Chapter 26: Hazel

TIMESKIP

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally reached the weekend. We had done our Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology and Defence Against the Dark Arts. I had always found magic easier than the rest, probably due to my ability to control The Mist. Sure, I had found the written paper for Transfiguration difficult, but my practical wasn't bad. At least I was able to vanish my entire iguana on my third attempt, unlike Jason, who had transformed the iguana into a large flock of eagles, and the examination had to be halted for around 20 minutes, as they tried to be recaptured.

I did horrible in Herbology though. I guess it's because of the whole Daughter of Pluto thing, and plants wither and die and try go as far away from me. This happened to Nico all the time, and the same throughout the year in Herbology, and Professor Sprout had no idea what was happening. Basically the same thing happened in the practical.

The examiner called me in, and I walked in slowly. I was told to repot, care for and trim many plants. However, as soon as I came near them, the plants seemed to wither, die, or protest heavily at me repotting them. I was bitten, stung and hurt by so many of those dangerous plants; it was so embarrassing. Eventually, the examiner seemed to think that I had had enough and the plants clearly weren't my thing, so he ushered me out.

Defence Against the Dark Arts however, was very good. All of us, including Harry, Ron and Hermione did really well. None of us had any problem on the practical due to our extensive research and we shone in the practical. The D.A and our own practicing benefitted us greatly. Umbridge was watching all of us from the doors to the Entrance Hall, surveying our moves like a hawk, trying to find out if there was any more incriminating evidence on us. If she found out we were demigods… the Ministry would have a field day, and that was the last thing we needed.

All in all, I was super happy to reach the weekend, and take a break, even if we had to revise for potions of the day back. Camp Jupiter was due to arrive today, and we'd go down to meet them. I was excited to see Reyna and members of the 5th Cohort. Half way through the day, while the rest of the Seven and I were just walking throughout the fields, roaming near the lake when Harry, Ron and Hermione started running towards us, with concerned, yet excited looks on their faces.

"Hazel!" Hermione shouted.

I whipped around immediately, scouring the land for any threats that would endanger my friends. However, when Hermione ran up to me, I thought she was attacked or in danger, but instead she asked me a question that I didn't expect.

"Can we come and talk to those other demigods with you?" she asked, nicely. I was stumped, and it was Annabeth who spoke up.

"Hermione, I don't think that you can, but you must understand the risks. You would be running in, unintroduced into a large group of demigods, who will all have deadly weapons. I don't think it's wise to do this."

"Oh come on Annabeth. We'll be fine. Just vouch for us and we'll be alright," Ron exclaimed.

"It's not just that Ron. They might just identify you as a threat before we can do anything," Percy replied.

"Annabeth, doesn't Celestial Bronze not have the ability to harm mortals?" Hermione said, eagerly. Annabeth sighed tiredly before responding,

"Yes, but we're not sure about wizards. You could be considered dangerous enough that Celestial Bronze might be able to harm you. Want to check?" Annabeth joked. Surprisingly, Hermione volunteered,

"Sure." Annabeth shrugged and Percy and Jason looked about to laugh. Leo was staring absentmindedly into the distance, Frank and I, along with Piper were staring at what was going to happen. Annabeth pulled out her bronze dagger, and attempted to make a line across her skin, but it simply faded through, falling straight through her pale skin, leaving her unblemished and unharmed. A look of delight pounced onto Hermione's face and she adopted a child-like voice, begging to come.

"C'mon Annabeth, there's no harm. The Celestial Bronze can't hurt us, no harm can befall us," Hermione exclaimed. Defeated, Annabeth sighed and replied, clearly knowing that Hermione wouldn't give up.

"Sure. It's not like it can hurt you anyways."

Harry and Ron high-fived, which was weird, considering that they had said nothing throughout the whole conversation.

After that pronouncement, we walked alongside the trio, and was pelted with question after question of Ancient Roman mythology and facts about the legions, she almost exclusively talked to me and Frank about how aqueducts, the Roman baths and a plethora of other questions about Rome that she was fascinated about. Jason and Piper walked with Harry, talking about OWLs. Percy and Annabeth walked arm in arm, chatting to Ron about some of their lengthy adventures, which Ron seemed to find fascinating.

