"Olive makes better food than this," Percy grunted, eyeing the slop on his fork. The greyish-tan mush plopped back into his bowl. Percy frowned and turned to Hekate. "Remind me again, Cate. How is this place magical besides Starry Night above us and the stupid hat that tried to read my mind?"

"Do you have an off switch? Or a way to turn off your complaints?" Hekate grumbled, holding a piece of bread. "I didn't make this food. Complaining to me won't change how it tastes. Plus, it doesn't taste bad."

Percy shrugged, lowering his fork back into the rest of his food as he met her annoyed look from across the table. "Your world. Your blame."

"Just grab some mashed potatoes and meat. I don't want to hear you nitpick and complain about everything when if you just opened your eyes, you'd see other choices you could make. And I say this for more than just food."

Percy ignored her, "I could blame the deity in the lake if you'd prefer that, but I don't think they are responsible for magical cooking either. Although I don't even know the first thing about them, so I can't really say. If only I had a goddess who could know these things."

Hekate rolled her eyes, "Oh, just be quiet, Percy. I'm not omnipotent, despite what you might think. It has been many, many years since the family has cared about Europe and its happenings. In our absence, any number of things could have taken up shelter in the Black Lake."

"Yeah, that seals it. This is going to end disastrously, isn't it?" Percy groaned, pushing his food away so he could drop his head on the table. "Can I drop out?" he mumbled against the wood. "I got plants to grow."

"Percy, this is the opening feast for the year, and you've only just been sorted into your house," Hekate sighed, her hand reaching across the table, but she stopped short, ghosting over his. She carefully pulled back, "It isn't the one I expected, but that is beside the point. You haven't even started classes. You cannot drop out, nor will I let you."

"I thought you were using magical powers to cover my academics," he mumbled.

"I am. You'll pass every test and every assignment with no problem, but you still have to show up. More importantly, you need to socialize. You are like a wild hound right now."

"I feel like there has been a great miscommunication about what was expected of me, Cate."

"Percy, there has been little to no positive communication with you since I first spoke to you on your farm."

"You should be nicer then."

"I should be nicer?"

Percy shrugged, "Please and thank you go a long way."

"I want to smack you over the head." Hekate sighed. "I want you to know that, but I also know restraint."

"You smack me, and I stab you."

"Don't get your panties in a twist. I'm not going to stoop to your level."

Percy raised his head from the table, frowning, "My level?"

"Please." She rolled her eyes. "You've drawn your blade on me, and we both know what threat that implies. A smack is far less than what you stand behind."

"You touch me, I draw."

"So you've said. But here's my counter to you thinking you can threaten me, Perseus. You draw, I leave. And I make sure to cast a spell to lock you inside the wards of Hogwarts as well, so you'll have nothing to do but be stuck here till I care enough to see you kiss my feet and say sorry."

Percy narrowed his eyes, "You wouldn't dare."

"Please. Us gods have done worse for less."

An understatement, Percy thought.

"So, a truce?" he asked.

"It feels so immature to have to make a truce to agree to not harm the other, but yes. Call it a truce," she said, rolling her eyes.

"I mean, if it makes you two feel better, I've heard some other students make stupider deals," an older teen laughed, sitting down next to Percy. "Roger Davies. Seventh-year prefect. I thought I'd introduce myself to you two. It isn't often we get exchange students. Honestly, I don't recall a time we have."

"Oh, you are cute," Hekate purred, switching up her tone as she straightened her back. "I'm Cate, Cate Brimo. Grumpy beside you is Percy Jacks—"

"I can introduce myself, Cate," Percy raised his voice, straightening his back as well. He shot Hekate a glare.

"Don't mind him. He isn't socialized," Hecate teased, causing the prefect to laugh.

"Don't sweat it. It's chill." Roger smacked Percy on the back, lingering. "Lot of introverts in Ravenclaw. Though, I've never seen a 'Claw throw the hat off their head and then choose their own house. Thought you'd be a Gryf for sure, but hey, here you are."

Roger looked to Percy, waiting for a response. Yet, none came. His hand fell away.

"So, uh, what made you throw the hat off anyway?" Roger asked, glancing at Cate and then back to Percy.

Percy shrugged, "Didn't want it in my head."

"Oh, yeah, sure. I can see that," Roger nodded. "What, you got the secrets to the arcane up there and don't want to share?"

Percy frowned at the kid before turning to Hekate, who was eyeing up the teen, "Does the truce extend to everyone?"

Roger frowned, too, turning to Cate, who shook her head.

"I'm sorry, Roger. As I said, he isn't socialized," Hekate teased. "Sometimes, I think he was raised in a cave."

