Chapter 4: Research and letters

The next morning, it came as a shock to Delia to see that she woke up in 'her' cupboard. She groggily looked at her necklace, and was happy that she still had it with her. For some reason she felt safe when she touched it. She really hoped that the Dursleys wouldn't notice it. They would most definitely take it away from her, probably accusing her of theft while they were at it.

Normally her aunt would have woken her up by now, how strange. Maybe she is giving Delia some extra time out, or is she being punished further by not being allowed out again? Wouldn't be the first time. In the end, Delia wasn't too bothered by it, as it gave her time to think things over. You see, in school they started hearing stories about Herakles, a hero from mythology as her teacher called it. She could have sworn that in those stories there were characters, gods, with names like Zeus and Poseidon. Names just like in the stories Artemis was telling her about last night. That couldn't be a coincidence, right?

No. It couldn't be true. Those were just stories… but maybe she just jumped to a fantasy world where those stories are real? I mean, why else would Leto leave her children alone in the woods for a full week just so they could have a hunting competition? Delia might not have a mother figure in her life, but even she knew that that wasn't normal. So if it is the case that those jumps bring her to that world, then she would need to prepare. She decided that she would go to the local library as soon as she could for some research. Maybe they'll even have some information available on that language they taught her?

A few hours later a very irritated and possibly hung over Vernon opened the locks on the door of her cupboard. He squinted his eyes and told her to get out of the house and be back in time to make dinner. This couldn't have been more perfect for Delia, who quickly ran out the house, with a clear goal in mind.

Once she arrived at the library, having dodged Dudley and his gang on the way over, who surprisingly for once didn't chase her, she immediately went up to the librarian.

"Good day Miss, I have a little question about some stories I have recently heard. One of our teachers has been telling us about Herakles and I really liked those stories. Do you have any books on mythology available?" Delia asked her with just the right amount of puppy-eyes.

"Oh aren't you just adorable?" The librarian answered, fully melting over the power of her cuteness. "Follow me dear, I'll show you where you can find those Greek mythology books. Fair warning though, some of those books are in Latin and Ancient Greek, you're a little too young to learn those languages in school, so maybe in a few years you can learn them and read those books too." She explained to Delia with a happy smile, while guiding her to the correct aisle. "Here we are, all our books about mythology can be found here, as I mentioned before, the books on the right side are in Latin and Greek. Some books, like this one, the Iliad by Homer, might be a bit too heavy for you right now. I definitely advise you to read them once you're older though."

Delia was absolutely amazed by the quantity of books available to her. She already knew she would be spending significantly more time in the library than before. For some reason she felt drawn to the books on the right. She picked up the first book and read the cover aloud, "Herakles" she said.

The surprise was evident on the face of the librarian "You can read this, child?" she asked, quite shocked.

"Yes," Delia answered, rather unsure of herself. She really hoped she didn't mess up her opportunity to stay here and study.

"How amazing! You really are a smart one, aren't you! In that case, you'll be happy to know that we recently received a donation of books in Greek, however, the topics in some of those books might not be for you. Some of them are about martial arts, others about hunting and so on, they might be a bit of a dry read. I haven't had the time to place all of them yet. You can find them in the cardboard box near my office if you're interested."

"Thank you for your help, Miss!" she said with a beaming smile to the librarian.

"You're most welcome, dear. It's rare to see ones as young as you interested in books. Feel free to come to the information desk if you have any more questions." Internally the librarian was quite surprised, not only did the 'trouble child' of Little Whinging behave very politely, she was also clearly above average in the intelligence department. So why all those rumors? If she had to believe one of her old friends who worked at the primary school, the child was nothing but trouble and too dumb to tie her own shoe laces. Yet here she was, skinny, dressed in clear castoffs that seemed to have belonged to a baby whale, and with a surprising knowledge of a language she shouldn't be able to know. There definitely was something wrong here. She decided she would wait and see, maybe this is the beginning of something interesting in this otherwise abnormally boring place.

