Chapter 15 - Fiat Voluntas Deorum
"Harry, look, I'm doing it - I'm... Oh, for Hades' sake."
They were at their fourth DA meeting, and a very frustrated Percy shoved his wand back in his pocket in disgust as his friends looked on in sympathy. His shield spell had been strong enough to keep Annabeth's Reductor curse from shattering the empty shelves they were using as targets, but then he'd lost concentration for a split-second, and the shield lifted, letting Annabeth's own strong spell sweep aside Percy's like it was mist.
Hazel put her own wand away and stretched her neck, twisting and turning her head, wincing a little as the tight muscles protested. They'd been at this exercise for over half-an-hour, and even non-corporeal magic was surprisingly tiring.
Harry came over to offer some words of advice. Hazel watched in amusement as he struggled to find a differently-worded version of 'it's fine, just keep practicing', like he'd been doing ever since their first session.
"Listen, it's all right," he was saying, "you've got the hang of it now; all you need to work on is how to keep it constant."
"But it was constant." Percy argued, looking dejected. "For a whole three seconds, at least."
Harry fought back a smile.
"Well, more practice and next time it'll be ten seconds, won't it?" he said brightly.
Percy blew out air through his cheeks.
"I thought magic was supposed to be a shortcut to everything." he said. "Why does it take ages to learn?"
"Nothing comes by itself, Seaweed Brain." Annabeth answered, her smile grim around the edges. "Even breathing was a painful lesson when we were newborns."
"Not for me, it wasn't." Percy muttered.
Harry looked at him curiously, but a second later the Patil twins yelled for his assistance and he hurried to their side (they'd managed to set someone's hair on fire) preventing him from commenting.
Percy flopped down on one of the cushions.
"I'm dog-tired." he said, groaning a little. "I miss sword-fighting."
Thalia raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that just as demanding?"
Percy shook his head, his eyes closed. "Nah. That's all physical. This stuff drains at your mind, you know? All that concentration, that intent, that recalling of all the individual spells... Aw, hell, I'd make a crap magician's apprentice."
"Aren't we magicians' apprentices already?" Frank remarked, amused.
"Whatever." Percy muttered, passing a hand over his eyes. "I'm just tired."
The lilac shadows under his eyes and his uncharacteristic bad mood did not belie his words. They were all a little short of sleep, truth be told. Last night had been spent composing a report to Chiron - on paper, since they had deemed it too risky to recruit Myrtle's services late at night - and discussing what their next moves would be.
Annabeth was still adamant that some of the teachers - especially Dumbledore - suspected them to be rather more than they appeared.
"The only positive thing about that," she'd said with a grim look of satisfaction, "is that they all hate Umbridge too much to involve her in the process."
Yes, it did seem as though Dolores Umbridge suspected the demigods of nothing but the usual shenanigans of mischievous students. That did not mean to say that she cut them any slack: Piper had already given three reports on Harry and Co.'s activities, and each time had come back the worse for wear. But at least they were, in Umbridge's mind, nothing more than a few, pesky, normal Hogwarts students.
Teacher suspicion aside however, the most difficult aspect of their mission at present was that, put simply, they had no idea what to do next. Chiron had given them a mission, which was to protect Harry Potter. Well, considering the guy had just set up a defence practice group, safety-wise he was probably on the right track, and the demigods were feeling rather redundant: the boy didn't seem to be in any more danger than usual, so what could they do to improve that? This was a school after all, there was only so much that could happen - yes, even in an magic academy where everything moved or talked or was intent on getting a bite out of you.
The next part of the mission was trickier still. 'Find Harry Potter's friends and enemies, make allies of them if you can. Establish contact with creatures from our world.'
Where allies were concerned, they had the ghosts on their side, they had Harry himself and his closest friends, the DA, the Asrai, and possibly Jack O'Kent - though gods knew what he was doing - and they even had an unwitting Umbridge being slowly reeled into their net.
Hazel supposed that their next task ought to be to make contact with more people from their world, creatures of myth and legend. This was Europe, where Hazel and her friends' own divine parents had originally come from, a land so rich in myths and folklore that American tales of Bigfoot and Wendigos paled in comparison. And while Greece and Italy were considerably far away, Great Britain was by no means poor in lore either: these were the lands of King Arthur, Merlin, the Morrigan, Leprechaun, and Beowulf.
If wizards were real, Hazel had no doubt that those latter deities and creatures existed as well. Maybe all it took to obtaining their alliance was finding them... And if nobody had seen them for so long, as they reportedly hadn't, then perhaps they were part of the world Hecate had shielded from view all those centuries ago.
But the demigods had already seen - and conversed with - a few people who were supposedly invisible to this world. Hazel found herself wondering if the Forbidden Forest was forbidden for more than one reason; maybe, for instance, because a long time ago wizards had felt the urge to shut that part of their world away? Out of sight, out of mind, after all...
There was something lingering on the edge of her mind, like an idea - only not quite. It was too shy and vague, like the shadow of a thought instead of the usual sparkle. There was something... not quite right about what Chiron had told them in his briefing of the wizarding world. He said Hecate had shielded her children and followers from the eyes of Muggles, but it seemed to Hazel that she had shielded much more than that. Both Jack and the Asrai had known them to be demigods on sight... as though they had seen some before.
"Fred, George - no, NO! What the-"
There was a loud bang, very effectively interrupting Hazel's train of thought, and everyone jumped up or around in search of what had caused it.
Predictably, the twins were at the centre of the room's concern, looking sheepish and somewhat scorched. Wisps of pink and grey smoke curled around them, rising up towards the endless vaulted ceiling and causing many present to cough and twist their faces in revulsion. There was a smell of burned caramel and bubblegum, and something else that might have been sulphur.
Harry was visibly trying not to laugh by biting the inside of his cheek, but Hermione was fuming. The smoke for some reason made her hair go even bushier, and sparks were erupting from her wand. She looked like a pissed-off child of Jupiter.
"What did you think you were doing?" she said to the twins angrily, marching up to them and planting her hands on her hips. "I told you: no testing of your products anywhere near underage students!"
Fred and George looked up at her, at first a little dazed, but within a second a crazy grin spread across their faces. One of them - Hazel still could not tell them apart - turned to the other and raised his eyebrows, before went back to meeting Hermione's furious glare.
"Really? I don't remember that. George?" he said.
"Nope." the twin in question answered, shaking his head. "Don't recall ever hearing or agreeing to that."
Hermione opened her mouth in outrage.
"What do you mean, never heard - I told you in our first week here, no testing on students when you have no idea what the results will be."
Fred shrugged, then climbed to his feet, hauling George up with him.
"Oh, no. You see-"
"- we never agreed to that. It was you who viciously threatened us with treachery-"
"- against which we still protest, by the way-"
"- should we continue to test our products on sweet, innocent, naive little first-years-"
"- which, as you'll notice, we have stopped doing-"
"- but you never mentioned anything about testing them on ourselves or the years above, Hermione." George finished, grinning at her again.
Hermione glared at him, then gestured expansively at the people around. She didn't seem to notice that most of them were smiling faintly or exchanging amused glances. Somehow, Hazel realised, it was an accepted fact that the all-powerful Hermione, with all her books and intellect and sophisticated approach to problems, could never win an argument against the Weasley twins. But that was not to say she wouldn't try.
"And what about all of these people?" the witch pointed out, "You're not alone in this room. What would've happened if that product had been poisonous, or-"
"Explosive?" Fred suggested, still grinning and wiping his hands together. The grey scorch marks on his freckled face only enhanced his mad-scientist look.
