Chapter 6
Author's Note:
Hey guys, good to be back!
I hope you like this chapter, I had great fun writing it.
Oh my gosh, I never expected such brilliant feedback from all of you. Thank you, so much. It's great to know what needs fixing, what you would like to happen, and the way the story is going.
So, answers to reviews:
ResidentOfCabin6: Thank you, that is high praise indeed.
TheSoulDefender: Ditto. I only hope I can maintain that level throughout. Although... shouldn't be a problem with great followers like you :)
Guest: Yep, but not at the time you're thinking.
Seaweed Princess of the Fandom: Wow, coming from you, that means a lot. I've read passages of your fanfic through a friend; it's great!
Risa Silvara: Blimey, in one review you've given me about a dozen ideas. Thanks a lot for your feedback, it was exceedingly helpful, and kudos for trying to participate in the mini-contest.
Laonasa Enllyn Avery: You have had your wish :) Thanks for your review.
Ilovelunalovegood14: Yes, the dyslexia issue will be addressed shortly. Just to be clear, the notes written alongside the wands were in Greek, because Hecate wrote them, and that's why the demigods could easily read them - even the Romans (I think Riordan actually says something about both Roman and Greek demigods being adaptable to the other's language/alphabet). Also, please don't apologise for leaving a long review: I love those and yours was an absolute treat. Your guess for the DW references is very good, and though it's not the one I was referring too, deserves a mention of 'well-remembered'. As for future plot-lines, those were very accurate guesses, for the most part, though I admit you've given me a lot to think about. I had planned to include many magical creatures in the plot, but Grawp I had completely forgotten about. So thank you, for your great ideas. And thank you so much for taking the time to write your comment, and for your lavish praise. I don't think it's entirely deserved (there are some wonderful works out there) but it warms the heart just the same :)
Guest number two: Thank you, I will.
Urs-v: Still hoping :) Thank you, I'll keep the dialogue thing in mind. It's just really hard to balance the whole decision-making process the demigods have to make: do they think stuff through and act independently; do they always confer before doing anything? Or on the other hand, do they not think at all and act as rashly as Percy when he sees his friends in danger?
Longhour: Your review made me laugh! Thanks to you for sticking with it.
BoukieToo: Good guess, but again, not the one I was referring to. The time warps were purely for the dialogue's sake, and the TARDIS reference was, I thought, a tad too obvious to pick as a challenge. But your effort was commendable :) Merci.
When Percy opened his eyes the next morning, it was a moment before he remembered why there was no sound of waves crashing on the sand, and why he was staring at the top of a canopy bed instead of the stone ceiling of the Poseidon cabin. When he did remember, he grinned and slipped a hand under his pillow, his fingers closing around the thin stick of wood there.
He sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the back of his hand, and sat gazing at Hecate's gift to him.
His wand was of paler wood than the ones his friends had boasted the night before. Hecate's note said it was made of driftwood, which surprised him. Percy didn't think wood that was water-logged and soft due to days floating around in the ocean could be as magical as rosewood, or pine, like Thalia's. He checked the note again.
This wand is made of driftwood, for the sea will always be the source of your power. The core is unicorn hair. May it help to protect you in times of need. Use it well.
Yep, definitely driftwood.
Feeling more than a little foolish, he gave the wand a half-hearted wave, trying not to cringe at how ridiculous he probably looked. At least he'd had the presence of mind to close the bed curtains before he'd gone to sleep. His dignity was therefore intact in view of his dorm-mates.
Nothing happened as he flourished and twirled the wand a couple more times, so he gave up after a few seconds. He hadn't really expected it to work - even the professors used incantations to do magic, and Flitwick had made it clear non-verbal magic was much harder than saying the words.
Defeated, but not by any means discomfited at the notion, Percy pulled the curtains back and swung his feet out, yawning like a krill-starved blue whale. He stood and immediately tripped over his shoes and something much larger that had definitely not been there the night before.
Cursing under his breath as he clutched his throbbing toes, Percy looked down and saw that the cause for this most untimely bout of suffering was a large brown case, like a suitcase but made of leather, and - like everything about Hogwarts - painfully old-fashioned. Curious despite the smarting in his foot, Percy opened the trunk and discovered several items of clothing (not all of which were uniform, he was pleased to see; in fact, he glimpsed some items he was sure were supposed to be in his wardrobe at home) a few books which he automatically ignored, some kind of metal pot with lots of little glass vials inside, lots of rolled-up yellow paper and a bunch of very ordinary biro pens, looking very out of place among all the other items.
Looking around the dorm, where his friends were still sleeping, Percy saw that similar cases had been placed at the foot of every other bed too. He grinned. Gods could be right douchebags sometimes, but occasionally they did do something that was nothing short of awesome.
Thanks, he thought, to whichever deities happened to be listening.
He got dressed in his new uniform, of which only the robes were actually second-hand. The demigods had all worn their normal clothes under the black robes at the feast (with the uncomfortable and rather pointless addition of a tie, to Flitwick's insistence), but now Percy pulled out the brand-new and perfectly sized shirt, trousers, tie, socks and underwear with the faintly familiar feeling of pleased satisfaction that for once the gods were doing something to help.
He crept down the stairs of his dormitory into their common room where, he was surprised to see, the fire was still crackling merrily. No-one was around yet, because it was still only about six o'clock. Percy himself was really not a morning person usually. You only had to ask the river nymphs who were tired of being rudely awoken by Percy's body tumbling into their currents, normally as a result of someone having thrown him in while he was still snoozing. However, jet lag seemed to do funny things to the human mind, even if it was part-god, and Percy found himself to be wide awake and eager to explore a bit more before breakfast.
Fifteen minutes later, thanks to several helpful portraits and his own water-sensory intuition, he had found his way out of the castle and on to the grounds, from where he could see the lake Leo had fallen into the day before.
