By Hephaestus Forged

Author's Note: This prologue has been complete and waiting for me to continue with this work for quite some time. I kept putting it off though, believing that it was going to be a long time before I got to the work that it began. I was right, but now, I'm getting a little bit of muse attention to the next chapter, and some people keep asking what happened to Prometheus Unbound's sequel. It is still likely that it will be quite some time before more of this story is produced, but now, at least you will be able to set your story alerts for when it happens.

This story has gone under a lot of titles while I worked on the plot. Most of them had Prometheus in the title. I settled on this one when the prologue was written. I'm pretty certain that you will understand the choice once you've finished reading it.

...

The Heat of the Forge

Smoke wafted through the room. The heat of the fire was oppressive as the young wizard worked the bellows. Despite the chill of January's winter in the Hebrides, he wore only a loincloth, mostly for protection. The chill of winter could not penetrate this room, not with him working the bellows, ever increasing the heat of his uncle's forge.

The muscles of his just turned twelve-year-old body were well trained to handle the strain of the bellows. Long had Gregory worked in his uncle's forge. He'd first attempted to pump the bellows at just seven, and by nine, he regularly took his turn. Today the bellows were his, allowing him to watch his uncle form a sword as he kept the fire hot.

As strike after strike of hammer over anvil, steel forming blade, magic wafted through the room. The muggles had lost how blades like this one were made. They called it Damascus Steel. In the wizarding world it was known as magical steel, because it was the only steel that not only allowed magic to conduct through it, but enhanced it. In the right wizard's hands, a magical steel sword practically sung with magic.

His uncle raised the sword with his tongs, taking another look. Apparently judging it good enough for now, he plunged the sword into the ley line's water. Steam and the fresh smell of clean air fought with the odor of the forge, causing a moment's breath of fresh air.

"That will do for now," his uncle said, letting the sword cool. "Now Gregory, I know you didn't come to the forge just to watch me forge a sword that won't be done for weeks." His uncle sat down on a bench against the wall, picking up a nearby ice cold glass of water. He patted the seat next to him. "Come and let your uncle hear your problems."

Gregory sat down next to his uncle, picking up his own ice cold glass. The cold water felt good as his sipped it. Here in the warm of the forge, separated from the sterile rooms of home by the ice and snow of winter, he was not stiff. His worries had receded with each pump of the bellows. And now, in the comforting warmth, the barriers of ice and winter, of expectations and demands, they were melted, forgotten and lost like a snowman melted in the spring.

"I'm not a good wizard, Uncle Aodh," Gregory said. "I'm almost failing, and every time I look at my grades they keep getting worst, when everyone else seems to get better. I'm next to last in my class. My potions never seem to work, no matter how hard I try. I was supposed to transfigure a steel ball into a glass ornament, and it turned into an egg."

"Missing good fresh eggs from the farm, weren't you?" Aodh said, putting his arm around his nephew.

Gregory looked down at the floor of the forge, with its carefully fitted stones, seemingly randomly placed, but so tightly placed against each other that not a drop of water could fit between them.

"Have you asked for help?"

"Who is going to give me help?" Gregory said, still looking down at the stones, his eyes tracing the joints. "I'm a stinking snake, son of a Death Eater, doomed to follow in his father's footsteps. No raven will help me. The badgers are their own tight knit family. The lions? When have they aspired to anything other than pranks and retribution. And as for my own house. We are the house of ambition and cunning.

"We climb over each other, trying to get ahead by pushing each other down. My house is a pit. Ask them for help? No, it would just open the scars and wounds of my failures. I have to help myself, and I don't know how."

"My Gregory, you may not know how now, but you will learn," Aodh said, raising Gregory's chin in order to meet his nephew's eyes. "Do not be afraid to ask. If you have questions, speak up. If not in class, then afterwards. If you need help, your friends will be there for you."

"Friends, what friends?" Gregory said, forcing his chin out of his uncle's grasp. "I can sit around the other boys in my year in my house. Malfoy lets Crabbe and me sit with him, I'm practically his body guard, but he talks to me, not talks with me. I might as well be the wall. He didn't bother to invite me to the ball. Grandmother got invited, Parkinson got invited, even Greengrass was there. But I didn't. Crabbe didn't. We're left out in the cold, only good for our muscle."

"Maybe you will next time," Aodh said. "Ask for the real story of the Malfoy Ball when you see Draco again. Do not listen to a word from your grandmother. I'm afraid that Mum let her mouth get the family in trouble again. There is a reason I took up the forge. Anyway, I doubt that Draco even knew that you might want to go. I'm sure if he knew, you would have been invited. After all, he invited Gryffindors!"

"Yeah, maybe," Gregory said.

"Gregory, you have talent. You can do amazing things. You just have to ask, to put your hand out over the flames. Don't fear the fire, Gregory. Let the forge give you its warmth. Let it heat you. Let the hammer drive out your fears and worries as you rest on the anvil. Do not stay back in the corner. Take up the bellows, ask for help. Step out and show what you can do, who you are, and what you can be.

"You are Gregory Goyle, of the Goyles of Skye. You are a son of the forge. The fire burns deeply in us. Don't let it go out. Do not become a mere cold iron sword. When you get on the Hogwarts Express, do not huddle in the compartment. Go and find what you need to become."