Chapter 21

Disclaimer: As soon as I get those pesky telemarketing rights, trust me, no more of these, baby.

Percy stumbled away from his former cell, Thalia leaning on his shoulder, her legs slung in a makeshift cast courtesy of Hermione's magic skills. Leo jogged behind them, chattering away with Harry as if they were taking a walk in the park instead of sneaking around in a wizard's dungeon. Nico followed after the two, cradling the unconscious Hecate in his arms with Ron and Hermione walking next to him. Sanguini brought up the rear, glassy black eyes roving over the hidden nooks and crannies of the dungeon in case a stray Death Eater might be lurking near them.

"Point Me: Staircase," Hermione cited to the wand that lay flat on her palm. They watched as it circled and pointed to their right. "Okay, we need to get to the ground floor. I think we're right around two floors underneath the surface."

"So. Staircase," Leo mused before walking slowly in the general direction the wand was pointing to. "Nothing complicated about that."

"Well, sometimes staircases in wizard homes have a pension for moving," Harry said aloud as the rest of the group followed. "So, where the steps might be there now, it might travel a couple meters in a couple hours or so."

Percy groaned lowly. "You wizards are so strange. What happens when you can't find the stairs anymore, huh?"

"Pray and hope it shows up soon," Ron grunted.

"That is so irresponsible," Thalia said, limping along with caution now, eyes searching the floor suspiciously. "What if someone randomly opens up a door and falls down the steps because they didn't know the stairs were there?"

"Well, no one ever said that wizards were particularly concerned about others' health, now did they?" Harry muttered, scuffing his feet against a part of the floor that was peeling paint and dirt. He winced when a bit of liquid dripped from the uncared-for ceiling down the back of his neck. "This place is disgusting."

"Yeah, man, tell me about it. You think if they actually use this joint as often as they say they'd take care of it at least. Decorate it a little or somethin'. Fluffy bunnies and glitter rainbows and all that crap," Leo said, straight-faced.

Hermione snickered and Nico gave Leo a look. "Can we please focus on not getting blown up by any stray Death Eaters instead of joking around, please?"

Leo snorted, "Only if you relax the stick up your butt for ten minutes, Death Spawn." His tone was light and humorous, so Nico didn't take offense, but he did hit Hephaestus's son over the head—it was the principle of things.

"Mmmh!" Leo protested. "The hell, man!"

"Don't scream stuff so loud like that when we could be killed at any moment, knucklehead," Percy said, more amused than annoyed.

The pyro rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "Gods. You people are so touchy." He blinked up at the concrete stairwell before him that definitely had not been there a few minutes ago. "Oh, look at that. We're here. So, up or down, princess?"

"Up, obviously," Thalia said as she struggled to limp up the intimidating steps while leaning on Percy for support. Said son of Poseidon winced visibly when she accidentally stepped on him.

"That's my toe, Thals," he hissed under his breath.

"Yeah, I know—it's under my foot," she snipped.

"Can all of you please shut up?" Nico breathed and everyone had to strain to hear his voice because he was being so quiet as they crept up the steps. "I don't know if I'm the only one who noticed, but we're in a life or death situation here, and all of you are cracking stupid jokes."

"Dude, we're always in life or death situations." Leo rolled his eyes. "We're demigods—it's sort of an occupational hazard.

"Yeah," Percy agreed sarcastically. "It was mentioned in the contract and everything."

"But that doesn't mean you guys have a suicide wish, now does it?" Harry interrupted. "Nico's right. You need to be quiet." He zipped his lips for emphasis. "Unless you happen to enjoy crucios."

