Many thanks to Chaos Mizore, misscullenmasen, Rotisserie Chicken, and Alessa-Daughter of Athena. You guys rock! Rotisserie Chicken, yeah, they made up, but Nico still has mixed feelings. (I don't think he would really kill Percy, either. He probably knew deep down inside that Percy would be okay, because Percy's always okay.)

Disclaimer: I also do not own Harry Potter.

The sky was pitch black; it was far too early for even Apollo to be awake yet. Nico di Angelo silently rolled out of bed. He hit the floor on all fours with a muted thud. The boy proceeded to brush himself off and walk briskly into the shadows in the corner of his room.

Suddenly, Nico found himself far away from Camp Half-Blood. The demigod was on the edge of his father's domain, right next to the river Styx. He gazed at the black castle and realized one flaw in this procedure: Nico was located on the wrong side of the river.

One shadow travel later, the boy found himself ten feet away from where he previously stood, and twice as tired. He could already tell that he was going to have a wonderful day. Just wonderful.

Nico trudged through the gloomy, desolate land to where Hades resided. He knocked on the doors three times quickly. A dead servant greeted him, chattering angrily. Nico tried to brush past the skeleton, but it wouldn't budge. Instead, it chattered angrily.

The living boy narrowed his eyes. "Excuse me," he muttered through clenched teeth, "I'm trying to get into my FATHER's house."

The skeleton stared straight ahead, unmoving.

"Listen. My DAD is the Lord of the Underworld, and he's going to be very, very mad at you if you don't let his son in. I know you're his guard, but for Hades's sake, LET ME IN!"

The skeleton did not budge.

Aggravated, Nico decided simply to unsheathe his sword and slash through the obstacle. The problem was solved, and he strode right in.

"Ah, Nico," Hades purred, "You finally made it. Took you long enough." The god of the afterlife froze in sudden realization. "What happened to my new guard?"

"H-he wouldn't let me pass, so I - so I…I disintegrated him?" The boy squeezed his eyes together, awaiting the scolding that was sure to follow.

"YOU WHAT?"

Nico winced. "I stabbed him with my sword and he disintegrated."

"Do you KNOW how hard it is to find a loyal, GOOD undead guard? So, you think they grow on trees, huh? How about next time YOU be my guard?"

"N-no thanks, father. It won't happen again…"

"It better not. Oh, it better not." Hades turned around and stormed into the other room.

His son hesitated. Was he supposed to follow? Or was he simply expected to wait? He opted for neither.

Making his way through the cold, twisting halls, Nico couldn't help but shiver. This was less from the chilly air and more from the dank loneliness of his father's castle. He stepped into the living room, where his doting step-mother was conversing with the wheat goddess.

"I'm telling you, Persephone, you need to eat more whole-grain products! Cereal, bread, rice, just eat something!"

Nico could barely stifle his laugh.

The bored daughter whipped her head around to face Nico. "Well, well. Little pitchers certainly have big ears, don't they?" She paused, and the room fell into silence for a full minute before Nico realized that they were waiting for his response.

"S-sorry ma'am. I didn't mean to offend you."

She glared daggers at him. "Well sometimes," she added extra emphasis to the word, "sometimes sorry just doesn't cut it."

Her unfortunate step-son twitched. He struggled to keep his mouth shut and thus hang onto what little dignity he had left.

"Sometimes little boys just need some punishment. Keeps them from getting too full of themselves, now doesn't it?"

Unable to resist the urge any longer, Nico fell to his knees. "Please don't turn me into a dandelion again! Please! I don't think I can take it. Please." The boy's words were reduced to a pathetic whimper, and his body trembled.

Just then, Hades strode into the room. He was beginning to realize that he might have been a bit too harsh on his son. He now searched for the boy, ready to apologize. However, one step into the room led the troubled father to see that scene: his only son bent down in front of his wife, crying and kissing her feet.

Hades backed away slowly.

"Oh, get up. You're too pathetic to punish, anyway." The goddess paused before adding, "For now!" She cackled evilly.

Trembling, the child of the big three stumbled out of the room…and right into his father. The demigod jumped away. "S-sorry, sir," he muttered, wiping the tears off his face.

"…" Hades was at a loss for words. He wasn't very good at this whole "parenting" thing and wasn't sure if he should comfort his son or side with his wife and tell Nico to man up.