Hermione narrowed her eyes. Fred rolled his.
"Oh, come on - it's not like anyone was hurt. And we've tested all of them before, we just needed to be sure for the sake of professionalism."
"And with Umbridge breathing down all our necks recently, there weren't many other places we could do the tests in peace." George put in, his reasonable tone actually sounding for a second like it might calm Hermione down.
But she was not having any of it. She straightened her back as much as possible and pointed a finger at their chests, her sharp eyes narrower than ever and her voice dangerously low.
"I don't care what you do to yourselves with your stupid tests, but you do not potentially endanger others with them - especially without their knowledge. Why is that such a hard concept for you to swallow?"
The twins looked at each other, hesitated, and shrugged. Fred placatingly put his hands on Hermione's shoulders, ignoring her furious look as he did so.
"We come from different worlds, Hermione," he said slowly and clearly, at a low volume. By now their audience had returned to practicing their Shield spells, and only Hazel, Harry and Ron were within earshot, "Muggles can afford to mess around with precaution and safety and rules as much as they like. But don't try to bring all those habits into the wizarding world, because they won't be appreciated."
Hermione raised an eyebrow. Her expression turned cold, as it probably did whenever someone poked at her muggle background.
"Because they're all ridiculous muggle nonsense, is that right?" she hissed, shoving Fred's hands off her shoulders.
Fred looked at her with something like pity in his eyes.
"No, it's because they're not what people here are used to." he said, more gently now and with less condescension. "Look around you: we're in a magical school full of ghosts and creatures that can kill you in a second. You're expected to learn spells that, with the wrong intention or poor aim, can wound, maim and kill. You brew mixtures that can make someone fall in love against their will or enter a lifelong coma." He looked at her more seriously than Hazel had seen the twins treat anything before.
"The wizarding world doesn't have health and safety measures because they don't fit here, Hermione. They never will. Now, Muggles can disillusion themselves that they can keep their people safe with a few rules as much as they feel comfortable with, but wizards prefer to let their children learn safety and the risk lesson for themselves."
He gave her a cocky grin.
"Ever wondered why George and I get into trouble so much? We don't care about the limits: we've toed them often enough, we know where they are. Maybe," he said, touching her arm, perhaps in apology for the unwelcome message he was sending with his words, "you should let go and get a feel for them yourself. Hogwarts and the magical world are no places for rules where obsessive safety is concerned."
With that, he turned away, clapped his brother on the shoulder and left Hermione standing there, stock-still. She looked slightly in shock, and did not move until Harry hesitantly touched her shoulder, looking at his friend with concern and an inquiring expression.
As for Hazel, she turned back to the group she had been with prior to the altercation. More people had joined them and a lively conversation was being held - something about the upcoming Quidditch match, where even newcomers were expected to pick a side - but she was still thinking about Fred's warning to Hermione.
It explained a lot of things about Hogwarts, and by extension the entire wizarding world. Why else would parents let their children learn potentially lethal spells alongside monster-like creatures if it weren't for the fact that they themselves had done it, and that it was universally considered a perfectly normal thing to do?
Hazel couldn't bring herself to feel much sympathy for Hermione. The girl was too uptight a lot of things, and rules were no exception. Even as a young girl - when Hazel hadn't even known she was a demigod - life had been hard and unfair. There had been no rules to stop people from treating her and her mother like they did, and no people to enforce them if there had. Hermione had grown up so far as part of the privileged circle of world society. If she expected the rest of it to behave the way she believed it should, even devoting her entire life to the task, she was going in for a hard fall.
The conversation taking place next to her was getting louder by the second, upsetting Hazel's thoughts once more.
"I just think that we are not getting our parents' money's worth with education nowadays," Marius Fell was saying huffily, his arms crossed. "With Umbridge teaching DADA - or pretending to, at least - Binns as a non-existential teacher for History, Snape as a medieval interrogator-turned-professor, Trelawney as the most obvious fraud in all of creation, and a half-giant who's somehow been selected as the best option for teaching us Care of Magical Creatures, we're not exactly getting the best deal."
"Hagrid isn't half bad," Harry interjected over his shoulder as he corrected Dennis Creevey's aim by physically moving his arm for him. "He's just... over-enthusiastic."
"Not to mention dangerously unaware of the risks involved." someone mumbled.
"Well, what do you expect? He's half-giant. What's dangerous to us probably looks like a puppy to him." Michael Corner said, flicking his fringe to the side - causing several girls to sigh - and shrugged with his usual effortless grace. His friend Terry Boot sat next to him, sporting the expression of bored superiority that Ravenclaws sometimes had when they talked to members of other houses. Not all of them, granted, but the older students of that house often made it clear that they placed the legacy of their founder in high esteem, possibly as high as their intellect.
That kind of behaviour had seriously irked Hazel at first, but over the weeks had come to the conclusion that they simply couldn't help it. Annabeth had once explained to them that the Ravenclaw common room was not just a place where students could relax, but was first and foremost a study room, then a debate arena, and finally somewhere to read in peace. It was like a library, she'd summarised, except with less books and thirty Madam Pince's instead of one. Thus, whenever they left their sanctuary of calm learning and educated discussion, Ravenclaws tended to feel out of place with all their uncalled-for knowledge brimming from their minds, which made it rather hard for them to tolerate students with less data-orientated interests.
Hazel raised an eyebrow.
"I thought the twins had successfully proved that safety wasn't an issue in this school." she said, with an edge of sarcasm.
Terry Boot shook his head.
"You should have seen Hogwarts in our second year. There was a series of accidents that led to several students being petrified-"
"What, by a gorgon?" Hazel asked, taken aback.
Terry raised an eyebrow, possibly impressed against his will. "D'you know, I don't think that possibility ever occurred to the teachers back then. But no, in any case, gorgons are thought to be extinct nowadays, and it turned out to be a basilisk. They usually kill with their gaze, but that one never seemed able to make full eye-contact."
"Guess it was shy." Michael said dryly.
"Anyway, for months the school was a virtual prison. The teachers were afraid to get the school shut down if they sent everyone away and alerted the Ministry, so they compromised by making sure that no-one was alone ever. That meant escorts to classrooms, to the toilet, to meals. You weren't even supposed to go to the showers without a group of friends."
"Awkward." Percy mumbled.
"So, just don't get too impressed by Fred and George's very laissez-faire attitude." Terry said, smiling faintly. "They certainly don't need many rules, usually they do know where to stop, but there are some reasonable safety measures in place."
"Like making it all right that there's a forest full of deadly creatures by putting up a sign that says 'No Entry'?"
Terry grinned.
"I said they were in place. I didn't say they were good."
Michael and Percy laughed, and Hazel smiled, but had to force it a little.
"So do people sometimes go in there?"
The boys looked at each other and shrugged.
"Not us, but the twins certainly do. At least, they have." Michael said.
"Gryffindors sometimes find it funny to dare people to go in for as long as they can without something getting a bite out of them." Terry said a little disparagingly, the slight superiority returning in his tone.
"I take it they don't brag about it if they do?" Hazel asked.
"What, get bitten? You're joking, Malfoy hurt his arm by insulting a Hippogriff two years ago and wouldn't stop drawing attention to it."
"I meant going into the forest." Hazel clarified. "If teachers got wind of it, they could get in trouble."
Terry opened his mouth to answer, but Marius had started complaining about Hogwarts' waning standards again, loudly.
