Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter in any war or form.
AN-1: Sorry for delay, but health has been down these past two months, and time is something I find rare and rarer these days. Still, working on creating a schedule , and I will have some extra time from April. So we might be back to five updates a month from April.
AN-2: I have a P*T*E*N, where you can read the NEXT THREE CHAPTERS RIGHT NOW!
AN-3: A big thanks to Lordlexx and Hades for being my editors and beta readers!
7 months later
"Harry Potter, I have a quest for you," a female voice whispered in his ear, and Harry jumped awake with a start, his xiphos already moving through the air, only to clang against another one. "That was not very nice."
His mind fully awoke at those words, or rather…the pure ambrosia that dripped from the voice. It was sweeter than a nightingale, and somehow, Harry knew the identity of the Goddess—for no mortal could have such a voice—before his eyes even traced up the pale white, unblemished hand holding the sword up to the speaker's face.
"Lady Aphrodite," he breathed out, his brain almost shutting down for a moment as it refused to process the sight of the perfection that was the Goddess of Love. Her face was…unspeakably, unfathomably beautiful. Perfectly pink and plump lips stretched into a small, otherworldly smile upon a symmetrical, regal face with high cheekbones and blue eyes straight from the clearest, bluest of oceans. Hades, even her eyelashes were beautiful, teased out to perfection along with the barest hints of…whatever the fuck girls applied to their eyelids. Struck dumb by the sight of her, it took him a moment to return to his senses…and notice that he had just attacked a Goddess—one, which according to the campers, should never be angered or trifled with. With his back against a tree and his xiphos still in contact with hers, Harry bowed his head hurriedly and placed his right fist over his heart, "My apologies Lady Aphrodite, please excuse this blunder as a foolish reaction on my part."
"There is no need to apologize. Harry," she laughed, placing a finger beneath his chin and raising his eyes to meet hers, "It was a mistake on my part, waking a demigod in the woods when he is known to be…dangerous."
"It's fi…ne," he gulped midway as she suddenly stood up, and he finally got the chance to look at something other than her face. His mouth went dry, and Harry experienced the most powerful sensation of arousal he had ever felt as he saw her absolutely mouth-watering body. Perky, large tits that strained against the red halter dress she had worn, leaving a clear line between them, along with a tapered waist and flat abdomen. Her hips were wide, and from the slit that rode along the length of her left leg, he could see that her long legs were toned and muscled. He couldn't see her rear, but based on what her daughters at the Camp were packing, he had no doubt that Aphrodite had an ass that would make men lose their lives for just a glimpse. She was Lust personified, a woman straight out of fantasy, and she was…looking at him as he looked at her.
"My my, you like what you see Harry? No need to be ashamed, tell me what you want, Harry?"She smiled predatorily, clapping her hands together and pushing up her pale white tits even more while moving her leg just enough to give him a passing glimpse at her thigh, "What do you want the most, Harry Potter, right in this moment, this place?"
"I want to kill Poseidon," he answered, his eyes glazing over at her question, but the rage in his voice was unmistakable, "For what he did to my mother, I want to kill Poseidon."
23 July 1990
Harry grunted as he slammed his fist into the dummy, pushing it back by several feet before he charged in, jumping and spinning to land a roundhouse kick on its head. Wincing as his heel made contact with the Celestial bronze, he ducked underneath the hands trying to grab him, and fell on his back, spinning on his shoulder to kick out its legs from beneath it. Climbing atop the automaton swiftly, Harry reared his hand back and slammed it in its neck, lightning coursing through his veins into the metal body beneath him.
The dummy powered down at its death, and Harry sighed as he stood up. Walking over to the bench, he picked up the towel and wiped the sweat off his body, frowning as he saw his knives sitting on the bench along with his xiphos. Nowadays they reminded him of Aphrodite every time he looked at them, and more often than not, it was not because she was the most beautiful creature on Earth and regularly starred in his fantasies. It was because of the words she had spoken before giving him his quest all those months ago.
'Then you are wishing for the wrong thing, Harry…but for a right cause'
Cryptic as hell and with no contact between them afterwards, Harry had gone mad trying to decipher the meaning behind them. A part of him wanted to disregard it as just the ramblings of a Goddess looking for some entertainment…but somehow he knew that she was telling the truth. Of course, the fact that Poseidon hadn't wiped him out after that also meant Aphrodite hadn't tattled on him, despite using her charmspeak to make him say that. But why in the name of Zeus had she said that?! His wish to kill Poseidon was wrong, but the cause, his mother's rape did happen?! Was this wha-
"Attack on the southern side!" A shout came from the innermost wall, and Harry tensed up as he stared in that direction, able to hear the faint sounds of screams…and explosions? Picking up his sword and one of the knives, he teleported, a skill that he had learned last month. Appearing right on the top of one of the towers right as a large explosion of greek fire happened, he stared at the horde ahead of him. The monsters had already broken through the first wall, the magical barrier and booby traps all failing to st-oh fuck! His eyes widened as he saw a large form emerge out of the green explosion, its multiple heads each holding a demigod as the large, lethal tail behind whipped through the air, shattering the second wall instantly.
