PERCY
Percy was having a bad week.
It wasn't just the fact that Annabeth had kicked him out of her cabin because she was doing work (something about blueprints for a nice open sunset pavilion on Olympus), or that he'd gotten stuck with dish duty for the week because he'd forgotten to clean out his cabin for inspection, or that his watch-shield from Tyson had somehow fell from its display on his wall right onto his foot. (And gods, that had hurt way more than Celestial bronze should have. Maybe his half-brother had put a little too much effort into hardening the metal.) No, not even getting beaten by Clarisse in a sparring match with the entire Ares cabin watching was the worst thing that had happened to him.
But this, the cherry-on-top, the-last-match-needed-to-set-his-head-on-fire, this was it. All Percy had wanted was to visit his mom's apartment in Manhattan for the day, with no trouble, or training, or anything demigod-related whatsoever. Being chased by a hellhound straight into a dark, shabby sort of bar was not on his agenda. What kind of place was called The Kale Children, anyway?
Sorry. That probably wasn't its name, but a dyslexic demigod doesn't exactly stop and try to decipher the name of the bar he's fleeing into.
Looking back on it, the entire event was unfair, spontaneous, and entirely typical. He probably should have expected it. Maybe he could've run into his mom's old sweet shop then, because Zeus knew that Connor and Travis Stoll a) had a serious sweet tooth and b) were sons of the god of thieves. They had made it a hobby of stealing from Percy's personal stash. Or maybe he could have gone into a nice quiet, sketchy alley to finish off the hellhound instead. Either way, all this wouldn't have happened if being the idiot that he was, Percy hadn't chosen the one wrong door to wrench open.
But he had, and it did. That was Stupid Act #1.
So now Percy was in the middle of a bar, people gawking at him as he hastily capped Riptide, surrounded by yellow dust and about to be labeled as a madman. He tried that finger-snapping thing Thalia did back when they had first met Nico, concentrating on summoning the Mist.
"Uh, you're all drunk, and this was a dream. I was just playing, um, fetch with my dog, and she barged in here. Sorry!" He made to leave, but the voice of a woman wearing a tall hat like a witch's spoke up.
"Did you just… kill a Grim?"
Percy froze and turned around. He had no idea what a Grim was, but the woman had certainly seen him kill the hellhound, and the other people in the bar seemed to have too.
"No?" Percy gulped. "What's a Grim?"
Murmurs burst out among the customers. "Did a muggle just get into the Leaky Cauldron?" he heard someone shout. At least, it sounded like "muggle", but he couldn't be sure. He couldn't help but notice how everyone here spoke in a British accent — in the middle of an American city, it was strange.
Slowly, Percy inched away towards the door, hoping for one last chance at a clean getaway. However strangely these people were dressed up, not quite old-fashioned but slightly out of place, he'd rather not engage in any more "strange circumstances." Not only had he found them to be seriously detrimental to his status as a studying student in school (not that he would have to worry about that right now), but Annabeth would kill him.
The bartender, an older man with an old cleaning rag still in his hand, stopped him. "Wait, young man," he said as he leaned over the counter towards Percy.
He backed up slowly under the man's scrutiny.
"U — um, I really need to be going now," he stammered, unnerved. "My mom's — uh, waiting for me, back at the apartment, and she's waiting — um, I'll just go now." He broke off and made for the door quickly.
"Perseus Jackson?"
Percy froze. Whenever a stranger knew his full name, they tended to either be a long-lost half sibling or some ancient powerful monster — both of which usually were out to kill him. He turned back around. "H-how do you know my name?"
At the sound of his name, hesitant whispers had filled the room.
"Perseus Jackson?"