All in all, the day passed extremely quickly. Soon, it was nightfall and it was time to sneak out of our dorms. I was in the Hufflepuff dorm so as to not draw attention to ourselves. We were right next to the kitchen and once I had gathered Piper, we hurried quickly out of the portrait hole, after quickly tapping the barrels to be able to exit and began to jog towards the exit. Along the way, we caught a glimpse of Filch's cat Mrs. Norris, but somehow she left us alone and we were able to quickly and quietly leave the castle.

We walked to the edge of the Dark Forest, our designated meeting spot to find that Annabeth and Leo were already there.

"Hey guys!" I shouted, my voice echoeing of the inky blank expanses of the surrounding trees.

"Hey Hazel!" Leo shouted back. Not wanting to alert the whole school to our presence I ceased my shouting and ran towards them. Exhaling deeply from the sprint, I asked something between my heavy breaths.

"Have—you- seen- anyone else?" I gasped out. Annabeth shook her head, indicating that none of them were here yet. I stood there, shrugging it off, they'd be fine.

After standing there for ten more minutes I began to get more worried, my breathing rate increased due to my worry, however, it was quelled when six specks ran down towards us, I was so happy, I ran and embraced Frank. He was significantly out of breath and panting.

"What happened Frank? What took so long?" I scolded. Frank put his hands up to create a time out symbol as if to say Be right with you, I just need to reorientate myself… . After about five more minutes of panting, more scolding from Annabeth and Piper, who also went and embraced their boyfriends, Jason finally cleared his throat and began to monologue.

"Well, so we were basically leaving the Common Room…"

Jason:

"Jason wake up!" I heard dimly from my left-hand side, rubbing the sleep from my eyes I turned and assessed my surroundings. It appeared that I had fallen asleep on one of the armchairs in the Gryffindor Common Room. I was told by Percy and Harry to not fall asleep, as running through the halls of Hogwarts while drowsy was harder (something that was reinforced by first-hand experience) than running while wide-awake. I was shaken from my stupor by Frank, who was grinning broadly, obviously excited to see the legion again. We had been at Hogwarts approaching a year now, and Frank was obviously thrilled to see his fellow Romans again. I was extremely happy again. Seeing the rest of the Fifth Cohort and especially Reyna was exhilarating.

Piper and Reyna had definitely sorted out their problems over these past few months and I had assured her a multitude of times that she had nothing to be jealous of. That being said, I would have always been cautious around Reyna, but after a certain point, all three of us got the message and we went back to messing around and being friends. I was tapped on the shoulder repeatedly by Frank, who shook me out of my dream again,

"Jason, hurry up, we're leaving Gryffindor Tower. This time, I responded

"Yeah Frank, I'm ready? Where's Harry, Ron and Hermione?" I asked

"They're getting their invisibility cloak, so they can easily sneak past Filch or anyone that comes bellowing past us in the corridors," Frank replied.

"What about us? How're we going to get through?" I questioned. Once I said this, Percy popped up from his position in an armchair and input into the conversation.

"Well, Frank can turn into something small and run around the castle easily, but he said he didn't want to abandon us, so he offered to stay with us. You could fly to get there quicker, but it is clearly too obvious. I doubt I could do anything, I could shroud myself in water or something, but I doubt that would work."

I nodded, deep in thought, "I guess we're just going to have to run and hope that no one sees us," I concurred. Just as I finished my sentence, the trio ran down the stairs, with broad grins shining upon their faces, holding a carefully folded silver piece of cloth. Having already seen this, I knew this was an invisibility cloak.

"So? Are we just going to stand around, or are we going to meet these demigods?" Harry asked, with humour tinging his tone.

"Nah Harry, we're just standing around… joking. We're going now," Percy replied. Harry nodded, and threw the piece of fabric above him, covering both Ron and Hermione, but barely, completely obstructing them from view. I strolled up to the portrait hole, and uttered the password "Alea iacta es." (Before you ask, yes I looked on Pottermore. It means The die is cast, just for extra info)

After the portrait hole swung, forward releasing the three of us from its contents, as well as the three wizards behind us under the cloak. During this, we knew that the wizards were close to us, due to the constant scraping of feet across the dull concrete of Hogwart's floors, and the stumbling and cursing that came with 3 fifteen year old's trying to fit under one cloak.

After a few minutes of walking briskly, without any interruption, I believed we'd make it clearly, however, our luck wouldn't last as soon enough, we heard the high-pitched shriek of a horrifying Slytherin girl : Pansy Parkinson.