"Sorry," Thalia and Leo mumbled at the same time before glaring at each other in surprise. Harry bypassed them, steadily tiptoeing up the stairs in a way that was nervous and silent at the same time. His hands were fluttering agitatedly over the banister and the top row of his teeth was gritted against the bottom row. There was a sharp pain throbbing in his forehead that wouldn't stop burning. He strove harder, biting his tongue to ignore the sting of his scar. He knows, doesn't he? he realized, his face going pale as they went higher up the cracked staircase. Voldemort… He suspects we're trying to escape, doesn't he? He has to; unless he's angry about something else. Harry scowled; couldn't Voldemort just leave him alone for one minute? He watched the walls suspiciously, wondering if Voldemort had some disillusioned paintings that were spying for him. He did a subtle revealing charm and tried a more powerful one when there was no reaction.

"What are you doing?" Thalia mumbled in question.

"Trying to see if there's anything invisible on the walls that could tell Voldemort that we're here and trying to escape," Harry answered.

"Why would you think he knows?" Nico asked.

"His scar," Hermione interrupted. "His scar holds a connection to the Dark Lord—it has ever since he was one year old."

"What kind of connection?" asked Percy suspiciously.

"Now is not the time for that," Nico snapped lowly. "We need to—"

But he was interrupted by an awful wailing sound from the above levels; someone was in a dreadful amount of pain, that was sure. They all stiffened as the screams died down just as quickly as they had begun.

"Someone's being tortured," Hermione said hollowly and Harry winced in sympathy.

"We go up," Nico decided grimly. "We find our weapons. We get the hell out of here."

"Agreed." Sanguini spoke up for the first time in a couple minutes.

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Luna ran. She wasn't normally a violent person, but she supposed she could make an exception now. Her well-placed Exploding Hex nearly beheaded a slower Death Eater who wasn't able to dodge. An uncharacteristic flare of heat and adrenaline shot through her at hearing his angry shout. Her feet pounded against the ground, legs pumping harder than they ever had before. Her lungs were frozen with either fear or excitement, she couldn't tell which; her lightheadedness had disappeared in the heat of the battle. Hogwarts was crumbling around her as black robed figures swooped through the halls. Red, green, blue lights flew over head. Stone exploded at her feet and someone cackled wickedly from behind her. Blood stained the floor red and she made a face of disdain at the laughing man in front of her. There a body slumped on the floor at his feet, clothes tainted and dirty, and she was willing to bet whoever it was had died only a few moments ago. There was pain in her thighs and calves from running for so long, but still, she stood on her trembling legs and faced him. She recognized his face from the Wanted posters that were plastered all over the Daily Prophet and her father's magazine. His name might have started with a C; she couldn't remember anything else, but she thought he might've been a regular practitioner of blood magic.

He shouted a curse she didn't recognize and without thinking she dodged and sent out three or four more hexes in retaliation. They didn't land, he was too good to let them, but her protego held up remarkably well against some darker incantations that she didn't doubt wouldn't have killed her if they had touched her.

"WATCH OUT!" a voice screamed near her ear, and two rough hands shoved her to the floor followed by a solid body falling on top of her. A green light flashed over both of their heads and Luna blinked up at the strange boy who had pushed her.

"Thanks," she said politely. Say what you liked about Luna Lovegood, but never let it be said she wasn't gracious to those who'd earned it.

"No problem," the boy answered as he stood and pulled her up by the hand. She looked over him curiously. Eyes blue like electricity looked over her, from her blood-splattered school-girl skirt to her wand clenched in her delicate-looking hands and curly blond hair inquisitively; he had a bold, serious face with a masculine nose and a heavy brow. He was rather good looking with tidy hair cut military style and a muscular build. He held a peculiar double edged sword that glinted gold in the bad lighting; she could see faint drips of blood falling to the floor from the metal.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"I'm Jason. You?"

"Luna." They stood there, eyeing each other and weighing the other's worth.

"Witch?"

"Yeah. Demigod?"

"Sorta. I'm Roman. Son of Jupiter." He gave a sheepish, albeit proud half-smirk.

"That's rather impre—PROTEGO!" She cut herself off, and a shimmery red shield was erected to block the tongue of flame that some cowardly DE had sent at them. She watched and winced as Jason lunged at the man with his sword. He promptly stabbed at the man; red spurted from the deep wound and the Death Eater keeled over, twitching violently. Luna hesitantly edged over to his side, looking disgustedly down at the man at their feet.

