Amongst the Hunted Moons

Summary:

When after 11 years, the goddess finds her lost child.

Notes:

Oh man, I wanted to end the Waxing Moon chapters with this one, but it went on too long. Harry is just too fun to write like this and demands his snark to be heard.

But I digress. Now Let me show what a man is!

On with the show!

Chapter Text

New Jersey Pine Barrens, Mid-day.

It had been eleven years since that cold night in October, she had never told anyone what had happened nor what she had done out of a whim and curiosity. She had paid the price for it that night, or at least she thought, She and her hunters had found themselves in the New Jersey pine barrens, not the hardest place in the world to survive, but they weren't there for a survival exercise; they were there for a hunt!

It had been a few years since they had hunted the hind, a ritual that is done every one hundred years or so to test the skills and wills of the recruits and keep sharp the skills of the older ones.

She had released her Hind with a two-day head start in the pine barrens before bringing her hunters in.

The rules were simple: hunt the Hind by any means, do not lose yourself to the hunt, and those who bring the Hind back alive will be honored as Hunt leader for the next year.

If the hunter would bring back the Hind dead, well they would still be honored that night for bringing back the kill and showing the respect it deserves, Artemis would just revive the Ceryneian Hind the next morning.

The Hind was a particularly difficult hunt to have, The Hind was fast and none but the swiftest hunters could hope to keep up, it was smart and able to double back on its tracks, use rivers and lakes to wash away its scent from hounds, it would use rocky paths to hide its tracks. Yes, one had to be cunning to hunt the Hind, and thanks to its golden fur it is almost unkillable by any normal methods. She looks forward to seeing who can catch the Hind this year.

Artemis sits atop the peak of a hill overlooking the pine barrens and a small lake in the middle, her eyes picking out her hunters as they scour the land looking for the Hind, she sees a few of her oldest hunters who have done this hunt before lazy away by roaming the forest or sleeping in trees. This brings a smile to her face as she picks her target, a hunter by the lake, a fishing pole resting against a rock and her with a book in hand.

Artemis takes out her bow and notches an arrow before aiming, and takes her time picking her shot, so when the huntress raises her water bottle for a sip; she lets the arrow fly.

As it strikes the water bottle almost a mile away she laughs at the shocked hunter looking for where the arrow came from, hopefully, that would hopefully teach Phoebe to look after her younger sisters and not lay about; no matter how many times she had hunted the Hind.

Artemis sits back down on her perch looking over the forest below, none of the hunters were close to finding the Hind, which was currently swimming in the river leading to the lake. The rustle of pine needles behind her perch in the tree alerted Artemis of someone walking up behind her, not sneaking per se, they had long ago learned that was impossible in her domain of the forest.

Her lieutenant was just naturally quiet after all these years.

"Zoë." Artemis greets her second in command, "Has anyone lost themselves yet?" She asked the more important question first because she both knows how the hunt is going and why Zoë had not joined.

"No, My Lady." Zoë replies "All seem clear of mind and focus on finding the Hind, but I will keep an eye on the younger members, they are the most susceptible to it as you know."

All the Goddess does is a nod, her blessing was a powerful one but not without its downsides. For those who hunt monsters must remember their humanity, or else become like the monsters they hunt; lost in the bloodlust.

Those who take her blessing are endowed with boosted senses, they can see, smell, hear, and feel more acutely than before. Their skills with a bow and survival increase ten-fold even if they had no skill at all, and they become immortal and unaffected by the passage of time, but her blessing also comes with a curse.

An ever-consuming need to hunt, what they hunt does not matter to them, so long as it was fed they did not care. Some get lost in the euphoria of the chase, the lust for their prey, and the intimate moment of the kill. She called it "Losing one's self to the hunt." Where they considered themselves predators and everything else around them prey.

It hasn't happened in a while, but still, it's best to be prepared if it does.

It's never easy to kill one of her Hunters, but once they cross that line there is no coming back from it.

"I have the fetish keeping an eye on the two new recruits, making sure they have a stable mind," Zoë says as she looks down into the valley below, leaning on the tree Artemis is perched on.

