In which the chapter revolves around Nico
Sitting in the silence, Meg was happy to note that the storm from the previous night had blown over. The sun was shining but the light refused to wake Nico. As if scared of waking Hades' son, which made sense seeing as he was technically the prince of the Underworld.
Meg sat there in the blinding morning light just thinking about how to tell Nico about her dream last night.
How about she tells him the part about Voldemort coming back, and then her dream about her mother to back it up? She'd have to improvise seeing as Nico was waking up.
"Morning sunshine." She said sarcastically as he tried to get the sun out of his eyes. He shook his head and blinked a few times and Meg slipped out of the hospital bed and out into the bright white room.
She hated how white this room was. All of the sunlight bounced off of the stupid color assaulting people's eyes. Really, it should be illegal to have a room with a white theme and huge windows.
She located her shoes under the bed, her socks on the other hand...
It seemed that someone had exchanged her uniform for her poke-a-doted pajamas. Not that she minded, she was in a rush to tell Nico about her dream and get some breakfast, she was starved, which was surprising seeing as there had been a feast last night.
"Hey Nico." She said.
"Yeah?"
"Last night I had a dream, and it wasn't good. After it I saw my mom." She started and Nico's head snapped in her direction. Now having his undivided attention she finished.
"Harry is in mortal danger this year. Tommy boy is coming back."
Nico had been glancing up at the staff table and back since the two had entered the great hall. He was obviously shaken but trying to keep his head.
Meg leaned over as Prof. Catwoman handed him his schedule.
"Are you okay besides the whole he's back thing? You look like you're expecting an attack from a teacher." Which Meg thought wouldn't be that far outside the realm of possibility as you'd think.
The shadows were curling unnaturally around Nico's hand, ready to hand him his sword.
Nico scowled. "With our luck, it could happen." Nico replied, echoing her own thoughts.
They were silent for a few minutes, the only sound being the clinking of silverware and plates. Meg opened her mouth to break the silence but Nico beat her to it.
"I don't trust that new teacher. Something about him is off, and it's not just his soul." He said staring at the Ex-Auror.
"By the way, we don't have to worry about the Tri-Cup-thing. You have to be seventeen, a seventh year." He said suddenly.
Meg blinked. How did he know she was so distressed about that?
"It was the fainting thing wasn't it?" Meg said with a blush of embarrassment.
"What?" Nico responded a little distractedly
Oh, she had thought out loud again.
"Nothing, just thinking, what do you have first today?" She asked as Snape handed her the schedule.
Nico squinted at the paper for a bit and answered. "I got Herbology with Hufflepuff, Then Care of Magical Creatures with Slytherin." Then his face fell as he continued, "than Double Divination too, this school hates me!" He exclaimed.
Meg strained to read hers, it seemed she had been moved from the Gryffindor's Defense Against the Dark Arts class, it was instead the first thing on her list today.
"DADA, Magical Creatures, divination. Great, more time with the creepy, bug-eyed, oracle-wanna-be." She moaned. She didn't say it out loud but, she was a little unsettled about the DA lesson with the fat guy. Really he looked like a shaggy red-headed Santa. Except Fat-Guy also seemed crazy and paranoid enough to wage war on Russia, if a Russian even as much as bumped into him.
She stood up and gathered her things. Then she smiled at Nico. "I'll tell you if the teach is strict." She said and walked off to the upstairs classroom.
Whatever hopes Meg had about the new teacher were soon pulverized.
The guy was almost bipolar in a way. One minute he was screaming about having constant vigilance and the next he was showcasing unforgivable curses with a smile plastered across his face.
His room truly creeped her out as well. There were Mirrors everywhere, Sneak-A-Scopes of every size and shape lying on every shelf, right next to the live specimens in jars. Cursed objects lay under magical wards so strong, Meg was sure it wasn't just her that could feel them.
"Who can tell me an Unforgivable Curse?" Asked Mr. Moody teacher, scanning the class with his ultra-creepy eye.
Not waiting for an answer he pointed his wand at Goyle. "Mr. Goyle, you, gives us a curse."
Goyle's huge chunky face paled. He stumbled out of his seat and stuttered out indecipherable gibberish.
"Speak up; we can't bloody hear you with your fat lips blubbering each and every way!" Said the lunatic of a professor.
"The Imperious Curse." He quacked.
The professor's face lit up proudly and motioned to Meg. "Oi, you, with the red hair and glasses, please retrieve a spider." Meg got up and strode over to the window sill, where there was a row of jars, each containing a nasty looking spider.
As she approached she could hear them chattering much louder than normal spiders, they were all small, and from the looks of it, venomous.
