Chapter 3: The Article
"Percy wake up!"
He opened his eyes groggily, staring into the brown eyes of Adrian "What?"
"Let's go explore the castle!" Adrian squealed excitedly.
"Why?" He groaned, rolling back over.
"Why not?" Adrian asked. "The castle is so new and exciting I just can't wait."
"Adrian, we have seven years to explore the castle. Let me sleep." He put my pillow over his face. He had been up late last night Iris-messaging Mom with Annabeth about the events of their first week at school.
"Fine. You're going to waste the first weekend we have at Hogwarts lying in bed?"
"Absolutely." He said.
"Don't make me throw water in your bed." Adrian warned.
If he wasn't expecting Adrian to throw water, he would stay dry. Then he would learn his secret and Dumbledore would be mad. Percy couldn't have that. He groaned again, finally getting up. "You're evil."
"It's what I do best." Adrian replied with a shrug, leaving the room. "Meet me in the common room."
He stretched, changing his clothes quickly and grabbing his wand. He grabbed Riptide, putting it into his pocket after a moment of hesitation. He knew he wouldn't need the sword, but the familiar weight helped him fight off any unease. He fixed his tie tighter around his neck, heading down the stairs into the common room. The common room was large, but cold. The Slytherin common room was under the lake, which caused water-rippled shadows to cascade around the room, even at daytime.
Silena was sitting on the sofa reading a textbook. He wasn't sure how she could read it without cringing, but he wasn't going to ask her in front of everybody. At his entrance, she closed the book and said, "About time."
Percy rolled his eyes. "Good morning to you too."
"It's 10 AM." She sighed.
He yawned. "Sorry. I was up late last night."
She raised her eyebrows at my comment, but said nothing.
"Breakfast?" Adrian asked hopefully.
"All right." She said, getting her things together into a bag.
The three of us headed to the Great Hall. The room was packed; it seemed like everyone else had also slept in. They headed to the Slytherin table, and as soon as they sat down he began to pull food onto his plate.
"How much syrup are you putting on your pancakes?" Adrian asked in awe.
"Way too much." Silena wrinkled her nose.
He shot her a half-hearted glare. "It's not too much."
"You're eating syrup at this point." She pointed out.
"With butter." Adrian agreed.
He scoffed, shoving a few more forkfuls into his mouth. There was a loud sound as the owls began to deliver the letters to the students. He didn't pay them any attention until a barn owl landed in his pancake.
"Hey!" Percy said to the owl. "Right in the middle of my plate?"
The owl hooted impatiently. He scowled and pulled the letter from its leg as two more owls landed: One in front of Silena, and the other in front of him.
"You're popular." Adrian noted.
"Hardly." He said, pulling the second letter from the second owl's leg. Both of the owls flew off, leaving him to look at his half-eaten plate of pancakes with owl tracks in them.
He opened the first letter, his confusion growing as he noticed the seal of the Ministry of Magic.
Percy,
Congratulations on making it to Hogwarts. I look forward to hearing great things from you.
P.S. Don't take the news to heart.
Cornelius Fudge
Order of Merlin First Class
Minister for Magic
"What news?" He mumbled.
"Huh?" Silena said. "Are you talking about the letter from MACUSA?"
"What?" He set down the first letter, and opened the second one.
Dear Perseus Jackson or whomever it may be concerned:
Upon your departure from the United States of America via Floo powder, we have received notice of your enrollment in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. If you wish to re-enter the country at some given point in the future, you must put in a request form no later than one week before your expected arrival. Failure to comply will result in punishment.
Samuel G. Quahog
President of the Magical Congress of the United States
"Did you get the same letter?" He asked her.
She nodded. "Why would I take this to heart?" He wondered, handing her the letter from the Minister.
She read over the letter and shrugged.
Percy started to get up to show the letters to Annabeth at the Ravenclaw table when a third barn owl landed on the table. He sighed deeply. "Anyone else want to send me mail today?"
