PERCY
Shopping was not Percy's thing.
Not that he had gone to the mall many times as a little kid, but the few times his mom had taken him out for jeans that weren't above his ankles, she'd complained that he was a monster. He didn't like being dragged around and asked countless questions. He needed to fidget, not stay still while his mom rummaged through the discount racks.
And besides, Percy had gotten them banned once from the store because he'd somehow exploded the dinky little fish tank. Luckily it hadn't ruined any clothes from the store itself — there was no way his mom would have ever been able to pay off something like that.
But as much as he disliked shopping, Percy had to admit that this time, it was pretty interesting. A Hermes Express package had dropped into his arms soon after ending his Iris Message with Chiron, a few words scribbled on the receipt:
still owe you one for the caduceus fiasco. have fun.
Inside there was a pouch filled with unfamiliar coins, and an envelope containing an official-looking document and a list of what looked like school supplies. The first item on the paper was a wand — a wand — and a few more typed words directed him to a shop called Ollivander's. It took Percy about ten full minutes of wandering around before he found the shop.
"Huh," he said, staring up at the dusty, abandoned storefront. Obviously, no one had been there in a while. The old-fashioned gold letters spelling out Ollivander's: Makers Of Fine Wands Since 382 B.C. were peeling, and there was a sad purple cushion with nothing on it displayed in the stained window. There was a single board nailed across the door.
"A shame, he really was the best wandmaker around. You looking for a wand, boy?"
Percy turned to see a passing kindly-looking witch and her friend looking at him. "N-no, I was just looking."
The witch nodded, squinting. "Well. Ollivander's was the best, but I suppose my little boy will have to choose from Jonker's instead." She and the other woman left, chatting and shaking their heads.
Percy turned back toward the shop, and glancing around to make sure no one on the nearly deserted corner was paying attention to him, he tugged at the board over the door. The rotting wood gave way easily. He opened the door slowly, cringing at the loud squeal of protest, and slipped inside.
He had entered a small, narrow room, dusty sunlight highlighting shelves stacked floor to ceiling. Each shelf was crammed with long, thin black boxes. There must have been thousands of wands in the shop. Percy stared at them in awe. The floorboards creaked slightly underfoot as he stepped over to the small wooden chair in the corner, which had spindly legs and a few splinters sticking out. He traced a finger over the tiny carved letters on the back: GERBOLD OLLIVANDER.
"Gerbold Ollivander," Percy read out slowly. The lettering was scratchy and shallow, as if made by a bored student fiddling with his ruler. (And Percy had had plenty of experience in that field.) The chair seemed like something special; a reminiscent heirloom, and not something that the owner would leave behind.
"My father," said a thin voice behind him, and he jumped.
A very, very old man was standing behind him with an unlit candle held in front of him. He seemed vaguely confused, as if wondering why the candle wasn't lit and why the room seemed light anyway. But his pale, almost milky eyes were focused somewhere in the vicinity of the chair, and Percy stepped aside cautiously.
"My father, son of the founder of this place…" the old man's voice trailed off feebly, and he coughed.
Percy winced. "Uh, sir? Are you alright?"
The old man's gaze snapped to him. "Ah! A customer!" he wandered closer to him, eyes scrutinizing him dazedly. "Haven't got one of those in so long…" he wheezed. "Not since Garrick was taken. Are you here to see him?"
"Um—"
"Yes, of course… where did he keep those wands? They must be here somewhere…" he looked around, and Percy cleared his throat.
"You mean those?" he gestured at the thousands of boxes stacked around them.
"Ah! Yes, there they are." The old man stumbled over to a shelf, running long, thin fingers over the countless boxes. There was a certain sureness in his movements beside his otherwise addled appearance, a familiarity that suggested he had spent his life dedicated to this collection. "Let's see… beech… hawthorne… no, this won't do…"
He stopped at a package, nestled in between two shelves. "Yes, here it is," he murmured, opening it and taking something out.
