Welcome to another chapter of The Philosophy of Fear, where we return to seeing what Harry is up to.
On with the show.
Harry Potter, Los Angeles, July 22nd 1996.
Harry stands with Artemis at Glendale Peak in Griffith Park that overlooks the city of Los Angeles. Harry disliked the city immediately, it looked blank and gray without any green in it. Seeming small and cramped with people stacking on top of people, the smell of the wind caused his nose to wrinkle in disgust at the city. As much as he disliked the thought of heading into Los Angeles by the smell alone, he knew he had to do it, to satiate his own curiosity.
"Are you sure about this?" Artemis asks at his side as she turns and looks to Harry with a frown on her lips. "You don't have to, you know. I can always drop you off at Wolf House for a bit while I collect the Hunt, I think you'd enjoy Lupa and her pups," she says with a tilt of her head. Artemis had known Lupa since the founding of Rome and many of her children have come to join her hunt as hounds.
Harry sighs in aggravation, his shoulders slumping a bit. After Artemis teleported herself, Caíque, Caíque cat, and Harry out of Paititi(much to the absolute bafflement of Caíque) and back to the base camp they had stayed at the night before. Artemis had manipulated Caíque's memory into thinking they were just lost hikers he had come across and decided to help. Harry had conveniently "forgotten" to mention just what Caíque was doing in Paititi and let the Grave-robber get away with his ill-gotten gains. After Caíque led them back to Urqupa Llantuynin, he said his goodbyes to the two of them before vanishing, which Harry and Artemis did shortly after, Artemis mumbling about hussies and him the entire time. After that they went to the Hunters camp to pack it up before Artemis sent it to New Rome with the rest of the Hunters. Then Artemis fulfilled her kinda promise as he and Artemis spent a night tracking down the Nazi Vampires in South America, which was oddly bonding for the two of them.
It was then that Harry brought up his selfish request, if Artemis was going to New Rome then Harry wanted to be dropped off to meet someone since Artemis had informed him of Zeus' "orders". She wasn't happy with it, but she had agreed on the grounds of making up to him for the punch back in the tent. Though, after what he had seen in Paititi -Hands and claws grabbing him, whispers crying for mercy "Kill us! End us! Please"- Harry could understand why she had done it.
Harry shakes his head. "No, this is something- something I need to do. Other than The Morrígan and Brigid, she's the only other goddess I know of with the same eyes as…" Harry says, trailing off as the image of Didi smiling at him flashes through his mind. He hadn't told Artemis the full story, just the basics of what happened at Mag Turied, about how he was Mantled by something divine that used him like a puppet. Harry could feel Artemis' eyes on him for a long moment before she sighs as well.
"Fine," she says, looking back over the city once more. "Do you at least remember where the MCUSA offices are here?" Artemis asks flatly while turning back to Harry after a moment.
"West first Street and North Main Street, head inside and take the first left before entering the out of order bathroom. Second stall and tap the cracked tile with my wand three times," Harry says as he rolls his eyes and turns to look at his mom. "Happy?" He asks snarkelly to her but all Artemis does is make a quick humming sound of acceptance. "You act like you can't leave me alone for more then a few hours without something blowing up, don't you trust me to at least avoid trouble?" Harry asks, sounding hurt and frowning at his divine mother.
"No," Artemis says deadpanned, her lips twitching a bit as if she wanted to smile at something.
Harry sighs again. "Well, at least you're honest about it," he mutters to himself before turning back to the city of angels.
Los Angeles, DOA studio's, Penthouse.
A woman stood on a balcony overlooking the downtown skyline of Los Angeles. She had an innocent beauty to her with soft brown eyes and tanned skin, her black hair whipping in the wind as she hummed under her breath a song from decades ago. She held a spray bottle in one hand and was taking her time watering the myriad of plants and flowers. Some of the flowers anyone could find in the penthouse, from bluebonnets to lilies, belladonna, and nightshade, it was as if spring visited the penthouse and was in full bloom.
The woman sighs contently before running her hands through her hair. The roots of which were just now turning white in anticipation of the coming winter when her descent would begin again. But the woman wasn't worried about it. She had done it a thousand times before, and she would do it a thousand times again to retake the throne as her other self. She turns with a smile and opens the door to the large luxury penthouse that her husband had set up for her use when the spring and summer months pulled her from his side. She would spend her time between here and her mother's temple on Olympus.
She steps into the kitchen just to hear the blasting of The Script of My Requiem by Blind Guardian from the living room and the woman smiles as she hears the vocals being sung along in perfect sync and harmony by her daughter. Whoever thought the wails of the ghosts and of the dead would sound bad had never heard her daughter Melinoë sing, honestly, the girl had the voice of an angel when she put her heart into it.
