cream_the_rabbit_77: Thank you!

Emmagination: I'm so glad you like them. As I've mentioned before, I have a thing for random facts. This fix is one of the few places where I can put them with out being "socially inappropriate."

cookie_lover_1441_peace: Thanks!

Yay, another chapter!

"Fine, then," Annabeth mumbled to herself as the door closed behind Umbridge and Marietta. "I'll just wait here then."

She paced in front of the room, checking her watch every thirty seconds to see how much time had passed. She sighed dramatically and leaned against the door, not bothering to think of the fact that once it opened she would fall back.

In an attempt to distract herself further, Annabeth glanced at the mosaic on the ceiling. It looked relatively new, perhaps coming into being around the sixteen hundreds or so. Come to think of it, the mosaic really was stunning. Maybe she could run back to her dorm and grab her sketch book . . . no, she couldn't risk it. What if they finished just as she left? It was better to just wait.

Feeling rather fidgety, Annabeth stuck her hands into the pockets of her robes. As expected, her bronze knife and Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder were in the right pocket . . . but what was in her left? Annabeth didn't remember putting anything inside her left pocket. Curiously, she pulled it out. It was a navy blue Yankees cap. Ooookaay. Well, that made absolutely not sense whatsoever.

Tapped to the inside of the hat was a note written in Ancient Greek. Annabeth glanced at the neat, cursive letters. She didn't recognize the handwriting. Her heart pounding, she read through it.

Dear Annabeth,

I give you this hat as a late late birthday present. Be careful when using it, as it is irreplaceable. Good luck.

Athena

Her mother had sent her a hat for a birthday present? But Athena never gave her children birthday presents! And why a hat of all things? Surely it must have had some sort of magical property, but what that was, she had absolutely no clue. It didn't make any sense. Why-

"Excuse me, Miss," squeaked a voice.

Annabeth jumped, immediately snapping back into reality. "Who said that?"

"Down here, Miss." The Ravenclaw glanced down and immediately dropped her book and reached into her pocket from her knife: a small creature, about two and a half feet tall, stood before her. It had enormous ears and frighteningly disproportionately large eyes. It wore an outfit that consisted of oddly mismatched clothing, several hats, and an extra sock on its ear. It carried a large tea tray with pink china.

"Dobby does not mean to interrupt you, Miss, but Dobby is needing to enter the Professor's office to deliver to the Professor afternoon tea."

'Dobby' needs to use pronouns, thought Annabeth. Could it be a monster? The creature didn't look like any that she recognized from her lessons at camp, but that didn't guarantee it was safe. She pulled out the dagger and looked the creature straight in the eye. "Monster?" she asked in Greek.

The creature appeared indignant now. "Dobby is not a monster! Dobby is a house elf - a free house elf!"

Annabeth mentally slapped herself. A house elf, of course! Well, now she felt incredibly stupid. With extreme awkwardness, Annabeth put the bronze dagger back into her robes, forcing an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that."

The house elf didn't seem to notice, rather he was preoccupied with trying open the door. Annabeth watched for a while as the creature tried repeatedly to reach the doorknob by balancing the tea tray on his head and jumping up and down. It was rather pathetic. Eventually, Annabeth pitied him enough to open the door before bending down to grab the book, only to notice that it was gone as if having vanished into thin air.

"Hey, where'd it go?"

"Books that appear in the Room of Requirement only exist outside of the room if they are being touched by the person who took them out, Miss. Objects from the room are not meant to exist outside of the room. If the person is letting go of one of such objects, Miss, the book returns to the room."

"How did you . . . ?"

But Dobby had already run into the office. After about three seconds there was a loud crash followed by a scream, and Dobby ran out into the hall, his arms flailing in terror.

Without thinking, Annabeth pounced on him, grabbing the elf by his neon pink shirt. "What happened? What's going on?"

"Dobby has to warn Harry Potter! Harry Potter and his friends are in danger!"

"Danger?" she repeated. "What kind of danger?"

"Let me go, Miss! Dobby needs to warn Harry Potter right away. There is no time to lose!"

