ALL CHARACTERS PORTRAYED WITHIN THIS STORY ARE 18 YEARS OLD OR ABOVE.

Summary: Weary from battle and wishing a respite from the losses of war, Harry absconds from Wizarding Britain, leaving everything he knew behind. Armed with the Hallows, Harry travels the Magical World, learning secrets long forgotten and breaking the boundaries of magic itself. However, it’s when he stumbles upon an abandoned temple that his life truly begins to change, drawing the eyes of beings long thought to have faded into history and myth…

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Chapter 5: Meet Thy Maker

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“You’ve redecorated,” Aphrodite said softly, her voice edged with disapproval. She clicked her tongue once. “I don’t like it.”

Harry exhaled through his nose, already feeling the familiar tightening behind his eyes of an oncoming headache. The words themselves were mild, but the intent behind them wasn’t. Aphrodite’s tone carried a polished sharpness that made his instincts scream ‘ danger’. She was hardly trying to hide her dislike, it seemed. Harry could only hope things didn’t escalate further. He really didn’t want to become stuck in the middle of a divine cat-fight of all things, but it seems Aphrodite had other plans.

Hecate did not turn from the shadowed counter where she had been arranging a collection of bone-handled knives. Still, Harry felt her attention shift, the air responding before she did. When she looked up at last, golden light flared briefly in her eyes.

“That’s unfortunate,” Hecate replied, lips curling in a thin, knowing smirk. “And here I had begun to suspect you were developing taste after all these millennia.”

The temperature in the shop dropped perceptibly.

Harry suppressed a sigh. For Merlin’s sake, they hadn’t even made it  three steps  into the shop.

Aphrodite’s smile remained in place, radiant and sweet, but fine fractures appeared at its edges. Harry could feel the anger stirring beneath her mortal guise—divine, righteous, and very much capable of leveling the building if allowed to crest.

Before either goddess could speak again, Aphrodite stepped forward.

Her hip brushed a narrow pedestal crowded with carved relics. The stand shifted—only slightly—but Harry caught the change instantly. His hand shot out, steadying it before anything could fall.

Aphrodite stilled, glancing down at the pedestal, then back up as if nothing had happened.

Hecate’s gaze flicked to the artefacts, then to Aphrodite. “I believe I said try not to break anything, yes?”

“It’s not my fault you’ve collected so much clutter,” Aphrodite scoffed and crossed her arms.

Harry didn’t comment, though he did suppress another a quiet sigh. He was far too used to the love goddess’s less than noble nature. He had long since accepted the truth: Aphrodite wasn’t careless out of disrespect. She simply existed as though the world would rearrange itself to accommodate her presence. Most of the time, it did.

They moved deeper into the shop. The front room was oppressive, shelves packed tight with artefacts that whispered, pulsed, or watched. Harry could feel the magic thrumming through them, dense and old, some of it dark enough to make even a horcrux seem tame.

As Aphrodite turned to examine a hanging charm, her sleeve caught the edge of a glass vial. It tipped, clinking softly against its neighbour.

Hecate snapped her fingers.

The vial froze in place, suspended in midair.

“I said,” Hecate repeated, voice level and unmistakably final, “do not break anything.”

Aphrodite inclined her head, a golden blush painting her cheeks, a graceful concession rather than an apology. She straightened slowly, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle from her sleeve, every movement precise and controlled.

Hecate watched her for another heartbeat too long before a thin smile touched the witch-goddess’s lips. “For an all-powerful Olympian goddess,” she began lightly. “One would think you’d possess a bit more awareness of your surroundings.”

Aphrodite’s eyes snapped up. “Careful,” she warned, sweetness gone from her voice.

Hecate’s smile widened, gold light flaring faintly in her gaze.

“ Or what? ” Hecate whispered in response, her smile curving into a sharpened point.

The air tightened.

Harry felt it instantly—the surge of power, the pressure building as Aphrodite’s glamour sharpened into something far more dangerous. Gold light shimmered along her skin, the scent of roses and salt thickening as her anger rose, divine and absolute.

Both goddesses stood there, staring each other down as reality seemed to almost spark and crackle around them. The faery lights overhead flickered. The artefacts lining the walls began to whisper more loudly, magic responding to magic, tension coiling toward violence. He needed to intervene now before the two deities went nuclear.

“That’s enough,” he said.

The words rang out, cutting cleanly through the rising divine pressure.

Both goddesses turned to him at once.