"We won't get enough from school this year if we don't do anything about it." he declared, crossing his arms triumphantly. "Labor omnia vincit!"
When nobody reacted other than staring blankly, Marius scowled, then opened his mouth to explain but was cut across.
"Sorry," someone said. "No sprechen sie idiotic."
Michael Corner shifted on his seat and rolled his eyes.
"It's Latin," he said, sounding only a little less exasperated than Marius looked. "It means-"
"Hard work conquers all." Hazel completed before he could.
Everyone goggled at her, while Terry looked like he might kiss her. She smirked.
"Yeah, that's right. Hufflepuffs know Latin too."
"Not all of them." Ernie McMillan muttered.
"Not most of them." Susan amended, slapping Ernie's arm and tucking her knees under her chin to better stare at Hazel. "Where'd you learn it? America?"
Hazel nodded, noting with amusement but no small amount of exasperation that 'America' for most people here seemed to be the default term for any land west of the Atlantic. It was as if people in the United States vaguely referred to places like London and Versailles and Florence as 'Europe' instead of in the context of their respective countries. Didn't they realise each state was - for all non-geopolitical intents and purposes - basically a different country?
Susan looked impressed.
"I knew it was all rubbish when they said the New World had no value for old roots." She smiled, again unaware of the distinctly old-fashioned nature of her terminology - even Hazel had never consciously referred to America as 'the New World'. "My auntie works in the Ministry and she says American wizards actually have the best academic programmes because they're so international. Students there get to learn shaman rituals, and Mayan incantations, and I think even stuff like vampire lore." She watched them expectantly for confirmation.
Frank spluttered a little.
"Vampire law?" he whispered to himself, but Hazel nodded encouragingly at the girl.
"Oh yeah, all sorts of stuff. Like you said, we really like old roots. We go waaay back, too. Ancient Greece and stuff."
"And Romans," Frank put in, clearly wanting to stay on top of the conversation.
Hazel nearly rolled her eyes, but Susan made a sound of sudden comprehension.
"Ah, so that's how you know Latin." she guessed, triumphant.
"Yep, you got us all figured out," Thalia drawled, coming up behind them all and sitting down next to Hazel. "It's like you looked us up, or something."
Her tone was light and jokey, and it was only Hazel's recent life experiences that made her notice Thalia's tense shoulders and even more direct stare than usual. Next to her, Frank shifted as well, though Hazel didn't turn to see if he had also picked up on the huntress' verbal poke. It seemed Thalia had been listening on their conversation before joining them, and not liking the direction.
Before Susan could either answer or laugh it off, Harry called for attention.
"Okay, guys. Thank you all for coming, I could see some definite improvement today. I think by Halloween we should have mastered Disarming and Blasting spells."
"But Halloween's in two days!" someone called out.
Harry grinned, his green eyes sparkling. "Better practice, then."
There was some groaning at that, but a few smiles as well. Any excuse to use their wands these days. (And that sounded like a euphemism, but it wasn't.)
The demigods gathered to leave together, as usual. Nico was looking a little more cheery than normal, despite the tiredness that he was feeling like the rest of them from their sleepless night. When asked about it, he even smiled and joked that Halloween was his time of year: when was he going to be happy and comfortable other than when skeletons came to life?
Everybody thought there was more to it, but left it lie.
Except Hazel, who asked him more about it when they were walking back from dinner that evening. The others were either up ahead or had opted to go straight to the showers, so they were almost alone.
She asked Nico if there was any other reason he was happy.
"Well, happier than usual," she said with a warm smile. "Whatever it is, I want to bottle it up and keep it for one of your rainy days."
Nico kept silent for a bit longer than such a question necessitated. Then he shrugged.
"Not really. I just used Myrtle to IM home this morning. It was still night there, quite late, but there were still people around the campfire. It was... nice to see everyone again."
That was a surprisingly normal answer. Perhaps a bit too normal for Nico, who usually avoided people, much less acted happy about seeing them afterwards.
"Did you see Chiron?" She didn't think the centaur usually let his charges up that late.
Nico shook his head, and another thought struck Hazel.
"Was Will there?"
Ouch. Wrong question. Nico tensed up immediately and the familiar, slightly hunted look returned to his face.
"Yes. So?" his tone was so defensive that Hazel couldn't help but smile. She touched his arm lightly.
"Nothing, I just thought maybe that was why you were looking better. I miss the rest of my cohort too, and Reyna. I'd like to see them again."
Nico relaxed a little, but his jaw was still set in that defiant way of his, and Hazel knew the subject was to be dropped.
"So what new tricks should we ask Leo to cook up for Umbridge?" she asked much more lightly, skipping ahead and grinning back at her brother. "I feel Halloween calls for something much more special, don't you?"
0o0o0o0o0o0
The next day was Saturday, which in theory left students to their own devices, but in practice usually saw them being crushed under mountains of homework. Such would also have been the case for the demigods had they actually been concerned with their grades, but currently only Annabeth actively cared about what letter topped the head of her assignments, and even she admitted under pressure from her friends that it was a matter of pride more than actual desire to do well.
As Leo pointed out, all assignments given to them in class were based on theory, and when was theory ever going to be useful when they were expected to actually do magic? Seeing his girlfriend open her mouth with an answer to that had prompted Percy to hurriedly change the subject, but nevertheless, following that line of thought the demigods elected to give priority to practice-based assignments over written essays. Annabeth was of course free to work on hers as much as she liked, but even she readily accepted the fact that none of her friends could any longer put much effort into fifth-year magical theory when they barely understood even half of it.
That said, for every hour they neglected to spend on History essays or Transfiguration diagrams, they spent another working on practical spell casting. As Leo had also pointed out, the DA was teaching them far more useful stuff than all of the other classes put together. Thus, while Annabeth scribbled away at three-foot long essays, the others practiced attacking, disarming, and shielding. The range of spells available to work in this direction was surprisingly broad, since the purpose of each and every one of them could be adapted to combat situations. Even the spell Flitwick had taught them to make teapots dance, for instance, could be applied to an opponent's glasses once they had been struck away from the wearer's face, leaving them to jig out of the way and their owner all the more disorientated for it.
Similarly, Reducto could blast the earth right under the opponent's feet instead of their face (which was more predictable as a target); Engorgio could increase the size of their arm, weighing down their fighting hand with cumbersome flesh; Diffindo could slash at flesh (or clothes, Leo discovered to his great embarrassment) as well as anything else; and Lumos Maxima could blind any onlookers if said with enough command.
They also worked on the DA's own creations, including Hermione Granger's genius galleon communication devices. Percy couldn't believe nobody in the Hephaestus had thought of something similar for demigods, for whom mobile devices were deadly, and resolved to bring the idea back with him when he returned to camp. Terry Boot had also been working with Marius Fell on developing their own little spells for the DA's advantage - ones that were similar to the originals but just tweaked enough to work differently. Stunning spells, for instance, that activated a second after they were cast so that it sailed right under the opponent's immediate defensive reaction.
The demigods were getting better at it all, slowly, but steadily. In fact according to Annabeth's Studies in Adolescent Magical Development handbook, they were approaching fourth-year level in various Charms wandwork, and only a little behind in defensive magic. Nowhere near as good as many others in the DA, of course, but that was only to be expected and the demigods were in fact feeling rather good about themselves.
When Piper trudged down the stairs of the demigod girls' dormitory on that Saturday morning, yawning and pushing her mussed hair out of her face, she was incredulous but unsurprised to see Annabeth already up and scribbling away at yet another piece of paper.
