Chapter Ten

Hermione

Part of my nervousness did not come from the fact that we were planning to start a club against school regulations. Harry and Ron sat beside me, waiting tensely for the people to file in when I drew in a sharp breath and began: "There's something I've been meaning to tell you."

"You've been telling us a lot of stuff these days, Hermione," Ron grumbled, "and none of them were particularly cheerful."

"Well, this one isn't exactly happy either, but… I've been meaning to tell you two for some time already. Either way, it's about Nicole."

Ron frowned. "The little Slytherin American girl who's always talking to Annabeth?" Because of course he would only remember the prettier, fiercer, and already taken girl.

"Yes, her."

"What about her?"

"She wants to kill you, Harry." Sometimes, bluntness was simply the best way to take a conversation. Unsurprisingly, her declaration was met with laughter from the two boys.

"Kill Harry?" Ron stifled his giggles when the bartender, busy wiping dirty cups with an even dirtier rag, glared in their direction. "How old is she? Twelve? Kill Harry? Last time I saw her, she was passing out chocolate bars to random people in the hallways. So kill Harry?"

"Hermione, I think you're being paranoid again," added Harry, chuckling. "As disturbing as it sounds, I somehow find it slightly hard to believe."

"Of course you do," I answered smoothly, unperturbed by their skepticism. "But I have my reasons." And then it was a simple matter to recount the events: from the sleepy, foggy night to the deathly frightening morning. The rest of the week had passed uneventfully: Nicole not even acknowledging my presence whenever we cross in the halls, as if nothing had happened when she was the one who had toppled the first domino. The weekend arrived, and what we had begun planning almost a week before forced itself back onto my priority list: a Defense Against the Dark Arts club.

Ron and Harry looked thoughtful after I explained everything to them.

"Nicole is… a Death Eater…?" Harry summarized uncertainly, glancing at Ron, who was fiddly his fingers with a conflicted expression on his face. "Do they even recruit that young?"

"Her age can make it less suspicious," I pointed out. "No one would expect a child to work for L-Lord Voldemort." The name still felt ominous and exposing on my tongue, but I forced myself not to shudder, unlike Ron.

"You have a point," the redhead admitted. "We should probably keep a lookout for her. If she's after Harry, it'd be up to us, Hermione, to protect him."

"We cannot let anyone else find out either," I added. "Keep it inconspicuous."

"Hey!" Harry was frowning lightly at us. "I don't need all the bodyguard stuff. Why don't we focus on the idea of-" he gave a little groan, "-me teaching. Great. This is going to go so well."

"Yes, it would," I agreed, deciding to ignore the sarcasm dripping from his tone. "You're brilliant at DADA, Harry. Trust me, no one will be able to do better than you." I glanced up at the dusty grandfather's clock ticking at one corner of the Hog's Head. It was probably off, but currently, it was also the only thing we could rely on to tell the time. "They should be arriving sometime now," I murmured.

And right on cue, the pub door creaked open tentatively to reveal the round face of Neville Longbottom and the dark head of Dean Thomas not far behind him.

I took a deep breath to calm my quickening heartbeat, feeling the two boys tensing beside me. Nicole or not, it's time to handle other, probably just as important, businesses.


"Please explain to me why we're doing this again?" Nico drawled, glaring at the line of students waiting to pass through Filch's inspection and enter a village called – outrageously enough – Hogsmeade.

Nicole gave a breathless little chuckle. "I'm not sure. Annabeth?"

"I was rather curious as well," the blonde girl replied, slowly rotating to Percy as she continued, "I thought we planned to use the weekend to do more research in the library about our predicament?"

Percy gave them a bashful grin, rubbing the nape of his neck. "Well, I heard some rumors flying around when I visited the Gryffindor common room, something about buying stuff. They have bookstores too!" he added in an attempt to appease and convince his girlfriend – to no avail. "And they also mentioned something about a meeting in a place called… uh… Hog's Hair, or something, so I thought that it… might be fun…?"

"Really." The others were unimpressed.

"We have the money to go buy stuff?" Nico demanded emotionlessly.

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "It's not about that," she said. "Hogsmeade is a village outside of Hogwarts. Students are boarding onto those carriages with the creepy horses for a reason. They will be leaving the school borders, over the Forbidden Forest and halfway down a mountain, and last time we've tried, we could barely get out of these school walls."

"Then we could use this as a test," Nicole suggested, uncomfortable with the reminder that they were trapped in a magical castle. "What if it's only shadow-travelling? Would we be able to leave the school through another way?"

They were at the front of the line now, and they revealed everything in their pockets – nothing, essentially – and then they were out of the castle and clambering onto a carriage. The horse pulling the carriage was made out of nothing but leathery black skin pulled over a skeleton. It reeked of carrion and musky death, and when it whinnied, the two Underworld children nearly jumped out of their skins.

"It spoke!" Nicole gasped in amazement.

"It's a thestral," Nico realized. "Hagrid had been talking about them in class…"

"You listen in class?" Percy sounded incredulous.