But the woman takes her time bobbing her head to her daughter singing as she goes from room to room with her spray bottle making sure every plant was watered and every one had enough sunlight. As she returns to the living room, she watches her daughter dance on the couch using the tv remote as a microphone as she sings. The woman smiles before walking over to the radio and turning the volume all the way down, causing Melinoë to turn to her.
"Hey!" Melinoë snaps at the woman while turning to look at her, her two-tone hair of half black and half white swinging as she does, "What gives? I was just getting into the album," she says hoping off the couch.
"Don't worry dear, I don't plan on asking you to stop, I just want to know if you are staying for dinner and, if so, what do you want to eat?" the woman asks with a motherly smile to the other girl in the room dressed like a punk-rock goth princess.
"Oh, is dad gonna show up?" Melinoë asks while perking up a bit, cocking her hip as she looks at the woman in bell-bottom jeans and a black shirt with a large skull logo.
The woman sighs, "You know how busy he gets in the summer, so I'm not-" the woman begins to explain but was cut off by an unexpected sound, the sound of knocking.
Knock, Knock, Knock!
Both of the women turn to look at the front door, confusion etched deeply on their faces before turning back to one another, "Do you feel anyone?" The woman asks, and Melinoë shakes her head slowly.
"No," Melinoë says, turning to look back at the door, "How did anyone get up here without being stopped? I have my ghosts patrolling the halls, they should have warned us if they saw anyone," she says with a frown, unsure or unbelieving of how her ghost could have missed someone.
Knock, Knock, Knock!
Both women frown before the older of the two walk to the door. There were very few beings that knew she was here, and even fewer who could even want anything from her. If it was her husband using his helm, then he would have just let himself in instead of knocking. So when she opened the door to find no one there, the woman was even more confused. She pokes her head out and looks down the hall to see no one, she was about to close the door when she jumped as a voice spoke from nowhere.
"Are you Kore?" the disembodied voice of a young man asks.
The woman takes a step back, her eyes wide because once again, she couldn't feel anyone.
"Show yourself, Now!" She orders, her earthen brown eyes turning cold as she glares at the empty space. Preparing to summon forth her domain of destruction if need be. It wasn't as powerful as with her other self but it would be enough to rip most mortal things apart.
"Oh, right! The cloak, sorry," the voice says as it seemed to Kore that reality shifts before her, parting to reveal a human arm to pull back a hood of nothing to reveal the face of a young man with wild black hair and haunted emerald eyes with a lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead. From the slitted pupils alone the woman had a good idea who the boy was, but beyond the Hunt that the woman was sure was running through him, his eyes held more than words could do justice. The bags under them spoke of sleepless nights and the pain of loss shown from deep within his slitted eyes. The boy in front of her was scarred, inside and out, and Death-Touched on top of whatever horrors and trauma he had endured in his life.
"Sorry about, ah, dropping by without notice," the boy says with a grimace, "Rather rude I know it's just, ah, I-I need to, ah, talk to you, if you're Kore, about, well…you?" the boy explains, sounding confused himself, and what was even more infuriating is that she still couldn't tell who he was.
"However you're doing that," The woman says with a gesture to the floating head trick the boy was doing, "Stop it," she says in a tone that brokered no argument.
To the woman's surprise, the boy just blinks before his arms appear once more to undo the strap that held whatever he was wearing around him. He shrugs off…whatever it was before looking back at the woman as a flood of information hits her. She was correct in her guess, the boy in front of her was indeed the Son of Artemis, Harry Potter. If it wasn't for her domains telling her that, she would have known by the jacket he wore, a dark steel gray one. She stands there, her fingers tapping the door as the boy shuffles awkwardly in front of her, debating on what to do. Not many half-bloods sought her out either in the summer or the winter months, most of them thought her either irrelevant or far too scary to look for, but this boy had approached her without fear.
"I am the Kore, Harry Potter," Kore tells the young boy with narrowed eyes, "What questions do you have for me?" she asks as she hears Melinoë behind her asking who it was. Kore steps to the side and closes the door a bit to block the view of who was at the door, knowing her daughter would try to jump the boy's bones as soon as she saw him. With Melinoë's particular love for all things haunted and nightmare blessed, Harry would be like Christmas morning and her birthday all rolled into one for her.
"Well, they're not about you, um, I think?" Harry says, shuffling in place a bit, "Artemis explained it but it was kinda hard to follow, but you're like two people in one, right?" he asks, looking at Kore confused.
