"Open Hand, Closed Fist"

Percy was the first one to master the Patronus charm. He knew his happiest memory, as morbid and as horrible as it really was.

His happiest memory was killing Gabe Ugliano.

The pain, the abuse, the hate was all gone the second his face turned to stone. Percy stood like a carven statue of his namesake, Riptide in hand, head bowed as Medusa's head was held out in front of him.

Percy latched onto the memory, the dark light of release, and from the tip of his wand, blue light exploded. It jumped and whirled around the room, and slowly the shape of a seal formed from the light.

Percy smiled grimly, the sickle moon shining on his blade-sharp features.

---

"Wasteland, Baby!"

The first time Thalia kissed Reyna, all she could think was that this was the best and worst time to be kissing someone. The rain was falling in thick torrents around them, thanks dad, they were fighting for their lives, but the moon was shining.

Thalia wanted to kiss her until the day she died. Until their bodies were hewn on the ground until Olympus was really gone until the world was a wasteland until her baby was dead.

The memories burned hot in her core, and in all of our fear and the fire of the end of the world , her Patronus erupted from her wand. The dog, a labrador retriever, bounded around, born from memories of kisses.

---

"The Glamour and The Trauma"

Hazel knew her memory would have to do with her Mom.

So she thought of the good times, the hard times, but not a single thing was working. She remembered bright glimmers of colour, her Mom's calloused hand holding hers. Hazel wished her Mom could see her now, see what she had become.

Hazel sat down for a moment, trying to remember her first life. Remember the diamonds in the rough. She remembered the sun and the stars in the form of lights, dust on her cheeks from Sammy and his silliness.

People looked back on the time she grew up in as some golden age of living. They saw the parties of beauty not the trauma of living. Hazel thought and found the memory she was sure would work. Collecting and streamlining her thoughts, she remembered.

She had been at some dance. She didn't remember much of anything beyond her mothers tinkling laugh, and swinging lights casting a golden glow. The memory took hold, and the smell of oil and spice drifted past her as her Patronus leapt out of her wand.

It was a bull that walked with surprising grace, slowly exploring the room before fading out by her side.

---

"Just Another White Lie"

The first thing the legion taught you was that your loyalties lied with it and only it. You could have a life outside of it, of course, but when it came between the legion and your personal life, the elders would always tell you that your choice should always be the legion.

Jason had lived and breathed that for years upon years, it was no surprise that his happiest memory was the day he didn't. The day Jason Grace became an actual fucking person , not something to be used, to be controlled.

He'd grown up on white pillars supported by lie after damn lie, the truths, the cracks he couldn't see, all over. He became his own person, took a silver hammer to the pillars of Rome, and in the death of his loyalty, he became his own.

His Patronus, a wolf, like the goddess who had first decided his loyalty, was the ruins of the pillars in his heart that refused to go, but he didn't mind. He was Jason Grace, and his allegiance was to his heart.

---

"Shun the Light"

Memories are dangerous, boy , Reyna wanted to tell Harry Potter as he talked about Patronuses. He did not understand. He would not understand.

Or maybe she didn't understand. She could never separate memory from context, never hone in on the brief moments of joy in a clouded sky. And when you live on the edge of a gathering storm for all eternity, there is no memory where that storm is not on the horizon of the mind.

Or maybe...

Maybe there were.

Reyna thought of San Juan, of Hylla. She tried to clutch onto the memories of the before. Before her dad lost his mind before she killed her own kin. Before Orion destroyed and murdered before Skippy was lost to the world.

The good gave way to the bad, and she screams internally, crying for the sunlight. One memory, one clear ray of the San Juan sun, finds her.

She tackles it. Wraps her head around it, pulls it into her very being. She says the words, an old accent coming through, and a ram, horns curved and glistening, runs free.

---

"The Altar (Is My Hips)"

Jason. Jason. Jason. Jason. Jason.

Hands. Hands. Hands. Hands. Hands.

He and her. He and her. He and her. He and her. He and her.

That is her happiest memory.

Their altar of love, his perfection, her power.

She smiles as she speaks the spell, and tilts her head curiously as the animal's shape comes to light. A snake, for cunning and rebirth. It's fitting, she decides and goes to help someone else.

---

"Marching Through This World Alone"

Her happiest memory haunts her dreams.

Silver pride, rough hands on smooth ivory. The pride before the fall, before she marched through death and through destruction. His eyes, normally like stolen drops of the sea, glimmering like pearls, rage in her mind forever, the poison reflected in their depths, as the storm inside him releases.