Their attention crashed down like a physical weight, ancient, immense, demanding. Harry’s magic flared instinctively, anchoring him in place as he met their gazes without flinching. He did not challenge them, but he did not yield either.

The moment stretched.

Then, slowly, the pressure eased.

Hecate’s glow dimmed to a steady molten yellow. Aphrodite’s golden shimmer receded, her anger cooling from a blaze to a simmer.

Harry took another step forward, deliberately placing himself between them.

“You said you would help us,” he said, voice steady, resolute. “Prove it.”

Hecate studied him for a long moment, something ancient and searching moving behind her eyes. Then she nodded once.

“Very well,” she said. “Follow me.”

The change was immediate as they followed the daughter of Perses into the back of the shop. Warm light spilt across the room from flickering faery lights floating above. A small iron furnace burned away in the corner, keeping the room warm yet comfortable despite the humid bayou air outside. In lieu of chairs, piles of cushions dotted the room surrounding a small, knee-high coffee table with three steaming cups of tea already prepared.

“You knew we were coming,” Harry said, eyeing the cups.

“I keep watch over what is mine,” Hecate replied simply. “Your presence was not difficult to trace.”

Hecate gestured, and the cushions subtly rearranged themselves, sliding closer to the low table as if encouraged by unseen hands. Harry sat where she indicated, aware of Aphrodite settling on his other side—close enough that he could feel warmth radiating from her skin, the faint scent of roses lingering in the air.

For a moment, no one spoke.

The tea steamed gently between them, releasing a comforting herbal scent that cut through the lingering tension. Harry wrapped his hands around the cup, grounding himself in the heat. His pulse was still elevated, magic humming just beneath his skin, responding to the proximity of two goddesses who had both, in very different ways, just laid claim to him.

Hecate studied him openly now, no pretence of indifference in her gaze.

“You’ve changed,” she said at last.

Harry blinked. “I—well, I suppose I have,” he said. “I needed to after the war. The person I was…Well,  there was a lot I needed to move on from, I suppose.”

“Indeed. You’ve come a long way in your journey to heal,” she replied, her eyes flicked briefly to the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead before returning to his face. “But what’s more is how you’ve grown. You have learned restraint. Discernment. You weigh consequences before acting—something many immortals never manage.”

Aphrodite let out a soft huff. “Speak for yourself.”

Hecate ignored her.

“Yet that is not all,” she continued. “Through your journeys, you’ve come to control more than just your temperament, haven’t you, Harry? You learned to bend that which you keep hidden to your very will. You’ve mastered them,” the goddess leaned forward, fingers tracing idle patterns in the air above her tea. “The Hallows.”

Harry shifted as a weight burned against his wrist, where the elder wand sat securely in a holster beneath the sleeve of his coat. He hardly used it, much preferring his holly wand over the ancient Death Stick, yet he never allowed it to stray far. He kept it hidden, only using it when things became particularly dicey during his travels.

The Ressurection Stone he kept locked inside a locket around his neck, only ever taking it out when he wished to call upon ancient mages from old so that he may learn their secrets. Never did he call upon a loved one, not since that night in the Forbidden Forest.

The Cloak he still used often. It was too useful to lock away, though even if it wasn't, it was still one of the only mementoes he had left of his father. It would pain him to part with it.

“Most who encounter even one are undone by it. The Cloak feeds isolation. The Stone feeds grief. The Wand feeds ambition.” The goddess studied him with a knowing smile, her golden eyes catching the light as each word settled between them. “Yet you held all three, and they did not rule you. Something not even Albus Dumbledore was able to achieve.”

Harry cleared his throat, the faint, familiar tug of the Hallows stirring at the edges of his awareness as if in quiet protest. They were never silent for long—not truly. Not when spoken of so plainly.

He thought of Dumbledore’s confession, spoken in a voice stripped of its usual certainty. Of the Gaunt family ring, slipped onto a finger not out of caution, but yearning. Not because of Voldemort’s curse, but because the Resurrection Stone had whispered to him. Promised him the sound of his sister’s laughter again. The chance to look into Ariana’s eyes and apologise.

Harry had heard those whispers, too.

The Stone had murmured to him in the dark, its pull subtle but relentless. It had promised his mother’s voice—soft and warm, just as he had imagined it as a child, on nights when the cupboard beneath the stairs had felt impossibly small and unbearably quiet.

The Cloak had been no kinder.

