2002, Kid's Safehhouse, Near Richmond, Virginia, (After Harry rushed his work to finish earlier)

The soup was good, but even better was the knock at the door as soon as the three demigods had finished it.

Harry came part way through the door after being opened by Luke, who looked at Harry's legs and scowled.

"Did you even get caught in any traps? I spent all day setting them out!"

Thalia grinned at Annie. Luke had been very proud of his trap idea, and specifically taught Annie and Thalia the route around them so they wouldn't get caught out. But of course a servant of the gods wouldn't be caught in a demigod trap, especially if Harry was, like Thalia guessed, a minor godling serving Aurora.

"Oh I had to get around one of them, but I repaired it and set it back up again for you, good as new." Thalia turned towards the door, Luke was still blocking it, he was probably annoyed about Harry getting around his 'awesome traps' that he and Annie designed and set up. Thalia knew that they wouldn't keep out that many monsters, her and Luke had to abandon far too many safehouses for her ever to really trust any traps they laid.

She looked closer, and could see Harry whispering something to Luke, who immediately grinned and let him through the door. Thalia was far too familiar with the gleam in his eyes, that was Luke with a plan - and most of his plans ended up with something on fire or somebody chasing them. The son of Hermes immediately took something from Harry and went outside, after glancing over at Thalia who gave him an impatient stare in response. It was only a monster injury, nothing that either of them hadn't shrugged off before, but he was suddenly acting like she was made of glass.

When Harry came up to her and Annie the first thing he did was ask Thalia how her shoulder was doing. Uncomfortable with showing weakness to anyone, especially Annie who was looking at Thalia with concern, and gripping her hand even tighter, Thalia mumbled a response.

Harry sighed.

"Thalia, I need to know if the vials I gave you worked, when we've tried them before on creature wounds, sometimes they don't always work." Annie gasped at this and turned accusingly to Thalia.

"You didn't say you were hurt! Are you OK, d'you need ambrosia? There's some in the kitchen." All this was said without breathing. It would've been funny if Annie didn't look so scared. Thalia didn't get a chance to reply as the seven-year-old dashed off to the kitchen to grab what was carefully rationed ambrosia and nectar supplies (somehow Luke could always dig up something). Despite insisting she was fine, Thalia was forced to eat a square of ambrosia, and take a swig of nectar to prove to Annie she was going to get better. She tried to glare at both Harry and, much more gently, at Annie, but it didn't quite work. Annie ducked away to help Luke set up more traps and plan out tomorrow's breakfast, but Harry just laughed.

"Seriously Thalia, how are you feeling, lightheaded? Urge to vomit?" Harry was looking at her and sounded a little like the doctors of that crappy TV her … that used to be on in the house. She briefly wondered if he was like the minor god of sorta injured people.

"Nah, I'm good, all healed up good as new." and to prove her point, Thalia rolled her shoulder and swung her arm around. It was perfectly fine, if not slightly better - she couldn't even feel the spot that was sore ever since fighting an empousa, before her and Luke met Annie and Harry. The look of pure relief on Harry's face almost made her laugh.

"Oh thank Merlin , I'm glad those potions got you back on your feet, I am not a trained Healer."

Ok there was no way he was a minor god of kinda sick people then. But why did he say Merlin? And were potions what the British called their version of nectar?

"Well, this might help as well." Harry reached into his pocket - Thalia had no idea how it happened but his entire arm went into it.

Thalia's shock must've shown on her face, because Harry laughed again, and pulled out a box that definitely smelled like pizza, and lots of it.

"Really great find, muggle place not too far from here, all sorts of stuff."

Thalia tilted her head, that word again, she had no idea what it meant.

"Don't you mean mortal?"

This time harry looked at her confused.

"Is that what you call muggles over here? I don't think anyone at MACUSA has used that phrase."

Thalia had never heard of MACUSA, that sounded more like a mortal government thing, not a Greek god thing. She decided to start on a safe topic.

"Erm do you know about half-bloods?"

"Of course, I am one."

That threw her off. How could he be a half-blood, he had the powers of a minor god! Unless half-blood meant something different in England. Thalia tried again

"So what do you know about the Greek gods?"

"Greek gods?"

"Yeah, you know, the olympians, brother marrying sister, really tangled family tree, that kinda thing."

"Vaguely." Harry knew the barest bones of Greek mythology - namely that their family tree made the Blacks look progressive, and that Zeus' children were responsible for most of the myths and stories.

"Yeah, erm, if I told you they were kinda real, and the monsters from the myths are real, how would you react." Thalia wasn't usually so passive, but she didn't know if he was a minor god completely separate from her father, or something, she really didn't want to offend him. Maybe he wasn't even sent by an Olympian and that worried her. Plenty of monsters kept themselves separate from the olympians.

"That would." Harry paused, and tilted his head, thinking. "That would kind of make sense. So" he looked at her expectantly, obviously waiting for Thalia to fill in the gaps.