Kore nods slowly, "An oversimplification, but yes, essentially," she says with a slow nod of her head.
"Mom, come on, who is it?" Melinoë whispers as she pokes Kore in the side, but the woman doesn't budge.
"My questions are about the other, ah, you," He says, frowning, "Zoë, Artemis' Lieutenant, met her once a long time ago, and well, I'm kinda looking for someone or something like her- er, you?" he asks, sounding unsure of himself, "I don't even know if it's a god or something like one really," he says with a sigh as drags his hand through his already messy hair.
"Well, Persephone only comes out in the winter months, so I don't know if I could help you with that," Kore says before slapping the hand of her daughter away before shooting her a glare for trying to poke her again and turning back to the boy.
"That's fine, I just,..." Harry says with a sigh and pressed lips, "I just need to know about beings with black eyes, and I know she has them," he says while looking at Kore in her widening brown eyes.
"Fine!" Melinoë snaps, before she draws on the domain of ghosts and steps through the door before Kore could stop her. The intangible white form of Melinoë stops as she sees Harry, her face lighting up like a thousand-watt bulb, "Well, heeello~ Pretty Boy," she says as the ghostly form flickers and becomes solid once more as she looks at the boy while licking her top lip, "What brings a cursed little cutie like you to my neck of the woods, hmm?" the princess of ghost says with a smirk as she advances on the rapidly retreating boy. Her {Fathomless Black Eyes} twinkling with glee as she eyes the boy up and down hungrily. As Melinoë steps closer to the boy, she is suddenly stopped and yanked back by the collar of her Megadeth shirt.
"No, down Melinoë!" Kore snaps at her daughter as she drags her back with a frown.
"But look at him!"
"Melinoë, I said no!"
"But-"
"No! I swear I will use the squirt bottle!"
Melinoë humphs as she crosses her arms and becomes decidingly grumpy at Kore's promise before the ghost-like girl is shoved back into the penthouse. Harry had watched the scene play out between mother and daughter with a look halfway between bewilderment and amusement, looking unsure whether he should laugh at the sight or run from Melinoë.
"I am so sorry about her," Kore says, as she turns back to look at Harry, pressing her hand to her face in embarrassment at her daughter's actions. "I swear, that girl has no self control in the summer," she mutters with an aggravated sigh while dropping her hand from her face and giving Harry a rather tight smile.
"Um- er, r-right," Harry says, his eyes wide and his back against the wall even after Kore had dragged her daughter back into the penthouse. The boy shakes his head back and forth quickly as if to banish a bad memory from his mind. "Is she gonna…" he asks, trailing off as if he was unsure of what he was going to ask.
"She'll behave," Kore says, putting emphasis on the second word as she turns and slightly glares at her daughter. Melinoë sticks out her tongue at her mother before walking back into the living room and turning off the radio before marching over to the couch and grabbing a magazine off the coffee table and plopping down on it. Kore rolls her eyes at Melinoë's antics before turning back to Harry with an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry about her, she's a bit of a brat," she says with a sigh.
"Ah- yeah," Harry says quietly before once more running his free hand through his messy hair and scratching the back of his head. An awkward silence falls over the hall as Kore looks at Harry inquisitively, ignoring Melinoë's whispers to invite the poor boy in, while Harry looks everywhere but at Kore.
"Tea?" Kore asks, raising her brow at Harry.
"Pardon?" He asks back, sounding confused.
"Tea, Harry, I'm inviting you in for tea. You're British judging by the accents, and as far as I remember tea drinking is the national pastime in England, yes?" Kore asks with a bit of a smile as she steps back, holding the door open for him.
"Oh, ah, Yeah, sure," Harry says with a nod of his head before walking into the penthouse, thanking Kore as he walks in. His eyes drift over the sensory overload of plants all across the penthouse before his eyes finally land on Melinoë. Her face was hidden behind a Rolling Stones Magazine pretending she wasn't eyeing the boy up and down before he looked over at her. The boy was nervous, anyone with a set of eyes could tell as he fidgeted and shuffled his feet, his eyes darting around the room looking for every exit and entrance into the room.
"Well, come on then. Take a seat," Kore offers, pulling out a seat at the table that pointed his back towards Melinoë. But to her surprise, Harry walks over to the opposite side of the table and pulls out the seat just so he could keep them both in his field of view. Kore just smiles as the boy taps his foot, unable to keep still in what felt like a tense atmosphere to him. She busy's herself with preparing the tea as her daughter shamelessly eye fucks the child of Artemis every time he looks away from her. Kore rolls her eyes as she sets out a plate of cookies, sugar, cream, and honey before prepping the teapot with her own homemade blend. But after a few more minutes of the tense atmosphere, Kore is finally able to sit down with the tea and three mugs, just in case Melinoë decides to join them.