It was a beautiful day. The sky was blue, the sun shone brightly, and the birds had already started their morning serenade. Percy ambled towards the lake, instinctively drawn to the iron-grey waters and its calm shores. There was a narrow strip of small grey pebbles on one side of the lake, and a kind of beach with a wooden jetty at one end stretching about twenty feet into the water. The air was warm despite the earliness of the hour, so Percy sat down on the grassy bank just above the pebbly beach and gazed out at the landscape before him. It truly was breathtaking. He didn't think he'd even witnessed such fresh, vibrant countryside before. The mountains glowed nearly purple in the distance, contrasting with the bright green hills and the clear sky. He was vaguely reminded of Ogygia from the wild beauty of it all.
Percy was more of a city-person himself, though he had to admit this was probably the most perfectly situated school in the world. The area was secluded, beautiful, spacey enough to accommodate the needs of a couple hundred teenagers and twenty members of staff. He had no doubt it was made even more ideal by mortal-repelling enchantments, much like the ones surrounding Camp Half-Blood.
As he gazed out at the horizon, something caught his eye at the level of the forest. A large dark shape was gliding over the treetops, spiralling up and down a couple of times before gracefully disappearing back into the trees. Percy immediately recognised the creature to be a winged horse, rather like a Pegasus, though something about its uncustomary grace and the delicacy of its wings made him suspect this was not strictly the kind of horse he could find back at Camp.
Curious, but not really surprised, Percy made up his mind to go and investigate - school rules be damned. He got up and shook the morning dew off his robes (on second inspection, it probably hadn't been a very good idea to sit down after all, and he didn't know any drying magic yet). Percy estimated the direct distance to the forest to be about a quarter of a mile, and walking around the lake would perhaps double that distance.
Grinning, because he had missed his element, Percy shrugged and walked down to the beach, not bothering even to remove his shoes as he charged into the water. As usual, he was quite dry as the water lapped over his limbs and washed over his entire body as he plunged right in. He could sense it was cold, though he only felt a slight coolness on his skin as he consciously chose not to feel it.
The lake's waters were dark, but surprisingly clear as he easily stroked his way across. The lake floor evened out for a couple dozen feet as he swam, then sharply gave way to a big expanse of water as it dropped down in to an underwater cliff.
Completely undaunted by the dark masses of eerie weeds and cold undercurrents below him, Percy dove further in, deeper and closer to the lake's floor. He was sensible enough not to go through the forest of kelp, because this was not salt-water and therefore not as secure as the sea to him, and he had no idea what kind of creatures the wizarding world would have in its aquatic whereabouts.
Schools of fish swan past him, their lithe silver bodies flashing in the faint light before they disappeared either in the kelp or the darker waters to his left or straight ahead of him. On a few occasions, Percy was sure he saw humanoid figures flitting around in the weeds below, or just beyond his line of sight. He wondered if he ought to take the wizarding world at its word and assume there were merpeople in this place. He had made the unfortunate mistake, once, of calling his godly stepmother and her kind 'mermaids', a non-deliberate slip-up that had cost him a thorough soaking from a huge wave (he'd been on a beach at the time) and an algae-rash that he was sure he was usually meant to be immune to.
Nevertheless, his years as a demigod had taught him the painful lesson of never underestimating the other side; a lesson he still occasionally forgot but not, he decided firmly, on his first day of magical classes.
He swam a little more briskly, summoning a gentle current that bore him in the direction he wished to emerge - partly because he was now sure there were not just merpeople in this lake after seeing an absolutely massive dark shape looming ahead of him and disappearing as he approached, which had eerily reminded him of Phorcys' old threats. After that, he wasted no time in reaching the other side and scrambling out.
He collapsed on the grassy bank, breathing more heavily and feeling the need to close his eyes a little. Swimming through and controlling freshwater was always more tiring to him than the sea. He basked in the sunshine for a minute or so, enjoying the warmth, when out of the blue came a few voices calling out to him.
His eyes flew open and he caught sight of several girls waving at him from the water, about twenty feet away from the bank.
Rubbing his eyes and surprised beyond words despite his earlier resolution not to be, Percy approached the water again and beckoned. The girls hesitated, looking at each other with uncertainty as though they hadn't expected to be summoned. After a few moments' hesitation, one of them took the lead and cautiously approached the edge of the water. When she was about ten feet away, Percy called out to her.
"Er... Good morning." he said. "What's your name?"
She was obviously some sort of nymph, because he hadn't seen anyone else around the lake, and her skin had a blue-grey tone that said she wasn't human. Her features were pointed and pretty in the way most nature spirits were, though Percy had yet to have seen anyone like her and her friends.
"My name's Moiragh." she replied, in an accent similar to Professor McGonagall's. "We're Asrai. What's your name, young demigod?"
Percy's eyes widened in surprise.
"How did you know-"
Moiragh laughed in a voice that reminded one of gurgling streams in the mountains.
"No-one's done what you just did for centuries." she replied, amused at his bewilderment. "The mortals here never venture very far from the shore, and certainly not as a shortcut. Nor do the waters of the lake respond to their will." She added with a smile. Her sisters giggled.
"Oh. Right." Percy answered with an eloquence to rival that of Cal's. "Um. My name's Percy Jackson."
The nymphs smiled at him. Percy wondered why they called themselves the Asrai. He'd never heard of that term before; maybe they were the Northern European version of naiads.
"What brings you here?" Moiragh asked him, her curiosity drawing her closer to the bank.
"School, mostly." Percy said. "I had no idea I was gonna meet people like you here, though."
Moiragh shrugged.
"Oh, we've always been here. For centuries and centuries."
"Since the founding of the school? And no-one's noticed you before?" Percy asked, rather sceptically.
The nymph scoffed.
"Of course not. Mortals don't see us, even if we flop out of the water and waggle our hands in front of their faces. It's like we don't exist. But you," she said, smiling beguilingly and approaching even more, "you see us."
Percy decided to play the part.
"And how very lucky I am too." he said, hiding the sudden slight awkwardness behind a blinding smile. "The others are really missing out on something."
The Asrai giggled.
"Listen, ladies." he started again, wondering if these attention-seeking girls could be of more use to him than he had at first thought. "Are there any more people like you here? People mortals can't see. Do you know any?"
Moiragh glanced back at her sisters for consultation.
"There are the centaurs," came the cautious answer eventually. "But they're not very nice. They're not mortals, so they can see us, but the only thing they do is threaten to shoot arrows into the water if we don't stop singing."