Reluctantly, Annabeth released her grip and watched the little creature scurry off. Almost immediately after, the door to Umbridge's office opened.

"Now, now, Marietta. It doesn't look that bad. Really."

The response was a few nearly surprised sniffles.

"Okay, that's enough. I will not have you crying over such a petty matter. I'll reverse it later. Right now there are bigger matters to settle. You said the seventh floor, right? Good. I will send for them right away."

Amazingly, the two had yet to notice Annabeth observing them from behind a potted plant. She didn't know what was going on, but knowing Umbridge, it couldn't be anything good. And the seventh floor . . . that's where the Room of Requirement was. Were her friends still there? What if they ran into Umbridge? Nott had mentioned that they weren't the only ones using the room, and both Harper and Dobby had mentioned Potter. Why did it seem that every story was centered around him? It was like Potter was some sort of magnet for attention. Either way, it wasn't in her character to just stand around and wait for things to fix themselves. No, she had to find out. Still, she couldn't just follow them. Umbridge would know that something was up right away, and by the sound of it she was bringing reinforcements. There had to be a way she could follow them but remain undetected.

Annabeth began to fidget nervously, rummaging through her pockets in search of something useful. She came across the same things she had found before: the powder, the knife, and the stupid Yankees cap. Annabeth pulled out the cap and examined it. She still stood by her earlier thought on it having some sort of hidden power. The obvious thing to do was try it on.

Doing so, Annabeth caught a glimpse of her reflection in a hallway mirror, or rather, her lack of reflection. Could it be? An invisibility cap? The timing was certainly convenient, that was for sure. But there was no time to dwell on it now. She had to get to the seventh floor.

Never before had Chase been so grateful for the obstacle courses she had been forced to run at Camp Half-Blood. She had just run up several flights of stairs to the seventh floor, narrowly missing a couple of fifth-year Slytherins, all with one hand tightly gripping her cap to her head.

Annabeth skidded to a halt, narrowly avoiding a Gryffindor boy tripping right in front of her.

"AAARGH!" the boy cried.

Annabeth heard a sort of mocking laughter coming from the side. She turned to the face the source of voice and saw none other than the Malfoy boy Vaisey had pointed out.

"Trip jinx, Potter! Hey, Professor- -PROFESSOR! I've got one!"

Umbridge ran up to them, grinning enthusiastically. "It's him! Excellent. Draco, excellent, oh, very good- -fifty points to Slytherin! I'll take it from here . . . Stand up, Potter!" Potter obeyed and got to his feet, giving the two the death glare. "You hop along and see if you can round up anymore of them, Draco," she said. "Tell the others to look in the library- -anybody out of breath- -check the bathrooms- -Miss Parkinson can do the girls' ones- -off you go- -and you," she added looking at Potter in a way that made Annabeth instinctively shudder. "You can come with me to the headmaster's office, Potter."

The headmaster? Well that didn't seem too bad at least. Dumbledore would be sympathetic to Potter.

Satisfied with this conclusion, Annabeth ran after Malfoy. It didn't matter what those kids were doing. If Umbridge got to them, their punishments would not be fit for a serial killer.

Harry Potter fact: Ron Weasley's character swore a lot in the original drafts of Harry Potter. Rowling's publisher made her censor his language because he was worried that Weasley would set a bad example for young readers. (It didn't work. At age seven, I learned the phrase, "bloody hell.")

Random fact: The only Romanov member to survive the 1918 shooting was Alexei, the youngest boy's, dog Joy. The spaniel was found blind and half starved by White Army troops several days later and lived out the rest of her life in Windsor. Contrary to popular belief, the bodies of Anastasia, the missing Duchess (although it may have been her sister Marie) and Alexei were found in 2007 and identified in 2008. Their bodies were missing from the other grave which was dug up in 1991.

Bonus PJO fact: A new Percy Jackson movie, this one on The Sea of Monsters, is set to be released this August. The actress who played Annabeth dyed her hair blond for filming.