"McGonagall said that wasn't due for a week," Piper said sleepily after reading the cover of the open textbook next to her friend.
"This isn't an essay, I'm writing to Chiron." Annabeth explained, her tone slightly absent as she wrote on.
She was still in her pyjamas, but her hair was brushed and she looked fairly alert for someone awake at eight on a chilly Scottish Saturday morning. Piper herself had just come down to retrieve her water bottle from the common room, intent on going right back up to bed for several more hours.
Instead, remembering that she had seen relatively little of the daughter of Athena in the past few weeks - boarding school was a lot busier when she was surrounded by her friends - Piper sank into the plushy sofa next to the fireplace and curled up near the armrest, using her wand to summon a blanket from the other sie of the room and feeling very proud of herself when it sailed over immediately.
Annabeth looked up from her parchment and threw her an impressed, amused look.
"I'm not sure I'd be the best company for you right now," she said, "Percy says I mutter and chew on my pen when I write."
"You do." Piper answered with closed eyes and a sleepy smile. "But at least I can pretend that you're muttering to me and that I'm actually up early on a Saturday, like a responsible person."
"I don't think it would be very safe to go down just yet anyway," her friend said, giving her a look, "The first Quidditch game is on this morning, and it seems like civil war might break out if Harry or Ron accidentally make eye-contact with the Slytherin team during breakfast."
"I don't think so," Piper muttered, "I know nothing about Quidditch or the Slytherin team, except for the fact that most of them are too busy figuring out how cutlery works to pick fights in the Great Hall."
Annabeth laughed softly and went back to her letter. They sat in amicable silence for a while, Annabeth occasionally asking for Piper's opinion over whether she should recount their latest troublemaking to Chiron - usually a resounding 'no' - or how to spell various wizarding names or places (which as it turned out did not translate well in the Greek alphabet). An hour later, Hazel came down, fully washed and dressed if still a little bleary-eyed from sleep. She sank next to Piper on the sofa and curled up like a cat, apparently also set up for a lazy morning of relaxing after a week of intense lawbreaking and Umbridge-wrecking.
It felt strange to converse quietly as one of them wrote a letter home and the other two stretched out on a comfy seat, debating whether they should bother with breakfast that day since none of the boys were likely to get up before eleven at least. Probably a common scene in Hogwarts, and perhaps in every boarding school, but so very rare for demigods who were always on the move, either between homes or on quests, looking over their shoulder for monsters and things that could kill them. Piper suddenly felt absurdly lucky as she lazily opened her eyes and watched her two friends do things that a few weeks ago had still felt so alien. She could get used to this.
Yeah... She shouldn't have thought that. Turned out, jinxes were just as potent in the wizarding world as they were in the mortal one.
Piper had just volunteered to go and wake Thalia so that they could have a girls' breakfast before the boys made it impossible, when there was a sudden and blinding flash of light in the room, causing them to cry out in shock and fling up an arm to cover their eyes. Piper's immediate thought was that Jason had somehow struck the floor with an accidental lightning bolt, but then registered that they hadn't been burned to a crisp, so that couldn't be it.
Instead, when the bright spots in their vision had faded somewhat and Annabeth had scrambled up from her seat on the floor, the three girls turned to see a grown man on the floor, writhing in what appeared to be unbearable agony.
"What was... - who is that?" Hazel panted, sitting up and still wincing from the impact of the flash.
The figure at their feet still thrashed and jerked about, making little whimpering sounds that sounded like an over-excited puppy, albeit one in pain.
Annabeth stepped a little closer, hesitation apparent in her every move. Her grey eyes scrutinised the man under an uncomprehending frown that made her look like every statue of her mother ever.
"I think... I think he's... laughing."
Piper stumbled off the sofa, dragging the blanket with her.
"What?"
It was true. The man, dressed in nondescript jeans and a dark green shirt, was alternately clutching his sides, arms flailing around him or rolling about dazedly on the floor, all the while making those strange little whimpers that the girls had initially taken for symptoms of great pain but now realised were sounds of giggling.
The man was currently face-down on the carpet, obscuring his face so that only his curly auburn hair was showing, but when Piper glanced at Annabeth in complete astonishment she saw her friend glaring at the man, the frown still in place, this time with a spark of recognition in her expression.
"Is... Is he drunk?" Hazel whispered, transfixed at the man, who was now thumping the leg of the sofa repeatedly, his gales of laughter getting louder by the second.
Annabeth didn't reply, but strode over to the man and forcibly pushed him onto his back so that his nose pointed to the ceiling. Now that it was no longer muffled by the carpet, his laughter came out loud and clear, his brown eyes crinkled and teary as the gales racked his body. Annabeth looked grim.
Piper also didn't feel like laughing.
"He has to be a god," she whispered, "No-one else could have come into Hogwarts like that."
"He's Hermes." Annabeth declared, getting up and dusting her hands on her blue pyjama bottoms. She looked down at the newly-identified, giggling god with something akin to dislike. Piper wondered what the god had done to offend her. She knew demigods in general weren't keen on gods - complicated family history, and all that - but she knew nothing of any long-standing animosity between Athena and Hermes.
"Hermes? As in Mercury? What is he doing here?" Hazel asked, her voice much higher than usual.
"Yeah, I thought he was the god of messengers or something." Piper said, tilting her head as she considered the god's extremely strange behaviour. "Not alcohol. Isn't that Mr. D.'s job?"
"Search me." Annabeth muttered, stepping away. "But I think I know why he's like this. Remember how we got here, through the aether? That stuff is breathable air to gods, but I guess not in pure form." she glanced down at Hermes again, who was now tracing the floral design of the carpet with his index and singing a nursery rhyme as he went. This time the distaste in her expression was clear. "He's not drunk. He's high."
Together, they managed to drag and haul the flailing god onto the sofa, finding it difficult due to his uncontrollable laughter, but finally they dumped him among the cushions and padded seats, panting and massaging their sore arms. Messenger gods were heavier than they looked. Probably all the junk mail they carried.
After another minute or so of repeatedly nearly falling off the sofa due to his condition, Hermes' giggles started to fade, until at last he made eye contact with the girls - Annabeth especially - and his crazy grin disappeared for good.
Immediately, he brought a hand to his eyes.
"Ooh, my head..." he moaned. "What in the name of Olympus just happened?"
"You tried to get into Hogwarts. Without Hecate's help, I imagine." Annabeth answered crisply.
"Hecate? That witch, she never told me..." Hermes let his words fade as he looked at the girls again, sizing up the three female teenagers like there was nothing he would rather do less. Annabeth's stormy gaze seemed to intimidate him a little, but stirred him enough to sit up a little.
He sighed.
"Well, I know it's been a long time, Annabeth Chase, but you look well."
Annabeth nodded, but continued to stare at him with thinly-veiled hostility.
Hermes' mouth twitched, and he turned to the others instead.
"And you must be the legendary Hazel Levesque, and the lovely Piper McLean." he said, some of his pantheon's charismatically divine charm leaking into his voice. "I saw you briefly in Greece during the war, but we were never introduced."
Hazel and Piper nodded awkwardly, but cast Annabeth nervous, expectant glances, waiting for her to deal with this unfamiliar deity.
Annabeth complied.
"What are you doing here?"
Hermes raised an eyebrow.
"Why, to deliver a message of course."
"What's wrong with Iris messages? We could have been anywhere when you found us. You could've blown our cover." Annabeth said sharply.
Hermes looked annoyed.