"Sounds familiar —"
"— in the newspapers? I don't remember —"
The bartender leaned over the counter further, a strange expression on his face. Almost like recognition, but not quite; as if he was recalling a face from memories that weren't his own. Percy was seriously planning on just running away from the place as fast as he could and hoping he wouldn't be chased in three — two — one —
Suddenly the mutterings ceased, and the people seemed to blink themselves out of a trance. They returned to drinking and laughing, turning to sit properly at the tables as if nothing had ever happened. The bartender resumed polishing a large glass mug, and Percy blinked at the room.
"Um…"
But no one seemed to hear him — in fact, he appeared to be invisible. He waved his hand in front of the bartender's face. The man didn't even blink.
"Oh-kay…" Percy watched the room through wide eyes. You're not crazy. You're not crazy. You're not crazy.
The fact was probably debatable. And with his next breath, he proved it.
Percy sucked in some air and yelled like some cafeteria dare: "POSEIDON'S UNDERPANTS!"
He waited for someone to jump, for the people to look at him like he was insane (which he probably was) — but nothing happened. The customers were still talking with each other about lunch, the bartender was still using that questionably stained cleaning rag, and the shady man in the corner was still being just as shady. His mind spun.
He inched away towards the door, and once the full bizarreness of the situation sank in, he bolted out and sprinted for the sidewalk. Without pausing to check if anyone had seen him, he hailed a passing taxi and hopped in.
"Half-Blood Hill, Long Island — quickly, please," he told the taxi driver breathlessly. The man held out his hand and Percy dropped a few drachmas in, then settled into the back seat. Whew, that'd been close, he —
Drachmas?
As he stared at the back of the taxi driver's head, which had brown hair cut short and a bit of shaving cream behind his ear and looked decidedly mortal, Percy blinked.
He checked the compartment where the driver had dropped his coins. Drachmas. He was pretty sure no American currency was bright gold, or so large. Had the Mist transformed them to look like dollar coins or something? He concentrated, but the image didn't waver like veiled objects usually did.
Percy tapped the man's shoulder hesitantly, half-expecting the guy to grow wings and fangs and try to kill him. But the driver just looked at him in the rearview mirror with a friendly expression. Jamie Smith, his name tag read. Didn't seem at all like a poorly-disguised alias for some monster.
"Can I help you with something, kid?"
"Um… yeah, can you just confirm how much I paid you? Thanks," he said.
The taxi driver winked. "Sure. Two drachmas."
"And you're mortal?" Percy blurted out before he could stop himself.
Jamie Smith blinked at him in the mirror. "Sorry?"
"Yeah, never mind. I just — ah, I'm going to change the currency — here, this should be enough." He put down two dollars and took back the drachmas. Jamie just shrugged and continued driving.
Percy stared out the window, oblivious to what was outside. The encounter at the old bar was strange enough. But the last time he had checked, taxis didn't accept ancient Greek coins for payment. He decided to ask Chiron about it at camp — the old centaur usually had all the answers.
His thoughts wandered to Camp Half-Blood, where he had spent the summer after the Battle of Manhattan doing normal summer camp activities (well, as normal as you could get as a demigod. He had probably ruined at least three shirts while failing the lava wall). The camp had become a home to him over the past months. As strange as it was, he had come to like all the kids there — including Clarisse, although that might have been more on a "tolerate" level. And no matter how many times she kicked his butt in wrestling or called him "Prissy," he liked to think the feeling was mutual.
Percy was confident that his swordwork had improved as well, considering the hours he had spent at the training arena, but he still was no match for the veterans like Annabeth and Clarisse. They did have years more experience than him, though, so it was to be expected.
In other areas of fighting, though — cough cough, archery — he was just as hopeless as he ever had been. The last time Chiron had attempted teaching him… well, let's just say he had given up after that. Not even Annabeth could convince him to go back to the archery range again.
Annabeth… she and Percy had been dating for almost two months, and they were now apparently the Aphrodite kids' favorite couple to tease. Especially when she held his hand and his face turned beet red, making the campfire spurt up wildly in Cupid-pink hues. Gods, those girls could squeal.
