AN: Who put the glad in gladiator? Harry-cles! And apparently he got another chapter in twenty four hours. Guess he really, really wanted his time under the spotlight. And we are all too willing to let him have it!

AtW: Aye. It was fun. And thanks to R3D4K73D for being our live audience, lol. On the whole, have fun with things and enjoy the fight.

Heracleidae - Origins II

Harry James Potter

"Harry Potter." Blinking, confused, waking from a deep, exhausted sleep, the young man had no idea where he was or what was going on. "You are a demigod."

Standing at the foot of his hospital bed, Harry at least recognized where he was now, there was a woman. A bit on the short end, with shining black hair that hung in a heavy braid down her back. Harry's still sleep addled mind couldn't help but feel there was something out of place as he looked at her. Something that couldn't, shouldn't be possible.

Like when he met Ollivander.

There was something different about the woman, blurry as she may be without his glasses.

She looked normal enough, normal in the sense she was wearing normal clothes and not the robes that seemed so common amongst magicals. A pair of functional jeans with a red shirt with letters that seemed to shift and rearrange themselves. Over it she had put on what he could only describe was a biker jacket, the kind he saw on TV and always had his relatives sneering. The dirty hiking boots she wore seemed to complete the look.

Harry was fairly sure the boots weren't dirty with mud.

On the whole, it was far less striking that he would have expected from, well, anyone who had eyes like she did. Black and full of age. They were heavy and seemed to carry in them something timeless - almost like the Headmaster's, but even more intense.

Still, he was a Slytherin, so it was with the utmost elegance and cunning that he responded.

"Wot?"

Nodding, the woman elaborated.

"I am Hippolyta the Amazon. And your father, Heracles, the son of Zeus, has sent me to find you. When you summoned your strength yesterday you were revealed to his senses. He shattered his bonds and empowered you to not kill yourself from the rebound of your strike. Then, after dealing with his father's wrath, he dispatched me to locate you and lead you to him."

Closing his eyes, he tried to go back to sleep. Clearly this was a dream, or a prank, or anything else besides a crazy lazy talking to him. Besides, his entire body hurt and nothing felt right. Like there was an itching in his very bones. He chalked that up to whatever magic was working on him. Again, he desperately wished he had his glasses.

What was that about demigods?

And a Heracles? What was that, some kind of foreign language?

The name felt strange to say. Like there was a meaning he was missing, like it was on the tip of his tongue.

"I'm sorry Ms. Hippolyta, ma'am. But I… don't know what you are talking about? Demigod? Heracles. What are those?" He felt stupid for asking. One of the Dursley's cardinal rules was to never ask questions. And though Hogwarts had been doing a good job on getting him used to it, Harry still felt like there was a lot he didn't know.

The only thing he understood is that his dad somehow helped him fight that Troll.

Which was pretty good for a dead man.

Wait a minute….

"I think you might have the wrong person, ma'am. My parents are dead."

"Is it truly so difficult to believe?" She shook her head. "Surely you've seen some of those Disney films, yes? They show those to children your age." He shrugged. The only movies he'd seen were out of the corner of his peephole and none of those were ever permitted to have magic. "Very well. You are at least aware of the concept of a god?" Harry nodded. He'd gone to Service every Sunday and knelt at the altar and always tried to listen to the presbyter. It was one of the few times he got to eat a snack with the other kids. "Good. Your father is one of many of the ancient gods of Greece. You know of this country?" Nodding again, he wondered what he should be doing. His wand was at his bedside but his arms weren't quite working, making even his strength useless, assuming he could use it again. "At least you know that. Still, I am a spirit in service to your father. Come with me and I will take you to him."

"Again, I apologize ma'am. But I can't really seem to move my arms and my legs. Also, how do I know you won't do something terrible to me?" Blushing, he looked down. "After all, I've never met you before and people keep talking about how Voldemort's some awful man and wanted to kill me. Maybe you worked for him."

That got a laugh from the woman, a deep, belly laugh that nearly staggered the woman. Sobering, she rubbed at her eyes and shook her head.