Thalia didn't know how to react. The person that all three of them thought was a minor godling, or a servant of a god at least, just wasn't. That made Thalia question everything, looking over at the three beds and the now fuller cupboards that Harry helped them fill.

How could he do all that and not be linked to the Olympians, or her father?

[some time, and a small explosion later]

Thalia chuckled, but still wouldn't look him in the eye. Luke grinned at her whilst Annie was busy munching on a donut looking between Harry and Thalia.

"Yeah well, we've got Annie, daughter of Athena, Luke, son of Hermes, and me, daughter of Zeus." She looked like she was about to say something else, but stopped herself.

"The fact that the greek pantheon is real, and that greek creatures have been sprouting up all over the US recently-"

"Oh it's not recent, even when I was only a few years old there were monsters, Luke says that the Greek gods have been here since the Revolution."

It took Harry a few seconds to realize what Revolution the girl was talking about - he vaguely recalled there was a war between Muggle Britain and Muggle America at some point in the 1800s, so that was probably it. His thoughts on half-remembered wars between Britain and America ground to a halt. He then asked her what he should've probably checked first before assuming they had no-one.

"So why don't your godly parents help you out more, aren't they, well, gods?" Harry was incredibly confused by this. It was a parent's job to stand by and help their children, if they couldn't even do that then they weren't worth the title.

"Yeah, well with the whole god-thing, they have their attention in a lot of places at once, some gods have loads of kids running around, and most of them ignore us. Like we're annoying insects." Luke definitely sounded bitter from experience rather than plain old annoyance, that instantly cooled Harry off on the whole idea of gods - they sounded like arseholes.

"So is there any way of getting their attention. Surely they would care more if they knew about you?" As much as he disliked it, Harry knew that people cared about things they knew about, there was a quote about statistics that Hermione told him once, but he couldn't remember exactly what it was.

"Oh yeah, well they usually kinda pay attention if you use their names."

"As in saying their names gets their attention, no matter how loud or where you are?" Harry wanted to check this. There were gods that would pay attention

"Well yeah, but it doesn't always work, sometimes they're just busy, and to really get their attention with using their names you gotta curse in their name, or swear in their name, and -" Thalia broke off here, but Harry could fill in the rest.

"But getting their attention that way would annoy them?" He finished gently.

"Yeah."

It was only through having gone through a similar experience before, but Harry was very very tempted to list of the worst curses he knew (and he was friends with Ron Weasley, he knew a lot of curses) with increasingly creative ways to use various greek god names in them. But by the sounds of it, that would just end up hurting the demigods , now that was something he had to get his head around. He had no idea what they were like (arseholes, his brain helpfully supplied) nor what they would do to someone like him, or their own kids.

Harry briefly thought back to the Blacks, where their bloodline made them arrogant to the point of stupidity, and the blackened spots on the tapestry at Grimmauld.

A vague plan was forming in his head, but he decided to leave that until he could get a better idea of what the kids-demigods were facing.

"So, your erm, godly parents, just left you in the muggle"

"Mortal."

"Yeah, mortal world, and that's it?"

Here Thalia shifted uncomfortably.

"Well, yeah, usually it is, but he did come back a few years ago, he was different, but it was alright I guess. Luke's dad visited him and his mom more often, but his mom is, well, being with a god isn't exactly good for mortals I guess. Annie's mom just sorta left her with her dad and they've never actually seen each other since."

Harry counted in his head, slowly. He mentally thanked Seamus for that calming tactic.

They weren't orphans, but an abandoned parent may have been just the same as a dead parent, if not worse. He wanted to ask questions about their non-godly parents, but that was probably too personal, so he just settled with.

"Yeah I can imagine. I know of something similar, where a certain type of wizard, they call themselves pure-bloods, would leave a child they had with a muggle or even a half-blood." At Thalia's odd look, her rushed to explain, "So pure bloods are wizards that can trace a pure wizard ancestry back a few generations, what we call muggles, or I guess you would call mortals, sometimes marry and have kids with purebloods, then the kids are what is known as half-bloods. Make sense?" He waited for Thalia's furrowed brow to smooth out, and she jumped up saying

"Oh yeah I get it, so like if a demigod married another demigod, that'd be like a pureblood, kinda, but if a demigod married a mortal, that'd be a half blood?"

"Sort of yes."

"Demigods are sometimes known as half-bloods, so I guess that makes it more confusing."

Harry shook his head, he didn't think of it like that. That was probably the root of all this confusion in the first place. Couldn't they have come up with a more original phrase?

"Yeah I guess."

A/N:

So the time-skip (small explosion) is my cop-out way of avoiding the whole magic/greek god conversation (it was giving me serious problems, I might add it in later as a separate work in the series when I can write something decent), but there will be one (or more) in the future involving more wizards/gods and maybe demigods as Harry tries to explain his way through this mess

Let me know what you think, love it? hate it? confused?