Chapter 18, 2008, Montauk Coffee Shop, Montauk, New York (Thalia is weirdly nervous about this, like worse than when she was introduced to camp)

Thalia was nervous. Well no, that wasn't quite right. First off she was hungry (and ordered another brownie to stave that feeling off), but secondly she was, well apprehensive was probably the best word.

It had been over five years since she had last seen Harry. She was so scared that he may have forgotten her that she held off calling him for days, until that stupid nightmare scared her.

She didn't know if she should blame Kronos or her brain making up the worst things. She probably needed to talk to Mr. D, brain stuff and madness was his kinda thing.

Focus back onto the problem, she scolded herself.

Harry. And his wife and kids (and who would've guessed that, She thought) were gonna come into the little Montauk coffee shop anytime now. And Thalia already had drunk three cups of coffee and ate four brownies, just to give her something to do.

She was kinda glad though that she was actually eating. So many times in camp, even in the middle of activities, she would just kinda shut down. She heard the Aphrodite cabin talking about her becoming 'tree-like. Again' which just annoyed her at first. But when that rumour spread around camp, she couldn't help but think. Was all her pauses, and being slow and weird with weapons that she knew how to use, her body still thinking it was a tree? Well trees didn't eat brownies, so she wasn't being tree-like here.

The daughter of Zeus was drawn out of her thoughts on trees, particularly if trees liked coffee, when the little bell over the coffee shop door dinged.

Her stomach grumbled but that didn't matter. When she looked up, she saw Harry, and his family, entering the little shop she told them to meet her at.

"Harry!" The black haired girl waved obviously touristy group over as soon as they came into sight.

"Thalia." Harry smiled back, "Good to see you again, you're looking … well."

It was a few seconds of chaos as the adults tried to shuffle around chairs and insisted on ordering food and drink for everyone else. Which allowed Thalia time to think of a response that wasn't sarcastic (like she would give Luke) or plain reassuring (like she would give Annabeth).

Finally when everyone was settled down and introductions were made

"Hi, me Jamie"' The baby declared to the startled teenager. He then immediately ignored the demigod as he found something more worth his time in the shining bracelets and bangles that adorned Thalia's wrists, desperately trying to reach out and grab one. It soon turned into a game, James reaching out to try and grab a flailing chain, and Thalia would occasionally jingle it away, but always drape her arm on the chair so that Jamie had a chance of grabbing one of the chains. Whilst this 'game' was going on, Harry and Ginny just looked on with fond smiles.

"James? Aww he is so cute." Thalia embarrassingly gushed at the baby, who stared up just as fascinated by her. Thank the gods no camper was nearby to see that. She thought.

When the baby got bored of the game and turned to the other kid (with actual dyed hair, she was super jealous of that!), Thalia cleared her throat and finally got around to answering Harry's unasked question.

"Yeah, erm well…" this was actually hard. Where do you begin with telling people about gods and battles and turning into a tree? Probably with a warning, she guessed. But Thalia was never good with warnings, and ploughed straight on in a massive braindump of information.

"...and then all I knew was I was lying on the hill wearing a weird blanket, and this kid was staring up at me. He's called Percy, he's some new bigshot at the camp now." Thalia finished her, rather abridged, story, looking at the two adults nervously. The other boy was playing with the baby James, Thalia couldn't remember his name, and the adults were both part way through their own food. Harry had stopped eating when Thalia mentioned being turned into a tree.

"Well." Harry finally said looking at her. "I'm glad you're back, and so sorry that I couldn't be there to help-" Thalia interrupted him with a shake of her head.

"Don't worry Harry, please. It's all anyone has ever said to me over the past week that they were sorry. Everyone's so much older Annie's grown up and Luke… " Thalia trailed off. Despite what Annabeth had told her, she wouldn't believe Luke would hurt camp. Rebel against the gods? Sure, in fact Thalia would probably join him there. But attacking kids? Making an alliance with the actual monsters that hunted them? No way. How could he even forget about the promise they made?

Ginny interrupted her spiralling thought process.

"You haven't mentioned Luke at all, Thalia, did he…" She trailed off, leaving Thalia to fill in the blank.

"Oh he didn't die." at this, the other kid's head flicked around to stare at her. Oh right, Ginny probably didn't want to get a 7 year old involved in a conversation about death, like a good parent.