Kore fills hers and Harry's cups with tea and the boy politely waits until she is done before fixing his own to his liking. Kore smiles at the boy before taking a sip from her mug, the floral and tart taste on her tongue makes her sigh.
"So, you wanted to ask me a few questions about my other half?" Kore asks as the boy adds a splash of cream to his tea before nodding at her words as he reaches for the sugar. "Oh, try the honey! I collected it myself," she says with a bright and proud smile, causing Harry to pause to look at her. He blinks twice before reaching for the small bowl filled with honey and using the small spoon to add it to his tea. "Anyway, I was thinking if you wanted to ask me a few questions, I could ask you some as well, if that's alright?" She asks, only to watch the boy shrug before bringing his mug to his lips.
Kore smiles a bit as the boy takes his first sip and almost spits it out. She's out right giggling at how big his eyes get, it was almost comical to her as he finally swallows.
"Bloody 'ell," Harry mutters, his accent thicker than normal as he looks into his mug with wide eyes before looking back at Kore. "That's one hell of a cuppa," he says with a soft smile before taking another drink from his mug as Kore claps her hands together with infectious joy.
"It's my own personal blend! I've been working on it for years," Kore says before taking a sip of her own tea and letting out a pleased hum.
"It's good," Harry says with a sad smile before placing his mug now. "Been a while since I had a good cuppa, to…" the sad smiles spread to his eyes as he trails off, horror and terror that had left their marks on the boy's mind return in full force in his emerald eyes. Kore frowns as she looks at the boy in front of her, he looked as if he was close to crying but didn't have any tears left to shed. Her lips pressed together into a thin line as her heart broke for the boy sitting in front of her.
Riiiiiiiip!
The sound of a magazine ripping in two made both Harry and Kore jump as they both turned to look at Melinoë. She now had a new magazine in her hand, an older copy of Rolling Stone, and a complete red face with a look of frustration in her eyes. Kore just chuckles and shakes her head as she looks back at Harry.
"Don't mind her, she's a weirdo," Kore says with a smirk that she hides behind her mug.
"Hey!" Melinoë snaps from the living room, looking at her (kinda) mother with a mock glare. "I am not a weirdo," she says with a bit of heat to her voice as she frowns. "I am the weirdo, thank you very much," she says with a proud grin before going back to her magazine that she was pretending to read as Kore rolls her eyes.
"Anyway, we have tea, you have questions, I may have answers," Kore says as she looks at Harry, she watches his lips twitch a bit as her mood was almost always infectious.
"Right, I guess my first question would be…" Harry sighs out before taking another sip of his tea, he places his mug down before looking across the table and right into Kore's eyes. "What do the black eyes mean? I've noticed a few gods share eyes but I was hoping if you could explain why," he asks, a frown slipping onto his face.
"The boy doesn't ask easy questions, does he?" Kore thinks to herself as she takes a sip of her tea. "An interesting question," she states as she places down her mug and places her hands on her lap. "I doubt many demigods would realize that little detail unless they met multiple gods from different pantheons like you have. Possibly chalking it up to us being related or something like that," she says, leaning back in her chair with a slight frown on her face. "We are…toeing a line here into things that I can't talk about. But you seem like a smart kid, so how about I nudge your understanding in the right direction?" She asks.
Harry frowns deepens as he mouths the word "can't" as his eyes narrow a bit. "Is this can't anything like explaining the meaning of fate to a mortal?" He asks, but Kore doesn't say anything nor does she move, which gives Harry the answer anyway so he nods to her once.
"Do you like poetry, Harry?" Kore asks before picking up her mug of tea once more.
"Not a real big fan if I'm honest," Harry says with a shrug before taking another sip of his tea.
"Well, there is a rather old saying. The eyes are the window to the soul, and for us divine beings, it's a bit more true than it is to mortals," Kore says with a sharp grin as she takes a sip of her tea. She watches as the boy in front of her looks down to his own tea, his eyes narrowed in thought. She could practically hear the gears turning and was slightly surprised that steam wasn't shooting out of his ears at the moment.
"Windows to the soul," Harry mutters to himself before taking another sip of his tea. "It's not the same soul, it can't be. Then it would be just the same gods running around, I know they mirror what mortals believe about them but not completely different personalities and looks," he says before putting down his mug and leaning back. Kore watches as Harry's head tilts back with his eyes closed before letting a long and low sigh. His hand comes up to pinch the bridge of his nose as he talks to himself saying "Windows to the soul" over and over again.
