Chapter Text
Dumbledore’s POV
For so much of his life, Albus had by necessity been an elusive figure to most everyone who knew him. He had held so many of the secrets surrounding the war and Tom, held three of the most important titles in Wizarding Britain in helping to bring about what reforms he could, and besides that, he was considered peerless in his influence, his power, and his knowledge of magic, such that many of his fellow wizards and witches were too intimidated to try to be real friends to him, and he had, to an extent, given up on trying to connect with them the way he had in his youth. It had not helped, either, that he was unable to express himself as a gay man, attitudes such as they were even in the magical community. That those attitudes were changing, and the way the war was going (not too mention his imminent passing), he was considering ‘coming out,’ something previously unthinkable but now far less risky than the thought of not making it easier for the next generations. For young men like Nico and Harry, he thought.
At the thought of several of those subjects, Albus’ thoughts turned to Lady Hecate’s demigod champion, Nico di Angelo. On the one hand, he had been slightly horrified at the idea of a boy so young so easily killing three of the most dangerous of Tom’s inner circle, and prayed to Hecate and Hades for the wellbeing of Nico’s soul. On the other hand, that he was able to so easily destroy them, and neutralize the unforgivables at the same time, was a source of hope that the war was indeed imminently winnable. Already, in so short a period, four horcruxes were destroyed, with a fifth soon to be disposed of as well. They even had confirmation of the precise number of horcruxes, and he knew Nico was doing what he could to ensure Harry’s survival in removing the horcrux. He was impressed at how easily Nico had negotiated the information in speaking to Horace. Ingenius, to bribe him with connections to the dead. Necromancy, while deeply illegal and reviled among the wizarding public, had been difficult but manageable to accept in a son of Lord Hades.
Severus’ latest reports indicated that Tom was becoming more and more unstable after the loss of Bellatrix and the Lestrange brothers, flying into rages and demanding information on Hecate and demigods. From his own research, Albus knew that any information on the existence of the gods and current information on the divine was scarce, largely relegated to rumors and the oral traditions of insular magical communities. This, of course, would frustrate Tom to no end, and lead him to rely solely on information gained from his followers’ children in their classes under Nico himself.
Yes, all was progressing well, and Albus felt more at peace than ever before regarding his passing. His one time using the Resurrection Stone, to speak to Arianna and his mother, had not gone as bad as he had feared, and he looked forward to fully reconciling with them when he passed on–Beedle the Bard had not lied in stressing the pain of the dead in remaining on living plane. He set down to write.
Hermione’s POV
“Harry, I still don’t understand! How do you know you can trust this person?”
Ginny, Ron, and Hermione all seemed to agree on a level of skepticism regarding Nico, despite all evidence of his opposition to Voldemort. Still, he’d demonstrated such power, and he was working for an alleged Greek goddess, and why could they trust his motivations after five straight years of teachers trying to murder Harry and them by extension? Ginny, however, was the first to voice that apprehension.
“It’s not that we don’t believe that you think you have a good reason to trust him. We just want to understand what it is about him that you think is so worth believing in. It’s like he’s the second coming of Dumbledore to you all of a sudden!”
Seeing them all staring at him waiting for a reply, he decided to bring them to the Room of Requirement, cast a ‘muffliato just to be safe, and told them the truth.
“Nico killed Bellatrix and the other Lestranges, and showed me how he could destroy Voldemort himself. Riddle did some rituals, with some of the people he killed, to split his soul into pieces and put the bits into objects, from the Founders and from his life. Ginny, the Diary was part of him, not just his memory.”
At this, Ginny went pale and looked like she might cry at the reminder of her possession in her first year.
“After Sirius died, I thought for a while that there was no point in believing in magic anymore, not as the wonderful thing it was to me when I got my Hogwarts letter and could see a life away from the Dursleys. Dumbledore had messed up, I had messed up, and it was like I couldn’t see past the end of the war. Now I can. Now, I feel like there’s something to work for past the dark lord and the death eaters and the Slytherins. And, Nico himself is pretty great, too. And, maybe…”
“Maybe you love him? Or have a crush? Or maybe you get to have a hero for once?” Ginny, ever a friend at least, knew him pretty well.