Thalia had to really try to stop herself disliking the kid, even though he had really cool dye in his hair. It wasn't his fault that he had both loving parents that were involved with all the godly stuff and could still be decent people underneath it all, if the gentle way Ginny was wiping up the baby's latest messy drink was any indication. Thalia knew if it was her mom then it would be done with a lot more complaining and force - she made Jason cry so much whenever she cleaned him-

Yep, not going there. Nope never again. She forced those memories out of her head and decided that being weirdly silent for a few seconds was tree-like. Again. She sighed and forced herself to speak.

"Luke survived, but he's kinda joined the other side, fighting against camp. I kinda see where he's coming from. Our parents are assholes and-" Suddenly the other kid's giggling stopped her. Thalia cursed herself again, she'd just sworn in front of Harry's kid. She was so godamn stupid sometimes.

"Hey, Thalia." Harry's voice got her attention, "Don't worry. It's not the first time Teddy's heard someone being called an arsehole, they're just easily amused." The older wizard finished his sentence with a playful prod in Teddy's side, which just set the seven year old giggling some more.

Teddy, their oldest kid was called Teddy. Right. Thalia promised herself that she would remember that. Teddy was now really laughing, and had started the baby laughing as well, but nobody else in the coffee shop even so much as glanced at them. That was definitely weird, Thalia remembered that with Jason, or even with Annie, some people, mostly old ladies, couldn't help themselves when it came to 'cute' kids and babies making noise, that they had to come over and compliment or talk to them, or at least look at them. But here, nothing.

The confusion must have shown on her face, since Ginny smirked at said.

"It's a little privacy charm, we didn't want to be overheard, and these two." She gestured to both giggling kids that Harry was now making faces at. "Make enough noise to wake the dead."

Thalia and Ginny shared a look. She could remember Jason, and even Annie when they'd first met, and how loud they both were.

"So Thalia, your adventures with Luke and Annabeth sounded, well, exciting."

Thalia knew Ginny was just doing the parent thing and trying to get her to open up, she did skirt over a lot of the detail, and there was a reason for that.

But reason or not, there was just something about Ginny that made her want to tell somebody the full story.

"Ok, well, it wasn't just all three of us. I ran away from home…"

…

It must have been getting late, Thalia didn't care. She was enjoying telling someone, who actually would care, about her and Luke and their adventures. It was nice as well to hear about a magical witch's life. Ginny told her stories about the Harpies (a Quidditch team, like soccer but flying, which Thalia didn't think sounded that fun), Harry told her more about Hogwarts, and why he was looking for those weird Assyrian curses. (When Thalia mentioned this, Ginny looked confused and Harry just blinked. Right, mortals must have called them something different, but Chiron definitely did tell her that cuneiform was used by Assyrians. Thalia couldn't get any more out of him than that, but she knew it did worry the centaur, for some reason)

Finally noticing the time when one of the mortal's accidentally bumped into their table - they had been talking for actual hours at this point, and Thalia noticed that the guy behind the counter was shooing people away.

"Err, I think this place is closing."

Ginny elbowed Harry, who stood up and walked over to the cashier. Thalia wasn't too sure what happened exactly, but Harry came back with a bit of paper.

"Well this place is closing, it's taking a delivery right now, but it should be open tomorrow, as well. Thalia do you need to get back to camp now or would you like to explore New York with us?"

"Oh, umm, Chiron, the activities tutor, is kinda strict about not being out of camp in the evening"

"Didja sneak away to come here?" Teddy asked, and Thalia briefly pegged him as a would-be Hermes kid.

"No, I was given permission for today. But tomorrow, I think they - Chiron and Mr D, our camp director, wanted to meet with you. I think they make exceptions for some things and maybe…" Thalia didn't want to finish that sentence. Of course there was part of her that liked the safety of camp, but after years of travelling around America, it did feel incredibly strange to be so rooted in one place.

Ginny nodded and said.

"Of course we can meet up and talk to them. There are a few things I'd like to clear up myself."

For some reason Thalia got the feeling that it wasn't going to be like any normal PTA meeting. She knew that even thinking of tangling with actual gods would always end badly.

But part of her couldn't wait for it.

AN: Yes Thalia is calling Teddy a 'he' because she doesn't know about him being metamorph or non-binary (and this is 2008/she 'died' in 2002/grew up in the 90s, where pronouns and LGBTQ+ were really not a thing like they are now), nothing malicious but it is there

Thalia is also getting attached to James (who, at 2 years old, is the same age as Jason was when he 'died')
And yes, Chiron and Mr D. do know about 'Harry' looking for cuneiform/Assyriology-related objects in the USA after Thalia told both of them what happened (and also explained her cool coat - more on that later!) and now both of them are very very worried about what this could mean

You didn't think that the Greek/Roman/Norse/Egyptians were the only pantheons that were out there did you?