He grabbed the letter from the owl's leg and noticed that it was a lot heavier than the other two letters. The owl hooted and took off. He pushed the plate of pancakes out of his way and opened the letter to reveal the Daily Prophet. On the front cover of the paper was a moving picture of him, Silena and Annabeth at King's Cross station.
FRIEND OR FOE?
By R.A.B
With the arrival of three American exchange students from Ilvermorny, it raised a lot of questions for the Wizarding community. The reason for the transfer is unknown, but some spectators believe that the students may be here under dark pretenses.
With You-Know-Who still at large, some speculate that the students are secretly informants for the Dark Lord. Unconfirmed accounts report of the students talking to Aurors such as Frank Longbottom who serves a life sentence in Azkaban for treason against Britain.
The rest of the article went on to slander their names. Percy was so angry he couldn't see straight. He ripped open the letter that was attached, and tried to calm himself down as he kept having to start the letter over.
Percy,
I'm sorry. Rita tried to stop the publishing of the article, but it slipped through her fingers. We're working tirelessly to make this right and fix your and the other's credibility. We're not sure how long this will take to blow over, but you should be prepared anyway.
I've included a copy of this morning's Daily Prophet at no charge. I highly suggest subscribing to it so you're not surprised by this anymore.
Kingsley Shacklebolt
The edges of the letter were being crumpled in his hands. Silena took the newspaper out of his hands and was reading it with a worried expression on her face. She looked up at him with worry in her blue eyes.
"What's going on?" Adrian asked.
Both of us ignored him.
"Do you think Annabeth has seen this?" She asked.
"Don't know." He ripped the paper from her hands a lot more harshly then he meant to. "Let's find out."
He grabbed the other three letters and stomped over to the Ravenclaw table, looking it up and down before he saw a familiar blonde head.
He ignored the protests from the people around Annabeth as he sat down beside her, putting the paper in plain view in front of her face. Her expression went from confused, to shocked, and finally to anger.
"Are you serious?" Annabeth said.
He nodded. "Yup. Then on top of that I got letters from the Minster, MACUSA, and Kingsley."
"Well, I got the letter from MACUSA, too." Annabeth waved that off. "Why would you get letters from the Minster and Kingsley?"
He handed her the other two letters and waited for her to read them. Silena had just now sat beside him at the Ravenclaw table, pushing Roger Davies further down the bench.
"So somebody is already trying to target us from less than a week being in the country?" Annabeth's mouth was hung open. For once, the daughter of Athena was speechless.
"Who's R.A.B?" Silena asked, pointing at the paper.
"Not sure." He replied. "Not Rita. She wouldn't publish this if she tried so hard to stop it."
"Do you think someone knows why we're here?" Silena whispered.
He shrugged. "I don't know, but I'm really angry about this."
"I'd be concerned if you weren't." Annabeth looked back at the paper. "I'm going to write to Mom and ask her what to do about this."
Writing Mom. That was their code word for Iris-Messaging, just in case someone was listening.
"Should we come with you?" He asked.
"No. We don't want to raise any more suspicion than we already have." Annabeth took the newspapers and the letters and put them in her bag. "You should talk to Dumbledore. Let him know that we aren't Death Eaters."
He nodded. "Silena, just keep Adrian company until I come back. It's not fair to him to keep him in the dark like this."
"He's bound to find out eventually anyway." Silena agreed, hopping up off the bench.
"Meet me by the lake later this afternoon." Annabeth said before Silena left. "We'll talk this over again."
Silena nodded, blending back into the crowd in the hall.
"I'll go find Dumbledore's office." He said, mostly to himself since Annabeth was already gone.
He walked out of the Great Hall, trying to not let the stares of the others unnerve him. He walked through the school hallways a few times, getting turned around once and getting directions from a portrait of a Fat Lady before finally reaching Dumbledore's office.
"Lemon tarts." Percy said to the stone gargoyles.