"Like I was saying," she continued, "Son of Jupiter: rather impressive."

Jason looked at her oddly before giving a weird smile. "C'mon," he said. "Wanna kick some Death Eater butt with me?"

"Hmmm." Her brow wrinkled in contemplation. "Maybe."

"Heh. You're a weird one, you know?"

"Thank you," she said graciously.

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Harry had to keep reminding himself as he stood there without Hermione and Ron that this was all part of the plan.

[No, seriously, it was. It wasn't exactly supposed to be a simple, Escape-Plan-For Dummy's sort of thing; the usual sneak-through-sneak-over-sneak-away-before-you-get -caught kinda deal—no. Just no. Nothing's ever that simple with Harry's luck].

[Harry couldn't help but wonder whether it actually would work out the way they wanted it to in the end].

Rodolphus Lestrange smiled almost indifferently at them, heavy black robes shifting slightly as he brandished his wand lazily. It wasn't as if they could just run past him. One flick of that thing in his hand and they'd be halfway to hell, Harry realized grudgingly.

"It seems like I overestimated you three. You know, I actually thought you would be smarter than this. Trying to break out of one of the most fortified Wizard Manors in Britain—not a very intelligent move, Potter." He smirked, tapping his chin with his wand. "Now. What exactly am I going to do with you three?"

At that exact moment, a blur of white and black slammed in Lestrange's side. Shocked, the wizard fell, the tip of his wand already lighting up with a curse before the person wrestling him to the floor roughly ripped it out of Lestrange's hands and threw it across the room. Fists slammed into the wizard's temples, and the man let out a strangled yelp of pain. Lestrange struggled for a minute before the repeated blows eventually knocked him unconscious.

Sanguini stood, not looking the slightest bit out of breath from the vicious scuffle before spitting on the battered man at his feet. "Filth," the vampire sneered.

Harry made a face as he moved away from the doorway of the dungeon. He looked around discretely—it appeared they were in a flashy main Hall with gilded mantles and large fireplaces. There were multiple doors around the walls; no doubt, they led to more mazes of corridors.

They had to find the correct hallway that led to the exit—whatever spell that had been cast in Nico's cell had been applied to the rest of the manor as a safety precaution. The lack of shadows underneath their feet said as much. Harry frowned. This was a set-back, but it wasn't one that he hadn't expected. As evil and as wretched as Death Eaters were, they could be clever buggers when they wanted to be. With Voldemort as a leader, Harry didn't expect anything less. He knew that if they stumbled across the Dark Lord in this mansion, they might as well kiss their lives goodbye. Voldemort wasn't about to take any chances anymore—before he had basically let Harry get away when the bastard, in his arrogance, tried to make a big deal out of Harry's killing; a show, to make an example of him and to crush the Order of the Phoenix's spirit. Now, though, he probably just wanted the Boy-Who-Lived dead, no whats or ifs about it.

The rest of the group was already up the stairs in the time that Harry had been brainstorming. Hecate was slung over Nico's shoulder because this was, naturally, the worst time for her to be unconscious—the world was out to get the lot of them, of course. Percy was gallantly supporting Thalia on his shoulder, who kept snarling at him whenever he tried or offered to carry her. Leo just stood there, looking mildly bored.

"Okay, people, this way," Sanguini prodded, striding down a randomly chosen hallway.

"Wait, how do you know that this is the right way?" asked Nico as he jogged up to join the vampire.

"This is the only way that actually has fresh air through it. I'm guessing we're on the ground floor with windows cursed and locked like Azkaban itself. There's no way a draft would get through unless there was an open door." Sanguini sped up the pace, almost nervously.

Thalia gave an irritated huff from behind. "Could you slow down a little bit, please? Some of us are a little incapacitated at the moment."