Ruefully, Percy rubbed his camp bead with the names of all the lives lost in battle against Kronos. Silena Beauregard would have been happy to see them finally get together — it was unfair that she never got to.
After a few minutes, Percy's curiosity took over. "Excuse me, sir? Do you always accept drachmas?"
Jamie Smith looked at him oddly in the mirror, eyebrows slightly raised, and replied, "Drachmas, kid? What the heck are those?"
Percy opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. "N — never mind," he stuttered out. "Just — thinking of something else."
Jamie shrugged and continued driving.
An object dangling from the rearview mirror caught his eye. It was a Santa Claus air freshener — smelling of pine and candy canes, which seemed oddly out of place in the middle of summer — with the old figure laughing and holding a large belly. For a moment Percy's ADHD brain wondered if Santa was related in any way to that snow goddess (Khione?), if he was her son or something. There was no way an old man could survive forever in the North Pole, right? But he had also heard a myth about Khione once having an affair with Poseidon, which would make jolly Kris Kringle Percy's —
Percy quit his train of thought.
But the figure itself wasn't what was strange. The air freshener had a faint aura of blue glowing around it, like it had been strung with LED's. Except there were no lights on it; as far as Percy could tell, the light was coming from inside it. Strange.
That was when he committed Stupid Act #2.
Percy leaned forward, intrigued by Saint Nick's halo, and touched it.
The first sensation he felt was being yanked forward violently, screaming (his mom would have murdered him for not wearing a seatbelt). For a split second he worried that he was going to crash into the taxi ceiling, but the hit never came. In fact, he could no longer see the inside of the taxi. Everything was a blur of colors; grey, red, blue; he was being tossed and jerked around; vaguely, he thought he might have been moving to the left but he couldn't be sure. Everything was just so fast —
Then Percy's feet hit the ground and he rolled instinctively, tumbling to a stop in the middle of a very strange road that was most definitely not the backseat of a New York city taxi.
He put a hand out against a wall next to him, steadying himself. The place was sort of similar to the bar from earlier, with an old-fashioned feel. Storefronts lined the street, which was cluttered with loud shoppers — but as Percy looked closer, the stores were strange. Eeylops Owl Emporium, read one. Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, said another. He was pretty sure the average store didn't sell owls and robes.
He looked closer at a store called Quality Quidditch Supplies, whatever "Quidditch" was. A group of blustering boys were crowded around something in the shop window, which upon closer inspection, held a — broomstick? — displayed proudly on a gleaming pedestal.
Okay…
Percy slid up against the wall, passerby eyeing him strangely as they walked past. He eyed them strangely back. They were dressed as if they were going to a costume party, with robes and pointy hats and —
Was that an ice cream shop?
A plump elderly woman bumped into him accidentally, startling him out of his thoughts. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "My apologies, dear! Must've gotten distracted. Getting supplies for another year at Hogwarts, are you?"
Percy stared. She was dressed in long, flowery robes and — was this street supposed to be witch-themed or something? — because there was another pointed hat atop her grey hair. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Quite a handsome young man you are. Ah, I remember the good old days…" the lady adjusted her spectacles with a giggle. "Fredrick courted me in our seventh year. And they said Gryffindors couldn't date Hufflepuffs, the fools! What house are you in, young man?"
The english accent again. At this rate, Percy would be calling "soccer" "football". "Um, what — Gryffindors? Wh —"
"Gryffindor? Why, that was Fredrick's house!" she squealed happily. "Oh! My grandchildren, too. They're awfully sweet, those children… well, here are their names, in case you ever run into them—" she began rattling off kids whom he had never heard of before: "Annie, she's a quiet one, never likes to speak up — got to talk with her about that — Henry, the boy's all puppy tails and mischief, if you get my meaning, although he's a smart young man…"
As the woman rambled on about her grandchildren, Percy inched away from her. He seemed to be doing a lot of that today. When it became clear she wasn't even aware of him, he broke away and headed inside the closest shop he could find (he really had to stop doing that).