The Goddess of the hunt chuckles at the name but nevertheless tells Zoë "I really wish you wouldn't call one of your sisters by such a vulgar name Zoë."

Said girl crosses her arms and pouts of all things before speaking her mind.

"I still don't know why you let her rejoin the hunt, she broke her vows once, I have no doubt she will do so again." Artemis does not comment on the last part but does tell her lieutenant

"Aphrodite helped the boy cheat during that contest, and sank her hooks into her afterward. The hunter had paid for that for the last almost two thousand years, besides I've been in a…forgiving mood as of late." She admits freely to her long-time friend.

"She chooses to keep the ears and tail, My Lady," Zoë says in a flat unamused voice "Considering all the weird things Lord Apollo brought back from Japan, that artwork of those, what did he call them? Cat-girls? What else am I to call her?"

Artemis rolls her eyes, "Maybe she just-"

~please help me, I need help. I can't do this alone. Help!~

"Likes them…" Artemis' head snaps to the east, her voice trailing off.

It was a prayer, while not unusual for her to hear, most of them tend to be from her Hunters, all young girls or from older men who kept to the old ways; as rare as they are.

Not from young boys, crying out for help.

He was also crying out for anyone to help him, not her specifically, just a plea for anyone to help. So, why did she hear it?

There is a ping in her chest, almost like a pull to whoever had prayed, the feeling so odd she can barely form the words in her mind to explain to herself; let alone voice it.

"My Lady?" Zoë calls from below, noticing her lady's odd reaction to something. "Is everything okay?"

"I do-...Yes." Artemis says before jumping from her perch to the forest floor, placing two fingers into her mouth she lets out a shrill whistle that echoes throughout the woods, all her hunters should hear it and head back.

She turns to Zoë, "Have your sisters break for camp by the lake, they are no closer to catching the Hind than yesterday. You are in charge till I get back, there is something I need to…investigate." Artemis tells her lieutenant.

Zoë is not one to ignore her lady's orders and simply nods before wishing her a good hunt.

Artemis begins to descend into the valley, walking under the canopy of trees and past the ancient trunks of the forest, she focuses on the pulling sensation in her chest, letting it guide her to the one who sent the prayer.

The musky smell of the forest gives way to the damp wet smell of a cavern, and the crunch of pine needles beneath her feet becomes stone that she moves like a ghost over. The towering trees of her realm become pillars of stone snakes in her Uncle's realm, and the sounds of the forest are replaced by the hiss of something monstrous.

As Artemis makes her way to the last pillar in the row, she stops in the shadow of it. Peaking around she spots what was making the hissing sound that filled the chamber.

A basilisk, nearly 30 ft long from snout to tail tip, female from the missing plumage above its head, and old, very, very old. Oh, what a beauty she was, what a hunt she would make! Artemis almost snatched up the serpent right there, A Basilisk was rare enough, but to have one that old and that large, the beast would be a worthy hunt for her and her hunters.

If it wasn't what she had noticed next, she may have done just that, a small boy moving across the forehead of a large stone face carved into the wall. He moved with grace and was sure of foot in the almost impossibly angular position of the stone forehead, that is when Artemis stopped marveling at the great serpent and took in the rest of the room. Other than the boy fighting the Queen of Serpents, with what seemed to be a silver sword of all things, there were three other beings in the room.

One girl, a maiden her divine senses supplied, lying on the ground, her eyes closed and her skin pale, she felt as if her life was draining away drop by drop.

Another boy? Was it a boy or a piece of one? Whatever he was he did not seem whole, how odd. He was tall, fuzzy around the edges, and his back to her as he watched the younger boy fight the great beast.

Then there was the Phoenix, perched atop one of the stone statues on the other side of the chamber, in one of its claws it held a small black book, its plumage was the mix of the red and gold typical of its kind, and as she studied the bird, it studied her right back.

They watch each other for a moment, both of the ancient beings wondering what the other was doing here. That's when Artemis felt it, a tug, a pull on her divine realm, one she did not use so often anymore. Sudden and swift death, she only uses it in modern times to end a hunt that had gotten out of hand, or when one of her hunters had lost themselves to the hunt.

