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Chapter Text

As Harry watches Ron and Hermione leave him for the Prefect’s carriage at the far end of the train he sighs and stalls in the middle of the narrow hallway of the Hogwarts Express.  He looks around, after a moment, for an empty compartment and, annoyingly, can’t find one--he wishes they hadn’t needed to be shadowed to the station, knows that they would have made it so much earlier if it weren’t for the protective measures put upon him.  He does, however, eventually see a compartment with people he recognises sitting in it, the one Ginny must have headed to when she dispersed from the Weasley family on the platform.  She is sitting there, having a conversation with Neville Longbottom whose face is impressively pink, both wearing fabulously mis-matched muggle clothes.  He recognises a blonde girl sitting in the corner, her long, pale hair a veil over her round, white face, but he doesn’t really know anything about her other than that he’d seen her walking around with Ginny from time to time.  She hasn’t made much effort to look like a muggle at all and has her light eyes covered with an odd, eccentric pair of glasses, her long, bony hands holding a magazine open and upside down in front of her face, covering it from the bottom of her nose and down.

Then there are the three other occupants, sitting closely together on the bench opposite.  He can't see much of them before stepping in and asking to join, permission which Ginny and Neville grant him with ease.  He’s glad for it, knowing that having to sit with people he doesn’t know as well as he knows Neville and Ginny, who are bolder and less caring would be sentencing himself to a barrage of taunts and questions he’s not all too eager to hear.  What had once been a line of legs and shoulders, the vague shape of a mass of inky black hair, becomes the image of three teenage boys, dressed much more convincingly as muggles than the purebloods occupying the other half of the carriage, speaking with familiarity to each other in a language Harry is sure he has never heard.  Regardless, there is an air of familiarity to it, something vaguely magical.

The one closest to the carriage door is the shortest, with dark hair hanging in loose waves that just barely reach his shoulders, falling occasionally into his pale face, somewhat distorting the disconcertingly dark shapes of his eyes, accented with dark circles that are emphasised by the near paper-white colour of his skin.  He is wearing a brown leather jacket, much too large for him, the sleeves pulled back as to not hang over his hands, which are as thin and bony as his face, adorned with a series of black rings and one seemingly out of place silver bracelet with a charm on it in the shape of a sun.  Under the jacket he wears a jumper, the chunky, mustard yellow of the yarn and the way it swamps his small figure giving the distinct impression it isn’t his, or at least wasn’t originally.  He has one leg drawn up to his chest, wearing tight-fitting black jeans with rips at the knees and dark boots.  He gestures a lot with his hands as he speaks, looking weary of Harry and his friends, but evidently comfortable with and enjoying the conversation he is having with his own friends.

Next to him is a boy maybe a year or two older than him and much taller, with a much larger presence yet a similar, lingering impression of emaciation in his lithe frame.  His hair is the same jet black, cut shorter with a slightly tighter curl to it and one grey streak amongst it, and his skin has comparable olive undertones, though much darker, seeming almost as though he spent most of his life outside in the sun.  The darkness in his complexion and his hair makes the disconcerting brightness of his eyes all the more vivid, both beautiful and unsettling to look at, shining out of his face a bright sea green that seems almost to be moving, like waves contained in his irises.  There is a long-sleeved shirt underneath the t-shirt he is wearing, both thread-bare and worn to death, a stain that Harry can only hope isn’t blood mars the left sleeve of the undershirt, made indistinct by its dark charcoal grey colour.  The white shape of scars move over his knuckles and the backs of his hands, as well as a light pink asterisk in the centre of his palm that Harry is able to catch as he gestures widely, careful to avoid his companions’ faces with his wide-flung hands.  He is wearing a necklace, a simple leather strap around his neck, adorned with a set of six beads of different colours as well as what looks to be coral, and a large watch on one wrist.  He has his ears pierced, a simple black stud in each earlobe, and his nails look like someone painted them maybe a month ago, the remnants of dark colour minimal, especially on his thumbs and first two fingers.  He is also wearing jeans, a small section of his t-shirt tucked carelessly into one side of them.  His belt is made of brown leather and looks to be on its last legs, as does much of what he is wearing, including his dark-wash, loose-fitting jeans which are cuffed at his ankles, revealing graphic socks, and seem to be more hole than they are denim.  His shoes are dirty, scuffed to the brink of death, and his socks don’t match.

The last of them, if Harry had to guess, is probably the tallest, and he looks the least alike of the three of them.  His skin is a bronze colour, not as pale as the first boy’s nor as dark as the second’s.  His hair is dirty blonde, straight and close cropped on the sides, not particularly long on the top of his head either, a far cry from his companions’ dark, unruly mops.  They all have high cheekbones, his smattered with a few freckles that crinkle along with his electric blue eyes as he smiles at something Harry can’t understand.  There is a scar on his upper lip but he otherwise looks perfectly sensible, like he could be a model student, whereas his companions look like certified trouble makers.  His jeans are ironed, crisp creases pressed into them, not a rip or stain in sight, and the same goes for his thin jumper, plain and purple in colour.  He is wearing a necklace comparable to his friend’s, though only adorned with a singular bead, the same as sits on the left side of his friend’s.  It’s the only accessory he has.  His shoes are simple, plain grey trainers with no fault in them aside from the impression of mud barely creeping up the side of the sole.  His posture is perfect, his hands folded in his lap, constantly moving but not gesturing like his friends’, feet both planted, firm and still on the carriage floor.

Harry watches them wearily as he tentatively takes a seat across from them, next to the girl whose name he can’t remember.  Ginny is quick to tell him, “This is Luna,” she says simply and the blonde girl looks up with a soft smile.

She forgoes a hello and instead starts with, “You’re Harry Potter,” he nods, because, of course, he is.  “I’ve been reading about you,” and he winces, because he knows that the grand majority of what people have to say about him lately isn’t exactly a glowing review about his infectious personality and how gracefully he handles all the shit the world keeps putting upon him.  “I do believe you, you know?” She continues with.  Harry doesn’t know whether she clarified because she saw the look on his face or if it was just where she was planning on going in her slow, disjointed, deliberate manner of speaking.  Her voice sounds as if she has found a way to whisper at full volume and Harry isn’t sure if it is pleasant to listen to or as off-putting as the way she takes too long to remember to blink her wide round eyes.

“Nice to meet you,” he says because he doesn’t know what else he can.  She nods then sinks back into her upside down magazine.  “Who are they?” he asks Ginny, thinking he’s being quiet and not even sure whether the people he’s talking about can understand the language he is speaking in.  She shrugs but the stranger in the middle of the three looks away from the shortest of the them, who looks to have cut himself off mid-sentence to look at Harry a little too intensely, near-black eyes focused on a spot on Harry’s forehead where the shape of his scar is masked by his hair.

The boy smiles at Harry, grin stretching further to one side than the other, making only one cheek dimple.  His teeth aren’t very straight and there is something scary, almost shark-like, about the elongated point of his canines.  “I’m Percy Jackson,” he says.  Harry is kind of surprised to hear his American accent but at least it’s confirmation that he speaks English.

“Jason Grace,”

“Nico di Angelo,” his companions introduce, the last being the only one with any kind of accent to suggest he isn’t speaking his native language, and even that is faint, as though he had been speaking English for a very long time with a lot of people.

“Nice to meet you,” Harry says again, “I’m Harry Potter,” he states even though he assumes they probably already knew that.  Nico just nods, seemingly answering for all three of them, and Harry really isn’t sure what that’s supposed to mean.  Neville and Ginny introduce themselves and the nod remains the only response.  Harry hums unsurely to himself before asking “Why haven’t I seen you around before?” He would guess that Nico was his age and Percy and Jason were a year older; there was no way that any of them were eleven, first years.

“We’re transfers,” Percy answers easily, tapping a distracting rhythm on the floor with his toes, “From the states,”  Harry is kind of surprised, both that there are transfers to Hogwarts after everything that had happened after last year, and that, in the event of transfers there would be just three of them, a group of teenagers he isn’t convinced aren’t amongst the most intimidating people he has ever met.

“Oh,” he says dumbly, “Just you three?”

“Yep,” the answer is plain and easy but it sounds slightly strained, resigned, and for a split moment Percy’s grin slips and his face settles into something more turbulent and brooding.  As quickly as it appears, it’s gone.  “It’s not, like, a thing our… school is doing, our family just fucking hates us,”  Harry notices the way he hesitates at the word school but doesn’t mention it.

“They hate you,” Nico mutters, amused but clearly also somewhat genuine in his frustration.  His voice is thin, kind of how Luna’s is, but Harry doesn’t have to wonder about whether or not he enjoys listening to it.  “Jason and I are just collateral,”

Percy waves a dismissive hand, “We all know if I wasn’t there they would have picked a different one of us to hate,” He looks at Nico pointedly who returns it knowingly and Harry, Neville and Ginny watch, feeling as though they have been left out of the loop.

“You’re related?” Ginny asks, bracing her hands on her knees, one of her rolled-up sleeves falling down to her wrist, covering the dense patch of freckles on her forearm.  Her knees are bare, revealed by the football shorts and brightly striped knee-high socks she is wearing.

Jason nods.  “We’re cousins,” 

“Much to my dismay,” Nico adds under his breath and Ginny can't help but grin, especially as Percy turns his torso to look at him.

“You wound me!” he declares melodramatically, “You know you love us, Neeks,”

Nico shakes his head and his hair splays across his narrow shoulders, covering some of the worn leather of his jacket.  Harry can’t help but wonder why they’re all dressed for such cold weather when it’s a nice day, probably one of the last they’ll get as the summer dies out.  “That gods-forsaken nickname is the precise reason why I do not,”

It’s Jason’s turn to smile, the barest hint of mischief on his handsome face.  “Would you prefer Sunshine?” He says and Nico’s face turns pink as he shakes his head with vehemence.  Jason may not look like his cousin but Harry thinks they act a lot like siblings, or at least a lot like the Weasleys, who are the best metric he has for what family members are supposed to act like.

“I’m going to kill you,” Nico decides and Harry can’t help but feel like the threat is at least a little bit genuine.  A brief glance between Ginny and Neville betrays that they must be thinking the same because Ginny looks pale and weary and Neville looks green and nauseous, swaying in his seat as though lightheaded, as he was inclined to whenever things went terribly wrong.  Jason and Percy, however, laugh and Nico glares, only further fuelling Harry’s unease and the Americans’ amusement.  “I hate you both,” Nico says, but there is the barest hint of a smile pulling at his lips.

They go back to talking in their strange language and Harry isn’t sure what to make of them, which immediately makes a feeling of suspicion well up in him.  He has a tendency of not having the best experience with new people, especially elusive ones.  Now that he’s really listening he can tell that Jason’s speech seems to falter, slower than his cousins’ and lacking their native-seeming fluency.  He doesn’t speak as much as they do but he still listens with a smile and never once betrays that he maybe doesn’t understand something that has been said.

Eventually the lady shows up at their compartment with her trolley of sweets and they switch back to English.  “Anything from the trolley, dears?” she asks with a smile and Nico sits up straight in his seat.

He turns to his cousins and states “You have to buy me chocolate, doctor’s orders,” and Percy laughs, a giggle that matches his troublemaker’s appearance.

“We’re sharing funds,” Jason points out, “There’s no difference between us buying it for you and you buying it for yourself,”

Nico shrugs.  “It’s the sentiment that matters,”

Jason sighs and asks the lady to give him whatever chocolate she has.  She smiles and hands over a handful of chocolate frogs which he promptly deposits on the table in the centre of the carriage.  “I’m telling Solace about the monster that he’s made,”

“He’d be glad,” Nico points out, turning over the ornate box in his hands as Harry collects his own selection of sweets, much smaller than the loot he had got in his first year.  His sweets join the frogs on the table and he invites the whole carriage to take whatever they like.

Jason rolls his eyes, “Don’t I know it,” he says, incredibly fond.  They might be speaking in his language but Harry still can’t really understand what’s going on, it almost feels like they’re speaking in code.  It does nothing to make him feel more comfortable around them.

Nico opens the box he’s holding and grabs the frog before it can jump away.  He watches it squirm between his thumb and forefinger like it’s trying to jump before he turns to the Brits in the carriage with an eyebrow raised and asks “These aren’t real frogs, are they?”

Harry shakes his head, a memory coming back to him from years ago.  Ginny is the one that actually answers.  “Nah,” she waves her hand and grabs a liquorice wand from the table, “it’s an enchantment.”  Nico nods and drops the eyebrow, taking a small bite of the chocolate and smiling around it softly.  For the first time, Harry sees him as a child, or at least someone like himself, rather than a threat who either holds his gaze for too long or not at all.  Percy and Jason clearly see it too and, smiling, they reach for a frog of their own.  “There are collectable cards,” Ginny tells them, chewing on the liquorice with the left side of her mouth.  “Y’know, I’ve never really considered that wizarding America would have different foods than wizarding Britain,”

Jason shrugs, “I’m not sure how well these would sell back home,” he closes his eyes for a moment, presumably thinking of everything he had left behind halfway across the world.

A moment later, Hermione and Ron show up, both letting out sighs of relief as the door closes behind them and they get a break from Prefect duty.  Ron perches himself on the edge of the bench beside Neville and Hermione lingers just in front of the door somewhat awkwardly.  Jason gestures to the space on the seat beside him and she smiles at him tightly yet gratefully.  As she takes her seat, smoothing out her uniform skirt before she does so, she introduces herself to him.  He returns her smile politely and does the same, introducing his cousins as well as himself and telling her that they’re transfer students.

“So have you lot been sorted yet?” Ron asks them bluntly, immediately reaching for the sweets without really paying attention to what it is that he’s grabbing.  Jason shakes his head as Percy squints at the card from his chocolate frog and Nico stretches his arms above his head in a yawn.  “You don’t want Slytherin,” he tells them matter-of-factly.  Hermione makes an indignant squeak by Jason’s side.

“Ronald!” she chastises, “You’re a Prefect now, you can’t talk like that about the other houses!”

“C’mon Mione,” he says, sinking his teeth into a pastry and getting crumbs on his face and shirt.  He’s still mostly speaking to her but he turns his head to include Jason, clearly the American most eager to engage in this conversation with him, “There’s not a wizard who's gone bad who wasn’t in Slytherin,” he states like it's an undeniable fact.  Jason stares back at him as his cousins make faces.

“Well what about Sirius Black?” Percy asks.  He has placed the card in his lap, clearly giving up reading it, and braced his elbows on his knees.  Harry watches the exchange and the strange body language of the foreigners, unable to get why he couldn’t read it: the text on the cards wasn’t that small and the font was as legible as any other.

Harry and his friends all tense in their seats, drawing their shoulders up towards their ears and making faces of ranging discomfort.  Harry is all too aware of how Percy is looking at them, like he knows something more than he’s letting on and he’s trying to provoke them into reacting so he can monitor how exactly they go about correcting him, or perhaps if they do at all.  “He was framed,” Harry says meekly and Percy angles his body further forwards, shoulders level with his jaw.

“Okay,” he accepts simply, “Who by?”

“Oh,” Ron says, slowly, quietly, his cheeks going red as he thinks.  “Peter Pettigrew,” he says.  Percy nods and Nico continues the conversation.

“And what house was he in?” he asks.

As Ron answers “Gryffindor,” he grows redder still and both Hermione and the Americans are levelling him with a look that makes him squirm in what little of the seat was left for him.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Nico says and he and Percy exchange a look like they have experienced that exact type of judgement themselves.

Hermione and Ron stay long enough for the group to make their way through the majority of the sweets before they return to Prefect duties and the Americans disappear to change into their Hogwarts robes, Jason seemingly the only one who isn’t the least bit annoyed by the garments.

“So,” Harry turns to Ginny and Neville as soon as he thinks they have moved far enough away to be out of earshot, “What do you think of them?”

“They’re interesting,” Ginny smiles and looks at Harry with a grin that implies she doesn’t think they’re too difficult on the eyes either.  He shakes his head at her before looking at Neville.

He grimaces and Harry immediately feels like he’s a little less paranoid and a little more sensible.  “I don’t know,” he says slowly, “They’re weird,” he gulps, “And kind of scary,”

“Oh,” Luna says, putting down her copy of The Quibbler, “No,” she hadn’t had much to say for most of the journey but Harry has a feeling it isn’t out of shyness, but rather that she spent more time with her thoughts than anything else and she was more than happy to observe until she had something to say.  “They seem nice,” she shrugs then turns to Ginny, “And interesting.  Old,” she added, as though it was supposed to mean much to Harry, “It’s not nargles,” she muses, “But their heads are full of something,” her blue irises are faced to the ceiling rather than the people she is talking to, and there is the hint of a smile on her lips, like there is a joy in the unknown that she is revelling in.  Harry feels jealous; the only feeling the unknown ever gave him was dread, he knows much better than to expect good from it these days.

He doesn’t have the chance to ask her what she means because she takes so long getting all the words out that the Americans are already returning by the time that she is finishing her piece.  They are dressed in the same version of the robes as the first years will be, lacking the accents and the tie that signify which house they belong to, and they don’t look all too pleased about it.  Jason looks to be accepting of the garments even though he stares at his feet as he walks back to his seat, as though very conscious that he could trip at any moment, but Percy and Nico are complaining to each other loudly, only fuelling each other’s hatred with the vehemence of their own.

“This is so impractical,” Nico declares, slumping in his seat.

Percy nods, putting his heels on the bench and wrapping his arms around his knees, “I can’t wait for the bottom of this fucking robe to be ripped to shreds,”

“I give it a week,”

“I think that’s optimistic,”

“That’s a big word--Annabeth teach you it?”

“Why are you so mean to me?  I’m not a complete idiot, you know?  Okay stop looking at me like that I know I’m not the brightest but I resent that you think of me as an idiot,”

“Then stop acting like an idiot,”

“I’ve done plenty of non-idiotic things!”

“And enough idiotic things to compensate for them,”

“Gods, Neeks, why are you so mean to me?”

“Your ego can take it,”

“But should it have to?”

Nico doesn’t dignify that with an answer and instead returns to ranting about the uniform and how he can’t think of a single type of weather that it is appropriate for.

It isn’t much longer until they arrive at the station so Harry changes into his own uniform before sitting and waiting for the last ten minutes of the trip.  He suddenly feels very isolated in the carriage upon his return, as the Americans have switched back to their strange language, Neville is still away changing, and Ginny and Luna are having a conversation he doesn’t understand that sounds as though it could have been pulled straight from the Quibbler.  Hermione and Ron haven’t returned, having spent no more than twenty minutes with him throughout the entirety of the journey.  They had promised to spend most of it with him and he felt somewhat betrayed that they had barely even tried.

They arrive at the station and Harry clambers out, finding his friends at last and trying to hide the hurt in his expression as he greets Ron and Hermione with a wave.  “First years!” Hagrid calls in the background, “First years and transfers!” and the Americans disappear as Harry and his friends near the self-moving carriages that are waiting, as they always are, to draw them towards the castle lingering in the distance that Harry can just see on the horizon, waiting to welcome him to the home that feels less and less like home after every year of disaster and terror it inevitably brings him.

Chapter Text

Percy feels horribly out of place standing in a crowd of eleven year olds, at least a foot taller than most of them.  It’s disconcerting to look down at the crowns of their heads as they stand, a crowd of emotions clambering for pride of place within the room: apprehension, anxiety, fear, boredom, excitement.  He’s used to being around kids, after all he had taught more than a few classes of children to use swords, refusing to think about any of them facing the same onslaught of danger that he had at their age.  Nico is standing at his side, looking more uncomfortable and Jason is standing with his coin in his hand, certainly not still but as unflappable as ever.

There is a Scottish witch at the front of the crowd peering at them with stern eyes over the crowd of children she is addressing directly.  Percy knows her name is McGonagall, knows that she knows that he and his cousins are there as bodyguards for Harry Potter, knows that they aren’t normal, but he also knows that she doesn’t know what that means.  The way she is looking at them makes him think she’s actively trying to figure it out, as though there will be visual hints.  He supposes there are, if you know what to look for and are open-minded enough to accept Greek and Roman gods as fact.  He knows that he and his cousins were open-minded enough to accept that wizards existed, but then again it wasn’t like they had never met the goddess of magic or her offspring before.

“The hat of Godric Gryffindor will be placed on your head,” she explains from her place at the front of the crowd.  They are incredibly quiet as she speaks, as though she commands respect.  “It will look at your mind, converse with you, and decide which of our esteemed houses you will be best-suited to,” She scans the crowd, “now wait here quietly, soon these doors will open and I will bring you through to the Great Hall.”

Percy shares a look of apprehension with Nico and Jason looks at them with an understanding pity that makes Percy uncomfortable in spite of how positively he feels about his cousin.  “Look at our minds,” he echoes to Nico who scoffs.

“Good luck to that hat,” Nico scoffed, “That’s two separate trips to the pit,”

“So what house do you think you’ll end up in?” Jason asks them, not wanting to think too much about Tartarus and what his cousins may or may not have seen and done down there.  He knows the bare bones of it but he also knows that sometimes Annabeth looks terrified when he asks, not of the vague representation of the primordial she has in her mind, but instead at the physical form of her boyfriend, standing there with blank eyes and twiddling his fingers like he can’t bring himself to make eye contact with anyone.  He knows that Percy will tell him what he saw but not what he did, will stare at his hands like they aren’t actually his or he doesn’t want them to be, press on his stomach, still too sunken in even after all these months, like he’s trying to push disparate pieces inside it back together.  He knows that Nico, too, will relay in some vague detail the sights he saw but won’t tell, as though he can’t, what he felt.  He hopes they confide in each other, knows that Percy talks to Annabeth about everything except the biggest part of it that bothers them both, and that Nico talks to Will, though in how much detail he cannot hope to know.  “Your hamartia is loyalty,” he says to Percy, “You must be a Hufflepuff,” They had been given lessons on the world, to an extent, before they had been dropped in the middle of it and expected to help out.

