Strolling down Hyde Park, I took a sip from my Pumpkin Spiced Latte. Everything was coated lightly with snow, maybe and inch or two. Levánta was following along the tree lines; another thing you need to know about my Pegasus was that she blends in with the snow very well. That's how white she was. I continued to admire the scenery while I strolled down the pavement. I felt like I'm forgetting something, but I couldn't remember what . . . Oh well.

Draco Malfoy entered Potions class and headed to his designated table shared with Percy, Ariana and Annabeth. Noticing that a certain black haired, green-eyed girl wasn't there, he frowned. Catching himself, he forced his face to look as emotionless as possible.

"Mr. Jackson, Ms. Chase, Mr. di Angelo, Mr. Stoll and Mr. Stoll have you seen Ms. Jackson?" asked Professor Slughorn. Said people looked at each other. It was then that the other students noticed that the unpredictable girl wasn't in the room.

"No, sir," answered Percy. "We saw her this morning, but we don't know where she's at, at the moment." He, Annabeth, and Nico twitched slightly, annoyed that she wasn't back yet.

Draco Malfoy's head tilted to the side. I wonder she could be, he thought.

"Oh, shame," said Slughorn. "I was going to ask her something. Oh, well. It could wait. Mr. Jackson and Ms. Chase, please see me after class. Now for today's lesson . . ."

As class continued, Draco was getting more and more anxious. Surely, Ariana was just talking to a teacher and lost track of time, right? It couldn't be that she was attacked at the Forbidden Forest, right? Draco saw her went into it and headed for where the Pegasi were being kept earlier this morning. Knowing the danger that lurked there, even more so now, now that the Dark Lord was back, he couldn't help but worry. It hadn't taken long until he was glancing at the door every so often, hoping for her to appear.

Finally, his prayers were answered. At the last thirty minutes of class, she walked through the door, holding a cup in her hand. Draco let out a breath that he hadn't knew he was holding.

"Ah, Ms. Jackson, my dear," greeted Slughorn. "You're finally here."

Draco stared as Ariana smiled apologetically. "Sorry, Professor. I was getting something hot to drink, since it's cold. And seeing that I still had time, I went for a walk. Long story short, I lost track of time. I'm sorry."

"No matter. Go to your station and get to work. I'm sure your friends can fill you in," said Slughorn. "Oh, and please stay after class, Ariana. There's something I want to talk to you about."

Ariana nodded. "Of course, Professor." She flashed him a smile and went to her table like she was asked. Draco immediately went back to his potion but listened to their conversation.

"Where were you, Coral Brain?" Draco frowned slightly at the degrading nickname that the girl Annabeth called Ariana.

He snuck a glance at Ariana to see her reaction. To his surprise, she just rolled her eyes and raised an eyebrow in an amused way. "What? Didn't you hear me? I was getting something hot to drink, took a walk and lost track of time, Book Worm."

"Aren't you done with your drink yet?" asked Percy.

"My latte's hot. If I chug it down, I'll burn myself. Besides, even if I could chug it down, it tastes better if I drink it slowly," replied Ariana. "Now stop asking me pointless questions and tell me what to do." Percy and Annabeth rolled their eyes and told her.

Draco turned back to his potion and couldn't fight the small smile appearing on his lips.

Friday night came, and all of us demigods were at the Hearth (that's what we call our common room now), sulking. In Clarisse's case, she was attacking a dummy repeatedly to the point that if I hadn't known better, I never would've thought that it was a dummy. Normally each and every one of us would be excited because it's Capture the Flag night. But as it turned out, we're not allowed to have our annual game since Moldy-what's-his-face was up and around. You might be thinking, 'They've broken many rules now to do whatever they want, so why should this time be any different?' Well, my answer was that Dumbledore IM'd Chiron and said centaur made us promise on the River Styx to not do Capture the Flag without permission or at least not until Moldywart's stopped; and I didn't want to find out what would happen if I break that oath. So here we were, at the Hearth, cursing two really old-aged people. Or rather a really old man and a really old centaur. In my case, I was cursing the idiots who were stupid enough coughleopercynicocough to mention our tradition to the Headmaster of this castle.

With nothing to do, I decided to take a walk in the castle, more specifically towards the Astronomy tower. On the way there, I stopped by the kitchen for a hot chocolate drink with marshmallows, which the working elves happily gave me. I don't get why they were so happy all the time.

I arrived at the tower and found that none other than Draco Malfoy was already occupying it. "Is there room for one more?" He mustn't have heard me approached since he jumped and spun with that deer-in-headlights look in his eyes. In addition to that, he had flicked his wand and a wave of magic hit my cup causing me to drop it. "Aw, now look what you did. You made me drop my hot chocolate, and it was a perfectly good chocolate too," I complained and then pointed at him. "You owe me a hot chocolate."

"Uh, sorry," he mumbled, rubbing the back of his head.

"You still haven't answered my question yet."

"Huh?"

"I asked you if there is still room for one more," I reminded him, forgetting about the chocolate accident. For now. "Oh," was his smart reply. "Well, is there?"

"I guess," he answered.

I raised my eyebrow at him. "You guess? It's either a yes or a no, Draco."

His eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. "What did you call me?"

"Draco," I replied. "That is your name, right? Why?"

"It's nothing. Never mind," Draco shook his head. I stared at him, waiting for his reply. He looked back at me, confused, and I once again raised my eyebrow. "Oh! Right. Um, yeah, there's room for one more."