She turns her eyes from the Phoenix and back to the boy fighting for his life just in time to see him sink the silver blade into the roof of the serpent queen's mouth, and with a burst of divine power, she feels the great beast die.

"No," she thinks to herself, "No, no, no. The boy is dead." She was there the night after it had happened, she had felt it, three souls were cut from their mortal bodies, the crib crushed. But against her belief stood proof she was wrong, the boy had pulled on her divine power, and she had heard his prayer. Not because of a hunt, but because she was the closest God to him in a metaphysical sense, he carried a piece of her inside him, his prayer would go directly to her so long as no other God had a claim on him.

Beyond any of that, in the dark gloom of the chamber, she saw the only proof she would need.

As the boy grinned in Triumph as his sword slid through the brain of the basilisk, she saw his eyes behind his glasses. She saw his emerald green eyes, the same color as Lily Evans, but his pupil was a slit, like a cat's…like hers.

Her son was alive.

~~~~~~~~

Harry Potter, Chamber of Secrets.

I move across the giant stone forehead of Salazar Slytherin, or at least I think it is, honestly looks nothing like his portrait in the Slytherin common room, dodging the strikes of the overgrown garden snake. Really, how big can a snake get! This is just ridiculous.

I weave back and forth as it tries to eat me, hissing at me that I'll taste delicious because I'm a half-blood, yeah yeah I know my mom was muggleborn, shut up about it already!

It slams its nose into the statue just as I step back, HA! Maybe that will shut it up for once.

As it pulls back to once again lunge at me, it opens its mouth and I see it. Black spots floating in my vision at the back of its mouth, there, that's where I need to stick the sword, I just know it.

This time when it lunges I'm ready for it, my feet are planted as I grip the sword the hat gave me and take a breath, and as it lunges at me I lunge at it. I meet it before it could touch the stone head, the blade punching through the roof of its mouth and I feel my ears pop, my cry of victory turns into a hiss of pain as the great big old snake goes limp and crashes onto the floor below with the sword still in its mouth. Man, I hope that didn't land on Ginny or Ron is gonna be pissed.

Pain burns throughout my arm, looking down I see why, sticking out of the crux of my elbow is three inches of basilisk fang. Oh, that can't be good, the venom that it spat at me at the start of this melted through my leather jacket, my dragonhide leather jacket. So I'm sure that what it does to flesh isn't gonna be fun, I pull the fang from my arm and look at it in confusion, what am I gonna do now?

That's when the vertigo hits and with the dizzy spell, I lose my footing, falling down the stone forehead, rolling and landing on the basilisk before bouncing off and landing firmly on my arse. Oww.

As I lean against the body of the stupid snake, footsteps grow closer, and as I see them enter my darkening vision I hear the sound of clapping, oh please don't start gloating, please.

"And so ends Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived" Tom's voice says, damnitt he is gloating, "It took eleven more years than it should, but Lord Voldemort got you in the end."

I want to point out it was Slytherin's pet snake that did, but the chamber of secrets is doing the best impression of a merry-go-round of all time, and I'm afraid if I open my mouth I'll be sick, huh, maybe I can hit his shoes.

My vision swims as I try to make the room stop spinning, my head slumps to the side, and look past Tom's ever-solidifying form to the columns on the other side of the chamber and I see the oddest thing, eyes. Glowing amber eyes, they look like they belong to a cat, a really big cat, and they're looking right at me with a mix of curiosity, and something else… it's the same look Hermione gave me last year before going through the fire or the one she has on her face when she thinks I'm not paying attention.

Honestly, the look is just weird.

"Even Dumbledore's bird knows it, look at it, it's even crying," Tom says. Oh right, he was gloating, and hey Fawkes! When did he get there? I opened my mouth to say he was brilliant, how much of a good job he did, but I don't know if I said it or if it came out as a slur, I was feeling numb all over.

