Sorry this took longer for me to upload than I originally thought. And I'd also like to apologize if any of the characters are OOC. Anyways, I don't own Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. They belong to J.K. Rowling and Rick Riordan respectively.

It only took him ten extra minutes to find his classes, so he was late to every single one. None of his fantastic classmates found it necessary to tell him where he was supposed to go. So when no one was around, he'd cheat by shadow-traveling. But no one seemed to notice, or they just didn't care about Nico di Angelo, the creepy American transfer student. He hadn't seen that Luna girl, or the guy named Harry.

He was pretty much screwed. He didn't know anyone, and he sure wasn't getting friendly with any of the other Slytherins. They just gave him a bad feeling. Sure, there probably were some good ones, but he didn't have the time to interrogate all of them when Malfoy was around. It was fairly obvious that the blond was the head of whatever type of cult was formed in the House.

But the guy was stuck up as fuck. And that was Nico decided not to have anything to do with him or the rest of the House of Slytherin. Even the name sounded sinister, like something was going to jump out of the plumbing and go on a killing spree for fun, targeting people that didn't fit the Slytherin standards. So Nico had to look out for stuff like that. The people here were crazy. Who knew what would happen if he turned his back?

Gods, he was sounding paranoid. What next? Would there be birds flying around, dropping stuff on his head?

He learned, during lunch, that such occurrences were normal at Hogwarts. Evidently, the postal service wasn't quite sure whether or not Nico di Angelo was a student or a place for them to drop their excrement. Half the time, letters fell on top of his head. The other half caused Professor Flitwick to cast some weird spell to get rid of the revolting stench of the substance during class.

Nico hated it at Hogwarts. He was a second class citizen to the actual wizards and witches, and whenever he couldn't quite charm something correctly, he could feel the scornful stares of both students and teachers. It wasn't his fault he couldn't use magic properly. He wasn't a wizard. Why would Hecate give him of all people this quest?

This was worse than the time Percy accidently soaked him to the bone during Capture the Flag. At least water didn't dry to create a residue of waste. Bird droppings did. One would think that owls that delivered mail for a living would know the difference between a person and something that wasn't a person. The way they were acting would make it seem like he wasn't even human. He happened to be half human.

He was half human, only half. Of course that was it. They knew it. The birds knew that he wasn't normal. He was in Enemy Territory and those could be Enemy Birds. For all he knew, they had ratted him out. He could be kicked out in less than a second. That would actually be a relief. After all, he hadn't asked for this.

He didn't ask to go to England. This would be much better for Lou Ellen, who could actually do magic, or Hazel, who could manipulate the Mist. What could Nico do? Raise the dead and shadow travel. Necromancy was evidently illegal, according to Hecate's letter. So what could he do? Nothing. He was going to fail, fail school, and fail a quest. School, he didn't really care about, but failing a quest personally given to him by a goddess was (supposedly) unacceptable. That was common sense, and-

"Hey, are you leaving or not?" Nico looked up to see a girl with red hair. She looked vaguely familiar. "You've forgotten me, haven't you?"

"Yeah," he admitted sheepishly. "I'm Nico."

"I know that." Despite her snappish retort, she extended her hand. "I'm Ginny Weasley. We met on the train."

"Right." Nico shook her hand and then got up out of his chair. "Sorry. I'm just a bit lost and confused, you know?"

"First day of Hogwarts. Yeah, I know." They left the classroom, and to be polite, Nico held the door open for Ginny. After all, it was the first day of actual school, and she had been the only one nice to him. "I…I've got a boyfriend."

"Really?" Nico smiled at her, trying to withhold an unwanted laugh. "So do I. Can you believe how much we've got in common? It's insane."

He felt kind of bad for not recognizing her, but that couldn't be helped. Besides, he wasn't sure that she had been on the train all that long with him. He figured he was being nice. And he definitely was hitting on her. She knew that now, too. He was pretty much an open book here, minus the part where he had to lie about his family and the fact that he was half god. In other words, he was being completely honest about barely anything.

They talked. He was actually talking to someone without them being rude to him. And apparently, most of their classes were together, something he hadn't noticed until after Charms class. And it was nice to have the owl droppings on his head gotten rid of with some spell Ginny had used. He would have to look that up later on.

Care of Magical Creatures. It was an uncomfortable class, simply because none of the animals wanted to be around him. They ran away from him, no matter what species it was. It wasn't that bad though. Nico was used to that. Most animals, normal or magical, were afraid of him. So he didn't really care. He was trying to listen to what the giant man was saying about the weird creatures they were learning about.

However, he couldn't hear the giant over the disruptive noise of the other Slytherins, who clearly didn't care about their grades. The imbeciles were going to get failing grades if they kept that up. Did Hogwarts expel people for bad grades? If so, then there was no doubt in his mind that even if the poor students were expelled, they wouldn't be because they were all rich.

