The Girl Who Didn't Die

XXIX- Withholding The Truth

On the Hogwarts Express, Diana found Draco waiting for her in an empty compartment.
  "What's going on?" she asked, taking a seat.
  "I need to tell you something, Ana. My mother lied to me," he murmured as Diana quickly shut the door.
  "What did she lie to you about?" she asked immediately.
  Draco sighed with a gulp, as he prepared to give away his family's secret. "Lucius Malfoy is not my father."
Diana laughed, not with joy, but in disbelief. "Well, do you know who is?!"
"That's the part I was afraid to tell you about. It's.... Zeus," he gasped nauseously.
"Draco! Do you know how big of a target that makes you? I may not be the careful-and-cautious demigod of the year, but you definitely should not be here!" she whispered.

  "Yes, I know, and I wasn't always out in the open, vulnerable, like this. I once lived at this place, a sort of.... 'safe haven' for demigods, they called it," he replied. "Although I didn't really know where I was at the time. Camp Half-Blood. But I couldn't stay, because, well, demigods like you and I, we're called Hybrids there, which I think makes us sound like werewolves of something, and many are afraid of us," he sighed frustratedly.
  "Draco," Diana sighed. "We're twelve now. Or, I am. You're getting close," she corrected herself. "You know what almost always happens to demigods at twelve."

  "Yes, I know! But we've got to be safe around here, right? Until it's safe for us to go back?" Draco sighed, growing paranoid.
  Diana stared. "Us? What are you going on about?"
  "Well, you'd come with me, wouldn't you?" Draco asked.
  "Are you out of your mind? I'm not hiding. If the monsters want to come kill me, they can come and find me. Surely I can't hide from them forever, might as well get used to them," Diana reasoned.
  Draco chuckled impatiently. "Diana, this is Ancient Greek monsters we're talking about, not paparazzi."
  "Believe me, I know! But there are other ways," Diana fired back.

Then her eyes went wide with a stunning and sobering realization that dawned on her.

  "No f**king way," she gasped.
  "What, Ana, what?" Draco asked.
  "Lily and James. Part of the reason they sent Harry and I to the Dursleys' was because their Muggle and mortal smells would mask mine," Diana laughed with pride at her discovery.
  "So we have to hide amongst Muggles? Yeah, I think I'll pass," Draco snapped immediately
  "No, you dumbass. We have to hide amongst wizards. Think about it; magic blocks all technology, so if it's strong enough to do that, maybe, in large amounts, it's strong enough to mask our demigod powers!" Diana realized.
  "Could work," Draco nodded slowly, unsure. "But godly magic is different," he remembered.
  "No, it isn't. Because wizards are the descendants of Hecate or Trivia," Diana argued.
  "Oh," Draco smirked insecurely. "I knew that."
  Diana laughed, then exhaled her inner tension. "How did things go with your mother?"
"Oh, just as you'd expect. She tried avoiding all of my questions after I overheard her and the man that I always thought was my father, and ten she tried justifying lying to me," he scoffed. "She said that she wasn't lying, that she was 'withholding the truth'. But I got the full story out of her."
"Good. Well, I'm not at all saying that I condone what she did, but don't you see why she did it?" Diana asked expectantly.
"Maybe," he mumbled. "But it's all a big jumble now. It's hurting my brain, really."
Diana chuckled. "You'll get used to it. Or, at least, you won't be afraid of the confusion anymore."

They returned to the castle after a while summer of being away, which felt strange to Diana, although she was glad to be back, around friends and people like her. Of course, none of them were truly like her, but they were the closest she could find. And she was actually grateful for them, most of them. She silently stared out the window, daydreaming. She wondered if maybe one day she'd be able to settle down, once she'd done what she needed to do in life, but she couldn't see it. Every time she tried picturing it, it just seemed too perfect.

Diana knew that she was born for war, seeing as her mother is actually a war goddess. She knew that the gods were actual physical embodiments of that which they represented, and that her mother was actually war itself. My father actually fell in love with war. How poetic, Diana thought to herself. She'd heard from Lily and James's letters and from books on demigods in the Hogwarts library that falling in love with war was a dangerous thing, as if that were something that she needed a book to tell her. War was dangerous, and she was war. Diana was dangerous. Loving Diana was dangerous.