"What else am I supposed to do?" the younger boy shot back. "I can't exactly sleep standing."

"Boys," Annabeth snapped when the horse whinnied again and a troubled look settled onto Nicole's face. "What did it say?"

But it was Nico who answered. "It said, 'Don't come here'."

Percy frowned, puzzled. "What? Why?" He reached for the handles next to the carriage door, but the thestral clopped a few steps away from them, obviously reluctant to even let them touch the carriage it pulled. Nicole slowly stepped forward, hands raised to attempt to calm the skeletal horse as she called softly to it.

"Hey, it's okay. We're not going to do anything. Just let us-" The thestral rudely interrupted her sentence with a violent scream, which Nicole echoed with a shriek and stumble when it rose onto its hide legs, fronts hooves kicking up to drive her away from itself.

"He really hates us." Because someone had to state the obvious, and Nico was content with that job.

"I don't think he hates us." The troubled expression remained disrupting Nicole's ever-present smile. "Hate is strong word. I think he's just… repulsed. Or uncomfortable with us. I don't think we should get near him or his carriage anytime soon."

"So much for trying to get of the school borders," Percy grumbled, disheartened. "I bet if we try to walk out of the front gates of the school, the doors would slam in our faces as well."

The rest of the group were equally discouraged, and they paid no heed to the curious but skimming glances of students still waiting in line as they stepped away from the skittering thestral and its clattering carriage to head back up to their little 'American' tower.

The silence maintained through most of their journey up the stairs and down several twisting hallways, quivering and thoughtful and unhappy until Nico blinked and wondered, "Where are the front gates anyways?"


There was a burn on his hand. It looked like a tattoo of a small triangle on the heel of his hand, except it wasn't inked into his skin because when you looked closely, you'd see that the sides were charred and uneven, and the shape was crude, almost misshapen. It was in an obvious enough location, but low enough on his palm that the sleeve of the school uniform and his robe usually kept it covered. Nicole never noticed, and neither did Percy or Annabeth, and Nico would have been able to forget about it himself if it wasn't for the consistent, itchy burn that grew more painful every night, but settled into a prickling throb every morning. He tried to avoid scratching it, but it was difficult when the skin around the tiny, burnt-black triangle was plagued with a persistent case of pins-and-needles. And if it was barely tolerable during the day, Nico could only describe it as torturous when night falls and he falls back into his bed, expecting a good night's sleep, which he never got, thanks to the burn.

It grew gradually worse every night. At first, it simply became uncomfortably hot and itchy around the burn, which made sleeping difficult but not impossible. By the next week, however, it felt like there was a fire crackling beneath his skin, slowly spreading over his hand and into the fingertips and down his wrist. It left a residual throb in the mornings, making it difficult to hold a quill – not like he would have the energy to take notes in class after several near-sleepless nights. Visibly, however, there was nothing to show save for the little triangle, and his evidential story of voices and vanished rooms were farfetched enough that he doubted even Nicole would believe him.

Except, hidden beneath several layers of clothes at the bottom of the trunk under his bed, the envelope with the knife and key and slip of paper were still hidden and haunting him.

Nico remembered blacking out after picking up the knife and waking back up on his own bed with the burn on his hand, warm light pooling from the window and signaling noon.

Nicole was sitting next to him, reading a book she had borrowed from the library. When she noticed him stirring, she directed her attention to him and frowned. "When you told us you needed fresh air, I thought we'd meet you at breakfast, not find you asleep and skipping classes."

"What are you reading?" he had asked instead.

She held up the book to him, but it was a jumble of English letters that he didn't bother to translate. "History of Defense Against the Dark Arts." So Nicole did it instead. "Magic turned out to be more than just wand waving. There are runes and all that as well, and certain objects have their own magic too. It's quite interesting, though a little confusing."

"Cool." Nico wasn't exactly listening, but it was always a safe answer to give.

"Did you know that there are several possible ways to bring somebody back from the dead?" Nicole continued. "And not just through the Resurrection Stone either." What was the Resurrection Stone? "A stone that resurrects, obviously. But they also have this ritual thing that involved two people, one dead and one alive. They didn't go into detail though, and I think the person who does the ritual gets his soul sucked out or something."

"Cool."

The dark-haired girl rolled her eyes, but there was a twitching hint of another smile on her lips. "You're pathetic. I'm leaving. Stop skipping classes."

"You should try sometime," he called towards her departing form, his right hand clenching and unclenching as he contemplated telling her everything. "You might even like it."

But she couldn't have believed him. She wouldn't. Then again, who would?

And now around one and a half weeks later, his entire forearm was burning, the sensation reaching just past his elbow.

It was going to be another sleepless night.

Percy was a wonderful soldier, but an extremely heavy sleeper, and all the rooms were soundproof enough that when the painting that served as an exit from their lonely little tower slammed shut behind him, the three old men scowling up at him as if he had interrupted their poker game – which he probably did – he doubted anyone was disturbed by it.

