POTTER FILES : THE SEA OF MONSTERS

Chapter 1 : Prologue

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Disclaimer : I do not own Harry Potter or Percy Jackson.

Note : The timeline of the HP universe has been changed to fit PJO universe. Some slight changes have been made to HP canon to fit girl Harry. So, Iris (fem!Harry) Potter was born on 31 July 1993 and COS happened in 2005-2006.

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This chapter will be in Iris' Pov unless stated otherwise.

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My third year was finally over. While not to the level of my previous two years, a lot of weird things had happened in the year. First of the many was Trevor, Neville's toad going missing...permanently. It seemed the animals could scent the snake in me. It was a good thing that Trevor was already well known for his habit of running away.

After the welcome party I received, half of them fled when they finally realised that they were the prey. A pity. A consequence of that was the centaurs started refering to me for the forest matters. They told me of the burgeoning population of the acromantula colony which, while not as dire situation as dementors, could create problems in the future. Apparently, it was Hagrid's responsibility to oversee the ecosystem of the forest and keep the balance. While the man had a big heart, in a more than literal way, he, like many others, saw only what he wanted to see. He was not going to take any action against his old friend's brood.

At Hogwarts, I learned why dementors were roaming around the school. Apparently, a prisoner named Sirius Black, who was supposed to be Voldie's right hand man, gone to Azkaban for killing a wizard and 12 muggles with a single spell, had escaped Azkaban, the prison the Dementors were supposed to guard, and the Ministry, in their infinite wisdom, placed them around school to protect me.

Another thing that happened was Dumbledore offering to take me on as an apprentice and me accepting. He believed that it would be a good cover even though he would have offered it anyway considering my talent, just not too soon. It was not like there were not already rumours of that nature considering the ease with which I perform Transfiguration.

He also taught me the Patronus charm in case I had to fight them in the view of other wizards. The daggers could be passed off as family heirlooms but bow and arrows could not. I was very surprised to feel the familiar power signature when he showed me the spell. When I asked him about it, he was not very surprised. After all, when a spell involved a silver coloured animal as guardian, it was not hard to connect the dots. Dumbledore told me that most of the old and powerful spells involved invoking the power of the deities. After all, Fiendfyre invoked the power of the Norse demon lord Surtur. As with every ability related to my godly mother, I was natural at it. My patroni were as physical as Hedwig used to be and I was not restricted to a single animal. The headmaster believed that my Patroni could kill dementors.

I also understood what Thanatos meant when he said I would be given the details later-dreams.

First was of the Gaunt family living in a hovel in Little Hangleton. Well, they were not the type of people Salazar Slytherin would be proud to call his descendants. It showed the unjustified pride of the father and son and their foolish belief that they could get away with harassing muggles due to their 'purity' of blood. It also showed the daughter's infatuation with the son of the local lord, Tom Riddle. I also saw two artifacts that could be potential phylacteries, a ring and a locket, that were believed to be that of Salazar Slytherin.

Next dream showed, ironically, a pure blood lady who was referred to as "Mrs. Smith", her infatuation with Tom Riddle, rising dark lord ie, and her attempts to impress him. It was weird to see a fat middle aged woman acting like a school girl with a crush in front of a boy barely out of school. She showed him a beautiful goblet she claimed to be Hufflepuff's Cup, which could supposedly turn water to an elixir that could heal any injury. She talked to him about doing a deal without his employer's knowledge not noticing the malicious glint in his eyes. Three guesses what happened to her.

The next showed me an island in the middle of which was basin similar in appearance to the headmaster's pensieve. The basin emitted a greenish glow which I later learned was due to the liquid it contained. Suddenly, a man who looked like a younger version of Sirius Black popped in with an elf. From their talk, I learned that the man was Regulus and the elf was Kreacher. The man drank the entire potion albeit with difficulty since it seemed to cause him some kind of nightmarish delusions. He ordered the elf to escape with the locket and destroy it at any cost. The last thing I saw before waking up was the man lapping up the water from the lake desperately and some zombie- things coming out and dragging him down with them.