It was a wand. As the old man grasped it, a light came back into his eyes, making them appear less washed-out and more silvery. He turned back to Percy with a new clarity. "Ah! A customer! And—" he strode toward purposefully, swishing his wand at Percy, who flinched. "An extraordinary one. Yes… I have seen your kind only once before."
"What?" Percy asked warily.
"Ah, I had one customer many, many years ago… but never mind. My son did not know if these, I hid a compilation of special wands when I once owned this shop…" the old man ran his hands along the shelves again and stopped at a section that looked like all the others. With a flourish of his wand, he moved the wands to the side, revealing three silver-lined black boxes stacked in the back of the shelf. Muttering to himself, he selected two of them.
Percy stepped forward, curious. The man held the containers out to him, and he took one carefully. Inside was a stick — a wand. He reached inside the box and took it in his hand.
The effect was instantaneous. Suddenly he felt as if he had woken up, like he'd been doused in salty oceanwater. The bronze runes flashed dully, and the wand spouted blue-green sparks like fireworks. He stared at the thing in wonder as the old man clapped.
"Ah, yes, very good! Very good indeed. Cedar wood with a phoenix feather and dragon heartstring core, eleven and a half inches with unyielding flexibility. Very rare to have a dual core; unheard of to have a dual core made of two supreme cores. Normally the power would overwhelm the user, rendering the wand useless. Yes, very good," he said, grinning widely.
"Wow," Percy said, smiling a little. Annabeth would have been fascinated by all this. Magic? Wands? He looked at his closer.
It was long and slim, made of smooth, nondescript dark wood. When he squinted, he saw that there were thin, barely visible bronze etchings running down one side. They caught the afternoon light in strange glints. He studied the symbols curiously, watching as they seemed to shimmer and shift subtly every time he thought he had identified some shapes.
"Runes," the old man said in answer to his unasked question. "As a half-blood, your magic is different from the typical witch or wizard. Much more potent, yes, yet slightly less refined. Wild and untamed, like a vast ocean."
Percy startled at that, wondering if the man knew who his father was.
"I researched and experienced a while after the incident with the other demigod, combined cores and woods. They all contribute to an adequate wand, but the runes — they channel your power in unique ways. In fact, without them, your power would be too great altogether for the fine intricacy of spellwork." A wisp of the man's white hair fell into his face in his excitement. "Of course, I didn't know I would ever get to see one really being used. Go on, try it. Give it a wave!"
He was a bit like a mad scientist, Percy thought. One who had finally succeeded in an experiment and was giddy as a child. But he obliged and swooshed the wand through the air.
Immediately, a cool metallic light flared from the tip and filled the dingy room. Then there was what felt like a whoosh of wind, and it dispersed into a spray of silver-blue before disappearing. He stared in awe, the only thing he was able to voice being a soft exclamation of "whoa".
The old man also stared in awe, eyes wide in an almost childlike excitement. "Incredible," he breathed, the light still reflected somehow in an almost mad expression on his face. "Truly incredible. What my father would have given to see a descendant of the gods themselves perform with an Ollivander wand…"
"That was awesome," Percy acknowledged.
There was another moment of silence, and then Percy startled and dug into his pouch for some coins. He held them out, but the man rejected them vehemently.
"No, no, a demigod does not pay here! Please, accept this wand as a gift… from Gervaise Ollivander. Good day… hello, what's this, do we have a customer?"
Ollivander had returned once again to his addled state, peering at Percy through milky eyes. "Haven't had a customer since Garrick was taken… come in, my boy, do come in…"
"Right." Percy felt a pang of sympathy for the old man, reduced to a fumbling to state due to age. "I might, er, come back later — thanks for the wand!" With that, he left the shop, clutching his new wand in his pocket. "That was interesting," he commented to himself as he checked for the next item on his list.
School Robes: Madam Malkin's Robes For All Occasions, it said. He remembered seeing a shop like that when he had first fallen into this place — now it was just a matter of finding it again. Percy sighed and stuffed the list back in his pocket. He had a feeling he was going to be doing a lot of walking around today.
