Mass Collision

13. Memories

Sirius was sitting in Remus's cottage. Sirius had gotten a job at Gringotts as a cursebreaker. Not what he wanted to do, but for now that's what he could do.

They were sitting at the table with a book in between them. It was about memories and Occlumency and Legilimency. "Are you sure you want to do this?" Remus asked his boyfriend. "It could be painful."

Sirius nodded with a deep breath, "I want to do it, I can't make sense of these memories and I want to get them back to her before she does something she'll regret."

Remus nodded and they both stood up. Remus pointed his wand at the other wizard. "Legilmes."

They both got sucked into his head and were in a completely different place. It looked like it was outside a school, there was a boy with green eyes and a sword, promising three that everything would be okay. Then, he got attacked by some kind of monster neither of them had ever seen.

Sirius blinked his eyes and suddenly, there was screaming and a blonde haired girl fell off the side of a cliff and a group of girls came running through with bows. "What the hell?" Remus muttered. He turned to Sirius. "Is there another memory with more information?"

Sirius blinked again and the memory moved to only moment later.

"Whoa," the oldest of the three siblings said, "Hold up. Time out."

Everybody looked at her. She pointed her finger at all of them in turn, like she was trying to connect the dots. "Who... who are you people?"

The woman who was leading the group of girls' expression softened."It might be a better question, my dear girl, to ask who you are! Who are your parents?"

Bianca glanced nervously at her brother and sister, who were still staring in awe at the woman.

"Our parents are dead," Bianca said. "We're orphans. There's a bank trust that pays for our school, but..." She faltered. From the looks on everyone's faces, they didn't believe her.

"What?" she demanded. "I'm telling the truth."

"You are a half-blood," Zoe Nightshade said. Her accent was hard to place. It sounded old-fashioned, like she was reading from a really old book. "One of thy parents was mortal. The other was an Olympian."

"An Olympian... athlete?"

"No," Zoe said. "One of the gods."

"Cool!" said Nico and Natalia at the same time with huge smiles on their faces.

"No!" Bianca's voice quavered. "This is not cool!"

Nico danced around like he needed to use the restroom. "Does Zeus really have lightning bolts that do six hundred damage? Does he get extra movement points for—"

Natalia slapped his arm, "if he's real, they don't use points, dummy!"

"Guys, shut up!" Bianca put her hands to her face. "This is not your stupid Mythomagic game, okay? There are no gods!"

Sirius and Remus looked at each other, "that's Natalia with her older sister and her brother."

Remus nodded, "And– and she's half-god."

A girl with electric blue eyes and black hair looked at her with sadness, "Bianca, I know it's hard to believe. But the gods are still around. Trust me. They're immortal. And whenever they have kids with regular humans, kids like us, well... Our lives are dangerous."

"Dangerous," Bianca said, "like the girl who fell."

Thalia turned away. Even Artemis looked pained. Remus had guessed that that's who the lady was.

"Do not despair for Annabeth," the goddess said. "She was a brave maiden. If she can be found, I shall find her."

The memory stopped and everything seemed frozen. "Wow," Sirius said, still in shock. "Guess she really did have a hard life– she said she fought in wars."

Remus's eyes widened, "Godly wars, that's why we could never find anything on them. Is there anything on those?" Sirius nodded.

"There are, but I can't show you," he said and Remus looked confused. "They're horrible, screaming, death, Natalia and her brother brought some kind of army to Manhattan with two gods. She saved her best friend, but every everytime I look at them, I break down. I sit in the corner and I just go over everyone she knew that died. Castor, Deliah, Cora, Lee, they were all children." Remus moved closer to him and engulfed him in a hug as he cried.

They were suddenly back in the cottage, "I don't want Harry to end up like them," Sirius told him and Remus hugged him tight.

"He won't because unlike them, we're not going up against gods and our army isn't made up entirely of teenagers," Remus reminded him. Sirius nodded and wiped the tears from his eyes as he pulled away.

"I–I just feel her pain. She went through some of the most terrible things– you know tartarus?" Remus nodded. It was like hell, where monsters were from. "Natalia was down there for so long, she almost died. And she was manipulated by the ghost king and betrayed everyone and everyone hated her and her brother and she lost her sister and– and just so many other things."

Sirius sat on the couch and Remus sat next to him. "I just feel so angry all the time and it's her just screaming that it wasn't fair. That none of this is fair." Remus sighed and Sirius turned his body towards him, "Did you know that she didn't like eating because of tartarus and she would make herself basically starve? Because I didn't."

Remus looked guilty, everything Sirius said just felt like a punch to his gut. Sirius felt it too and felt bad, but there were just so many things. He hadn't even gotten to finding her sister or the second war or the vampires or the whole Apollo situation that she wasn't there for. She had to find out that one of her friends had died after the fact and there was nothing she could've done to help.

Remus then got an idea, "did you say that one of her friends was a daughter of Hecate?" Sirius nodded. "And the goddess that brought her here was Hecate?" Sirius nodded again. "What if we go through those memories and see if we can find a way to get her memories back?"

Sirius perked up like a dog and gave him a hopeful look, "Yeah, she might have something!"

Remus smiled at him and leaned back on the couch, "another time, that kind of magic can wear you down. You 'll also have to explain this to Harry and the others." Sirius nodded once more, feeling the dread of having to do that.

"They won't take it well. Harry already probably thinks that she betrayed us," Sirius sighed, rubbing his hands over his face.

Remus patted his shoulder, "it's better than not knowing."