"I'm going to stand here and watch you die, Harry Potter," Tom tells me in that I'm better than your tone of voice he likes to use, but hey, at least the spinning stopped, …and my vision is getting clearer instead of darker.

Wait, Phoenix's tears did something, didn't they? He felt like someone told him something like that, was it Hermione? It was probably Hermione, she was always talking around him about one thing or another.

"Get away, get away from him you stupid bird!" Tom yells as I blink the spots out of my vision. A loud boom echoed through the chamber as Tom shot a spell at Fawkes, okay not cool. There are three competent and trustworthy things in this entire Castle, one is that Phoenix, and the other two are Hedwig and Miss Norris. I'm going to make him scream before this ends.

"Phoenix tears, I had almost forgotten," Tom says as he walks closer to me, he's looking at where Fawkes had flown off to, so it gives me the chance to switch the basilisk fang I was still holding onto to my other hand before he turns back to me.

"Better this way, I think." He says as calm as ever, "You dying by my hand instead of the bite of Slytherin's basilisk, yes Harry Potter, I want a front row seat when the light leaves your eyes." He states as he walks up to me and bends down to meet my eyes on the balls of his feet, the tip of my Holly wand pressed to my neck.

Looking back on that moment, later on, I couldn't tell you what was more satisfying, the look of shock on his face when he saw how quick I could move, the scream of pain that he let out when I had grabbed his wrist and twisted it till I heard the wet snap of his wrist breaking; or the crunching sound of my forehead hitting his nose.

Whatever it is, I do know getting headbutted when you are on the balls of your feet does not do good things for balance, so when Tom is falling back and my wand clatters to the floor, I noticed Fawkes's parting gift, the diary, perfect.

With a heave, I pull on Tom's broken wrist, pulling him back towards me, I see the rage, pain, and hatred in his eyes as my other arm comes up, basilisk fang held high; I wanted him to see this.

He looks at the fang before looking down at his dairy, he makes a face like he was going to say something or scream, but he doesn't get the chance as I plunge the fang right into the heart of the dairy.

I watch his eyes widen as his form cracks like glass before he shatters into golden motes.

I slump back against the dead snake with a sigh, it was over and I am exhausted. I lay there for a moment, merely taking in the rush at the end that I feel, I glance over to the columns remembering the eyes, but they're gone. Probably just a hallucination from the venom anyway, I'm more than ready to take a nap, and I almost do. But I then remember why I had come down here in the first place, Ginny.

I pull myself up off the ground and limp my way over to her, I think I may have cracked my tailbone because every step has me wincing. As I got closer I could see some color had returned to her face, and checking her pulse had her heartbeat nice and strong but she still hadn't woken up yet. I sigh, walking over, I pick up my wand and the dairy and shove them into my pockets, before grabbing the sorting hat and tucking it into my belt with an apology, and finally pulling out the sword from the snake's mouth, careful not to nick its fangs.

I walk back to the still sleeping Ginny before picking her up like a princess and begin to move to the safe-like entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, I stop for only a moment to look down at the half-melted Aviator jacket and curse, I had owned that before ever coming to Hogwarts, I've had it since I could remember, hell it used to be my blanket when I was little enough, and now…now it was gone.

With my arms full of a fair maiden I couldn't take the jacket too, we had to get out of here and get out of here now, I'll ask Professor McGonagall if she could help me come back down here later and grab it if she says no, …well I do have a very nice Cloak I could use.

I called Fawkes and got him to follow us out as I sealed the chamber behind us because seriously Salazar, what the hell?