After maybe a minute, he stops, his hand pulling away from his face. "Not to the soul," escapes him like a whisper before he shots forward in the chair. "Gods don't have souls, do they?" He asks and Kore smiles brightly at the boy in front of her. Harry's eyes go wide before he jumps from his chair and begins to pace in the kitchen. "Okay, so a god is just a mass of power wrapped in belief and if they don't have a soul the windows don't show it but the power, like…" he freezes in the middle of his pacing before turning back to Kore who was still smiling at him.
"The domains, the eyes are from the domains. Like the Hunt, it explains why it has some many fucking eyes, and why mum, Nuadha, and Cernunnos all have the same eyes! Because the domain of power they're connected to!" Harry says with wide eyes and a bright smile as Kore immediately starts clapping for the bright boy who figured it out, even Melinoë looked impressed from her spot on the couch.
"Very good!" Kore cheers for Harry as she claps for the boy. "You catch on pretty quick. So, if you know what their eyes are, care to take a guess of what black eyes mean?" she asks with a raised brow and a smile as she picks up her mug for another sip.
"Death, black eyes mean they're gods of death," Harry says quietly as he stops pacing. "The Morrígan has them, Brigid has them, and the other you has them-" he says before turning back to Kore. "-and you're all gods of death," he states and all Kore does is nods her head and takes another sip of her tea.
Harry frowns before retaking his seat and picking up his mug and drains it. "So, she's a god of death, that certainly narrows things down," he says as he reaches for the teapot to pour himself another cup and fix it how he likes. "My next question is if you know another Goddess of Death that goes by the name of Didi?" He asks, looking back at Kore with hope in his eyes.
But sadly, Kore had to destroy that hope with one sad smile. "I'm sorry, but no. There is no God or goddess of death by that name," she admits and watches as the boy sinks back into his seat at the kitchen table.
"Fuck," the boy mutters before dropping his head into his hands, running them through his hair as he squeezes his eyes shut. The sound of crumpling paper causes Kore to turn around in her seat to look at her daughter. Melinoë was all but eye fucking the boy while drooling, the Rolling Stones Magazine was crumpled in her hands as she was quiet literally shaking with anticipation. Melinoë looks to be fighting herself to remain still and not jump the boy where he sat, Melinoë was an oddity among the gods of Olympus. She wasn't fed off of worship of mortals or the power of the Flame of the West, but their terror.
It was the reason why she was locked in her cave for so long, as she would leave the underworld at night to haunt the living with ghosts and nightmares. Of the people those lost, the regrets they have, and the trauma inflicted on them was something that the Princess of Ghost found irresistible to feed upon. Over the centuries they had let Melinoë out of her cave, or as she liked to say "ungrounded her", every few centuries after she was locked in the cave. she would swear on the River Stixs that she would behave. She never did of course, not for long at least, Melinoë would always find a mortal that reeked too much of her favorite flavors of terror for her to ignore and much like any junkie, after that first taste in so long, she would go on a binge. Then her and Hades would lock her back in the cave to start the process all over again.
But thankfully, in the modern age, Melinoë had far more humane ways of feeding herself. Mostly hanging around in therapist offices, graveyards, or courthouse to passively feed herself on those regrets and terrors. That, and her favorite holiday, Halloween all but lasting a month to go out of her way to terrorize people for the enjoyment of all.
"This is going to be a problem later, isn't it?" Kore thinks to herself before turning back to Harry with a coy smile as the boy finally looks up to her. "I'm sorry that I couldn't be more of a help, Harry," she says with a sad smile as the boy just shrugs.
"It's fine I guess," Harry says as he folds his hands over one another and rests his elbows on the table. Kore almost snaps at him about bad manners, but it wasn't her kid so it wasn't her problem and takes a sip of her tea instead. "I'm probably being stupid about the name, it's a nickname or a cover most likely," he says with a glare sent at the wall.
"What did she do?" Melinoë asks from her place on the couch trying to sound curious but failing to Kore's ears, her daughter sounded almost…needy. But as Harry looks over at her with his angry look, Kore couldn't help but turn to look at her daughter blushing to her roots. "The- the Didi Chick- goddess- whatever, I mean," she says as she brushes her hair behind her head and fidgets on the couch. Harry just glares at her for a moment before turning back to Kore to see the goddess roll her eyes as she sips her tea.