It had offered him absence. An escape. A way to step out of the world entirely—to watch without being seen, to exist without being touched. There had been moments, especially after the prophecy became a weight he could barely breathe beneath, when vanishing had felt like mercy. When hiding forever from war, from expectation, from loss, had seemed like the only sensible choice.

And the Wand…

Harry swallowed.

The Wand had promised certainty. Power without hesitation. Strength that would never falter again. It had whispered to him the name of every friend he had lost, every loved one he was too slow, too weak , to save.

‘If only you were stronger’

‘If only you were better’

‘If only you were more ’

It had offered him dominance over a world that had taught him, again and again, how fragile he truly was.

Never be weak again, it had said.

Never be helpless.

For a long time, Harry had wanted that more than he cared to admit.

“There were… moments,” he began. “Times when it would have been simpler to let them decide things for me, but I couldn’t. I’m not arrogant enough to believe myself capable of taking back control should I ever give in to the Hallows. Maybe that’s why I’ve been able to resist. The Hallows don’t punish arrogance, after all. They reward it, right up until the moment they take everything else from you.”

The goddess’s smile softened, approval unmistakable.

“So you chose restraint,” she said. “Not because you lacked desire, but because you understood its cost.”

Harry frowned and looked away. The goddess was hardly looking for an answer.

“What do you know of them?” he asked. “The Hallows are hardly items of consequence to a goddess such as yourself after all.”

Hecate smirked. She leaned back into her cushion, the steam of her tea dissipating around her fingers.

“True, but it is still quite the feat for a mortal to control such artefacts. Especially when said artefacts contain a small piece of my essence inside of them.”

“You–” Harry shook his head in confusion, “You made the Hallows? Why”

Aphrodite’s gaze sharpened, interest piqued.

Hecate leaned back slightly, considering him. “Because humanity needed to learn something,” she said at last. “That death is not an enemy to be conquered, nor a prize to be hoarded. It is a boundary. One that gives life meaning.”

Her voice lowered, the weight of ages pressing into each word.

“The Peverell brothers each believed they could bargain with Death,” she continued. “In truth, they bargained with themselves. I merely… gave form to their desires.”

Harry absorbed that in silence.

“The Wand was not meant to be won,” Hecate went on. “The Stone was not meant to restore. The Cloak was the closest to its purpose—concealment, not escape. You were the first to understand that instinctively.”

Hecate’s lips curved into a genuine smile.

“That,” she said softly, “is why I am proud of you.”

The words settled over him, warm and heavy. Praise from professors had always felt conditional. Praise from Dumbledore had been layered with expectation. This—this felt different. Earned. Uncomplicated.

Aphrodite broke the silence, her tone lighter but no less intent. “So what happens now?” she asked. “The Hallows answered to him once. Do they still?”

“They do,” Hecate replied. “Their cycle has been broken. The lesson they were meant to teach is now learned.” The goddess snapped her fingers as she spoke. In an instant, the weight of the Hallows eased. They were still there, still…present, but no longer did the strain of their existence weigh so heavily upon his shoulders. “They will heed their master’s call unconditionally.”

Harry took a breath, his magic and mind alike reeling from the sudden shift. Beside him, Aphrodite reached over, her fingers brushing against his hand in a soothing gesture. Harry took the offered comfort, lacing his fingers through hers as they had done countless times before.

The air shifted again, not with hostility this time, but something warmer. More dangerous in its own way. Hecate watched with rapt attention, her golden eyes glued to their joined hands.

“You walk a narrow path,” she said, not unkindly. “Power attracts power. Desire attracts desire. You have drawn the attention of forces that do not take change lightly.”

Harry met her gaze steadily. “I’m aware.”

A faint curve touched her lips—approval, perhaps, or something closer to concern.

“And yet,” Hecate continued, “you persist. I find that interesting.”

Then she turned, the shift of her attention sharp as a blade, and fixed Aphrodite with a look that stripped away pretence.

“You cannot hope to keep your child hidden forever,” Hecate said coolly. “Zeus’s gaze is far too unyielding for even you. Olympus will sense the power growing inside your womb soon enough.”

“I know,” Aphrodite replied stiffly.

She placed a hand over her stomach, more instinctive than necessary, and looked away. For a moment, the goddess of love looked… small. Not weak. Burdened.

“That is why we are here,” she said finally. Her jaw tightened, and when she spoke again, the words clearly cost her something. “We need your help.”

The last word emerged barely above a whisper.

“Please.”

Hecate said nothing.

Her golden eyes remained fixed on Aphrodite for a long, torturous stretch of silence. The air grew heavy, magic tightening like a held breath.