"I think you're forgetting that I am, in fact, a god." he said, his tone a little snippy. "Do you truly think determining the circumstances of my appearance beyond me?"
"Oh no, I'm sure you manage your entries perfectly," Annabeth retorted, "Which I suppose is why you spent your first five minutes here giggling on the carpet."
Hermes flashed her a look, but conceded her point with a moody shrug.
"Hecate reminded us that the aether can also be used as a form of travel. Although I must say that I haven't used it in... well, ever." he admitted. "And whether or not Hecate left out the details deliberately..." he shrugged again, looking annoyed, "is irrelevant at present."
"So what's the message that couldn't be put into an IM?" Annabeth pressed on.
Hermes seemed to hesitate.
"It's a rather, ah... delicate matter. And of the utmost importance, which is why the gods sent me. Anyone else could too easily spread the information."
"How trusting of them." Annabeth said.
"Do tell." Piper said, casting her friend a look and leaning forward on her forearms on the back of the sofa. "Has my lady mother gotten caught up in a net again?"
"Not your mother, no." Hermes muttered. He stood up, kindly but firmly brushing aside Hazel's concerned protests. "It really is a very important message, so I would appreciate it I only had to relay it once. I had understood there were more of you-"
"I'll go wake the others," Hazel volunteered, turning towards the boys' dormitory.
"No need," said a voice from the other side of the room. It was Thalia, leaning against the wall with her steely gaze fixed on Hermes, the same hostility as Annabeth's apparent on her features (Piper really had to find out what the deal was around this guy). Glancing at her friends, she held up a DA galleon by way of explanation.
Hermes looked confused, but Piper and the others understood. With Marius' help, they had charmed the coins to vibrate instead of heat up when a message arrived. The demigods had also taken to keeping the coins on at all times, which for most of the boys involved piercing the coin and keeping it on the beaded cord around their neck. It made it awkward to check the message once it arrived (even though the leather cord had been replaced with some of Leo's sturdy elastic), but at least there was constant skin contact to make sure any message did not go unnoticed, as could sometimes happen when you were wearing four layers of clothes like most people did in an increasingly wintry Scotland.
Indeed, a few moments later, the boys' dormitory door crashed open and out tumbled five sleep-rumpled teenagers in various stages of dress, but all fully alert and aware of their surroundings if the weapons they were holding were anything to go by.
Hermes appeared to note the presence of wands alongside the demigods' usual swords, and he stuck out his bottom lip, impressed.
"Percy Jackson," he greeted them, "and the other famous demigods who saved the day several times in the past five years. I can honestly say it is both an honour and a pleasure."
Percy and the other boys looked surprised, perhaps at the Hermes' words more than at his presence. It was not often that a god so voluntarily expressed genuine respect for demigods.
"Lord Hermes," Percy answered, lowering Riptide and confusion clouding his green eyes. "Um... What are you doing here? And - uh, how did you get here?"
Before the god could explain, Annabeth cut across him and gave them a brief summary of the past ten minutes, making sure to emphasise the god's peculiar reaction to the aether, for which the god in question narrowed his eyes at her. Clearly, Annabeth was not going to cut him any slack for whatever beef she had with him, and he was not going to endure it for long.
"An embarrassing message?" Leo repeated, grinning and shoving his wand back into his pocket. "Let's hear it."
Hermes once more looked uncomfortable at the mention of his mission.
"I must stress that you keep this absolutely to yourselves. We gods really cannot do with any more crises at the moment, not so soon after Gaea-"
"Oh no, I think we'll tell the first wizard we come across," Annabeth drawled, sitting in the armchair behind her like a queen. "I mean it's not like we're trying to hide the fact that we're demigods, is it?"
"Annabeth..." Percy murmured, glancing at her.
"No, she's right," Hermes said, though he was frowning, "I realise the danger of your situation. I'll just have to trust that you will do what is best. My friends, it is with great urgency that I have come for your assistance-"
"Makes a change," Annabeth mumbled.
"- for we have found ourselves in a rather delicate situation two days ago, when it came to our notice that," Hermes cleared his throat, winced, and ploughed on, "the god Apollo has disappeared." He paused. "Or been captured. Possibly both."
There was a brief anticlimactic silence, blinks, and a few glances exchanged between the demigods, followed by a couple of groans.
"What, again?" Percy complained. "Last time he was in Delos. Have you checked there?"
"Yes." Hermes replied testily. "But you're not-"
"I thought Zeus was planing to temporarily exile him anyway?" Jason asked.
Piper glanced at him, wondering how he knew that.
Hermes looked uncomfortable again, and increasingly annoyed.
"Well yes, but-"
"How come it's always us who have to find your relatives?" Nico grumbled. "You're gods. Aren't you supposed to have inherent tracking devices?"
Hermes closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his lips moving silently as he counted. When he reached ten, he opened his eyes again, looking less annoyed, but there was a steely quality to his gaze that hadn't been there before.
"We cannot interfere," he said, enunciating every syllable clearly, "because Apollo has gone off the radar, but we know for a fact that he is in this area. Wizarding area." he clarified. "We cannot reach out to him through our normal means of communication because, as the son of Zeus has rightly surmised," he sighed, motioning towards Jason, "Zeus has deemed it right to exclude Apollo from Olympus and strip him of his powers for the time being, rendering him all but mortal. Only-"
He paused, pulled a slight face that betrayed his discomfort again, and resumed.
"Only Zeus had not planned to send him to Earth quite just yet, but when Apollo was called upon two days ago, he was found to be missing. The Lady Artemis was the last to speak to him, and she says he was intent on travelling here. To find you, presumably, although I have no idea why."
Percy sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.
"What makes you think he ever even reached this place?" he asked tiredly.
"We can no longer communicate with Apollo through godly means, but we are supposed to be able to locate him and send him messages by other means. However, whenever we tried, we received only blank static, which suggests he is no longer in our sphere of influence." Hermes explained. "Or rather, he has penetrated someone else's."
"Can't Hecate help you out with this one?" Annabeth asked, half a step ahead of him. "If this is her 'sphere of influence'-"
Hermes' lips thinned into a smile that was anything but happy.
"I assume she lectured you on her inability to interfere in this world, much like we gods often cannot in our own. That applies double when some of us cross into her realm."
"She sent you." Piper pointed out.
Hermes looked uneasy.
"Well, the gods sent me, I wouldn't go so far as to say that Hecate sent me..."
Thalia groaned.
"Oh, tell me you're not going to drag us into one of your ridiculous feuds again. They never end well for anyone, least of all for us." She shuddered. "I am living proof of that."
She nervously ran her hands up and down her arms, as though making sure they weren't turning to bark.
Judging by the stony faces of the rest of the demigods, they heartily agreed.
"Well, yes, I suppose I can understand why you may not feel inclined to be involved in this matter, but..." Hermes looked nervous again, and his right eye twitched a little. "We cannot afford to ask help from anyone else. You are the heroes of the moment, our most experienced fighters-."
"More like it's embarrassing for you to admit that one of you has gotten lost again." Percy said, crossing his arms. "First Artemis, then Hera, and now Apollo. Does it run in the family, or what?"
Hermes looked him straight in the eye. He seemed to deliberate for a moment, his gaze calculating and narrowed, deciding what to say next. But when he spoke the urgency was almost gone from his features, replaced instead by sincerity, and his tone was both resigned and grave.
"We ask for your help. Not because we wish for it, but because we need it. We gods rely on humans, that I will no longer deny. The fact that you are the children of some among them makes the gods all the more reluctant to ask, but hear me: we beg of you to help."