"I'll slow down when we get out of this hellhole, how about that?" the vampire sniped.

Harry watched this exchange with a growing sense of unease. There was something tightening in the air that wasn't just from the pressure of being in a metaphorical bottomless pit. Tension flared up.

"Wait, what about our weapons?" Leo interrupted.

"What about them?" Sanguini raised an eyebrow.

"What about them?" Percy sputtered indignantly. "We need them, that's what! They're probably the only defense we actually have against trigger-happy wizards, so I'd be a whole lot more comfortable if we managed to get those before we escaped."

"We don't have time to go gallivanting all over this mansion searching for a couple of replaceable weapons, now do we? You can get new ones when the moment presents itself," Sanguini finalized.

The demigods bristled and Hermione made a wincy face at Ron.

"I knew we shouldn't have left the escape plan to the undead vampire," Ron griped, rolling his eyes to the ceiling.

Nico glared steadily before opening his mouth. "You think you can replace our swords. You can't. You wouldn't know, you're not a demigod, but it'd be like leaving behind your strength or your intelligence. You're defenseless and naked. We need our weapons."

His cousins nodded in grim agreement.

"I don't know about you but I'm not leaving 'til I get my baby back," Leo said firmly.

"My Prince, are you certain—" Sanguini began.

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure." He gave the vampire a solid glare just to get his point across.

"Hmmm. Let the wizards find them for you, then. I'll have no part of this suicide mission," Sanguini sniffed delicately before stepping back. "My apologies," he added to Nico.

Harry rolled his eyes. "I doubt they would have protection charms on weapons you shouldn't have been able to even think about, let alone steal." He waved his wand lightly. "Do you call them a specific name or…?"

He managed to summon them very quickly after having very descriptive insights on what they looked like and had to literally dodge to the side when the demigods bodily flung themselves at him to get to their swords. He shook his head in exasperation and wondered whether it was like a wand for a wizard. He raised an eyebrow when Leo triumphantly emerged from the dog pile with what looked like a plunger's utility belt.

"My baby," he crooned as he buckled it around his waist before reaching into a pocket and pulling out a huge mallet hammer and cuddling up to it. "Daddy's sorry he went away, he missed you very much, yes he did!"

Hermione exchanged a glance with Harry and he just shrugged. Leo could be weird sometimes.

They had to run halfway down the hallway when they realized they had tripped a curse that caused a signal to shoot up to a group of Death Eaters upstairs. When the black cloaks started flooding the hallway and blood started flowing, in more ways than one, they knew they had to get out of there. Nico had it rough, seeing as he had both himself and Hecate to protect, but he managed as best as he could. There weren't so many Death Eaters that they could surround and overpower them, but there were enough to put up a real fight; a real, ugly, bruising, bloody fight that left him shaking and weak from crucios.

A large hand clamped around his shoulder and he blinked, clinging to both his sword and Hecate when he was abruptly pulled away from the DE he was battling. He looked up at Sanguini and winced when the Death Eater that tried to follow him suddenly exploded. He looked to Harry, whose wand was smoking and whose face was pale.

"What…?" he exclaimed. "That was supposed to be an expelliarmus!"

"It's Hecate," the vampire said grimly as he pulled both of them away from the fray. "She's unbalanced, unstable. And your magic, in turn, is as well."

Ron popped up next to them. "That explains when I tried to curse one of these gits, he fell asleep instead." Hermione was standing next to him all of a sudden. She brushed a bit of hair out of her face and gave him a look. "We gonna get going any time soon?" she asked.

Leo and Thalia stumbled into them, blood streaming down their faces. Luckily, none of it was theirs. "Percy's gone cray-cray!" Leo gasped, staring at where the son of Poseidon was taking out his fury on some poor sap on the wrong side. "We need to get outta here before he decides to blow this place apart!"