"Yes, and one of them grazed my arm!" called a nymph behind Moiragh, holding up her forearm, on which Percy honestly could not discern any scar.
"Grumpy horse people." another grumbled. "Who doesn't like opera, anyway?"
"Yes, who?" her sister agreed. "And Elvis songs are so groovy, why shouldn't we sing them?"
"You're the only one who likes Elvis." her friend said, scowling and nudging her in the ribs. "Kylie's much better."
"Nope. Tom Jones." another one joined in. "He's the best. That scowly centaur likes his songs, too. He only shoots arrows if it's not Tom Jones music."
Moiragh cleared her throat.
"Anyway," she said, rather loudly, "it's mostly the centaurs, but there are others as well, because we can hear things that mortals never seem to notice, like laughter and...er, howls. The Forest has lots of different creatures in it, but we live in the water, so we don't see very many."
She smiled rather nervously as she finished. Percy thought she was maybe a little scared of the forest.
"What about those horses with wings? Can mortals see them?"
Moiragh cocked her head to one side.
"We're never sure." she answered honestly. "I've seen a few students jump a bit when one of them flies above the trees, but sometimes they come out from the edge of the forest and I don't think anyone really notices it."
Percy picked at the grass near his feet, frowning in thought.
"Huh. That's strange." he mumbled. "D'you think the students who saw them were... like me?"
The nymphs shook their heads.
"You're the only demigod we've seen for...ages. We don't even know how long it's been. Decades and decades. It's like suddenly ages ago mortals with magic just got cut off from our world, but now... you're here."
Percy nodded. He'd expected that answer, if he was being honest.
"Well, girls, it's been a pleasure." he got up and reached out to shake Moiragh's cool, slightly slimy hand, like a fish's, and determinedly kept his face straight at the touch of it. "I'm expected for breakfast, but you can be certain I'll come and see you again."
The nymphs blushed violet at his words and nodded eagerly. They chorused their farewells as he left. One of them even started the chorus of So Long, Farewell before her sister hit her upside the head and told her to shut up.
Percy made it in time for breakfast in the Great Hall, and to his relief navigation had been fairly simple, since the door he had used to leave was situated right next to the hall. The ceiling, enchanted to mimic the sky, was grey and overcast as he entered, the weather in Scotland apparently as changeable as the school's staircases. He sat down next Thalia, who was eating an apple. She did so by slicing morsels from it with a sharp knife that was hers - not the rounded gold ones they had used the night before - and earning many concerned stares.
"Morning, stranger." she greeted him, putting a slice of apple in her mouth. "Where've you been? Annabeth was going spare."
"Went for a swim." he said, grinning.
Thalia put down her knife and fixed him with glare.
"You did not." she said flatly.
"I did. Met a few very nice girls at the lake, too. Very...spiritual."
His emphasis on the last word registered as he had intended, and her eyes widened in surprise.
"Already?" was her answer to that.
Percy laughed quietly. "Well, we can't complain. Usually it's monsters we attract."
"Well, yeah... But-"
She was interrupted by the sound of a hand hitting flesh, just as Percy's entire torso jerked forward and he nearly spat out his orange juice as Frank sat down to his right after having slapped his back so hard he was seeing black spots.
Percy was winded.
"What...was...that...for?" he wheezed at his friend.
"Sorry." Frank answered, looking a bit uncomfortable. "Annabeth's orders."
"Annabeth's...what?"
"Percy Jackson, how dare you disappear like that?" a furious voice whisper-yelled in Percy's left.
He cringed and turned to face his very angry and very aggressive girlfriend.
"I can explain-" he started.
She ignored him.
"Do you have any idea what it was like for me to wake up and find you were gone, again, with no explanations - nothing! - no reasons to leave, no idea where to find you?"
Percy winced. He hadn't thought of that. He'd known his disappearance between the two wars had upset her greatly for months, but he hadn't expected her trauma to resurface the moment he wasn't in sight.
"I didn't think-"
"No, you didn't think." came Jason's voice behind them. "That's the problem, Percy."
Like the others, he was dressed in his colour-coded uniform and was walking over to them hand in hand with Piper, and he looked grave as only someone related to Jupiter could be.
"Everything we do here is at great personal risk." Annabeth reminded Percy tersely. "I thought we'd established that."
"I know." he said gently, trying to take her hand, even though she'd crossed her arms so tightly there was little chance of finding it. "I know. I just didn't think being alone for an hour would cause an uproar. I've gone off alone at camp dozens of times since the war, and it never caused a problem."
"Camp is our home. This is still unknown territory." Jason said reasonably.
"Here goes the Roman, again." Thalia said, rolling her eyes. "All battle decisions and no gut feeling."
"Let's not make this about Greek and Roman, Thalia." Piper reprimanded her friend gently. "This is about sticking together when we can."
Percy tugged a bit more and finally Annabeth's hand came free of her arms' steely grip.
"I promise I won't go off alone without telling anyone." he told her softly. "I'll leave a note, or take someone with me."
Annabeth's intense grey eyes bore into his, and she held his gaze for a few seconds before squeezing his hand in return.
"Just don't do let that happen to us again." she nearly whispered, sounding uncharacteristically vulnerable. "I don't think I could cope if you really did disappear."
"Sure you could." Percy said, pulling her down next to him and kissing her temple. "You're my Wise Girl, one of the strongest people I know."
She smiled shakily and poked him in the ribs.
"One of the strongest?" she scoffed, with a smile.
"Definitely in the top two." he said seriously.
Annabeth laughed, not even needing to ask. She shared his opinion of Nico di Angelo. That kid was the toughest person either of them knew; it had taken the two of them, a friendly titan and a pacific giant to get them through Tartarus, whereas Nico had done it alone. If that didn't get the boy kudos, Percy didn't want to know what did.
The small group of demigods clustered around the part of the Gryffindor table Thalia had claimed, where they were soon joined by Hazel, Leo and Nico. They made a colourful bunch, grouped together like that with their uniform trimmings of various colours and equally colourful jokes, only matched by the sickeningly vibrant pink of Umbridge's cardigan as she entered the hall and smugly sat down two seats away from the Headmaster. Her smugness, to their delight, evaporated quickly as she noticed their multi-house congregation. She was not the only one to have noticed: all around the Great Hall students were staring and pointing at the group of new students who clearly were not aware of millenia-old prejudicial conventions.