"Yeah, all good," Roger forced out, turning his attention fully to Hekate. "So, how does a pretty American like you get to a place like this anyway?"

"I'll tell you only if you tell me something."

"Sure, anything you'd like to know."

Hekate smirked, leaning forward, "What's going on in the Wizardry World on this side of the Atlantic?"

"Merlin, where do I even begin?" Roger laughed, showing his pearly whites.

"Like all good stories, the start preferably."

Percy rolled his eyes. Poor kid didn't even know he had become prey to the goddess. He'd have to bail him out if Hekate found the chase worth it.

:P LINE BREAK d:

"Gross, seven flights of stairs. Now a riddle, too, from a talking door knob?" Percy groaned from beside Hekate at the back of the group of first-year students, who were also receiving a succinct tour of the Hogwarts castle. "If I knew that was part of the deal, I would've never picked the blue house."

Hekate frowned, slowly turning on her companion. "Wait," she trailed off, pressing her hand into her forehead. "After throwing the hat off and refusing to put it on, and then given the choice to pick whichever house, you picked Ravenclaw because it was blue?"

Percy shrugged, "I like blue. I don't look that good in red or yellow, and that shade of green doesn't go well with my eyes as much as you'd think."

"You picked off colors?" Hekate repeated, exasperated. "Colors?"

"How else was I supposed to pick?" Percy threw his hands up. "Was I supposed to pick the house with the least kids in it? Is everything a magic riddle here?"

"Percy, have you ever looked at anything about Hogwarts?"

"I haven't even used my wand since we bought it, much less opened a book."

"By Khaos." Hekate facepalmed. "How did you ever complete your quests?"

"Luck, skill, and some brute force." Percy shrugged. "Like, does it really matter? It's just an animal emblem and a color-coding system, right?"

"Come on, you two," Roger, the prefect, called from ahead of them.

She sighed, taking his upper arm, dragging at first, before leading him through the opened doorway into their common room. The two stepped through the doorway of riddles and into a tunnel of stone.

"The houses are personality tests," Hekate explained. "The hat is the test. It 'scans' you for a lack of better terms and selects the best place for you to grow as a person. This isn't correlated to what best suits you but what will develop you into the best you can be. It is why I thought you would go to Gryffindor or Hufflepuff."

"The red and yellow ones?" Percy asked, looking ahead to where the small children were exiting the tunnel into a larger room.

"Yes. Bravery and loyalty are key factors in those houses. Fitting attributes for a hero like you."

Percy frowned, "Right. What is blue, then?"

Hekate smiled, taking him the last step through the small passage between outside the common room and into the room proper.

Moonlight streamed in through grand mosaic windows with colored glass of wizards and witches standing in poses of power. A fire crackled from the center of the room, like a hearth, where an assortment of chairs and couches extended out from it, reminding Percy somewhat of an amphitheater. On the other half of the circular area were rows of tables and chairs that looked like they had been pulled from a library. Against the far walls, bookshelves lined each available inch. The occasional globe or knick-knack littered itself amongst the organized mess.

"Ravenclaw, or the blue house, is about the pursuit of knowledge."

Percy paled, "Well, that's not me at all."

Hekate shrugged, her eyes roaming across the many kids inside the common room, "Yes, but here we are."

"Here we are," Percy grimaced. "I'm not participating in any AR projects. Never worked as a kid, and it isn't going to work now."

Hekate turned to him, her eyebrows knitted, "What is AR?"

"Accelerated reading. It was a thing to make children read back when I was a kid."

"And you have dyslexia like all your kin."

"Yup." He popped the 'p.'

"Well, worry not. Even if there was such a task here, you do not have to do it. This is supposed to be your vacation, after all. Just try and take some time to meet some new people and have some fun. Think of it as a cruise."

"Who vacations to a school?" Percy huffed.

"Magical school, Percy. Here, things going weird are normal. You'll fit in."

"Right, totally. Do these kids also blow up school buses with canons?"

"No," Hekate laughed. "They use their wands, not canons."

"Hey, Percy," Roger Davies showed up out of nowhere, slicking his brown hair back as he smiled at Hekate. "Why don't I show you around the rooms and where we will sleep for the year? The other idiots on our floor always have a little first-night party."

Percy frowned.

"Go on, Percy." Hekate pushed him forward into the devil's arms. "Go have fun. I'll see you two in the morning, okay?"

"You're the best, Cate. I'll make sure to have him up and about by eight for breakie," Roger laughed, throwing his arm around an uncomfortable Percy, who glared at the goddess.

"Just remember, he's all bark, no bite," she added.