"Draco, didn't you hear something in that corner?" She cooed. The sleek blond head of Draco Malfoy protruded around the corner, but thankfully, not even his sight could penetrate the shadows that we had concealed ourselves with.

"Probably some scum walking around, trying to displease our Headmistress. Don't worry about it Pansy." Draco jeered. Behind Malfoy, his two thugs Crabbe and Goyle were standing around, looking as usual, as if they had no idea what was happening in their surroundings. Behind them, was a Slytherin girl who's name I didn't know, but she appeared to be freakishly beautiful. She had long blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, as if she knew where we were. She smirked inwardly, before turning to our corner. She stared at us for a few moments, before averting her eyes, and I believe that she had saw us.

To make matters even worse, Ron had slipped out from under the invisibility cloak, looking entranced by the beauty of this strange girl and his feet were seen by Goyle, who grunted and pointed in our direction, and Malfoy let out a cackle before menacingly walking towards them. We took this opportunity to break into a sprint, and attempt to break line of sight with the Inquisitorial Squad, however, Frank's shoe squeaked loudly upon the surface of the floor, which alerted Crabbe to our presence. Instead of calling for his friends, being as stupid as he is, he chased after us. He began to pant heavily after about two seconds of sprinting, but showed no signs of stopping, no doubt determined to impress Malfoy. Thankfully, we passed a broom cupboard and Frank took initiative, pulling his wand from the depths of his robes and firing three curses behind us, and a grunt and thud behind us indicated that it had met its mark.

We slowed down and rotated, only to see Crabbe laying motionless on the ground, when an idea burst into my head. Percy and I grinned, and I knew we were thinking the same thing, and moving as a seamless team, we picked up Crabbe's huge frame and lugged him into the broom cupboard. We were only a few floors till we would reach the entrance hall, and we took a break, before we heard the pattering of feet behind us, seeing Hermione, Ron and Harry, sweating like mad, having shed the invisibility cloak following us.

"How did you guys get away?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"We didn't," Harry replied, "They're probably still on our tail, we need to keep moving." Without further confirmation other than the voices echoing through the hallways carrying the complaints of Malfoy, we bolted down the stairs and out through the doors. We didn't stop running, until we reached the edge of the Forest, where everyone else was waiting patiently. Without giving us time to rest, Hazel rushed and embraced Frank, Piper ran and embraced me, and Annabeth ran and embraced Percy. After minutes of scolding from Piper and after catching my breath, I cleared my throat and began to recount the events just passed…

"So, basically that's what happened," I finished, somewhat lamely and all the girls looked exasperated, while Leo cracked a wide grin and stuck both his thumbs up.

Leo began to adopt a teasing tone, and look Ron dead in the eyes, "So Ron," he said, wiggling his eyebrows "Who was that certain Slytherin girl that caught your eye?" Hermione glared angrily at Ron, and I knew it was not only from anger by blowing our cover, but that the circumstances had caused her to get jealous, Ron of course, being as dense as he is, didn't take the hint and instead, blushed scarlet after these words and mumbled out,

"I don't know, it starts with K for sure. Katie? Katherine? Kylie? … something like that." He finished. All the boys smirked at him, before abandoning the topic and moving on.

After a while, we pulled ourselves together and plunged into the Forbidden Forest, and in the clearing where we'd usually train, we expected to find the Roman reinforcements.

After minutes of walking through the dull forest, we finally approached the clearing, and saw a large group of people, all clad in gleaming armour, their sharp eyes darting around the area, scouring the scenery for any threats. When we made our appearance, walking confidently into the clearing we heard the unmistakable noise of a bowstring being draw taught, but once we showed our faces, the archers lowered their bows – before immediately drawing them again and firing two arrows into the first person they didn't recognize: Hermione. I let out a guttural cry as the arrow sailed towards the young wizard, and upon my cry, devastated faces appeared across the legionnaires faces. The arrow flew towards Hermione and I flicked my wrist, summoning the winds to knock the arrow away. I waited for the arrow to be knocked off course from my power… one instant – two instants – three instants… I missed. The arrow sailed towards Hermione's chest and knocked her twice in the chest; splitting each other down the middle. Upon this, Harry and Ron let out a scream and fell to the ground, looking down aghast at Hermione's body. Despite this, I couldn't help but notice the constant rise and fall of her chest, meaning that she was still breathing and not dead. What surprised me most though, was the groan that escaped her lips and she quivered slightly before standing up again, much to the shock of everyone around her.