~~~~~~~~~

The now sealed Chamber of Secrets.

It was only after the door was shut did Artemis step out from behind the pillar she had used to hide behind, so the boy was alive….

Interesting, but how did she not know? When the moon was full she saw all that it did, much like her brother and the sun. So how did she miss the boy?

Artemis makes her way over to the great serpent, running her hands down its scales, what a marvelous beast, what an amazing hunt. Questions on how the boy survived and how he has been hidden from her aside, he had grown strong. It would have taken at least 5 of her hunters to take down a basilisk that was this size and this old, for the older the creature became, the more powerful it would become.

But the boy did it by himself, with only an ill-fitted sword, her divine realm notwithstanding of course.

Artemis turns her head and spots the jacket the boy speared a mournful glance on his way out, he had left it behind because he chose to save the maiden, Ginevra Weasley, walking over and picking up the jacket, she feels as if she has seen it before, on someone…somewhere…

Artemis shakes her head, no time to ponder about the jacket, she has questions that need to be answered about the boy, she snaps the jacket flinging off the venom, as it hits the floor it hisses and bubbles, more like acid than venom.

Artemis looks from the jacket to the dead serpent, her eyes narrow, the boy didn't take his spoils. His hunt was a success, he had felled his prey, and yet he took no spoils as is his right to do so. It seems that the boy, like much of his kind, was a fool.

But foolishness can be fixed, ignorant gasps could be filled with knowledge, the boy is untrained that much is true, but that can also be changed.

Artemis walks back over to the serpent, once again running her hands over its scales, yes. The boy will need training, as to how and who, she has no idea yet, so she will figure it out later.

But first…

First, the boy would get his spoils, as his right as a hunter.

Artemis drops the jacket to the floor before reaching behind her back and drawing out a silver hunter's knife. Yes, such an excellent hunt deserves a fitting reward, does it not?