Hermes made eye-contact with the unmoving demigods.
"Please," he added, "We trust you in our moment of need."
There was a brief silence among the demigods again, but this time it was from a mixture of disbelief and stunned surprise. Hermes seemed intent on breaking all records in the category of relations between gods and their children. He had crossed an important line, and they all could feel it. No god had ever so shed their pride and divine superiority to relate to them on an individual level, not even their godly parents.
Hazel cleared her throat.
"Lord Hermes, could you, um, let us talk for a minute - please?" she sounded so polite that Hermes nodded without protest and retreated to the furthest corner of the room, then sat down in the armchair.
The demigods retreated up the stairs to the boys' dormitory, since the stone walls of the common room and staircase made the room very resonant and this was not a conversation they wished for Hermes to hear.
"I think we should help." Piper said as soon as the door closed behind them.
"I don't." Nico muttered. "Gods never know when to stop, whether it's asking for help or giving it. Read the myths."
"But what about Apollo?" Hazel asked, worried. "If he's mortal now, doesn't isolation put him in danger?"
"Maybe he'll learn a thing or two about fighting for your life and think twice the next time he asks people to sacrifice themselves for his whims." Thalia said, her face hard.
"With any luck, he might even teach the other gods to do the same." Annabeth agreed, sitting next to Percy on his bed.
"I'm finding you uncommonly harsh, girls." Frank said - well, frankly. He was leaning against the post of his own bed, frowning a little at Thalia and Annabeth.
"Trust us-" Thalia said, pulling a face.
"-we've had more experience with gods like these than you have." Annabeth said.
She was correct, no doubt, but Piper found it a bit tactless to point it out like that. Their experiences did not mean they would repeat themselves.
"Actually," Piper interjected, "I think Hermes coming here is a good thing."
"Why?"
"Because we'd been wondering what to do next, and now we have our answer." she reasoned. "By looking for Apollo we might even explore more of this world."
"How? We can't leave the school." Nico objected.
Annabeth looked thoughtful. "Hermes said Apollo was almost definitely in Hecate's zone of influence. He said Apollo had been on his way to find us. Does that mean he could be on Hogwarts ground already?"
Percy snorted.
"Even as a mortal, I have a feeling we'd know it if Apollo was in the school."
"Okay, but what about Hogsmeade?"
"Then Hermes would have appeared there directly and found Apollo for himself." Jason reasoned. "It's so small, it wouldn't have taken more than an hour."
"So, that leaves what - the forest?" Piper suggested, half-joking.
The demigods exchanged glances. Hazel was biting her lip, and even Thalia looked a little concerned. Piper's face fell.
"Oh, come on-"
"Not to hustle you, but do you think you could finish your chat once I'm gone?" came Hermes' voice from the common room bellow, quite faint now that it had several stone walls and a staircase between him and the group of demigods. "The fire's getting cold."
Leo snorted.
"Bless the little moppet, his feet are getting chilly." he muttered.
Nevertheless, they returned to the common room as the messenger god requested, finding him still in the armchair, staring at the fire.
"You know," he said, conversationally, "I rather think you don't like us anymore."
Annabeth's raised eyebrow at that practically drawled As opposed to...?, but Piper didn't get it. When asked what he meant, Hermes shrugged lightly.
"No more offerings." he explained, gesturing at the fire. "Not one, since you got here - except for a couple of Iris Messages."
Annabeth crossed her arms.
"Did you really think we were going to burn food at every meal in front of everybody else just to make you feel good about yourselves?"
A flicker of annoyance passed on Hermes' face. Piper couldn't really blame him. Where had the cautious, diplomatic nature of the daughter of Athena gone?
"Hardly. But one private mark of respect towards your parents hardly seems to stretch the bill." He shot back coolly.
"We had thought about it," Percy ventured, gently putting his hand on Annabeth's shoulder. He too had noticed her uncharacteristic hostility. "But we decided it wasn't worth risking our cover. Fire here is strictly monitored ever since a third-year set the whole second-floor corridor ablaze in our first week."
"And our parents should know that we respect them no matter what," Piper said sweetly - a little honey never hurt, "Please tell them that if they don't."
Hermes inclined his head to her, conceding their words, though his gaze was still cool when he looked at Annabeth. He turned to the fireplace again, but with his hands extended close to it, as though trying to glean a maximum of heat short of plunging his hands into the embers. He was also shivering a little, which struck Piper as distinctly odd: gods did not shiver. They weren't supposed to be affected by temperature at all.
As though he had read her mind, Hermes cursed under his breath, rubbing his upper arms.
"This place is affecting me," he said quietly. "I shouldn't be here. Not my place."
He looked down at his arms, then yelped.
"Oh crumbs, blast it all! Here I've gone and caught a disease! Stay back, all of you. I appear to have contracted a form of small pustules-"
"You've got goosebumps," Hazel said, sitting down on the sofa. "People get them when they're cold."
"What a beastly thing to have," Hermes mumbled, looking closely at his arm and the little bumps of divine flesh he had mistaken for pustules. "How do you mortals withstand such humiliating disfigurement?"
"Crumbs? 'Beastly'?" Leo muttered to Percy, who shrugged.
"He did say this place was affecting him," he answered back in an undertone.
"Lord Hermes, if we accept to go looking for Apollo-" Piper started in her most polite tones.
"Do you have any idea where he might be?" Annabeth cut across, interrupting Piper. Again, that sort of thing really wasn't like her, but the morning so far had been strange enough that Piper reminded herself not to feel vexed. "Our movements are restricted here, we can't leave the school without attracting suspicion, and certainly not without external help."
"We can only assist you if Apollo is on or nearby Hogwarts grounds." Piper clarified. "Any further away than that and we have to decline and put our primary mission first."
Hermes looked relieved. He stood up, brushing the last of carpet dust from his clothes.
"Of course, I should have been clearer earlier. By Hecate's area, I meant the epicentre of her power: here. The place where European magical civilisation started. If Apollo is anywhere in the United Kingdom, he is here."
0o00o0o0o0o0o
"Right," Percy said, "Because our lives aren't dangerous enough, so now we have trek across a forbidden forest to look for a lost god."
They were standing on the edge of the forest, a little way away from Hagrid's hut - Percy still could not believe they let a half-giant run the grounds - peering around the first trees, trying to see what could possibly have given the forest its name. The sky was pale blue and clear, with a chilly breeze that almost annulled the effects of the bright sun. They were wearing their own clothes instead of uniforms, for once, which meant that they were more comfortable to move in, but not necessarily warmer. Only Thalia, with her thermal huntress attire, seemed unbothered by the cold.
Hermes nodded absently, looking nervous. He kept glancing around furtively, as though he expected Hecate to jump out from behind a tree and yell BOO! at any moment. The whole this-is-my-territory business was really starting to irk Percy, who remembered only too well the Nuckelavee's crazed attack on them for trespassing and his deathly stench. If Hecate was going to punish Hermes for coming to find them in her world, she had much less sense than Percy credited her with.
"I really should go," Hermes muttered. "This is not my place."
"Are you okay?" Hazel asked, a concerned frown on her face. She looked younger than she was, possibly because she'd tied her hair back in two braids to keep it out of the way, giving her the air of a elementary schoolgirl.
Hermes indeed looked far from comfortable, but he smiled weakly at Hazel.