Of course, they were aware, because Dumbledore and McGonagall's delicate skating around the subject of house unity had been easy to imply from, but that did not make them hesitant in the slightest to flaunt their indifference and, as Leo so eloquently said, 'stick their conventions up Hecate's weasel and her gastric system'.
Indeed, their utter don't-careishness about the whole thing soon spread among the more open-minded students, and some of them even grinned gleefully and went to join their own friends from different houses, now that someone had started the fad. Percy noted with interest - but without much surprise, in accordance with all they'd heard about Slytherin house - that the table sporting green-trimmed uniforms remained decidedly unicoloured, and some of them occasionally shot dark glares at Piper and Nico, who, judging by their pinker-than-usual necks, were very aware of the green on their own robes.
Among the staff however, only Umbridge looked as though someone ought to be doing something to break up this unorthodox grouping of students at meals. She kept glancing up and down the staff table as though trying to catch her colleagues' eyes, but here the other teachers forever endeared themselves to Percy by supremely ignoring her. One of them, whom Percy didn't yet know the name of, even propped up his newspaper between them to block her from sight following very obvious wink-wink-nudge-nudge gestures.
Professor McGonagall soon came down and started distributing timetables.
"Ah, I'm glad I've found you all together," she said, business-like, as she reached them. "Professor Dumbledore has entrusted me with the task of fine-tuning the details of your education here at Hogwarts."
She leafed through her papers, peering over the edge of her spectacles.
"Upon consulting your school files from Mythomagic, which we were able to retrieve late last night, we were able to establish suitable timetables with each of your subjects. I'm afraid, though, that Martial Arts are only partially covered here, and only then in Defence Against the Dark Arts, which focuses mainly on magical defence."
Oblivious to their exchanged glances and slight bemusement, she handed them all a piece of strengthened parchment with a table detailing their classes, room locations and times. There were six periods a day, with twenty minutes mid-morning for break and an hour at lunch. Comparing his with Frank and Hazel's, Percy noticed that he had free periods - presumably for studying - whereas they had not.
"Professor, what does Ancient Runes involve in Hogwarts?" Annabeth inquired, looking up from scanning her timetable. "Is there any use of practical magic in the lessons?"
McGonagall glanced down at the parchment.
"Possibly, though not in the process of actually learning the runes and their uses. I believe the subject is mainly the deciphering and calculation of power of individual symbols. I am not an expert, so I suggest you ask your teacher for specific details, but I do believe magic and incantations come in useful when the runes are laid out and bound together to perform a specific purpose, such as prevention of entry, or a protection spell."
Annabeth nodded, satisfied. She looked relieved that at least one of her subjects seemed based on intellect rather more than magical prowess.
The nine demigods compared their timetables, surreptitiously asking Frank to decipher the writing for them, because the tables were neatly written in very curly, very elegant spaghetti, and saw that they shared the ambiguously-named subjects of Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Astrology, something called Herbology ("Gardening," Leo muttered. "You're kidding me? I bet Demeter added that for us.") Muggle Studies, Divination and Care of Magical Creatures. Percy noted that Annabeth had two extra ones called Ancient Runes and Arithmancy. Leo also had Ancient Runes on his schedule.
"Well, that's just wonderful." Leo mumbled. "Extra work, and for a subject we've never even heard of."
"Ancient Runes, Leo," Annabeth said, looking pleased. "It'll be like learning a new alphabet, only magical."
"And that's a good thing how, exactly?" Leo scoffed. "We can barely read these," he flapped the timetable around, nearly hitting a passing Hufflepuff, " - oh, sorry - and they're in English!"
"We'll manage." Annabeth said calmly, folding the paper and putting it in her pocket. "Wizards are bound to have some sort of spell to help kids with learning difficulties."
Leo just looked at her, and started to grin slowly.
"What?" Annabeth asked, immediately suspicious.
"Oh, it's just - the irony!" he said, starting to laugh. "Two of the smartest Camp can offer, ending up in the house meant for clever people, and it turns out they can barely read!"
"Yes, shout it out on the rooftops, why don't you?" Annabeth muttered crossly.
"Aw, don't worry about it." Percy dismissed with a nonchalant shrug. "We'll find a way. We always do."
Thalia grinned, then glanced over Nico's shoulder, quickly comparing it with hers.
"Huh, there's a surprise," she said, smirking, "I'd have expected them to add Necromancy to yours."
Nico scowled and glowered at her. The huntress held up her hands and backed off, laughing.
"Sorry, I'll shut up." she promised.
Nico pointedly looked away and ignored her.
"Shouldn't be hard to convince them to include it though, if you like." Thalia pressed on, apparently ignoring all expected conventions of keeping her word. "Considering you look like death warmed up."
To his credit, Nico almost didn't physically react at all, instead glaring so hard at the table that Percy could have sworn the steam rising from the porridge bowl wasn't entirely due to overcooking.
"That's enough Thalia." he snapped at her. "Know when to stop."
Thalia scoffed.
"Big words coming from you, Mr I've-provoked-Tartarus-and-lived-to-tell-the-tale."
"He's right, Thal." Jason said quietly. "That's enough."
Thalia glanced around her circle of friends, saw their steely gazes, and the look of irritation that nobody seemed to get the humour of her jest quickly faded into something resembling shame. She flushed slightly and punched Nico on the arm.
"Sorry, dude." she muttered. "Didn't mean anything by it, you know."
Nico nodded tersely and gave a stiff shrug - a brave but - in Percy's opinion - slightly unconvincing gesture that the remark had left him unconcerned. Hazel, who'd been looking annoyed on her brother's behalf, suddenly brightened, grinned, and whispered something in Nico's ear. No-one heard what she said, but Nico suddenly flushed pink and determinedly avoided everyone's gaze. Hazel leant back and smirked in satisfaction, while Percy made a mental note to later ask Nico what she'd said.