It snapped all of its mouths shut simultaneously the next second, and the screaming demigods in its even maws fell silent at once, halves of their bodies falling to the ground as their heads and torsos were swallowed. It was green, it was scaly, it was powerful. It was the Hydra. A Tier 4 monster, and probably more than fifty times harder to kill than the lesser hydra he had killed.
"The big one is mine, tell all others to keep the riff-raff off me," he said, jumping to stand by Chiron. The centaur was already launching arrows at an unmatched pace, leaving even the children of Apollo behind him, "And Chiron, when I tell you to, pull back all others."
"Understood," he muttered, knowing full well to trust in Harry's capabilities, especially since he was the only one who could deal with that monstrosity. "Be careful Harry. This Hydra is nothing like the one you fought last year. Its hide is exponentially tougher, and it can shoot three elements out of its six maws. Its regeneration rate is second to only the first Chimera…and I don't need to tell you about the poisonous fumes its breath emits constantly."
"Got it," he nodded, deciding to forego any armor—and it wasn't like a chainmail or a breastplate of Celestial bronze was going to stop the Hydra's claws or teeth in any way, "Don't die, old man, you still haven't scolded me for public display of sexual affection yet!"
Jumping down from the platform, Harry roared as he let the floodgates in his mind open, all of his anger and frustration bubbling out to create one hell of an emotional trigger. Slamming his fist right into the head of a Laistrygonian Giant, he grinned as the blood and brain matter exploded out around him, the whole torso of the giant nothing but bloody mist and chunks of dissolving meat. Bringing up his xiphos, Harry bent his knees and looked at the rampaging Hydra, the giant reptile trampling over demigods and other monsters alike as it breathed out water, fire, and ice in all directions, laying waste to everything around it.
Blood awash with adrenaline—or whatever the fuck its demigod equivalent was—Harry summoned lightning from the skies and pushed against the ground. The earth shattered around his feet as he jumped like a bullet, the thunderbolt striking him midway to cover him in a blanket of voltage. He streaked through the slowly darkening sky like a comet…and was immediately sent careening into the forest as the Hydra slammed its tail into him. A short, surprised scream came out of him before he slammed through the trees, breaking through the trunks like they were nothing but clay tiles. Groaning as he fell into the ocean after tearing through the whole forest between the shore and the Hydra itself, Harry sighed as his broken ribs healed, along with the large bruise that had formed upon them—with audible cracks that too.
Stumbling back to his feet, he glared in the direction of the Camp, the Hydra barely visible through the column of destruction he left amidst the trees. Grunting in anger, he called upon the lightning as he walked out onto the shore, his father's element exploding out from within him as he flashed through the land, just like he had all those years ago when he had accessed this power for the first time. Clearing the hundreds of feet of distance in practically a second, he simply tore through the monsters in his way, and stabbed his xiphos into the Hydra's knee. Snarling as the acidic blood splattered on his bare, blood-covered front, he channeled the lightning on his body into the wound. A tactic that worked surprisingly well against the monsters with acidic blood and tougher hide than normal.
The Hydra roared in pain, all seven of its heads thrashing about in the air as the whole battle around the stilled for a moment. Steam rose from his body as his eyes shined an electric blue, a soundless scream spilling forth from his lips as he channeled every bit of his power inside his sword, burning the child of Typhon and Echidna from within. The world fell away from his senses as his every thought, every cell was consumed by the thunder. However, the Hydra wasn't considered amongst the deadliest and most legendary monsters of the world for nothing. The shock was certainly painful for it, especially since its very insides were being cooked…but it was nothing that the Hydra couldn't handle.
Opening its leftmost maw, it shot a jet of fire at Harry, while lashing out with its tail at the same time. He grunted as the fire washed over him, the heat dozens of times worse than what the chimera had made him experience years ago. However, before he could so much as think of a way out, the Hydra's tail hit him again. Thankfully, he had managed to see it out of the corner of his eyes through the blazing orange flames, and managed to turn his body just enough that it impacted his back rather than his head.
His face hit the dirt immediately, the force behind the blow making him carve a trench for meters on the end as the lightning around him fizzled out. Stunned and probably concussed a little, Harry nonetheless swayed back to his feet, his hand empty of his xiphos' familiar weight.
"By the Gods," he muttered, shaking his head and blinking his eyes as the world swam for a moment. Groaning with pain, he twisted to his side sharply, sighing as a series of pops came from his spine. He turned and ducked as a hellhound went flying over his head, his eyes snapping over the Hydra as it made its way to the sec-third wall. The wound on its leg was as expected, healed and completely regenerated with a fresh armor of scales, and his sword was lying several meters behind it, getting tossed around the feet of the demigods and monsters alike as they battled.
