Book One: Under the Hunters Moon

Silver souls, pulsing as one

Dún Scáith, Land of Shadows.

The door to the room opens after a short knock, a show of politeness that the Goddess of Dún Scáith would not have bothered with if it wasn't for the Goddess who had given her a good fight, and the child who she felt had potential on the other side. Scáthach enters the room, no longer in the skin-tight catsuit she had worn two days earlier for her battle with Artemis, but in an elegant light purple gown that she had once worn during feasts and holidays in days long past. As Scáthach enters she announces herself and watches the Goddess of the hunt tense as she always did when she entered the room. Good, the prideful Olympian has learned something about fear.

"I am here to change the boy's dressing, I'll be gone when I am done," Scáthach tells Artemis like the last four times she had done it before pulling back the covers, and setting the tray she had brought in with on the side table before getting to work.

Scáthach works quickly, with skilled hands she removes the old bandages and discards them before she takes the new ones, soaked in a healing poultice, and applies them to the now quickly healing wounds. Taking a vial of a slightly glowing silver potion, swirling it to check its consistency before spelling it into Harry's stomach. Normally she would work in silence as Artemis watches her like a hawk, but the Goddess of the Hunt felt like talking finally.

"Why are you helping him?" Artemis asks, her voice soft, almost a whisper as she watches Scáthach work.

Scáthach pauses in her work before she starts to clean up, as she does she speaks, "Because I see potential in him, he landed a mortal wound on an opponent that was equal in power to him, and survived the monsters of the chasms, and because I would be a poor teacher if I let him die after completing my challenges."

"Didn't you throw him down there yourself?" Artemis says, a growl in her voice, Scáthach just nods her head as she finishes up her cleaning.

"He could have died down there!? What would you have done then?" Artemis speaks, her anger leaking into her voice.

To this, all Scáthach does is shrug before saying "Then he would have died and been unworthy to teach. My methods are cruel but they yield the best results." Scáthach says before making her way to the door.

"He's been through enough cruelty in his life." Artemis spits out at the Goddess of Dún Scáith.

"Has he?" Scáthach asks, looking between Artemis and Harry, "and did he learn from it?" When Artemis doesn't answer but looks at the Scáthach with confused eyes, the Goddess of Dún Scáith elaborates, "A lesson can be cruel, yes. But if he learns from it, especially if it's a lesson worth learning, it is well worth the pain of the lesson."

Artemis looks away from the Witch-Queen before saying, "He…did not have the best of childhoods." The hitch of self-blame couldn't be missed.

"I see," Scáthach says in a soft voice, "A human can grow strong or can be broken during their early years, but if they do make it out of years of cruelty without breaking, it will take them years to unlearn the lessons that were forced upon them." Scáthach says in a sad voice that spoke of how many times she had seen it before, "but if he can make it past the demons that hold on to him, he'll be stronger for it, and I have learned that a mothers touch can exercise even the strongest of demons." The Goddess of Dún Scáith says with a knowing look at Artemis.

"I do not think I've been a good mother." The Goddess of the Hunt admits in the same soft voice, "I…said things to him that I had thought as true at the time, I have no clue how to take them back."