I return! I know, completely unreasonable wait, you all hate me, etc. BUT DOCTOR WHO DOES THAT TO A PERSON. Its. Just. So. Amazing. And sad. And heartwrenching. And incredible. And life-ruining. Mofatt just loves hurting people emotionally, doesn't he? And I just finished season 4...David! Don't go! And now I have to wait till November to see 10 and Rose again...just STAHP. *shakes fist at the sky* MOFATT.

So, enough about me! enjoy your chapta y'all! By ze way, I do not own either of these stories. Just in case you though I was Rick and J.K. undercover. That would be so cool if I was...

6. I Screw Up (Twice)

PERCY

The minute I entered Ron's room at the Burrow, I collapsed. My brain was thoroughly exhausted from all the wizardy stuff I was expected to learn. Actually, that was the stuff I was supposed to already know. How had Chiron expected us to get to know everything in such a short period of time? We were leaving for Hogwarts in two days, for Zeus's sake! I thought about Iris-Messaging Annabeth to see if she could be of any help, but before I could do anything, Harry and Ron walked in, with Nico close behind.

"Oh, hey Percy," Harry said, nodding in my direction. I raised a couple of my fingers to let him know I heard him without looking up. I could hear Harry hesitate for a moment, like he was about to say something, but then he continued over to Ron's bed, where his friend sat. They then began an animated conversation that contained a lot of words like, 'muggles', 'Dumbledore', and 'Hogsmeade'. At this point, I didn't even want to know.

Nico sat on the ground next to me. I kept my eyes fixed on the ceiling. "Gods," he sighed. "I don't know how much more of this I can take."

I let out a halfhearted laugh. "We'll never last the year. We're hopeless."

Nico rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Captain Sunshine. That really helps."

I opened my mouth to argue, but I saw something move in the corner of my eye. I sat up and looked through the window. A flicker of movement caught my eye, and I focused on a dark shape at the crest of a hill near the Burrow. It looked like a man, but from here I couldn't be completely sure. For a moment, I could've sworn he was looking at me. Then he vanished, melting into shadows.

I blinked. "Percy?" Nico was studying me with an expression of mild curiosity. "You okay?"

I shook my head, trying to clear the fogginess that had been in my mind all afternoon. "I'm fine." I lay back down again and closed my eyes, only to see that dark silhouette imprinted on the backs of my eyelids. I covered my face with my arm, somehow thinking that it would help.

It didn't.

So I was basically half conscious for an hour or two, drifting in between sleep and wakefulness. I was jolted out of this state by Ginny, who alerted us for dinner like she had the night before. She still seemed kind of skittish around Thalia, Nico and me, but hey, who could blame her? Pinecone Face and Death Breath aren't the friendliest looking of people. As for me, well, I was just glad I hadn't blown anything up yet.

The four of us headed downstairs and took our seats around the table, sitting where we had yesterday. Every time we ate food without sacrificing to the gods, I got more and more worried that I would be incinerated in the middle of the meal. Demigod problems are so weird.

Tonight, Mrs. Weasley had made spaghetti and meatballs, which I proceeded to shovel onto my plate and into my mouth. I don't know what it is with food, but I never quite get that feeling when I'm 'full'. Is that bad? Anyway, my third helping of meatballs paused on their way to my plate when Hermione (that's her name, right?) spoke up. "So, what kinds of spells do you learn at Delphi School of Magic?"

I froze. I shot a glance at Nico, who immediately looked at Thalia. I followed suit, and she gave us a look worthy of a drakon before turning to Hermione. "Um, you know, making things fly around, shooting sparks, stuff like that."

Hermione didn't look convinced. "What are they called? I've always wondered if Americans had different names for their spells."

Thalia glanced at me, her expression screaming, help me! I bit my lip and thought of all the nonsense words I knew. "Oh, you know…" I started, having no idea what to say. "Hepouiliosus, wibbly wobbly, timey wimey…" I mumbled some more senseless stuff before ending with, "abra kedabra!"

Immediately, I was met with gasps from the Weasleys. They all looked at me like I had just proclaimed the end of the world. I blinked, looking at Nico and Thalia, who looked just as worried as I was, and then at Harry and Hermione, who respectively looked like they were trying not to laugh or they suspected something. At the moment, I was too confused about the Weasleys' reaction to be concerned with Hermione's. Finally, Ron broke the uneasy silence. "They taught you the killing curse?" he breathed.

Crap.

"Oh, no! Professor Brunner would never want us to kill anyone!" Thalia yelped quickly. Ron's expression turned from shock to disbelief.

"But you said—" his voice dropped to a barely audible whisper, "Avada Kedavra."

I tilted my head. "I said what now?"

"It's one of the Unforgivable Curses. It's forbidden, because it will kill anyone it's used on," Ron explained.