They watched for a moment as the half-blood sliced through the crowd like a tornado of celestial bronze and shaggy black hair. And then, they got distracted when a bunch of wizards decided to attack them all at once. Hermione managed to save them by producing a shield that would've resembled protego had the shield charm originally produced a barrier of flowers. As it was, most of the harmful spells the Death Eaters were attempting seemed to have the opposite effect on their opponents. Instead of killing curses and the Crutatius Curse, cheering charms and color manipulation spells bounced off of them.

There were some advantages of Hecate being unconscious.

"Okay, enough!" Nico griped when a stray wizard's spell hit him the face in the form of a dozen rubber ducks. He sliced at the man, not really looking to see if his aim was actually true before he ducked around the rest of the moving, squirming people around him and caught Thalia and Percy fighting side by side, her Medusa shield glinting in the dim light, his sword glittering.

He tapped his sword against the ground and the floor rumbled underneath his feet. It shook angrily for a second before the foundation split open, cracking along the hall, dragging down unsuspecting Death Eaters with it. He could hear their screams as they fell to Hades and he gave a happy little smile.

The hands of skeletons, the bones picked and white, clutched at the edge of the pit, pulling up the bodies of decayed people, their old, 18th century and onward clothing ripped and frayed. Their skulls were frightful, white bone pulled into permanent, parodies of what smiles were like. Nico was used to them, but he supposed wizards weren't, seeing as they all freaked out, all screaming and flailing limbs when they appeared. He smirked and clapped a dead hippy on the back, his hand coming away with crumbling purple vest. "Go get 'em, boys," he said. And when an undead princess in a moldy green dress glared at him with empty sockets, he added "And girls."

He smirked as his lovely little creations fell onto the Death Eaters like hungry dogs, creating the perfect distraction.

He cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice. "Okay, c'mon people, let's get moving!" Sanguini and the demigods picked up right where they left off, hoisting their weapons into more comfortable positions and joining rank around Nico. The three wizards had to stare and gape for a moment or two before they got their bearings back.

"Could you do that the entire time we were here?" Harry asked, sounding more exasperated than irritated.

"Yeah," Nico yawned, his jaw cracking. "It just makes me really… ahem… tired so I don't do it often." He swayed slightly. "Just watch; I'mma go to sleep now." And with that, he fell forward, the ground rushing up to meet him.

Booka: *hides behind wall* I'm so ashamed. I'm so, so sooo sorry, you guys.

Audience: *throws cinderblocks* Boo!

Booka: Real life's a real female dog, ya know? School, school, school, weddings, new baby in the family, school, school, homework, practice viola, new obsessions, TV, reading fanfiction, school, school, homework, new baby in the family, baby shower, cousins, aunts, school, school, school and did I mention school?

Leo: Yes, you did. Multiple times.

Nico: …

Booka: And don't even get me started on this guy. *points to Nico* He's been giving me the silent treatment for like two months. And, crap, has it been that long since I've updated?

Leo: She's been a little distracted lately. We think she caught ADHD from spending too much time with Percy.

Booka: …

Leo: …

Booka: I won't even… I can't, I'm sorry, Leo but sometimes you're really dense. I've been developing new fanfiction ideas and typing like crazy, but not… on this one.

Audience: BOOO!

Booka: Yikes! Tough audience. I hope you like the chapter. If you think about it, it's not even a cliffhanger.

Nico: It totally is, don't even deny it.

Leo: Hey, maybe if you leave a review, she might not be a complete idiot and leave the chapter sitting on her hard-drive for 2 months until she starts and finishes it in two days.

Booka: …

Leo: …

Booka: Leo, I will castrate you. I swear I will.

Nico: *smirks*

Booka: I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST SAID THAT TO ALL OF THESE BLOOD-HUNGRY READERS! FOR ZUES'S SAKE, LEO! DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY'LL DO TO ME? THEY'RE GOING TO TIE ME UP AND FEED ME TO THE HELLHOUNDS! MY FREAKING LORD, LEO! Sdsjdbaidbvfisebwefibwf *faints*