Kore puts her mug down before letting a smile take over her face. "So, if that's all you had to ask, I'd like a few of my own questions answered now," she says, her smile never leaving her face as she watches Harry shrug and could practically feel Melinoë sulk as the boy ignored her. "The thing you were doing when you got here, where you were invisible, how did you do that?" She asks, the curiosity burning in her bones. To her knowledge there was only one thing that could help someone hide from other gods, which was her husband's Helm of Darkness. But even that couldn't do what the boy had pulled off.
"Oh, ah- that would be my cloak," Harry says as he reaches down and pulls something off of his lap to hold it to Kore. But still, Kore could neither see or feel anything, even now with Harry just holding it, it felt as if the boy had vanished from her senses as the "cloak" just covered his hand.
Kore eyes the boy up and down for a moment before holding out her hand. "May I?" She asks politely. Harry frowns for a moment before shrugging and handing it, whatever it was, over to her. She reaches over the table and touches the nothing that the boy handed her and it felt like she had plunged her hand into an ice bath. She takes it into her hand and slowly brings it to her, it feels almost like silk but somehow more fluid. She unbunches the nothing and runs her hands across it, finding the sides and feeling around them. Harry wasn't lying, it was the shape and size of a cloak; it even had a hood.
"It's called The Invisibility Cloak," Harry tells Kore, watching her carefully.
But that wasn't correct, any god could see through some cheap Invisibility spell, it was why Hades' helm focused more on using and moving through shadows. The cloak she held in her hands was more than just mere invisibility, it was like a thin film of void or nothingness given form that could be worn erasing whatever was underneath it from existence. Kore tries to probe deeper, to work her power in between the fabrics that composed the cloak but her power doesn't even register it was there even though she was holding it.
It was nothing, a cold void of endless nothingness.
"Where- where did you get this from?" Kore asks in shock, her voice breaking as her divine mind refuses to comprehend what she was holding. "Do you even know what this is?" She asks a follow up question, because she certainly didn't.
Harry scratches his creek as he looks from Kore to across the room to Melinoë. "Well, it's kinda a family heirloom. It belonged to my dad before getting pasted on to me when I was eleven," he says with a shrug before looking back at his mug. "And I know that it's THE invisibility cloak, the one that all others are based off of and that it was created by…an ancestor of mine," he informs Kore as he avoids her eyes.
"He's hiding something," Kore thinks to herself before looking back at the cloak of nothing, her eyes narrowing at what she was holding. "A mortal created this?" She says with a frown. "No, that isn't possible, this thing is perfect," she mutters to herself.
"What do you mean?" Harry asked, looking up to the Kore.
"I mean this thing is flawless, and as a general rule of the world, humanity can not achieve perfection in any way; only the divine can. But this thing is…" Kore explains shaking her head, trailing off in her disbelief of the cloak. The cloak itself went beyond perfect, it reached deep within the realm of the divine and pulled something unheard to the forefront of reality. She truly had no words to describe it or even explained how it was even possible for a god to create it. "Do you know who made it? Which mortal?" She asks, wanting- no, needing to know.
Harry is quiet for a moment before taking a deep breath and looking Kore in the eyes from across the table.
"His name was Ignotus," Harry says, swallowing the lump in his throat. "Ignotus Peverell," he says softly just as Kore blinks.
Kore was falling, through shadow and snow, ice crawling across her limbs as white hot rage shoots up her spine. Ephemeral moments that had lasted years in the past where she had turned over every rock and limb, every house and haunt, every brick and stone. She had torn through the Circles and even Hogwarts to find him! But he had got away, somehow, some way, he had slipped through her fingers even when she held his brothers in strangle holds. He had slipped away from her, life and even soul, for even now she didn't have Ignotus' so-
Kore blinks again. She was now on her feet, the cloak of nothing in a death grip as she felt the glare on her face as if it was carved from ice. As the glare slowly thaws from her face, her eyes slowly take in the penthouse. The table before her was reduced to splinters and large portions of the cabinets were torn apart, ice crawled over everything around her while frost clung to the windows. Melinoë had abandoned her place on the couch, that was now thrown across the room, and was hiding behind the overturned couch. Harry was now on his back, his eyes wide and full of fear as he looked at Kore, shivering on the floor from the blast of winter's chill.
And worst yet, all her flowers and plants were now dead.
"Oh," Kore says as her eyes go wide from both shock and embarrassment before she covers her face with both her hands. "How embarrassing," she says, mortified at the actions of her other self.
Harry crawls away from her slowly, shaking as he does. "I am so sorry about her, she gets rather upset when that person is brought up," Kore says before turning around and opening up a cabinet to pull out a small tin. By the time she turns around, Harry was already on his feet with his back against one of the kitchen walls. She slowly approaches him, holding out the tin and the cloak of nothing to Harry.