She grabbed one with orange fur and bulging splotchy green spider eyes. It looked like the nicer of the spiders. It seemed friendly and intelligent too. It kept making scratching at the glass like it was writing.
The floor raced up to meet her as she suddenly plummeted. Time seemed to flow like molasses. Somehow she had managed to trip on her nonexistent shoelaces, which is to say, nothing. Desperate not to cut herself, she threw the jar as far away from herself as possible.
She heard it shatter, but didn't see it. The teacher was cursing about the glass. Malfoy simple used Repairo and the jar reconstructed itself. The remainder of the class was spent finding the spider. This was placed back in its jar once found.
The demonstration that had been planned had been completely ruined before it could even begin. All because Meg had tripped.
Class ended soon after the spider was found and Meg walked out to Care of magical creatures. Harry and Nico were already there. Hagrid was talking animatedly to them. Meg noticed huge crates full of deformed albino lobsters. As Meg approached the Gryffindor's she noticed that the lobsters had no shells, where six inches long, and slimy to boot. All in all, not a very pretty specimen.
Nico noticed her and jogged over to her. "We got Blast-Ended Skrewt things. They look like lobsters though." He said motioning towards the crates.
Meg forced herself to look at the creatures in the crate. They had legs in strange places and appeared not to have heads. They were disgusting. They smelled like rotten fish and shot sparks of fire out of their rear ends.
They looked dangerous. They looked gross. Lavender Brown exclaimed, "Eww!" This pretty much summed up the Skrewt in terms of appeals.
They better be Miss Congeniality.
Hagrid began to talk, but with his thick accent Meg could just make out that the Skrewts or whatever they were had just hatched, and that they would be raising them.
Worst part is that Hagrid didn't know anything about the Skrewts. Hades! He didn't even know the difference between the males and the females!
Meg poked hers with a stick she'd picked up off the ground. It was one of the supposed females. The Skrewt bit the stick with its sucker/mandible mouth parts. Nico's male blew up in his face, leaving him covered in soot.
Nico coughed lightly and wiped his face with the sleeve of his aviator jacket. He leaned in and scowled at the creature; suddenly he stood up and pointed at the creature. "I Christian thee, Bob, as never before have I seen such a- a..." "Disturbing, Gross, or maybe, um er- awkward?" Meg supplied.
"Yes, awkward! Such an awkward creature." He finished.
Bob the Skrewt made a few cricking sounds before going off again. Meg shook her Skrewt from the stick. She pointed the stick at the beast. "I name you, err- Pansy, as I can't think of anything better at the moment."
She heard her roommate sneeze at the other end of the outdoor classroom.
Class ended and they went to lunch. There were lamb chops today. Meg helped herself and Nico stared at the DADA teacher. He turned to her.
"Is he strict?" He asked her. She swallowed. "I bit bipolar, don't be late, and remember..." She trailed off before holding an olive in front of her eye. "Constant Vigilance!" She finished and ate the olive.
After lunch was divination. No doubt Prof. Oracle would predict more death this year; Quite possibly Harry's.
It took forever and a day to reach the tower at best of times. Nico had to be dragged, seeing as the class was on one of the highest towers in the school.
The trapdoor was open and Nico went up first. Meg followed him up into the smoke filled room. It was filled with incense and candle smoke. Sickeningly sweet perfume poured from the fireplace. Though it sounded nice, the smells where suffocating. The room was hazy at best and the room cluttered. It was a bit scary thinking that right outside the wall was a never ending sky. And it was so high you'd think the whole tower would collapse at any moment.
Nico sat at the table closest to the exit. He wanted to be out as soon as possible. Lavender came up looking excited with Pavarti next to her.
Harry and Ron arrived next. They sat in there chairs after a brief conversation with the teacher. Afterwards Harry looked rather worried.
Meg noticed that every time the dwarf planet, Pluto was brought up Nico would momentarily snap to attention before relaxing. Meg knew about astronomy. Mercury was the roman form of Hermes, Venus was Aphrodite, Mars was Ares, and Jupiter was Zeus, up to Pluto AKA Hades.
Ron made a joke about Uranus and got the rest of class swamped with homework. The whole class was spent making up horrible fates and fortunes.
On the way to dinner Malfoy stopped her. He showed her an article from The Daily Prophet. She couldn't read it, but the picture of Mr. W was self-explanatory. It was obviously a derogatory.
"They didn't even get the man's name right!" Laughed Malfoy. Meg was losing patience and interest.
She was about to tell him that he was boring her and to quit picking on Harry like a jealous school girl and to get a life but right then Harry walked by with Ron and Hermione. Malfoy ran past her after his new prey.