In the end, Hades settled on awkwardly patting his son's back. "There, there…" He tried to sound comforting, but it came out almost as a growl.

Nico looked up at his father, confused and more than a little freaked out. "Uh…thanks… So…what now?" His voice squeaked slightly at the conclusion of his sentence.

"…Why don't you visit your sister?"

In a burst of confidence, Nico asked, "What about my mother? Can I finally see her? And not just as a memory?"

"NO!" Hades shouted, then revised his words. "I'm sorry, Nico, but she is the one ghost you cannot see."

"Why?"

The god was thrown off-guard. "Uhhh…Ahem. Because holding grudges is your fatal flaw."

"But I already saw how she died!" the boy protested.

Hades winced at the mention of Maria di Angelo's death. "Still. You just don't question these things, Nico." And with that, Hades glided into the living room, mumbling to himself about Rick Riordan and questionable plots.

The demigod stopped and stared for a moment. Then, he shook his head to rid himself of confusion and stepped outside in search of Bianca.

He found his sister in Elysium. She was talking to Zoë Nightshade, but stopped abruptly when she saw her younger brother. "Nico!" the dead girl squealed, "You're here! Oh, I missed you so much!" She ran over to the boy and attempted to hug him, but her arms ended up passing through his skin.

"Geez, stop it, Bianca," Nico muttered, "It's creepy when you go through me." On the inside, he was positively beaming.

Zoë sighed. "Farewell, Bianca. We shall continue this conversation at a time when there are no boys present." And with that, she stalked off.

"Yes!" Nico hissed in triumph.

His naïve and somewhat stupid sister focused her full attention on Nico. "How are you?" She giggled with glee.

"Uh…okay, I guess."

Bianca's smile was quickly replaced with a look of concern. "What's wrong, Nico?"

"N-"

"And don't say 'nothing'! I know you too well for you to get away with that."

The boy sighed in defeat. "Fine. I'm having…trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

Another sigh, followed by an inaudible mumble.

"What? Speak up, Nico. I can't understand what you're saying."

He uttered a slightly louder mumble.

"Ni-co." Bianca shot her brother a look of intense disapproval.

"Girl trouble! Are you happy?"

She giggled again. "Oooh, Nico! Of course I'm happy! My little baby's growing up!" The rest of her words were lost in an avalanche of laughter. Wiping a non-existent tear from her eye, Bianca attempted to resume their conversation. "No, seriously, Nico, what's wrong?"

"I just told you." Suddenly, the demigod felt extreme loathing toward his sister. If he was ever actually allowed to see his mother, he was sure she wouldn't act like this. What was Bianca's problem?

"No, Nico. What's really wrong?"

"Why won't you believe that I have a stinking crush?"

His comment was followed by dead silence as Bianca tried to process this information. "So, you really and truly like a girl?"

"You know what? Never mind. Just forget I ever said anything."

His sister became upset. "Why, Nico? I'll help you! I promise I won't laugh again."

"Okay! Fine! Whatever! …I like this girl…"

"Which girl?"

"Does it really matter?" Nico was rather touchy on the subject.

"Yes."

"Okay, fine! I like Juniper-"

"Who?"

"Some dryad! Anyway, I like Juniper, but she already has a boyfriend. What do I do?" By the end of his little speech, Nico sounded almost desperate. Which he was, if he was seriously asking his sister for advice.

Bianca took all of five seconds to produce a solution. "Get rid of the boyfriend, duh."

Nico rolled his eyes. "Well, I know that. But how?"

"Hm… Well, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Harry drinks that lucky stuff-"

"Felix Felicis?"

"Yeah, whatever. Anyway, he drinks that stuff, and then shoves Ginny and makes it look like her boyfriend did it. Then Ginny's all like, 'OMG, I hate you! Stop pushing me around!', even though Harry did it, so they break up and Harry gets the girl!"

Nico's head spun from his sister's inability to form a cohesive sentence. "Look, Bianca. I don't really care about what Harry Potter did. This is real life. Magic's not gonna get me out of this situation."

The ghost looked slightly annoyed at her brother's dismissal of her helpful information. "All I'm saying is to do something like that. Is there anything Jupiter hates?"

"Juniper," Nico corrected.

"Pfft. Same thing."