Percy looks tense, shakes his head and finds the pockets of his robes with his hands.  “Not if it’s looking at my memories,”

Nico glances at him knowingly.  “Hard to be in the pit and not come out a Slytherin.  You have to be cunning,”

“That’s a word for it,” Percy sighs and Jason deflates.  He’s almost certain he doesn’t belong in the house of snakes and he hadn’t assumed Percy would either but Percy knows himself much better than he lets anyone else know him and Jason is suddenly convinced he’s going to be alone.

“It will be hard to help Potter,” he grimaces, “Him and his friends don’t seem all that fond of Slytherins,”

Percy shrugs, “Can’t do anything about that, Dumbly insisted we get sorted properly even if it was going to make our job way harder,”  He’s projecting stock body language and expressions of nonchalance but it’s not really all that convincing.  Jason isn’t convinced he hasn’t looked dead tired for the entire time that he has known him.  They were already a war down when they met, and it is hard to be fresh out of a war, have your memory wiped and be dumped amongst strangers, immediately sent out on another quest for gods that can’t care about you, and be thrown into another great prophecy, all whilst retaining youthful, happy, exuberance.  He knows the Greeks lost a lot of men and it probably hit harder for them because their community was tighter, their “men” so few as to consist mostly of kids, and he knows Percy knows all of their names, all of their faces, who they had been and what exactly had happened to them.  It can’t have been a good feeling, not conducive to lightness, excitement, or optimism.

“I’ll probably end up in Gryffindor,” Jason says, “I’ll try to get them to like me so they’ll have to like you by extension,”
“You’re very likeable,” Percy agreed, “But good luck with us,”

“What do you mean?  You’re very likeable!”

Nico scowls but his dark eyes twinkle, “What about me?”

Jason doesn’t dignify that with a response.  “What do you mean you aren’t likeable?  You got Praetor in like a week and CHB idolises you,”

“Because they know the truth about me,” Percy reasons, “And I had to prove myself in both of those instances.  I’ve never had much luck with mortals, I think they don’t know what to make of me,” he shrugs again and this time it still doesn’t manage to seem entirely unbothered but it's much more convincing than the earlier one.

“I don’t blame them,” Nico says, “You’re weird,”

Percy sticks his tongue out at him and Jason is glad to have left any talk of Tartarus behind them for the time being.  He’s always there to listen, but at the back of a crowd of mostly silent eleven-year-olds who are staring at them with very little subtlety is probably not the ideal place for that cathartic unburdening.  “You’re one to talk,” Percy retorts, eyeing Nico up and down then sticking his nose up in the air, laughing all the while and making the act thoroughly unconvincing.  Nico snorts.

Harry watches as McGonagall leads the brand new first years onto the stage at the front of the hall, wondering vaguely if he was really ever that small, their height only emphasised by the rather awkward teenagers hovering behind them, wishing for the sorting to be over already so he can eat then sleep and pretend that his brain doesn’t hate itself.  But then he spots her.

“That woman was at my hearing,” he says quietly to Hermione, all too aware of how quiet the hall is aside from the occasional yell of a house or a name, and how many eyes are focused on him like he is a circus performer or a car crash.  She’s a toad-like monstrosity sitting in her seat at the front of the hall, looking tiny with a sickly sweet smile on her face and her elbows propped on the table, hands folded into each other by her chin.  She’s pink, like all over, and Harry would cast colovaria on her if there was enough commotion in the hall for him to not get caught, because it’s really quite offensive on the eyes.  Hermione makes a face at her, lowering her bushy eyebrows and twisting her thin lips into a frown.  She hums some kind of wary consideration then turns back to the sorting, suddenly looking tense.

As the last of the first years files away to their new house, a Hufflepuff, McGonagall steps into the centre of the stage again and gestures behind her for the teenagers to step forwards.  They take a step forwards, synchronised like an army, but do not stand beside the woman, like they are unsure whether or not they are meant to.  She nods.  “We have transfer students from America this year,” she tells the crowd, “Who will be joining the fifth year to complete their OWLS, but first they must be sorted.”

The hat on the chair perks up, the slit that functions as its mouth distorting, pulling at the surrounding fabric in some strange semblance of a smile.  Amongst the teachers, most remain relatively emotionless, most of the others welcoming, aside form Snape who scowls at the table in front of him, the pink woman who looks vaguely displeased but also like she is determined to hide it, and Dumbledore himself who is harbouring a glint of mischief in the baby blue of his eyes.

“Di Angelo, Nicodemus,” McGonagall calls, and even from the distance Harry can see the displeasure he feels at hearing his full first name declared to the crowd.  He scowls again at the hat before he sits down on the stall and places the hat on his head.  It’s still visibly too big for him but not enough to fall over his eyes.  The stool is ever so slightly too small, his knees positioned kind of awkwardly upwards and, in spite of his general air of don’t fuck with me he looks kind of ridiculous.

The hat is barely on his head for a moment before it calls out a rather disgruntled and decisive “ Slytherin!”  The green house cheers and he slinks over to it noiselessly, his face betraying nothing other than a vague sense of displeasure at something or other.  His new-found place in the house of snakes makes Harry feel a bit better for defaulting to mistrust.

“Grace, Jason,” is the next name and the blonde walks up to the stall, sits on it awkwardly with his knees close together, forced up towards his chest.  He projects a fleeting look of discomfort that might be self-deprecating or apologetic, and places the hat on his head.  This one takes a moment longer and Harry watches the way the hat moves, humming to itself as it has a private conversation and its slit mouth moves almost as though it is chewing.

“ Gryffindor ,” it announces, sounding proud of and happy with the decision, beyond what Harry believes it normally does.  He contemplates whether that’s the effect of its personal ties to the house as he tries to force himself to cheer and seem excited as Jason makes his way down from the stage and towards their table.  He seats himself near enough for Harry to see his face, across the table from him and a few people to the left, next to the Weasley twins.

“Jackson, Perseus,” McGonagall calls finally, and another look of displeasure emanates from the stage at the front of the hall.

The hat is on his head and he is looking out over the crowds of students with a level look on his face, like he is used to being the centre of attention and though he doesn’t seem to revel in it, he knows how to manage it.  Harry almost wants to ask him for lessons.  The hat is squirming again, tensing its strange slit like it is drawing in its lips or bearing its teeth.  It shakes as though in disagreement and declares “ Slytherin,” and Percy removes the hat from his head quickly, like neither he nor the hat, something which Harry had thought for the past five years to be positively unflappable, want to bear with the exchange for a moment more than is necessary.  He walks quickly towards the Slytherins who are cheering extra boisterously, as though to rub in the fact that they got two of the three attractive, mysterious foreigners.

Dumbledore stands behind his table and begins to speak, his tone as light as ever, always seeming like he knows a million important things nobody else is to be entrusted with, gesturing widely, but he is stopped as soon as he starts.

“This year,” he says with a smile, “We have two new members of staff.  Please welcome Professor Umbridge who will be taking over Defence against the Dark Arts, and welcome back Professor Grubbly-Plank who will be taking over for Hagrid as our Care of Magical Creatures teacher,” He makes to continue, clearly much more to say, but is cut off.

“Hmm hmm,” a thin voice sounds from the side of the stage, impossibly loud for its fragility, the softness of the tone seeming as artificial as one could get.  It sends a feeling like dread rocketing down into Harry’s stomach as he remembers that this woman had not only been at his hearing but had voted for his immediate expulsion from the school that was the closest thing to a home he had.

Dumbledore tries to continue but the annoying interruption happens again, making it clear that the woman is not going to allow the headmaster to continue without saying her piece even though even the most cursory of glances around the hall would be enough to confirm that Hermione is amongst the only students willing to listen.  Umbridge stands in her place and it takes Harry a moment to realise she has moved at all because, especially from the distance and downwards angle, she is the same height standing as she is sitting.  She clears her throat once more and the grating noise makes Harry want to rip his hair out at the roots.  Her speech is dull, sounds like it has been ripped off from another equally uninteresting person, and hinges on much more student participation than she is able to garner from the crowd of teenagers whose eyes she is assaulting, all scowling back where she expects to see smiles.

“Thank you,” Dumbledore says around something that seems like it might be a sigh of relief, “professor Umbridge, for that illuminating speech,”

“Illuminating,” the Weasley twins echo, faces blank like they are trying to find anything even mildly interesting anywhere within the speech.

“More like a load of old waffle,” Ron scoffs and Harry is inclined to agree, but Hermione doesn’t seem like she shares the sentiment.  She is leaning forwards on her elbows and it takes Harry a moment to realise she is making eye contact with Jason, looking at him almost as though they are sharing thoughts, reaching some sort of truce or agreement that Harry can’t follow.

“I don’t know,” she says slowly and Jason nods, his scar distorting as the sides of his lips pull down into a frown.

“Illuminating seems like the right word,” he says and Harry and the nearby Weasleys must be looking at him like he has grown another head because he raises his arms, palms splayed and on display, as though in surrender, “I didn’t say it was a good speech!” he defends then adds, “Or that she said anything I’m particularly happy to hear, but it was illuminating,”

Harry squints at him from behind the round lenses of his glasses, trying to make sense of the conclusion both Jason and Hermione seem to have drawn as though he didn’t spend the whole speech only half absorbing the words he was listening to and devoting most of his energy to wishing he was already asleep, warm and comfortable in his four poster bed up in Gryffindor tower.  “Why is it illuminating, then?” he asks through a yawn.

Hermione fixes him with that same look she plasters on her face every time she reaches a breakthrough that means either something amazing or something catastrophic for Harry.  “Because we know for sure,” she said, emphasising the stress on syllables, like slowing her speech and making it more deliberate would force harry to pay attention, to really listen to what it was she had to tell him, “That the Ministry is Interfering at Hogwarts.”

Harry isn’t happy when he finally goes up to the dorm even though he had wanted nothing more than to be there since he had gotten off the train.  He is trapped in a prolonged, deathly silent argument with Seamus, the tension having built then broken, then built up again before returning to the silent staring match they are currently locked in, neither speaking a word, waiting for the right trigger for the bomb to go off.  Ron is distinctly on Harry’s side, of course, and Dean is standing behind Seamus, and Neville just looks like he wants to cry.   He looks like that a lot.  Jason is just standing kind of awkward, too tall and too broad to not feel like his presence is an imposition even as he tries to stay by Neville’s side, decidedly uninvolved.

The room seems like it might be marginally larger than it usually is, made to accommodate the extra bed tucked besides Harry’s own.  He doesn’t really want it to be there but he is beyond tired, pretty powerless, and aware that it would be rude to protest Jason being able to sleep, especially seeing as he hasn’t done anything to make Harry suspicious.  Or at least not yet, Harry is still certain there is something off about him that he needs to keep an eye out for, catch some anomaly to justify what some might call paranoia.  He already knows the wizarding world as a whole doesn’t really trust him, not anymore, so it’s hardly like they’ll be surprised if he acts out, like the madman they are all convinced he is.

“Are you actually fifteen?” Neville asks Jason eventually, trying hard not to engage with the impending doom taking up the other half of the room, making Neville feel a bit like he is trapped in a shark tank.

Jason shakes his head.  “Percy and I are sixteen,” he says, “But we don’t do the same courses back home and we can’t study NEWTS without OWLS?”
“So what do you do back home instead?”

If Neville notices the momentary flash of blind, flailing panic on Jason’s features he doesn't mention anything, maybe even thinks he might have imagined it as the look of perfect composure settles back in place, so natural-looking that it seems like it is the only facial expression he could ever wear.  “We have this thing called the DSTOMP,” he says, then he closes his eyes and Neville realises he has been staring at their oddly neon colour a bit too intensely only when he is made to look away by their sudden absence.  “Please don’t ask me what that stands for, if Mr. D ever told me I have long since forgotten,”

“Mr. D?” Neville is really just trying to keep the conversation going so he can distract himself from the people that he knows and their conflict, but it’s nice learning things about new people who are perfectly pleasant to him and seem happy to answer any questions he has.

“Our Director,” Jason shrugs, almost smiling, “He’s not allowed to drink but I’m not really convinced he’s ever sober.  He doesn’t know anyone’s name even though I think Percy’s saved the school twenty times over by now, and he’s constantly getting complaints from the younger campers that Nico creeps them out?”

“Campers?” Neville probes because it is the first thing he really registers, easier to come to terms with than the fact that their school is so often in danger and Percy suddenly seems like he might be their own version of Harry Potter.

“Oh,” Jason says and he actually seems like he might be caught off guard long enough for it to register, “It’s just what we call our students,” he shrugs, “especially the younger ones,”

Neville nods a few times too many and they continue talking about nothing because it’s the easiest thing to do when the room feels like a pressure cooker and Neville seems like he might need the comfort.  It’s something Jason knows he’s good at and it helps him feel a little bit better, especially when he can’t stop the creeping growth of the doubt that Harry Potter will ever let him in, or even let him approach the door.

Chapter Text

The first word that pops into Nico’s head to describe his Slytherin housemates is annoying.  He should really know better than to expect much else but he fails to see how the cunning that was supposed to characterise Slytherin house translates into snootiness and an obsession with wealth and something that seems an awful lot like wizarding racism.  He looks to Percy, pleading to be saved from the hushed interrogations and lofty introductions as his cousin nears the table, but he sits, unknowing.

Until the snooty blond kid who looks like a weasel that has been pulled like taffy then gifted a platinum toupee turns to him, the clear, watery colour of his eyes finding all of Percy’s rough edges with what might be amusement but is probably disapproval.

“I’m Draco Malfoy,” he introduces like the name should be ringing bells.  It isn’t.

As much as it clearly pains Percy, they’re there to play nice.  “Percy Jackson,” he says, voice sounding strange.  Nico watches silently, having already been through the painful introduction.

“Nice to meet you,” Draco says and Nico isn’t convinced he really believes what he is saying because, as much as he is playing formality, Percy’s eyes are that unnatural bright colour that makes the new campers stare at him like some alien, the colour they turn when he’s angry, and he’s gritting his teeth and they’re as sharp as ever.

“Well met,” he returns, and it might be the single most strained-sounding thing he’s ever said.

“Are you purebloods?” He asks, drawing Nico back into the conversation in spite of how little he wants to be there.  Jason has gone to Gryffindor and Nico is already planning how he can force him to share the experience he’s currently being forced through.

Nico and Percy share a look that means a lot to them but momentarily confounds the wizards watching them.  “Halfblood,” they return in tandem.  Draco shrugs.

“That will do,” he relents, seemingly pleased that their heritage is not disgracing his noble house.  Nico wishes he could hex the boy but he’s pretty sure that’s exactly what they were instructed not to do.

“Will anyone know it’s me if a skeleton crawls up from the ground and chases him around the hall?” He whispers to Percy in Ancient Greek who laughs back.

“I think the staff might,” he says and Nico scowls.  “Don’t worry,” he says, “We can figure out something more subtle.”

“You?” Nico raises a dark eyebrow and the unstable light made by the candles lined up in rows along the walls flickers in them, the darkness of his irises like a screen for the uniform orange flames.  “Subtle?”
“Okay,” Percy relents, “Maybe not so much subtle as just not quite so obviously us as a rogue zombie chasing him, or flooding his bed, or something,”

Nico pauses, eyes going wide.  His features fall, slack and small.  “We have to share a dorm with him,” he realises.

Percy mutters something like “I survived two great prophecies for this?” and commits himself to ignoring the conversations that his housemates attempt to pull him into as he eats, slowly and deliberately, unable to eat with the same speed as he used to after Tartarus stole his appetite and starved him.  None of the food is as good as his mother’s.

Harry thinks that his fifth year is going about as well as any of his school years do at the beginning, before everything inevitably goes to shit, only this time he has the addition of stress from his OWLS, the ministry’s intrusion, the stranger he can’t make himself trust sharing his dormitory, and half of the school believing him to be crazy as he struggled to come to terms with the way Cedric’s young body had fallen, crumpled.  Which is to say he wants it to be over already but he knows the only alternative is somehow worse.  He wishes, not for the first time as he traipses, half awake, to potions with Snape and the Slytherins in the dungeons (because the world is kind to him like that), that he could be somebody who wasn’t Harry Potter.

Ron and Hermione are walking beside him and it almost feels right except for the glimmering prefect badges on their lapels that bounce back the candlelight.  They are talking to each other and not to him even though, like always, it sounds like they are mere moments away from devolving into an argument about nothing.  He would turn around and talk to Neville to feel a little less ignored but he’s not there, stumbling behind them and unengaged, but instead walking ahead of Harry, by Jason’s side.  They’re having a conversation and Jason’s accent feels wrong in the echoes of Hogwarts’ ancient halls and Neville is barely even stuttering.

So Harry walks in silence, looks at his shoes and the way they kick up the dust that has settled on the floor, and finds his way to the dungeon, wishing for something different even if he’s not really sure what exactly that is.

Ron and Hermione aren’t really ignoring him, but he feels a little like an afterthought, even more so when Ron abandons his typical seat in the potions classroom, the one next to Harry’s where they crowd around the bubbling pewter cauldron towards the back of the room, barely able to read the instructions Snape always writes in his cruel cursive hand.  He sits there alone and watches the class split into groups of two.  Almost everyone sticks within their own house, with the exception of Jason who approaches his cousin, the bonds of family clearly stronger to the Americans than any sense of house loyalty.  So with Jason sitting with Nico only a desk away, Percy wanders over to him, smiling sheepishly and waving his hand.

Harry looks at the vaguely star-shaped scar in his palm rather than his face as he takes the seat across from Harry, not waiting for permission to.  Harry looks around the room, trying to avoid looking Percy in the eyes.  He realises that there are no other unclaimed desks or partners so he can’t exactly complain.

He looks across to Percy as Snape writes his instructions on the blackboard.  He is looking back, smiling gently and clearly barely listening to what Snape has to say.  His eyes aren’t the same sea green Harry remembers from the train and are instead a sickly, poisonous green that is somehow even more unnaturally bright.  Harry thinks they make him look evil, or at the very least inhuman, and supposes that they might be evidence enough all on their own that there is something wrong with the transfers.  But still Percy is smiling at him.

“I’ll try not to drag you down,” he promises and Harry, well-acquainted with his own patchy potions track record, doesn’t think Percy could if he tried, “but potions is my best subject,”  Harry notices that there is something in the way that he smiles that makes it feel like there’s some sort of joke or secret in what he’s saying that isn’t supposed to make sense to Harry.  He hears a sound from Nico and Jason’s desk that might be a snort or a cough.

Harry doesn’t respond.  He readjusts his glasses and scowls at the stained wood grain of the table.  Then Snape walks around and places a sheet of paper with the instructions on it on the transfers’ desk with a look on his face that might be grudging or might be impassive.  Harry looks over to it as soon as Snape leaves and Percy slides it over, not looking at it himself.  It is written in block capitals, as easy to read as Snape could manage.  Percy glances at it once before getting up to gather ingredients, looking sheepishly back at Harry every now and then as he struggles to figure out Snape’s ridiculous organisation system.  Harry helps him occasionally when he asks, tries not to let the fact that the Slytherin isn’t being as annoying as most of his house affect him.  He refuses to feel at all positively about a snake, especially one that is so strange.  Even if he grins goofily at Harry and his too-sharp teeth aren’t even all that off putting and he’s never even said anything rude to Harry, let alone incendiary.

Percy sits back down and doesn’t spare the instructions another glance.  Harry knows he definitely hasn’t read over them enough times for there to be much memorisation going on but there’s a fluidity and an intuition to the way he moves as Harry is trying to read the instructions and keep up with where exactly in the instructions Percy is.  From across the room, Snape raises a single eyebrow, forehead wrinkling.  For once, there is no note of condescension in the expression.

Harry keeps track of where Percy is in the instructions, makes sure he’s following them even if he seems to be working off some strange sort of instinct.  He follows the instructions exactly and Harry stirs when Percy asks him to and chips when Percy asks him to and counts down from 30 when Percy asks him to and the Slytherin is nothing but polite.  He deviates from the instructions, crushes a herb rather than cuts it, and before Harry can stop him he is dumping the handful of green into the bubbling potion.  He brushes off his palms, a useless gesture as they’re already stained green with the leaking chlorophyll.  Percy grins down at them as Harry bites back frustration and looks down into the vat of boiling liquid, trying to see just how badly Percy has ruined it, fallen at the final hurdle.

But he hasn’t.  It is a toxic kind of green, glimmering gossamer-y silver across its unstable, ever moving surface.  A bubble pops and Harry realises it’s the exact same colour as the instructions describe and Snape’s exemplar shows.  When he looks back up at Percy, eyes wide behind the round lenses of his glasses, he can’t help but notice that the vibrance in Percy’s eyes is a perfect match for it.

For once, potions goes well and, when Ron and Hermione ask him about it as though they didn’t leave him alone, he refuses to thank the transfer student for it.  Defence against the dark arts is a completely different story and Harry kind of wishes that, even for a moment, he could be at all surprised.

It’s an afternoon lesson, the second one of the day that they’re sharing with the Slytherins.  Harry decides whoever made their schedules must really hate Gryffindors.