Some time ago, he discovered that shadow-travelling was possible as long as he stayed inside the school, so teachers were not too high up on his alert-list. In fact, they were under curious paintings and appearing doors, but had maintained a position above moving and vanishing stairs.

However, students were not on his alert-list at all, so needless to say, he was mildly and unpleasantly surprised by two pairs of scurrying feet that shot right past him in huddles of black robes trimmed with blue, hissing at each other as they walked.

"We're going to be late!"

For what? Detention? But teachers don't hand out detentions assigned after curfew…

The shadows were quick to embrace him and muffle his footsteps as he strolled after the two frantic students. Down several twists and turns, up several flights of stairs, and Nico was almost completely lost until he recognized the Charms classroom on his left. Then they were heading up another flight of stairs, and Nico waited for until they were on the seventh floor before rapidly following suit. The strangely familiar zigzagging staircase led him to an empty corridor decorated with nothing but a painting of an Italian grapevine garden void of any living subjects, the tails of the students' robes disappearing just around the corner. He headed the same way, but froze before he stepped into the view of the other hallway, because the students were hissing words at each other again.

"Are you sure it's here?"

"Probably. That's what they told us, right?"

"I don't see a door though…"

"Must be one of those vanishing ones. Wait a- oh!"

And then he thought he was hearing the voices again. After finding the strange room, the voices hadn't bothered him again, but for one second, he thought they had reappeared.

Until he peeked around the corner and saw a sliver of light cutting through the darkness from a crack in a doorway that apparently, had not been there moments ago.

The light prevented him from recognizing the face of the person inside the room, but the two students were Ravenclaws, and snippets of chattering children's conversations spilled out into the silent hallway from inside the bright room.

One of the students sighed in relief. "Harry-" Harry Potter, then.

"Come in first." And that really was Potter's voice, cautious and nervous. "I think there's somebody near-" And that was all that Nico heard before he panicked slightly and stepped back into the shadows so they could carry him back to the 'American' tower.

He was spat out from the roaring, windy tunnels of shadow-travelling into the warm, silent common room of their little tower. For a moment he froze there, breathing in the unfamiliar scents, trying and failing to pretend to be back at camp in his cabin and not in some secret, hidden magical castle that seemed to be from a whole different world.

And in a way, it really was an entirely other world the way it trapped them inside the school grounds and forced them to mingle with people they didn't know, and would probably never know because Nico wanted to get out of this place, and the moment he was out, he would never come back.

They were in another world, with its own secrets and crooks and nannies. There were students meeting up for gods-know-what in a faraway, seventh floor corridor-

A… seventh floor corridor…?

Nico rubbed his throbbing hand against his side, trying to ease the pain that was distracting him from thinking. If he remembered correctly, the two students – and all the others who were there – had entered the same room he had found the envelope in. What were they doing there? Was it possible that what he took was something of theirs?

He crossed out the thought immediately. Wizards barely knew how to punch, let alone use a knife; and the message inside the envelope had been a part of the poem or prophecy Nico had found in his trunk. Then does that mean that the teachers were involved? Were the teachers even the ones who prepared their school supplies?

Nico fell back into an armchair, clutching his head with his good hand. This was a complete, utter mess that only he seemed to be aware of. He probably should tell the others, but the problem of being trapped inside a magical school was distressing enough that he didn't want to throw in this whole other complication as well. Maybe everything would be resolved when they find a way to leave. It was a first step.

The burning sensation crawled an inch up his elbow, now halfway to his shoulder. He absentmindedly rubbed the strange triangle etched onto his skin and stood up, deciding to head back up to his bed to try to sleep again when he was halted by a voice.

It was a breathy, barely audible whisper that stroked through the silence of the night and called to him: "I wonder…"

Nico froze and spun around, eyes darting to the dark corners of common room. Dying embers in the fireplace casted strange shapes onto the circular walls, but nothing seemed out of place. For a moment, he almost thought he had imagined it all until it said, "Don't you think…?"

His arm gave a sudden, painful throb, and Nico almost screamed.

"Wouldn't it all be so much easier if they were all dead?" Who? "Come with me, I'll show you-" What?

I'll show you I'll show you I'll show you I'll-

NO! What was it? What was it talking about-?

Come with me come with me come with me come-

Where?!

And then it was that feeling again. It was as if somebody had grabbed him from behind with long, sharp, bony fingers and dragged him backwards, shoving him onto the ground, packing him into a box and suffocating him with a darkness that wouldn't listen to him not again last time had been bad enough but he was here again and not again-!

Wouldn't it all be so much easier if they were all dead?

Wouldn't it all be so much easier if you just killed them all?

Especially her.

I'll kill her.

And somewhere far, far away, Nico heard himself laugh.


Hi! Thank you for the reviews! This chapter was actually done a few days ago, but I thought well, my birthday's almost here, so why not? So I waited for three days and today's my birthday! I'm selfish that way.

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