Next dream showed a pure blood lady walking along the entrance hall of Gringotts. She was tall, curly black hair that reached mid back, pale face, delicate eyebrows, long eyelashes and a figure that would make supermodels cry out in envy. While she was not as beautiful as Amphritite or Hecate, she was certainly beyond mortal level. It was only later that I learned that she was Bellatrix Lestrange, the woman who tortured Neville's parents until their mind broke. It went to show that physical beauty was not everything. I could almost hear my mother commenting about how boys would be too busy salivating over her body to see her character. I saw her go into a vault and place the cup on a pedestal. It was as if she considered the chalice more valuable than the vast amount of treasure surrounding it which, as much as I hated to admit it, was greater than mine.

Dumbledore and I first went to Little Hangleton to check out the hovel and found that it was heavily warded. He told me that the first ward ensured that only those who had seen the hovel before the ward was placed could find it. Demigod dreams and pensieve memories could bypass that restriction. The rest of the wards were not anything special. With my Parseltongue skills and Dumbledore's knowledge and experience, they were easily disabled. The headmaster warned me that Tom Riddle was young when he hid that horcrux and others might be more difficult. The one noteworthy ward among them was a variant of repelling charm he must have created which induces in the target an uncontrollable rage at anyone who they believed had wronged them, enough anger to commit murder. Unfortunately for him, it could be easily overcome by anyone who had trained their mind and both of us fell in that category.

It was when we found the ring that the situation changed. I had not thought much of him keeping quiet. In fact, I did not notice anything wrong until I saw him trying to put the ring on his finger as if he forgot the fact that it was a horcrux or that it surely would have a curse on it. I quickly stopped him and asked what he was doing. It was then that I noticed that his eyes were blank. I had a feeling that he could not comprehend anything other than the ring he was so intent on wearing. Suddenly, he pushed me away surprising me with his strength. My combat instincts kicked in and I unleashed a wandless banisher at him. He was pushed back a few feet and landed on his rear, both his wand and the ring flew from his hands in different directions and clattered away. The fact that he got caught off guard underlined the severity of the situation. Dumbledore was a veteran of two wars. He was considered living legend for a reason. He should not have been caught off guard by the banisher of a school kid, albeit a wandless one, especially in a hostile territory. As if to double underline the severity of the situation, Dumbledore completely ignored his wand and summoned the ring to him. I quickly summoned and threw Artemisia. Unlike my archery, my throwing skills had always been mediocre. But, to my surprise, the tip of the dagger fit right into the hole of the ring. It seemed my blindfolded training with Clarisse and later training in the Room of Requirement did me some good.

For a fraction of a moment, time stood still or perhaps it was my skewed sense of perception due to my demigod status. Then, my sweet Artemisia tore through the ring. An unearthly scream echoed throughout the hovel and I saw black smoke being emitted from the remains of the ring. Just like with Quirell, it formed into a mockery of a face for a moment and then dissipated. Dumbledore got up summoning his wand to his hand and looked around as if he had been asleep and the scream startled him awake. He relaxed slightly when he saw the damaged ring but I knew he was still alert, ready for any unpleasant surprises. He cast a spell on the remains of the ring and his face twitched slightly as if he saw something unpleasant and then relaxed.

Dumbledore then told me that it was a good thing that I accompanied him there. Otherwise, he would have been travelling to the Underworld the painful way. I guessed he might have been embarrassed, a war veteran like him having to be saved by a school kid, demigod or not but he took it in good nature.

Dumbledore believed the only reason I was not affected was because I was too young to regret someone's death. Looking down at my skii jacket, I was not sure. I had once asked Artemis why the Hunters had a uniform. She admitted that the main purpose of it was to give her Hunters immunity to Aphrodite's charm speak and other benefits were merely an afterthought. The compulsion charm must have been more similar to charm speak than a mental attack if Dumbledore was affected.