“Olympus will not stand for this,” Hecate said at last.

“No,” Aphrodite agreed. “Many will see our child as a threat.”

Hecate shook her head slowly. “Not a threat. A fulcrum. The point upon which the scales may tip.” Her gaze sharpened. “Only the demigod of the Great Prophecy could rival your child’s potential and even then, only just.”

Harry felt the weight of those words settle in his chest.

“Then what must we do?” he asked.

Hecate turned to him, and the hardness in her expression softened, though conflict still shadowed her gaze.

“You were supposed to be mine,” she said quietly.

The glow in her eyes dimmed, fading into something unmistakably mortal.

“You were my chosen long before you ever drew breath. I watched you patiently from afar. I waited.” Her voice wavered, just slightly. “I took on another face, one I could wear among your kind.”

Her form shimmered. Raven-black hair lightened to silver-blonde. Her height diminished, her presence compressing inward until the ancient goddess stood as a familiar young woman.

Harry’s breath caught. “Daphne Greengrass?”

“A persona of sorts,” Hecate said gently, her voice now unmistakably Daphne’s. “The Greengrasses were among my last true devotees. Their firstborn was fated to die before dawn. They prayed to me for help, but even I cannot sever the threads of fate.”

She looked down at her hands.

“Yet I saw an opportunity. I bound my essence to the infant’s soul. Daphne lived because of me and I lived among mortals because of her.” A pause. “But Death cannot be denied forever as the Hallows taught the Peverells.”

Her eyes lifted to Harry.

“She died during the Battle of Hogwarts as she was always meant to. Her soul rests in Elysium now.”

The illusion faded, Hecate restored.

“Even then,” she continued, voice heavy, “I could only watch you. I wanted to reach for you, to claim what I had waited for, but even when you stood within my temple, I could not. You were still healing from the war. I did not wish to burden you further.”

She exhaled slowly, shoulders sagging.

“I waited too long, I suppose. Or perhaps I feared wanting too much.” Her gaze slid to Aphrodite. “In the end, it was you who did what I could not.”

Aphrodite’s voice was barely audible. “You can still take that leap.”

She reached out, taking Hecate’s hand. The gesture was simple and devastating.

“Help us,” Aphrodite said. “Protect his child. Our child.”

Hecate stared at their joined hands.

Then she swallowed.

“Zeus’s power is vast,” she said quietly. “But it is not absolute. It is the others you must turn to, the gods he believes would never oppose him.”

“You want us to start a coup?” Harry asked incredulously.

“No,” Hecate replied firmly. “That would end in the ruin of this world. But if enough gods believe your child is worth protecting, Zeus will hesitate. He cannot risk division with the Great Prophecy looming so near.”

“Easier said than done,” Aphrodite murmured. “Olympus barely sees the demigods as little more than tools to be used and thrown away.”

“Which is why you must seek her ,” Hecate said.

Aphrodite stiffened. “You mean—”

Hecate raised a hand. “Careful. Her gaze pierces just as easily as Zeus’s. You know this.”

Aphrodite nodded slowly. “She will be difficult to reason with. We must plan carefully.”

“Indeed.”

With a wave of Hecate’s hand, the teacups vanished.

“For now, though, the hour grows late, and your journey was not a short one. I can shield you further from Zeus’s gaze, but only while you are under my roof. When you leave, you must be ready to act.”

Harry rose, offering Aphrodite his hand. She accepted, smiling softly before kissing him—brief, tender, real.

Hecate looked away.

“I’ve prepared a room upstairs,” she said briskly. “I’ll be in the front.”

She vanished, leaving behind only a cloud of purple smoke.

Aphrodite frowned at the goddess’s abrupt departure. She could sense the emotion she left behind, the raw feeling steeped within her domains. The love, the yearning, the want , all centred around Harry. It made her remorseful in a way, for taking what the Wiccan goddess so desperately longed for. If only there was a way…

Aphrodite suppressed a groan. For chaos sake, this mortal pregnancy was slowing her senses! Of course, there was a way for both of them to get what they wanted. Harry would have to agree, of course, but Aphrodite wasn't too worried about that. Was it an ideal outcome? Perhaps not, but then again, she was always fond of the occasional threesome…

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Coaxing Harry into bed had been trivial. His hunger had only grown as her pregnancy progressed. A simple snap of her fingers to vanish her clothes, and within moments, he was crawling on top of her, fingers and mouth exploring every inch of her divine flesh like she was the most sacred of feasts. Her domains of lust and pleasure practically purred in her ears as she felt his hardened length pressed against her inner thigh. Chaos, she would never be able to get enough of him.