"Hardly, child, I serve your father. No other man may command me." Here she smirked. "And if I wished you ill, you would not have been awoken. Do you not wonder why your friend is still sleeping?"

He'd wondered about that.

Were they friends? He and Hermione, that is? They'd never talked much, but when he was trying to fight the troll and save her he thought he felt something in his chest. An unpleasant feeling that made him want to hurt the troll.

That was friendship, right? You protected friends.

Just thinking about the woman hurting Hermione made something deep in Harry's stomach clench and an ugly, angry feeling to well up in him.

"If you hurt her, I won't let you get away with it."

This too amused her, even if the woman seemed to harden a bit.

"Those are good eyes you've got there boy. Better than your father's even. But unless you want to marry a living dead, you shouldn't tempt me with a good time." Taking a deep breath, the woman took her hand off the hilt of something sticking up from her belt. "As for your friend, I placed a small sleeping spell upon her."

Now that his brain was firing away, he glanced towards Madam Pomfrey's office.

"And as for the nurse, she's resting too."

Harry paled slightly. Having been a semi-regular visitor to the medical ward, he was aware that the matron had a not insignificant number of spells placed around the beds to alert her whenever a patient needed something, was awake, in distress, or anything else. For her not to react to this situation meant something was terribly, awfully wrong.

"I see."

Her eyes narrowed.

"Are you calling me a liar boy?"

Swallowing heavily, he was once more painfully aware of how utterly useless his arms and legs were. It was also hammered home that Hermione's privacy curtain was pulled to, or at least he assumed it was her since it was the only other occupied bed. And all of that meant he was trapped in a room with a woman talking about gods and his parents not being dead.

'I need an adult.'

Instead of screaming for help, he tried to reach out to his wand.

One day during study hall, he had remembered what Gerrick Olavander had said about wands choosing the wizards. So he did what he usually did when he didn't know something and asked Gemma. She had spoken on how a wizard and their wand were deeply connected - and that he'd get to an age where he polished it every night. Even if he hadn't gotten that particular joke, a few other boys had blushed deeply and tried to hide their blushes.

She'd cackled in laughter but, eventually, elaborated on how they were united on a level beyond that of the physical and that physical contact wasn't always, or even ever truly needed to cast a spell. And then promptly gave him three feet of parchment to write out essays on wandlore and magical theory.

In the end, Harry didn't know many spells.

But he did know one that could help.

'Standard book spells, chapter four, and the one spell all little boys went straight for.'

Taking a deep breath, he reached deep inside of himself, grabbed what he found there, and shoved it at his wand as he screamed.

"Incendio!"

Hippolyta flinched back at the scream but, instead of a torrent of flames, a spurt of burning embers launched from his wand. Striking the bed curtain, they caused a small, smouldering flame. That she promptly put out by cutting the curtain down with the knife whose hilt she had grabbed earlier and then stomping out the flames.

Harry simply watched silently and felt defeat well up inside his chest.

Flinching back as the stranger's hand reached for him, he prepared for the worst.

Only for it to pat him on the head, ruffling his already wild hair further with a sigh of fond exasperation.

"Quick reflexes." She praised. "Your combat instincts are pretty sharp for a newbie."

Harry blinked, confused.

Shouldn't she be angry at him?

"Again, boy. I'm not here to hurt you, only to escort you to your father. And while we are on the subject of parents, are you sure your mother wasn't some kind of amazon? This kind of stubborness can't be just from that knucklehead."

Frowning, he shook his head, the most he could do, and responded honestly.

"My parents are dead, ma'am. Murdered by a man named Voldemort. I… really don't know anything else. Sorry ma'am."

That got an annoyed sound out of her and she unwrapped a small cube of white-gold bread.

"Eat. It will heal your wounds."

Obviously going to, politely, decline, he was stopped in his tracks when the smell of it hit him. Things he couldn't name came back to him and memories that weren't fully formed tickled in the back of his mind. Suddenly, he found tear pricking at his eyes and, obediently opening his mouth, he let her place the substance on his tongue.

He'd tasted something like it before.

But he couldn't remember well.