He broke off the stone and levitated it to his hand. It was then I felt it. I turned and, on seeing me, so did Dumbledore ready to attack.

Thanatos was standing there nonchalantly as if he had always been there but I knew otherwise. He extended his hand palm up towards Dumbledore and suddenly the air grew tense. For a moment, I thought Dumbledore was going to duel him to keep the stone but he gave it up without a fuss.

It was then that I understood the importance of the stone. I asked the god about it. He must have been in a good mood. He replied without the reluctance that he had displayed the last time. While the stone could summon the spirits from the Underworld, its real purpose was for him to summon the dead souls to him. Of course, it would not work across the oceans, Poseidon's domain, but with it, he just had to be on the same landmass rather than at the site of death. It would save a lot of time and effort for him. Soon, he left and we followed suit returning to the school.

I had another dream involving Voldie and a huge snake he called Nagini, which I assumed was the horcrux. I could not understand why he would have one of his phylacteries so easy to kill, in comparison. There was only so much you could augument a living thing. Dumbledore believed Tom did not know what he would happen if his physical body was destroyed beyond repair and preferred the risk of losing a piece of soul to that of being trapped for eternity in a glorified prison of his own making.

It was when Dumbledore started negotiating with goblins that problems started. I was not there of course but he informed me about it later. Apparently, there was a clause in their peace treaty with humans which magically binds them to defend anything stored in the vaults, with their lives, if need be. Even after using a lot of influence and 'compensation', the most he could get out of them was that we would be allowed into the particular vault and allowed to look around. If we took or damaged anything, they would treat as thieves who had broken into the bank and act accordingly. Basically, the only way we could destroy the phylactery was to somehow expel the soul from the chalice without damaging it.

We were in a dilemma when I remembered the white flames, Selene's power. I had the idea of creating a spell that invoked Selene's power to create purifying flames. Even with Dumbledore's help, it was an uphill task as Arithmancy was a completely new subject for me. Arithmancy was more Hermione's field than mine but I could not ask her help.

Luna was my saving grace in that regard. She was...an interesting girl. Our first meeting was basically her stating my name, speaking hers and then telling me that she felt comfortable with me because I had a power that was familiar to her yet unfamiliar. By the time I recovered from my shock, she had already left.

I later introduced her to Neville and Hermione. By the time I realised what I had caused, it was too late. The meeting of two eternal rivals. Luna was the Kakashi of the pair : calm, cool and unflappable, prodigy while Hermione was the Gai : passionate, energetic, pumped up, genius of hard work. Whenever Hermione failed to convince Luna that the creatures she was talking about did not exist, she would storm off to the library determined that she would be successful next time. Hopefully, she would not find a mini me and learn to create a combined reality marble.

Luna later told me that her mother was Cerridwen, Welsh goddess of Moon, Magic, Agriculture, Poetry, Music, Luck, Death, Fertility and I told her my parentage. She accepted it as it was, as if virgin goddesses having demigod children were the norm rather than the exception, which ironically enough was true in Greek region.

I wondered how many other pantheons were there still practising their own ways. Luna told me that when a Welsh deity took an interest in someone, they took on a mortal avatar, bereft of any divinity, and did the usual courting and marriage rituals the way ordinary mortals did. They would live out their lives as mortals until their death.

After that, Luna started helping me with the spell. Despite being too young to start Arithmancy course in school, she was natural at it. According to her, Arithmancy was her mother's gift to humanity so that they could create their own spells without invoking the gods. Apparently, Cerridwen wanted to see how far mortals could go on their own before they needed the gods' help. She could, for that reason, also be called 'Mother of Modern Magic'. With Luna on board, the process had accelerated and I was finally confident of completing the job within the year.

When I returned to school after Winter vacation, I noticed a lot of changes, primary being the absence of dementors. I later heard from the gossip vine that the Weasley boy was kidnapped and when the Auror who became our DADA professor went to rescue him, he found not only Sirius Black but also Peter Pettigrew, the wizard who Black was sent to prison for killing, very much alive and well. Both of them were taken into custody. There were many other tales mentioning forbidden love or something that I ignored. I asked Dumbledore about it but he asked me to wait until he had all the facts.