Thalia, Nico and I looked at each other, trying to it piece it together. And, at the same time, we all came to realization, and burst into laughter, along with Harry, who apparently couldn't hold it in any longer. Hermione hesitantly joined in, the fact that she didn't want to laugh with us evident. Meanwhile, the Weasleys were staring at us like we had just blown up a country. "They said Abra Kadabra," Harry explained after finishing his laughter. "It's a muggle thing, it's what children say when they're waving a stick around pretending to cast spells and do magic, things like that. Not the Killing Curse." Every redhead at the table looked at us disbelievingly, reproachful looks on their faces.

Mrs. Weasley exclaimed, "That's terrible!" at the same exact time Mr. Weasley leaned across the table with a curious expression, saying, "Fascinating!" Immediately, Mr. Weasley looked at his wife, who glared daggers at the man. He instantly corrected himself. "I mean, who would ever do that? It's simply unheard of!"

I tried to conceal a smile at that. These Weasleys were interesting people indeed.

The rest of the meal went on pretty much without disruption, except for when I got really jumpy and caused the faucet to start spraying water everywhere. That caused me to get several death glares, courtesy of Thalia and Nico.

After everybody was done eating, all of us headed upstairs to get some sleep. Nico was out within a half hour, but I couldn't get to sleep. I got that that feeling when I really just want to go to bed, but every time I close my eyes it's just like: UNICORN RAINBOW PINEAPPLE AUNT SUE WONDER WHAT SHE'S DOING FOR CHRISTMAS WOW I SHOULD REALLY GET ON THE HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH MY LIFE et cetra.

Needless to say, I was having a rough night.

Until, around 3:00am, I heard voices from the direction of Ron's bed. It took me a moment, but I was just able to make out what they were saying.

"…faucet explosion?"

"What about it?"

"Well, what if one of them made it happen?"

Crap. I listened harder, still feigning sleep. "Don't be ridiculous, Ron. How could they have made that happen without a spell? I remember, none of their mouths moved, I was watching their lips—oh, that sounds a bit weird—"

Ron cut him off. "But they didn't have wands! And didn't you say their wands don't have cores? That could be really powerful dark magic—"

"Oh, please," Harry sighed, "not again with the Death Eater stuff. If Voldemort had sent them to kill me, they would've done it by now, don't you think? Just give it a rest."

Ron seemed reluctant, but gave a defeated sigh. "Whatever. I'm going back to sleep. G'night."

"Night," Harry responded sleepily. Someone shifted in their bed, but it was quiet otherwise. Meanwhile, my mind was going a million miles an hour. We had to be waaaaaaay more careful. I made up my mind that I would talk to both Nico and Thalia tomorrow. I turned on my side and closed my eyes, hoping for some sleep. No such luck.

It was a long, long night.

oOo

The day before our departure to Hoggy Warts (I had taken to calling it that) was rather uneventful, except for the excessive packing and frantic running around looking for stuff. Thalia, Nico and I were done within an hour, since most of our stuff was already packed, and so were Harry and Hermione for the same reason. Ron didn't have any spare time since he was freaking out looking for his school robes, so the five of us decided to go outside for a bit, just to get away from the chaos.

After we had done one lap around the house, Harry suggested we get some broomsticks. Hermione immediately looked wary, whilst us three demigods shared looks of confusion. "What are we gonna do with them, sweep the yard?" Thalia asked dubiously. I was about to ask something similar, when I remembered Diagon Alley, and how there were lots of kids drooling over a shmancy broomstick called a "Firebolt".

Harry raised his eyebrows at Thalia. "We're going to play Quidditch, of course."

All these weird words were making my brain hurt. I think I could say the same for Nico and Thals, who had exasperated looks on their faces. "What exactly is Quidditch?" I asked, knowing it would probably sound stupid to him. And it did.

Harry's mouth dropped open briefly, but he covered up his surprised expression as best he could, unlike Hermione, who just glared. "So, er, you don't have Quidditch in America?"

I quickly shook my head. "Nope." Wow, if I had a dime for every time I'd blamed something on America these past couple days, I'd be flippin' rich. I was about to ask what exactly you did in Quidditch when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I turned towards it, squinting against the afternoon sun. For a second, I saw nothing. Then, at the top of a hill, I saw a figure. I don't know how I knew, but I was positive it was the same figure that I saw last night. Also like last night, for a moment I felt the heat of the figure's gaze on me. I took a step toward it, but felt Thalia's hand on my shoulder. Or was it Nico's? No, Nico's hand was smaller than the one I felt, it had to be Thalia. Right?

"You okay?" Nope. It was Nico. I tore my eyes away from the figure for a moment, and motioned for him to look.

"Don't you see it?" I asked him.

"See what?" Thalia's voice. Harry wasn't far behind her when they came over to me and Nico.