Luckily, it took him only about five minutes before he found himself in front of a decently-sized place with purple official-looking posters plastered to its windows. Come to think of it, Percy had seen a bunch of those on store windows and doors, as well as what looked like those WANTED posters from movies. Except for the minor fact that these had moving photographs, like mini tv screens. He stared at the cackling image of a lady with black hair and wild dark eyes, disconcerted. She even looked dangerous, like one of the countless classic crazed goddesses Percy had encountered in his demigod career.
Shaking aside his thoughts, he pushed open the door with a quiet tinkle of bells. A woman was sitting at the desk in the back of the room, scribbling something down furiously. She was too absorbed in her work to notice him enter.
"Um, hello?" Percy tried. "Madam Malkin? I'm here for school robes."
The witch looked up, glasses nearly sliding down her nose. "Ah, yes, sorry about that," she said, standing and bustling her way over to him. She seemed vaguely flustered, like something had bothered her. "Just — sit right over there, dear."
Obligingly, he sat on a tall stool in the center of the room. Madam Malkin hovered around him, uncomfortably close, absent-mindedly taking down measurements with a measuring tape. She was muttering something about "disruptive, feuding students" and "inappropriate language" and "impudent boy". Percy tried not to fidget too much.
"Do stay still, boy!" she snapped suddenly, and he winced. Apparently he wasn't doing a good job.
"Sorry."
"You should be," she muttered, still miffed, and finished jotting notes down on her clipboard.
He managed to stay relatively still while she measured out his robes and started pinning the hems, but his thoughts wandered. He was still reeling with the news that there were real, live witches and wizards and he had never heard of them before. It was something that he might have daydreamed about as a kid, going to a school of magic and learning spells and brewing potions. The thought that he had actually managed to land himself in another quest within two months of the war nearly made him laugh.
Annabeth would be jealous.
Percy had wanted a bit of a break from all the adventure, though, and part of him whined that Chiron could have just asked someone to get him home and someone else to attend this "Hogwarts" school. What kind of school was named after pigs and skin diseases, anyway? Even Dr. Boring couldn't compete with that.
But at the end of the day, Percy knew could never turn down a quest. It was in his nature and his natural sense of loyalty to do his duty and fulfill whatever tasks the gods required of him, however absurd they were. And he had gone on a lot of absurd quests by now. A lot of them consisting of a god or goddess having screwed something up big time and needing him to fix it.
(Hermes's caduceus. Persephone's sword of keys or whatever. And no, of course Percy wasn't pointing fingers. Even he wasn't as stupid as to go saying gods were imperfect and needed the demigods to run their errands. Yeah, definitely.)
Sometimes, he could even sympathize with Luke.
Luke had been a hero in the end, Percy reminded himself. He didn't finish on the path of betrayal, even if that was where he had begun.
"You're all done," Madam Malkin said, handing him a set of long black robes. He thanked her and paid with a few of the large gold coins that looked like drachmas. She bowed him out of her shop, flipping the sign on the door to CLOSED behind him.
It was getting late, the sun still relatively high in the sky but dropping quickly. Percy counted the rest of the items on his list and sighed. He still had to purchase school books, visit the apothecary (whatever that was, he was sure Annabeth would know) to buy ingredients for potions, get a cauldron, quills, ink, and parchment (how old-fashioned were these wizards, anyway?), a hat (a classic wizard hat, black! Percy was way too excited about that one), and a few other miscellaneous items that he didn't care to list.
He sent a silent prayer of thanks to Hermes for the money.
Glancing down at the list again, Percy decided to get his school books next at a place called Flourish and Blotts. "QUILLS", "INK", and "PARCHMENT" were all also listed under the same shop, so he could knock out four birds with one stone.
He passed a ratty-looking street vendor as he walked, with armfuls of gold and silver bejeweled necklaces clanking around.
"Amulets, all sorts of protections!" the guy called at the passerby, who shook their heads at him and hurried on. When he spotted Percy looking over, he sneered widely in what might have been a smile, revealing yellow teeth. "Got one just for you, boy, here. Protect you from all o' them evils in the world!" He waved a random chain at him.
