Book One: Under the Hunters Moon

Full Moon IV

Aphrodite, Hogwarts.

Heartstrings. This little term has been used from time immemorial, from Sappho sitting at an inn and gazing at a woman so beautiful she had cursed Aphrodite for pulling at them, to the modern day as a God stood on a beach with his wife looking at a young woman in a blue bathing suit, both feeling the strings of their hearts pulled to each other by a weave of knots and entanglements. Heartstrings were powerful, possibly the most powerful thing in the known universe, if one knew how to pluck at them that is; and Aphrodite certainly knew how to do just that. There are three common types of heartstrings, the most common were the gray threads that attached a heart to things they care for, be it an object, a pet, or a person, these tied people together in friendship mostly and were the most fragile of the heartstrings, prone to wear and tear until they snap or are forgotten about.

The next are the golden threads, which show the love between two or more people that could be wound so tightly together that they become a Gordian knot in and of themselves. They were uncommon, but still in abundance considering the last heartstring, the golden thread tied deep friendships and love blooming between to hearts together, they connected family with one another and those who were like family together. Aphrodite tries to avoid playing with the golden threads for while tied to her domain, it was also a part of Hestia's more deeply, and she did not want to cross Hestia any more than Hestia wants to cross anyone.

Then there is the last of the threads, the red thread of fated love, the one Aphrodite was most interested in. The red thread connects two or more hearts to each other so thoroughly and so tightly, that the hearts start beating as one at first sight. They were unbreakable and impossible to serve, even for a Goddess of Love like herself, but it did not mean Aphrodite could not manipulate them. All Aphrodite had to do was cut her finger and run it along the thread that connected two people together, and voila, instant red thread. Her son Eros had a simpler way to do this with his arrows, but her way works just as well.

The gray and golden threads can and would switch between coloring as mortals and gods went through their lives up and downs, gaining and losing color till they either die and all threads but the red ones snap or till they snap for other reasons. The red threads always stayed even after death and would normally drag the other person it was connected to, to their death as well. It was a rare power that only one in a hundred of her children could see them, one in a thousand that could pluck at them as she did. But as Aphrodite weaves these threads into a complicated and convoluted tapestry that no other being other than herself could make sense of, she was cursed as cruel and wicked, and praised as loving and wise, the goddess of love could do this to anyone, to anything, at any time; if one were to ask her Aphrodite would simply shrug and tell them it was just a part of her nature.

It was the heartstrings that would lead her to the boy, she was sure of it. So as she appeared on the green grounds of Hogwarts she was surprised to find not one, but two strings attached to the leather jacket she held folded in her arms, one gold and one gray, the golden one was pulled tightly leading off into the woods, while the other was snap and flailing in the wind. Aphrodite follows the golden one because she was sure it would lead to Harry, besides it was leading into the woods, son of Artemis, this was a no-brainer. But she didn't find a boy, but a large black hound laying under a tree looking up at the castle, and as the Goddess of love approached the hound, it stood looking between the jacket and her before growling and backing away. As Aphrodite ponders this odd occurrence of the heartstrings, the hound turns tail and runs away.

"Such a strange dog," Aphrodite murmurs to herself watching it run off, it was almost as if…

No, focus. She was here for the boy, nothing else. Sighing to herself Aphrodite came to terms that she was going to have to do this the hard way. So turning on her Gochi heels she starts walking to the castle, shifting her form from that of an adult to that of a seventeen-year-old, copying the outfits of the students she sees off in the distance and walking through the doors of the castle.