But she knows what her happiest memory is, even if it's just a picture in her head. Even if it's just the memory of a statue being pulled to a flying ship, and five seconds of thinking she was safe.

It's a memory and the blue-light crow tells her that it's enough.

She is enough.

(Ah la la la de day)

---

"You'll Be Alright, No One Can Hurt You Now"

Saving lives was the best gift Will was ever given.

Even if it means your arms will be coated in blood from fingertip to elbow, even if it means you pass out seconds later, even if it means that this is going to hurt , saving lives, hearing a heartbeat drum is the thing that keeps him going.

He admires the light of his bear Patronus, the cool blue disappearance that is so different from his hot yellow return. Light is home, light is good, light brings tether to those who long for death to take them.

And when he can't save a life, when he fails, light is what they see as they pass into the underworld, his promises of a better place where they'll never have to fight again carrying them home.

---

"The Fifth In My Bones"

Family was all Frank Zhang had for a long time. His mom, and his grandmother. And then it became about his dad, who he was destined to be because of that. He wanted healing, he got war.

Gods, he had wanted so much in his life. He had wanted friends, he had got those. He wanted to be valued, he became Praetor over the heirs of Rome. He wanted a father, and he sorta got one.

He wanted life, he got death.

He wanted his mother.

She's the main focus of his memory, a silly day where they laughed and shopped and drove, not a care in the world. She would leave a few days later and he would never see her alive again.

Maybe that's why this is the one he holds dear, the pang of longing making it happy. He doesn't know, too enthralled with watching his Scorpion Patronus scuttle through the air.

---

"Your Faith Walks On Broken Glass"

Dying hurt.

Leo hadn't wanted to die when he flew up in the air to kill Gaea, but he knew that there was no option here. There was no end to his story that was good and painless. Dying hurt more than anything else in the cursed world he gave his life for. He just prayed the physician's cure would work and he could see Jason and Piper, sweet gods, Piper , again.

Coming back hurt more.

Death had been nice for the time he'd known it. There were no cares, no troubles, no masters or kings to dictate his fate. There was just...death.

But coming home, being alive, made up for all the pain. Seeing Piper, seeing Jason, breathing in strawberry air, is all that makes life good.

He remembers this all, and the dragon that rips from his wand tells the story for him.

---

"We Sing The Nightingale Song Alive"

"Papa?" A young Titaness asked her father as he watched the stars. "The stars are speaking."

He looked at her, endless eyes, watching her softly. He picks her up, holding her close. "Yes my nightingale, they are speaking. What do they tell you?"

"Scary things. They speak of islands and recluse."

He looks at her, then frowns at the stars above her head. "Don't worry, my Calypso. The stars will not hurt you. You do not need to heed their warnings."

✦0✦

"Papa!" Calypso cried as her father was dragged to the end of the world and as he screamed from the weight of the sky. She tried to lash out at these gods, but her power was not enough, and she was thrown back into the blackness.

She woke up on an island that smelled of jasmine and oranges, golden sand between her fingers. Her fathers screams echoed in her head, and she sobbed in the sand, never regretting loving her father but regretting that he was gone forever.

She screamed at the stars as they twinkled over her. She watched as the first hero washed upon her shores. She forgot her father for the first time in years that night. But his brief love did not fill the void of the absence of her father, her sisters, her aunts, and her uncles.

✦0✦

Many years later, a woman draped in a heavy cloth would climb Mount Tam in clothes modelled after those of her youth. She approached her father and asked a simple question.

"When the stars spoke to me, did you know what they said would come true?"

He looks at her, her eyes mirrored back at her.

"I did not, my nightingale."

"Why did you kill Zoë?" She asked him, and he hung his head.

"The death of your sister is my sin to wash away one day. I did not mean to kill her."

"I do not believe you."

He hangs his head. "And you are allowed to, child. I just hope you remember me for what I was when you were a girl, not who I am today. Give me this, Calypso."

She looks at his father, the beauty of his prime gone. "Papa," she says softly. "I love you still. I just wish you had not done what you did, and I could approach you and hug you again."

"You should never have been a part of our war. You were still a child."

She watches him for a moment after his confession, then murmurs a prayer for his soul to chaos itself, before turning away and pulling up her hood.

✦0✦

Calypso's Patronus was a nightingale.

-

-

-

Lyric/Literature references will be in the comments.