It was warm, creamy, with a small taste of cheese behind it. It was warm on his tongue, but not burning, just the right temperature. It tasted like nothing he had ever eaten before and left him with a pit in his chest.

Wanting for more.

It tasted like… home. That's the closest thing he could think of.

Safety, warmth. Love. Hugs he didn't remember getting. Blurry faces he really didn't have names for. Even more sounds. A barking laugh, a tentative chuckle, and a strong, deep chortle.

And a tender sigh of indulgence.

Realizing that his arms were fine, he brought his hands up to his eyes and scrubbed at them. It also occurred to him that something had been very, very different.

"My sight… it's not blurry." Suddenly hissing, he doubled over in pain as his forehead burned and blistered. "Gah! What… what's going on!"

Hippolyta was by his side in a moment, a hand on his shoulder.

"What is it boy? What's wrong?"

Gasping, he showed her his scar.

"A curse mark? The ambrosia might be trying to destroy it." Frowning, she ran her finger around the edge of the mark. "It is a thing of death and strong enough to fight back." Rubbing his back, she sat with him until the pain eased and spoke to him in a low voice. "Breath, boy, in and out. Surely you can do that?"

"If only it were so simple, Ms…."

Standing at the foot of the bed was the headmaster, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. He was not smiling and his eyes did not twinkle. There was a low smoke in the room, climbing up around the edges of the bed. So too was a deep, powerful sense of peace and apathy in the room. The kind that made you simply accept whatever it was that was happening around you and not pay overmuch attention to it.

"Hippolyta, Bright Lord. I have come to bring my patron's son to him."

The old man's lips turned down.

Harry couldn't help but glance over at this… friend's bed. Secretly, he was glad to notice that Hermione's bed was empty, meaning the headmaster had already rescued her.

"Is that why a Graecus violated my wards, spelled my nurse and one of my students, and broke the laws of this neutral ground?"

Albus… too many names Dumbledore

Albus was more angry right now than he had been in a long, long time. The Elder Wand was loose in his grasp, he had drawn upon his skill with occlumency to order his thoughts, and yet, even with that working for him, he felt anger bubbling up in his chest.

When a house elf, come to fix a burned drapery, reported an intruder in his medical ward… he was angry. When he realized that Poppy was in a magically induced coma of all things, he was personally offended. When he realized two of his students were possibly in serious, immediate danger as the spirit of a godly pantheon stood in the medical room he was utterly, totally furious.

How long had it been since he'd been this angry?

Not for over a decade, he reckoned.

The wizarding world often forgot its roots. Forgot the other side of the coin which lay hidden by a veil of secrecy. The divine powers which had shaped and governed their land since times long forgotten.

Most didn't even know the role they played in their war against Tom and his followers.

But he stood watch over this castle, charged with the protections of the children within. And if one being would violate his castle's laws, then every other spirit would see it as acceptable.

"I have come to claim the boy for his father. As I told him."

This was even more offensive to the old wizard, pulling his lips into an even deeper frown.

"Lily Potter was many things, but an adulterer was not one of them. I will not permit you to slander my students, present or former, so I warn you, speak plainly."

Scoffing, the strange woman - something was deeply wrong with her, though he knew not what - shook her head.

"Your opinion is unneeded, wizard. I have come for the son of Heracles and I will bring him to my patron."

Several things happened in quick succession.

Hippolyta reached out towards Harry, who only somewhat cringed away. Albus felt his heart break a little more when he met the eyes of the boy he failed. And he clenched his fist.

An invisible force lashed out, grabbing the woman and throwing her through the stone of the castle walls. Walking over to Harry, Albus smiled, running his long fingers through the boy's hair. Smiling, he shared a chuckle with the lad and spared a moment to comfort him.

"Ms. Granger is in her common room and the castle is in siege mode. I shall handle this intruder and we shall speak more tomorrow." He placed a single finger on the lad's nose. "Sleep."

Albus took a deep breath, sent a mental ping to the house elves to stand ready, and steeled himself.

A mighty crack shattered the night when he appeared. Consciously putting too much power into the technique, the boom of his apparition rattled the castle's windows, and, once more translocating, he ripped through space and time to dodge out of the way of a massive black arrow.