Delia, oblivious to the librarian's internal musing, focused back on the books. She was rather intrigued by the Greek books. Why was she able to understand them almost instinctively? She is sure she has never seen those symbols before in her life. She started pulling out books that interested her, mainly focusing on the 'encyclopaedia' type of books, as her eye fell on a book with the cover of a sun. It captured all her attention the second she saw it, she just had to pick it up. As in a trance, she moved over and picked up the book. The moment she touched the cover, she felt warm, very warm. Like she was in some kind of southern country enjoying the beach kind of warm, or at least how she imagined that would feel like. It also made her feel safe, not unlike her necklace. The book itself was about healing techniques discussed in mythology. Why anyone would even write a book about this baffled her, but she decided to add it to her pile anyway.

When her pile was nearing 10 books, she decided it was more than enough for now, and went to the reading corner, where she spent the rest of the afternoon poring over the books. She started with looking into this Artemis character the books spoke of. The more she read about her, the more she realised that 'her' Artemis and the Artemis from the books were very similar, if not identical. They had to be the same person, there is no way it's all coincidence.

She concluded that her jumps were either to the past and that mythology actually is history, or to a different universe where myths became real. In both cases she would need to know as much as possible about the people in it, the customs and so on. You don't want to accidently piss someone off, especially if said person can place some horrible curses on you, or worse. Though it was hard for her to imagine her good friends as all powerful beings. Maybe she could use the information from the books to help her friend? Some of those stories clearly happened after her stay in Delos, so telling Artemis about them might prevent them from becoming an issue? But if she did that, how would that influence the rest? Would it change her current life, would it make things better, or would things become worse? No, she can't all out tell everything to her friends, she had to be careful. Maybe the safest way would be to inform her friends of her findings and discuss with them what the safest course of action is.

She continued her reading, so engrossed in the explanations about primordials, titans, gods and their wars, that she completely lost track of time. As she reached the end of her chapter, she looked up at the time to realise it was a few minutes before 5PM. She had to go back to the Dursleys right now if she wanted to avoid trouble. She quickly placed the books back where she found them, although she did hide the one with the sun cover behind some other books.

As she walked over to the exit and past the information desk, the librarian called out to her "You've been reading here for a quite a while, I take it that you find the books quite interesting?"

"Yes, they were very informative, I'll definitely be back soon to continue reading them!" She answered enthusiastically.

The librarian looked pensively at her for a second, before telling her "You know, we offer classes to both adults and children here throughout the year, including during the summer break. Maybe some of those classes interest you? You can find all of the classes we offer on this pamphlet".

Delia, intrigued by this offer, immediately accepted the pamphlet and started reading it. Some classes didn't interest her at all, such as philosophy and modern history, others were on the maybe later spectrum, such as dance classes, and some seemed to be very useful to her, such as Latin and Greek classes. The one that stood out the most to her though, was the singing class. She absolutely loved singing with Apollo during their walks, so she would love to sing again and learn different techniques. There was one issue though, there was no way in hell that the Dursleys would pay for any of this. "Miss, these lessons, they're very interesting, and I would love to follow some of them, but I can't pay for them." Delia said a bit dejectedly.

"That's not a problem dear, these classes are taught by volunteers, meaning these classes are free. They do require you to actively participate and if you're being asked to prepare something to actually do so by the next class." As the librarian told her this, Delia's eyes started to shine with hope.

"In that case, I would love to follow the singing classes, as well as the Latin and Greek lessons!"

"Getting a bit bored during the summer huh? I will let the teachers know that you will be joining them." The librarian said, as she started scribbling a note.

"Thank you miss! Until next time!" She rushed out of the library towards the Dursley's residence. Once again she was able to spot Dudley and his gang and yet again they didn't bother to chase her. What is going on? Delia started to catch onto the fact that Vernon's actions of – for them – yesterday evening must have really shocked Dudley.

Delia was cooking breakfast as she was lost in thoughts. The past year has definitely paid off. She now felt confident in her knowledge of mythology. Surprisingly enough, the Greek classes seemed to have been a bit overkill, since she spoke the language better than the teacher herself. She still didn't know how those people thought that her excuse of self-study was a viable reason for a kid of her age. The culture side of those classes was an absolute gold mine, as she didn't find anything about that in the books in the library. She made good progress in her Latin class too, but it didn't come as easily to her as Greek did.

The Dursleys responded to her classes with mixed feelings when they eventually found out. On one hand there was the fact that she clearly was doing better than Dudley in some fields, on the other hand the classes were free, she was gone away from their house for more hours and it gave them a good reputation to have such a talented niece. They decided to grudgingly accept her going to classes, and to ignore all references to it.

