Chapter 24

Hazel

Well of course they had questions Percy, the primary one being, "When do I get a sword?" Still, although I wasn't consulted, and didn't need to be as this was something from Percy and Poseidon, I wholeheartedly agreed that our kids as we thought of them, were not ready to carry blades full time. Most days I didn't think I was. We sorted through all that and explained that Annabeth, Frank and Reyna, as their combat arms trainers, would be the ones to decide when, and Percy was more than okay with this. After a little bump in the road it appeared our team was working well again, like one of Leo's well oiled machines.

Once the clamor died down I turned to Hermione.

"This morning, if I recall correctly, Hermione is going to teach us a few offensive and defensive spells for our first hour."

"Uh, aren't we going to practice the plan again?" She asked.

"Yes, but not until an hour or so before its time to run it. No need in wearing out, and guys, this is important to remember, rarely does a plan survive contact with the enemy. Neville, one of the main reasons I changed it last night was to figure in that we might have to improvise on the fly. You may still when you get to London, they may be waiting for you there. But planning is still important and it will get you a long ways to victory." Percy said, with Frank and Jason agreeing.

"So Hermione. Teach." I said again.

"Well I didn't really have time to research anything defensive, but I have a few offensive charms and transfiguration spells that I thought we could look at. Okay, so all the Hogwarts guys should know "Glacious" by now. Its a simple charm that cools the air, water or ground you aim at, and one use is to freeze the ground around your target's feet and freeze them temporarily to it. A really strong person can break free in a few minutes. We also use it to chill drinks sometimes. The audible component is just the command word 'freeze', and the somatic component, thats what you do with your wand, is a sort of z shaped whip, with a curl around on the end like this." She demonstrated moving her wand and we all joined in imitating her motion, not that it was needed for most of us.

"So lets try it, Leo, can we use a drone?"

"Sure" replied Leo, who then pulled a small golden egg from his tool belt and manipulated it to call one of the drones down to us.

We each took turns casting it, and freezing the drone to the ground. Of course Percy, Frank and Jason had to learn to control theirs as each covered the entire drone in ice. Fortunately each time Leo would step over to touch it with his hands and thaw it out.

"Okay, so that was the Glacious Charm. Next step up is Glacious Duo, which is about twice as strong. Here, the audible component remains the same, but the somatic component starts with two of the z whips before the curl. Now, this one, although not a unforgiveable spell, can kill. You can freeze your opponent so much it can stop their heart, so you should be careful in deploying it. Lets give it a try, shall we?"

This was new territory to the rest of the Hogwarts kids so they all had trouble at first, and so we pretended to as well, but within minutes the drone was being frozen solid by everyone. Finally Hermione came to her third spell of the day.

"Okay so we've had Glacious, and Glacious Duo, our third spell is Glacious Trea. It is stronger yet, and any living tissue exposed to it will almost surely die. That said, it still isn't an unforgiveable curse as it has a few practical uses as well. Same somatic component as Duo, but the verbal is the word "Glacious! Let's try it shall we?"

This one was actually easier that Duo as we already knew the difficult part. Well, the demigods didn't but didn't really need to. With our results no one was checking our methods too closely. Hermione froze the drone, Ginny shattered it. After that we took turns freezing chunks of it while Leo pretended to weep. Actually he was okay with it and said he could rebuild it in just a few minutes, this time improved to withstand lower temperatures.

"So with those three you have some offensive spells, but I was thinking, what if the target was wet, and I mean soaking wet, well then the power of the two weaker ones would be magnified, without necessarily killing the opponent."

"So you want us to carry a bucket of water with us?" Neville asked, his nerves about today's mission beginning to show.

"No, I was just thinking that two witches together might cast Glacious and "

"Aqua Eructo" Harry said.

"Yes, or any of the Aguamatio transfigurations." Hermione said.

"What's that?" Percy asked.

"Oh, they are transfigurations that change the air into water, its like a spring of water shooting from the end of your wand." Ron said.

"You can do that? Show me!"

"Uh sure mate. That's really first year stuff." Ron said, then demonstrated the verbal component, 'Agua' and the somatic, a peculiar twist that was probably difficult to master at first, and water shot from his wand a good fifty feet or so like a garden hose.

"Did you know we could do that?" Percy asked Annabeth.