"No thanks, my mom told me never to accept offers from strangers," Percy replied with a grin. "I did always wonder why she listened when a cashier told her about a buy one-get one free sale, then."
When he began walking again, he thought he heard footsteps some distance in front of him. But there were few shoppers here, and everyone seemed to be avoiding a dark side street marked with a swaying sign reading "Knockturn Alley" in crude lettering. There wasn't anyone in front of him except for a black-cloaked boy who turned left and disappeared swiftly into Knockturn Alley.
Percy shrugged and kept walking, keeping an eye out for Flourish and Blotts — until he walked straight into something and had to catch himself from falling.
Regaining his balance, he looked around to apologize to whoever he had bumped into. But there was no one there; he was standing awkwardly on the sidewalk with no one within twenty feet of him. All that he sensed was the stifled sound of footsteps, running into Knockturn Alley and quickly fading out.
It took at least another hour or two before Percy was finally finished getting his supplies, and he found himself in front of a familiar-looking bar (pub?), ready to drop into a proper bed and sleep for the rest of the day. This time, he took the time to read out the creaky wooden sign that hung over the entrance: THE LEAKY CAULDRON.
Wearily, he pushed open the door.
He was greeted with the babble of voices and laughter. A man sitting close to him slammed his large half-empty mug down on his table, and he jumped. Hopefully, this place had rooms as well.
He headed for the bartender, keeping his eyes down. The man spotted him quickly and asked, "What can I help you with?"
"Do you have somewhere I could stay for the night?" Percy asked.
The bartender smiled widely, showing a toothless mouth. "Of course, of course! I'm Tom the innkeeper, call me Tom." he made his way around the counter to shake Percy's hand amiably. "Wait one moment — Mary! What room is open?" he shouted behind him over the noise.
"Fifteen!" An elderly woman's voice called back, and Tom turned to Percy again, beaming.
"There you go. Head up that staircase over there, odd numbers on the right, go to room fifteen. A galleon a night. Holler if you need anything, here's the keys!" he tossed Percy a key and headed back to the counter to tend to his other customers.
Clutching the keys in his hand, Percy walked to a handsome wooden staircase in the back of the room. It led him up one floor, where he found rooms lining a long hallway. One, three, five. He kept walking until he found a door labeled with the brass number fifteen.
The room was a comfortable place, with a bed, polished wooden furniture, and an unlit stone fireplace. The air smelled a little musty. A quick glance at the clock told him that it was still six thirty, and that he was way more tired than he should be. With a loud sigh, Percy set his new suitcase — a trunk, he thought the shop owner had called it, but that was such a British term — down on the bed and flopped next to it. He didn't want anything except to sleep then and there, but he had to make a few Iris Messages first.
Making his way over to the bathroom, Percy dug into his pocket and realized he only had two drachmas left. He winced. If he'd known what was going to happen, he'd have packed more money.
A thought struck him. Would Iris accept the gold wizard coins that looked like drachmas? Hermes had sent plenty of those, and he would be able to get more easily enough. Percy turned on the sink and created a rainbow the same way he had in the bathroom of the joke shop, tossing in a galleon.
"O Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow, please accept my offering. Show me Sally Jackson, Manhattan."
Please work, please work, please work, he prayed.
The mist shimmered and an image of his mom saying something to Paul appeared. Percy clenched his fist in victory. He was about to get her attention when she and Paul laughed, and he felt a guilty pang. Who was he to interrupt his mom's happy moment? He wondered for a minute whether or not to end the call, but decided she would appreciate to know where he was.
"Mom," he said, and when she didn't hear him, he repeated himself. "Mom!"
She jumped and looked up, startled. Seeing the Iris Message, her face split into a warm smile. "Percy!"
Paul turned around, too, and nearly fell out of his chair in amazement. "Whoa there! What the —"
"It's an Iris Message," Percy explained quickly. "Because it's too dangerous for us demigods to use phones."