After a slightly awkward silence, Frank muttered that they had better hurry up if they wanted to be on time for their first lesson. They parted at the hall entrance, arranging to meet at the Ravenclaw table for lunch. Frank, Hazel and Nico departed together for their joint Hufflepuff-Slytherin Charms lesson, while the others wandered upstairs to find Annabeth and Leo's Ancient Runes classroom whilst keeping an eye out for the Transfiguration room, where Percy, the fake twins and Piper would be having their first lesson.
Having soon found the Runes classroom, where Annabeth recognised a new acquaintance and dragged Leo along with a hasty goodbye to the others, the four remaining demigods soon regretted not having Hazel with them. The girl truly was amazing at finding her way in all situations, including labyrinthine millenia-old castles. They ambled fruitlessly for a few minutes, the lesson time drawing dangerously close to the present, until Percy spotted with relief Alec Malone who was heading in a certain direction. Transfiguration was a compulsory subject only until fifth year, but Percy knew from their conversation the previous night that Alec still took it. He pulled his friends behind him and followed the Gryffindor along the length of two corridors and several archways hidden behind tapestries before emerging right next to the correct classroom.
Slightly breathless after the quick pace, they bustled in and looked around, unsure where to sit. Seeing as it was the start of term, other students were also choosing their seats, arguing with neighbours, waving at friends, and pointedly placing their bags on a seat next to them in reservation for someone. The demigods found two free desks in a corner of the room without much trouble, and settled themselves down, with Jason and Piper together at the front, and Thalia and Percy right behind them.
The other students were casting them frequent, curious looks. A few even looked disappointed, presumably because the opportunity to sit next to one of them had evaporated before it had even existed. If he was being perfectly honest, Percy actually much preferred it that way. He had nothing against making new friends, quite the contrary, but in such an unfamiliar environment it was always better - not to mention more comfortable - to have familiar faces around you. He hoped the fifth-year demigods had also found a way of sticking together - to hell with what Dumbledore said about fitting in. Nico and Piper really hadn't seemed keen on their housemates last night.
The other students were still openly casting glances at them, and a couple even got to their feet and started to make their way over to the demigods, but Professor McGonagall swept in before they could reach them and make conversation.
The witch strode up the length of her classroom, batting away the few students who were still standing with a sheath of parchments.
"Settle down," she said, her tones as crisp as usual. "Yes, I'm sure we're all glad to welcome our transfer students, Bolder, Woodville, no need to gawk at them like petrified house-elves."
The two students who had been about to come over and talk to them, a blonde girl and a boy with reddish-brown curls, blushed and meekly regained their seats.
McGonagall bustled around her desk, arranging papers, opening drawers and taking out several cages - all entirely too large or the foot-wide drawers, as per usual in the wizarding world - containing small squeaking animals Percy didn't recognise.
"Right. We'll be starting this term with Conjuring spells. They're not due to be officially examined until your NEWTs year, but the more practice you get the better. Conjuring spells are harder than Vanishing spells - which, as I'm sure you'll remember from last year, were far from simple as well. Don't look at me like that Codswallader, I know it's only the first day back, but you've all just had two months to yourselves. This is school; it's hard work. If that's news to you, I may just as well recommend you as an apprentice to Hagrid, though his hard work is a different kind to our own."
Percy exchanged a look with his friends, alarmed at their teacher's steely words. Her gaze was no less cold and sharp as she surveyed the room.
"I will take this opportunity to remind you that this is your sixth year," she continued, her eyes fixing them over her square spectacles. "We expect each and every one of you to pick up the pace of work quickly and efficiently. Fail to do so, and you will find yourself falling behind."
Percy gulped, and beside him Thalia and Piper groaned. Jason sat up a little straighter, but didn't look any more bothered than if someone had announced their expectation to see him at dinner that evening. Percy wished he himself could have that attitude, but unfortunately studies had never been his forte. He was a genius in his own right, Annabeth had once said with a smirk, thinking of the many occasions he had escaped from monsters and hostile immortals using his wits alone, but he was not an academic. It was a shame, Percy suddenly found himself thinking, because whilst McGonagall was apparently not one to attract much liking or warmth, he already had high respect for her, and desperately did not want to disappoint her - or worse, anger her. Her stern demeanour terrified him as much as it earned her his respect.
"The task for the next hour will be to conjure several wood lice each. These Falken Pixies," Professor McGonagall pointed at the cage of chattering small animals, "are here to test your results, should there be any. Falken Pixies are very fond of wood lice, and if the ones you have conjured are faulty, they will not eat them. Begin."
Without much further ado, the whole class started to attempt Conjuring sells. Well, the whole class except four. The demigods glanced at each other, slight panic written across their faces.
"That's it?" Thalia said. "No specific instructions, no steps to follow? "
"What do we do?" Piper whispered. "Do we still try?"
"Only way we're ever going to learn, isn't it?" Jason replied grimly. He pulled out his wand from his sleeve (something the others had seen him do that morning and immediately copied because it was actually quite a good place to put it, not having bags or pockets deep enough). The wand, they had learned, was made of olive-wood and had a core of - Percy still couldn't quite get his head around it - one of Zeus' lighting bolts. Percy was willing to bet no-one - ever - had had a wand like that, nor would they ever have one.
Jason checked the board, where their teacher had written the incantation, cleared his throat and stared intently at his desk, before waving his wand in front of him and carefully articulating the Latin words which, as far as Percy could tell, meant 'Wood lice bound together'.
Nothing happened. Jason looked disappointed, but unsurprised. He saw the others looking at him with slight amusement.
"Well, go on then, your turn." he said, a little defensively.
Piper giggled and made her own attempt at the spell. When she spoke the words, her voice was laden with charmspeak, discernible even in Latin. Her wand emitted several little beads, tiny and very dark, which scattered on her desk upon impact and rolled to a stop after covering a few inches. Piper gave a small yelp and leapt back, probably not exceedingly comfortable with the idea that multi-limbed crawling things were now potentially going to attack her. Percy knew that she was not squeamish in the slightest, but he also knew that their experience with those murderous nymphs had left a scar, and he did not blame her in the slightest. In that black, poisonous excuse for water he'd thought he could feel things in there too.
Percy leaned forward to look more closely at the beads. They weren't moving. He reached out a hand and prodded one with his finger. It didn't show any signs of life.
