Heartwarming / The Trials of Apollo

Moments pages are Spoilers Off. Read at your own risk!

The Hidden Oracle

• Considering what terrible parents the Olympians are, it's always nice to see them express any positive emotion towards their kids.
  Austin was awake.
  I [Apollo] crawled to his side, now weeping with relief, and kissed his face. "My beautiful son!"
  • Heck, just seeing Apollo starting to warm up to his kids at all.
  • Not to mention seeing the way his kids take care of him.
    "We'll watch out for him," Austin said. "We're all he's got now."
    [...]
    A blanket was draped over me. Will said, "Sleep well, Apollo."
• Nico and Will have a lot of cute moments together, especially when you think about how Nico was all through the last series. It's safe to say that he's come a long way in six months, considering that he accepts and initiates touch with his boyfriend, and he also smiles more often. Read Blood of Olympus and then come back to The Hidden Oracle, and you can tell there's a major difference, undoubtedly because of the influence of Will and his other friends. He acts more like the dorky kid we were introduced to in The Titan's Curse than the brooding, asocial loner he made of himself in later books.
  • Their interactions have been compared to the early days of Percy and Annabeth.
  • After Chiron tells Will that the campers shouldn't walk around camp alone and to "use the buddy system":
    Will: Understood. (to Nico) Will you be my buddy?
    Nico: You are a dork.
• The way that Apollo goes from barely tolerating Meg's presence to risking his life and breaking an oath on the River Styx to help her. And at the end, his empathy for Meg's situation and refusal to give up on her.
• Apollo reassuring Will before going into the woods.
  I rested my hand on Will's shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll be back by dawn."
  His mouth trembled ever so slightly. "How can you be sure?"
  "I'm the sun god," I said, trying to muster more confidence than I felt. "I always return at dawn."
• It's a small one, but Zephyros sweeping away the remains of the dryads who gave their lives in the winds. It's a sign from the wind god that he's finally forgiven Apollo for the death of Hyacinthus, a mortal they both loved, and it's a small but sweet moment of two gods reconciling in a world where grudges can last quite literally forever.
• Harley, the youngest member of the Hephaestus cabin, spends most of the book (when not putting his fellow campers through a Death Course) building a homing beacon to help his brother, Leo, find his way home.
  • When Apollo was angry at Harley for the disappearance of Kayla and Austin in the Death Course, he saw Harley crying and blaming himself for what happened, and decided to comfort him and give him instructions to change the frequency so Festus can hear it. It worked.
• When Leo does finally return home, Harley immediately tackles him and gives him a rib-cracking hug.
  • Likewise, Harley's sister/cabin mate, Nyssa, slaps Leo across the face and starts yelling at him in Spanish.
    Leo: Dang, hermana, I love you, too!
• When Apollo wants to spend the night outside, in case Austin and Kayla come back, Meg just goes right along with it.
• Percy and Leo reuniting.
  Percy: Still with the sarcasm.
  Leo: Hey, man, I've sailed with the most sarcastic scalawags on the high seas.
  (They high-five)
• The interactions between Leo and Calypso are pretty sweet as always. They haven't lost their snarky tones, but certainly are more easy around each other, compared to their initial interactions in HoH/BoO. And more nicknames too, including "Mamacita" (Spanish for hottie/sexy momma, said in a distinctive loving manner) in addition to "Sunshine" on his part, and even "babe" on hers.