“We talked, before school started up again. About everything with the war, and his role, and mine. About our lives. He told me about being a demigod, and having to fight all the time just to live to adulthood. It was cool to have someone who got it, and who understands being on the outside, for something we couldn’t help. And…guys, he let me talk to my parents. To Sirius. I got to say goodbye to them, to ask them everything I wanted to know, to tell them things I thought I’d never get to. And then, when it was over, he hugged me. And we went dancing and clubbing until dawn, to get it all out. And then we went back to Hogwarts, and I kissed him. I couldn’t help it. Maybe I do…love him. Maybe I just can’t get past someone with that amount of power, wanting to spend time with me. If it’s anything like what you felt around me, the idea of me, Ginny, when we first met, I can at last say I understand better now. That’s what he means to me. He, and the gods I guess, made me feel like I could breathe again. So, yeah.”
They were quiet for a minute. Harry was maybe the most private of any of them, in his own way, Hermione thought. They all knew his relatives were terrible, but they didn’t know the extent of it. Ginny wore her emotions on her sleeve, and so did Ron. She herself was pretty open to anyone who was interested. But, none of her friends seemed to even know her parents’ names, and never really asked her about her own home life.
Suffice to say, to hear Harry be so…admiring…of Nico di Angelo, and so open and vulnerable about it, and his feelings, was shocking. It was like, in the course of Nico’s short time in their world, he’d managed to break down a wall his life had spent a decade putting up before he came to Hogwarts, and that public scrutiny and betrayals and traumas had spent five years reinforcing. She knew what she would have to say.
“Alright,” Hermione started. “So he may be genuine about his intentions, and clearly he’s done you good. So I suppose it’s only right that we give him a chance as well. When we have our next class, since there’s a free period after, I’ll stay behind and ask him about it, and give him a chance.”
“Thanks, Hermione,” Harry smiled. “The gods seem to be great, or at least, powerful enough that they can help you if they like you. And Nico seems to know how to talk and deal with them, especially his dad.”
Nico’s POV
Nico wished these wizards were as easy to deal with as his family. Persephone was nice enough, at least the last few years, if he was respectful and showed interest when she talked about her domains. His dad was like an older version of himself, in many ways. Hazel was perfect and so sweet, a model child of Pluto if ever there was one. And his friends all treated him like a respected younger brother. The wizards either didn’t believe him, feared him, or sucked up to him as if he could dole out divine favor. He still laughed about getting those Ravenclaws to pray to Zeus telling him how cool Nico was and how lucky Olympus was to have him. Jason IM’d him three days later having gotten a personal visit from his father telling him to get Nico to lay off!
Anyway, he was standing in front of the Wizengamot, having just had to demonstrate the range of his powers after receiving a summons through Albus, and was answering questions about Lady Hecate and the gods. It was all going pretty well, and then one of them asked the only question he seemingly hadn’t prepared for.
“And what, truly, are the gods, exactly?”
He had to be real with the guy.
“If I’m being honest, sir, I’ve never asked my father, Lord Hades, what the gods are, in their essence. I know that he and the other gods have their domains, and I have helped my father with tasks and he has been training me to do work in the Underworld. I have walked among the dead, and have a friendship with Thanatos, who himself is the incarnation of death. My sister, Hazel, is also an acolyte of Lady Hecate, learning magic and the ability to control the Mist, the veil of magic that hides our world from yours and the other mortals’. But I’ll ask him more about that when I see him soon. I just haven’t really thought about it.”
He seemed to lose some credibility with some of them after that, but by the end he thought he was winning them over to considering the gods and Hecate, and to studying her and the Hellenistic faith. At the end of the meeting, Dumbledore, who had presided over the meeting as Chief Warlock, stepped down onto the floor of the Wizengamot, and drew a silver knife, slashing a small cut across his palm as he had done when he first invoked the Goddess.
“In adjourning this meeting and introducing you Lady Hecate’s champion in reintroducing the gods and their power into our world, I consecrate this space in the name of the Mother of Magic. Our Lady, I offer you our service in your domain. Let us know and do your will in this space.”
“You know,” Nico began, “you don’t have to cut yourself every ti-”
And in that moment, a great green fire burst out in the very center of the Wizengamot chambers, and a loud voice, three loud voices, spoke in unison.