Not to mention that it’s with the toad herself, who is sitting behind her desk at the front of the room.  If she had been offensive to look at the day before with the rest of the great hall to dilute her then she is positively revolting, and perhaps even deadly, sitting there in her own space, where her ruddy cheeks are as pink as her monotone clothes and the paint and the wallpaper on the walls.  There are cat decals on the walls, kitschy moving pictures of painted cats on plates strung up, completely devoid of taste or consideration for her students’ eyes or mental health.

She smiles and it looks like it hurts.  Her lips are pink too.  “Look at you all,” she says, voice lethally saccharine.  “This is the future of the wizarding world sitting in front of me, eager and ready for learning!” She claps her hands together.  Her hands are neither flat nor cupped enough to make much noise.  Hermione shuffles in her seat.  It might be discomfort or maybe apprehension, ready and waiting to learn, either way Umbridge sends her a side eye and she squirms in place again.  This time it’s definitely discomfort.  She tells them to open their books, that they’ll be working through a brand new, Ministry approved curriculum.  It sounds like they aren’t going to learn anything.  The one small mercy is that the closest Slytherin to Harry is three desks away, dressed in green which feels almost like a relief in the rose-tinted room.

It’s Hermione who bites the bullet and asks about whether or not they will be doing anything practical that year, if they’ll actually be learning how to defend themselves against the dark arts.  Considering their past experiences, it’s beyond a fair request to make but Umbridge’s expression contorts and it becomes clear she doesn’t share that opinion.

The very moment her face changes Percy winces, outwardly and empathetically.  Hermione continues and holds her ground but suddenly Umbridge’s attention is divided.

“What is it Mr…?” She asks, prompting him to fill in her gap.  Percy has a feeling, as she watches that monstrous expression crawl over her face as it changes in that way only a human’s can, that she already knows.  She just wants to hear him turn himself in.

“Jackson,” he says, standing up and staring down at her.  It’s not his wolf stare, he’s still determined to be civil, but the way that Jason nudges his shin with the toe of his stupid leather school shoe is an indication that he’s already going a little bit too far.

“Right,” she says, and Percy is sure that there is no way she can hold her face that won’t look forced, “One of our transfer students,” she says it like a curse, as though, in its very utterance, she is wishing him ill-will.  The joke’s on her, of course.  He has plenty of that without her puny interference.

“That’s me,” he says cheerily, because he’s always had a knack for saying precisely the wrong thing.

“Right,” she looks flummoxed and uncomfortable but she stands her ground on shaking knees as Percy sharpens his eyes and widens his grin.  He knows how he looks but he supposes that nobody had ever told him he couldn’t make the new teacher a tad bit uncomfortable.  Especially because he has an inkling he’ll end up in the same place as Harry Potter, which is the ultimate goal.  Scaring the shit out of a crappy teacher is just a bonus.  “And I ask again: what is it?”

He shrugs and gestures loosely to Hermione who looks back at him without the suspicion Harry always seems to hold in his eyes.  “Well she’s right,” he states easily, “And I knew as soon as she said it that you were going to be unreasonable,”

“You do not talk to me like that, Mr. Jackson!” she says defiantly, but her voice is climbing higher.  He smirks.  “Insolent American!  Do you not have manners across the pond?”

He screws up his nose and ignores the way that Hermione looks at him, wide-eyed, as all the attention turns away from her, gratefulness and guilt mingling in the chocolate brown colour of her hooded eyes.  “No,” he says, “No, we do,” he gestured to Jason who makes a face and holds up his hands, palms out, as though in surrender, not wanting to be involved, not like this, not yet.  “He does, even though he was raised by wolves, I just didn’t get that blessing,”

Nico snorts from the seat to Percy’s left.  “Or any other,”

“Detention!” Umbridge decides shortly, “Both of you.  You do not talk like that in my classroom,” Nico hasn’t really done anything, but it was the goal so he doesn’t protest.  He smirks at her and he knows what his face looks like.  She pales and looks at Percy who is looking right back at him, their grins matching.  “Now,” she turns back to Hermione, trying her hardest not to look like the confrontation has affected her.  She’s not a very convincing actress.  “Would you care to actually explain to me why you are so concerned about your safety at Hogwarts?”

Hermione stills, spine as straight as a board for this horrible moment where she thinks she is going to lose her nerve.  “Cedric Diggory-” she starts slowly, unsurely.  All the eyes are on her, or they may as well be.  Her hands shake as she fiddles with her quill.  She snaps a spine off the feather and sets it down on the table.  There’s navy blue ink gathering around her nail beds and in the cracks and wrinkles in her skin.  She stares at her own hands until they start to look like scales.

“Cedric Diggory died in a tragic, one off accident,” Umbridge interrupts and Hermione is having trouble finding the words to fight back.  This isn’t just another condescending teacher, this is the ministry and she’s scared for her future more than she’s scared about ending up in detention with Percy and Nico.

“Did he?” Percy says, figuring if he’s already in a hole there isn’t much harm in digging it a little deeper.  It would be a hole all the same.

“Yes, Mr. Jackson.  He did.  You weren’t here at the time so I would kindly request you don’t butt in where it doesn’t concern you,”

“You weren’t there either,” Harry says quietly, but she notices.

“What was that, Mr. Potter?” She doesn’t even pretend she doesn’t know his name.

“You weren’t there either,” he repeats louder, with more conviction.  The class looks at him, as though this is the perfect show featuring everyone’s favourite madman, Harry Potter, poised to create another scandal.  Through no fault of his own, he is always poised to create another scandal.

“Mr. Potter, detention!” she says askance, clearly meaning to say more.

“You weren’t,” Percy says, so she can’t.  He shrugs, like none of this has gotten to him and, not for the first time, Harry feels compelled to ask how he does it.  “And, on the off chance he’s lied about this for so long because he likes being treated like a freak, I’ve heard about lots of things that happen here and I’ve been through a lot myself.  Even if Voldemort-” Umbridge gasps and Harry feels a little vindicated.  He doesn’t trust Percy, not at all, but if he is a manipulator, he’s a good one.  “Isn’t returning, there’s still danger.  You’re gonna struggle to convince me you care about this “future of the wizarding world” if you refuse to teach them to protect themselves,”

She takes a deep breath.  “Mr. Jackson, I implore you to consider what you say before I have to take harsher disciplinary action.”

Percy shrugs.  “I’ve had worse,”

And, in the ensuing moment of silence that feels like it will last an eternity if nobody else speaks up, Harry grinds his teeth and says, in spite of his personal feelings, “He’s right.”

Chapter Text

The voices are getting to Harry.  He certainly never truly managed to get used to them in spite of their frequency, but they’ve suddenly increased tenfold from their position of barely tolerable and he feels like screaming.  They aren’t just about him, of course, but they don’t talk about Percy Jackson in the same way they talk about Harry Potter, and that makes it undoubtedly worse than it would have been if Harry were the sole focus.

Percy Jackson is this and that and six feet tall and has the most incredible eyes and really impressive muscles and he’s fearless and his accent is so interesting and he’s funny and loved, and somehow even being a Slytherin can’t tarnish that admiration.  But Harry Potter isn’t that, he’s the same Potty Potter who gets obsessed as easily as he gets into trouble, who is always at the centre of all the danger, who is argumentative and confrontational and bad news.  It hurts a lot and Harry can’t do enough to block it out.  He tunes into the conversation Hermione and Ron are trying to have with him but still the gossip seeps in.

(Percy hears it all too, the voices, and hears things Harry misses out: Percy Jackson, the freak who came into their school to disrupt it, the one with the scary eyes and the scary face and the scary scars, who people will look at from a distance but try their best not to get too close to.  The one who may as well be venomous.)

Harry sits at Gryffindor table and tries to pretend there isn’t some strange, half-bitter feeling in his stomach when he watches Jason settle himself across from Harry at the table  and immediately reach for a goblet of pumpkin juice, smiling at the novelty of it as he swills the viscous orange liquid around in the shining metal.  It’s a small mercy that Jason doesn’t even begin to mention Umbridge’s lesson.  He shakes his head when Fred and George ask him if Percy has always been like that and then that’s the end of it.  He either doesn’t have many opinions on it or doesn’t want to share them and that’s enough to make his presence feel like a relief.  Which is enough, in and of itself, to make Harry ever so slightly nauseated.

He leaves the table early, feeling like his body is swallowing itself bit by bit, chewing up the pieces and spitting them out, put back together all wrong; he still feels like himself but he feels uncomfortable in that fact, like the skin doesn’t quite fit.  Ron and Hermione have the decency to leave alongside him, leaving their plates in their spots and standing as they are cleared away as though there was never any mess there to begin with.  Jason halts his conversation with Fred and George for a moment to look at them with an inquisitive look that makes Harry want to drop to his knees and explain exactly what he’s doing and thinking as though it’s an apology.  But Jason stays put, nods once, and doesn’t interrogate nor make a move to follow.

Hermione falls heavily onto one of the large, plush chairs by the flickering fire in the common room, the noise of the fire crackling evident amongst the lack of voices in the room, empty aside from them and all the ambient clutter and paintings which make the Gryffindor common room what it is.  She sighs and says, her head buried into the palms of her hands where the kin is calloused from years of gripping to her wand for dear life, too accustomed to the danger that the Ministry is denying as though that will simply banish it from reality, “Nobody believes Dumbledore,”

“But why?” Ron presses, “I know the snakes don’t like him, but the rest of the school?”

“Right after he gave his speech last year the Ministry took their stance,” she remembers, “I guess they didn’t leave enough time for the message to sink in,”

“So we’re fucked now,” Harry confirms, glaring at a spot on the floor as though he might be able to bore a hole in the floorboards where the orange glow of firelight illuminates the texture of the woodgrain.

“That’s one way to put it,” Hermione nods, resigned, “I don’t suppose it helps that Umbridge is clearly a spy for the ministry,”

“So detention?” Nico asks Percy in ancient Greek as they sit around the Slytherin table, trying their utmost to create some sort of emotional and language barrier so their roommates and the rest of their house keep their distance and don’t try to butt in.  He knows his cousin, which means that he knows he is pretty good at coming up with plans and pretty smart practically, though often unconventionally.  So he joined in, took the detention as well.

Percy shrugs.  “If we stand up for him he might be a little more inclined to trust us,”

Nico nods, “He did seem like he felt a bit less hostile at the end there,

“Even if he wasn’t all too happy about it.  I may not be the best as far as mortal friendships and all of that goes, but I’m pretty good at rallying troops,”

“So you think this will end up as a war,” Nico grimaces.  It isn’t a question.

“When does it not?”

There is something too knowing in Nico’s eyes, an echo of his past before the Lotus Hotel and Casino as he blinks slowly.  “There’s another reason you stood up for Potter,”

There’s a glint in Percy’s when he responds, picking up his goblet and swirling the pumpkin juice around the bottom.  “You don’t win a war with a weak army,”

“But you do win one with an army of teenagers,”

“Don’t I know it,” Percy sounds so resigned when he says it that Nico has to think, for a moment, about Percy living for so long in the shadow of the great prophecy, knowing that even before he knew there were people around him training him up just to send him to what they were sure would be his death.

He realises that there’s probably something a bit more personal in Percy’s investment in Harry than just the quest.  “You think Harry knows it too?”

“I don’t see how he couldn’t,” The way that Percy shrugs looks somewhat forced to Nico but he knows what it will look like from outside, a casual gesture in a casual conversation, absolutely nothing worth being concerned or intrigued about.

“You think the kid’s like you?”

“Well, I’m not that scrawny-” Nico snorts, “But I think he’s a lot like you too,” Nico doesn’t know what he means but Percy seems so sure that he can’t imagine asking being anything other than tiring.  Though Percy might not be the idiot everyone thinks he is, he isn’t the best at articulating things clearly--that’s more Annabeth’s job--and Nico doesn’t always have the energy to untangle the verbal knots he has a tendency to tie himself into.

Care of magical creatures takes place outside and Nico isn’t all too sure he appreciates it.  It’s a cold, blustery, autumnal day and the air smells like the damp, sodden dirt underfoot that is ruining his shoes and making his footsteps somewhat unstable.  He doesn’t care about most of his clothes at all, and he definitely doesn’t care about the stupid patent leather school shoes Hogwarts makes him wear, but it is still uncomfortable and he’s cold and miserable and missing his home.  He never thought he would call Camp Half-Blood that, but it’s the best thing he has and the weather is almost always nice, not to mention it being where Will is.  He can’t even praise Hogwarts for its lack of monsters and threats, because he’s been told what lives in those woods that aren’t cordoned off in any way but are strictly forbidden, and he knows he wouldn’t be there if there wasn’t a significant threat looming.

He’d love it if, for once, there wasn’t a threat looming.

This isn’t his world and it shouldn’t have to be, it’s Hecate’s and it has spiralled out of control into a series of civilisations across the world.  He understands that he was needed as a child of the big three, one of the most powerful demigods they had to hand, and therefore available to carry out every whim of the gods, every request for him to fuck himself over.  And the thing is, that he answers the requests, grits his teeth and fucks himself over time and time again for the good of the gods that don’t care about him.  He doesn’t take it personally: he’s no Luke Castellan but they all know better than to think the gods care about any of them really.

Still, Hazel always had much more to do with Hecate than he did and he kind of hates that she isn’t there in his stead, even though he isn’t selfish enough to pretend not to know about all of her responsibilities in New Rome.

The Brits around him are talking about how the teacher in front of them, looking distinctly like she had suffered a few too many run-ins with the magical creatures she supposedly cared for, isn’t the one they’re used to.  It seems like a small detail but he files it away anyway, wondering why the staff had changed and, even more so, why the reactions vary so much between the Gryffindors and the Slytherins.  He’s muttering to himself as he thinks and Percy has joined Jason’s side, talking animatedly yet quietly like a lost art only he could master, the product of mortal schools designed for somebody other than him and countless fights with monsters who could smell as well as hear him.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that Harry Potter is looking at Nico like he’s a threat as well as a mystery, like a person must be both at once.  Nico is perhaps starting to see, when he’s looking for a reason, why Percy thought to compare the two of them.  Still, it doesn’t stop a sort of cocky grin crossing Nico’s delicate features.  He doesn’t mean for it to look how it does but he is under no illusions about his facial expressions--how he can never quite manage to look genuinely happy or amused, at least not welcomingly so, if he is at all aware of himself--but he can’t help but find it funny that he knows that he is one of the only people he can confirm Harry would do well to trust, a secret bodyguard in the shadows.  It is, after all, where he operates best.  Harry scowls so Nico waves and he scowls harder.  He looks like an angry kitten and, as funny as it is, Nico really hopes whatever is looming won’t be big enough to change that.  He isn’t hugely optimistic.

Harry is fed up with the entirety of Slytherin by the time Care of Magical Creatures ends.  Draco had some unsavoury things to say about Hagrid, about his absence and his job security, and everything he was and stood for as a person.  It was predictable, really, but still infuriating.  And then there was Nico, looking at him with those too-dark eyes like he knew something he shouldn’t and he was holding it over Harry's head.  Harry still can’t make sense of the transfers, even Jason who shared his dorm and was as pleasant as anyone else (and less intrusive than most) gives him a sort of undefinable bad feeling.  There is something wrong about them, right down to the way the latent sense of magic in the air feels like it is twitching around them, contorting as though cursed, tortured.

The rest of Slytherin weren’t really doing anything but they always manage to piss Harry off just in their indifference, how they crowd around Malfoy and listen, not so much as twitching their fists with the strength of the urge to punch him in the face.  Percy joined Jason and spoke quietly and the reminder that Jason would always be Percy and Nico’s family before he would be a Gryffindor, someone on the right side of wizarding history, hit Harry suddenly.  As he thinks back on it, Harry thinks it’s as good of a reason as any to distrust Jason exactly how he distrusts almost everyone else.  (He tries not to think back on it any further, because he knows that if he were to think back far enough he’d land on Peter Pettigrew eventually and be forced to think about the exception to the rule he operated around like gospel.)

He’s not in a good mood as he walks back to the great hall for lunch, traipsing in streaks of sodden mud that paint the floor with a mess of footprints, too tightly packed to follow any one person’s paths.  He falls onto the bench of his usual table heavily, ignoring the pain in his tailbone as he reaches for a goblet of water and sloshes a couple of tablespoons of it across the lower part of his face and the front of his shirt.  It's cold and the breeze from the still-open door makes him shiver whenever it hits the dampened fabric against his chest but he doesn’t bother fixing it.  He goes to grab a sandwich and is halted mid-action by the sound of a girl clearing her throat.

It’s a familiar voice even from what little he hears of it, and that doesn’t feel like a good sign to him.  He turns in his seat to look up at Angelina, the shape of her jaw stronger than ever from the perspective he is viewing it from.  Her shoulders are broader than he remembers and he tries to shrink himself into the shape of her shadow as she stares down at him with her eyes narrowed and her face contorted into what may be anger, or otherwise general discontent.

“You need to talk to Umbridge,” she tells him matter-of-factly and he kind of wants to cry because it is the very last thing he would want to do.  “We have quidditch try-outs on Friday and I want the whole team there,”

Harry winces.  There’s a feeling like a stone in his stomach when he asks “and what if I can’t be there?”

She sighs.  “You aren’t off the team,” she assures him, “But I will be pretty pissed off,”

“Noted,” Harry nods, “I’ll talk to Umbridge but I can’t promise she’ll have any ounce of compassion or interest in me,”

Across the table, near enough to hear every word that passes between them, but not enough to lean across and involve himself in any way that may seem natural rather than intrusive, Jason stands up.  He’s taller and broader than most Hogwarts students and there’s an inherent quality to his presence that makes him stand out, someone you feel like you should listen to.  He walks to Nico and Percy, sitting isolated and close together at the edge of the Slytherin table and talking amongst themselves, like he has an idea, something urgent.  Jason’s plate is still half-full, forgotten as Harry stares at the back of his blond head as he evades the table, like he would rather be amongst the Slytherins than his own house.

Angelina walks away after she claps him on the shoulder with the calloused palm of her hand and wishes him luck.  He tries not to react for a moment before he clasps his upper arm and tries to dull the sting of pain.  She seems tense.  The entire school body seems tense.  Harry could rationalise that it was all a product of losing Cedric last year, it wouldn’t be a stretch whatsoever, but he can’t help but feel it’s something more, even if he can’t assign a name or characteristics to it.

He has his first detention with Umbridge after dinner, and he spends the entire meal tense, watching Percy and Nico from a distance and trying to discern if they know anything about the detention that he doesn’t even though he knows the exercise is useless.  Instead he tries to think about what they might be saying to each other, wondering who or what they are talking about, whether they are speaking English or the Greek they had spoken on the train, if Jason feels left out watching his cousins share a conversation between themselves and without him all because of a hat.

When the dark-haired transfers clamber to their feet with a strange ethereal sense of grace that Harry would never have noticed if he wasn’t watching closely and that feels so intensely out of place, Harry shoves a last forkful of sticky toffee pudding into his mouth and sips on his water, drawing out the moment before he too has to leave for as long as he can make a convincing excuse.  Ron looks sympathetic as he wishes Harry luck and Hermione doesn’t attempt to tell him that he shouldn’t have gotten the detention in the first place.  Fred and George look proud of him for pissing off the toad on day one, as he suspected they would, and Jason continues to be a mystery.  “Don’t let them do anything too stupid,” he requests of Harry who nods even though he is as certain as he has ever been about anything that Percy and Nico are not going to be particularly inclined to do as he asks of them.

He tried his luck before the meal and asked Umbridge to let him have Friday off of detention, swap it out for the following Monday, but she was having none of it.  Her denial was vehement and there was a vitriolic glint in her beady eyes, like a promise of cruelty to come.

There is a feeling in his stomach like his attempts to appease Angela had made his own life worse and that consequence is looming, a couple of staircases and a little under ten minutes away.  He is familiar enough with the layout of Hogwarts to know he can push off the thought of leaving until the very last minute, but that doesn’t conquer the reality that he has to go.  He has a bad feeling about the detention, like something more than a run-of-the-mill detention, and it makes his body feel like a tightly coiled spring.

Chapter Text

Hermione is staring at Jason and he is willing to pretend he doesn’t know why if there is a chance it might make her even a little bit more trusting of him.  She is sitting in one of the coveted cosy chairs by the fireplace and there is an essay, presumably finished, on a roll of parchment that she has discarded on the coffee table alongside a quill and a half-empty pot of ink.  There are water-rings and coffee and ink stains all over the wood of the table that nobody has cared enough about in a long time to magic away.  Nowadays the consensus seems to be that it adds character and you’d be doing the tower a disservice by trying to clean it so intensively.  Hermione has swapped out her homework for knitting needles and a tangled skein of chartreuse wool that she is slowly and laboriously twisting into a shape that might be the beginnings of a hat if Jason squints hard enough at it.  In fact, that’s exactly what he is doing.  His glasses are on top of his head because they aren’t made for up-close work, and he has given up on the essay sitting on his lap, nothing more than an opening paragraph, because the letters were smashing into each other like a car crash and, in spite of his predisposition to Latin, he has never been a big fan of scriptio continua.

“Can I help you?” Hermione asks and Jason realises he must have been staring, looking either confused or suspicious.  She sounds a bit nasally, defensive like she is half terrified that he’s making fun of her but he genuinely means her no ill will.  Jason looks behind her, over her shoulder, before answering her, and sees Ron on the other side of the room, with his head buried in his ink-stained hands, either asleep or frustrated with the essay Jason sincerely doubts he’s anywhere close to finishing.

“Sorry,” Jason says, holding up a placating palm and hoping he seems genuine.  He has been told he’s intimidating a few times but he knows there is a world between intimidating and scary that puts him at an advantage as far as personability goes when Nico and Percy aren’t there beside him.  “I’m dyslexic and I’m just struggling a bit--a lot--with this essay.  What are you knitting?”