The Dark Prophecy

• Emmie and Josephine are made of this — they're a pair of former Hunters who gave up their immortality to fall in love and grow old together, and now maintain a haven for wayward demigods and whoever else needs their help. They are even able to convince Apollo that living well for a short time is better than just living forever, a foreign concept for him.
• When Meg had a prophetic bee swarm inflicted on her, courtesy of Trophonius. Apollo did everything he could to help her, from singing old healing chants, to singing about her mother Demeter and how nice she is, to just babbling reassuringly to her about how much Demeter loves her and she needs to live.
• The fact that Apollo and Meg not only repeatedly risk their lives for each other, but that Apollo actively pleads with several enemies to kill him and spare her. They've come a long way from a reluctant master/slave pair.
  • "I can not give up. Apollo/Meg needs me."
• Apollo refuses to abandon the elephant he found and walks her to the Waystation personally. It's slow going, but he's starting to become less selfish.
  • Also, him insisting on Lityerses being saved. This is considered him being lenient — by demigod standards. It eventually leads to the latter pulling a Heel–Face Turn.
• The Hunters of Artemis coming to Apollo's rescue using I Was Just Passing Through as an excuse because Zeus has forbidden Artemis to order them to help him. Despite this, Thalia specifically tells the hunters to save Apollo. She may be forbidden from helping out, but Artemis will not abandon her brother when he's in trouble. It's sweet how much they care for each other despite being Polar Opposite Twins.
• Apollo has no hard feelings, except maybe heartbreak, that Leo and Calypso want to stay at the Waystation.
• Leo and Calypso are staying at the Waystation, after traveling for possibly over year, they've finally found a place to stay. One where Leo can talk shop with Jo, and Calypso is going to learn how to do magic again from Emmie.
• When Apollo and Meg are finally reunited (after Meg was initially with Nero at the end of the previous book). Meg orders Apollo to go as she's fighting Lit at the griffin enclosure. He refuses and rescues her instead:
  Meg twisted to face me, her mouth set in a ferocious scowl. "You were supposed to go!"
  Then she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me so tightly I felt new fracture lines developing on my ribs. Meg sobbed, her face buried in my shirt, her whole body shaking. […]
  I was quite content to be annoyed, once again, by Meg McCaffrey.

The Burning Maze

• When Apollo wakes up in Palm Springs, he finds Meg asleep beside him, holding his wrist.
• Jason apologising to Apollo for not trying harder to stop Zeus from punishing him.
  • In response to this, Apollo promises Jason that no matter what happens, when he returns to Olympus, he will remember what it is like to be human.
• Meg comforting Apollo after the deaths of Jason Grace and Crest.
  • She calls Jason a hero and implies she sees Apollo as one as well.
• The last lines of the book, showing how far Apollo has come:
  But from now on, I would be more than Lester. I would be more than an observer. I would be Apollo. I would remember.

The Tyrant's Tomb

• How Apollo got his skill in archery back — firing arrows at zombies to when Meg jumps into Tarquin's throne room/tomb.
  • Likewise, Meg attacked Tarquin, hoping to prevent him from turning Apollo into a zombie.
• Apollo comforting Meg afterwards as she reveals that she doesn't want to lose anyone else. Apollo’s reaction is to reassure her that it's not her fault he was hurt and that she did all she could to help him, topping it off by giving her a hug.
• When he has the opportunity to summon any one god to help stop Tarquin from destroying New Rome, he briefly considers all the heavy hitters, up to and including Jupiter himself, but eventually decides there's only one god he'd depend on in such dire straits: his sister Diana.
  Apollo's narration: If I was going to die tonight, which seemed increasingly likely, first I wanted to see my sister one last time.
• The Arrow of Dodona, for all its sarcasm and Shakespearean jabs at Apollo, truly comes to care about him, to the point of begging Apollo to hold on just a bit longer as he's dying of his wound. It even knows some of Apollo's favorite things, as evidenced by the scene with Harpocrates.
• Apollo reconciling with Harpocrates, who he used to bully as a god, by apologizing and empathizing with him. When that isn’t enough, the help of Meg and Reyna vouching for him and all the good he's done allows them to reach him.
• Apollo's punchline to Don's final joke: that the only difference between satyrs and faun was what people saw in them and what they saw in themselves. A fitting tribute to a faun who first appeared as an annoying beggar but ended up performing a Heroic Sacrifice to make sure that the mission to sabotage the yachts succeeded, proving that fauns are more than just their stereotypes and can be just as heroic as their Greek counterparts.
  • Don even reincarnated into a laurel, traditionally granted to heroes and champions to honour their deeds.
• Diana herself can be considered a walking Crowning Moment of Heartwarming from the moment she appears; acting as a concerned, if somewhat aloof, big sister to Apollo, from healing his injury to stop him from dying to briefly holding his hand to comfort him. Apollo even noted he couldn't remember when his sister showed him that much open affection. According to Thalia, she sometimes became so worried about the now mortal Apollo that she split into her Greek and Roman forms. She also compliments Meg for her fighting skill and shows sympathy towards a heartbroken Hazel.
• Hazel's promotion to praetor. One moment she's politely applauding Reyna's retirement speech, the next Lavinia and the crowd start chanting her name and raising her on a shield, the same thing they did for Percy. It's nice that after all she's been through, she and Frank can settle down and lead New Rome into a new era.
  Apollo: Seeing Frank and Hazel side by side, I had to smile. They looked so right together — wise and strong and brave. The perfect praetors. Rome's future was in good hands.
  • Then Lavinia herself gets an unexpected surprise when the Fifth Cohort nominate her to be their new centurion. Despite her apparent desertion, her later heroism still inspires her fellow legionnaires enough to put their trust in her to be their new commanding officer.