Finally, I completed the spell. 'Flóges Katharismós' or Flames of Purification was not exactly original but I felt simplicity had a beauty of its own. It was not like I needed an incantation.

Once I finished and mastered the spell, the actual destruction of the phylactery was anticlimatic. Just a matter of point and shoot. The goblin that escorted us was downright rude and snarky, even for a goblin, but we did not take it personally. After all, he was the one who would be labelled traitor and given dishonourable death for our screw ups. He had every right to be bitter. On our return, his behaviour was more typical of a goblin.

The next dream showed Tom Riddle hiding a beautiful tiara in the Room of Lost Things. He cast no wards or protection around it and I was starting to wonder about Dumbledore's claim of job getting more difficult. Surely, Tom was not arrogant enough to believe that nobody else would discover the room by accident. Apparently, he was. The only interesting thing to note was that the phylactery was anchoring the infamous DADA curse that had been piggybacking on the Hogwarts wards. The moment it was destroyed, the curse would cease to exist, crushed under the numerous ancient protective charms though it did make me wonder how the hell the guy knew where the ward stones were. Like with the chalice, destroying the horcrux itself was too easy to bother mentioning.

The next surprising incident was me getting an invitation to Azkaban. Yes, you heard it. Apparently, somebody, I suspect a certain twinkle-eyed old man, informed them that my Patronus was special and could kill dementors. Dumbledore escorted me there naturally.

Azkaban was dreary place, fitting for its monstrous guards. Or perhaps the long term presence of the dementors turned the place that way, I do not know. The very earth there seemed to be blackened by the unnaturalness, the misery, the pain. The castle itself, which seemed to be made of pitch black obsidian stone, stood stretching to the sky towering over everything else like Dracula's castle brought to life.

From what I could see, nobody liked dementors, not the Aurors, not the politicians, not the 'Imperius Curse' victims, perhaps not even old Voldie himself. The Aurors we met seemed skeptical but I could see the stirring of hope they were trying to hide. Perhaps, they might not have even allowed me there if I had not been Dumbledore's apprentice. I could not blame them. From what I understood, they were the ones doing the guard duty here. While they had the talismans, it only provided the protection of a beginner level Patronus, some silver mist thing which diminished the effect of the dementors but could not chase them away like proper animal guardians. It was disconcerting to see that most of the Aurors were wearing a talisman, a stark realisation of how few people could cast the spell that came naturally to me.

We were led to the room where they had the dementors trapped. On the way, we met many different kinds of people : reporters, politicians, 'concerned citizens'. One interesting person I met was Amelia Bones, the new head of Department of Magical Law Enforcement (DMLE). She was slightly chubby but I could tell it was the kind that came for those who were used to physically demanding lifestyle and suddenly ended up in a desk job, unlike her niece who was, let's say, slightly spoiled. By the way she held herself, I could tell that she was as dangerous as she used to be when she was more active. From the way, she scrutinised me, I knew she saw that there was more to me than my unimpressive exterior might suggest.

In the room, two Aurors were keeping the dementors back with their Patronus. By how dark the room was, I knew that they had every dementor they knew about in there. I requested them to let go and they did after they got the nod of consent from their boss.

The dementors charged at me enmasse but I had no fear. I could feel their desperation. They knew that I could kill them. After killing many and observing others, I knew that they had a hive mind of sorts. What one learned, everyone did. But, they had no queen or any kind of central command. It was obvious from their complete lack of any kind of teamwork and the fact that they were so easily trapped. I had assumed that the one who created them intended themselves to be the central command but lost control of them and the servants turned on their master.

I had decided that if Dumbledore went to such an effort to show off his apprentice, I might as well play along. I did not even bother with the incantation. When they got close enough, I simply pointed my wand at them and a huge silver phoenix appeared before me, a perfect replica of Fawkes. As expected, it was a massacre. It seemed I just completed one of my quests.