Her actual school life was a whole other story. Dudley didn't openly beat or chase her anymore, but the other kids were still wary of becoming friends with her. She couldn't get rid of the trouble maker persona, even if it was completely undeserved. Her ADHD and dyslexia didn't help in the matter. As such, she spent as much time in the library as she could, learning on random topics that caught her fancy. Doing that had vastly improved her English, she even felt that her dyslexia wasn't as bad anymore.

She hadn't been back to the alternate world ever since the star gazing, and she wasn't one step closer to figuring out how to get there. It seemed that her visits there were somewhat tied to heavy emotional situations, not something she could control. If only she could visit the twins more often, she did miss them a lot. Touching the necklace Artemis gave her always seemed to soothe her whenever she was feeling down or ill.

XXX

She was serving breakfast, as they all could clearly hear the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.

"Get the mail, Dudley." said uncle Vernon from behind his paper.

"Make the freak get it." He said, as he continued shovelling food in his mouth.

"Get the mail, freak." Said her uncle, without skipping a beat.

Delia, not willing to further anger her uncle, scrambled up and ran to the door. She picked up the mail and brought it to her uncle, as her eye fell on the top letter, which was addressed to her. Who would write her a letter, and why on parchment of all things? The fact that they knew she slept in the cupboard under the stairs made it look quite creepy.

As she was about to open the letter, it was snatched out of her hands by her uncle who was rapidly turning purple. "How dare those freaks write you a letter?! I will not allow this! You go to your cupboard and don't even think of going outside of it!" Delia, not understanding what was going on, quickly decided to follow his orders.

XXX

After a few days that can only be described as utter madness, Delia ended up walking into a tiny, grubby-looking pub next to a giant of a man named Rubeus Hagrid. Earlier that morning they had left behind the Dursleys in their lovely shack on some rock somewhere in the sea, while travelling on a self rowing boat of all things. Delia was secretly mildly impressed that her uncle even managed to find a place as secluded as that. While they were travelling to London, Hagrid gave her brain a small overload of information about a completely new world.

Apparently she was a witch, a famous one at that, for something she had no memory of. Magic was real, and she was going to learn all about it. It also implied that other things previously thought to be just stories and fairy tales could be real too, meaning there could be actual gods and monsters walking around. And wasn't that just a scary thought.

They entered the Leaky Cauldron and her first impression of it wasn't a good one. It was quite dark inside, like one of those places movies would portrait for shady people to hang out in. A ripple seemed to go through the patrons as Hagrid and Delia entered. All chattering briefly stopped as they gazed upon the two. Everyone seemed to know Hagrid, as they greeted him with a smile and invited him to drink with them. The bartender, seeming to be nonplussed by it all, merely took a giant glass saying "The usual, Hagrid?"

"Can't, Tom, I'm on Hogwarts business today." said Hagrid, clapping his great hand on Delia's shoulder and making her knees buckle a bit. As he said this people started to pay attention to Delia, and it didn't take long for them to somehow recognise her.

"Good Lord," said the bald bartender - or Tom as Hagrid called him, peering at Delia, "is this - can this be - ? Bless my soul, Delia Potter… what an honour."

The words had barely left his mouth, or a great scraping of chairs could be heard, as people rushed to Delia to shake her hands and greet her. This made her feel very uncomfortable, as she quickly became overwhelmed.

After a few minutes in which she was introduced to a lot of people, including a professor of Hogwarts who was acting quite weirdly, Hagrid seemed to finally pick up on her discomfort. "Must get on - lots ter buy. Come on, Delia." He said, as he started to guide her to the back exit.

"Three up… two across…" he muttered. "Right, stand back, Delia."

Confused, Delia took a step back as an archway onto a cobbled street appeared. "Welcome to Diagon Alley." Hagrid said, grinning at her baffled expression.

They made their way through the bussy street as Delia drank in the sight of everything around her. After a few minutes of walking, they reached a white building that towered over everything else in the street. They started climbing the stairs of the building, while Hagrid explained that this is the wizarding bank named Gringotts, and that the small being in front of the large bronze doors is a goblin. As Delia walked by a silver door with a poem engraved in it, he also made the remark that you would have to be quite mad to even consider robbing Gringotts.

They made their way across the beautiful marble floor towards a free counter. "Morning," said Hagrid to the goblin. "We've come ter take some money outta Ms. Potter's vault."

