Disclaimer: I do not own HP or PJO, and if I did, then I would be Jo or Rick, and if I were them, then I wouldn't be wasting my time on fanfics.
Author's Note: Yay! Chapter 4! I hope that you've been enjoying the story so far. I'm sorry if you don't like it though. Enjoy reading!
Once everyone was feeling somewhat recovered after that chariot race, Harry motioned to Percy to come over to a nearby strawberry field where he would teach Percy to play quidditch. Harry had found some brooms in the big house, put some spells on them, and found a red ball for them to throw around as a quaffle. Harry had never taught anyone how to play quidditch before, especially someone who wasn't magical, but he decided that it was a good time to find out if it were possible.
At the same time that Harry and Percy were walking over to the field, Ron was shyly walking up to Mr. D. "And so you slowly tear off each toenail one by one," Snape was telling Mr. D. who was eagerly taking notes. Ron had a feeling that they were exchanging ways to torture children.
"Um, Mr. D., I have a question," Ron said quietly to Mr. D. who was smiling at Snape. Mr. D. slowly turned to look at Ron, and as his fat little eyes rested upon Ron, the smile immediately vanished.
"Oh, it's you; the little liquor-head." Ron cringed at his new nickname.
"I was wondering if I can stay in your cabin tonight." Ron stated.
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"If I wasn't sure, would I have said no?"
"Touché"
"You can't stay because you disgrace the name of Dionysus."
"Where am I going to stay tonight, then? I can't just sleep outside, a chimera might come and eat me!" a note of hysteria crept into Ron's voice.
"As amusing as I would find it if you were consumed by a chimera," Snape said in his elegant, monotone voice, "I do have some advice for you. Why don't you look for someone who has a similar personality as you and stay with them?"
Ron looked around as though that person may just fall from the sky. In fact, they did. A few miles off, the Weasley and Stoll Inc. associates and Grover were playing with a giant catapult that they had constructed entirely of goldfish bite-size crackers. Grover, who would never miss out on a chance to be catapulted by food, volunteered to test it out. Grover went flying through the air. A few miles away from the goldfish catapult, Ron was looking around for someone who was just like him. He saw a tiny little speck floating near the sun. It slowly grew larger, then to the size of a bird, and then even bigger. Ron realized that someone was flying through the air towards him. "Make a wish, everybody," Ron murmured quietly to himself. Grover landed in a heap of hooves, goldfish, and fur next to Ron.
"Dude, that was totally sweet!" Grover said. He looked thoroughly drunk on goldfish and an adrenalin rush. Ron stared down at Grover. "I was just catapulted by goldfish cracker snacks. It was wicked awesome, man!" Ron beamed at Grover. "Um, Ron, you're kind of creeping me out."
Ron continued to beam at Grover. He had finally found someone to stay with. "Where do you live?" Ron asked.
Okay, so maybe this wasn't the best thing to say to someone when you first meet them, and Grover was getting pretty freaked out.
Back at one of the strawberry fields, Harry led Percy over to a hill. They each had a broom slung over their backs. Percy was twitching with excitement; flying on a horse was sure to be very different from flying on a broom. As they were about to reach the top of the hill, they saw someone running up the hill to them. Squinting in the sunlight, they could make out the form of a young boy. That boy happened to be Nico. When he reached them, he had to stop for a moment and catch his breath. Grasping the stitch in his side, he wiped his shaggy black hair out of his pale face. "Chiron is holding a special meeting," Nico panted. Harry and Percy reluctantly headed down the hill.
At the big house, Harry, Percy and Nico found everyone squished together around a ping-pong table. The three boys squeezed in between Tyson and Ron as Chiron banged a ping-pong paddle on the table. "Order, order," he stated (but he didn't really need to because everyone was already enveloped in awkward silence).
It was dead silent. "Well this sucks," Zorra complained loudly while she filed her nails. Draco looked as though he were about to pass out because he was squished rather tightly between Zorra and Clarisse. Zorra and Clarisse both looked as though if they got any closer to Draco, they would be on the other side of him. Chris, Clarisse's boyfriend, was shooting dirty looks at Draco from across the table.
"Is there any food? I'm starved," said Grover, whose stomach was as much a bottomless pit as Tartarus. Someone threw a ping-pong ball at his head, which he caught in his mouth. Grover turned to Ron, who sat next to him, and started whispering things in his ear.