It bounced off the stone of the castle and the old man let his magic carry him high.

Falling through the air it was a simple thing to adjust his fall, dodging past arrow after arrow. Ms. Hippolyta was moving swiftly through the grounds, wielding a rather modern bow with wheels and pulleys and loosing volley after volley at him. Strangely enough, it practically glowed with magic when he looked at it and the scholar in him yearned to know how its craftsman managed to get magic to bind to such modern materials.

The warrior in him simply gave an amused snort when she tried to take cover near the Whomping Willow.

"Awaken."

A more primal type of magic than the spells he taught, the burst of pure magic was channeled through Hogwarts itself and into the animate tree. Filling up its limbs, the ancient, gnarled thing roared by shaking every last limb in one, furious motion. Trusting in his ally, the wizard apparated once more, coming out of the movement silently, one foot in front of the other, and he strolled across the lawn.

Already, the tree had ripped itself out of the ground, roots formed into crude feet and branches into dozens of smashing fists.

Figuring he should fight fire with fire, and that this enemy was still far too mobile for his liking, he jabbed his wand forward and twisted. Curling up just in time to block a flurry of arrow shafts, a dozen golems of dirt and grass and stone picked themselves up. Each one of them taking the form of Heracles completing one of his labors.

One of them had several stymphalian birds covering his body, the other had the jaws and claws of a lion, one was shaped life a half horse, half man monster.

Each was unique.

Each was also vividly, brightly colored. Polka dotted pink and yellow, turquoise and aquamarine, one even being a rapidly shifting rainbow of flashing colors.

"Fuck this!"

The woman swore, swapping out her bow, which simply flashed into black ash, for a very large, plastic muggle weapon. Ironically, it was the seeming innocence of the bulky thing that warned Albus not to treat it like it was harmless. When it fired, several loud whumps were made and several small metal ovals were fired. Twisting the Elder Wand around himself, the teacher conjured up a wall of water - destroying the very life around him to draw the water from the air, the worms in the dirt, and grass - he was still shocked when massive explosions rocked his golems.

Shrapnel and debris impacted his shield, the shockwave of the explosives distorting it, and he had to freeze the water itself to stop the pieces of stone and metal from doing more than nearly giving him a heart attack.

Worse, however, was when she fired several incendiary weapons at the whomping willow, his parody of a hecatoncheires smashing the ground up as it chased the attacker suddenly blooming in flame. Directing his shield of ice to return to water, he doused the flames and apparated again.

Appearing right behind her, the old man fired off a quick volley of stunning spells. But, it was when she resorted to her knife that he used his trick.

"Portus."

Turning a speck of dirt on her cheek into a portkey, he knew nothing on her person would be vulnerable to direct attack, as the servants of gods were always protected to at least a moderate degree, she vanished in a flash of light and sound.

He was ready when she repeated a few hundred feet away, bouncing across the ground.

He was far less ready when she unleashed a fusilade of whirring death from a rotating gun of some kind.

'What is that!?' Hardening the air in front of him, he grunted when the attacks slammed into the makeshift shield. Waving his hand, he gathered up more stones and had them rotate into the line of fire. Watching them be reduced to so many shards of rock, he gathered himself and fed more natural material into the stream of death as he looked at the weapon. Truly immense, it was nearly the size of the woman herself!

Fortunately, she seemed to think his ploy was a sign of weakness, or at least of confusion, and had begun to advance.

Albus simply summoned every single fleck of stone to his hand, compressing them into a bundle of tiny, tiny darts, and then unleashed them.

A shockwave broke the air in front of him and nearly ten thousand projectiles exploded forward like a vast blast of grapeshot. Dirt and earth and every plant for about a hundred feet was ripped to shreds. Torn up and tossed about, and utterly ruined.

Except for a single strip, where a woman holding a tower shield stood.

Letting it fall, Albus noticed she was bleeding and wounded, clearly injured, and not even able to fully stand.

'At least I did some damage.' He smiled. "Ms. Hippolyta, if you would-"

"It's Mrs." She spat the words out, smiling, with nothing but pure battle lust in her eyes. "Now square up old man. You don't look as good as the brat, but I'll accept your marriage proposal!"