Promptly, he walked out and backed up so he could properly observe the storefront.
Weasley's Wizard Wheezes stood in flashing multicolored letters above the large awning, a stark contrast to the other shop names that were printed in smaller, more nondescript fonts. Then again, all things about this place were different than its surroundings.
The store window was so brightly colored Percy almost had to squint to make out the objects, which were all bouncing around and twisting and popping like Mexican jumping beans on steroids. A few people were crowded around the window in fascination. A brilliant eggplant purple poster was plastered on the other window, with bold sunflower-yellow letters reading out:
WHY ARE YOU WORRYING ABOUT
YOU-KNOW-WHO?
YOU SHOULD BE WORRYING ABOUT
U-NO-POO—
THE CONSTIPATION SENSATION
THAT'S GRIPPING THE NATION!
After poring for about a full five minutes over what the poster said and reassuring himself that his dyslexia hadn't distorted the words Percy snorted, and a passing group of official-looking men looked at him disapprovingly. Then they read the poster and muttered amongst themselves, aghast, before moving on.
He didn't know who You-Know-Who was, but it didn't matter much. Grinning, he pushed open the shop door and was met with a world of noise and color.
The store was packed with people. An overwhelming majority of them were kids, all clamoring at the goods and shoving each other away from shelves. But a good number were adults as well — some were just as engaged in the products as their children. An balding older man looked at a pile of innocent-looking books with interest, then opened one, whose pages immediately spewed noxious fumes that smelled suspiciously of farts.
Percy pushed his way through the crowd curiously, almost having forgotten what he had come inside for. On one shelf, glass bottles filled with varying hues of coral-pink serum gleamed attractively. On another, there were rows and rows of brightly packaged candies, and one more still displayed small boxes with what looked like long pieces of string wound up inside. He stepped closer to look at the last one, reading aloud the description slowly.
"EXTENDABLE EARS— soon out of stock! Eavesdrop on your professors, or your parents, or your parents' professors, or your professors' parents. Not for sale for under-sevens."
All the times in his demigod career that he had listened in on things he hadn't been supposed to — Percy shook his head in wonder. These would have been incredible. Assuming they actually worked.
"Oh, they work, all right," a voice behind him made him whirl around in surprise. Standing there was a young man a few years older than him, with fiery red hair and a cocky expression. He was dressed in bold magenta robes and tossed a murky glass ball in one hand. "'Course, unless there's an Imperturbable Charm. Mum's got that one down."
"A — what?" Oh, real smart, Percy, he berated himself mentally. You totally don't sound like an idiot.
You are an idiot, some part of his brain reminded him.
Shut up, he told it.
The teenager shrugged. "So are you looking for anything? Skiving Snackboxes are running out fast, if you're wanting one of those — or, Spell Checking Quills, real useful if you've got trouble with writing — oh! And there's a limited sale on the games section. A galleon off, if the item's two or above! It won't last long." he gestured toward a corner of the store with a dramatic flourish of his arms.
"Um — thanks, but —" Percy cocked his head. "Wait — you work here?"
"Sure I do. My brother and I own the place," the redhead said with a charismatic grin. "George Weasley. A pleasure." He gave a sweeping mock bow.
"Yeah," said Percy warily. "Sure. Okay. I was just, uh, wondering if I could use the bathroom here."
George raised an eyebrow. "Just the bathroom? Alright, then. 'S right down there. Let me or Fred or Verity know if you end up wanting to buy something after all, eh?" He headed down a nearby set of stairs, whistling.
Nodding slowly, Percy went down a small hallway to a door labeled "WC". He pushed it open and headed for the sink. The faucet creaked as he turned it on, and as the water streamed into the basin, it splashed into a smiley face signed with the letters F and G before dropping.
He was pretty sure he hadn't done that.
