Under the Hunters Moon

Full Moon V

Atalanta, Hogwarts, February 14th

Atalanta missed the Hunt, She missed the chase, She missed being in her Lady's presents, and most of all, she missed her sisters. Don't get her wrong, she doesn't regret coming to Hogwarts under her Mistress' orders. The first two months were rocky, between hunting alone in the woods and getting Harry out of his shell, it was lonely for Atalanta. She slept in the dark woods alone when with the hunt you got to bunk with whoever wanted to bunk with you for the night, normally Atalanta bunked with the younger girls, they didn't mind the fact she liked to snuggle with the nearest warm body. It was a comfort to both the younger girls and Atalanta, knowing someone was there when any of them woke from the nightmares of time before the hunt, before the sisterhood. But during the first two months, Atalanta was without that comfort, waking up in the dark of night in the forbidden forest wasn't a fun thing to do, there were a few nights when she had awoken from a nightmare thinking she was back in the body of the beast she was for so long.

When Halloween passed and she took up Dumbledore's offer for a room inside the castle, even when Artemis had forbidden it, it was a small comfort. Being able to wake up from a night terror and look in the mirror and know she wasn't an animal anymore was a great help, there was also all the pillows she had on the bed to snuggle with, but it still wasn't her sisters of the hunt. When Artemis found her again five years ago, when she had offered her to retake her oaths and escape the nightmare she had lived for the past untold years, she had jumped on it. But being someone from ancient Greece and transmigrating to the Modern world was difficult at first, getting used to the new world she found herself in, and finding out the subtle changes to the Gods was a shock.

Artemis would let girls leave the hunt when once it was a lifetime commitment to it, and forgiving slight transgressions instead of pushing them harshly was also mind-blowing.

She was blown away by all the progress the mundane world had made, toasters, ovens, and the food you could get at a burger place where once preparing a meal would take hours it could now take as little as 15 minutes. Cars were also a huge thing, metal and plastic boxes that speed down roads so abundant to carry people and things from one place to another in a journey that measured hours when once it would take days. The hunt had changed as well, little things and one big thing, but change it did.

Back in Atalanta's day, the Hunt was a loose collection of girls who had taken the oath and journeyed the known world by themselves or in small groups. Nowadays it was one large group of girls that numbered forty strong, no more, no less, that all hunted together with Artemis when once it was only Zoë and a few Nymphs that traveled with her. Atalanta likes that change, to be with the Goddess of the Hunt and hunt with her was considered the greatest honor a hunter could have during Atalanta's time, but now they all traveled with Artemis, and it was, well Atalanta couldn't put it into words of what it was like. The Hunts, the feasts, the comradery, and the cuddle piles were great, more so than the days of stalking Africa as a lioness or being kept in a cage to fed on whoever and whatever was thrown to her that day. Those days as a Lioness, as a monster, and a beast of the hunt were a blur of blood, carnage, and the Everchase. She didn't ever remember when Hippomenes had left to stalk demigods, it wasn't until she went to Camp Half-blood and found out from Chiron of what happened to him. He gave in fully to being a monster where Atalanta had fought against it, Heracles would later kill him and take his pelt for a spoil of war.

She had burned a shroud of Arcadia for him at the Camp as an act of mourning, to her surprise Artemis was the one to allow it.

"For who would mourn for him if not his wife?" Artemis had said, mostly in jest.