It had been a lot more comfortable communicating with his mom now that Paul knew about the Greek world, and his reactions to some things tended to be hilarious. But Percy was in a hurry today. He hesitated a moment, debating how to explain what had happened. His mom immediately interpreted his hesitation to mean that something was wrong, and her lips pursed immediately.
"Are you alright? Are you hurt? Oh, no, did something go wrong? Where's Chiron? I knew I shouldn't have —"
"Mom, I'm fine," he interrupted, and her face relaxed.
"Oh, good," she said. "So why are you calling? Are you sure everything's all right?"
"Yes, everything's fine," he said. "It's just — ah, how should I say this. I maybe, kind of, sort of, not quite in an official sense, am on a quest."
His mom looked scandalized. "A quest?"
Percy shrank back. He'd battled the Minotaur, countless monsters, the jailer of Tartarus, the Lord of Time, all of which were out to kill him — but faced with his disapproving mother? He'd take on an army of hellhounds over this any day.
"Did you, or did you not, go on a quest not two months ago?" she asked, tone rising. "Did Chiron put you up to this? Why is it that he expects you to go on all their quests? Why can't Annabeth go instead? Or Clarisse? Or any of the hundred other kids at camp? Percy!"
"Look, I'm sorry, Mom," he complained. "It's not like I chose to go. I just, you know, have a habit of landing myself in unfortunate situations."
"You got that one right," his mom muttered under her breath.
Paul chose that moment to intervene. "Let's all calm down, and we can figure something out. Percy, buddy, what do you mean by an 'unofficial quest'?"
"There wasn't, like, a prophecy or anything," Percy said. "It was kind of impromptu — see, Paul, I'm not terrible at english — and Chiron said to keep it under wraps from all the campers except those who I absolutely had to tell. I'm supposed to have decided suddenly to go home a week early before school starts. That being said, since he said it's supposed to be secret, I'm sure the whole camp knows by now."
His mom sighed. "And what exactly is this quest?"
Percy shifted uncomfortably. "Well… It's not exactly something you'll believe…"
"Percy, sweetie, the God of the Caduceuses lost his caduceus. There aren't many things I won't believe anymore."
"Wait, what?" Paul said. "The — wait, what?"
Percy ignored him. "Yeah, but this is different. It doesn't exactly… It's not the same."
His mom groaned. "Dear, are you going to tell us what it is or are you going to stall all day?"
"Fine." He pressed his thumb tighter against the faucet, taking a deep breath. "I'm kind of in London right now."
He proceeded to tell his mom and Paul everything that had happened since leaving the apartment. They listened with wide eyes, Paul especially. He was still getting used to the idea that there were supernatural things that mortals didn't believe existed; now he was telling them that there were supernatural things that mortals and the Greek world hadn't known about at all. Several times, he interjected in utter disbelief and amazement.
Meanwhile, Percy's thumb was getting tired.
"Chiron also told me I should avoid IM-ing people when I'm at school, unless absolutely necessary, because it's too risky," he finished. "So this will probably be the last time I'll get to call you in a while."
When he finally got off the Iris Message, having been bombarded with typical mom-type reminders ("Don't forget to write me!" "Be careful!" "Brush your teeth!" "Don't die!" and "Try not to get expelled."), the last thing he wanted to do was to make another call to Annabeth. But they were officially dating now. He was pretty sure she'd murder him violently when he got back if he didn't tell her where he was — not that she wouldn't murder him anyway. At least she might make it less painful if he told her now.
Reluctantly, he tossed a second galleon into the mist and called for Annabeth Chase. Unlike his mother, she had been waiting for him, arms crossed tightly against her chest and grey eyes flashing like storm clouds. Momentarily, Percy contemplated if an angry girlfriend could compete in scariness levels with an angry mother. It was a possibility, which was saying something.
"Perseus Jackson," she said in a low, dangerous tone, "If you do not tell me right this instant where you are, I will personally crawl through this Iris Message, knock every single one of your teeth out, and stuff them down your throat."