She sticks up her nose before she answers but Jason can’t see it as anything more than just a defence mechanism.  “I’m making hats and socks for the house elves,” there is a challenge in the way she talks, but Jason isn’t going to take her up on it.

“House elves?” He presses.  Hecate had told them about house elves and how wealthy wizards may keep them in their quarters and the thought had sent a shiver up Jason’s spine, but asking Hermione gives him the chance to have a conversation with her and he needs every chance he can get.

“Yes, house elves.  Did you know there are a lot of them here at Hogwarts, in the kitchens, cleaning, it’s all house elves,” Jason winces slightly.  He had been assuming naively that the magical school had ways of managing magically, without the labour of house elves, and the idea that anything otherwise was happening made his skin crawl.  The look of discomfort on his face seemed to have appeased Hermione, because she dropped her nose and leaned forwards in her chair so she was bringing herself closer to him.

“You’re trying to free them?” She nodded.  “But is that going to work?  You aren’t their master,”

“Oh,” she deflates and drops the knitting needles into her lap.  There is a knot where a series of neat loops should be.

“You should try talking to Dumbledore,” he suggests in an attempt to raise her spirits in spite of the discomfort that the old man causes to build in his gut.  Jason remember clearly the feeling of their first encounter with wizarding kind, as aided by Hecate, when Dumbledore had examined him and his cousins with surgical precision as though they were specimens in a lab and nodded with a smile, half hidden in his bright white beard, like he was plotting already.  Dumbledore hadn’t felt like a threat, but he also hadn’t felt like Chiron even though both had spent years raising their respective prophesied heroes to face near certain death.  “I’ll go with you, if you want me to,”

Hermione smiles at him genuinely and softly, her face cast orange by the crackling fire nearby, close but not for one moment too hot.  “Okay,” she agrees after a moment of consideration. In which she drags her deep brown eyes agonisingly slowly across all of the faces in the room.  Jason can guess that she’s making sure none of them are Harry, who distrusts Jason and his cousins so implicitly and deeply that Jason is concerned about their ability to protect him, even though they both know he is in detention.  Then she leans closer and shuffles the chair ever so slightly, it being too heavy for her to really make much difference.  “You said you were dyslexic?  I can probably give you a little bit of help with that essay,”

By the time Harry gets to detention, Percy and Nico are already standing outside of Umbridge’s classroom, hovering by the closed door.  Harry tries the handle because neither of them tell him not to (though he is sure he would have anyway) and it doesn’t budge; it’s locked, a clear sign from Umbridge that they can be no earlier nor later than she wishes, even though Alohomora is a wonderfully simple charm.  It’s the impact that matters, not the practicality.

Harry intentionally stands on the other side of the door to the dark-haired transfers and tries pointedly not to look at their faces as they talk to each other in hushed English.  It strikes him as odd as he strains himself to listen whilst staring at the floor and the scuffed leather toes of their shoes and the signs of wear already accumulating along the bottom of their new robes.  Usually, if they don’t want to be overheard they speak in their strange, oddly magical tongue, so the English feels almost like an invitation to eavesdrop.  Harry picks up on the odd word: “Toad-”, “pink-”, “George-”, “forest-”, “blood-”.  It’s enough for him to have a vague idea of what they’re talking about but not enough for him to tell what it is they have to say about it.

Harry has been staring at their feet for too long, so he can’t be sure if his thoughts about the way the Slytherins stand are actually based in reality, but even as they are appear generally relaxed, like no punishment Umbridge could ever enact on them would be able to phase them, their feet are carefully shoulder-width apart, like an army standing at ease but never truly easy.  Neither of them are still, but there’s something defensive about the way that they fidget and the way they hold themselves.  Percy is spinning a muggle pen across the back of his thumb with practised ease, but there isn’t a moment where he doesn’t seem ready to grab it and wield it how Harry might wield his wand.  Nico alternates between spinning the skull ring around his finger and the sun-charmed bracelet around his wrist and there isn’t a single moment where he doesn’t look ready to spring into action like a feral beast.  They’re slumping their shoulders as though in relaxation, but there’s something about the posture that isn’t quite right, even if it’s just the way that it emphasises unexplained hunger pangs in their frames, the way that their bodies are  muscular in a way that indicates necessity, ropey muscles made for use rather than appearances speaking to emaciation, recovery.  Harry wonders if there’s a chance they have come out of a war of their own but he knows he would have heard of so much upset in wizarding America so it just makes him suspicious instead of sympathetic.

The door creaks open, pulling Harry out of his spiral and back into the moment, and Umbridge appears slowly and somewhat menacingly in the gap it creates, casting a thin, threatening stripe of warm light into the near darkness of the age-old corridor they are standing in.  She is short and physically not imposing, but there’s something off putting in the way that she holds her features so her skin wrinkles and folds over itself like it’s a bit too big for her, starkly pasty and bright pink at the cheeks.  It has that look of layers of makeup sitting on top of the skin, poorly blended and a couple of shades off, a stark line where her jaw meets her neck.  The yellow light in her room emphasises the patches of skin where the makeup can;t quite sit, broken up by the oil across her nose into stratified spots.  She is sneering at them through the guise of a sickly sweet smile, and Harry almost wants to smile at Nico and Percy for the pure, inhuman intensity that they are scowling at her with.  She makes a point of not looking at them as two pairs of large, fathomless eyes drill holes into the back of her head, instead looking at Harry like she has singled him out as her weakest, most vulnerable target.  He sneers at her too, but he knows from a look at the way that Nico and Percy hold themselves and the way that their faces have warped to accommodate the abysses that have become of their eyes, dark, dangerous, leading, a great, deep, threatening pit to fall into, that he may as well be a puppy baring its tiny needle teeth.

She claps her hands and, as though he has noticed the precision with which her nails have been immaculately painted pink, Percy begins to pick at the remnants of colour on his own, a flake of the dark colour falling slowly and deliberately to the ground as if to make a point.  “Come on in,” she invites and her voice, thin in a way that is clearly forced, feels like it sticks to Harry’s teeth like black treacle.

There is always something uncomfortable about detentions at Hogwarts, how the age of the castle creates an atmosphere in the empty classrooms that makes them feel like gutted relics of a time long gone, somewhere where he doesn’t belong.  There is something about the sickly sweetness, the superimposing of the distinctly modern kitschy cat-themed décor on top of the castle, that somehow counteracts that discomfort and creates an entirely new and infinitely worse one in its place.

“Well dearies,” she says as they take seats at the desks she gestures to and Percy makes a show of leaning back in his chair so two of the legs are suspended in the air.  There is cursive writing on the blackboard behind her that Nico and Percy are glaring at as though it has done them a personal disservice.  “I’m sure you all know why you’re here, but I want to be sure you know exactly what it is that you’ve done wrong,” She bends at the waist and lifts a box onto her desk, out of which she pulls three somewhat distressed-looking quills which she hands to each one of them alongside a sizeable piece of parchment.  “I want you all to write out “I must not tell lies,”

“How many times?” Harry asks.  He was expecting something much more tortuous and less humane than lines.

“Hmm,” Umbridge muses, “As many as it takes for the message to sink in,” It’s a vague answer.  Harry is beyond sick of those.

“We’re dyslexic,” Nico says, gesturing between himself and Percy with his eyes half lidded and his hand relaxed, like he is forcing his posture to show no signs of respect or fear to Umbridge, who is clearly equating the two.  Umbridge looks at him as though she may be able to set his papery skin a light with a look alone but he stares right back and the blackness of her eyes swallows her.

“That won’t be a problem,” she insists, “Try your best, it’s the message we’re concerned about here,” Nico and Percy look between each other with frustration and Percy makes a short comment in that language of theirs that makes Nico let out a single bark of laughter.  “English, please,” Umbridge says, and it’s evident that the expression on her face is disquieted, because they could be saying absolutely anything in front of her and she would never know.  There’s something satisfied about the way that Percy smirks at her as he picks up the quill and starts methodically picking at the barbs.  She turns her back for a moment and sinks back into her chair, watching them expectantly.

“You haven’t given us any ink,” Harry points out, sounding about as tired as he feels.

“Oh,” Umbridge says, nothing if not self-satisfied, “You won’t be needing any ink.”

Harry picks up the quill and scowls at the slightly bent spine as he holds it between his fingers and drags the dry nib across the parchment in the ghost of the shapes of the letters.  Nothing happens but Umbridge is peering at the blank off-white of their parchments expectantly and not saying a word, so Harry keeps tracing the words until he can see their shapes indented into the parchment and the hand he isn’t writing with, resting atop the desk and holding the parchment in place, starts to itch painfully.  Umbridge’s beady eyes glint and she leans forward in her seat as he drops the quill for a moment to hiss and brush his fingertips across where the skin burns.  There’s a fleck of red on the parchment and, as Harry tries to dull the sting, he looks over to see Nico’s head down, his dark hair falling in loose, limp waves so Harry can’t see the yellowish colour of his parchment as he laboriously traces the shapes of words he can’t see, but Percy is holding his quill loosely in one hand and looking at Harry, eyes wide and horrified.  It only takes Harry a moment to realise Percy’s vision is fixed somewhere between the quill and his sore hand.

“What the fuck?” Percy says with a venom Harry doesn’t quite understand.

“We don’t use that language, Mr. Jackson, be careful or you will earn some extra lines,”
“I won’t,” Percy says confidently with a voice like ice, his arms crossed over his chest and his face steely, a weapon all of its own.  Nico drops his quill and looks to Percy, something understanding and horrified passing across the dark, reflective pools of his irises.

“Blood?” He checks, the hollowness of his cheeks making his face look skeletal as his eyes join Percy’s in their pursuit to bore into Umbridge.  She is shaking where she stands and Percy is slowly raising to his feet, the ways he is holding both his body and his face positively feral-seeming.  He looks at Harry and there is a moment where everything softens.

“It’s torture,” he says, “Or as good as.  Don’t touch those quills,” and Harry stops thinking that the pain in his hand is a coincidence or a random occurrence even though no part of him wants to trust Percy Jackson who looks ready to throttle Umbridge but looks at Harry with this understanding that only makes him more aware of how alone he is in the ways that really matter.  Being the chosen one, the boy who lived, the triwizard the champion, Potty Potter, is an incredibly isolating experience.  But there is something about Percy’s face and the way the yellow light bounces across the shiny lines of the extensive scarring across his bronze skin that makes Harry think that there might be something there.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr, Jackson,” Umbridge says, but her voice has dropped like she can’t quite maintain the act and it warbles as she twists syllables awkwardly like they don’t quite fit in her mouth.

“Don’t I?” Percy inquires, leaning forwards so that, even though he is standing, his head is about level with Umbridge's.  She seizes up like there is something stopping her, but Percy’s hands are gripping each other behind his back and all three of their wands are sitting in the book she put them into when they were confiscated.  Harry looks at Nico like he might have answers, but the look on his face, the knowing, the understanding, the reluctance and the lump in his throat where he tries to hide the discomfort, just confuses Harry more.  “I know blood,” Percy shrugs and rights his posture and a darkness passes across his face like he is doing or thinking of something terrible.  “These quills of yours will be reported to Dumbledore, and I know you’re under the impression that he can’t do anything--we all know what the Ministry is thinking, you aren’t a subtle group, y’know--but lots of accidents can happen,”  Nico stands and joins Percy and it’s like a spell is broken as Umbridge stumbles over herself and her face is gaping, eyes wide and lungs hungry.  He has his hands tucked easily into his pockets and he is tapping his foot on the floor impatiently.

“We won’t be back for the rest of these sessions,” Nico tells her coolly, taking the ring from his finger and holding the shockingly cool metal up to the light so it is refracted back, somehow forming the same shape as the ring itself where it is reflected.  “None of us.  I suggest you find a more humane form of detention, for your own good more than ours,” He picks his discarded quill back up and snaps it easily in half and a single drop of viscous claret falls to the floor, leaving a bright stain that sinks into the ground like it is destined to stay there forever.

Then they leave and Harry, frozen in place, stares at the retreating forms of their backs as their dark silhouettes move further and further away from Umbridge’s classroom until they disappear completely.  What they don’t hear is the sob.

When, a couple of days later, Umbridge’s office is flooded and the quills as well as the box they were kept in are completely destroyed (alongside some of her more garish decorations) Harry is sure Percy Jackson and Nico Di Angelo have something to do with it.  He just needs to figure out how.

Chapter Text

Percy wants to talk to Jason.  It isn’t uncommon in and of itself--not in a long shot, they get along well and they talk a lot--but Percy has seemed angry and a little outside of himself since he and Nico returned from their first detention and refused to go to any of the others.  Umbridge hasn’t even been chasing them up on it, so Jason takes that to mean they have scared her off.  They’re good at that.  Not only that, but Percy is insistent that they talk at the bottom of the Black Lake on the school grounds that swallows all of the light from the sun like an abyss and ripples with unspoken threats like a silent omen when the wind or the students or the giant squid that inhabits it disturb the stillness of the surface.

If silence and privacy is what Percy is looking for, Jason knows that there are groves and clearings in a forest full of monsters that they would be able to pass through without much difficulty.  But Percy is insistent on the lake, even though Jason and Nico are predisposed to avoiding any body of water large enough to swallow them up, even if Poseidon has never made a habit of trying to murder them.  It lets Jason know that it is personal and important so he agrees and leaves the dormitory in Gryffindor tower at half four in the morning as quietly as he can, waiting until he is in the common room to slip his shoes on because their soles are noisy in a way his socks aren’t and he isn't great at sneaking.  At least not by demigod standards.  Jason Grace is no son of Hermes or Mercury, though he occasionally wishes he was.

Percy is standing there toeing the grass where it stops at the lake’s edge and Nico is hovering behind him, looking closer to the verge of death than usual.  And, uncharacteristically, he doesn’t complain about that.  It’s still almost dark out, the sun not having quite risen but the night still leaving gradually, leaving the world a dim sort of grey.

“This better be good,” Jason says as he dips his toes into the water, shoes still on, and starts to slowly progress deeper into it, wincing at the cold water soaking into the cotton of his socks.  The water makes his clothes heavy as they absorb it and Nico visibly recoils as he too steps in.  Percy’s response is a grimace that might be an attempt at a smile before he pushes himself into the water and sinks almost immediately beneath the surface.  Jason takes one last breath, deep and desperate, before he lets himself sink.

He doesn’t need to.  Percy takes barely a moment to enclose Nico and Jason’s head in bubbles of air that they can breathe in without a problem, but Jason still struggles to get past the mental block that tells him that he shouldn’t be down there and certainly shouldn’t be able to breathe beneath the surface.  There is life in the lake, lots of it appearing hostile, but the most it does is stop and stare at them from a distance, talking into the water in a language that Jason doesn’t know, then swimming away when Percy responds in kind.  Briefly, Jason wonders if he might be able to talk to eagles if he tries hard enough.

They sit on the soft blanket of vegetation and mud at the bottom of the lake and Percy draws his knees up to his chest and tries to make himself seem small even though he cannot counteract the way the water welcomes him.  The movement of the lake water around him and how it carries his clothing and hair is somehow elegant, but Jason thinks he must look like a wet rat with a funny little bubble around his head, more akin to how Nico looks than how Percy does.

“Back in the pit,” is how Percy starts his conversation, his voice distorted and deepened by the way he speaks through the water like it’s air to him.  It’s still perfectly understandable, but Jason isn’t sure the voice he is speaking in is really his.  It sets the tone pretty effectively and Nico nods sagely, like he knew where this was going to go and is on the exact same page all the way.  Jason’s gut goes into turmoil but it isn’t enough to override that part of his brain that wants to know more than anything else.  Tartarus is a place of myth, somewhere no demigod has ever survived.  Except for three, and two of them are his cousins, sitting right there beside him.  Percy sighs and there is something so intrinsically wrong about the way the lake water fills his mouth and lungs but he isn’t bothered by it so Jason also tries not to be.  “In the pit,” he repeats slowly, like he is forcing himself to say it.  Jason is a patient person, as much as a demigod with ADHD can be, but he is also underwater and really really shouldn’t be.  He thinks that might be part of why Percy has taken them into the lake, because that means he has to hurry up and spit it out for their good.  “Annabeth was scared of me,” Jason has seen it, of course he has.  They’re still a great couple but they also aren’t the same people that went into the pit.  Percy swallows and Jason wonders if it feels like he’s drinking water or swallowing saliva and air.  “Because I figured out that I could control anything with enough water in it… like poison, or ichor, or blood…”

Jason is trying not to stare, because he knows it is the very opposite thing to what Percy needs, but there is only so much he can do to dull the sharp edge of surprise burrowing its way through his intestines.  He blinks slowly, runs a hand through his limp sodden hair, and feels the raised surface of the scar on his lip with his tongue.  “Oh,” he says, hoping his voice can carry past the bubble.  He doesn’t want to call Percy powerful because he knows the son of Poseidon won’t think of it as a compliment, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t what Jason is thinking.

“I didn’t want to,” Percy says slowly and Nico clumsily kicks his way over to Percy, sits next to him on the ground but doesn’t touch him.  Jason feels kind of like an anchor.  “But I panicked with Umbridge, she’s trying to use the kids’ blood to torture them…”

Jason shakes his head.  “I get it Perce, you did the right thing,” even if it is terrifying; Percy Jackson has always been kind of subtly terrifying and he’s clearly running low on subtlety.  “She’s torturing kids, sometimes you have to do something,” Jason breathes in the air from his little bubble deeply, and he is kind of scared that he’s going to end up using all the oxygen it gives him, but Percy must be funnelling more oxygen because they’ve been under there for a while and Jason isn’t even really lightheaded.

“If you didn’t do anything I would have,” Nico says with flat certainty that makes Percy smile, even if just barely.

Jason nods and thinks.  “I don’t have anything like you two,” he says slowly, contemplatively, “Nico, life and death is kind of your whole schtick-” Nico snorts and Jason smiles, “and Percy, well…” he doesn’t need to elaborate so he won’t.  Percy’s expression is appreciative.  “But if I had anything comparable I would use it if I had to.  Sometimes you have to,”

Percy is grateful for what Jason is saying and how graciously he accepts what he is being told.  He has a feeling that Jason isn’t as calm inside as he is on the outside but he can accept that if he can pretend it isn’t happening.

He is listening to what Jason is saying, nodding and feeling like he can finally breathe again as he realises that Nico and Jason get it, somewhat.  Of course Annabeth understands his experience of Tartarus better than anybody else ever could, but there is something specific about the inherent inhumanity of his powers that she can’t understand.  But Nico and Jason can.

Jason is talking about not having anything comparable so genuinely that Percy can’t bear to burst his bubble--metaphorically, of course, he isn’t about to drown his cousin--but he really doubts that Jason doesn’t have some corner of his power, somewhere, that wouldn’t be just as terrifying if he were to tap into it.  Percy doesn’t know what Jason’s powers feel like to use, but he can imagine Jason in his position even if he doesn’t want to, moving through the pit with the familiar tug in his gut--or wherever else Jason might feel it--until the crystal ball shatters.

It hadn’t really felt bad at the time, and the power still doesn’t hurt anymore than the way he had been using his powers since he was twelve--probably before, before he even knew what he was--but there is a shifting feeling whenever he moves so much as a millilitre of water.  Once upon a time it was a restrained tug, but it has since become a tidal wave and he hates that it is honestly a better sensation.

He can’t help but wonder what would have become of a Jason who snapped, if there would be a point for comparison.  He’s almost certain there would be, but he would never consider putting Jason through the torture of finding out.  Jason can control air and Percy is the only person he knows who can breathe anything else, or maybe he could tap into Thalia’s speciality, the side of their father’s power that she leans on.  The human brain is fundamentally just a lump of meat and electrical impulses that the rest of the body depends upon.  The electricity passing between neurons could be something he could control.  Maybe.  Percy is determined never to find out.

It makes Harry's stomach hurt just a little that Hermione Granger, who has been his friend since they were eleven, who has trusted and relied on him like he has trusted and relied on her, is sitting next to Jason Grace completely of her own accord and talking to him like an old friend.  He doesn’t really think he dislikes Jason Grace, but that doesn’t create trust and nothing is more important than that.

He hasn’t told her or Ron about his detention and what Umbridge did--or tried to do--or how the transfers had reacted, only that he was sure the flooding was the dark haired transfers’ fault.  But Hermione hasn’t stopped talking to Jason Grace since the day of Harry’s detention so he has a sinking feeling that she might already know.  He doesn’t know why, maybe he just doesn’t want his friends to think he’s weaker than Percy Jackson and Nico Di Angelo, but the idea that they might know makes his skin crawl.  He doesn’t want to tell Dumbledore or McGonagall either, and the silence around the subject might be an indication that they haven’t heard.  Or at least that they are waiting to retaliate.  Dumbledore is a man who exists outside of complete comprehension, and Harry isn’t sure that he has ever been comfortable with that.

He doesn’t really know what he wants to look for, but Harry feels some sort of obligation to screen the transfers, check them over for dark marks or strange artefacts, incriminating letters or maybe literal skeletons in their trunks if that’s what is waiting for him.  He considers Jason grace for a moment as he casts the invisibility cape over his head.  He isn’t eleven anymore and it doesn’t swamp him in quite the same way, but there is plenty of room for just him.  If Ron or Hermione, or perhaps both, were with him they would have to crouch to move without their ankles being a dead giveaway.  They don’t really move like that as much these days.