'Great.' Albus thought annoyedly. 'An amazon.'

He was painfully reminded of why he hated fighting demigods when her sudden acceleration moved her several dozen meters in the time it would take him to move two. Still, he apparated, once more tossing himself into the sky. Searching for his opponent, he grunted when a foot connected with his sternum and actually dug into his chest for a moment. The boot of the woman he was fighting, who had now just leapt at least a hundred meters into the air, pushed off of him and he was sent head over heels.

Still in pain, he at least thanked the woman for letting him know it was time to end this.

"Lumos Maxima." The light that shone out of his wand was brighter than the sun. It was, in fact, so blinding that anyone looking on would have screamed in pain. At least if they weren't a battle crazed woman or a wizard who had very heavily enchanted spectacles. "Nox."

And with that, the grounds were plunged into absolute darkness. Not a shred of light escaped the power of Death's own wand and it plunged the grounds into an absolute night.

'Ah, what would I be without my enchanted glasses.'

The fact he was still falling was solved by the application of another water spell. Summoning as much of the liquid as he could, he pulled on the heavens themselves. It was only when a dozen meter thick tendrils of rushing, grinding, crushing fluid lashed out across the grounds that he caught himself.

Submerged into the center of a large ball of the stuff, he felt his body start to heal and the aches and pains of his old joints start to fade. Even better was the fact he was able to breathe properly again, his chest fixing itself, and the magic imbued water no different than air.

At least as long as he exerted his control over it.

In the end, he was still massively impressed by the woman he fought. Not only did she literally smash through enchanted water, but she did so with nothing more than a sword and shield. Even a single blow, brought down with enough power to crush tanks - he would know, having done it far too many times in his youth - only staggered her. However, just as before, his trick paid off.

Curling up from under the ground, thousands of tangling roots swarmed up and over the woman. Occupied as she was with his water tendrils, she was utterly unprepared for a second, swarming assault.

Once more pushing his magic into the Whomping Willow, he fortified the ancient tree, now once more buried in its old place, and empowered it with the very power of Hogwarts itself to restrain the trespasser. He was pleased to see that she'd stopped fighting, but much less so to see that the battle lust in her eyes had been replaced by an entirely different kind of lust.

"Mrs. Hippolyta, I don't believe that it is appropriate to look at a man who isn't your husband like that."

She chuckled.

"Oh, don't worry, we'll get a potion of youth into you and Heracles and I could spend, oh, a few decades teaching you how to have some fun. Maybe make that a century. You look like the type to only let yourself go when you've had a proper divine romp."

Albus paused.

"I do have to ask, are you, perchance, the Hippolyta whom he defeated and captured?"

Smirking, she somehow managed to look incredibly proud even after having been defeated.

"You may address me as 'your royal highness', boy. As for any other questions you have, I suppose you earned an explanation. Let me down, we will speak."

Against his better judgement, the headmaster decided to oblige her request. No longer sensing any more bloodlust from the woman who just a few minutes ago had given Albus one of his worst workouts since The Wild Hunt tried to swoop through Hogwarts.

"There were better ways to go about your business, your highness."

Albus could already tell this was going to be a long night.

Harry James Potter

"Did you understand everything, Harry?"

Harry screwed his face in focus, trying to organize the information he'd just been given as he tried to think of a way to answer. Before finally giving up. Instead he opted to make sure he'd heard everything right.

"So I'm really a demigod?"

"Yes, that would be the case."

"The son of a mortal and a god?"

"A Greek god, in your case. That distinction is very important here in Britain."

The younger wizard nodded.

"And she…" he pointed towards the woman lounging on the headmaster's couch. "was sent by my dad, who was actually a Greek god, to come pick me up?"

"Which was a gross breach of protocol. You see, not everyone knows about the divine, and that goes for both magicals and muggles. Many students here aren't aware the gods still exist while to many magical families they are nothing but myths, stories created by muggles to explain the acts of wizards in the past."

Still managing to look like she had just gotten out of a life and death fight, the demigoddess on the couch snorted.