The goblin didn't even look up as he answered with an uninterested tone "And do you have her key, sir?"

"Got it here somewhere." said Hagrid, as he started searching his pockets. Delia used the time he needed to find the key to observe her surroundings. She could see hundreds of goblins milling around. A lot of them sat behind counters, as they were weighing things of great value or simply writing in a book. The goblin on the right of them seemed to be casually inspecting the biggest rubies she had ever seen in her life.

"Ah, got it!" Hagrid said at last, holding up a tiny golden key.

The goblin finally looked up from his book, to inspect the key closely. "Everything seems to be in order."

"An' I've also got a letter here from Professor Dumbledore. It's about the You-Know-What in vault 713." Said Hagrid, in a rather conspiratory way. This peeked Delia's interest, but she didn't dare ask any questions.

The goblin sighted and accepted the letter, taking his time to read it carefully. "Very well," he said, handing it back to Hagrid, "I will have someone take you down to both vaults. Griphook!"

The goblin who Delia assumed was Griphook, seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. He asked them to follow him, before he marched off towards another set of doors containing railway tracks and small carts. Delia found the ride down to the vault awesome. She loved the speed, the wind flying through her hair. Eventually the cart slowed down and stopped. Griphook hopped out and unlocked the vault door. Delia gasped and her eyes bugged open as she saw the contents of the vault. There were heaps of golden coins inside.

Good thing the Dursleys didn't know about this, she thought, or they would have tried to claim it ages ago. They certainly complained more than often enough about how much of a burden she is and that she costs too much to keep. While she was distracted, Hagrid seemed to have found his bearing and handed her a bag.

"Put some of the coins in here." He said, and Delia started doing just that. "The golden ones are Galleons, silver ones Sickles and the bronze ones Knuts. 17 Sickles to a Galleon and 29 Knuts to a Sickle. You'll get the hang of it. Okay, that should be enough for now." Delia stopped piling in money, closed the bag and held it close to her. She never had money of her own before.

Their next stop was vault 713. The vault only contained a small brown package. Hagrid scooped it up and tucked it deep in one of his many pockets. She tried to not think too much about it, it was none of her business after all.

Another wild, lovely cart ride later, they were once again standing on the stairs outside of Gringotts. "Alright," Hagrid said "would yeh mind if I slipped off fer a pick-me-up while you get yer uniform from the shop there? I'll be at the Leaky Cauldron." Delia nodded her consent, as Hagrid did indeed look a bit sick.

As she entered the shop, a woman with an easy smile walked up to her. "Hogwarts, dear?" Delia, who was a bit nervous, simply nodded. "Seems to be that time of the year again, another young man is being fitted up just now."

The woman - madam Malkin Delia assumed, led her to the back of the store to a stool next to a pale looking blond boy with a pointy face. The boy looked at Delia with a haughty expression. He somewhat reminded her of her cousin.

"Hello," said the boy, "first year, too?"

"Yes." Delia answered tensely. Apparently the madam and the boy hadn't recognised her yet, and she hoped to keep it that way.

"Do you know what house you'll be in yet?"

Delia, not knowing what he was talking about, simply answered "No." She felt out of her depth here, and couldn't wait to get this conversation over with. It seemed that her new research project would be the basic information about the wizarding world.

"Well, no one really knows until they get there, but I know I'll be in Slytherin, my entire family has been. I can't imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?" The boy continued, oblivious to Delia being distracted.

Delia not sure what to say, merely gave a nonanswer "Every house has its pros and cons."

The boy frowned a bit at this. He suddenly seemed to realise something. "What's your surname, anyway?"

Before Delia could answer, the madam interrupted. "That's you done, my dear." Delia immediately jumped off the stool and started looking around in the shop. She decided to purchase some normal clothing like jeans and shirts as well. She would finally have her own clothes! As she was browsing the shop, she came to realise that none of the people in the streets were wearing 'normal' clothes, but they wore robes. Coming to that conclusion, she decided to also throw in a pair of robes she liked.

Next to the counter, she spotted some jewellery. There were two pieces she liked in particular: a necklace with a golden sun and one with a silver lion pendant. She decided to buy both of them as a gift to Artemis and Apollo, if she ever saw them again. As she paid for everything, she noticed Hagrid standing outside the shop.