"The figure…" I trailed off when I looked back at the hill. It was gone.

oOo

I grit my teeth as the car bumped along the London roads. Being contained in a small crowded space for a long period of time was not doing anything to help my ADHD. I felt like throwing a party when I saw the mass of King's Cross Station in front of us.

Everybody filed out of the little car and grabbed his or her luggage and we all followed Mrs. Weasley into the station. I gripped my train ticket firmly in my left hand, my right one in my pocket, subconsciously clenching and unclenching around Riptide, my lethal ballpoint pen. Nico, Thalia, and I didn't have big trunks like everyone else, since those would've been a major pain to get on the airplane and everything. Chiron had given us some enchanted backpacks that were bigger on the inside, so we could keep everything we needed in there. And, also, they wouldn't weigh us down if we had to make a quick getaway.

Mrs. Weasley herded us all as we wandered through the station. I looked at my ticket, trying to make sense of all the letters and numbers on it. When I finally did, I let out a bark of laughter, which, thankfully, the wizards couldn't hear over the din of the station. My demigodly companions, however could hear it, and looked at me with puzzled expressions. I held my ticket in front of their faces. "It says platform 9 ¾!" I told them. Thalia laughed a bit, and Nico cracked a small smile. It hadn't done much to ease the tension, though. We were all nervous. This was really it. We had to step up our game now, bigtime.

We arrived at platform 9, but I saw no trace of any 9 ¾. I looked at Mrs. Weasley, but she was already one step ahead of me. "To get to platform 9 ¾," she explained, "you need to run straight at the wall between platforms 9 and 10."

I stared. "Really?"

She nodded cheerfully. "Here, Fred, George, you demonstrate."

They nodded. "Our pleasure," they said in unison. Fred lined himself up with the wall (or was it George?) and ran straight for it, George (Fred?) not far behind. I couldn't stop myself from wincing as they…didn't run into the wall? They just…vanished. Gone. Zippo. No longer present.

WHAT?

Harry went next, followed by Hermione, then Ginny, who went with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. And then there was us. I looked at my friends. Thalia's face was tight with anticipation, and Nico looked even gloomier than usual. "I nominate Percy to go first," Thalia said quickly.

Nico nodded. "Me too."

I sighed and threw my hands in the air. "You guys just hate me, don't you?" Not waiting for their response, I turned and ran at the brick wall. Aw, man. I was hoping that was a sentence I would never have to say. I got closer, closer, closer…I took the last step, closing my eyes for the impact…that never came. I opened my eyes and found myself staring at a huge scarlet train with the words Hogwarts Express on the front. Everywhere, wizards hustled about, saying their last goodbyes, making sure they had everything for the school year, scampering onto the train to get seats.

I was too busy looking around that I didn't notice Thalia hurtling out from the brick wall behind me, nearly knocking me over. Said demigod put a hand to her forehead. "I never want to do that again," she gasped, swaying and blinking. "This Wizarding stuff is making my head hurt."

"Ditto," said a new voice, right behind Thalia. She jumped and turned, facing a smirking Nico. "Gotcha."

"You little—" It probably would've gotten pretty bad, but Mrs. Weasley came out of nowhere and ushered us to the train doors. Harry, Ron and Hermione waited there, but disappeared into the train when Mrs. Weasley motioned for them to go ahead. Thalia, Nico and I were about to follow suit when Mrs. Weasley stopped us.

She looked at each of us in turn, her expression deadly serious. "Keep them safe, demigods."

I blanched, throwing panicked glances at Nico and Thalia, who were doing the same. "But—how—" I began, but Mrs. Weasley held up a hand.

"Yes, I know about you. Dumbledore saw it fit to tell me. The only other person that knows your true identity is Professor McGonagall."

I breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment there I thought we had completely failed the quest before it even officially began. I nodded to Mrs. Weasley. "We will." Right as I said that, I internally flinched. The last time I had promised someone I would keep their family member safe, she ended up getting killed by a huge metal statue. I shot a glance at Nico, but his attention was turned to Mrs. Weasley and he didn't notice. Mrs. Weasley smiled at us and motioned for us to hop on board the train. I turned to get on, but was stopped when she cried out and flung her arms around me and nearly squeezed the life out of me. She did the same to Thalia and Nico. Thalia managed a forced smile, even though her eyes smoldered. Nico just went very stiff and his face turned beet red.

Molly Weasley stepped back and waved while the three of us got all the way into the Hogwarts Express. We shared a look, and looked down the aisle, which was full of young wizards and witches laughing and fooling around. Every one of whom we would have to lie to. "I wonder if this is how Hannah Montana felt," I mumbled.

We started forward, and, after a while of aimless wandering, we found an empty compartment and collapsed as the train started moving. I sighed and looked out the window as we exited the station. Our quest—our real quest—had begun.