"They're not wood lice." he announced. "Dunno what they are, but I bet our Pixie friends can confirm that."
Piper sighed in relief and leaned back forward, looking at her creations with an air of fascination.
"I created that?" she wondered. Her face fell after a few seconds. "Didn't really work though."
Thalia and Jason spluttered.
"But - Piper, you managed to get something on your first try!" Jason exclaimed, sounding a little envious. "You heard what McGonagall said, it's really hard."
Thalia grinned. "You've just performed your first feat of magic."
Piper blushed and modestly looked down.
"Okay, my go." Percy volunteered, shaking his sleeves back and readying his wand, but before he could utter the incantation, Professor McGonagall suddenly appeared next to them.
"Ah, Mr. Jackson. Do continue." she said, nodding approvingly at Piper's mysterious bead creations and looking at him with interest.
Percy exchanged a very quick glance with his friends and swallowed.
"Erm - Okay... Here goes."
He spoke the incantation and jabbed his wand at the desk before him but, predictably, nothing happened.
For a split-second, McGonagall looked slightly disappointed, as though she had expected something to happen, but an instant later she had switched back to mentor-mode and was giving Percy and his friends further directives.
"Remember," she said, "it's all about intent. Stories about wishes coming true are all very well and good, but in real life you have to be able to picture your creation, design it inside your head, transfer that crystal-clear idea to your wand and will it into existence. Willing is different to wishing - I'm sure you've heard of the saying When there's a will, there's a way. Even Muggles use it, but it origins from centuries ago, from when wizards and witches were not as hidden from society as they are now, and non-magical folk often asked them for remedies to their problems."
She drifted off, leaving the four demigods slightly discouraged.
It was Thalia's turn at doing the spell next. She cleared her throat and stared at empty space in front of her. It took her a little longer to say the words, and Percy knew she was doing what McGonagall had said and creating it in her mind before making it appear.
When she did say the spell, a couple of beads fell from the tip of her wand and bounced on the desk. Delighted, she gave a small sound of triumph and picked one of them up to examine it. It was slightly different to Piper's, more ovular in shape and a lighter brown in colour. Still not, strictly speaking, woodlice, but it damned well looked like some.
"Wow! Well done, Thalia." Percy said, genuinely impressed. "How'd you do that?"
"Just like McGonagall said," Thalia replied with a nonchalant shrug that contrasted with the pleased sparkle in her eyes. "Intent, and all that. You have to really picture it and... I dunno, will it to appear, I guess."
It was harder than what she made it sound like. Percy and Jason tried again and again, finding it hard to conjure what both girls had managed so far, and even Piper admitted she had felt the charmspeak affect her magic when she'd done it, like it had been forced to respond to her will. When she tried to conjure more woodlice - but without the charmspeak - it wasn't until her fifth try that she managed to produced little beads much like Thalia's. A little later, Jason also succeeded in conjuring five little beads of his own, three of which even had tiny little legs.
With ten minutes left of the lesson, a disgruntled and somewhat pressurized Percy attempted once more to conjure the dratted things. This time, he remembered something he'd been told very recently: the sea will always be the source of your power.
Okay, he thought, let's do this my way.
He stared at the desk, where he wanted the woodlice to appear. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the stick of driftwood in his hand, knowing it had come from the sea, that it had drifted across an ocean for days on end, imbued its waters and absorbed its power. This wood had known the sea, the rolling motion of the waves, the wind and lightning conjured by Kymopoleia, the motion of every current and the wearing down of its edges by washing up again and again on sandy beaches.
Percy started to feel a slight thrum in his wand, as though the tool was hearing his thoughts and responding to them. The thrill of magic ran up the length of his arm, and suddenly Percy could smell salt-water and brine. In his hand, his wand felt warm and full of power, until it felt like the entirety of the sea was at his command.
Summoning to mind an image of many small, brown, creeping woodlice, Percy opened his eyes and spoke the Latin words with as much conviction as he could manage.
Thalia gasped and Piper leapt back again with a yelp. With a startled cry bursting from his own lips, Percy jumped as a small stream of woodlice poured onto his desk from thin air. His concentration interrupted, the stream of woodlice stopped, but the ones already created did not: the wooden desk was suddenly covered with tiny scuttling insects, each one desperately trying to make its escape.
Jason laughed in delighted surprise, while Piper tried to look pleased and revolted at the same time. Thalia grinned and clapped Percy on the back, who was sitting there with a great bit goofy grin, so wide he was starting to look like the Cheshire Cat.
"What a climax!" Jason said, still laughing slightly. "Saved the best for the last minute, did you?"
"How did you do that?" Piper asked. "Those were real."
Percy shrugged.
"Remembered where my real powers lay." he said with a small smile.
A look of comprehension appeared in his friends' eyes.
"Right." Thalia muttered decisively. "I'll try that next time."
The Falken Pixies, they would find out in a week's time, had fallen ill and died unexpectedly. Percy would always wonder if his woodlice had been faulty after all, or if they'd been so nutritious the Pixies had simply died of indigestion.
0o0o0o0o0o0
Annabeth was finding Arithmancy very difficult, and trying to pretend she wasn't. Not that the difficulty bothered her: a challenge was always welcome to children of Athena, especially if it involved numbers. The mathematical side of the subject was actually quite manageable, she found in surprise - about the level she had back home at school.
But it was the magical aspect of it she found hard to get to grips with. Her discomfort and frustration with the subject irked her further whenever she was reminded that she had been placed a year lower than her age required. Apparently, you could not take sixth-year Arithmancy - which was NEWT preparation - unless you had an OWL in it, and so she found herself in a class of fifth years. Unlike traditional, core subjects, this class had members of all four houses in it, since Arithmancy was not as popular as, say, Divination (which was renowned for being an easy pass, and thus highly coveted by practical-minded students).
At first, Annabeth had thought of this as an advantage: lower level of difficulty; smaller classroom= closer tutoring; and a more diverse learning environment student-wise. After her first couple of lessons, however, she was to land back to reality with a thump.