Why did he have to be put in with the lot of these people? He really couldn't stand any of them. He liked Ginny more than he liked the entire House of Slytherin. Was that bad? It didn't really matter. What mattered was how obnoxious the students were. Would they be expelled if he complained enough? Maybe he could start a petition. They all needed to be trained to behave properly. Grades were very important. They could at least pretend to pay attention. No, groups of them were gossiping or playing some card exploding card game.

He made it through dinner though. And then a couple people grabbed him on his way back to the Slytherin Common Room. He could fight and make more enemies than he already had, or he could let them do whatever they wanted to do to him. He chose to let them drag him to their destination- the Boys' Lavatory.

That was when he elbowed one in the stomach and punched the other in the mouth. It distracted them long enough for him to slip away into the shadows. He appeared in front of the common room and entered before anyone else could grab him.

Malfoy was talking to a girl Nico assumed was his girlfriend, but he seemed surprised that Nico was standing there, in the common room.

"What's your name again?"

"Nico di Angelo."

"That's Italian. I thought you were American."

"I thought you'd be a little bit smarter than the two guys you had try to drag me to bathroom." And with that, Nico walked past Malfoy and the girl. But then he stopped, deciding to scare the guy a little. "And you might want to cover up whatever that is on your arm. It radiates death like crazy."

"How-?"

"See you later, Draco, Girl-I-Don't-Know-The-Name-Of." The girl gasped, as if it was criminal for him not to know her name. Draco Malfoy, on the other hand, was completely silent for once. It was nice having silence. So instead of studying the stuff he didn't know anything about, he sat on his bed and got out his parchment, quill, and ink.

But then he put the supplies back in his bag, figuring that the lighting in the room wasn't all that great for writing a letter. Besides, he didn't even know who to write a letter to. And he had already sent a letter off that day. Wouldn't it be irritating for an owl to show up to camp everyday with a new letter from him? If he were over there, he'd get pretty annoyed with it. Of course, that might be slightly biased as he really hated the owls right now for dropping excrement on him repeatedly during lunch.

The good news was that he had the dormitory to himself for the moment. At least he wouldn't have to deal with anyone else for a while.

Just his luck that the other boys that stayed in his dorm walked in right after he thought that. So, he got up and left. Surely there'd be some peace and quiet at the library. There had barely been any people there earlier in the morning. Without Sir Nicholas to help him around, Nico got ridiculously lost. It took about fifteen minutes longer than it should have to find the library.

And he almost walked into a girl with bushy brown hair that was busy bustling around, scanning each shelf for the book she wanted.

"Sorry. I didn't think anyone would be here." He wasn't sure why he apologized so quickly. He should have waited to see if she was a bitch or not. Oh well, too late to analyze the girl. However, by the way she was clutching the books in her arms closely to her chest; he figured that she was a studious girl. Or she was shy. Or maybe she was both studious and shy. That was a possibility. "Wait. I know you. You're… that one girl that had introduced herself on the train. Hilda? Was that it?"

"Hermione."

"Sorry." There he was, apologizing again. Why was he being so forgetful all of the sudden? Was this what happened to most high school students in normal mortal schools?

"It's fine," she replied curtly. And then she went back to book scanning. But her short answers and obsession with looking at the book shelves gave Nico an idea that would be just as bad as asking Annabeth about construction and accidently calling Gustav Eiffel the wrong name in the process.

"C-Could you tutor me?" Hermione stopped dead in her tracks and even looked away from the books.

"Pardon?"

"Could you tutor me, please?" He even used please. She had to say yes. She just had to. With her tutoring him, at least he'd have a chance of passing here. "I'm so confused on what going on in all of my classes. And I don't want to fail. What if I get expelled? I really don't want to get kicked out. That would be terrible."

"Well, I guess I could."

"Really? That's great!" He knew he sounded way too excited about being tutored on subjects he had no experience in. And he could tell Hermione was trying to figure out whether or not he was mocking her or being serious. "I-I'll look for you tomorrow during breakfast. That way, we can figure out a schedule."

He turned and headed for the exit of the library. But a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"I sit at the Gryffindor table." She was looking at his Slytherin badge. Clearly, he was in the House that no one in the other Houses liked. A smile crossed his face, which seemed to throw Hermione off guard.

"Cool. I'll see you tomorrow then."

"Yes, I'll see you." She was so uncomfortable. Nico knew that he wasn't going to get anywhere with her if she was hesitant to help him.

"I'm not pranking you or anything like that. Cross my heart and hope to die."

"Words like that could get you killed." She let go of his shoulder and allowed him to head back to his common room again. So, he went from only talking to ghosts to talking with ghosts and two girls. That wasn't too bad.

It didn't hurt that one was going to teach him how to use magic.