The gargoyle moved, revealing the spiral staircase. He climbed the stairs slowly, trying to figure out what to say to Dumbledore. Too quickly, he found himself at the top of the stairs.
Dumbledore looked up from his desk at the sound of his approach. "Ah, young Percy. Eventual morning, hmm?"
He noticed that Dumbledore was reading the latest issue of the Daily Prophet. "Sir, we're not Death Eaters." He blurted out, his face beginning to blush.
Dumbledore blinked, his expression showing his confusion. "I never thought you were."
"Really?" Percy said hopefully. "How did you know?"
"It's funny that this article specifically mentions the Auror Frank Longbottom." Dumbledore said with a slight smile. "Who as a matter of fact, was under the Imperius curse at the time of his imprisonment, and had been released from Azkaban eight years ago. I also doubt you've met him, because he spends most of his time at St. Mungo's, caring after his wife who was tortured into madness."
He stared at Dumbledore for a second, the weight coming off his shoulders. "So, what do we do?"
"Us? Nothing. Anyone who knows you and the inside mind of Voldemort knows that he wouldn't recruit three 11 year-olds for his cause." Dumbledore leaned back into his chair. "Have a biscuit, Perseus. Or as you Americans call them, a cookie."
He was still on edge from the article, but he accepted the cookie and sat in the chair in front of him.
"I'm going to tell you a story." Dumbledore said. "You may remember this summer about how I told you that I used to be the Minister of Magic. I was originally against it. I didn't want anything to do with politics, and I just wanted to focus on being the best demigod that I could be. But I took the position anyway, and learned everything there was to know about it, eventually taking the position on."
He nodded. "Makes sense."
"Things went very well for a long time. Then, one fateful day, a dark wizard came into power: Tom Riddle. While I outmatched him in skill, I was stuck in a political position that I didn't want. I also knew that Zeus had forbidden all demigods from fighting wizards directly without them attacking us—the demigods- first. This was an ancient law that dated back to the creation of Wizard kind. It was meant to keep the two worlds separate when many demigods were born as wizards as well as demigods. I knew that Riddle was growing in power, and the Council was adding pressure to me to do something against him. War was coming, and it was inevitable. Still, I was bound by ancient laws. Breaking those laws would be far worse than anything the Wizarding world could ever do to me. So I did nothing, and it cost many people their lives." He sighed.
"But you didn't know it was going to happen." He said to Dumbledore. "It's not your fault."
"I went to Zeus. I pleaded with him. Begged him to allow me to fight. He refused, so I asked my mother, who also refused. She knew that I would eventually have to fight, but she wanted to delay it. She believed that everything would fix itself. One night, Aurors were called to the Potter's house. Riddle himself had paid the house a visit, intent on killing the couple's one-year-old son. The mother and her son were able to escape, but the father was killed. From that day forward, Riddle flew into an unstoppable rage, killing anyone with any answers to where they might have gone. As the days turned into months and eventually to years, and he had no answers he attacked the Ministry. I did nothing.
"Angered by my lack of response, the Wizarding community pulled an ancient law from the spell books. 'If the born Minister is unable to fulfill his duties, a new Minister will be chosen'. At once, I was released from the job that I hated, and Cornelius Fudge got the job."
"He sent me a letter today." He said. "What is he like?"
"Cornelius will do anything to keep himself in power. Since I had come of age, I already knew that my replacement had been born. When Cornelius came into power, he fought to keep it hidden. It stayed hidden for nine years until I told the entire Wizengamot what he had been hiding. An investigation was launched, and then after a year of searching, we found you. And now, here we are."
"What about the dark Wizard, Riddle? You also mentioned a Moldywart." He tapped his fingers on the desk.
"Voldemort." Dumbledore corrected with a smile.
"Eh, I like Moldywart better." He shrugged.
"Whatever we call him, it is the same person. Most people think he is biding his time. Waiting for Harry Potter to emerge from his isolation, so that he can kill him."