Nico split off from his group of Gryffindor's and jogged over to her. "Come on, get some food and meet me on the seventh floor." He whispered before meeting up with Harry. She watched Nico walk around the table grabbing his favorites and burning some of everything. The first years must have thought of him as some kind of pyromaniac.
Meg shrugged and began burning her food too. She grabbed some of the roast and, mashed potatoes, and carrot sticks.
She ate the roast and potatoes immediately and wrapped the carrots in a napkin.
She quickly excused herself and rushed out of the Great Hall after Nico. She almost got caught several times by a grouchy Filch before getting to the seventh floor.
Man the school had a lot if steps!
Now where was Nico? She wandered around for a little bit before realizing she had a magical map in her pocket. She nibbled the carrots as she followed Nico's dot to a corridor filled with tapestries. There was Nico, leaning on a statue with a bag of chips. Where he got the chips, Meg did not know. But man they looked good.
He smirked when he saw her. "Watch this!" He called and began to pace between two of the larger tapestries. He kept muttering something under his breath. On his third lap a door suddenly carved itself in the wall. Meg's jaw dropped. Gods but magic was amazing.
Nico smirked again before grabbing a handle, just as it carved itself and opened the door. "Coming?" He asked before stepping in and leaving the door open. Meg stepped in and was amazed to see a huge room. Greek fire light the torches and a jar of Floo Powder lay on the mantel piece of a roaring fire place. A huge table had a huge, possibly magical, map of the world. Maps of the school were on all of the walls along with statues of the gods.
Meg noticed something off about one of the statues. "Hey Nico, I've never met Athena personally, but shouldn't there be a glittering helmet on her head instead of a rusty circlet?"
He looked up at her from one of the many chairs that lined the table. "Maybe it's a really old and forgotten statue." He looked towards the statue and his eyes went wild. From the familiar look of shattered glass to straight out creepy.
He lunged from his chair towards the statue and ripped the circlet from its marble head. Meg found she was unable to decide on what to do and stood there in a stupor. Slap Nico back into his right mind, or try talking to him? She was at a total loss as to what to do.
She suddenly unfroze and stumbled over to where Nico was holding the circlet like it was his One Ring. She expected him to begin rubbing it and calling it his precious.
She sat beside him. "N-Nico?" She asked tentatively.
His head snapped unnaturally fast into her direction. It was a familiar scowl, but his eyes were unnaturally focused. Trained on something in front of her and yet very far away. He wasn't looking at life forces, or her soul. He was looking at something only he could see.
"N-Nico?" She repeated. A stare was his response. "Nico wake up!" She shouted. She grabbed his shoulders and shook him back and forth, his head lolling around like he was asleep. She heard a sizzling sound and looked down at his hands.
The circlet was still held firmly in his grasp. The Shadows were coiling like steam off what she now recognized as a diadem.
She had no idea what to do now but grabbed the diadem and attempted to rip it from his grasp.
He held fast.
She continued to try to pry it from him. He seemed not to notice and made no move to defend himself. Desperate with worry she backhanded the demigod.
He dropped the diadem and blinked. And then he blinked again and continued blinking until the new but familiar shattered look returned at last. He looked shocked as Meg threw her arms around him.
"W-what happened?" He asked suddenly. "Why are you crying?" He continued after a few seconds.
She hadn't even realized she'd started crying, but she was. Suddenly aware of how awkward this had to be for the boy she backed off and wiped her face. She noticed the circlet and warily pulled up her sleeve and grabbed it. She could feel an immense evil presence in the tiara like object. She turned to Nico.
"Nico, what is this?"
"A Horacrux!" He said his face filled with disgust.
"A what?" Meg asked covering her own embarrassment
"Tell me what happened first, Then I'll tell you." Nico said shakily "It was obviously pretty scary."
She sighed and thought about how to start. She took a deep breath and told him what happened. Meg wanted to get rid of the circlet ASAP.
"So..." He started. "I got possessed by a Horacrux. Lord Hades never said anything about this being possible."
She watched him for a few seconds as he seemed to think. Eventually her ADHD got the best off her and she coughed and fidgeted. Nico looked over.
"Okay, Answers." She said. "What's a Horacrux?"
Nico looked at the diadem with distaste.
"A fragmented soul"
So I hope that was good and long I haven't updated in forever and a day!(not really, updated twice this weekend) It's a pretty big document too.
Jeff says that I misspelled "Took" as "Toke"
cookies to those who find the other document where I made the same mistake.
Hint: it was my first story and was recently updated.