She could not allow herself to get lost in the ecstasy of their lovemaking as she usually did, though. Not tonight.

“You are eager tonight, my love,” she purred, shivering as Harry’s lips found that spot on her neck that never failed to make her pussy quiver with phantom pleasure. “One might think something besides myself has already stoked your desires. Or perhaps, someone?”

Harry pulled back, a look of confusion peeking through the haze of lust. “I would nev–”

Aphrodite silenced him with a kiss, her tongue cutting off his words as she guided him inside with a tug of his hips.

“Hush now my sweet,” she breathed, the feeling of his cock spreading her walls apart nearly driving her into a frenzy. Her domain of pleasure never did like to be held back for very long. “Love cannot so easily be diluted by the occasional wandering eye.”

Harry groaned as the bases of their sex met. She giggled as his lips returned to her neck, eager and filled with want that permeated every bite and kiss against her divine flesh. The goddess rocked her hips in time with the slow, steady thrusts of his cock. The rhythmic grinding was sensual, if a little tame compared to their normal vicious fucking, but Aphrodite wanted to save the fun stuff for later.

“Hecate and I may have her differences– hng! ” she grunted, the other goddess’s name drawing a particularly hard thrust out of him. “But I cannot begrudge her desire for you –gods right there– I cannot say a part of me does not wish to see what she looks like with a mouthful of your cock either.”

Harry pushed himself up onto one arm while he used the other to close his hand around her throat with a low growl. Aphrodite whimpered, a small orgasm sneaking past her diving defences as Harry slammed into her with hard, unrelenting thrusts. Her words were having an even greater effect than she had imagined.

Good.

‘ Say the word, my love,’ she cooed inside his mind, her eyes flashing pink as more of her divine essence bled through her mortal guise. ‘And I shall summon her here for you to sate your desires. Say the word, and you shall hear what it sounds like when two goddesses scream your name.’

Harry’s answer was spoken not through words, but in action. Releasing her throat, he brought his hand down upon her left cheek with a firm ‘SMACK!’ , the stinging in her face only making the goddess’s moans all the louder. The next second, Aphrodite watched her world pivot, turning from staring up at her beloved as he pounded into her dripping wet slit, to looking forward at the ash coloured headboard as she was forced to her hands and knees while Harry slipped his cock inside her arsehole with a single thrust.

Needless to say, Aphrodite took that as a yes.

While her physical body jolted and jerked with every thrust from the rough buggering, her diving presence seeped through the walls and wards of the dark magic shop in search.

Hecate’s own essence was easy to find, the smouldering black and golden shine of her godly soul like burning through the divine veil like a blazing star.

The Wiccan goddess regarded her approach with a flicker of curiosity and the slightest bit of wariness. Aphrodite had to fight to keep the smug satisfaction from radiating off her essence. On the physical plane, the other goddess was a force almost equal to Aphrodite’s own, especially here in a city so steeped in Hecate’s domain. But on the metaphysical? Well, there was a reason she and the other Olympians were the ones chosen to rule. Where Hecate was a blazing star, Aphrodite was that of a swirling galaxy, the gravity of her essence crushing that of a lesser god.

Still, as good as it was to see the goddess quiver after dealing with her snarky comments, Aphrodite was not here to taunt, but to invite.

‘You wish to take the leap? Then prove it. He awaits you Ἑκάτη,’ she murmured.

Hecate’s essence stilled at her words, as if the goddess’s breath had caught in her throat. Then, with the faintest shimmer of hope, Hecate sent back a pulse of acceptance.

Pulling away, Aphrodite returned to her physical body, a smirk splayed on her lips for the briefest moment before it was forced away with a loud moan as Harry gave her arse a hard spank. The crack of flesh was loud enough that she barely heard the door to their room creaking open, but she hardly needed to hear it. The scent of burning sage and belladonna oil wafting through the air was enough to know she had arrived.

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Author’s Note

This was meant to come out like a week ago I swear…

In all honesty, the holidays were especially draining this year, far more than I expected, and I found myself practically banging my head against a wall every time I sat down to write. This chapter was a hard one to get to where I wanted, and honestly, I think I may update it in the future because I’m still not 100% satisfied, but hopefully it’s still enjoyable enough for you all!

Next chapter will be the entire scene between Harry/Aphrodite/Hecate, so keep an eye out!

Thanks for reading!