"It will pass once I leave this place," he assured her. "In the meantime, I just have to ignore the waves of hostility and not-belonging that roll off every rock and tree of this place like steam from a cauldron. Hecate knows how to make a point." he finished, more dryly.
"Are you sure the forest is the place we have to search?" Annabeth asked, getting back to the subject at hand. She had mellowed a little since the whole exchange in the common room, but her gaze was still cool when she looked at the god. No doubt she still couldn't really forgive him for what Luke had suffered as a result of Hermes' decision to accept the prophecy.
"It's the most logical option," Hermes confirmed. "And I gather you Athena kids are big on logic."
Annabeth turned away from him, her nose a little higher in the air, while Hermes smirked.
Frank was anxiously twisting his favourite dagger in his hands, expertly switching his grip on the handle and passing from hand to hand. It was a nervous habit of his, one he'd abandoned at Hogwarts since they'd arrived, but it had returned now that his hands once more held a weapon.
"I hope nobody notices that we're gone," he muttered, squinting back at the castle against the sun.
Thalia snorted.
"They'll be too busy celebrating their Quidditch victory."
"What makes you so sure you'll win?" Piper asked slyly.
"The Gryffindors act like losing's not a possibility." Thalia said with a shrug. "And even if they do-"
"What are Griffin Doors?" Hermes asked, frowning in confusion. "Another school?"
Thalia explained how Hogwarts students were divided into four houses for the length of their studies. Hermes looked perplexed.
"They divide the students into houses according to their personalities?" he asked.
They nodded.
"Well there's a recipe for rivalries if ever there was one." he muttered. He pointed a stern finger at them. "Whatever happens, do not let this give Zeus any ideas."
His face was perfectly grave, but Hazel and Piper laughed.
"Can we please get a move on?" Nico asked irritably. "It's cold."
He was wearing his aviator jacket, but otherwise his clothes were the same black t-shirt and jeans, which worked fine in summery New York, but not in autumnal Scotland.
Hermes clasped his hands, suddenly very businesslike, when he spoke his tone was brisk and cheerful - no doubt he knew he was going to depart very soon.
"Right, this is where I leave you. Stay on track and play nice with the monsters in there. Meanwhile-"
"What?" Nico yelped. "Wait! What do we do when we find Apollo?"
"And what if we don't?" Hazel asked.
"We probably won't." Thalia said grimly.
"But what if we do?"
"Knowing him, we'll spend most of our time getting him to shut up."
But Hermes wasn't really listening. He was dusting off his sneakers - which Percy only just noticed had mini wings on them - maybe the dirt made them less aerodynamic - and his body language was of someone preparing to leave quickly.
"Oh, just make sure he doesn't get into any trouble," he said, far too vaguely to suggest he had given the matter any thought. Giving his shoes a final cursory look, Hermes raised his hand, holding his fingers like he was about to snap them.
"But how are we supposed to get him back to you?" Jason blurted. "Won't-"
But Hermes clicked his fingers together and just like that, he was gone.
Jason swore.
"I hope he overdoses on aether." Annabeth said darkly.
0o0o0o0o0
Forty minutes later in the increasingly shadowed and oppressive mass of trees, there was still no sign of Apollo, mortal or otherwise. On the other hand, the demigods had found Weasley Wizard's Wheezes sweet wrappers, a few dead birds (worryingly torn to shreds), the inexplicable presence of a car's headrest, the slightly more understandable but infinitely more awkward instance of a bra, and various prints in the mud, some of which none of them recognised.
Nobody had mentioned the idiocy of blindly searching for Apollo a large forest, for two reasons: one, it was too obvious. Two, what other immediate choice did they have?
However, after nearly an hour had passed, Annabeth was the first to come to a dead stop, her face blank, before suddenly turning around and sitting down on a protruding edge from a cluster of rocks near the path. She sat cross-legged, dropping her small backpack on the ground beside her, then clasped her hand under her chin, resting her elbows on her knees. Her gaze was fixed on her friends, but it was not her uncharacteristic behaviour that unsettled Percy, it was the emptiness of her expression.
She had looked at him blankly before, out of shock, or anger, or even boredom, but never with this terrible blank look of such uncaring emptiness that a marble statue looked vibrant in comparison. Percy hadn't even known human features were capable of forming such a mask of utter passivity.
"What are you doing?"
Annabeth shrugged, not answering, staring into space.
Thalia had walked ahead, unaware of her friend's halt, but now she walked back, her expression of annoyance replaced by increasing concern and confusion as she took in the scene.
"Annie, what's wrong?" she asked.
Again, Annabeth only gave a slight shrug in response.
Thalia stuck out her hip to the side, readjusting her grip on her bow - constantly in her hand since they'd entered the forest - and took a long breath.
"Not that I don't applaud this sudden rebellious version of you, sis, but we're pretty much on a deadline. Do you think you could save it for when there are any adults around to actually care?"
Annabeth finally raised her eyes to meet Thalia's.
"Since when do adults care what happens to us? Adults are the ones who got us here in the first place - the oldest adults in the universe."
Thalia sighed.
"Is this the we-shouldn't-be-lapdogs-to-the-gods thing again? 'Cause if it is-"
"What if it is?" Annabeth fired back, sounding angry now. "Don't act like you don't agree, Thal. You've suffered from it as much as I have. We all have-"
"This really isn't the time or the place," Thalia said shortly. "We have a mission. We do not let personal issues interfere with out quests."
"Artemis made you quite the little soldier, didn't she?" Annabeth observed, a snappish tone to her voice. "Have you lost what little free will you had?"
Thalia's knuckles went white as she clutched her bow harder than ever. Biting his lip, Percy watched the two conflicting girls, completely at a loss what to do. Usually it was him who clashed with Thalia. Children of the Big Three tended to do that - it was an accepted fact of demigod life since Percy had met the Grace and di Angelo siblings. In fact it was moments when they agreed on something that made others worry.
Which was why the air was thick with tension as Annabeth and Thalia glared at each other, for never before had the two fought in front of their friends. They'd had the occasional spat, like the rest of them, but never had so many lines been crossed before, least of all by Annabeth.
Thalia took a deep breath.
"Annie, let's not do this," she said, her voice surprisingly calm. "Not now. We can't afford-"
"I don't care what we can or can't afford!" Annabeth almost shouted, stunning everyone around her. This was the Forbidden Forest, the very last place one should hold a shouting match. "I. Don't. Care. I'm sick of caring! I've spent my life caring what to do and what to say, what not to do and what not to say. And you know why?"
She snorted. "Of course you do, you're just afraid of saying it. It all boils down to the gods. It's what they think that matter, what they want, what they feel. And because to them we're just extensions of themselves, they expect us to do the same." she spread her arms around her. "Look at us. Lost in a haunted forest at the request of a hapless god who's lost one of his friends and can't be bothered to look for him himself. In a freaking forest, because the best lord Hermes can do is suppose that it's the most logical option, in the whole of magical Britain.
"And don't give me that epicentre crap," she snapped at Jason as he opened his mouth to object. "You really think he'd come to us if he had even a idea where Apollo really was? He couldn't even tell us what to do with him. It's like we're servants, trusted enough to carry out tasks, but not enough to be considered in the whole plan. Well I'll tell you now, I'm sick of it. I won't do it anymore. I quit."
If she'd had any weapons on her, she would have thrown them to the floor in disgust. As it was, she stayed sitting on her rock, glaring around at her shocked friends, daring them to contradict her.
None did, but Percy took a tentative step towards her.