"Well, I think she doesn't like dogs…especially Mrs. O'Leary."

Bianca's jaw dropped. "Mrs. O'Leary's a dog? I always hear Daedalus talk about her like she's his wife or something." She composed herself. "Anyway, you should trick Jupiner's boyfriend into whistling and calling Mrs. O'Leary. Then she'll freak out and yell at her boyfriend! All you have to do is say, 'Never fear! Nico's here!' and make Mrs. O'Leary go away! You'll be her hero!"

"I love you, Bianca."

The sister smiled. That's what she liked to hear.

Many long hours later, it was finally time for dinner. Nico had eaten whole-grain wheat flakes for breakfast and organic rice for lunch. He shuddered at the thought of what Demeter would serve for dinner.

Hades was in a bad mood from the gods' annual Winter Solstice meeting. No one had listened to any of his suggestions, and he made sure that his family knew it. "Persephone!" he whined, "No one cares about what I have to say! They all think that just because I'm not an Olympian god, my opinions don't matter! They're a bunch of big bullies!"

"There, there," his wife soothed in a bored and slightly annoyed voice.

Demeter clapped her hands twice. "Hey! I baked this delicious dinner for you, and you'd better eat it!"

Nico groaned inwardly. The meal splayed out on the table was – you guessed it – wheat. There was a huge loaf of turkey-shaped bread, surrounded by what Nico supposed to be whole-grain mashed potatoes and Hades knew what else.

Actually, judging his father's baffled expression, not even Hades knew.

Nico bit back his complaints. This was going to be a long dinner. While trying to appear to eat more food than he actually was, the boy mulled over his evil plan against Grover. He tried to avoid all conversation and to ignore Persephone's stinging insults.

After the terrible meal, it was time for the exchange of Yule presents. Last year, Nico had given his step-mother a flower he had picked from her own garden, which had not ended well. This year, he had learned from his mistake, handing Persephone a flower of moonlace he had plucked from Percy's garden when the older demigod wasn't looking.

"What. Is. This?" Persophone growled, "You killed a flower to give to me. You gave me a dead flower?"

Nico trembled. It seemed he just couldn't please the demanding woman. "S-sorry, ma'am."

Hades placed a firm hand on his son's shoulder in an attempt to defend him. He shot his wife a stern look.

"You're lucky your father's here," the goddess whispered, "Otherwise, I'd have turned you into a dead flower, punk."

Nico gulped before revealing his gift for Demeter. It was a crown the boy had made out of stands of wheat weaved together. Well, to be fair, Annabeth had made it. She had tried to teach Nico, but all his efforts had failed miserably, so the daughter of Athena had ended up just handing him a crown she herself had made.

Demeter scoffed at her present. "What a waste of wheat! Wheat is meant for eating; it should be respected." The goddess glared at the demigod, grudgingly donning the crown.

The only person left was Hades. Nico turned to his father and blushed, taking out a black tie decorated with small white skulls. He had searched at four different Salvation Army stores to find the tie, and hoped that his father didn't hate the thing the way every else had despised Nico's gifts.

Hades was struck speechless. "A tie," he thought, "Really? Why would I ever need a tie?" He cleared his throat. "Thank you, Nico," he said aloud, "That was really…thoughtful of you." The god silently patted himself on the back for his good parenting skills.

Persephone and Demeter didn't have any gifts for Nico, as they didn't consider the boy to be family. The goddesses also insisted that Hades give Nico his present as soon as possible, in order to speed up the process of kicking out "unwanted" visitors.

The god pulled a small figurine out of his pocket. As the trinket was pushed into Nico's hands, the boy gasped. It was a Hunter figurine from the Myth-O-Magic game. The girl's blond hair had been crudely painted over with black. "I-is this supposed to be Bianca?"

Hades nodded, sweating nervously.

Tears appeared in the corners of Nico's eyes, but he blinked them back. "Thanks dad." His voice came as a whisper.

"Could you hurry up and leave?" Persephone whined, ruining the moment.

Gulping back sobs, Nico shadow-traveled far away from his father, his sister, and the mother he was never allowed to meet.

A/N: Sorry for the delay. I'll be quicker with the updates after Christmas, because I have a lot of stuff due on the week before break. …Wait a minute…midterms are in January. Aaaah! Oh, well. I can always write during my study breaks. ;)