"Here. The tin is full of the tea we had and I am once again, so sorry about her. But I do think it's time for you to leave, Harry," Kore tells him softly before the boy slowly reaches out to take the tin and his cloak back before Kore swiftly takes a step back from him, pulling her arms to her chest. "And I am sorry I couldn't help you out more, you seem like a good kid, a brave one as well," she says with a small kind smile.
There is a moment when the tense atmosphere returns before Harry slowly inched his way to the front door, his eyes flicking between Kore and Melinoë before in a burst of movement he was out the front door and walking quickly down the hall. Kore watches him go, feeling bad for whatever Persephone had done or said to the boy in the few moments where the Queen of the Dead had woken up. No one, other than her husband, could deal with the full brunt of her anger without being frightened like that.
"Are you okay?" Melinoë asks, catching Kore's attention from her hiding spot.
"Embarrassed, but otherwise I'll live," Kore says with a sigh and a shake of her head before covering her eyes with a hand.
"Oh, okay, cool," Melinoë says before hopping out of her hiding space and immediately makes a bee line for the patio door. "Well, if you're okay I'll be heading out for a bit," she says as she ghosts through the door and hopping the railing on the 30th floor. "Don't wait for meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" The Princess of Ghost calls back as she falls.
"Yeah, that's definitely going to be a problem," Kore thinks while sighing inwardly. "Welp, hopefully it won't be a me problem," she says out loud before turning back to the ruined penthouse and begins to clean up the mess and regrow her plants.
Harry Potter, Los Angeles, 20 minutes later.
Harry walked down the sidewalk in a city he didn't want to be in and was surrounded by people that were loud and rather rude. The smell of the city was much stronger inside the rising stone walls, churning his stomach as he moves through the crowds. Harry felt tired, run down, and very thoroughly disappointed in both himself and the answers he got from Kore. Harry runs his hand through his hair as he continues down the street, he has hit a bit of a wall with his hunt. He thinks about everything he knows about his prey which was, frustratingly, not much.
One: Didi, or whatever her name was, was a goddess of death.
Two: she has been stalking him for the majority of his life. The cupboard, whenever he got seriously hurt, the Department of Mystery, Mag Turied, she had been near or came to him at each of those places or events.
Three: for whatever reason, she wants Harry to herself in someway or form.
"Fucking annoying," Harry mutters to himself as he moves closer to the buildings. "Maybe it's a goddess of death from England, one that's forgotten or hiding for whatever reason. Didn't the Welsh have their own gods at one time?" Harry thinks to himself, scratching the back of his head and wishing he had Hermione here with him. The wish did nothing but cause him pain, last he heard Hermione had survived Mag Turied but only just. Harry missed his friends but he didn't know if he could go back home, or if he even wanted to…
All he felt like doing was laying down and sleeping for the next forever, to never move again because everything felt so pointless…and meaningless. He felt as if he was drifting aimlessly on the sea without any stars to guide him.
"I better get to the city hall, I need to get to San Francisco next and find Reinhardt Park," Harry thinks to himself. While he wasn't allowed at Camp Jupiter for obvious reasons, it didn't mean he couldn't go near it. So, he and Artemis settled on meeting up at the Redwood Park not too far away from the Roman Camp. After that, they would go north till they hit Fur Canyon Falls before resting for the night and heading northeast into the Redwood forests that span the West Coast of America and get lost in them until Agent Doe found them for something. "And getting lost in the woods sounds good right about now," he thinks to himself, wanting to escape thoughts of his home, of his friends, of a stupid prophecy, and of Del-
Harry shakes his head, knocking loose the thoughts he didn't want to have while walking past an alley. He completely misses the pair of arms shooting out from the alley to grab him.
He's tossed through the air into the alley, barely having time to righten himself midair before landing on his feet and sliding backwards. One of his hands slips into his pocket and wraps around Serpent-Hunter as he looks up at the one who had thrown him.
She was a bit taller than Harry with tan skin and short dark brown hair that looked more like a crew cut than anything else. She was dressed in denim and riding leathers as she smiled down at Harry like a maniac, a golden Ridge Roman helmet sat tipped back on her head. The leather jacket she wore was open to a purple shirt with the letter across it in white with the symbol of a sword crossed with a torch set into a wreath just below it. On the left breast of her riding jacket hung medals on top of medals of military service and on the right was a patch that had the same letters as her shirt set into the same type of wreath. Her face was round and boyish with a few cruel looking scars running across it that gave her a brutal beauty to her and her blood red eyes that burned like flames.
