That goddess also went by another name: the Goddess of Discord, the one who stirred desire and ambition in mortal hearts and set conflict and war in motion wherever she went.
The most famous case of it was the war that engulfed Troy itself.
When the hero Peleus married the sea goddess Thetis, every god and goddess received an invitation except Eris. In revenge, she tossed a golden apple into the middle of the wedding feast, inscribed with a single phrase: for the fairest.
Among the goddesses present, Hera, Athena, and the goddess of love herself all fell for that small trap and began fighting over who deserved to claim it.
Zeus, unwilling to make an enemy of any of the three, handed the decision off to the Trojan prince Paris instead, and each goddess offered him a temptation of her own.
In the end, Paris awarded the apple to the goddess of love, since she'd promised to win him the love of Helen, Queen of Sparta.
She kept her word. And in doing so, she set the Trojan War in motion, dragging even the gods themselves into taking sides.
"I mean Hera's golden apple," Tom said, and released the Transfiguration he'd been holding over himself. Under Nicolas's and Newt's startled eyes, his already handsome features sharpened further still, edging toward something almost too perfect to look at.
A presence had settled over him too, something that no longer felt entirely human, heavy enough that both men felt the weight of it pressing against them.
Nicolas stared at Tom, equal parts alarmed and uncertain. "What exactly is going on here?"
"I ate the golden apple," Tom said plainly. "The one from the old legend, Hera's apple. Eternal life, eternal youth, and along with it, a kind of sacred power that sits above magic itself. That's what did this to me."
Nicolas and Newt both stared, speechless, as if they'd just been told a myth was walking around in front of them.
"Tom, it's not that we don't believe you, but by your own account this is a myth, so are you certain that whatever you found was really the golden apple from the legend?"
"I completed another one of my trials."
Both men understood at once, though understanding it didn't make it any easier to accept. Tom's trials never seemed to end, and worse, every single reward that came out of them was enough to leave a person's jaw on the floor. At this rate, who was to say he wouldn't come home one day wielding Zeus's thunderbolt, or Poseidon's trident.
Tom wished it were that simple. He'd tried lately to activate a new trial, only for the tenth palace to give no response at all. Most likely it needed the Phoenix Trial completed first.
Every task that followed seemed to grow more monstrous than the last. At this point even Tom wasn't sure how long the next one would take to unlock.
Well. Worry about that when it came.
Watching the two men sit in stunned silence, Tom continued. "Aside from eating the apple, I've also got a seed on hand now, one that needs to be planted somewhere rich in magical power."
Newt came back to himself first. "Near the Whomping Willow, perhaps? There's still open ground there."
"That won't be nearly enough. The golden apple demands far more magical saturation than the Willow ever needed. I'm planning to build a dedicated growing ground instead, using the water from Voldemort's Inferi lake as the initial nutrient base, and then stocking it with a few dark creatures to keep the ecosystem stable, so it isn't just burning through resources with nothing feeding back in."
Tom laid out his idea, and Newt couldn't help clicking his tongue at the sheer audacity of it.
"You really don't hold back, do you. That lake water alone could trigger a plague or some blight if you're not careful, and now you want to keep magical beasts nearby on top of it..."
Nicolas, unconcerned with any of that, cut in. "But Tom's plan is genuinely sound. Surely you remember the Death Valley inside the Hoia Baciu forest? Even wizards refuse to set foot in that place."
Romania's Hoia Baciu forest held a Death Valley of its own, home to more than a thousand dangerous magical creatures, venomous pests, savage beasts, spirits of every kind imaginable. Smaller in area than the forests of Albania, but far more lethal per square foot.
"Which is exactly why I need your help," Tom said with a smile. "I don't want the magical creatures to just be one-time fertilizer for the Inferi lake. Something sustainable matters more here."
Newt nodded, which counted as accepting the job.
The three of them agreed that once Tom returned from Berlin, they'd get to work draining the Inferi lake and turning the whole area into a proper growing ground.
Newt quickly worked out what species would need penning in, along with the food chains and supporting ecosystem each would require. Tom, following his instructions, began partitioning the space and shaping the terrain accordingly.
A good deal of it needed sourcing straight from the real world, hauling in a few small hills, for instance, and anything that couldn't be finished in one go got carefully marked for later.
Nicolas trailed along behind the two of them the whole while, brow furrowed.
"Something's missing... I can't quite place it."
"Missing what?" Newt turned, puzzled, and even Tom paused in surprise. "Do you actually know something about magical creature care?"
Nicolas studied both their faces, and then, all at once, something clicked into place in his mind.
"What kind of growing ground doesn't have farmhands?" the old man said, breaking into a cheerful grin. "That lot back at Durmstrang are practically born for the job. Shall I go pick a few up?"
Tom: …
Newt: …