"Not that this isn't fun, but I actually have a life," said Luke as he rose from the table.
"Sit down, Chiron has some announcements," Mr. D. growled. Chiron slowly cleared his throat and then said in a way slow enough to rival Dumbledore,
"Children, a misfortune has come upon the land, and it is up to us to help. Many years ago, a new litter of hellhounds were born. One of them somehow got up to the surface world and out of the Underworld. He was captured by humans. Soon, the humans realized that he was growing to enormous sizes, and they decided to use him to their advantage. They named him Clifford, and they made a children's television show out of him. They claimed that he was a "dog", but we know the truth, we all know that he is really a hellhound. Clifford was tired of being used as a happy-go-lucky talking dog, with an optimistic personality. He soon found out that he was really a creature of death; lurking in your every nightmare, causing pain and destruction wherever he went. He was tired of being the pawn of PBS Kids, so he rebelled against his agent and ran away into hiding. He is now in the wild, a threat to all of mankind and himself. He could cause more destruction than Godzilla on a hangover. Another problem is that Hades realized that one of his dogs was missing. He will unleash his undead armies upon all of PBS Kids unless Clifford is returned to him. So it is up to us to find Clifford and bring him back to the Underworld."
"You're kidding, right?" Percy said in disbelief. "I mean, every time I've seen the show, Clifford has always been this overly happy and sickeningly cheerful dog."
"You watch Clifford the Big Red Dog?" Luke laughed. "That is so not manly."
"Shut up Luke! Clifford the Big Red Dogis totally manly! It's mantastic!" Percy cried.
"Boys, calm down." Chiron said. "I am utterly serious about this. We have to find Clifford the Big Red Hellhound."
"Where do we find him?" Annabeth asked, clearly the only one taking this seriously.
"They say that he has taken refuge in the woods behind camp. He is somewhere in there."
"But that forest is huge! We could never find him, no matter how large or how mantastic he is!" Grover said.
"You must try to find him. If you don't, the staff at PBS Kids will be attacked by Hades' undead army. Also, having a giant dog on the loose could cause him to damage everything, including himself. Your mission is clear, you must go into the woods, and find Clifford, and you have to then find a way for Nico can escort him to his father."
"Who's going on the quest?" Clarisse asked.
"I've consulted the oracle, and she said that anyone can come." Chiron said.
In the end, the people going were Annabeth, Percy, Grover, Hermione, Ron, Clarisse, Luke, Draco, Zorra (she decided to go immediately after Draco decided), Harry, and Nico. Tyson decided to stay back because he was scared of that TV show; Thalia stayed back because she had to go off with the Huntresses on a mission; and the Weasley and Stoll Inc. workers decided to stay back because, as they said to Chiron, "We have to work on turning your campers in alcoholics and getting everyone drunk." Since there were 11 people going, they chose Harry, Percy, Hermione and Annabeth as captains, and in case a captain died or were unable to serve their duties, Ron and Grover were the back up captains.
A few hours after the meeting, Harry and Percy went up to the hill to where they were going to play quidditch. The wind was strong, and both of the boys' shaggy black hair whipped around their faces as Harry explained. "Okay, so you're going to have to grip your broom like this," he showed the technique, "and then you'll want to straddle the broom like this," Harry showed Percy the proper way. When they were both in similar positions, Harry and Percy were about to take off, when they saw two people coming up the hill; one with vivid red hair and one with brown hair.
"Harry, Percy, we've got something to show you!" shouted the ginger over the roar of the wind. As the two people approached, Harry and Percy were able to identify them as Ron and Grover, yet something was different about them. "Guess what," Ron said, "you know how I was kicked out of the Dionysus cabin, well, I found somewhere else to stay. Grover has let me become a satyr!" Harry and Percy now looked down at Ron's legs. Where his normal trousers once were, now were legs covered in thick woolly hair. The hair was as red as Ron's hair on his head, and looked as though they really could be satyr legs. He wore sneakers like Grover's.
"Ron, what have you done to yourself?" Percy cried in amazement. "Did Juniper use magic to turn you into this? Or did you find Pan?"
"Nope, I've become a satyr now. I live with them, eat with them, and act like them."