Harry is sitting, invisible, on top of the comforter of the bed he has spent the best days of the last five years of his life sleeping in and staring at the section of the room that never used to exist.  The curtains around Jason’s bed are drawn so Harry can’t see him, much like everybody else’s, but he can hear the gentle, constant sound of relaxed breathing, though too much of it for him to know for sure who each inhale belongs to.  His socks soft against the hard floors, Harry steps forward, approaches Jason’s bed and separate the curtains with his hand, just enough to peek through.  He feels like a creep but he would rather feel like a creep than be caught up in a near-fatal betrayal later down the line.  There is barely any light and he can hardly afford to cast lumos to spy on the blond American so Harry squints behind his round lenses and tries his best to pull details out of the darkness.

Jason is definitely asleep, either that or a very good actor, and he doesn’t look ready to pounce on Harry at any moment, like a wild animal.  It’s genuinely relieving; there is something truly animalistic about the way that he and Percy hold himself.  Then Harry sees the dark shape on his forearm, revealed by the short sleeves of the s-shirt he sleeps in, and the way he has cast his arms over the duvet and quilt that lay heavy, soft and comfortable across his chest.  He isn't sure what it says about him that he can’t tell whether his gut reaction is excitement or fear.  Harry leans in closer, to get a better look and double check that his eyes aren’t betraying him, and there is certainly the dark shape of a tattoo occupying Jason’s forearm, large and bold but hard to pull detail out of in the darkness.  But what Harry can tell is that it looks like a bird and some letters Harry can’t quite read; nothing like the dark mark.

He sighs then leaves his dorm, then the common room.  He’s used to the trip through the school hallways in the dark, but he never bumps into anyone.  He considers that as he walks without having to think about where he is actually headed.  He knows intellectually that there are other rule breakers in the school and thinks it must be a hell of a coincidence if they always just happen to be out on nights when he is actually in bed.  Or maybe they’re in the secret tunnels he knows exist within the walls and under the floors and, thanks to magic, in brand new and fantastical places that don’t really exist in any way that matters.

And as he thinks that, he walks straight into Ron.

He loses the cloak enough in the fall for Ron to know exactly who he has bumped into, but Harry is pretty certain Ron would have been able to figure it out anyway.  He isn’t the smartest person ever, but he isn’t incompetent and, between them and Hermione, they have used the cloak as a crutch for too long for any one of them to not be constantly aware of its existence.

“What are you doing here?” Harry hisses to Ron, raising the cloak over his head as much as he needs to in order to readjust it.  Then he notices the outfit, the mis-matching athletic wear and the freckled knuckles gripping at the handle of his broom.

Ron grits his teeth and in spite of the lack of clarity caused by the lack of lighting in the dim hallway, Harry can imagine that his face has turned a little pink.  “Um,” he swallows and moves the broom from one hand to the other.  Harry raises a single eyebrow even though he knows Ron can’t actually see him under the cloak.  “I’ve been thinking of trying out to be Keeper,” he admits with a wince like he is scared Harry will tell him not to or somehow get him blacklisted from the team.  They’re supposed to be best friends and it makes Harry’s chest hurt.

“Okay,” Harry says gently, because there really isn’t anything else to say, at least not at first.  He looks at Ron’s hair, the way the wind he was clearly practising in has blown it into a wind-tousled rat’s nest.  It’s funny, because wind-swept is exactly how he would describe Percy Jackson’s hair, but that has never once looked bad .  “You’ll do great, y’know, and I’m sure you’ll get it.  Umbridge cancelled the rest of my detentions, so I will be there to cheer you on,”

Ron smiles and the feeling between Harry’s ribs that might just be guilt eases just a little bit.  “Thanks mate… and if you wouldn’t mind putting in a good word…”

Harry laughs.  “I’ll see what I can do,” he promises, “But I’m sure you won’t need it,” and before Ron can ask Harry tells him that he’s just going to get some fresh air because the room is just a bit too warm and Umbridge’s presence makes the whole castle smell a little bit like a toad in a heatwave.

He waves Ron goodnight then heads straight down to the dungeons.  He whispers the sinister-sounding password to the entrance of the Slytherin common room and slips inside.  It’s dark and any light that manages to break through only casts sinister shadows, but really the room isn’t any fundamentally different to Gryffindor’s.  Harry doesn’t know what to think about that so he doesn’t think about it at all.  He passes through it, weaves around low tables and comfy chairs and ignores the fact that there are much fewer shrines to the great lord Voldemort than he had thought there would be, until he reaches the dorms.  It takes him a while to figure out which room Percy and Nico are sleeping in but he eventually slips in and parts curtains with invisible fingertips.  He feels like a creep again and, this time, he thinks about Ron as he looks and he actually feels guilty.  He feels isolated and he can’t quite figure out how much of that is his own fault and how much is his friends’.  Tonight he feels a little like that scale is tipping.

Percy Jackson and Nico Di Angelo both thrash in their sleep.  It’s restless and fitful and Harry can relate.  It makes him feel worse about being there and looking in the first place, but he is already there so he can’t quite stop himself.  Percy has a tattoo like Jason’s: a trident this time.  There is just enough light for Harry to realise it seems a little bit more like a brand than a tattoo and something uncomfortable knots itself up in his guts, but the transfers, all of them at the most vulnerable, seem fundamentally unsuspicious.

If you were to ask Harry how he got that password in the first place, he wouldn’t tell you.  If you were to accuse him of staking out under the cloak one evening until he overheard the password clearly enough to use it he would accuse you of not having any evidence.  He wouldn’t lie about it, not outright, not with the way shame is bubbling in the pit of his stomach like lava and he can’t get the picture of skin burnt to black out of his head.

Chapter Text

The wind whips cold around Nico’s head as he sits in the stands by Percy's side, his hair blowing about in dark strands like tendrils in the air, reaching out for something.  He can feel his teeth chattering, has pulled his dark cloak tight around his shoulders, over Will’s yellow jumper that he had smiled at teasingly when he saw Nico wearing it before leaving camp with his cousins, scowling and knowing he would be gone for a long time.  His hands are tucked between his thighs, horribly ice cold, and there are cold flecks of moisture in the air that have made him lean into Percy for warmth as they turn the skin on his face pink and make his eyes prickle.

They’re early to the Gryffindor quidditch try-outs, and there are wizards accessorised with red and gold pointing at them as they approach, chatter too far away for Nico to make out, growing slowly closer.  A girl older than them approaches with her hands on her hips, shoulder-length hair pulled back into a tight bun to keep it away from her face.  There are scars on her knuckles, closed tightly around a broom handle, the quidditch uniform billowing out from her shoulders.  He knows she’s the head of the Gryffindor quidditch team but her name just hasn’t stuck.  He remembers it starts with a vowel, but that’s about it.

“You snakes better not be here to spy on us,” she insists, her voice hard but her face unable to really embody that.  In the wind and the damp and the cold, her dark eyes glint as though amused, but nothing about her demeanour really suggests that she’s in on her own joke.

Nico points lazily at the ground where the stands meet the quidditch field.  Jason is standing there, stretching and lunging, a head of blond hair that is still too short to even really wave in the wind (whereas Percy can barely see and Nico is kind of wishing he took up the Aphrodite kids’ offer to teach him to braid before he left).  “We’re here for Jason,” he says plainly, letting his eyebrows twitch upwards, mimicking amusement he’s pretty sure he’s feeling.  “He’s trying out.  We don’t have any loyalty to Slytherin and we don’t play.  We’re safe,”

She grunts and turns sharply on her heel and a small section of wet, dark hair comes a little loose from her bun.  She paws at it absently.  “You better not be,” she says and walks away, down to the sodden mud and grass where the people trying out for the team have accumulated, Jason hovering, tall and out of place, at the back.  In the lower stands across from them, the rest of the current team sit, their hands folded in their laps and their hair plastered down.

Harry is watching the transfers as Angelina barks instructions at the people trying out.  She isn’t a mean person, certainly not by any meaningful metric he can think of, but she’s passionate and determined to be taken seriously.  She intimidates even him, and he has been on the team for years and fought Voldemort a few too many times.  Ron looks uneasy, standing next to Jason Grace, similarly tall but shrinkingly narrow, and Harry is looking past the crinkled brow, the downwards tilt of the mouth, and the shock of ginger, to the black shapes of winter cloaks and weather-mussed hair sitting distantly.

They aren’t looking down at him from their vantage point, focused instead on their cousin as he stands with a school-issued broom held loosely in his hands, shifting his weight from foot to foot but not betraying a hint of the anxiety filling the other teenager’s faces.  Percy and Nico are familiarly close to each other, and if Harry strains his ears he thinks he can hear the occasional bark of laughter passing between them.

He still wants to mistrust them but they aren’t doing anything to suggest to him that they might be.  They are wearing bright colours under the robes, like they have no plans on trying to travel in secrecy.  Harry is pretty sure the glint of yellow on Nico’s sleeve and where the robe fastens is the same as the one he was wearing on the train, and Percy has on a hoodie that is garishly bright orange and they both seem startlingly normal.  Harry can’t stop himself from trailing his vision slowly to Percy’s forearm where he is clasping at the collar of his cloak trying to draw it tighter around him, thinking again of blackened flesh in amongst the network of scars Harry can’t pretend he doesn’t know covers every inch of the Americans’ skin.  There is guilt sitting heavy in his stomach.

The students on the ground slowly lift up into the air, enough of them to constitute a team themselves.  They don’t have anyone after the role of seeker, but Harry knows his role is kind of separate to most of the game and nobody suggests he joins in to fill the space.  He’s glad for it as he rubs his palms over the dampened fabric covering his upper arms in a futile attempt to shun the gooseflesh prickling beneath.  As they hover, Angelina releases the balls, save for the snitch, and Ron flies his way over to the goal posts on one side of the pitch and a boy in the year below them with a nose that has been broken at least twice judging by the shape of it, approaches the others.  A second year who is really too scrawny to be playing beater swings wildly at a bludger as it flies towards him and barely manages to catch the very edge of it with the far end of his bat.  He spins slightly in the air and the bludger spirals towards the back of Jason’s head.  The second year beater calls out to warn him because he’s on Jason’s team in their mock match, and Jason spins quicker than most players would be able to on their dishevelled school brooms.  His face registers thought rather than panic and Harry leans forwards to watch it closer as he drops in a perfect nose dive, dodging the bludger and catching a falling quaffle in one efficient move.  He flies it the short distance to the goalposts the fourth year is guarding, followed by the other chasers on his team and the opposing beaters, and all three of them swarm forwards, the third year girl with the blue stripe in her hair almost dropping her bat in her haste.  Jason deposits the quaffle through the hoop without much difficulty, the keeper just a moment too late to stop him, colliding with him at the goal and sending them both spiralling for only a moment before Jason managed to gain his own composure and catch the keeper before he could go spiralling towards the wet grass alongside his broom.  It lands with a dull thunk.

Jason flies the keeper to the floor to pick up his broom before flying back upwards at a steep angle at a speed the shitty school broom really shouldn’t be able to move.  He whoops as he loops in the air, waiting for the game to be set up again, smiling bright against the wind lashing out at his face.  The cold has made the scarring on his face more prominent than ever but his face is so bright and so young Harry can’t force himself not to trust him.

Angelina is watching him from the spot she took on the stands after releasing the balls, and she turns to Harry with an open and amused smile.  Harry can’t help but return it.

Eventually they all drop back to the field and Angelina stops discussing their performances with the team as they take sips of their waters, shake hands and talk amongst themselves.  She leaves the stands to discuss with them and Harry looks up from Ron’s grinning face, his own aching.  He catches the startlingly bright pinprick of Percy Jackson’s eyes, impossibly and terrifyingly bright, and, in spite of everything else, they exchange a smile.  Both Jason and Ron make the team and Harry cheers as he casts a hand around his best friend’s shoulder and nobody says anything as the two Slytherins follow them into the celebration in their common room, a knot of arms and shoulders, boisterous laughs and a conversation that is nothing but distinctly accented voices speaking in English, a chorus of congratulations and stupid inside jokes.

Harry is scowling at his pathetic dream diary as he stands in the corridor waiting for the start of divination, his hands clasped tight around the little book’s leather binding.  “It’s such bullshit,” he says to Ron, “I had the same graveyard nightmare 5 times this week.  I’m sure I already know what that means,”

Ron snorts and Nico, the only one of the transfers who shares their divination class, walks up behind them silently, his dark hair casting his pale face in shadow.  “You’re early,” he remarks, scratching at the brown leather of his own journal with his thumbnail.  He has already worn several dents into the cover and Harry is pretty sure he’s working on a new one.

“So are you,” Ron echoes.  He is perpetually wary of Slytherins, but he knows, especially after the post try-outs celebration, that Nico and Percy are trying pretty hard to distance themselves from most of their house.  (“They’re stuck up douchebags,” Percy had told them with a remarkably straight face when Ron had asked.)  “Did you do the homework?”
“It’s really easy homework,” Nico shrugs, “I’d be stupid not to,”

Harry laughs.  “What did you dream about?” he asks, trying to force himself to feel comfortable even as his stomach bubbles with some volcanic sort of guilt, the suspicion trapped away in a corner of his brain Harry refuses to let out.  He can’t help but think of Nico and Percy thrashing in their sleep, faces twitching, hands clenching, a desperation only born of nightmares that are echoes of real life.

“None of the things I wrote about,” he admits.

“Me neither,” Harry says

Trelawney’s door clicks open and they file into the classroom, settling themselves on the soft cushions she has laid out around low tables, the air thick and heavy with the smell and smoke of incense and floral perfume.  They invite Nico to sit at their table and Harry’s lungs strain in his chest at something as the scar on his forehead remains calmly cool and settled.  They drop their books to the table with thuds and pull out inkwells and parchment.  Nico’s ink-black quill is about as distressed as the leather cover of his book.

“Gods,” Nico says with a slow exhale.  It strikes Harry as odd but he supposes it could be a religious thing, or else a common expression translated just slightly too directly from one of the other languages he speaks.  “Do I miss biros,”

Harry nods even though he hasn’t really written with one for years, since primary school.  “They are convenient,” he admits with a nod as he tries to ignore the way he knows Trelawney is staring between him and Nico, her favourite mysteries, her eyes bug-like and watery, too large for her drawn, frail face.   “But they’re missing a bit of that whimsy,”

Nico shakes his head at the table but one corner of his mouth is pulling upwards, his lips cracking, a small ravine filling slowly with blood, bright scarlet against the whiteness of his skin.  “You Brits,” he admonishes, “Too much whimsy, no practicality,” Harry laughs and Ron looks up, cheeks dusted pink beneath the freckles.

“Uh, what’s a biro?”

Harry has been going out of his way to be nice to the transfers.  He almost can’t believe it, but the suspicion makes him feel bad in more ways than just the way it imbues him with an anxiety that turns everyone around him into a villain in the making.  He’s too used to betrayal but he knows he is looking for malintent where there is none and his hypervigilance is worming its way in between him and his friends.  Nico di Angelo is sitting, folded over on himself on a low, emerald green cushion, wiry arms wrapped around wiry legs, looking like the very embodiment of death, and he is smiling, his teeth pressing at the cracked flesh of his lower lip and his eyes wide, bright, young.  There is something about him that makes Harry’s heart ache with familiarity as his brain shouts warnings he tries to filter out.  There is something about all of the Americans that makes his chest hurt and he wishes that he knew what that meant.

Trelawney approaches them after the lesson has started and there is low chatter filling the room.  She places her hands on the layers of thin fabric draped over her narrow hips and her slender hands flex against it.  “Tell me about your dreams, children,” she urges.  Ron volunteers himself to go first.

“I dreamt that I got really into knitting,” he says.  Harry doesn’t know if it’s true but his hands are making a motion reminiscent of knitting against the edge of the table and he is speaking it from memory rather than reading it from where it has been scrawled in a barely legible hand across the thick, yellowed page.  “Like really into knitting.  I couldn’t stop, I just kept knitting and knitting until I had spent all of my money on wool and I wasn’t even trying to make anything, I just had this long strip of poorly knitted fabric and I couldn’t sleep or eat, I just kept knitting,” he stares at his hands and Trelawney raises one of her own to the narrow point of her chin, cradling it in her palm as she thinks.

“Hmm,” she muses, voice light and airy, like half of it is missing.  Nico’s voice is thin, but not in that same dreamlike way, more like it just hurts ever so slightly to talk.  “And what do you two think of that?” she asks.

Nico looks down at the dark, inky shapes blotted across the textbook sitting open in the table in front of them, trying to twist letters into words even though none of them look how he is fairly certain they should.  His hope that not only will he be able to read the text, but also that the page will have what he’s looking for is fleeting.  He looks up, gives up, and tries hard to bullshit his way through a response that sounds like divination’s specific breed of bullshit.  It isn’t that he doesn’t believe in telling the future, that would just be frankly incompatible with his life thus far, but he is no oracle.

“Well,” he says, “the knotting and weaving of the wool could mean that he feels out of control?  Or that he’s trying to control his fate and not doing very well at it,” an image of three grizzled old women forces its way into his head, the glint of scissors, the snapping sounds of blades.  He has never seen them himself but he knows they once appeared to Percy, when he was just a scared little kid who didn’t understand a thing about the world he was born into yet kept separate from.  Nico tries not to let it show on his face as he thinks about an omen of his world a bit too closely.  Trelawney nods sagely, apparently content with the answer, and turns her face to Harry.

He gulps then looks between the defined ridges of his knuckles and the dense patch of freckles on Ron’s nose that have all become one smear in the dim, inconsistent lighting.  He screws up his face and feels the cold wire frames of his glasses shift on the bridge of his nose.  “The compulsive spending,” he says with a wince that he hopes communicates to Ron that he is sorry to be bringing this up, “Could indicate financial stresses?”

She nods again and it’s Nico’s turn to volunteer an example of a dream from his log.  “I dreamt about doing archery with a friend-” a glint of mischief, of secrecy and knowing intended solely for him and perhaps his cousins if they were there passes over his face.  Harry doesn’t know what it means but he doesn’t miss it.  An alarm bell sounds in his head but he tries to swallow it down and block it out.  “Him trying to teach me even though he isn’t brilliant at it and me almost shooting him in the foot,” It’s a memory rather than a dream.  For a child of Apollo, Will is distinctly average at archery and it seems to be a plague amongst the children of the big three that they’re just fundamentally incapable of that.  There’s always a bit of humour in watching him and Percy at the archery range, these great heroes that scare the new campers becoming dangerous to themselves and others because of incompetence alone.  Nico smiles a little at the memory of Will’s good-natured teasing and the way his hands had ended up over Nico’s guiding them, stabilising them.  He knows Harry is watching his expression with an almost forensic concern but he has been uncharacteristically open all day and Nico isn’t about to ruin that by protesting to an odd look.

“Maybe you’re scared of hurting the people you’re close to?” Ron suggests, and Nico can’t help but feel glad that he’s mostly over that.  It’s Percy’s thing now, and they’re working through it.

“Maybe you just miss your friends back home?” Harry adds and Nico nods.  Trelawney taps her long fingers against her jaw.

“Arrows are a symbol of Cupid, you know,” she says and Nico knows he could definitely never forget that.  He hates that arsehole.  Still, he has to swallow a chuckle at that; he hasn’t met a single other queer person in Hogwarts and he doesn’t want to risk anything.

“I was eating  pomegranate,” Harry starts and Nico can’t really help but wince, “And the juice was all over my hands.  I kept ruining everything I touched,”

Ron says something incredibly on the nose about red and blood but Trelawney nods along and Nico tries to stop the shivers rushing up his spine.  “Pomegranates are a symbol of the underworld,” he offers slowly, laboured in saying it, “maybe you’re worried about more than hurting the people around you?”

“It could be a fertility symbol,” Trelawney adds in her bone-chilling, breathy way, “Rebirth, perhaps?”

Harry sucks in air through his teeth.  It's a made-up dream about eating fruit but still, everything they have to say seems a little bit too on the nose.

Chapter Text

Harry can’t shrug off the building sense of dread in his stomach.  He doesn’t know what it is, just that he’d almost rather feel the intense but brief burning of his scar, because then it would all just be over with and he’d know just a little better what the threat really is.  He isn’t going to pretend not to know for sure that there is one, but he’s learned from a few too many misdirected accusations that he can’t trust intuition alone.

He tries to put it all down on paper without being too obvious about it, so he can send it to Sirius without everything going wrong.  He can’t believe how easily it could happen.  He likes to think about his eleven-year-old self every now and then, thinking about how wrong he was every time he thought things couldn’t get any worse and imagining how his younger self might react if he were told the Dursleys can’t even worry Harry anymore, and that’s not because they’ve gotten much better.  He feels out of control, but only by being completely in control can he stay safe.  He’s terrified and the thing about fear is that he has absolutely no idea what he’s supposed to do with it.

He leaves the common room and the hallways are still kind of dimly lit, like they’re just waking up as the first of the sensible students start to leave for breakfast in the great hall.  Harry Potter is not, in anyone’s mind, a sensible person, but the year so far has been kind of still and stagnant, no matter how much he knows something under the surface is wrong.  Footsteps echo around him and he clutches his fingers tight around the letter to Sirius as he takes it to the owlery and hopes against all of his better judgement that the ministry’s interference is not nearly as pervasive as everything about Umbridge suggests it is.  The wallpaper and furnishings in her classroom are still stained with damp and every now and then something drips conspicuously in the silence of her boring classes.  It feels like retribution but it isn’t enough.  Harry can’t get rid of the feeling that Percy Jackson is responsible but he doesn’t really feel so much suspicious as thankful about it anymore.  He can’t stop thinking about branded skin.  And that just leads him to think about quills carving script into students’ skin, of the ministry responding to disobedience by tearing teenagers to shreds.

