Under the Hunters Moon

Full Moon III.8

The Gods had a set of unspoken rules in the regard to having children, they were mostly followed by all.

The rules are as followed:

1: Never take a mortal lover that would go against the laws of man.

2: The mortal parent must be able and willing to take care of the child.

3: Protect the child to the best of their ability while working within the ancient laws that bound the Gods.

Artemis had broken two of these rules, not that she even meant to have a child.

Even her flighty and airhead brother followed these rules, and Artemis could hardly believe that he of all gods was a better parent than her, not that she had much practice mind you.

So when Artemis left Number 4 Privet Drive, she had made sure she would receive any prayers that Harry would make inside of the house by injecting the wards that were around the home with a small sliver of her divinity.

It would not stop the wards from functioning, but it would no longer block Harry's prayers from reaching her, and as soon as the protections fell she would know.

But still, the pain and the beast in her chest had yet to settle, it still hurts, she replays the image of the cupboard and the room of broken and unwanted things over and over, twisting the dagger in her heart more and more, as the Beast that bays for blood has yet to abide from what Artemis promised to Petunia Evans.

With her heart and mind warring with each other over the child that carried a piece of her inside him, her thoughts wander back to a time long ago as her body wanders the streets of Surrey, to a time where one could look to the heavens at night and see the stories written in the stars unlike nowadays with the mortals polluting even the sky, to a dark forest in her homeland, to a man made mad by the hunt and the overreaction of her brother.

"I knew, I knew that you were a Goddess who couldn't understand her own heart, but even knowing that I still fell in love with you…"

Orion's last words still rang true, even two thousand years after his death, even after she had immortalized him in the stars. Because Artemis didn't understand her heart nor what it desires, but she understood her mind and her wants, and she really wanted to kill something right now.

She wanted to hunt down Sirius Black and peel his skin from his still living body, she wanted to raise Voldemort from the dead to strip him of his magic and hunt him like the animal he was, she wanted to boil Dumbledore alive in Tabasco sauce before shaving his stupid beard from his face.

She would have to settle for something else however, Black would meet his fate soon enough, and Dumbledore was needed.

So as Artemis prepared to go back to her hunters, it was like the domain of the hunt answered her own wants as the prayers of her hunters reached her, they had cornered a Drakon in a cave somewhere in upstate New York. Perfect.

Artemis follows the prayers back to the source, a large wooded area not too far from Mount Greylock (He could have gone there if we brought him to the camp.) Artemis grits her teeth as she marches through the woods, the sun still hanging in the sky thanks to the time difference between the U.K and the States. She finds her handmaidens hidden in the trees and the underbrush, waiting for the beast to leave its cave to ambush it, the younger hunters in the back to learn from the elders on how to take a beast as dangerous as a Drakon.