“I accept your offering and your pledge, my faithful champion. I accept this as a consecrated place, and your work here will now be sacred and bound to the will of me and my domain.”
The fire burned taller and hotter, and from its flames a great oak tree appeared, a Tree of Life. At its base were many roots, stretching across the floor, three great roots in vague chair-like shapes. Its trunk was large, and three faces resembling Hecate (a frequent dinner guest in the Underworld) were carved in it. Many boughs branched out above the seats of the chamber, full of green leaves, and bits of Greek fire ran like streams throughout it. Above, on the ceiling, there was now a clear night sky, with bright stars and a moon, bathing the chamber in a silver glow.
The inhabitants of the room stood awestruck, even Nico, and the reporters and crowd in the gallery (curious about the self-proclaimed demigod) were silent for a moment. Then, some started screaming, declaring for Hecate, crying, the works. And then, horror as some of the darker elements of the Wizengamot, people like the Notts, the Parkinsons, and others known to be aligned with the Death Eaters, burst into green flames and screamed until their souls left their bodies. Nico knelt on one knee, having nothing else to do. When it was over, all that was left of them were ashes and their unblemished Dark Marks.
“This chamber is now made fresh, and those who have stood against life and renewal, against my gifts to you, have gone from it,” Hecate’s voice rang out again. “You are my chosen people, and yet nothing is promised to you. This world you have built exists only by my blessing, by the need of the world to have Magic in it. You will stagnate no longer. You will renew the world, and renew yourselves. I will not have petty leaders any longer. I will not have weakness. You will honor me, and Olympus to whom I bend my knee. You have been granted powers that can help the world in its problems, and whether or not you reveal yourselves, and in due course you may have no choice with or without my patronage, you must work toward a new wizarding society. In here, you will be blessed to make these decisions in the light and the love of Magic herself. Here, you and your people are at my Crossroads, and you will lead the way for my people across the Wizarding World, into the new millennium.”
Wellat least I can now say a god was actually helpful on a quest.
It was actually amazing, seeing a god flex their powers in a really cool way to mortal followers. It was…mythical,/em>, really. Like, a scene like that probably hadn’t happened since literal Ancient Greece and Rome. Not to real mortals rather than demigods. He couldn’t wait to tell Percy and Jason about her going full-on Old Testament on the wizards. And now, he just had to have dinner with Hades, and see about getting the horcrux out of the diadem. The joys never ceased.
Dinner was delicious, as usual. Tonight’s chef was a favorite, Julia Child, serving turkey ballotine filled with Paul Prudhomme’s cornbread dressing, garlic mashed potatoes, a vegetable medley, and a fruit tart. Genuinely, he thanked the gods he trained religiously (Author’s Note: Pun fully intended, motherfuckers lol). He’d asked his father to teach him to remove the horcrux, and his father agreed with the Ancient Laws-required task of him doing the dishes and questioning the souls of the now-dead Death Eaters. Cool.
He asked his father the question he’d been asked earlier, what the gods really were and how they existed alongside other pantheons, and was actually kind of surprised by Hades’ answer.
“We do not often reveal this to mortals, Nico. However, your ascendancy is upon you, as the Jackson boy’s is. Yes, he knows but does not want to face it, as you have managed to avoid thinking about your own. But, it is rare that even a child of mine spends so much time here, with so much power. And, I would like for you to become the Heir to the Underworld. And as such, it is your right to understand the nature of the gods, and of existence. You see…”
After dropping off the cleansed diadem in Dumbledore’s office, Nico made it to class just on time, with a full class of sixth-year Gryffindors and Ravenclaws. He barely remembered what he was meant to teach today. And, almost immediately, Harry’s friend Hermione raised her hand.
“Excuse me, Nico, but I’ve been thinking and wondering. You talk about being a demigod and Hecate and life in your world, and that the Egyptians and the Norse gods also have followers. And I can accept that, in theory, but I’m still wondering what the gods are, how they all exist.”
Fuck it, Nico thought. I’ll just break it to them and see what happens. Dad said how I use the knowledge is up to me.
“I actually just asked my father, Lord Hades, about this at dinner, because some old man at the Wizengamot had the same question. I’d vaguely been wondering about it, too, and it was a lot. It might break your brain a bit, actually, but here it goes…”