Hedwig takes the letter in her talons and even they make Harry think of shredding.  He just wants it to stop.

It doesn’t.

Harry sips pumpkin juice and nibbles on the corner of a slice of toast as Hermione slides over a copy of the daily prophet with sweat on her brow.  Harry has seen the look on her face too many times and it makes his stomach lurch.  He puts down the barely warm toast like it’s burning him and takes the paper between greasy fingers that leave yellowish smudges on the off-white pages.  He feels Jason looking over his shoulder, trying to read the article.  Harry only gets through the headline before all of his organs fall to the floor.  Sturgis Podmore sentenced to six months in Azkaban.  Sturgis Podmore who had Order involvement.  Who apparently tried to break into the ministry.  It doesn’t sit right with Harry, there is something wrong with that.  There’s something wrong with the ministry, anyone could see it if they knew to look.

“You don’t think they’ve done this?” Ron says, obscured through a mouthful of food.

“Done what?” Harry says.  He knows there’s something going on but he doesn’t know how to put things together and he’s still a bit too focused on not jumping to conclusions after it has failed him so many times.  Jason Grace is walking into the Great Hall wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt and Harry just wants to apologise.

“That they lured him there?” Ron shrugs.  The blank he leaves is one Harry actually can fill in but it turns his body to lead as Jason takes the seat next to him and they collectively know to keep their mouths shut about the Order.  He pokes his toast on his plate and hopes it might look appetising again but it’s too cold and his juice is too thick.

“How are you feeling about your first real quidditch practice?” Hermione asks Ron and Jason.  Harry is glad not to be included in their small talk.

The air is cold and bracing when they walk outside towards the quidditch pitch.  Jason is holding a school broomstick with wonky, worn bristles and a warped handle.  Harry saw him fly it during try-outs but seeing it up close tells him that Jason shouldn’t have been able to fly how he did.  Harry’s stomach twists but he tries his best to keep it from reaching his head.

“Angelina will probably start you on drills,” he tells them, shifting his broom from one hand to the other.  “It shouldn’t be too stressful,”

“Says the person who’s been on the team since first year,” Ron grumbles but his mouth is turned up at the corners.

“We don’t really play quidditch at my old school,” Jason says.  Harry knows there are plenty of American quidditch teams but he supposes that doesn’t mean wizarding schools in the US also do.  He also isn’t really sure whether or not there are smaller wizarding schools dotted around the country; he always assumed it was just Ilvermorny, but the way Jason talks about his school makes it sound like there might be smaller schools dotted around the country.  “So you might have to help me out a little,”

He sounds apologetic but he flew so well when he tried-out that it seems impossible.  “You’ll be okay,” Harry tells him, “I don’t think most people can fly that well on school brooms,”

He smiles at the sky even though it’s more grey than blue and the sun is a sort of sad spotlight through the shroud of clouds and it’s really nothing to smile at.  From the smell in the air, it seems like it will rain soon.  Harry just hopes it holds off long enough for them to practice comfortably.  “I like flying,” Jason shrugs.

Ron scrunches his face.  “I thought you said you didn’t play quidditch before you came here,”

Jason chuckles.  “But I never said I didn’t fly,”

Harry’s hopes for a good practice don’t quite come to fruition, unfortunately, because the Slytherins barely let them approach the pitch before their team approaches the Gryffindor’s to pick them apart.  Ron and Jason catch the brunt of it and Harry is so tired he feels like his body is about to fall apart.  It’s early and, compared to his standard, basically nothing has happened, but he still feels like he’s been torn apart then put back together time and time again.

Percy can’t help but watch Umbridge every time he’s unlucky enough to be in the same room as her.  Whether it’s a lesson or a mealtime or they have just happened to cross paths in the hallway, his eyes are drawn to her pinched little face.  She never makes eye contact back and it’s obvious she’s avoiding it on purpose.  It’s satisfying but he knows they were sent to the UK for a reason and he’s pretty sure that Umbridge, whether or not she’s at the epicentre of that, must be involved in it somewhat.  That tarnishes that feeling a bit.

Hermione has offered to help him and Nico study as well as Jason, because she knows they’re all dyslexic, and he’s glad for it.  In reality the Gryffindor common room and the Slytherin common room are very similar, with the same furnishings in different colours and echoing stone walls, but the atmosphere is entirely different.  In the Gryffindor common room there’s a rumble of chatter, something familiar and comfortable in the stretches of parchment spread out across laps and tables and the way everyone is helping everyone wherever they can.  The crackling of the fire is warm and pleasant rather than ominous, and even though he and Nico are Slytherins they have been afforded a place, even if only because they have been invited in.  Theoretically they belong in Slytherin but they never really had the same privilege there.

Hermione is knitting as they all talk and scrawl on parchment and there is ink staining Percy’s hands a couple of minutes in but the chair is soft and comfortable and he’s slowly sinking into it and it’s more pleasant than not.

It’s getting dark and the fire of candles and torches is growing brighter to compensate.  From one of the windows that is really doing next to nothing to light the circular space anymore, there is a knock.  Talons on glass.  It’s not a sound Percy was used to before coming to Hogwarts and it’s perhaps interesting but also a little bit terrifying.  His relationship with the gods is tumultuous at best and owls still aren’t fond of him, even if not outright aggressive.  Ron makes a face like he recognises the owl and isn’t sure how to feel about it before getting up to let it in then taking the letter it offers him.

“Hi, Hermes,” he says, running a couple of fingers across the soft feathers of the owl’s head before tearing the letter’s wax seal.  Percy chuckles into the side of his hand at the name.  Hermes is one of the better gods, he supposes, but he is never going to be able to forget about Luke Castellan.  Or May.

Ron reads the letter then makes a face at it and throws the paper to Harry.  “Load of old rubbish,” he says it like a promise and Harry scoffs when he reads it.

“Thanks Percy,” he spits at the page, and it takes Percy a moment to realise they aren’t talking about him.

“Ron’s brother?” Percy checks, just to make sure he hasn’t accidentally done something deplorable.  

Ron nods.  “Thinks I shouldn’t be friends with Harry now that I’m a prefect, that twat,”

The letter falls to the floor and they keep talking and writing, working out how to write an essay for Snape whilst only implying that they don’t like him.  They’ve given up on that subtlety for Umbridge.  Other students start filing out, disappearing into their dorm rooms, their work either done or given up on. Percy wishes he could join them, but no amount of help will make him quick at writing.  He finishes his paragraph with a smudge that could look like a word but probably doesn’t.

Then, maybe a sentence into the next downward sloping block of text, the fireplace starts crackling, tinged green where the flame makes the air fizzle.  Percy is no stranger to magic fire but this isn’t his type of magic fire.  He nudges Jason and points at the fireplace and, evidently, that movement alerts Harry who goes ashen immediately as the flames twist themselves against all logic into a face.  It pulls itself out of the fire, moves forwards into the dark room so it’s projected just in front of the fireplace.  It’s a scraggly sort of face, hunger-panged, gaunt and long and aged, deep lines and sunken cheeks, eyes that look like they’ve been bruised.  His facial hair is kind of uneven, a little wispy in places and overgrown in others, like it’s been picked at nervously or in agitation.  Or just because he didn’t have anything else to do.

Nico breathes and the air smells like ozone.  So do Jason and Thalia, but never this strongly.  “That’s Sirius Black,” he says, and the man’s pulled face contorts into something between surprise and apology as it flinches in the fire.

“Shit!” Ron exclaims but Percy, Jason and Nico are too calm.

“You said he was framed,” Percy shrugs by way of explanation when the Brits start looking at them for explanation.  Then he drops his parchment and his quill, trying his best not to knock over the half-empty ink well, to angle himself in front of the fire so he can stare more closely at the face.  He tries to avoid thinking about it as much as he can, but he thinks there’s always going to be something about fire that makes him think of Tartarus, of the burn in his throat and all the delirium from the pain, the hunger, the dehydration.  There is a sort of thick, heavy silence as they wait for something to happen.  Percy knows well enough that someone has to break it.  “We’ll leave,” he tells them, “I get that this is personal so we’ll go,”  They nod and he and Nico stand up, stretch and pack their things haphazardly into their bags to head back down to their own common room.  Before they leave they look between each other then look back at Jason.  Percy says one word in Ancient Greek and smiles and waves as he says it, tries to make it sound like a goodbye.  “ Listen” he tells Jason.

Jason smiles back and he waves.  “ I will,”

Percy understands that having Harry Potter’s trust, even part of it, is new for them and also essential, and he doesn’t want to risk that but he also has a feeling he needs to know.  They’re on a quest; they have a goal.  Anything they can know they need to.

Jason walks up the stairs to the common room and stops just outside the door for a moment.  He is tucked out of the way of the common room’s view but he knows that Harry is still at least a little bit suspicious.  He doesn’t know why he stopped thinking they were out to get him but he isn’t risking bringing it back full fast.  He pulls his wand from his pocket, whispers a supersensory charm as quietly as he can and slips into the dorm, closing the door as loudly as he can to make sure they hear it by the fire in the common room.  The wood of the door and the dust in the air make his skin feel like it’s prickling, ready to burst into flames.  His eyes sting with the air and the sheer burden of vision, so focused on every speck in the wood that he feels himself getting dizzy.  The scar on his lip and all of the ones on his arms and his legs and his torso and everywhere else pull as he moves and itch so bad he wants to shrug his skin off.  He walks into the common room and his footsteps sound like artillery.  He sits against the headboard of his four-poster bed, so aware of the dull sensation of wood against cotton against the skin of his back that it feels like crippling pain.  His sheets are so soft they feel damp and his skin is screaming screaming screaming.  He can hear every breath, every blink, the sounds of sheets rustling, of teenagers snoring so loud they sound like earthquakes  But he can also hear Sirius Black, and Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger talking about Voldemort, about something called the Order, about something much bigger than any of them that they’ve all been left to deal with.  Something like a promise of a prophecy makes his head feel like it’s about to explode.

He hates power.  He’s sure most wizards don’t end up in a state like this with this spell.  He’s suffering but he’s learning.  Percy asked him to listen so he is listening, but power has never gotten him anywhere good, not really.  It got him to the top of the legion, sure, but he was a timebomb at the same time and he’d rather be normal than waiting for his time to run out.  He’ll get 20 years if he’s lucky, but being powerful means he probably won’t be.

He wonders if Harry Potter is powerful, then, or just unlucky.  If there’s even a difference.  He, Nico and Percy are amongst the unluckiest people he knows.

He hopes he’s going to remember what he heard, gets rid of the spell then has a panic attack.  His dorm mates are still breathing and snoring too loudly and he wishes everything would stop.  He’s been wishing for that for a long time.  He’d be a lot better off if it all stopped with Typhon, or perhaps never got that far in the first place.

Chapter Text

Hermione is starting to think she should stop getting the Daily Prophet.  She doesn’t particularly enjoy its trashier articles or its disregard for ethical journalism, and she only gets it delivered so she can stay on top of everything that is happening in the wizarding world, so she can know if and when and how she can intervene with Harry and Ron to make it all better because no adult wizard ever seems to want to fix it for themselves.  But the problem with that is she never hears anything good and she’s tired of feeling bad.

Dolores Umbridge has been named high inquisitor.

Dolores Umbridge has been named high inquisitor and Hermione really wants to cry.  In front of her, her breakfast suddenly looks like it has gone rancid, and the smell of the honey melted in her porridge is more saccharine than appealingly sweet.  SHe can feel it in the back of her throat and the top of her head and it is making her dizzy as the bread roll turns into some sort of monstrous sludge, convincing her there is nothing she wants to do less than eat it.  She pushes her plate away and she can taste the pumpkin juice in her mouth even though she isn’t drinking it: too viscous, too sweet, with a strange tang of an aftertaste that sits heavy on her tongue and makes her feel like throwing up.  She has dropped the newspaper on the table beside her and a barely animated image of Dolores Umbridge is taunting her from the page.  How is it that a woman who is so minute in person looks so all-encompassingly large from that flimsy piece of paper?

She groans so loud she wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in the hall has turned to look at her and puts her head in her hands.  She digs her nails into her skin and hopes she’ll wake up and it will all be a dream but when she opens her eyes she is still sitting in the great hall under flickering candlelight and a fake sky, her food is still disgusting, the newspaper is still a wide open bad omen, and Jason is looking at her from across the table with his head cocked like a puppy, his goblet dangling from his fingers.  He looks comical if anything but Hermione isn’t sure she will ever be able to laugh again.  Then she realises Jason is dyslexic and the paper is upside down from his view: the poor boy stands no chance.  She gives him a quick summary then reacquaints her palms with her forehead

“This is unprecedented,” Hermione says.  She isn’t really sure if she’s explaining it to Jason or if she’s just voicing it to force herself to accept what she already knows.  “Nobody has ever had this amount of power at Hogwarts, not even the headmaster.  She’s going to be sitting in on every lesson she wants to and making them all as useless and controlled as DADA.  We won’t be learning anything,  The ministry is doing more than interfering at Hogwarts.  Much more.”

She approves of the look of abhorrence that graces Jason’s features as he slams his goblet to the table too heavily and a glob of pumpkin juice flies over its rim and onto the tablecloth.  “Tyrant,” he says.  He is counting on his fingers.  “Torturer, twat.”  It’s one of Ron’s favourite words and the venom with which Jason says it may give Hermione some joy in knowing that they seem to be getting along rather well at this point, but she’s too hung up on something.

“Torturer?” she repeats.  Her mouth tastes like vomit and her stomach is turning over itself like stormy seas.  Jason stares right back at her, his electric blue eyes wide and vibrant and so concerned they almost appear to be shaking.

“You didn’t know?” Jason says.  His voice is barely an exhale.

“I didn’t know what?”  Hermione can feel her hands screwing up the tablecloth as she thinks.  She could guess it has something to do with those detentions that ended frighteningly fast at the hands of a certain Percy Jackson, something to do with the flooding in her office, the destruction that made her steam at the ears but didn’t make her confront Percy once.

“The detentions, she was hurting students, torturing them.  She had these quills, they wrote with students’ own blood, cut into their hands.”

“And she doesn’t have them anymore,” Hermione concludes, “Percy made sure of that,” Jason nods slowly and Hermione’s urge to either cry or vomit or both is renewed with this awful, fresh vigour.  “Those are illegal,”

“I don’t think that matters much when the ministry is corrupt,” Jason shrugs with the quiet resignation of a person who is a bit too familiar with what they are talking about, like someone who has seen it all before.

“I should have become a dentist.” Hermione decides.  She wishes she could be rid of all of this, entirely outside of it.  Somewhere else, somewhere familiar, somewhere mundane and muggle where everything is okay and normal and she isn’t always at the centre of everything horrible that is threatening to literally destroy the world.  Jason looks at her funny but he doesn’t ask.

“So what are we going to do about it?”

Hermione cocks her head.  Doing something about it.  It’s certainly occurred to her, and she certainly knows that it isn’t optional, but she isn't sure what steps to take.  At least not yet.  “I’ll think of something.”  She promises.  She doesn’t necessarily feel confident about it, but making the promise means she will feel all the more pressure to actually do it.  Functionally, it’s like giving herself a deadline.

“I don’t doubt that,” Jason smiles but it’s uneasy and the scar on his lip looks like it's trying to pry itself open, stretching and pulling.  It seems that no amount of familiarity, the likes of which Hermione does not know how to place, can create immunity to the disquietude of everything falling apart from the inside out.  When Hermione had been eleven and first joining the wizarding world with the wide-eyed, buck-toothed smile of a child who had just been told she had magic and the world was better than the cobble and concrete of London, she had never once imagined that she would want to rebuild the whole thing from its very foundations, never mind that she would need to.

Nico is staring at the door to Trelawney’s classroom, ready and waiting for it to open so they can walk into their classroom and find Umbridge perched on one of the little cushions, like a ridiculous little toad.  The only comfort he can find in the thought is knowing that no matter how intensely she tries to hold herself with dignity, she will not be able to escape her fate of looking like an idiot.  He has never liked divination--no demigod who has lived through one is fond of prophecy.  Trelawney is no oracle and he has little trust in her fortune-telling, but the simple fact that he knows Umbridge will attempt to discredit her makes him want to trust her.  As he absently glares at the knots in the wood he briefly entertains the fantasy that he might have enough pull with Apollo to temporarily make her their Pythia.  He doubts that would end well.

“I would like to injure her.” he says, just loud enough that Harry and Ron can hear him.  They both laugh but the last thing Nico is doing is lying.

“Wouldn’t we all?” Ron sighs.  None of them had been discussing Umbridge explicitly before then, but their silence spoke volumes and it went unspoken that she was on all of their minds like some horrific spectre.  Of all the things to be haunted by it had to be a toad.

Harry laughs along but he is worried and still his scar conspicuously refuses to hurt.  The only pain is in the churning of his stomach and his body feels like it is full of electricity.  It won’t end here.  He isn't stupid, he knows it.  He knows there is no world in which Umbridge won’t surfeit herself on power as soon as she is able to.  He knows the ministry is too corrupt to stop with just overseeing lessons.  There is something more to it, there has to be,

The air is as thick and heavy and smoky as ever, and as always it is head-ache inducing.  Nico can’t fathom how exactly Trelawney can stand to stay in it all day without losing herself somewhere in the haze.  The only thing that is really different today is the way that Trelawney’s bug eyes sit in her face behind those bubbles of lenses, and the set of her thin-lipped mouth.  Her face looks like it’s shaking and her huge eyes are fluttering around like a flock of birds, about as determined to oversee Umbridge as they are to avoid her entirely.  As always, she floats about her classroom, from one low table to the next, and the clack of Umbridge scribbling away on her clipboard battles with the clicking of her hard-heeled shoes.  Nico glares at the wooden clipboard like he can bore through it with just the dark cast of his eyes and he gets an idea that he stores away in the corner of his mind for later.

Their dream journals are open on the tables and there is barely room left for their quills as the pages of their textbooks battle for space that simply doesn’t exist.  Nico has lied in his again.  So has Harry.  Ron has something else to say about yarn that makes Nico snicker into the back of his hand as soon as Trelawney has turned her narrow back.  She circles the room again and, as she is somewhere across the room, Umbridge eases herself up from her little purple cushion and the joints of her knees creak like unused doors.

“So could you give me a prediction?” she requests, her fingers interlocked with each other as though to form a cage, her lips pursed but the corners of her mouth upturned into something between a grimace and a smile that just ends up looking thoroughly ridiculous.  Trelawney takes a stumbling half-step backwards and smashes her calf into a low table, disguising her wince by closing her eyes and attempting to conjure focus from nowhere.

Trelawney stumbles her way through a string of words that don’t sound much like any prediction Nico has ever heard and Umbridge nods, satisfied in that sick, self-important way that can only stoke the flames of anger building in Nico’s chest.  Trelawney’s predictions are too direct, too mundane.  If any prophecy he had ever heard had been a bit more along the lines of “you’ll hiccough and your boyfriend will laugh at you like the asshole he is” and a little less “someone you love will die and it will probably be your fault” he might feel a little more favourably towards them.

Umbridge repeats her question when Trelawney gets back around to them and, even though she has already heard it once before and really should know better than to stumble over her words and her feet, She looks just as shell-shocked as the first time around.  She turns to Harry as though it is a reflex, like she expects him, the chosen one, the mystery, the hope and the undoing of the wizarding world all in one that he is, and Nico watched Umbridge’s beady eyes follow her, her smile as artificial as the pink paint that unskillfully shapes it, and Nico watches her distraction as Trelawney stutters.

“Ah- um, you will be in imminent danger…” She stumbles over syllables like obstacles and the precision with which Umbridge observes her is forensic.  That means she is completely distracted.  Nico pulls his robe tightly around himself as though to shield himself from a cold that simply can’t exist in a room so weighed down with smoke and scented vapours that Nico’s eyes haven’t stopped burning since he walked in.  It means his pocket is all the easier to reach into and he nimbly flicks his wand out from it, spinning it in his bony fingers and making sure it stays beneath the table as Umbridge’s attention is focused on Trelawney as she trips over herself in fruitless search for credibility.  The look on her face, a certain condescending type of pity that morphs with enjoyment to create something sickening, just makes him more angry and he pushes the tip of his wand past the edge of the table and whispers an incendio as subtly as he is able.

Across the back of Umbridge’s clipboard flames burst to life.  They smoulder without precaution and burn a plume of black smoke into the air that makes Nico choke a little but not enough to dampen his enjoyment as Umbridge starts to panic, making a squawking sound and flapping her arms, dropping the flaming board and stamping her feet on top of it.  Nico hopes Trelawney gets some joy out of it too.

“Toad or chicken?” Ron says with a grin.  Either he has figured out what Nico has done or he simply doesn’t care and is wallowing in Umbridge’s misery like a pig in mud.  Either way, Nico can’t help but respect him for it, just a little.

The room smells more like burning than ever and the flames have been extinguished, but there are signs of char and stains of smoke ruining Umbridge’s little pink shoes, and her clipboard, her quill, her parchment and, subsequently, all her notes have been turned to ash, reduced to nothing.  She looks at the black spot on the floor with dismay and Nico exhales, long and slow.  It is a Band-Aid for a bullethole at best, but it feels good.  If that’s all Nico can do in that moment then he’s going to do it.

“You will not be getting away with this!”  Umbridge’s face is so intensely scarlet Nico can’t tell if it’s the consequence of heat, anger or embarrassment and the way that she addresses the room as a whole lets him know that he will, in fact, be getting away with it without too much trouble.