"A lot of that was out of spite. After the gods left for the Americas, a lot of families got pissy at them."

Smiling, the Headmaster, pretending she hadn't spoken, continued.

"When an unclaimed demigod ends up in Hogwarts, their parents reach out to the headmaster through a representative so that a meeting can be scheduled. What your father did could have caused a big incident, so it was fortunate that you refused to leave when you did."

"Why?" Harry didn't understand. Why was it so bad that his dad wanted to see him?

Dumbledore smiled sadly.

"Reputation. Although James Potter was a well meaning lad who got up to trouble when young, most would know him as Heracles, or by his later alias, Hercules. As a hero, and later as a god, Hercules left a deep imprint on the world and many pantheons resent him for it."

Harry squirmed uncomfortably.

Was his dad… bad?

"I do feel the need to interject." Sitting up, Hippolyta looked Harry in the eyes. "In the future, I want you to ignore the myths, ignore any rumors you may hear. Your father was good and faithful to his wives. Even though I was his third, and we were only wed for about three hours at that, he treated me well and I watched over him from the afterlife. He was always loyal and always good to us. All of us. I swear it to you."

Nodding, the eleven year old didn't really get why this was important but he appreciated the words. Even if he still thought they had the wrong person, he was glad that his father was so loved.

In the end, their conversation continued in that vein. He was a demigod, he wasn't even the only one at Hogwarts, and he would not be dropping out of school to make an overland trip to Cyprus any time soon. However, the Headmaster had offered him special lessons! Since it seemed he would need to prepare for challenges to come, there were things he needed to know.

Harry thought that was brilliant and his final question was one he held off asking for fear of seeming too… freaky.

"So, um, is Hermione ok? The girl the troll hurt, that's her name right?"

Smiling at him, Professor Dumbledore seemed genuinely happy.

"Yes, my boy. She's made a full recovery. And she's been asking after you too."

Blushing, he accepted the offer of a parting lemon drop and rushed off. And it wasn't until he was already back in his common room, the schedule for his new classes in his pocket, that it hit him exactly how differently people were going to act.

Stepping through into the Slytherin common room, the whole place went silent. Every eye was on him. And the silence in question was practically palpable.

Not truly hostile, it was a sort of wary curiosity. And it was definitely overwhelming for the lad who mostly wanted to climb into his bed and sleep off the last round of potions he'd chugged down. When a number of other students, especially the seventh years, started to move towards him he panicked somewhat and looked for a way out.

"Oi! Get moving you lot." Thankfully, his indecision was solved by the arrival of a savior. "And that goes for you too boyo. Causing a ruckus, running off like that, almost getting killed. With me, now!"

Gemma was snapping at him, but she wasn't truly angry. One of the few things Harry was good at was reading body language and hers screamed worry. Following his prefect dutifully, he quietly trotted behind her, hoping whatever punishment he received was going to be mild. Instead, when they stepped into her room, he found himself surprised when the older girl snapped him up into a tight hug and practically choked him to death.

"You bloody wee eight year old looking wean." Unable to properly breathe, so strong was her hug, he couldn't do more than make vague flailing motions as the older student squished him. "When I heard you didn't wanna celebrate the day your Mum an' Da' got killed I was right with ye, but I didnae think you'd wan any pity."

Her Irish accent was coming out so strong Harry would have thought the Queen herself would've been murdered alongside her English. In the end, he mostly just calmed down though and gently hugged her back.

"I've spent two bloody months teachin' yah how to speak and spell and you go and make it all useless, getten your bones banjaxed by a bloody troll and its bloody club and Jesus, Mary, and Joseph you couldn' 'ave waited a wee bit longer?"

She'd relaxed a bit but there were definite angry tears in the prefect's eyes.

"Do you not understand what you do to people yah shite?" Sniffling, she smoothed his hair and looked him over, mostly the boy was just glad he could breathe again. "You follow me around like a puppy dog and you look so happy whenever I have the slightest word to say to you. And you go and look like you're this kicked puppy or something but you don't understand it. You can't do this to a girl! I wanted to bloody take you home like you were a stray!"