"So why is this Harry Potter so important to Voldemort?" He asked.
"There was a prophecy. The prophecy entails that only one person can kill him, so of course his immediate reaction was to try and kill them first, even though the person in question was a one year-old infant." Dumbledore looked angry at that thought.
"So how long do we have until Potter is of age to come to Hogwarts?"
"Two years." Dumbledore replied, getting up to pace. "We have two years to find Potter before Voldemort does, or he could make a comeback bigger than ever before. Just last week Voldemort was sighted in Godric's Hollow, where the Potters used to live."
"So nobody knows where they disappeared to? They don't have any friends they could've stayed with?"
"The only known friends of the Potters are all dead." Dumbledore replied. "Sirius Black: Killed a year after the attack in Godric's Hollow. Peter Pettigrew, missing and presumed dead. Remus Lupin was slain in the first part of the war. The Potters had a strong Fidelius charm around their house, I assume they're doing the same thing again, which would make it impossible to find without knowing the secret."
"So we can't find Harry Potter is what you're saying." He deadpanned.
"Correct." Dumbledore shook his head. "I've been thinking this over for years, going over every piece of information I can find, and I'm no closer to an answer then Voldemort is."
"They don't have any living family?" He asked.
"The mother does. I checked up on them. They're muggles in Little Whinging. It's a dead end. The father's family is all dead."
"Well, for right now there's not anything we can do about it." He replied. "Might as well not worry about it."
"I agree." Dumbledore said, taking his seat again with a sigh. "While I have you here, Percy, I want to let you know that every Saturday, we will have a lesson about the Ministry. From our meetings, you'll be sending monthly owls to Cornelius at his request of your progress. I daresay he still does not trust me, even after all this time."
"So is Cornelius going to teach me himself, too?"
"At some point, I suppose. He might wait until you're older, or he could start this summer. He is a very spontaneous man."
"So, Professor. Is it a hard job?"
"It can be. Hopefully by the time you take over it would be less so." Dumbledore picked up a letter and began to read it, but clicked his tongue. "Why do people insist on writing in cursive?"
"You're dyslexic too?" He asked.
"Yes. Not as bad as I used to be, but it still makes reading things difficult."
He was utterly speechless. He wasn't sure how to process all the information about Dumbledore's past, and then the bombshell on Harry Potter.
"What about demigod means?"
"I beg your pardon?"
He straightened in his chair. "You said you tried everything to find Potter. What if we tried to find him by demigod means?"
Dumbledore frowned as he thought it over. "Sending a satyr?" He asked after a short silence.
"Would that be against the rules?" He asked him. "A certain hairy-legged friend of mine can pass very well for a teenager."
"No." Dumbledore said. "It would not be against the rules. But if it would help us find Harry, I want you to try."
"Brilliant." He replied, a huge smile forming on his face. "I'll Iris-Message him tonight and tell him."
He nodded. "While I don't think we will find him, this may still be our best option. Tell him under no circumstances if he finds Harry, not to engage."
"Should I have him Floo here?" He asked.
"Dear heavens no." Dumbledore finally set down the parchment he had been holding. "Magic of any kind would be fatal to him. Instead, suggest to him to meet in Muggle London. You and I will take a trip into town this weekend on our own quest to meet him and tell him what he needs to know."
He nodded, getting to his feet. "Makes sense. Next weekend?"
"Correct. Tell him to pack light."
"Okay. Thanks Professor!"
He headed down the spiral staircase. He hadn't expected to see Grover again so soon, so the thought made his heart soar. He looked around, and headed back out onto the staircase. He had only walked a few feet when he saw two familiar redheads standing nearby. Fred caught his eye and motioned to George, who both stood on either side of him.
"Heard you're a Death Eater." Fred said.
"Listen—" He started, but he was cut off by George.
"We're shocked." George said.
"Absolutely." Fred agreed. "You didn't even tell us."