The rest of the shopping mostly passed like a blur. She was able to convince Hagrid to let her buy a bit more expensive trunk - it had password protection and extra compartments - and some extra books. He had merely sighed at the sight of her pile of books and muttered something about her mother as he started putting them in her trunk.

The last thing she needed from the list was a wand. As they entered the shop, a bell tinkled somewhere in the back. Delia looked around the shop and could see hundreds, if not thousands of small black boxes lying around on the shelves. The dust and the complete silence of the shop made her feel on edge.

"Good afternoon." said a soft voice, startling Delia. An old man was standing in front of them, he had wide, pale eyes, focused solely on her.

"Hello." Delia answered awkwardly. Something really felt off about him.

"Ah yes, I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Delia Potter." It wasn't a question. "You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work. Your father, on the other hand, favoured a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favoured it - it's really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course." During this entire monologue, he had simply stared at her without blinking even once.

Ollivander pulled out a measuring tape. "Now, which is your dominant arm?"

XXX

It took them almost an hour, but eventually they were able to find a wand that chose her: silver fir and phoenix feather, 11 inches and supple. A survivor's wand, Olivander called it, for the wood comes from one of the more resilient of trees. He also gave her some… interesting information about what the 'brother wand' of hers had done to her. Ollivander was hands down the creepiest man she had ever met.

Currently Hagrid and Delia were entering the ice cream parlour. She was excited since it would be her first time eating ice cream. She chose chocolate and strawberry ice cream. As they sat down to eat, Delia started asking questions, such as "What are the Hogwarts houses" or "Why do people still fly on brooms?". Hagrid seemed to finally remember that she knew nothing about the wizarding world and explained as much as he could.

Two hours and many, many questions later, Hagrid was helping Delia onto the train that would take her back to the Dursleys. He handed her an envelope with her train tickets, including the one for the school train. "Don't forget, 1st of September, before 11 am, it's all on your ticket. If there are any problems with the Dursleys, send me a letter, your owl will know how to find me. Until next time, Delia."

"Goodbye Hagrid, and thank you!"

As her train left the station, and Hagrid was out of sight, she started to think over her next actions. The Dursleys obviously didn't like her because of her being a witch, they seemed to fear everything magical. It finally made sense why they hated her. She could exploit that fear to make them leave her alone. She still felt lost in everything wizarding world related, so it was a good thing she bought a decent amount of books about its history, customs, laws etc. She would use the rest of the summer to study those and start with her school books. She would need the knowledge to fit in, and to minimise the advantage that people growing up with magic had over her.

She couldn't wait to learn magic.

AN: So yea "Cya again in a week or two" might have been a bit optimistic… Why did it take me so long? Well, apart from me being on internship and thus having to focus on a thesis, classes and the internship, I also caught Covid at my internship (a hospital) and consequentially got hospitalized (and yes I am vaccinated, 4 times even, but fuck me I guess). So I'm now playing catch up, as I have been out of commission to do anything other than lying in a bed for over a month (normally a dream, but now not so much as I'm not even sure if I can finish my year now – tl;dr life is being lovely).

Story wise, I am currently considering skipping all the way to the end of year 2, before picking the story back up. Doing so would mean that most of the events in canon will stay the same (sorting, friends and events - which would make writing/reading it a bit boring imo). My story would only start to deviate from canon afterwards. Any thoughts or opinions are welcome on this of course. I'm not planning any 'jumps' in these years either.

Kkmememesha – 99,99% sure it will end up that way, yes :P

milamar2007 – I will try, but as you probably have noticed, I'm a bit of a slow writer…

Guest – Yea, I kinda forgot about Eros' role in that myth. [small spoiler] I still plan to use it for a minor fall out. Gotta have some drama, right?

Man, that overthrowing plan does sound quite interesting. I'm not sure if I'll be using it, but it's definitely something for me to keep in mind, thanks :) In my story, Artemis and Apollo obviously are a bit older than 1 when everything goes down / when they go to meet their father. And as the rest of your comment pointed out, Zeus definitely isn't a great role model to say the least. Considering what I'm planning with Delia's parentage, I'm not sure if I'll get into the dark side of it all. Maybe in another FF or something.

Lala & Haseo187 & RedOuroboros – I'm glad you all like it, merci beaucoup :)