A/N: Before I get hated on for leaving I, Leviathan alone while I work on this, allow me to explain. I have contracted that most horrible of maladies, writer's block, and have been beating my head on my desk over that story for far, far too long. I hoped that taking up something else in the meantime might help relieve some of my writer's block. I do intend to return to it, it may simply take a while before I am fit to. This fic will probably have shorter chapters that I, Leviathan but should (hopefully) be updated more often.

This fic is based on Iskander Mandoraekon's challenge: Harry Potter and the Heroes of Old.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry potter franchise, nor do I own TYPE-MOON.

The five-year old harry Potter lay curled in a ball on the cold tiles of the Dursley kitchen and did his best to not cry out. Crying out made Uncle Vernon angry. "Freaks shouldn't talk" he said.

It was all the fault of that book he found outside the charity shop. He couldn't read all the little words, but all the pretty patterns and circles and stuff looked like something that Aunt Petunia might like. She liked patterns and stuff. He'd seen the little notebook she liked to draw in while Uncle Vernon watched the News in the evening.

He'd spent his only 50 pence on the book and taken it back home with the big bag of shopping for Aunt Petunia. He'd waited until after dinner, when his relatives were both full and happy-looking to give it to her. She'd taken it, opened the red leather cover and gasped, passing it to Uncle Vernon.

He'd turned almost as red as the book itself and Harry might have been tempted to laugh, had that not been the face that his uncle made when he was truly angry.

The book was thrown to the floor and Harry was tempted to run for a moment, before his uncle put paid to that possibility by charging at him like a raging bull and catching the young boy on the shoulder with his meaty fist. Harry sprawled to the ground and brought his hands up to curl about his head, trying desperately to protect himself from the vicious kicks of his Uncle. As painful though, and all the deeper, were the wounds inflicted by his words.

"You wretched, good-for-nothing FREAK! You DARE bring such unholiness into our house?! You dare spit on our hospitality?! After your worthless Freak parents died and left you here, not a penny to pay your way? We should have just sent you off to an orphanage! You want that?! You want to have the cane every day!"

"Why can't I have someone to save me?." thought the boy, silent tears of mingled pain and misery mingling with "Just leave me alone. I want someone to help me. Why won't anyone help me? Why won't anyone love me? That's all I want."

Unnoticed by both man and boy, the lead-inlaid circle on the cover of the book began to glisten faintly, as if transmuting to mercury. Unfelt by any, a tendril of Miracle reached out, fuelled by a far-distant artefact of holy-yet-unholy power and the impossible-yet-trivial wish of a child. A prayer for salvation, by one who had never known its face.

Semiramis, Wise Queen of Assyria, daughter of the goddess Derketo and the first poisoner in the world sat upon the plain of glass that was the Throne of Heroes and reflected.

She knew not how long she had sat there, the only features on the shapeless plain the wandering souls of those who, like her, had wrought deeds so great or horrific that their very beings were sublimated into this form. A form beyond human but less than a god. A Heroic Spirit. But what meaning had time here? What worth was the power of a demigod on a plain of glass where all one could do is reflect on their past successes and triumphs?

The ancient queen chuckled bitterly to herself. Pathetic, that's what they were. Every hero as impotent as the next, for all their demigodly might.

Then she felt it.

A tug within her chest, as if a hook had been inserted there and was pulling at her heart. Curious at this new thing, the first in all her time on the Throne, the long-dead magus extended her mystical senses inwards, towards where the alien presence invaded her essence.

What she found there shocked her. Emotions flooded through the incomplete magic, which she now realised was an attempt to summon her. Desperation, terror and the oily taint of misery and despair. Above all, though, was the desperate hope for salvation, a childish wish for protection, a mother's warm arms to be enfolded and protected in. It was an ancient want, one attendant to humanity for endless ages. One which she herself had been denied by her goddess mother, Derketo.

That was what made up Semiramis' mind. She would not allow a child to suffer as she had in her childhood, deprived of motherly affection. Not if she could help.

So resolved, the first poisoner gripped the magic attempting to summon her and accepted it. The magic seemed to 'click' into place, and then the Throne of Heroes vanished from her sight.