"I'm contemplating violating our truce already!" Percy called out to her, allowing himself to be dragged away.

But really, a part of Percy was happy to be dragged along. As Roger droned on about how much he would love the other guys in their year and how they were all super cool, Percy couldn't help but let a small smile cross his lips as a small spark of hope ignited in his heart.

Maybe Hekate was really right about this. Maybe he could start over. Maybe he could find some people who see him just as Percy and not as the child of Poseidon or the monster he had become to save everyone.

So, as Roger pushed open the final door on the steps, Percy entered voluntarily.

The first thing he noticed was the curved back wall of glass. The dark expanse of the world was just beyond his window. The moon shone down upon distant mountains as it reflected upon the lake below the castle grounds. Countless stars littered across the darkness above, staring back at him. He could even see the Huntress at the moon's side.

"You can spell it to look like a normal wall if you don't want the sun streaming in during the day. That or a partial transformation of it. It really is just customizable, but the magic it was built with only really allows you to change it from wall to glass and back again. When I was a first year, some kid in the year above tried to change it to something other than glass, and the best he could do was to change the color of the glass."

"Can people see through the glass? Like from outside?"

"Nah. One way. A Gryffindor heard about these windows once and tried to spy on some seventh-year girls. He couldn't see a thing, no matter how close he got. He ended up in detention for quite a while, too. But yeah, you could be a centimeter from the glass and still not be able to see through it from the outside."

"Neat."

"Perks of being in the Roost," Roger smirked, walking to the glass. "It has the best view in all of the castles." He turned back to Percy. "Highest as well."

Percy nodded, his gaze falling to the ground below. They really were high up. Almost too high. If Zeus was ever in a bad mood.

"Huh. That's neat."

"Best house in the school."

"Well, it is blue, which is the best color." Percy turned from the window, a small smile on his lips.

"It is indeed." Roger shared his smile. "Anyways. You got your bed, and it is a bunk bed. There used to be more students before the last Blood War, so you've got that all to yourself." The younger boy pointed to a door on the opposite wall of the bed, "Through that door is your washroom and toiletries. I think most else is self-explanatory with a bedroom."

"They are pretty straightforward," Percy nodded. His gaze roamed over the blue-accented room. It was simple and nice. It wasn't too far off from his own room on his farm.

"The day a bedroom changes and has to be explained is when I start asking if mankind has gone too far."

The two shared a small laugh before Roger continued on further. "Anyways, are you still interested in hanging out with the other idiots in our year? They should be busting out the exploding snap right now in my room."

"Exploding snap?" Percy frowned. "What is that?"

"Oh, my American friend, you are going to learn today," the brown-haired teen laughed, dragging Percy out the door.

:P LINE BREAK d:

"Is everything in order?" a weak voice rasped from the darkness.

A fireplace emerged from the vast darkness that was Percy's dream, and slowly, the world built itself around the flames. The fire light expanded outward, revealing more and more of a darkened room. A tall padded chair was turned to the flame, a chair Percy would imagine every grandparent owned. While Percy could only see the back of the chair, a dehydrated skeletal baby hand of nightmares emerged over the armrest, grasping for someone unveiled to the light.

"Yes, milord," the man in the shadows whimpered. "He has reported already that he has arrived despite being later than anticipated."

"How late?" came the weak hiss in response.

"Missed the feast, milord."

"Not good enough. Dumbledore will know if he does not suspect already."

"Milord! He is certain he has gone unnoticed. The Headmaster welcomed him as an old friend."

"The old fool could be putting up just as much as a front as Crouch! But we shall see. If he fails, it will be you who will have to bring me the boy."

The fire crackled, its flame growing brighter once more, basking the walls in its heat. Yet, the second figure remained out of sight, and Percy watched a snake emerge from the darkness. What appeared to be some bastardized anaconda slithered up the chair. Its tongue tasted the dust that floated aimlessly as hisses left its mouth.

If Percy was tangible and present in this room, he wouldn't have hesitated to chop the snake's head off. Something about it felt foul, like a monster.

Then the being in the chair hissed back, and the light from the fire blasted outwards, smashing into Percy andsending him stumbling back into a white void. His eyes snapped open, the blinding light of the morning sun driving through his window and into his very soul.

Percy's hands came to his face, shielding himself from the morning rays of Apollo.

"What in the Gods was that about? And what in the Hades have I been dragged into?" he mumbled to the empty room. "Hekate, you better have answers. This wasn't part of the plan."

AN: Follow. Favorite. Review. Join the Discord!

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Would love to chat there. I answer all questions, even if you want the content spoiled.

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-Manke