Percy kicks back in his chair, lifting the front legs off the floor and crossing his arms defiantly across his chest.  Umbridge is in front of them now instead of hovering around somewhere behind them like a bad memory, supposedly teaching but, as ever, referring them quietly to the book that they have surely all already read.  Percy had had enough a long time ago and now he just glowers at Umbridge, his book closed and his shoulders squared.  She won’t say anything to him, won’t do anything.  He enjoys his immunity quite a bit, but he resents and regrets the power he used to get it even though he logically knows he shouldn’t.

As it turns out, he isn't the only one who is fed up but he is the only one who Umbridge would never dare touch with a seven foot pole.  She treats him like a caged animal on a starvation diet so he gnashes his teeth at her, knowing that the sharp points they end in are just that little bit too inhuman not to put her off just that little bit more.  He smiles as he does it even though he’s not particularly happy.  In fact, her very existence seems to be persistently making him miserable.  Hermione seems to share the sentiment because her book is just as closed and her posture just as defiant.

“Miss Granger, is there a problem?”  Hermione is a good student but she is not a doormat.  Percy knows her enough to know that.  He smirks openly and wildly at Umbridge as Hermione nods her head with a satisfying profundity and vehemence.  He’s rather enjoying toying with Umbridge with nothing but body language alone.  He has never been the type to acquiesce to tyrannical leadership and he has the expulsion record to prove it.

“There is.”  She says it like she is sure of it.  She is.  “I’ve already read this.”  She’s being civil in a way that is imbued with enough venom to kill an elephant and Percy wants to high-five her.

Umbridge’s smile is strained and her teeth are gritted, grating against each other.  Percy looks at them more closely as he notices the sliding of her jaw and feels a hint of satisfaction in the knowing that they have long since been ground down the flat edges, like tombstones.  “Then read ahead.”
Hermione’s own facade drops.  “I’ve already finished the book,” she says, “And I know I’m not the only one.  Is there no way you could teach us an actual lesson?  I still don’t know how to use any of these spells,”
“You don’t need to know how to use them,” Umbridge echoes her own sentiment like it has been programmed into her.  Her eyes are wide, blank, and glassy and her head has been cocked to the side at an odd angle like a haunted puppet.  “And I’m sure there could be merit in a reread, deary.  You haven’t learned everything from that book, I’m sure of it.”

Hermione angles her head to the side and smiles in a way that indicates a challenge.  Umbridge takes it and, from the moment of her very first question, Percy understands that it is one Hermione will win.  He doesn’t feel even the slightest hint of guilt from the enjoyment he feels from that.  Harry joins the conversation and Umbridge seethes, the promise of detention hot on her lips even though Percy knows that her best threat has been drowned, thoroughly and literally.  He joins before she can spit it out like poison and it dies like a suffocated flame.  And if Umbridge happens to slip in a smear of spilled ultramarine ink that has appeared suddenly and mysteriously on her classroom floor, that has absolutely nothing to do with him…

Chapter Text

Percy Jackson comes up to Hermione at dinner in the great hall and slides himself onto the bench next to her in spite of the rich green on his uniform that makes him stand out like a sore thumb.  “I like you.” He decides.  He has an air of unwaverability about him that Hermione, somebody that can no longer afford to be who she was at eleven, can’t help but appreciate.

“Thanks?” she cocks her head.  She has nothing against the boy, though she wouldn’t consider herself close to him, they have reached a point in their relationship that is approaching friendship.  “Where has this come from?”

There’s something distinctly shark-like about his smile, but it’s friendly, welcoming.  She can understand that it probably looks like a threat when he grins at Umbridge in class, that it catalyses her fear of him.  In a way, he’s untouchable, at least on Umbridge’s part--Hermione wants that.  “Umbridge,” he shrugs.  Hermione isn’t exactly shocked they’ve ended up back at the toad, her own mind having already been wandering, but she is surprised that Percy Jackson has taken the time to congratulate her own quiet moment of protest.  “I appreciate that you stand up to her,”

Hermione can’t quite stifle the impulse to laugh.  “Me?”  She’s in a sort of pleasant state of disbelief that the turmoil of her life hasn’t allowed her in quite some time.  “She’s scared of you-” and Hermione wants so badly to know why, but it would be impolite to pry, and she’s experiencing that odd moment of reprieve where she can afford to be polite.  “I’m this close to asking you for lessons!”  And Percy laughs--the sort of watery-sounding laugh of a person who knows there is a sharp turn coming their way--while Hermione freezes.  Her eyes go wide and she finds herself staring at the jumping flame of a floating candle for a little too long and it starts to hurt but she’s a little too numb to turn away from it.  “That’s it,” she muses, the words feather-light on her tongue.

Percy closes his eyes tight.  It’s a look of knowing resignation, the culmination of a quickly waged war between what a person wants and what the world needs of them, the look of a person who has to undergo a personal loss for the sake of the greater good.  It is who Percy Jackson’s cruel relationship with fate has forced him to be, expressed in a moment, and Hermione, idea-stricken, is too distracted to notice.  “What is?”

“If the ministry doesn’t want to teach us how to protect ourselves but we need to know, why don’t we just teach ourselves?”

“Teach ourselves?” Percy cocks his head and, secretly, he knows he already knows more than what any of these kids could have to say to him, but also that he was sent to Hogwarts for a reason, and that his assignment of protecting, of aiding, could be made easier by Hermione’s scheme.

“Think about it!” she urges.  Percy doesn’t need to but he’s willing to play along.  “We’ve gotten through a lot on our own, and Harry knows how to do all of this--he’s done it all before.  He has experience, so do Ron and I, but most of the students here don’t.  It’s not as good as getting teachers who can actually teach, but if we can help a handful of other students and keep learning ourselves…”

“If it needs to be done and nobody else is willing…” Percy trails off, and Hermione finally realises that, despite his acquiescence, he sounds upset.  But you shouldn’t have to sits heavy in the air between them, a bitter taste in Percy’s mouth.  He wonders sometimes what he would do if he could talk to his own twelve-year-old self, kneel on the ground and hold him by the elbows with his heart in his throat and his stomach somewhere on the ground, and tell him exactly that.  He wonders if he would have listened, wondered if, should he have, he might have been a happy kid, even though the world was ending.  On his worst days he wonders if it even mattered--if the gods were even worth saving.  He’s tired of people refusing to stand up and do their own dirty work.  He’s tired of being a child in a war, and he is tired of the powers that be not intervening before they end up right back at bloodshed.

“I just need to convince Harry,” Hermione sighs, pulling Percy out of his thought spiral.  Harry’s not in the great hall yet, but people are flowing in and out at whatever time they please, so she isn’t worried.  At least not about Harry.

“You sound like you think that’s not going to be easy,” Percy raises an eyebrow.

“ I think,” Hermione says, “That Harry is the most stubborn person I know,” and, she thinks to herself, not someone who likes himself enough to realise that he really is needed and necessary, at least not without some incessant prompting.

“Well,” Percy says, “I’ll help however I can,”  It’s his job, after all.  And he knows what he’s doing.

Hermione nods and Percy stands up and captures Jason and Nico by the arms and drags them out of the Great Hall.  None of them have eaten, and in Hermione’s experience, none of them are prone to skipping meals.  She contemplates being worried.  It’s not a feeling she can stop, but she wishes dearly that she could be contemplating a choice of perfume, or an upcoming essay, or who will win the next quidditch match instead.  The transfers leave and she’s forced to contemplate, instead, the reality that her childhood was snatched from her in a brief moment, then never given back, because her other friends aren’t there yet and she’s too connected to her thoughts to drag herself away from them right now.  She decides on the moment that she saw Ron, wiry and freckly and a child who needed to be coddled by a mother who was kept appropriately up-to-date and appropriately outraged on his behalf, get knocked from the chess piece.  It was when it all started to feel real, when she realised death really was worse than being expelled, because it was no less real and much more permanent.  It was when she realised that if she was too soft she wasn’t going to last.

Nico hisses as Percy’s fingertips dig sharply into a tender spot of flesh by his elbow that is still bruised from a training session amongst the cousins a few days ago.  It was by no means worth a piece of ambrosia, but it’s still sore.

“What?” He snaps as Percy stops them just outside of the castle’s entrance.  The air around them is cold and brisk, and Nico’s cloak isn’t thick enough to keep him warm against the bite.  He’s hungry too, and he’s still struggling to get used to that feeling again.  It was trained out of him by a life of desperation, and he sometimes still struggles to realise that this time isn’t just another moment of reprieve.  He is as safe now as he will ever be, and he is allowed to unlearn his defences and his cheats for surviving in a body and a world that were never made to fit together.

Percy shakes his head, his eyes the almost-black of the lake on Hogwarts’ grounds.  Nico feels a little like he’s staring at his own reflection.  The look shuts up his complaints and he rubs the bruise under his sleeve in a silent, stewing silence.  He understands that something is coming, that something is changing.  Categorically, the life of a demigod has to lack stability.  Nico grew up in war, shuttled from one to the next, his reprieve stolen by a space that could warp time into near-nothingness, and he can’t remember really being sure he would make it to his next birthday.  He understands that’s what being a hero is, but it is also what being a demigod is.  If they’re not heroes they just die in vain.  It’s a great scheme on behalf of the gods really, to propagate a race of people who can’t really live as people, and who cannot live at all if they are not fighting on the gods’ behalf.  There is no reprieve, no bowing out.  There is losing and there is losing later, and perhaps there is earning immortality, but Nico, knowing what Percy did and what he will continue to do, can’t help but think of that as the ultimate loss.  Power corrupts; perishability sometimes gets in the way.

Jason leans against the rough castle wall, and he and Nico are looking seriously at Percy who is looking back with the serious face he wears when he has to resume his role as a leader.  It’s always there, always waiting for him, they all know it, are all haunted by it.  “They’re taking action,” he says.  Nico knows what that means, knows it’s bittersweet.  In war nothing can be better than that, and they wouldn’t have been sent to the wizarding world if there wasn’t a war.  “Hermione wants them to teach themselves because the teachers won’t.  She’s smart.  And I think it’s a good chance for us to step in.”

“It gives us a chance to actually keep the wizards safe,” Jason nods.

“Gods,” Nico sighs, “Safety would be nice.”

Hermione’s throat burns as she walks through Hogsmead, her cloak pulled tight around her and the sky drizzling a half-hearted smattering of rain that makes her hair frizz and her fingertips ache with the strain of cold.  She’s nervous and her stomach is throwing looping fits inside her abdomen, and she wants to be comfortable because her whole body is screaming at her, but not as much as she wants to survive.  She didn’t predict that being a trade she would have to make.

She has set up a meeting at the Hogshead and there are a couple of things about that arrangement that make her want to turn on her heel and stalk back to the centre of the town and off of the overgrown path she is currently traversing.  First is that the pub itself scares her--known for being the unsafe pub to go to in Hogsmead, the one with the unsavoury characters and poor hygiene standards and crumbling architecture--and the second is that she has absolutely no idea who is coming.  She doesn’t suppose it can be all that many, and she guesses she will find out soon, because the pub is looming and Harry and Ron are flanking her with differing degrees of enthusiasm and turning back would only undermine her.

They walk in and the door, a heavy thing, painted a dirtied, ambiguous colour that leaves little chips of indecipherable pigment on her hands, creaks like it is protesting to being opened.  Then all eyes are on them.  The men who patron this pub are not the kind Hermione would choose to talk to: a collection of haggard men and maybe an equally ragged woman tucked into the odd corner, where the shadows congeal into the sort of darkness that promises nothing good.  The man behind the bar smiles at them, his mouth a graveyard of teeth, some broken, some rotten, some lost altogether, and not one of them a colour that Hermione would ever consider describing as white.  She tentatively orders a round of butterbeers and slinks off to the table she promised to hold a meeting at that sits in an odd corner where the natural light that barely filters through the grime on the windows cannot touch.

She almost drops her drink when she sees everyone sitting there, mostly because there simply aren’t enough seats for everyone to sit in.  The transfers are there, of course, standing like soldiers at the end of the table, guarding the other twenty five students who are huddled around the long table.  Every now and then, a regular patron attempts to crane their neck to look at them with the forensic glee of a killer about to dismember their victim, and Hermione really wishes she could make herself surprised that Jason, Percy, and Nico can convince them to look away without a word.

She wasn’t expecting this and, at first, the number of students staring up at them expectantly sends a shock into her stomach that only tightens the pre-existing knots to the edge of excruciating.  Then the feeling mellows and she can think again, and she realises that the crowd that they have gathered--barely a droplet as far as the student body is concerned, yet large enough, loud enough, for a revolution--means that she was right, that people realise something is wrong and they are ready and willing to fix it. Or else they are just curious and teenage rebellion has brought them here, to her in a rundown pub where she will get the perfect chance to convince them to care.

She clears her throat and hopes she doesn’t sound a little bit too much like Umbridge in the action.  Anybody who wasn’t already staring at her suddenly is and her hands are sweating in spite of the cold.  “Welcome,” she says and, in spite of everything she has been through, her voice wavers like a child’s, because this is where she really gets the chance to make substantial change, to revolt, and her fear of messing it up is determined to fulfil itself.  She supposes that’s kind of her fault, always desperate and determined to feed curiosity no matter what.

“So,” Ron cuts in, as Hermione finds only pregnant silence where words ought to be.  She may not have stopped complaining about him, but really she appreciates him, appreciates that he understands her even if he doesn’t realise it, appreciates that he’s her friend.

He scratches his nose and looks at the people drinking frothing mugs of beer at the surrounding tables with blatant suspicion, but otherwise seems to be reasonably at ease with talking to the other students.  “No doubt you’ve all heard about what happened to Cedric Diggory last year-” he is cut off by sudden ruckus from students, but Cedric Diggory is not why they are there.  Ron sends Nico an appreciative glance when the short boy effectively shuts up the group with a hiss.  Ron isn’t sure what to think of the Americans, really.  Jason he likes: a good teammate, a person who can make Hermione laugh and think, who seems a little like he has always been there, just in the background, ready to be dragged into the spotlight at a moment’s notice.  (Ron isn’t as stupid as he sometimes comes across, he understands that spotlight is not his own and belongs instead to Harry, but that doesn’t stop him from always being pooled in the light.)  The others, though, are Snakes who, just like Snakes do, bare their teeth and raise discomfort like a coddled child, and yet they are always doing it in Ron’s favour.  He wants to dislike them on principle, but Percy Jackson always smiles and jokes and sometimes it’s enough for Ron to forget that he is really terrifying, and he can’t think of Nico anymore without thinking about lying to Trelawney and setting Umbridge alight.

Ron shakes his head and tries again, picking up where he left off.  “And I think we can agree that Cedric Diggory’s death means we aren’t very safe.  And if the old toad won’t teach us to protect ourselves we need to do it ourselves,” He almost doesn’t care how they respond, just that he has broken the ice enough for Hermione, ever the most eloquent of the three of them, but stuck in her head in a different way to how Harry was, to keep the conversation moving, to give herself the chance to convince these kids they needed more than what the ministry was giving them.

Harry keeps getting sent questions he doesn’t want to answer.  The building can’t seem to keep heat in, and the floor is sticky, and people are looking at him like a spectacle, like they always do; he doesn’t want to be there but he’s promised himself into a corner he knows he can’t leave.  The transfers, the people he would expect to be the most in the dark, don’t ask.  They stand and fidget and quip amongst themselves, like they have a purpose besides being there to join and learn.  He would guess it is a product of them being closer to his friends than the others, but Ginny is there, sitting in a hard chair that assumedly had a cushion once upon a time, so that excuse flies out of the window.  Harry keeps glancing up at them as he speaks.  Most of the time, he is content to trust them, at least more than he used to, but this is sensitive, delicate.  He doesn’t fear risk so much as he fears the knowing that it never ends well, that in its repetitive, cyclical nature, it never ends at all.

Eventually they move past the interrogation, and Harry takes a step back to let Ron and Hermione talk unless a question is asked directly to him.  His head is spinning and his friends are doing an incredible job at making him seem much more competent than he has ever felt in all of his frenzied flailing for a solution.  He can’t believe that people want to listen to him because they believe him, or can be convinced to, rather than because he is Potty Potter, the show, the example, the cautionary tale.

They reach an understanding and Harry is watching the whole thing through a fish tank.  They discuss names around him and he nods blankly when he sees other people doing it but doesn’t take any of the words in, and when Hermione hands him a sheet of parchment and a crumpled quill that is probably not one she personally uses, or has used to death and is on the verge of throwing out, he signs his name like he’s told without really registering why.

The paper reaches the transfers and Percy and Nico scowl when Hermione urges them to sign their full names--”No nicknames!” she chides with a smile and a tap on the side of her nose--but they do it anyway.  And when it has been all the way around the table and returned to Hermione’s waiting hands, she smiles and tucks it back into her bag with care then looks at the group with her eyes alight.

“My turn to ask questions:” she prefaces, “Do any of you think you have something that could be worth teaching in the D.A?”

And Harry is only able to really zone back in as he watches the transfers look between each other then collectively raise a hand like school children tentatively offering up an answer.  Percy’s face turns sheepish as he says “You’re going to have to bear with us for a minute, this might sound a little weird…” and Harry, with a pang of something like guilt or fear, realises that they have chosen to consider themselves an army.

Chapter Text

They are standing in the room of requirement and the room is so large it feels cavernous, and there are weapons lined up against one wall that Hermione can’t help but subconsciously veer away from.  Jason, Percy, and Nico are there, perusing the blades with a keen interest and a knowing eye as she and Ron talk to the group as a whole and Harry sulks just slightly behind them.  She’s losing hope that Percy Jackson is going to turn on his heel and confront her with a crooked grin, admit it was all a joke and they really don’t know what they’re doing.  Percy picks up a sword, tests its balance, then puts it back down with a contemplative look on his face.  Hermione knows she isn’t the only one distracted by the transfers and their clanging metal, their sharp edges and the scars on their skin that are looking increasingly like the stabs and slashes of exceedingly sharp blades.

They put the swords down and join the group gathered in front of Hermione and she really does like them, really enjoys talking to Jason and laughing at Percy and Nico bickering, but Jason’s eyes are far too bright and probing, and there’s something so fathomless about Nico’s and Percy’s that she feels like she is going to stumble and fall into them.  She clears her throat, her lips against the side of her fist, and tries to look away without it seeming intentional and it isn’t long before Harry is speaking and even though he doesn’t want to be there, his voice doesn’t shake.  It’s because he’s frustrated, Hermione understands that, that he becomes eloquent when he has to force his point across, and she hates that he has to do it so often that it has become a skill.  She misses the Harry that was motivated by wonder and curiosity and she wants to know whether him losing that was a product of growing up or the specific way that they grew up about as much as she fears the answer.

Soon he has them all practising expelliarmus and it’s such a simple spell, one Harry has been falling back on for so long, that she didn’t even think it might not be one everybody their age could execute without a second thought.  She watches Neville cast the spell on a student in the year below whose name Hermione knows she should know, and it clatters onto the floor, then she watches them reverse it and Neville is able to tighten his fist against the tug on his wand.  Her heart is in her throat, because this kid who can’t so much as disarm another teenager isn’t being taught how to protect themselves, and there is danger looming, evident and threatening.  There always is.

Oddly Jason is hovering, watching over his cousins like a mother hen as they spell each other’s wands out of their hands.  There are plenty of places that he could cut in, another few students grouped into a three, but he doesn’t.  She almost wants to wonder if he’s shy, but he doesn’t talk like a person who would be worried or rejected.  So she walks over and offers, leaving Ron and Harry standing across from each other with their wands drawn and flying, and deprives him of the real chance to say no.  It wouldn’t surprise her too much to find out he is hovering so close to his scary cousins in an effort to avoid other kids approaching him, but that theory really begs for an answer as to why he would be so desperate to avoid using his magic against them.  So she asks and he makes a face like he is being forced but he also doesn’t say no.  Beside them Nico and Percy wince and Hermione can’t hope to know why.

Until she can.

They start with her casting Jason’s wand from his hand, and she can pretend it is in an effort to teach the spell, but she somehow sincerely doubts it is something he struggles to do.  She notices that it takes more effort than it feels like it should, and something about that doesn’t sit quite right, but she doesn’t press and tries not to think too hard about it.  And then they swap places and Jason looks like he wants to protest, but also cannot quite find the words to explain why so instead chooses to swallow every complaint back down.

She understands it, though, when he mutters the spell so unenthusiastically her first instinct is to assume it won’t work at all, and the next thing she registers is a bright, white light emitting from his wand and a bright, white pain shooting up her arm.  Magic has a feeling, a sort of sense of pressure so specific that no words exist to do it true justice, but this isn’t that.  The dull edge of a thrumming sensation suddenly doesn’t exist and she feels as though she has been burned, electrically charged, and she wants to drop her wand even before the spell has had a chance to work because it hurts, but her muscles are so tight there is a moment where she can’t make herself move.

And then it is over, and her wand has flown a few metres away, clattered against the hard floor, and the pain has disappeared as quickly as it came on, but her eyes are watering as though to prove that it was real.  Jason looks apologetic and Hermione is just staring at him, at his handsome face and his high cheekbones, his roman nose, and his electric blue eyes that are staring through her so genuinely she wants to let it go.  But she is Hermione Granger, and she, as a rule, cannot let things go.  She pursues everything and, thus far, it has saved her and her friends from all the danger they seem to end up in, but she can’t shake the feeling that someday it will be her undoing.  But, for the time being, she really needs to know, really needs to keep kicking up dirt until she finds something beneath it.