"Annabeth-"
She looked at him, her gaze hitting him like a truck on a motorway. For reasons unknown to him, Annabeth's eyes always hinted at her emotions far more than anyone else's ever did for Percy. Maybe it was because he knew her so well. Maybe she made less of a conscious effort to hide her true feelings from him. But never before that instant had she looked at him with such raw intensity. He gulped.
"Don't say it," she whispered. "Don't say that you understand, that you wish you could leave it all behind. I know it all: gods are the reason we're here, and sometimes the reason we're still alive. It's our duty to help them. Gods are family, after all."
She shook her head, her mouth curling on one side into a bitter, humourless smile. "I'm sorry, but if they are, they should damn well act like it - not like game masters or executioners."
Percy felt his heart squeeze in response to her pain, the raw anger that roughened her voice, the weeks' worth of worry and fear that had left lines on her familiar and beautiful face. He wished he could hold her and tell her that it would be all right, that it would be over soon, that she only had to say the word and he would stop it all.
But he couldn't.
Because he knew her pain, he felt it every day. Usually, he was the one to act on it, too. He understood every ounce of bitterness and anger behind her words, every snap, every single fist clenched in frustration. Sometimes he thought he would get used to the feeling in time, but with every new divine request, it returned. The feeling of being disposable, a figurine in a game of violent, leisurely and pointless chess. The feeling of worthlessness as their superiors lay on them task after task, with a pat on the head and a smile, but always with a hidden snake in their actions.
They were demigods. This was their life. And for them, it was a literal case of 'accept it, or die.'
Percy could feel all of it weigh on his heart and his tongue as he stared hopelessly at his girlfriend, but no words would come out. No words could come out. None should.
Like she'd said. They knew it all.
Unexpectedly, in the middle of the tense silence, it was Frank who spoke first.
"Do you want one of us to walk back to the castle with you?" he asked softly, his face betraying nothing but concern.
Annabeth blinked, her anger suddenly gone as she glanced at the big burly Canadian-Chinese son of Mars.
She opened her mouth to answer - with what, Percy would wonder sometime afterwards - but before she could Thalia's head snapped up.
"Shh. D'you hear that?" she asked.
Used to following abrupt orders, the demigods immediately pricked their ears and listened to the sounds of the woods around them.
So far, it had sounded pretty normal for a forest. Well, there had been the odd howl and/or scream of terror, but mostly they had been far away and relatively un-worrisome as far as Thalia's bow and arrow were concerned. Quidditch noises had been muffled almost instantly by the trees, and birds' singing stopped around ten minutes into their trek, but the usual sounds of brushing leaves, small animals creeping around on bark and little crawly things scuttling around on the ground had been fairly consistent.
Now however, those sounds were laced with the newer, far less expected sound of a woman's voice, singing.
Except the word 'singing' seemed terribly mundane and not at all adequate for the sound they were hearing now. The notes undulated along the melody, flowing like the waves in open sea, at times reaching the essence of birdsong, and at others resembling the bray of woodland fowl, but never losing its impossibly beautiful, ethereal quality. It was faint, perhaps a little distant, but definitely there. Percy vaguely wondered how they'd failed to hear it before. The song didn't sound like it had just started.
Somewhere at the back of his mind, memories stirred. Suddenly, it wasn't trees he was looking at, it wasn't leaf-strewn earth beneath his feet. He was on white sand, the gentle breeze ruffling his hair, palm and cypress trees gently waving against turquoise water and a limpid sky. And the singing...
Calypso.
It was almost a whisper, and perhaps Percy said it out loud. Leo certainly did.
As one, the two boys started running towards the sound of the singing, leaving their similarly-entranced companions frozen to the forest floor, startling only when Percy and Leo left their group and disappeared among the trees.
They left the track, and they didn't even care - much. Percy was aware of something niggling at him, something like 'you bloody moron, why did you leave the path', but ignored it and raced ahead, with Leo keeping pace with him at his side. He could just about hear the others stumbling after them, calling their names, but they ignored them, completely focused on finding the source of the singing.
After about a minute - or was it an hour? - they burst into a clearing, skidding to a halt. Panting, the boys took in the scene.
The clearing was wide and devoid of trees altogether, fenced in on one side by a little cliff of pale stone, with nary a leaf marring the velvety smoothness of the mossy ground. Only a stream cut across this tellytubby-worthy floor, trickling as it flowed away from a small waterfall that bubbled out of a crack in the cliff. The clearing was mostly plunged in shadow, and ferns grew in little clumps around the spring, unseasonal purple flowers tastefully dotting the growths of moss on the side of the cliff.
The singing came from the pale figure kneeling at the little pond formed by the waterfall. The figure was female, but her face turned down towards at her hands, which appeared to be washing something in the pond. As she raised her hands slightly above the water - revealing long, thin fingers that were white as bone - Percy saw that what she was washing was a load of pale cloth, liberally dotted with... No, it couldn't be...
The figure raised her head, and her face was a pale oval in the gloom of the nearby trees' shadows.
"Calypso?" Leo breathed.
But Percy sucked in his breath.
"Mom?" he whispered.
Just then, the others burst out of the forest behind them, noisily coming to a sudden to a stop as they took in the scene confronting them. Annabeth appeared to have completely forgotten her outburst, and even Thalia only registered astonishment as she spotted the pale figure near the waterfall.
Surprisingly, she blanched.
"Lady Artemis?"
But Nico pushed her aside, his face suddenly so stunned and shocked that nobody challenged him.
"Bianca?" he breathed.
The woman's mouth twitched into a smile. Sally Jackson got to her feet with a grace that seemed illegal, and dropped her wet washing at her feet, lightly stepping over it - though not before a dazed but still aware Percy noted with grim confirmation the nature of the stains on it.
Sally Jackson took another step towards them. The trees' shadows still covered her completely, giving her unnatural pallor a glow that shone through the gloom.
Nico took a step to meet her. Without needing to think about it, Percy held out an arm to hold him back.
Something was wrong...
Nico obeyed Percy's touch, but kept staring at the woman's face.
"Bianca," he breathed again. "Is that really- what are you doing here?"
Sally Jackson's habitually warm eyes, now devoid of emotion save for distant amusement, turned to Nico's stunned face.
"Demigods," she greeted, in a voice that was less noise than music, more air than sound, as light as feather's touch but resonant as a steel drum. "I see the rumours are true."
Behind her, the pale cloth lay heaped in a soaking pile at the edge of the pond. It was stained with blood.
A/N:
I owe you guys an apology. Over two months since the last update! I've just finished my exams - including a 48h one that almost managed to entirely consume my soul - and also recently came back from Ireland (beautiful place, lovely people, spiffing food).
This is the result of hard-regained writing habits. Sorry if it didn't attain usual standards, it's just been hard to stay focused and inspired recently. Don't know why.
Anyway, thanks very much for all your reviews. All those Guests who comment, it physically pains me not to get back to you! As such, here are a few public responses:
- Nobody: that is a golden idea. Thank you very much. I shall reflect on it at great length.
- Demipuff: Yeah, I sympathise. I address that in the A/N of last chapter, if you want my view on that.
- H: you get your wish in this chapter ;-)
- You-Know-Who: you were the one to really motivate me to write the rest of this chapter, so it is dedicated to you :-)
To all of you who commented, thank you all. Every word was repeatedly read, weighed and cherished.
Toodles!
PS: This chapter's title, Fiat Voluntas Deorum, means "May the gods' will be done". (I think, although I had to adapt it and my Latin grammar is non-existent)