It was just another thing he would have to ask Chiron about. Reminded of what he had to do, Percy pressed his thumb to the spout so that only a fine mist escaped. A rainbow formed in it from the fluorescent lights above. Still keeping his fingers on the faucet, he fished out a drachma (thank the gods he had taken his coins back from the taxi) and tossed it into the rainbow, where it vanished.
(Stupid Act #3: telling Chiron. He could've just figured out his own way back home, but no, Percy had to have landed himself in another quest — this one at a school. Personally, he had preferred the evil titans.)
"O Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow, please accept my offering," he said. "Chiron at Camp Half-Blood."
The mist shimmered, and an image of the old centaur appeared. He was talking with a shadowed figure in what looked like his office, and by the looks of it, he wasn't happy. The back of his fake wheelchair faced Percy.
"— those stupid magi have been blaspheming the name of magic, Chiron, and I want them gone! Disappeared! Poof. Is that beyond the capabilities of your heroes? Employ your forces! This is urgent! My name is at stake," he heard. The speaker was female, and an angry female. The voice of the National Geographic narrator saying "A lioness will attack and kill if she feels that her young are being provoked or threatened" popped into his head, and he pushed it away.
"Lady Hecate, we —"
"Have a visitor," the goddess interrupted, miffed. "Receive him. I am off." With that, she vanished in a puff of white smoke.
Chiron sighed, turning to face the Iris message. He seemed tired, face more lined than usual. "Percy," he greeted wearily. "Why are you calling?"
"Was that Hecate?"
"Yes," the centaur said, rubbing a hand over his face. "Yes, that was the Goddess of Magic. Now —"
"What was she doing there?" Percy asked, curiosity taking over his mouth once again. "Doesn't she have — I don't know — godly business or whatever?"
Chiron closed his eyes, muttering something like "I wish she did," before addressing Percy again in a tight tone. "Apparently not. But enough about this, why are you contacting me? I thought you were visiting your mother?" Apparently realizing for the first time Percy's surroundings, he added, "And are you in a bathroom? Why are you in a bathroom?"
Percy winced. "Well, a lot of things happened on my way back from the apartment. A hellhound got on my tail, and I got chased into this little bar place —"
"You were chased by a hellhound? Are you all right?" Chiron interrupted worriedly.
"Yes, I'm fine, Chiron," he replied, rolling his eyes. "I'm not twelve years old anymore, you know."
The centaur just shrugged and moved his wheelchair a little closer, motioning for Percy to go on.
He continued, explaining how the bartender seemed to know him before suddenly acting like Percy had never been there. Then the taxi driver had accepted drachmas, and the Santa Claus air freshener transported him to a sort of shopping alley. "And now I'm here, in the bathroom of a joke shop," he finished, motioning at the tiled bathroom walls.
Chiron had begun frowning as the story progressed, and now he leaned forward in his wheelchair, chin resting on steepled fingers. "No one could see you, you say?"
"Or hear me," Percy added. "I yelled something out and no one reacted. It was like I was a ghost."
"And you paid the taxi driver in drachmas?"
Percy nodded.
Chiron sighed. "Yes, well, I suppose something like this was going to happen."
"What do you mean?" Percy asked.
Instead of answering, the centaur wheeled himself behind his desk and pulled out a drawer. After rummaging around inside of it for a moment, he pulled something out and approached the Iris Message again. He held the object up so Percy could see.
It was a stick, made of straight, polished dark wood. The bottom fourth or so was decorated with a pearlescent grip, making it look sort of like a very thin wooden dagger with no crosspiece, but other than that, it was a stick. At best, a fancy stick. Percy raised an eyebrow.
"What's this?"
"Exactly our question," Chiron replied tiredly. "It was found on Sherman Yang's bed this morning. The Ares cabin wanted to burn it, but I was able to confiscate it before any damage occurred."
Percy frowned. "So what is it?"
"A wand," he said.
"A wand," Percy repeated. "Yeah. So what is it really?"
Chiron didn't answer, only stared at him with those old, dark eyes.