The Tower of Nero

• Will saying outright that he would accompany Nico into Tartarus on his quest, à la Percabeth. Yes, the Tartarus from The Heroes of Olympus, the literal hellhole itself.
  • Just... these two in general, especially since Nico has very evidently shown character development since the beginning of the series. Cases in point, Nico calling Will his "glow-in-the-dark boyfriend" (he uses the B word!) and snuggling with him at the end of the book. Will also carries around a neck pillow for Nico when he needs to take a nap to regain energy from shadow-travelling.
• Meg breaking free of Nero's control, and inspiring the other demigods to do the same. Later, they're all shown happily gardening together.
• Apollo's reaction to Will glowing.
  Apollo: I'm so proud.
  Will, blushing: Dad, I'm just glowing. I'm not graduating at the top of my class.
  Apollo: I'll be proud when you do that, too.
• Apollo sacrificing himself to kill Python and save the world is both this and a Moment of Awesome. After spending most of the last four books being a selfish, narcissistic jerk who couldn't care less about anyone else, the utter calm and peace with which he faces his potential demise shows just how selfless and brave he has become from all his adventures.
• Apollo reuniting with the other gods, especially Artemis.
  • Hera is notably red-eyed from grief over Jason's death, and Apollo finds himself feeling an unspoken connection with his stepmother that he never had before.
• After being restored to godhood, he visits his horses, Camp Half-Blood, Camp Jupiter, Meg, Piper (who already has a new girlfriend—yes, girlfriend), and the Waystation to greet his friends.
  • Before leaving Camp Half-Blood, Apollo makes a stop by the Grove of Dodona to tell them that the Arrow was the most noble of them all and a true ally, a message he fully intends to pass on to Rhea. Equal parts a touching send-off to his friend and ensuring the old Shakespearian missile got the last laugh over its' judgmental brethren.
  • Apollo gives Meg a unicorn. What's more important is how he contextualizes it: he gave the kings he served rewards for treating him well during his period of slavery, and he doesn't want to cheapen their friendship by turning it into a transaction. Meg slowly agrees... and then asks if she could have a unicorn. Apollo makes her one, not as a reward, but as a gift granted to a friend.
• The book ends with the now returned god Apollo giving the reader his patronage.
  Call on me. I will be there for you.
• The back of the book features comments from the various gods about it. Two of them are from Hades and Poseidon, the first being fully confident that Nico is both a real hero and could do the job better, the second hoping Percy avoids the events of the book as Poseidon thinks Percy deserves a break.

---