"No, I mean,... no I didn't."

Percy ran off about fifty feet, shot a gigantic stream of water from his wand, and with his other hand appeared to reach out and pull it back to him, where it formed a column that lifted him up and into the air.

"This is fantastic!" He shouted, then formed the water into what appeared to be a large slide, which he froze with Glacious Trea and slid down.

"Why didn't you tell me we could do that?" Percy exclaimed.

"How did you do that?" Ginny asked, which saved the rest of the students the trouble.

"Do what?" Percy replied, grinning ear to ear.

"Make it change shapes. It was like you were ordering the water around."

"Oh. That. Son of Poseidon thing. This is awesome! Leo, would you mind?"

"No problem" Leo said as he raised his hands and waves of heat came from them and melted the slide."

"How did you do that?" Ron asked excitedly.

"What? Melt the ice? Its a son of Hephaetus thing. I was doing it all morning on the drone dude, wake up!"

"I thought you were just flipping a switch on the drone to heat it up." Hermione said.

"Nope. I'm fire, he's water." Leo said, pointing at Percy.

"And now, thanks to Hermione, we're all ice. Great class Hermione! Really well done. Annabeth, you want to teach these guys how to stab and slice now?"

"It would be my honor." She smiled.

Annabeth put them through their paces, starting with the same basic drills they had learned day one, then advancing. Each time they got better and better, especially Rachel who was taking the class for her own benefit as she received no weapons training as an oracle. We sat at the table and talked. Percy confided that waking up to the roses had made Annabeth's day, and that she was completely over the whole thing. We all confessed again just how much they meant to us, but Percy waived it off. He wasn't really a touchy feelie kind of person.

After a couple of sweaty hours Annabeth called in Reyna to lecture and train on small unit tactics, and after a brief water break she was running them through all manner of outdoor, open field attacks. We rescued Neville from this as it was time for us to run through a couple of times. After a couple of run throughs he was comfortable in his role and at 11:30 we broke for lunch.

Just as we arrived at lunch in the Hogwarts grand dining hall, Neville's grandmother, Augusta Longbottom, accompanied by Professor Dumbledore. She enjoyed regaling us all with stories about Neville growing up, mostly the embarrassing sort of stories one's parents and grand parents tell, but Neville took it in good humor. Reyna in particular enjoyed spending time with Augusta and we were all glad they had hit it off so well. Finally the appointed time came and we rose to leave. Jason distracted Dumbledore for a moment, which turned out to not be necessary as that was when Snape chose to arrive.

"I've asked Severus to come as additional help today, if for no other reason than to relieve his concerns. I hope you do not mind, Mr. Jackson... where is Mr. Jackson?"

"Probably already invisible and outside. Once he gets a time table in his head he gets a bit of tunnel vision about it." Jason answered. "Come on, we don't want to miss the show, if there is one."

Jason and I, as well as the professors, went through the main doors to the lobby where we found nearly everyone else.

"Percy, Annabeth and Nico are already outside scouting the road." Neville announced. "Is everyone ready? Okay, Jennifer, would you do the honors?

"Oh wait! Frank, I'm with you, right?" I asked.

"Sure thing hon, hop on." He said as he turned into the biggest, meanest, looking dragon I've ever seen. I jumped up to where his neck met his body, just in front of his wings, then waived the okay to Jennifer, and she made a show of waving her wand and turning all the escorts invisible. We could still see glassy outlines of each other, but to the world we were no longer there. Unless they ran into us, so we moved out smoothly as we had practiced and Frank took off, following Leo and Festus into the air. Snape was taken back it seemed by the appearance of two dragons in the lobby, each carrying a rider.

We caught up to the group walking well before they left the protections of the grounds. Jason, the professors, and Piper followed on foot a few yards behind them. Rachel, since she had as much experience with a blade as the Hogwarts students, and as much experience with a wand as the demigods, decided to stay at the Leodis and monitor the situation via the what we now called the 'Leocamera' Festus was wearing as well as the one clipped to Neville's shirt. So far there had not been much to see at our end, but as Percy predicted, that soon changed.

Three of them apparated into us initially with two others just a second or so behind. One, a big burly guy, landed behind Grandma Longbottom and had his wand to her throat as soon as he alit, the other two had their wands on Reyna and Neville but were several feet away.