First of all, the notion that math could somehow be affected by magic was something her logical mind was finding very hard to accept. Math, it was generally agreed, was pretty much the only exact science known to mankind (well, other sentient creatures too, but that wasn't the point). No giant, omnipotent force - benevolent or otherwise - should be able to change the fact that two and two equalled four.
Yet, apparently with Arithmancy, not only could incantations muttered during calculations alter the result, said results were usually employed as a primitive basis for divination. And also, numbers reportedly had magical properties. Okay, so she'd known about three being widely regarded as a holy or perfect number, and even seven was known for being frequently present in legends. But magic and numbers, she decided for the twentieth time that lesson, were supposed to be about as compatible as oil and water.
Annabeth had no idea how she had ended up doing this subject; Fates knew she'd never studied anything like it before. She doubted Chiron had picked it out for her - and while she wouldn't put anything past the gods she also had trouble believing they would interfere in something so apparently trivial as school subjects.
Still, it was more interesting than Ancient Runes (which both she and Leo so far found disconcertingly easy, because coincidentally they were starting term with an Ancient Greek-based module) and it was so far founded on theory, so once the teacher had explained the basics of a certain kind of problem-solving, Annabeth had more or less figured the rest out by herself. The only big hiccup she found were the incantations, really. It felt ridiculous to be muttering words in a dead language all the while you were scribbling out numbers and symbols and looking for a result.
After failing to solve a particularly hard question for the third time - because she kept losing track of her calculations while she was uttering the unfamiliar words - she turned to her neighbour, a girl with long, bushy brown hair. Her red-trimmed uniform said she was a Gryffindor, though not someone Annabeth had met yet.
"Excuse me," she approached the girl, a little hesitantly, because she was concentrating so hard that a frown was etched across her brow. "Do you think you could help me? I'm kinda stuck."
The girl looked up, and it was a moment before the frown disappeared and her eyes snapped back to reality.
"Oh. Yes, all right." the girl said, graciously enough. "I've finished them all anyway, I was just checking I had the right answers. What are you stuck on?"
"Um... The spell bit," Annabeth answered, embarrassed that she was asking for help in a subject that was usually her area of expertise. "I can't solve the equation while I'm saying the spell - it's distracting, especially when I know that usually math doesn't change just because a few words of Mayan are thrown at it."
"Ah yes, I see." the girl said sympathetically. "Don't worry, it'll come easily enough as you get more practice. Haven't you done Arithmancy before, then?"
"Um, no. Not really. I suppose this was the closest subject they could find to what I was doing back at home." Annabeth replied, fiddling with her wand.
"Really? What was that?" the girl asked, fully curious now.
Annabeth was starting to regret initiating this conversation. Getting into details was dangerous, she knew.
"Math, really. There was very little magic involved." Her eye caught one of the posters that were around the room, and was suddenly inspired. "It was like the history of math; we studied various numerical systems from all around the world at different eras in time. Most of it was just calculations, but occasionally we had to use magic to get to results faster."
Her neighbour nodded, readily accepting the explanation.
"Yes, that's also one of the uses we have for magic in Arithmancy. But maybe the rest of it'll come naturally for you - it did for me. Instinct has a big influence on calculations. "
"Mm." Annabeth replied non-commitally. "Maybe."
She could see the girl was dying to ask more questions, and she was not disappointed.
"You're Annabeth Chase, aren't you?" the girl asked. "One of the transfer students."
"Yeah," Annabeth said with a small smile. "Did my accent give me away?"
"I'm Hermione Granger." the girl revealed, offering her hand to shake. "I saw you get Sorted last night. The Hat took a while to decide for you."
"Does it do that often?"
Hermione cocked her head to the side, reflecting on that for a moment.
"Well, it's not uncommon, but it's pretty rare for it to happen so many times during a Sorting. Two of your friends took over a minute to be Sorted." she explained, the unspoken question clear in her tone.
Annabeth recalled Hazel and Frank taking a while to leave the stool, and wondered if a delay in Sorting meant something particular about the students.
"Mm. If I know my friends, the Hat was having trouble deliberating between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff." she said, smiling fondly.
"Well, that's encouraging." Hermione said, smiling as well. "Good, brave and loyal. Your friends have some of the best qualities there are."
Annabeth nodded, fully agreeing, but questing-demigod suspicion starting to make itself known. Were so many questions normal for someone she had met a minute ago? Was Hermione trying to gain information about them?
Annabeth shook her head and scowled at her parchment. She tried to scold herself for being so paranoid. Of course it was normal; just a teenager trying to be friendly to a new girl. Questions were a perfectly normal part of the process.
Hermione was talking again, so Annabeth tried to pay attention.
"It's lucky for the school you and your friends got spread out across all Houses, actually." Hermione remarked, starting to pack her bag as the lesson came close to the end and Professor Vector told them to finish up. "If you'd all ended up in one or two houses, the others would either have spent the rest of their year following you around out of fascination or made your life hell out of pent-up jealousy."
Annabeth let out a small laugh, but quietly also started to wonder if, after all, the gods were interfering more than expected. It couldn't have been pure coincidence that their personalities matched Hogwarts' four houses so conveniently... could it? And so evenly matched, too. Two in each house, except for Gryffindor, where three of her friends had ended up and in which also, funnily enough, was where their charge happened to be.
Lucky, indeed.
0o0o0o0o0
Nico really should have thought twice about summoning that dead mouse. He really, really should have, because now all the students in his joint Hufflepuff-Slytherin Charms class were standing on every table and bench available, alternately shrieking about inferi mice or zombie rodents, depending on the extent of their muggle background. One of the Slytherins in Nico's year, the blond one with silk trim and expensive cologne that really did not go well with the panicky yelping sounds he was making, was scrabbling about on one of the Slytherin desks, steering his two gorilla friends around him so he was completely immune to potential attacks from undead mice. Unfortunately for him, he couldn't seem to make his mind up if he wanted to keep an eye out for the decomposing mouse or hide behind his acolytes and miss seeing it sneaking up on him.
From his position - sitting perfectly immobile on the bench next to Hazel and Frank and looking around with cool disdain at the panicking students - Nico really couldn't bring himself to sympathize.