"How did it happen?" Harry asked.
"It was easy, really," Grover said, playing with is goatee. "All I had to do was teach him our customs and rules, and then find a lot of red fur."
"Oh, so they're just fuzzy trousers?" Harry asked. "And you can take them off whenever you like?"
"Nope, they never come off," Ron beamed.
"Weasley, I don't exactly catch your gist," Percy said.
"Super-Glue is an amazing thing, isn't it," Ron said at Grover. Harry and Percy looked at each other wondering when Ron and Grover would ever be normal, and how they thought up such ridiculous things.
The wind was picking up, and it was rapidly becoming dangerous conditions for flying. "I thought that you said that you never got bad weather at camp!" Harry yelled over the howl of the wind."
"Yeah, but I guess that the gods are getting pretty mad about Clifford disappearing," Percy yelled. Harry was seriously considering canceling the flying lesson, but Harry had promised Percy that he would teach him. The wind was so loud that it was getting hard to hear each other, so Harry motioned with his hand and they both soared into the sky. Harry had been on the house quidditch team for many years now, and was a superb flyer. He had played quidditch games before in storms, so he knew how to handle a broom in wind. Percy, on the other hand, had never flown a broom before, let alone in the wind, and immediately lost control. His broom shot upward first a hundred, then two hundred feet into the air. Rain had started to fall, quickly dampening everyone. The rain slicked the broom handle, causing Percy to let go, and plummet towards the hill. Harry and Ron both instinctively pulled out their wands and slowed Percy a bit as he fell to his early death. He fell so hard onto the hill, that he broke off half of it, creating a cliff. The cliff was steep and jagged. Harry, Grover, and Ron, couldn't see Percy at all. They slowly crept towards the edge of the cliff through to steady downpour. Before they could see Percy, they heard screaming from somewhere behind them. A girl with brown hair was running far too quickly towards the edge of the cliff. She started to yell at them,
"Get out of my way! I'm Bella Swan and I need to jump off this cliff!" She then pushed her way past them, and dove off of the cliff. Grover, Harry, and Ron just looked at each other, in wonder at what the heck that was. They soon remembered why they were standing at the edge of a cliff, and eagerly looked down at Percy. He lay in a crumpled heap and wasn't moving. The worst thought of what had happened to him sprung into all of their minds. They watched him for a few moments, and when he didn't move, not even twitch pathetically, they assumed the worst. Grover turned furiously to Harry,
"You killed my best friend, you son of a witch!"
"I'm sorry, I really didn't mean for that to happen," Harry explained, backing away from Grover. The wind blew his messy black hair wildly around his head like a swirling black vortex of terror.
"Listen, guys," Ron said, "we don't know if he's dead yet, so let's check." Harry grabbed a broom, and Ron got one (Grover hopped on the back of Ron's), and they soared over the edge of the cliff to wear Percy lay motionless. The wind was hard to fly in, and the dark clouds gave that day a very ominous and depressing feeling; the feeling of a new death.
They landed (or more tumbled...) off of their brooms and ran to the body of Percy. His leg was bent in a strange way, and his face was paler than the moon. A frantic Grover rested his head on Percy's chest to find a heartbeat. "He's alive," murmured Grover in less than a whisper, "but barely."
The three boys stared down at the unconscious Percy, who was one of their team captains. The trip would start tomorrow and if Percy didn't recover, serious problems may arise if they are unable to find the giant canine and save the staff of PBS Kids.
Author's Note: That was chapter 4. Unfortunately I need to state again that I don't want you to look to deeply into this or take it to seriously. Also, I would like to apologise to any PBS Kids fans out there who were offended or terrified by this. As always, please review stating exactly what you liked so that I can know what my readers like best, so that I can give you more of what you want, and be sure to give constructive criticism if necessary. Please try to review, because it makes my day when I get one, even if it causes you to sacrifice two sacred moments from your oh-so-very busy lives. Just think about it; everyone loves getting reviews so if everyone tries to review every story they read, then everyone will get more reviews, and everyone will be a lot happier. The best way to start this is with you, so please review for a happier . If you have any questions, be sure to address them in your review and I will answer them in the upcoming chapters or author's notes, or you can send me a message. Thanks for reading. Have an explosive day!