I rolled my eyes and smiled. "Took you long enough," I said as I walked and stopped beside him. Reaching into my pocket, I grabbed a small gift ornament. As soon as I untied the ribbon, the gift turned into a cup of hot chocolate. I had two in case something happens. You can never be too prepared. Hehe!

Draco raised one eyebrow at me questioningly. "What?" I asked. "You still owe me a hot chocolate. Don't think that you're off the hook just because I had another one saved."

He shook his head at me, and gestured towards my drink. "Is that any good?"

I took a sip. "Mm-hm. Do you want to taste?" He shrugged. "I guess it won't hurt." He took the cup from my hands brought it to his lips. "Careful, it's hot," I warned.

He took a sip and then said, "It's good. What is it?"

I blinked at him, wondering if he was messing with me. But, with the look he was giving me, he wasn't. "You . . . never had hot chocolate before, have you?" Draco shook his head. "It's a muggle drink called Hot Chocolate." He wrinkled his nose at the word 'muggle'. "You can have it any time you want, but traditionally, it's drank during cold weather, especially during winter."

"What's it like? Living with muggles I mean," he said.

"It's not bad actually," I answered his questions. "They have cool technologies that helps them with day to day things. Like my iPod for instance."

"Tek . . . nawlahgees?" He said the word slowly, as if it was foreign to him. Given the fact that he's a pureblooded wizard in high society, he probably was.

"Mm-hm. Yeah. It's kind of like their way of communicating, entertainment and/or transportation," I explained. "Instead of using owls to send messages, they use phones, computers and the post office." I fished my phone out from my boot and showed it to him. "This is a cellphone, or just phone for short. Don't drop it."

Draco fiddled with the keys on my phone. "What are these for?" He asked while pressing random buttons. I told him the functions of said buttons and other muggle things.

Once I finished telling him about the muggle world, we were silent. I could tell by the gleam in his eyes that he wanted to ask more about the muggle world, but he didn't know what to ask. Finally, he broke the silence with a question that I wasn't expecting at all, "What you do if you were told do something you don't want to do?"

"Simple. I won't do it."

"But what if your parents' life are on the line? Will you still not do it?"

"Well then, I will just have to find another way to keep my parents safe while still not doing what that person wants me to do."

Three days later, word got out that Katie Bell was cursed due to the necklace that was given to her. She was lucky it that she's still alive; that necklace was suppose to kill her. At least, that's what Snape had said. The inside people (McGonagall, Snape, the demigods and the Golden Trio) were the only ones that knew the truth, which was it was meant for the Headmaster of Hogwarts. We told the other demigods to keep an eye out for any suspicious activity. Other than that, everyone went on with his or her daily life. Of course, everyone except Katie's closest friends.

Katie's incident hadn't even deterred Slughorn from having his dinner 'party' Wednesday night. In fact, I had a feeling Slughorn was having a grand time during dinner. He had asked what Hermione's parents' jobs (they were dentists) were dangerous, and she answered "No. It's not dangerous." She then goes on about how one client bit the finger of her father and tries to make people laugh, but failed epically.

After a moment of awkward silence, Slughorn turned to Percy and I. "So Ms. Jackson and Mr. Jackson, what do your parents do for a living in the muggle world?"

"Our mother is a writer and is currently working on her novel. Our biological father was a Marine Biologist, and our step-father is an English teacher at the school that Ariana and I used to go to," answered Percy. Ha! Marine Biologist my butt. That was our automatic response if anyone asked us about our parents.

"Oh? What happened between your biological father and your mother? And what exactly is a Marine Biologist?" asked Slughorn.

"Our father was lost at sea at one of his expeditions," I answered, faking a sad tone. Again, it was an automatic response. "A marine biologist is someone who studies aquatic life."

"I see. I'm really sorry," said Slughorn. Percy and I smiled sadly. "And what about you, Ms. Chase? What do your parents do in the muggle world?"

Annabeth straightened up in her chair. "Both of my parents are Historians, meaning they know more about the past than what most muggles knew. My father teaches at a university specializing on planes and war while my mother focuses on Greek mythology."

I snorted quietly and mumbled, "That's an understatement." She stomped on my foot under the table. I bit my lip to keep from making a sound.

"Interesting. Tell me, what exactly is a University?" I tuned Annabeth out as she explained the muggles form of education and focused on my dessert. Most of the wizards, meaning the purebloods, were surprised that muggle studies are longer than wizard studies.

"Thank you all for coming," said Slughorn as he was waving goodbye at us.

"Thank you for inviting us, Professor Slughorn," thanked Annabeth. We turned and left.

"Well, that was uneventful," I commented as soon as we were out of earshot.

"Tell me about it," agreed Percy.

"I was almost tempted to say a monster's name during dinner to make it more interesting," I said.

"It could've been worse," said Annabeth as she walked through the door to the Hearth.

Percy and I looked at each other. "Worse?" asked Percy.

"Pray tell, how it could've been worse," I said.

"Well, I . . . uh, um . . . oh shut up," said Annabeth.

I shook my head. "Normally I would say something about you being speechless which is rare but that dinner party drained the living life out of me. So I'm going to bed now. Goodnight." I heard Annabeth and Percy say 'goodnight' as I walked to my bedroom early. Besides, I don't want to be around if they started making out. After I pictured the scene in my mind, a shudder ran through my body.

Merry Christmas, everyone! This is my gift to you. I don't own Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. Please no flamers, just constructive criticism. Thank you!