It had been that boy's fault Nico had felt black rage and the sudden urge to frighten the Furies out of him. Class had started well enough, with the usual bustle of choosing seats and unpacking of bags, during which the three fifth-year demigods chose to sit together, but as soon as Professor Flitwick had set them a task and practice had started, the stupid blond git had proceeded to make derogative comments at the top of his voice. Clearly, he had drawled with raised eyebrows and a sigh, foreigners didn't know the ways of Hogwarts, because why else would a self-respecting Slytherin choose to sit next to people who were only at Hogwarts because wizarding society felt sorry for them?
The boy's comment immediately caused Frank and Nico to tense and whip around in white-lipped fury, but then, as if that hadn't been bad enough, when Hazel stopped Frank from marching over and punching the blond cazzo by taking his hand and briefly touching his cheek, the boy raised his eyebrows, shook his head and voiced, in a tone of the fakest concern possible, that interracial relationships really weren't encouraged, around here - impurities, diseases and all that.
Hazel and Frank's jaws dropped open in speechless outrage, while Nico outwardly remained as still as marble. His eyes, he had inferred from the past few years, were what could truly cause other people to quake in their shorts slightly, especially when he was angry. And right now, no lotus cake nor overdose of shadowtravel could knock him out of it enough to stop the glare he sent at the boy.
Nico knew these kind of people, their prejudices and righteous certainties. Hazel did, too - Jim Crow activists had a hell of a lot to answer for. Of the three of them, Frank was perhaps the most untouched by the injustices of discrimination, but right now he was the one preparing to maul the son of a pox-faced Empousa, while Nico glared a very painful death at him.
Before Frank could try to reach the boy again, Nico restrained him by the arm.
"Leave it to me." He muttered.
Frank reluctantly sat down again, and the blond Slytherin laughed with his friends, proceeding to imitate Frank's burly frame trying to slot back down on the bench without knocking over the one behind him. While Hazel was murmuring soothing things to her beetroot-faced boyfriend, Nico looked around the classroom's corners. In the one furthest from him, to the right of their teacher's desk, was a section dark enough so that the actual corner was invisible. A small, sinister smile stretched Nico's lips as he made a beckoning motion with his hand under the desk. A second later he saw, with great satisfaction, a small mangled grey shape scuttle out of the shadows and make its way towards the group of still laughing Slytherins.
It was another few seconds before the first scream sounded. A girl with dark hair cut to a shoulder-length bob, the one who so far had always laughed first at the blond boy's jokes, shrieked and scrambled up on the bench she'd been sitting on.
"Mouse!" She screeched. "There's a moving- it's dead... There's a mouse!"
A few seconds later half the class - boys as much as girls, Nico was amused to see - were frantically copying the girl and standing up on their desks.
"Professor!" The girl shrieked. "There's a dead mouse attacking us!"
Professor Flitwick looked up from his papers and frowned. It was a mark of the strength of his studious concentration, Nico thought more bitterly than he expected, that he had somehow failed to notice any commotion beforehand.
"Come again, Miss Parkinson? A dead mouse?" He replied, his tone making it clear he did not appreciate the joke should there be one, nor the girl's shrill voice.
"Pansy's right, sir, there's one running around the classroom and it's more skeleton than mouse!" The blond boy called, visibly making an effort not to sound too panicked, instead schooling his features into an almost passable expression of concerned incredulity. If Nico hadn't been the cause of the persistent tremor in the boy's voice, he would have applauded the person who was.
"Don't be ridiculous, Mr Malfoy. How can a dead mouse be chasing you?"
Like this, Nico thought. He made a tiny tugging motion towards his stomach under the desk, and another small, deteriorating shape shot out from under the teacher's desk.
Flitwick caught sight of the flash of grey and jumped so violently he toppled backwards off his pile of books - which, fortunately looked like they had previously been charmed to cushion his fall.
"Good heavens!" He spluttered. "Stop that at once, whoever's doing this!"
His words were lost in a cacophony of shrieking students scrambling onto desks, books shoved off tables and Pansy Parkinson's howls for Malfoy to save her.
Meanwhile, Nico and his fellow demigods hadn't moved an inch and were having trouble not laughing - something which Nico thought was actually looking rather suspicious, and was about to surreptitiously suggest they copy their classmates when Flitwick succeeded in picking himself up, waved his wand in one sweeping motion and suddenly the two small squirming mice zoomed into his waiting hand.
Flitwick looked surprised to see two mice, and once he had observed the decomposing state they were in he hastily switched to levitating them in front of him instead of holding them. The mice were still struggling, and in doing so bits of dead skin, listless grey fur and small bones kept dropping off and landing at the teacher's feet.
The teacher peered more closely at the squirming rodents.
"Extraordinary." he murmured, barely audible over the sounds of students cautiously climbing back down and angrily calling out for explanations.
"If this is one of your funny tricks, Malfoy, it's completely stupid!" a Hufflepuff boy shouted across at the blond Slytherin as he helped a fair-haired girl hop off a bench.
"Scared, were you McMamillan?" Malfoy countered with a sneer.
"Not half as much as you were; I'd swear with goblin magic that you were one of the first to leave the floor." the Hufflepuff replied coolly.
"Boys, settle down." Flitwick squeaked reprovingly. "This was a silly prank, and no more. No doubt the brilliant moron who thought this up acquired their props in Zonko's. I must say, I'm disappointed with you all," he eyed them sharply, "I expected you to take your work a lot more seriously now that your O.W.L. year is upon you. Such behaviour and disruptive pranks," he waved the mice around, "are unacceptable."
The class grumpily settled back down while the teacher resumed the lesson.
Nico puffed out his cheeks in relief, and smiled faintly as Frank and Hazel grinned at him. The feeling of satisfaction he got, however, evaporated a second later when he glanced up at the teacher's desk and met Flitwick's cool, calculating blue gaze.
By the way, I wanted to ask you all: do you prefer answers to reviews at the beginning of the chapter or at the end? Answering individually isn't really an option because I'm just really busy, but I don't want the page looking clunky because of my hectic exam-life. Oh, well. Let me know if you have a preference. Thanks!
UPDATE: The chapter's title, Abundans Cautela Non Nocet, means 'abundant caution does no harm'.