"Wow," he couldn't help but say, "Have you been hanging around Clarisse?"
She glared at him. "You had better pray that I haven't been. Now, where are you?"
"It's a long story," Percy said, and for the third time that day, explained everything that had happened and what he had learned since leaving his mom's apartment in Manhattan. When he began describing what Chiron had told him, Annabeth completely forgot to be mad. She leaned forward, intrigued, grey eyes glittering intelligently. Dang, those eyes were beautiful. He tried to get back into focus.
At the end, Annabeth breathed out a low whistle. "That's…" she shook her head in amazement. "I went to the Big House to ask Chiron if he knew where you were, but he was 'busy' and wouldn't talk to me. Wow, Percy, that's — can you believe it? Magic! Actually, this explains a whole lot of things that I've been wondering about, like…"
Admittedly, Percy zoned out a little. One of the disadvantages to dating a daughter of Athena was the never-ending flow of information. And yet she still found ways to cram good vocabulary into him. After a few minutes, he reluctantly cut her off. She looked cute when she was excited about something, even if he had no idea what she was talking about.
"Yeah, um, Annabeth, there was something else —" she immediately snapped her attention to him.
"What was it?" she demanded.
He hesitated. He could very well have imagined it, but he figured she'd want to know everything. "Well, I was looking for a shop in Diagon Alley when I thought I heard quick footsteps somewhere in front of me, like someone was running towards me. But there was no one there except for one guy who just went into another street, and it wasn't him. I kind of dismissed it and kept moving, but then someone actually bumped into me. When I looked around to apologize, there was no one there, but I thought I could hear footsteps running into another alley."
Annabeth nodded thoughtfully. "Hm. Well, do you know much about how their magic works? Because if they're mostly based off of the typical witches and wizards you see in fairy tales, except real, what's to say they can't turn themselves invisible?" She paused. "I mean, I can turn myself invisible, and I don't have a wand."
"Yeah, that'd make sense," Percy said. "I definitely thought about that before you suggested it."
She laughed a little. "No, you didn't, Seaweed Brain."
"Sure I did, Wise Girl," he replied, grinning. It felt good to talk to her. It brought back some sense of normalcy.
"But you do know about the way their magic works, besides that they use wands?" Annabeth said.
Percy stalled. "Well…"
She groaned and put her head in her hands. "Oh, Percy, what am I going to do with you?"
"Hey!" He defended himself. "It's not like I've exactly had time to do my research."
She rolled her eyes. "Perce, look me in the eyes and tell me you would have thought to do research if you had had the time."
Percy looked to the side innocently.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. Check your book list. There must be some guide, some book to give you the basics. What year are you joining in? Sixth? You have a lot of studying to do."
Reluctantly, he checked the list that was still in his pocket. Sure enough, there was a title called Encyclopedium: An Efficient Muggleborn's Guide to Magic and the Magical World. He wondered what a muggleborn was, but realized they would probably explain in the book.
"It's still unfair that you got to go on a cool quest — to learn magic!" Annabeth exclaimed suddenly. "I want to — ugh, I wish you could at least IM me at school."
Percy winced. "Yeah, I'm sorry. I'll write you at least once a week, though, promise. Apparently wizards deliver by owls, whatever strange people do that."
Annabeth laughed. "You'd better write me at least once every day, Perseus."
"Of course. That's what I meant to say."
When the Iris Message ended and he passed out gratefully on the bed, Percy was in a considerably better mood than before.
And there's the second chapter! I know it's still kind of background and set-up so far, but stick with me — we'll get to the more interesting stuff eventually :)
Hold on, one last note: So I've been getting a bunch of reviews saying to post other good stories on Novel Star, except I've got no idea what that is and it's nowhere on the internet (that I can find). All the profiles that post these are only a day or even a few hours old, and they're completely empty. Has this been happening to anyone else? Am I just seriously out of the loop because I don't join forums and whatnot?
unfinished . nocturne