The silver hunting knife stabs into the dead body of the queen of serpents and begins to cut away.

~~~~~~~~

Gryffindor tower, second-year boys dorm.

Harry Potter was exhausted, not just in terms of his body being tired, but he had felt mentally drained, as soon as he had got back from the hospital wing he was swarmed by his fellow Gryffindors all asking questions, getting too close, trying to get him to talk.

He understood why Fred, George, and Percy had come up to shake his hand and thanking him for what he did, but honestly, he was starting to miss Hermione, she would normally send one look at anyone to get them to leave him alone, and if they didn't she would start asking questions about classes and test coming off scaring off any student who was within hearing range.

So when he had crawled into bed that night he was done, just so very done with it all, he had told Ron the whole story so he could answer any questions anyone had, Harry just wanted peace, quiet, the dark, and sleep. Happily, he got all three, but that's when the dreams started.

Harry was not new to weird dreams, he's had them all his life, from flying motorbikes and green lights to chasing a golden deer and fighting a giant scorpion; to the small olive skin girl in the silver tunic with the silver bow.

His dreams were weird, but then again he wasn't a normal kid so why would his dreams be normal. Harry had known he was a weird kid since he was five when he had learned what the word "freak" meant.

People had always looked at him oddly, from his aunt and uncle to the kids at primary school, to even here at Hogwarts. He was always the freak, personally, Harry didn't mind it, he hated when people crowded him, or talk to him, or ask one of their many stupid questions. Why couldn't they just leave him alone, it's one of the reasons that he liked Ron and Hermione so much, both had hobbies they could do without speaking a word to Harry.

Ron had chess, sure you had to call out your move, but it wasn't talking to each other. You were just moving the pieces, which was fine, the only problem was Ron played the game so slowly, he could spend hours thinking of his next move and it was almost enough for Harry to lose all interest in the game until Ron showed him speed chess, which was much more his style.

Hermione had reading and the library, which was a problem all on its own, he hated reading, anytime he would look at a book would make the letters swim across the page and give him a headache, and he could sit still for the life of him. Lucky Hermione seemed to understand, she called it sex daily, wait what? No, she called it dyslexia! That was it, also she thought I had ADHD, whatever that was. She had told me to go to McGonagall about them, but McGonagall hates me, I just know it. The way she looks at me, or how she takes points off when I can't sit still in her class. She hates me and I know it.

When it comes to essays and tests and the book stuff I'm pants at it all, the practical part, however, that I'm pretty good at. Or that's what Hermione says at least, she only needs to show me a new spell from class once or twice before I get it down pat. Though she always has one of those weird looks when I do, like she can't figure a really simple puzzle or something.

Anyway, where was I? Right, dreams. I'm used to them by now, the one I had this night doesn't even break the top 10, but still weird.

I was floating just above my bed, I couldn't see the alarm clock so I had no idea what time it was. But I could see myself under my covers, face in the moonlight with the curtains around my bed pulled shut. The door to the room creaks open, at first from the silhouette, I had thought it was Ginny back from the hospital wing, trying to peek at me or something. But when the figure moves across the light coming through the window, I saw it wasn't Ginny, it was someone else, a girl I've never seen before.

She stops at the foot of my bed before taking a package that was tucked under her arm and laying it on the end of my bed, right on top of my trunk. She turns as if to leave, but stops herself, before creeping around the side of my bed to pull aside my curtain, she looks at me, studying me as if I'm the most fascinating thing in the world, kinda creepy.

"I had thought you dead." She murmured into the night, "yet, here you lay, hale and whole."

Well, yeah. It comes with that stupid nickname the wizarding world gave me, but how did she not know that?

The strange girl raises her hand and brushes the bangs of his hair out of his face, stopping once she sees the equally stupid scar on my head, her thumb ghosts over it and she has an odd look on her face as if she's worried about something.

She's quiet for a few minutes as she studies my face before she speaks again.

"A marvelous hunt you had, I had only caught the tail end of it, but to kill the Queen of Serpents with but a sword, Marvelous boy. It would have taken at least five of my hunters to bring a beast of that size and strength down." She chuckles a bit. "It shouldn't be all that shocking when I think about it, you are after all, in a small way, my-" as she says the last bit her hand moves to my cheek, her fingers curling around it, and I feel them on my face.

I wake up with a gasp as I fling myself out of bed, I don't make a sound as I land on my feet beside my bed, slipping through the closed curtains.

My breathing is heavy as I look around the room, the dark room is greyscaled for me, the dark has never bothered me before. Hermione had said once that my pupil would slit vertically like a cat in the dark rooms of the castle or outside in the night, no idea what that implied, but hey, it helped.

But other than me and my roommates, there was no one else in the room, empty of extra body and sounds I sigh out in relief, about to crawl back into bed and go back to sleep.

But the pale off-white package with a silver ribbon laying on my trunk, goosebumps run up my arm as I realize my dream may not have been JUST a dream.

Ron would probably tell me to open it to see what's inside, and Hermione would probably tell me not to be going around and opening packages that weird touchy dream girls left for me in the middle of the night without telling a teacher first.

Naturally, I listened to my inner Ron and opened the package.

It was my jacket, my whole unmelted jacket. How? I had talked to Dumbledore, and he said he'd go down to the chamber with me in a few days to get it after all the extra work from what happened and what piled up when he was gone for the last few weeks was done with.

The Chamber was sealed, both the bathroom and the main entrance were closed. I did it myself.

But here was my jacket, it looked the same, from the faded tags to the wear and tear from years of use, it even smelled the same how the hell?

I try it on and it fits like a glove, I've had this as long as I could remember, it was like my second skin, and last year when Charlie told us it was dragonhide Hermione almost blow a gasket and started asking all these questions about where I had got it that I didn't possess an answer to.

But now it was back and I could honestly care less about the how, as my hands run down the front of it as happy as I can be, I feel something in the pocket. This is odd because nothing was in it when I went down to the Chamber, reaching into the pocket I feel something hard, and pulling it out I see what it is, it's a swiss army knife I think, made with silver and some type of white wood, carved on one side of the handle are letters, letters I've never seen before but know for a fact what they spell "Great Serpent-Hunter.".

With the knife is also a card, a plain white paper card, not parchment like wizards use, the same type of letters are on it, in perfect little typewriter style.

" Always claim your spoils after the hunt, young hunter."

Notes:

Well, that's the end of the chapter, I had one more scene in mind but it hit my word limit for the chapter which is, …bleh.

Oh, well. Next time Artemis is gonna get some answer to her questions, and she is not the type of person to take "no" as an answer.

The quote about showing you a man at the top comes from a French novelist and Castlevania.

"What is a man? A miserable little pile of lies, now enough talk, have at you!

so, a little note on Harry's Demigod abilities Has anyone here seen Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba?

What the fuck am I saying, we're all nerds here, of course, you have.

think of the swift death ability much like Tanjiro's ability to smell the opening thread to cut off a demon's head.

if Tanjiro isn't fast or strong enough, or if his opponent is just better than him at fighting he won't be able to do that.

but with Harry, it's not chopping off heads, it's ending the fight the quickest, it shows him openings in his opponent's fighting style he could exploit if he is skilled enough.

and that is my explanation of why is such a talented duelist.

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