Soon, came Easter holidays and I got a visitor, a very much innocent Sirius. It was all there in the Daily Prophet. Apparently, after Black's breakout, Minister Fudge found some inconsistencies in the case and ordered an investigation into it that he personally oversaw. Many evidences were found that showed many of the previous ministry being less than honest. The present Minister naturally took the steps to correct the mistakes of the previous administration and see that justice was done. The Minister awarded Black 100000 galleon for every year of his incarceration and the fees for being unregistered animagus was waved away as wartime concessions with the former claiming that the latter would have registered had he had the chance to do so. The daily also stated that Sirius Black would soon be taking over as the head of House Black, which unlike House Potter, did not allow a female head or heir.

Sirius Black told me the tale of four boys who became friends at the beginning of their school life and together formed a group of mischief makers called Marauders. He also told me of the three of them who chose to become animagus to accompany their werewolf friend on full moon nights. I then heard about the pranks they played on each other and the others. He then told me about my father's incessant attempts to woo my mortal mother and their comical failures. Even if I was content knowing that they were having a happy afterlife, I was glad to have had a chance to understand them.

For example, my father thought himself quite clever for sending my mother a lily along with a love letter. In a twist of irony, my mother was allergic to the flower that was her namesake. Let's say that she was not happy and James Potter then realised the true meaning of the saying, wrath of the woman scorned, especially when the woman was a redhead with a temper.

One thing I found interesting was the mention of Marauder's Map which was in Weasley twins' possession. I decided to introduce him to them later on. When I asked about it, he told me that it was a joint venture with everyone pitching in. He promised to give me the research notes if he found them. It would be a boost to security if we could make magical maps of the camp and the upcoming new Athens.

Soon, the story turned to a darker path with them fighting on the frontlines. He talked about families like McKinnon which had ended, my mortal grandparents' death during an attack on the family mansion and many other families on their last legs. He told me about my parents deciding to stay under the Fidelius charm placed on an old property nobody knew Dumbledore owned and a brief description of the charm. Apparently, it was an extremely powerful protection charm embodying the concept of trust (in someone else). Sirius convinced my parents to use Peter Pettigrew as the Secret Keeper while he served as the decoy to fool the traitor amongst them never knowing that Pettigrew was the traitor who would hand over the secret to his master. He only realised the truth when he visited Pettigrew's house and saw funeral clothes and speech prepared. By the time he rushed to Godric Hollow, everything was already over. After he made sure I was safe, he went after Pettigrew who outsmarted and framed him. It was followed by a series of regrets and apologies I was glad to get it over it. There was only so much angst I could take. As for Peter Pettigrew, my only regret was that I killed off the dementors too soon and he would not be getting the full Azkaban experience.

Sirius then asked me if I wanted to live with him. I told him that while I would love having a fun loving uncle spoiling me rotten, I was not comfortable with someone having authority over me. I did not want to hurt someone who had already gotten the rotten end of the stick in life but I believed that any relationship had to be built on mutual trust which required honesty from all participants. Luckily, he was actually relieved by my answer.

Later on, Dumbledore requested Sirius to ask Kreacher about the locket. On Sirius' order, Kreacher brought the locket though it involved a lot of kicking and screaming. He was lot more agreeable though after we told him we wanted to destroy it. Destroying it was easy with my spell but the problem began after I gave the purified locket back to Kreacher. He started gushing about getting a gift from the "moon lady" and well, Sirius Black was considered one of the best Hit Wizards for a reason. He certainly proved that he had not lost his edge in Azkaban by mentioning how he felt it was suspicious that Remus Lupin always lost control to his wolf side in my presence but had never pressed it. Apparently, he knew about the existence of gods due to his family patron being Morrighan but had thought that they had stopped interacting with mortal world long ago. I guessed Mist worked in weird ways. My divine mother's identity got a laugh out of him though.

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