"Now, now Neville, it wouldn't do for you to die in front of your grandma-ma would it?" a stocky yellow haired man said as Neville reached for his wand but then thought better of it. He was of the last two that landed. "You've been quite naughty from what we hear, associating with Harry Potter. Well, Mr Potter has recently caused us much grief, and we're here to repay that. So while you will survive this day to tell us what you know, the only way your grandma-ma lives is if your cooperate. Do you understand?"

"What about her?" Neville asked, nodding at Reyna.

"Well there is no reason for your friend to die, although Fenrir would love to get to know her better, wouldn't you Fenrir?"

"Heh he heh... indeed I would" said the burly guy.

"But we'll let her walk away with Grandma-ma so long as you cooperate. Now that's fair isn't it?" The burly blonde said.

"So wait!" Grandmother Longbotton said. "Your plan is to hold me hostage while you torture Neville for information on Harry Potter, and turn Reyna into a werewolf like Greyback here if he doesn't cooperate, and... and you thought that would work?"

"Well, you are held" The blond guy said, "And we do out number you five to three." He laughed.

"Well then go get some more guys so it will be a fair fight" Grandma said, before adding "Oh, and there is another problem with your plan."

"Whats that my feisty dear?"

"I'm not Augusta Longbottom." Annabeth said, the mist falling from her as she grabbed Fenrir Greyback's arm at the wrist, twisted it so as to point his wand away from her and deftly flipped him over her hip and to the ground before driving her sword into his chest, turning him into a evaporating pile of black dust before he could even get a shocked look on his face.

The mist fell from Percy and Nico as well as they dove into the two surprised attackers that were then focused on Annabeth, and sliced them in two. Before their corpses began dissolving, Percy was already spraying water from his wand with his other hand, turning the pathway to mud, which Annabeth then froze while Nico shouted "Expelliamous!" and both of the surviving death eaters wands flew from their hands to his.

The fight was over in just a couple of seconds, and went exactly as planned, with the exception of the extra prisoner. We only intended to let one live.

While Nico, Percy and Annabeth were tying them up with the quick ties Will had provided and duct taping their mouths. The prisoners eyes expanded when Professors Dumbledore and Snape approached as they let the invisibility fall from them, wands out, with a vial in their free hand, and began to extract long, gray, misty threads from their temples.

"Now Yaxley, it may interest you to know that you won't be killed today, or even sent to Azkaban, but if these memories turn out to be lies, my friend Mr Jackson, well, he will probably not be very forgiving. His girlfriend, Annabeth, whom you just saw dispatch your pet to the underworld, even less so. Do you understand?" Snape said with that slowing dripping voice of his. Just as he did the invisibility fell from the two dragons and their riders, and it became clear that both prisoners would require a change of pants.

"You want me to haul them to Bob's?" Frank, still in dragon form, asked Percy.

"Yeah, if the professors are done, let's move out. Professor, shall we meet back at your office?" Percy asked.

"I shall have the pensieve ready for yourself and Mr Potter's arrival." He smiled.

With that the professors turned and began strolling back to the castle.

"So how are you going to get there?" Leo asked.

"We'll apparate" Nico said.

"I thought Dumbledore banned you from apparating" Frank grinned as he grabbed the two Death Eaters.

"Him, not me." Nico said as he grabbed Percy and Annabeth by their arms and took off.

By the time we arrived with the thugs, Festus and Leo on our wing tip, Annabeth had calmed down from her surprise apparation.

"I'm just saying give me a little warning next time. I almost throw up when I know its coming!" Annabeth was saying as Nico grinned. "Oh hi guys!" She smiled. "Bob! They're here!"

Bob exited the temple polishing a spear. "Greetings gentlemen. Just so you understand you shall not be here long. You are going to a place where people have been known to live for thousands of years. I suspect you might last a week." Bob set a knife in Yaxley's lap. Miss Chase, would you like to do the honors?

"Of course!" She smiled as she aimed her wand first at one, then the other and commanded "Obliviate!"

A bright glow surrounded both of them as she did, and then they gasped, then looked around, seemingly confused. The duct tape was removed, as were the quick ties, then Bob touched both on the shoulders and they vanished with a burst of light.

"Well now, I suspect they will be on each other within an hour or two, don't you? Bob asked, then wondered if we would care for tea.