And to Harry's absolute shock, he recognized three old ladies as the Fates who were doing their best to bludgeon one of the giants to death with brass clubs.

All in all, it made quite the impressive sight and caused Harry to have to reevaluate his thoughts and initial impressions about the gods and goddesses, because he had never actually expected them to come to the demigods' aid. Not in a million years.

The battle finally dwindled down when the last of the giants had been defeated, but it turned out to be just the calm before the storm.

The gods and goddesses stood grim-faced before the demigods, while Hera attempted to take credit for the victory, as she had been the one to choose the heros that were to become a team.

Zeus thundered in anger and claimed that she was the one that caused at least as many problems as she had fixed, which caused Hera to pale at the reprimand.

Then Zeus' ire turned to his son, Apollo, who was berated for quite a few things and then banished to Mount Olympus to await his punishment.

Harry was just getting ready to say something before Jason began addressing Zeus and was quickly on the verge of unknowingly insulting him before Artemis interrupted and saved Jason the trouble of putting his foot in his mouth.

As it turned out, spilling the blood of Olympus caused Gaea to reach full consciousness. Percy was silly enough to think it had been his nosebleed that caused her awakening.

It wasn't until Zeus explained that the gods and goddesses could not help the demigods to defeat Gaea and not just would not, due to circumstances of the prophecy, Hera's interpretation and subsequent choosing of the seven heroes, and the Fates way of carrying it out that Harry finally spoke.

"So just to clarify, the gods and goddesses who ignore all other forms of logic when it comes to coming down to the earth and procreating with mortals to create demigod children, the gods and goddesses that can seemingly make up rules coming and going, are completely incapable of ignoring the rules of fate and prophecy in order to help their children defeat an enemy that came after the demigods because you all created them to begin with?" Harry asked bluntly.

Aphrodite laughed in amusement and said, "Don't you think we've been asking ourselves that question for thousands of years? But it is what binds us together, keeps us eternal. We need you mortals as much as you need us. Annoying as that may be, it's the truth."

Harry cleared his throat and said, "Well, actually we don't really need you, at least not my wife and I, we're immortal in a different way than you gods and goddesses are."

The other gods and goddesses stood there and scowled, while Zeus asked menacingly, "And just who do you think you are?"

Harry smiled and said, "Oh, I'm Harry Potter, although I've gone by a few different names over the years," then he gestured to Merope and said, "and this is my wife, Merope. Surely Mr. D, aka Dionysus, mentioned us when you ordered him back to Mount Olympus from Camp Half-Blood?"

"Oh, I didn't realize you would be so short." Zeus responded, shooting Harry and Merope an annoyed look.

Harry crossed his arms and muttered under his breath, "Well, you try spending the first ten years of your life being forced to live in a cupboard, causing your growth to be stunted, and tell me if you don't come out on the shorter side of average."

"While I'm sure we could spend all day out here measuring ourselves against the other, there is just that pesky little issue of Gaea being very much awake, even though Harry and I have partially frozen her in order to buy us a bit of time." Merope said with a huff, crossing her arms in annoyance.

"Dude, you were able to freeze her?" Percy asked, impressed.

"It was just a temporary solution while everyone was busy fighting," Harry said with a shrug. Then he turned his attention back to the gods and goddesses and said, "I guess there's no point in trying to get into the whys and why nots of you lot not being able to help your children, but Merope and I are not restricted by prophecies and we can go and come as we please. We can even ignore the prophecy and take care of Gaea ourselves."

"Dude, if you could do that, then why in the fruit loops did we all have to risk our lives to try to save the world in the first place?" Percy explained as he began tugging at his hair in frustration.

Harry frowned at Percy and said, "For one, we didn't have a full picture of what was happening to begin with. Two, we found it more prudent to remain at the camp when you lot all disappeared or left to go on your quests, so that we could train up the other children to protect themselves enough to survive the coming battle and any future quests. Three, while Merope and I would likely have been very capable of taking out and defeating all the the giants by ourselves, we had to consider the totality of the circumstances and the fact that there were demigods and gods and/or goddesses fighting the giants everywhere, it would have been too chaotic to try to take them out with you lot lunging and dodging and leaping and pouncing every which way."

Percy raised his hands in a placating gesture, "I get it, I get it. But are you sure you don't need our help with Gaea? She's rather tricky."

"Yeah, no problem." Harry responded, then he grabbed Merope's hand and said, "Let's go show them how it's done, dear."

Merope smiled and said, "Yeah, okay."

Then after a split second of deliberation, Harry and Merope knew by instinct what it was that they needed to do, so they knelt down on the ground facing each other and then placed their intertwined hands gently on the ground palms down. Power started to seep out of their very pores and their eyes began to glow blindingly as they began to absorb the essence of Gaea into themselves.

Once they were sure that they had sucked her essence from the earth, Harry summoned a gem from his ever present backpack, that only he and Merope could see, then he and Merope proceeded to direct the essence of Gaea into the gem, where she would be trapped for good.

After Gaea's essence was trapped into the gem, Harry and Merope levitated the gem and kept it hovering in the air, while Merope summoned some gold that she transfigured into a band big enough to fit around the tree that Thalia used to live in. She quickly etched protective runes into the band that would prevent Gaea's essence from escaping, but still be able to siphon off her power in order to power up the protective wards around the camp.

The gem was then set into the band of gold and an overall enchantment that not even Hecate would have been able to break was placed on it to prevent Gaea from being able possess anyone or to be able to converse with anyone in order to trick them into freeing her and starting a war all over again.

Harry then placed Gaea's new prison around the tree and new and better wards flared to life, and then dimmed into a gentle hum.

"There, I imagine that should keep Camp Half-Blood safe for at least two or three millennia," Harry commented, as he used magic to wash the dirt from his and Merope's hands. Then they turned back to the gods, goddesses, and demigods who had been watching the two of them with a mixture of shock and awe.

Percy was the one who broke the silence. "Did you just turn Gaea into a tree ornament?"

A/N: Aphrodite's little speech was an exact quote taken from The Blood of Olympus. Everything else was paraphrased or made up.