"I'm not—"
"We thought we were your friends." George said, burying his face in his hands as if it were a sign of sadness. He sounded like he had started to sob, but Percy realized it was actually a laugh.
"Are you two messing with me?" He asked them.
"Well of course." Fred said.
"Have to. You're a git." George replied, leaning onto his shoulder with a smile.
"You don't believe the article?" His mouth had hung open.
"Nah. The Daily Prophet is always full of junk." Fred leaned his hand across Percy's shoulder and shut his mouth.
Relief coursed through him. "I'm glad you two believe me."
"We're pretty good at telling who's a bad wizard." George responded. "Our dad works for the Ministry, so he's always telling us to be careful who to trust."
"And we trust you, Percy." Fred said.
For once, the two twins looked completely serious. They weren't joking around. Their expressions made them seem so much older than 11 as they spoke.
"Thank you." He pulled both of them into a hug. "I'm glad someone's on my side. What did Charlie think?"
"Not sure." Fred scratched his chin. "He looked at the article and was angry, but I'm not sure if it was at you three or the writer."
"I know Rita Skeeter from the Daily Prophet. She said she's going to fix this." He told them.
"That Rita's not any better than that Black." George huffed.
"Excuse me?" His eyebrows scrunched together. Since when were they racist?
"Regulus Black." George corrected. "The writer of the article."
"Oh." I suddenly felt silly.
"Somebody's apparently got it in for you." Charlie said as he jogged towards us. He shook the paper angrily. "This entire article is rubbish."
He smiled gratefully. "So I've been told."
"I sent an owl to my dad. Hopefully he could tell us something. What did Dumbledore say?" Charlie asked.
"How did you—"
"You're not sneaky when you're angry," Charlie said with a smirk. "I knew that it was where you had gone."
"The only place." Fred agreed.
"Especially since the Slytherin common room is downstairs from the Grand Hall." George said, a finger pointing down.
"How do you know where the Slytherin common room is?" Charlie eyed the twin curiously.
George's ears inflamed red in embarrassment. "Silena told me."
Even Percy knew that George had lied.
"Sure." Charlie said in a sing-song voice. "I'll believe that when Mum can sing soprano."
"Mum has a terrible singing voice." Fred explained to him in a whisper.
George sighed. "We found a map."
Charlie's eyebrows rose into his hairline. "A map? Of Hogwarts?"
George nodded, pulling it out of his bag and showing it to him. "Nicked it from Filch's office."
"Were you already in detention?" Charlie asked, whacking George's head lightly.
"Ow!" George frowned, rubbing his head. "I'll have you know Fred was there with me too."
Charlie smacked Fred on the back of his head lightly. "Thanks George." Fred said sarcastically.
"You better hope that Percy doesn't tell Mum on you two." Charlie shook his head, looking back at the map in his hands.
"I'd never tell their Mum on them." Percy replied.
"No—" Charlie laughed. "Our brother Percy."
"He's a prat." George said with a frown.
"Oh." He looked at them. "Can I see that map?"
Charlie handed the map to him. He extended it as far as it went in his hands. The map had the entire castle printed on it, including everyone inside of the castle. The small words printed nearest his hand read Headmaster's office right next to four pairs of footprints all inscribed with their names.
"Wicked, right?" Fred said excitedly.
"I need to show this to Dumbledore." He told him.
"We'd never get it back!" George complained.
"We'd get in trouble for nicking it!" Fred also complained.
"You two don't need it." Charlie sighed.
"I'll give it back eventually." He rolled up the map and stuck it into his pocket. "Just... trust me on this, okay?"
The twins nodded, but they looked sad.
"Where are you off to now, Percy?" Charlie asked. "Back to breakfast?"
"Not yet." I replied. "I need to find my sister and Silena and write our mom about the article. We don't get the Daily Prophet in America, so I doubt she knows about it."
"Want us to walk you down?" Charlie asked.
"No thank you." He told him kindly. "But I'll see everyone later."
He smiled at them in parting, and left to find the other two demigods.