"So you him, huh?" The woman says with a scoff as she starts walking toward Harry. "You don't look like much, but then again I don't expect a lot from some barbarian cults on some fucking islands," she says as she tilts her head back to glare at Harry.
"Who the bloody hell are you?" Harry asks in a growl as he stands, pulling Serpent-Hunter from his pocket.
"Oo the blody ell are oo," the woman says, mocking his accent right in front of him. "No matter how much you dress yourselves up, the blood of barbarians still bleeds through, and you can't even properly speak the language you've invented. The fucking gutter slang trash you are," the woman says with her own growl. "But if you must know, govna, my name is Bellona," she says and mocks Harry once more in the same breath as her grin turns feral.
"And you're Harry fucking Potter, the boy who broke the seals of our victory over the Celtic barbarian hordes of the Albion," Bellona says before reaching into her jacket and pulling a blazing golden sword from under it with a grin.
"Bellona," another voice snaps at the Goddess, causing Harry to look past the goddess to another one that shares Bellona's eyes walking into the alley. He was tall with graying hair in a crew cut with a clean shave, he was dressed in a military dress suit of olive green with far more medals pinned to his chest then that of Bellona. "Can you stop fucking around and get on with it, if Apollo or Diana catch us, there will be hell to pay," the man says with a frown as he looks toward Harry with a sneer.
"Oh don't piss yourself, Virtus," Bellona says as she turns back to her apparent accomplice. "Apollo couldn't care about his own kids, what the hell makes you think he'll care about some traitor demigod and we made damn sure Diana was busy at the Camp," she says before turning back to Harry. "I wanted to take my time and enjoy killing this little shit," she says before leveling her flaming blade at Harry with a smirk that promised nothing good.
"Please, I know I'm protected by fate, you couldn't kill me even if you tried your damnedest, you roman cunt," Harry growls out as he glares at the goddess. It didn't take Harry long to figure these two were from the Roman side of the coin after they started to talk about the seals of the Celtic Gods. But he did have a strange prickling in the back of his mind, like he had heard their names from somewhere before.
"Oh? Looks like someone has been let on to a few secrets he shouldn't know,"Bellona says as she places her flaming sword on her shoulder as she grins at Harry. "But that doesn't matter right now, but you are right. I can't kill you," she admits with a shrug.
"So, why don't you go the fu-" Harry tries to say before he's cut off by the Roman Goddess.
"I said I can't kill you, you stupid barbarian. But lucky for me, I know who can kill you," Bellona says with a cruel grin as Harry feels the blood drain from his face. "And nothing in that prophecy says I can't cut off your limbs and dump you in front of Tom Riddle to where I get to watch you die," she says with a laugh that echoes down the alleyway before gripping her sword with both hands and sliding into a charging stance.
Harry freezes for a half a second. "Oh, shit," he thinks to himself because the Goddess just might be right about that. With that thought in mind Harry immediately unfolded his Gaé Bolg and prepared himself for a fight, reaching inward toward the tap in his mind to flood himself with the Hunt. As he watches the goddess before him, he surprise when she freezes at the sight of his spear.
Bellona eyes widening at first before a very real fear flashes in her eyes. "That. Fucking. CUNT!!!" The war goddess roars in pure rage and seething hatred before charging at Harry, her blazing sword leaving a trail of fire behind her. "I'm going to fucking skin you and use your flesh as my standard!!" She roars in utter hatred as she takes a slash at Harry. The Hunter brings his spear up to take the blow and prepares to jump and move with the momentum of the attack.
But to Harry's and the two minor gods' surprise, another voice spoke up. "Oh no, Bellona, I believe this has gone as far as it needs to," a stern, unyielding voice spoke and in a flash of light someone appeared in between Bellona and Harry; stopping the goddess of war's attack with her bare hands.
"Oh shit," Virtus says as he takes a step back, his face turning white at the sight of the woman in a purple and black dress.
"What the fuck are you doing here, Juno!?" Bellona says, half in anger, half in horror as she looks up at the taller woman who was glaring down at her.
"That is Queen Juno to you," the woman says with an angry sneer before raising her free hand and with but a gesture, sending Bellona flying away as if she was struck by a bombarda maximum. "Peasant," The Queen of the Roman Gods says with a smirk.
Chapter done!
And out a few days early. This has been a chapter I've been looking forward to writing, where Harry meets Kore and Melinoë and gets some…useful information.
But then two minor gods of war try to jump him only to be stopped when the big bad bitch herself shows up. Welp, time for Harry to run the gambit of his extended family members and spoilers, he doesn't have a good time with it.
Kingsaxcul, Out!