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Leo Valdez is the 15-year-old demigod son of Hephaestus and the late Esperanza Valdez, the best friend of Jason Grace and Piper McLean and one of the protagonists in The Heroes of Olympus book series.
Origin
Leo was born in Houston sometime between 1994-1995 to Esperanza Valdez and Hephaestus, the Greek God of Fire and Blacksmiths. Because of being a Hephaestus child, Leo got a rare ability to produce fire. From the ages of two to five, Leo was babysat by Tia Callida (actually Hera in disguise) who put him in a fireplace to sleep, let him play with knives, tried to make him fight a rattlesnake and had him make a fire out of crayons. One night when he was eight, Leo helped his mother out at her machine shop and when they where closing it up, Esperanza went back in to get the keys. However the minute she went back in, the door locked by itself and the Earth goddess Gaia appeared to Leo and tried to get through the door to attack Esperanza this caused Leo to try and protect his mother and his fire powers got out of control and caused the machine shop to burn down and kill Esperanza. Leo survived, but his relatives wouldn't take him in as they blamed him for his mother's death, because of this, Leo was put into many foster homes but he always ran way from them and was eventually sent to a boarding school in Nevada called The Wilderness School where he met Piper McLean who was also a demigod.