"I'm glad I'm ok too. Sorry for scaring you ma'am."

At his words the girl threw her hands up.

"Ma'am he calls me after he punches out a troll." Pulling him in for a hug again, the prefect hugged him close, though not nearly so tightly, and finished calming down. "Hey Harry. Silly question here. But why do you smell a bit… different?"

The question was honest, a bit confused, but not particularly serious.

"Hmm? What do you mean?"

Putting her nose to his hair, she took a deep breath and Harry shuffled around awkwardly.

He was, after all, sitting on a girl's lap, in a girl's room, and she was holding him.

"You almost smell like… no. Even though…." Pausing, she took another sniff. "Tell me laddy, have you ever read Greek?"

Tensing up, the first year answered her question without speaking and the young woman squeezed him closer.

"Who's your parent, Harry?"

Trying to swallow, throat dry, he didn't even bother lying, realizing he was caught already.

"Heracles."

Her hug grew tighter again.

"You poor boy. You poor, poor boy." Gemma gave a watery laugh. "At least I know how you took down a troll. Good job on that, I suppose. There was no holding you back." They fell into a silence after that, the two just hugging even if he was growing rather sleepy. And just as he was about to ask if he could leave, the young woman spoke again. "My mother is the Morrigan."

Looking up at her with eyes full of questions, she shrugged.

"We're more common than most realize."

Harry tried to put his thoughts in order and, starting with the most obvious question, blurted it out.

"How many of… us are at Hogwarts?"

Thinking, she gave a slow nod in response.

"Twenty. Maybe a few more. Though some are very thin blooded and Hagrid is a good example of some."

Unable from stopping himself, Harry blurted out the next question.

"Hagrid is a demigod?"

Snorting, Gemma shook her head.

"Hardly, my little Harry-cles, he's descended from the giants of Britain, who are themselves bastard offspring of the Fomorians. Gog and Magog are the progenitors of this strain who bred with the low tribe and produced the likes of the half breed's ancestors."

In this way he would ask obvious questions and she would answer them. Some she didn't or couldn't, but was always honest about the reason for that. The most common explanation being that he simply wasn't old enough to know - at which point he'd pout and she'd muss his hair and he'd pout more.

But he honestly learned more from this conversation than he did from the Headmaster and Mrs. Hippolyta. Even now, he thought they might have the wrong person, since he really hadn't shown many of the signs Gemma spoke of being related to demigods. Of course, he couldn't sit still to save his life and he struggled with reading and writing plenty, but Harry had always figured that was because he was stupid. It seemed awfully convenient to him that those failings of his were just part of his freakishness.

Other than that he didn't feel very strong or particularly swift.

Mostly he was tired.

Though he did suppose he was happy with the fact she took the time to walk him through the common stories of Greek and Gaelic myths. Once again, in a very abridged and censored form, and condensed for ease of understanding. That was probably one of the things he most appreciated about her was the fact she simply… got the fact he needed her to explain things slowly.

Even now he was a bit jumpy, a bit twitchy.

And so when a knock came at the door and another seventh year girl poked her head into the room, he practically jumped so high he hit the ceiling.

"Gemma, it's curfew and the boy is too young to be your kept man."

She chuckled when he calmed down and called back.

"Back off yah gold diggin' slag. I'll eat your eyes and pickle your heart if you try anything."

Snorting, the other witch rolled her eyes.

"Northern Ireland."

Turning away and tossing her hair, the rival, and very much English, Slytherin seemed totally unaffected by the way the daughter of the Morrigan was spitting some of the most inventive, vile, and cruel curses he'd ever heard. And Dudley was very fond of American shock jocks.

Unfortunately for him, he'd ended up on top of her small pile of green pillows. The color a much softer green than Slytherin's house color - and the pillows were oh so divinely plush. So, as much as he wanted to try and make it to his own bed, one poor little demigod found himself dozing off.

Eyes growing heavy, it was with an exasperated, put upon sight that the young woman looked at the still too small, still too thin, still too worn down eleven year old in her bed.

Pressing her lips to his forehead she whispered a prayer for her mother to keep away and for An Dagda to bless the child before her.