Iolanthe Potter or Sally Jackson?
Sometimes, she had to admit being lost in her different identities. Saving Wizarding Britain was supposed to be the culmination of her life's work, never expecting to survive beyond the Final Battle against Voldemor...
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[Later back in the Leaky Cauldron, Hagrid and Iolanthe are at a long table, eating soup. Everything is too quiet, Hagrid soon notices this.]
Hagrid: You all right, Iolanthe? You seem very quiet.
Iolanthe: He killed my parents, didn't he? The one who gave me this. You know, Hagrid. I know you do.
Hagrid: [sighs and pushes his bowl away]First, and understand this, Iolanthe, 'cause it's very important. Not all wizards are good. Some of them go bad. A few years ago, there was one wizard who went as bad as you can go. And his name was V-...his name was V-...
Iolanthe: Maybe if you wrote it down?
Hagrid: No, I can't spell it. All right. [quietly]Voldemort.
Iolanthe: Voldemort?
Hagrid: Shh!!
Ron moaned out of sheer exasperation and looked at his best friend. "Could you be any less blunt? And a bad influence? How many times have I told you not to say his name?" He was brave, yes, but he had been living in a Wizarding family his entire life and they had grown up to fear the mere mention of the Dark Lord. Not even Grindelwald had managed to create the same amount of terror during his reign. It wasn't necessarily something to be proud of, but he could admit the man succeeded in his goals.
"So it's a family thing ?," asked Annabeth, raising a disapproving eyebrow. "I have been telling him for five years not to say the monster's name and he hasn't once listened to me."
Percy looked outraged by her lack of belief in him even though he had to admit he hadn't made their lives easier with that tidbit. It's just...he had always been told he was a lot like his father, and here he was, discovering he was more like his mother than he had ever wished to be. He couldn't say he wasn't happy about the fact: he had always thought he would one day disconnect with her because of their world's differences and he had always been worried about the fact. He loved his friends, and his father, and his girlfriend, but they couldn't dare to hold a candle to the woman who had raised him.
"There's two of them," complained Zeus, holding his head in his hands. He was a God – thus pretty sure he couldn't get migraines or headaches, and yet, the mother/son duo had managed to do the impossible. Trust Poseidon to fall in love with such a woman and to give birth to the perfect mix between both of them.
[Iolanthe looks around to see if anyone heard it]
Hagrid: It was dark times, Iolanthe, dark times. [We flash over to a flashback on the night at Godric's hollow, consisting off a cloaked man walking towards a house, breaking in with his wand, and proceeding to terrorize. Hagrid narrates.]Voldemort started to gather some followers, brought 'em over to the dark side. Anyone that stood up to him ended up dead. Your parents fought against him, but nobody lived once he decided to kill 'em. [Iolanthe's mother, Lily, screams in pain as she is killed by Voldemort's wand. Green flashes are seen from the windows outside the house. Then, we see Voldemort pointing his wand at an infant Iolanthe Potter's head.]Nobody, not one. 'Cept you.
[We flash back to the present time.]
None of them had been expecting to witness the murder of the Potters by Voldemort; the flashback bringing tears to the demigods and the wizards – Sirius especially. He had always felt like he had failed his best friend and wondered how different their lives could have been if they hadn't trusted Peter.
"Stop blaming yourself," Iolanthe chastised him. "If you had been the secret keeper, they would have killed you, you know that? I wouldn't have gotten to know you and my parents would have died anyway." They knew she was right: once Fidelius fell, every person who knew the secret could now share it, which was drastically less secure. "They shouldn't have moved to Godric's Hollow, they should have stayed in Potter Manor, under thousand-year old wards that couldn't have been broken easily. They trusted Dumbledore who led astray. They trusted their best friend . You are not responsible."
While she was comforting her godfather, people seemed to be stuck in the "Potter Manor" bit – they knew they had money money, but they didn't know it was money money . She wasn't just a girl who had just inherited her grandparent's wealth; she was part of a dynasty that had been living since the fall of Rome.
Ares, even though he wasn't the most...compassionate person and loved war, still had trouble understanding why a "Dark Lord" as they called him would want to kill a mere child. "What's so special about you?," he asked.
Iolanthe shrugged – in her eyes, Voldemort was the instigator of his own demise. He had been trying to kill for forever instead...of doing whatever a villain did. That was his goal in life: she might have moved to another country or another continent if he had just left her alone; prophecy be damned, but he had been relentless in his obsession and had killed every person she had ever cared about.
Iolanthe: Me? Voldemort tried to kill me?
Hagrid: Yes. That ain't no ordinary cut on your forehead, Iolanthe. A mark like that only comes from being touched by a curse, and an evil curse at that.
Iolanthe: What happened to V... to You-Know-Who?
Hagrid: Well, some say he died. Codswallop in my opinion. Nope, I reckon he's out there still, too tired to carry on. But one thing's absolutely certain. Something about you stumped him that night. That's why yer famous. That's why everybody knows yer name. You're the girl who lived.
Perseus hummed thoughtfully before looking at his mother, her green eyes shining with unshed tears after seeing her own parents die. He would have never recovered if he had been in her place: he couldn't imagine a world where it was someone other than Sally Jackson who had raised him. Never knowing blue cookies? Never knowing her hugs before falling asleep? Not getting encouragement for every single task he had undertaken?
"Let me guess," he asked. "He wasn't dead and he wasn't happy you thwarted his plans?"
She snorted, looking at him like he just knew her too well, which was the case. Their lives were very similar when one was to think about it, which, she could admit, made her pretty sad. "Exactly. And how does a child manage to do that? Well, no one said Voldemort was anything but insane."
Poseidon was a bit tired of the distance between them – he wasn't selfish and understood her need to spend time with her family, but being in the same room as her and not being able to be close to her was tearing him apart. With a single snap of his fingers, a couch appeared just next to his throne with enough space for his son, his future wife and his (maybe?) father-in-law. One look at Percy was enough to make him understand what he wanted and his son sighed; tired of his father's attempts to make them a permanent fixture in his life, even though he had to admit it had always been a dream of his.