He nodded, gaping. "It's actually a wand? Like a magic wand?"
"Yes, my boy. A magic wand, belonging to a witch or wizard."
A thought struck him. "The bar and the alley. The people were dressed with pointy hats and medieval robes. Was that—"
"You were somehow transported into the wizarding world," Chiron confirmed.
Percy made some sort of strangled noise in his throat. "Okay." He took a moment to process his thoughts, memories of his first arrival at Camp Half-Blood creating a strange sort of déja vu. "And you're expecting me to just believe that bibbidi-bobbidi-boo is real?"
The old centaur sighed. "Would you have just believed that you were a demigod when you were eleven years old? No. But that doesn't change the fact that you were one."
"Okay, but—" he realized that his mentor was right. Honestly, so many strange things had happened to him by now that he should have gotten used to it. Greek gods? Check. A literal, solid, very heavy sky? Sure. A girl-turned-pine-tree-turned-girl-again? Why not. Next, it'd be Roman gods — maybe even other messed-up mythologies like, oh, Percy didn't know, Egyptian or Norse. He shook his head. "Fine. So let's say you're right. How come I got teleported now, instead of any one of the last thirty times I've visited my mom?"
Chiron nodded. "We don't know. We only know that the Mist is failing — glitching, as you young people say. It goes back and forth, overshooting in some places and disappearing completely in others. The bar you say you visited, the Mist confused knowledge of the Greek world with what witches and wizards are meant to know, causing the bartender to feel as if he vaguely recognized you. As if realizing its mistake, it then overcompensated and backtracked until the entire bar's memories had been wiped of the past five minutes and you were completely veiled from their sight."
"But why is this happening now?" Percy persisted. "I mean, why not three days ago? Or a month? Or centuries? Hasn't the Mist been around since Hecate?"
"We don't know," Chiron repeated. "We believe there was some sort of attack last night on Hecate's persona, causing the system to go awry. Things began happening soon after you left for Manhattan. And —" he hesitated. "You might have to stay put for now."
Percy stared. "In — in this world? But — Chiron—"
"We have limited ways to get you back for now," he interrupted, "seeing as you are currently in another country. You're in the UK, Percy."
Percy opened his mouth, then closed it, at a loss for words. Chiron held up a hand to stem his flow of questions before they started.
"Think of this as an unofficial quest. We must figure out what is going on, who started this, and how to end it. Our world relies on the Mist to keep us safe from mortal vision. Think about what would happen if all of a sudden, New York City knew all about us. It would be chaos." he leaned forward. "These three worlds — mortal, mythical, and magical — they are not meant to collide. I do not know anything about the wizards aside from what Lady Hecate has told me, but I shouldn't know they exist at all. And seeing as you're already in the thick of this, we will have to rely on you to figure things out on that end."
"Yeah," Percy said. "Yeah, rely on me to save the world again? What am I even supposed to do?"
Chiron sat back in his wheelchair again. "I need you to attend the Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, as a student."
HELLO HELLO HELLO! Sorry, I'm just super excited to be posting this finally. So excited, I'm starting it off with a double chapter! You have no idea how long I've been working on this thing—who knew a cliché, overused idea like Percy-Goes-To-Hogwarts was so hard to write? But yeah, I do have a decent (?) plot laid out for this fic and hopefully y'all will enjoy Specter's Hollow.
Updating Schedule: Weekly updates! Probably on the weekends. I might be late sometimes, since school is starting again next week after an AMAZING break, but please don't kill me when that happens...
Time Period: This takes place when both Percy and Harry are sixteen—so for Percy, it's right after PJO and before HOO and for Harry, he's in his sixth year.
Umm... anything else you guys should know? Some of this will stick kind of (annoyingly) close to The Half-Blood Prince canon, but I tried to make it as interesting and new as possible. Things will start to pick up later on, don't worry.
That's about it! Drop a fav/follow/review on your way out!
unfinished . nocturne