"How did you survive that? That was an arrow piercing your skin!" Ron practically screamed, before crushing Hermione in a hug. The hug lasted for several seconds, before Ron whipped around and began ranting towards the legionnaires, which probably wasn't the smartest thing: ranting loudly about many demigods clad in armour. While Ron was in the middle of his speech,

"- HOW COULD YOU DO SOMETHING - THAT WAS SO CRU- YOU ALMOST KILLED HE-." Before he was cut off by a familiar voice.

"Stop."

A girl of about seventeen, almost eighteen with piercing black eyes and glossy hair of the purest black, worn down the back of her neck in a braid and toned skin that showed of her Hispanic origins. Her imperial gold armour glittered dangerously in the fading moonlight and her long purple cloak was glittering, as if interwoven with filaments of imperial gold, walked out from behind the stump of a tree, her eyes blazing dangerously.

Upon seeing her glare, Ron faltered, and began to quiet down, but still muttering inaudible insults under his breath. Reyna continued to glare at Ron, obviously angry at him for insulting her legionnaires. She then turned to her legionnaires,

"Stand down. These are obviously friends of these demigods. Any friend of theirs is a friend of ours, treat them appropriately," she boomed, her authorative voice echoing throughout the forest. She then turned her body back around and faced us, and a grin spread across her face.

"I know I'm not exactly one for hugs… but come on, give us a hug!" Reyna exclaimed. We were only too glad to agree, and we all lined up and embraced Reyna, and muttered words incoherently, such as, when I came up, I hugged her, before whispering in her ear,

"I missed you Reyna," and she repaid me in turn replying with

"I missed you too Jason."

After everyone had given her a hug, her posture straightened, and her voice turned extremely serious, and she disregarded Harry, Hermione and Ron as if she had never known they were there.

"So, you needed help, and I delivered," she began, indicating around her frame, showing off around 40-60 iron clad demigods.

"I brought a majority of the Fifth Cohort, and a few select legionnaires from each of the other cohorts. So this is…" Yeah, after about that time I had zoned out and only zoned back in when she mentioned the last name.

"Soo… Finally, we have Gwen and Dakota," she finished. At this point I gasped when she said those names. From behind the mass, the familiar tall and buff stature of Dakota was present, his curly black hair was still as present as ever, as was his permenantly red stained lip and his trusty flask of Kool-Aid that was everpresent.

However, what I was most interested to hear about was Gwen, who had retired from the legion last year, but sure enough the similar frame and hair of Gwen emerged from the same place as Dakota and I looked and saw Hazel, Percy and Frank's mouths wide open in amazement. Gwen looked at us, and smirked catching the eye of those three, before talking,

"Before any of you asked, I decided to come out and take a few months of college in New Rome, I needed to help my friends, they obviously needed it," she cheekily replied, before winking at them. Percy and the others still seemed to be confused. Gwen chuckled lightly, before stepping back and letting Reyna continued.

"So, we've brought a lot of reinforcements as according to you, we're fighting a huge army to protect Hogwarts, we can't let anyone die when we could've prevented it." Reyna stated, adamant about her stance. Before any of us could reply, she spoke again,

"We'll better clear out, I promised that we'd rendezvous with Nico right after this, every monster in the the northern part of Europe probably knows where we are…" she said, before flicking her hands, summoning her two dogs and instructing the legion to follow her, and they followed.

We just stood awkwardly for a few minutes, before I shook myself out of my stupor and spoke,

"Guys, we need to get back up to our dorms, we don't want to be late back to the dorms, we need to revise for our Potion OWLs, even if it's completely pointless due to the looming attack," I replied reasonably, there was a murmur of assent and we all walked up to the castle, with Ron, Harry and Hermione for the possibly first time, not saying anything and walking with dumbfounded expressions back up to the castle.

Chapter done. I spent a few days on this, just a couple minutes a day and it's quite long and a lot went down. Who is that mysterious Slytherin girl, and pay close attention to the Imperial Gold not hurting Hermione, there's a clue hidden in there somewhere. Now Reyna and Nico are here. The hunt isn't going to turn up sadly… or are they? Haha. Only I know. Hope you enjoy this chapter.

~RedGods