Growling, he walked forwards, punching a hellhound on its nose and pulping its face in, while with his other hand, he launched a fireball right in the mouth of a Laistrygonian Giant about to chomp on a demigod from behind. Ignoring the feeling of blood and brains dripping between his fingers, Harry opened his fingers and grabbed the Dracaena in front of him, tearing its head apart with nothing but brute strength. Ignoring the shocked girl beside him, he raised a hand, and his sword shot back into his hands, the leather-wrapped hilt bringing a dose of clarity to his mind as he wiped the blood from his eyes.
And with that clarity, came a series of realizations as he stared at the Hydra, the last one minute having given him a feel for what he was facing. His physical power wasn't even close to scratching the Hydra's scales, let alone piercing them. But the speed of his last attack and the strength of lightning behind it had managed to sink his xiphos inside it. Without it, he had no hope of even injuring the Hydra as he was now.
Growling at his own weakness and the Hydra itself, Harry floated off the ground, his eyes trained upon the multiple heads of the monsters as he climbed higher and higher. He needed power and speed to cut through the Hydras necks. Boost his body to levels it had never seen before, and there was only one place to do it. Grunting as he asserted his control over the winds as well as the sky, Harry flew towards the gathering storm clouds above him. His teeth grinding into each other with effort, he pulled upon his powers even more, his velocity increasing with each passing moment as the wind roared in his ears.
By now the sun had completely gone down in the sky, and he could see the hints of the half-moon behind the dark clouds, right before thunder flashed in them. Rain began to fall upon him, strengthening and healing his body by the second as his speed increased even more, the winds beginning to howl as the storm gathered. He disappeared into the dark clouds, feeling his body change in ways he had never thought possible. As distasteful as it was, Poseidon's domain of water and storms was helping him a lot currently, and he had not even started with his father's domain. He felt the clouds charge around him, sparks jumping between them as he enforced his will upon them, calling all of the thunder in the storm to him.
The thunder answered his call.
His vision went white and dozens of thunderbolts struck him at once—and they weren't even the ones that naturally existed, their power instinctively controlled by his demigod nature so that he would not get destroyed. He screamed long and loud until he tore his vocal cords once again, blood coming out of his mouth only to evaporate instantly and millions of volts of electricity flowed into him, his whole body nothing but a lightning rod attached to a battery at that moment.
His veins glowed and his hair stood on the end as his eyes shone brighter than they ever had as pure, unadulterated power made its way into him. Down on the earth, Chiron and the archers by his side stared at the light show going on above them, Harry's form visible to them for a moment as it was silhouetted against the flash of lightning. After a dozen seconds of this, the lightning died out completely, and even the rain stopped falling upon them as everything went dark in the skies above.
And then, a star fell from the heavens above.
With the sound of thunder heralding his arrival, Harry shot down from the clouds, glowing like a comet as he pointed his hands at the Hydra. "PULL BACK!" Chiron screamed out at the top of his lungs, his loud voice piercing through the momentary daze that had fallen upon the battlefield, "Pull back now, no questions asked!"
Perhaps it was the fact that they had never heard him raise his voice, or perhaps it was their instincts, but not even the most battle-crazy and hotheaded half-bloods questioned his command. All of them instantly rushed back to the fourth wall, and the Demeter campers swiftly raised a wall of trees and vines, supported by the Hephaestus campers who threw up walls of steel between them and the monsters.
The Hydra roared loudly, its ear-shattering cry a prelude to the massive torrent of flames and boiling water it shot at the quickly approaching form of Harry. He, on the other hand, grinned manically even as the flames, scalding water and steam all washed over his form. As much lightning as he had absorbed in the clouds above, at that moment he was strong enough to withstand everything the Hydra could dish out, and return it back with equal force.
Concentrating his power on the tips of his fingers, he slowed to a stop a couple of hundred meters above the ground, and lightning burned Chiron's vision the next moment. However, even though his vision was nothing but white, the screams and shrieks of the monsters right before they were cut off—along with the continuous crackle of electricity—were enough to paint the picture of what was happening. Even the Hydra was screeching in pain as it was once again fried from inside, however, this time it literally had the power of a storm behind it.
Seeing an opportunity, Harry summoned his xiphos to his hand and teleported right amidst the flailing necks of the Hydra. Pushing all of the power inside him into his blade, he felt the leather burn away into ashes as the sword glowed molten white, electricity arcing off his body and the blade both. Roaring with anger, he settled his feet right on the part from where all the heads sprouted, and swung his blade with all of his might. The Hydra shook its whole body as the silver metal made contact with its first neck, and for a moment, the blade stopped right in its tracks, bouncing off with just a red scratch on the monster's hide. However, the next moment, Harry roared and swung once again…right as one of the Hydra's heads snapped around his stomach.
As the monster began to close its mouth and bite away the left half of his abdomen, his blade too began to cut through the necks—that single swing enough to decapitate all the seven heads in one moment. As his vision began to darken and he fell off the Hydra's back, the last thing he saw was the white spark in the clouds above…along with the disintegrating monster heads falling alongside him.