She follows Jason back to his cousin and, for a moment, she hangs back, watches Nico and Percy closely to see if either winces or flinches when the spell hits them.  Neither shows a sign of pain, but looks can be deceiving and that doesn’t necessarily mean that it isn’t there.  “Why don’t you practise with Nico?” she suggests to Jason, and the Americans share an uneasy glance like they know this isn’t a good thing, but also that they can’t afford to say no.  Hermione doesn’t know what’s happening, or what the purpose of their apprehensive acquiescence is, but she’ll pretend she doesn’t see it if it gives her the opportunity to observe.  She has a feeling they won’t give her an honest answer if she asks, so it is the best opportunity she has.

Percy suggests Hermione casts the spell first and she doesn’t argue.  His, too, is more difficult to remove from his grip than it should be.  She braces herself for the electrical burning this time, and doesn’t miss the way Percy’s brow crumples before he says it with the same hesitance as Jason.  He had been casting it so confidently against Nico, too.  It almost hurts worse than the outright shock of pain when she feels like she is being enveloped in water, like she can’t breathe.  She is drowning in dry land.  And then, suddenly, she isn’t but her breathing still feels all wrong.

For the sake of her own wellbeing, she decides not to ask Nico--not today--for now, she has seen enough and felt too much.  She excuses herself to the bathroom to gather her thoughts, and as she is washing her hands it feels as though her throat must be closing up.

Ron watches as the attention is handed to the transfers and Hermione slinks back into the room with still-wet hands.  The swords that each transfer has picked up from the well-stocked stands look different but Ron doesn’t know nearly enough to know what the differences actually are.  Swords aren’t necessarily a muggle thing, but he is used to them being treated like artefacts rather than weapons, a last resort when conventional means aren’t working.  He almost can’t believe that he is being asked to pick one up and swing it at a friend.  Percy tells them to pick them up, try them out, and stick with whichever one it is that feels right, but Ron doesn’t know what that means.

“Are they training swords?” Hermione asks, “Like, blunted?” She looks aghast when Percy shakes his head.

“I learned with a real one,” he says with a shrug, “And we don’t have time to teach you to be scared of the real thing then teach you not to be,”
She nods apprehensively. “And what exactly makes you qualified to teach us?” Ron wonders if it’s just that she is scared, that she is Hermione Granger who is good at everything and so competent that she can be insufferable, and this is a new thing that she hasn’t had the chance to obsessively prepare herself for.  It wouldn’t shock him to find out that Hermione is too scared to be bad at things, but he has vomited slugs and the swords look so intriguing in the glare of the cool lights and the hands of people who seem to really know what they are doing.  He’s so excited he doesn’t even care about his safety, and he can almost pretend that they’re only learning for fun rather than to have something unexpected to fall back on.

“Our school principal back home is old,” Nico says, and something about how he stresses that syllable makes something in Ron’s gut curl in on itself, like he doesn’t mean Dumbledore old but something more, something that feels wrong.  “And Percy is the best swordsman he has seen in over a century.” Hermione nods and Ron wonders why this American wizarding school he has never heard of seems so eager to teach its students how to stab each other when his school won’t even teach them how to keep themselves safe.

“And what if somebody gets hurt?” Hermione frets.  Percy shrugs and gestures with his wand and, as if on instinct, Hermione flinches back.  He doesn’t notice, his back turned as he grabs a sword from the racks and hands it to the waiting hands of an excited fourth year.

Ron quickly realises he has no idea what he is doing and wishes, not for the first time, that he knew how to listen a little better.  He always seems to either miss instructions or mess them up somewhere along the way.  None of the swords felt right in his hands, like there was something wrong with the thought of it that kept him from being at ease, so he had latched onto the most wicked-looking one he had seen, with the longest, sharpest blade and an intricate hilt.  He regrets the choice, the whole thing is unwieldy and terrifying and uncomfortable to hold, so he can’t get the drills quite right no matter how elegantly and precisely that Americans demonstrate them.  There is a moment where he considers going back to the still half-full stands and swapping it out, but he feels embarrassed by the thought alone, and his limbs are starting to feel like they don’t quite fit him right either, so he doesn’t really think it will help him any.

Percy walks over to him and tries to help him as he gets used to swinging the blade against dead air.  “Did you learn like this?” Ron asks innocently as he almost drops the blade straight into his own foot.  His palms are so sweaty and he must be so out of shape because his arms feel like somebody is trying to rip them off, and with Percy by his side--a person who still looks like they are harbouring the remnants of sickness and hunger in the concaves of their flesh--he is aware of how narrow and unstable his frame looks.

Percy shakes his head and guffaws like he can’t believe Ron would even ask that, but it only lasts for a moment, as though it takes him that long to realise who he is talking to, that Ron would have no way of knowing.  “I was taught by an older student,” he says, “Who basically immediately brought me up in front of a class of people who at least kind of knew what they were doing and tried to embarrass me.  He was a learn by doing kind of person.”
“He sounds cool,” 

“Yeah,” Percy agrees, voice barely more than air, and the word ‘was’ won’t stop repeating in Ron’s head.  Somehow, he is struggling to imagine that, halfway across the globe, there are young people like them losing like them, that there are these huge, horrible things that he doesn’t know about.  He doesn’t know what the kid Percy is talking about looked like, so he pictures a sort of blurry, memory-tainted mimicry of Cedric Diggory, holding a sword in his hands, a victim of something bigger and more dangerous than what he was prepared to face.  Someone innocent, admirable, impossible to dislike.

Percy walks away and Ron swings the sword again a couple of times, not thinking about what he is doing.  Then his sword hits metal with a climatic clamour, halted mid-swing by a stronger, more confident hand.  Impolitely, he is jolted from his spiralling, feeling a little more like Harry than he is used to.  It takes a moment for him to look at the offending sword and follow the length of its blade up to a pale, frail arm that is apparently much stronger than it looks.  Nico’s hands have a strange purple tinge to them, Ron notices, that does nothing to help him look a little less sickly, and his nails are chipped and either cut or torn down beneath his fingertips.

“Careful,” Nico warns.  His voice isn’t very emotive, and Ron instinctively thinks of Harry slipping into parseltongue, hissing out in his sleep, despite the plain, clear English.  He doesn’t sound particularly concerned, but his dark brows are furrowed low over his dark eyes, casting them into a shadow so deep it almost compels Ron to admit all the things he has never wanted to say with minimal prompting.

He crinkles his nose and sheepishly runs a hand on the back of his neck.  “Sorry,” he says, feigning a nonchalance he thinks he should feel so decides he must be feeling.  “I’m alright, I’m just distracted,” he gets the distinct feeling his smile looks ridiculous on his face.

Nico raises his eyebrows and crosses his arms.  He looks so comfortable with the sword he is holding that it feels like an extension of himself rather than something deadly, though perhaps that just makes them both deadly--an instrument can’t make music without a person to play it.  “Distracted will get you hurt,”

And Ron, determined as ever to be petulant, to defend himself even when it is fundamentally unnecessary, too used to having siblings to really treat anybody like anything else, can’t stop himself from saying “How would you know?”

Nico smiles strangely and raises a forearm lined with dull, raised lines of white scars and patches of pink and light brown that look like burns.  “Careful,” he repeats, softer this time,  more caring, more knowing, more personal.  And then he slinks off like the snake he has ceased to sound like, and Ron lifts his blade again and tries to really focus in on the arc of his movements and the pull in his arms, actually trying to still the quiver of arms he is sure were never meant to bear weight like this.

He’s almost a little peeved, because he really hadn’t wanted to like Nico and Percy when the sorting hat, like a scared child, had announced them Slytherins, but they haven’t really given him a reason since to disparage them.  Nico looks over his shoulder as he walks off and adds “Or I’ll kill you,” to his earlier statement with a liberal dosing of mirth Ron knows it would never receive if it was directed at his family.

He shakes his head at the floor and mutters “Of course you will,” as soon as he is sure Nico won’t be able to hear a word of it.

Chapter Text

Ron decides, as their class of students leave talking with excitement and worry that seem equally correct, that he really should change out the sword he grabbed for one that feels a little less unwieldy in his unpractised arms.  The transfers are still there, still watching over the swords and making sure each one has been returned properly, so Ron swallows his pride and commits himself to asking for help. It’s a choice that feels weird, wrong, but one that he thinks is pretty necessary.  He isn’t as adept as Hermione and her vast magical knowledge is able to be at duelling, and he doesn’t have Harry’s command or bravery, so of all of them he is probably the one who most needs the blades still glinting in unstable candlelight.

Percy smiles when Ron walks over to them, handsome and friendly and welcoming even as a scar on his face warps as though to remind Ron that there must be a reason he is so capable with his weapon.  Ron points sheepishly to the swords and says he’d like to get in some extra practice and immediately Percy’s smile lights up, his eyes so bright they look to be glaring.  There is something satisfied about Nico’s smile as he and Jason waltz away, leaving Ron in Percy’s care, and Ron knows what that means.  He is deciding that Nico is trustworthy enough to take his advice.

“So,” Percy says, “You’re just gonna pick up some of the swords and test out how they feel to you.  That’s it, easy,” Harry and Hermione stop talking and look at Ron, heads cocked and eyes asking a question that needs not be assigned words.  He just nods back and waves a dismissing hand before turning to the blades.  They wave back and leave and suddenly he is alone in a huge room with Percy Jackson and he doesn’t think this has ever happened before.  If there ever was a moment where Percy Jackson would show wherever or not he was trustworthy, this room full of swords is probably it.

Ron picks up one sword and lifts it up and down in his hands, not knowing how else to test it.  “Hold it properly,” Percy encourages, “Try swinging it,” so Ron does.  It doesn’t feel right so he picks up another,  It’s worse so he keeps going.

“Blimey!” That sword was far too heavy and he almost fell on top of it when he tried to swing it, stopped only by Percy’s arm barring his chest from getting any closer to the ground.  “I feel like I’m at a higher pressure Ollivanders,” Percy snorts and starts looking over the swords himself.

“Well I guess that means I need to do my part,” he says, “Try this one,” He passes it to Ron and Ron has evidently neglected to consider that Percy is a lot stronger than he is because he sees the ease with which the blade is handled and almost crumbles when he is suddenly holding its weight and has failed to brace himself for it.  “Okay,” Percy mumbles, quickly taking it back, “ Not that one.”  He hands Ron another and he has actually prepared himself for it to not be feather-light this time around.  That was humiliating and he can feel his face burning and his hands sweating.  He hopes that won’t be an issue but tries to wipe them subtly on his trousers anyway when Percy’s back is turned.

This sword actually feels like it might be a good fit and Percy smiles, satisfied, as Ron swings it in a clumsy arc that doesn’t make his arms feel as though they are about to be torn violently from their sockets.  Ron finds himself nodding.  “Yeah,” he decides, “I think that one feels alright,”

“Nice!” Percy says.  He picks his own sword back up and faces Ron with a glint in his eye that makes Ron gulp.  “Now let’s teach you how to use it!”  Ron is honestly pleasantly surprised when that statement doesn’t culminate in Percy rushing at him, slashing with expert precision that Ron couldn’t hope in even his wildest dreams to match.  He shifts his own feet, slowly and deliberately, into a well-practised ready stance and waits patiently for Ron to mimic him, then raises his sword and swings it in a smooth arc at the air.  Ron copies that too, until his arms ache so much he feels like he can’t keep using them and his hands are so sweaty he thinks he’s about to drop it.  But he doesn’t do either.  He keeps going instead, keeps swinging and slashing and tries to respond when Percy actually starts focusing attacks, slow and restrained, at him.  After a moment the sword clatters to the ground and Percy steps back, smiling and barely breathing any heavier than he had been when they started in spite of Ron’s exhaustion.  Ron’s hands feel empty and he hurts but he picks it back up anyway, asks to go again even though he is still clumsy and barely able to mentally keep up with what Percy is doing let alone physically respond to it, and he isn’t used to this sort of exercise at all.  The sword falls again and he needs to take a break but he doesn’t really want to stop.

“I  can see why you like this,” Ron says once he has managed to catch his breath enough for words not to hurt.  Percy smiles.  It seems like it is his initial response to most things, to grin before responding.  It seems placating when Ron looks at it, but he could imagine it being infuriating if one were at odds with Percy.  It’s versatile then.

“Well you seem happy to learn,” 

Ron nods and suddenly, with a pang of guilt he realises.  “I’m taking up your time though.  You could be using it to do something else right now,”
Percy doesn’t smile this time, but he chuckles and there is something about the sound of it that makes Ron want to listen to him, to do as he says.  “Like what?  Seriously dude, you’re good.  I like doing this: it’s basically what I’d be doing back home too,”  Ron finds himself nodding along, picturing Percy teaching other kids like he has been teaching them today.  It seems right; a casual class of children circled loosely around him, swinging weapons too big for them and laughing along with their teacher as he finds a way to take all of the humiliation out of not knowing what you’re doing.

“So Nico…” Ron says after a pensive moment of comfortable silence.  His body is screaming at him to be done for the day so he decides he will leave in a few moments, that the Room of Requirement will disappear behind them, leaving no trace of their lessons.  “He said he’d kill me if I didn’t focus properly.  Was he actually serious?”

Percy chuckles.  “Deadly.”

“Right,” Ron nods, shakes his head.  “Say,” he says, “How is knowing how to use weapons like this going to be much use to us?  It’s not like we can just carry them around with us…”

Percy winks.  “You’re wizards, aren’t you?” he picks up his sword and turns to face Ron again in a fluid movement, lifting the blade so it is pointing skyward.  He pulls something small out of his pocket and taps it to the end of the sword and, by the time Ron blinks, the sword is suddenly no longer there,  Instead Percy is holding something small and muggle in his hand.  He holds it in front of Ron’s face as he walks past him on his way out of the room.  “I’m sure you can figure something out!”  So Ron, never one for studying, decides that is exactly what he will do.

“Do you think they’ll figure it out in time?” Jason asks Nico as they circle the halls of the castle, just wandering without a destination in mind, seemingly alone in their travels.  He wonders distantly where exactly they are but he isn’t really concerned enough to commit any real effort to figuring it out.

Nico screws up his face as he thinks.  Jason thinks he looks like a little kid in an amusing way, but, as he values the intact state of his kneecaps, he is unwilling to admit it.  “Ron seemed pretty eager to.  I bet he’ll be fine, Percy will make sure of it,”

“And the others?”

Nico sighs.  “Fuck if I know,”  He can’t understand why Jason would expect him to be.  “You’re the leader here,” he shrugs and Jason nods numbly.

“Yeah,” he says, “I guess.  But the legion always passed through Lupa before they got to me,”

“Right,” Nico says.  The halls are so empty his voice echoes around their cold stone walls as though trying to fill them up.  “I guess Percy is the one to ask then,”  Jason nods but he doubts he’ll ask.  He doesn’t really know what it would accomplish.  All he knows is that they have a small number of students willing to learn and a looming deadline that is growing ever closer and they either will run out of time or they won’t.

He doesn’t really mean to say it but he is tried and his jaw feels loose and the words, ones he regrets before they have even passed into the air in front of his face, just kind of tumble out, fall into a disgraceful pile he would love to shove straight under the rug and overlook.  “Do you think that might be why so many Greek kids die?”

Nico’s face goes dark, his eyes so reflective Jason can see his own ashamed face reflected in the black pools of his irises, all but indistinguishable from his pupils.  “Do you think that we might lose so many kids because the gods can never be bothered to fight their own wars?” and Jason doesn’t have a response to that.  Because Nico is right.  He looks up instead, at the old ceiling hanging high overhead, where mould and cracks creep along the worn stone, then at the walls, worn and chipped.   A painting moves to their left, a child dancing, happy and innocent and wearing a floral dress and a sun hat over pigtails.  She will never die, never bleed.  What would his life be like if the gods didn’t always expect him to fight for them?  At the very least, he wouldn’t be nearly so far from home.

Hermione practically spills out of her bed and onto the dormitory floor, her body tired and aching.  The DA has been going on consistently for a little while now, and every time she picks up the sword that has since become recognised as hers she thinks she might be a little bit more used to the exertion , and every time the Americans manage to find a way to bring the intensity until her body is screaming at her to stop.  Ron has been staying back behind afterwards, his face determined in a way she just isn’t used to seeing it.  Usually it’s just Percy, but occasionally Nico or Jason will stay back too, or in his place, and Ro will keep on pushing himself and pushing himself and pushing himself and it always seems like it has paid off an awful lot when Hermione watches him coping so much more easily than anyone else as she swings her own blade and tries not to feel self-conscious about how poorly she is doing it.  It isn’t that he is prodigious, but he is determined and committed and trying very hard to do an awful lot in very little time and she admires him for it.  He was also amongst the first to manage to charm his sword into a more manageable talisman to keep in his pocket.

She was the first and, she realises, she has taken to running her thumb impatiently over the little bronze songbird brooch that now sits heavy in her pocket at all times whenever she is forced to sit through one of Umbridge’s incredibly enduring and worthless classes.

She forces herself up, blinks her eyes wearily against the warm light of flickering enchanted flames and sunrise breaking through the gaps in the curtains as though by force, and pushes her sleep-mussed hair away from her face.  She gets ready as quickly as she can, tries to ease her hair into something a little more manageable by brushing through it with damp fingers, and eventually gives up and leaves Gryffindor Tower for breakfast in the Great Hall.  The thing about the DA is that its presence in her schedule has interfered pretty significantly with her homework time, and all the exercise has made her ravenous in a way she has never been before, so she finds herself scarfing down seconds every morning, spoon in one hand and quill, scrawling homework essays on sheets of parchment, in the other.  She is always out of the tower by the time the earliest riser amongst the girls who share her dorm has even woken up.

She pulls on her shoes and leaves, dipping her hand into her pocket and wrapping her knuckles around the cold, hard surface of her songbird brooch just to check it is there.  It’s an elegant little thing, a charm she is rather proud of but can’t exactly brag about to very many people.  She isn’t sure why she gravitates to it so much when she is decidedly more adept with her wand as a weapon, and it would undoubtedly raise many more questions were she to pull the sword out, but there is something about it that still holds a lot of novelty to her.  The brooch itself is an elegant little thing, one that is pretty unsuspicious.  She can change it to the sword by pushing on one of the wings, moving it up and out of the way of a little magical sensor that will respond only to her.  The same sensor exists on the base of the blade itself to change it back and every time she re-conceals it she worries about the safety of her fingers even though she knows she shouldn’t.

Ron’s is a little carving of something he insists is a weasel despite it looking much more convincingly like a shrew.  It’s kind of crude and it doesn’t look well-made, but it’s a good disguise and he always seems proud of it.  Hermione hadn’t predicted she would like seeing him like that as much as she did.

She thinks about the hard, unforgiving metal beneath her fingers, about how solid and reassuring she has come to find its presence even though there is something about the transfer’s proficiency with their weapons that makes her heart lurch violently in her chest, as her leather school shoes clack down the hallway.  It is empty.  That’s not uncommon in Hogwarts: the school seems very much like it was designed for many more students than it currently holds.  Hermione is well acquainted with the wizarding world and its history; she can guess exactly why that is.  She is just walking, the hallways and staircases familiar, comforting, saying hello to the paintings and smiling at the way they wave right back, when suddenly she is stopped dead in her tracks right before the Great Hall.  Her stomach rumbles impatiently but she ignores it, frozen in shock.

“Shit!” She curses to herself.  A few feet over a first year looks at her disapprovingly but she can’t bring herself to care what the little strawberry-blond kid might be thinking of her.

As is decreed by the High Inquisitor, Professor Dolores Umbridge, the gathering of all student organisations, including Quidditch teams, shall be prohibited pending individual approval from the High Inquisitor herself, to be effective immediately.

Chapter Text

“So she knows?” Jason posits apprehensively.  Despite him being the one who suggested Harry and his friends meet up with him and his cousins by the black lake he keeps staring untrustingly at the surface of the water and is shivering under a cold drizzle of rain.  Harry is inclined to agree with him, to think that Umbridge must have such tight reins on student organisations because she knows about theirs, but, vehemently and decisively, Hermione shakes her head.

“She can’t,” she says surely, and as everybody turns to her with their questions written plainly on their faces, as yet unvoiced, she holds up her palms in the hopes it will keep them silent for long enough to give her a moment to explain.  “Do you remember that parchment I had everybody sign?”  They all nod so she keeps going.  “It’s jinxed.  If anyone had told we would be able to tell who,”

Nico makes a face at her.  Harry can’t read it.  “How?” he asks.  It’s windy and his voice is quiet and Harry has to somewhat strain his ears to hear.

Hermione grins.  He’s proud of her jinx, of her idea; Harry can tell.  “You’ll know it if you see it,” she says and Nico grins right back.  Jason looks amused.

“I feel like all of you are bad influences on each other,” he decides.

Harry isn’t sure whether Percy Jackson is brave or an idiot, because he is sitting far too close to the edge of the water and, as though unbothered by the almost ice cold temperature and the giants squid they all know lurks beneath the sheen on the lake’s black surface, he is grazing his fingertips over the water.  He leans back on a tree, his hair hanging in his face and his other hand twirling his pen through his fingers.  Harry isn't sure what to think of that innocuous little gesture anymore, but the transfers are trying to help them, and have yet to turn a blade on any of them aside from in a spar.  He supposes he has to trust it, at least for now.  He still hasn’t figured out how to charm his own sword and he’s getting worried he’s running out of time to do it.  He might have to concede, admit he doesn’t know how to do it himself even though it was supposed to be good individual practice, supposed to make them think.  He knows Hermione will do it for him if he asks but he’s also kind of embarrassed at needing her help in the first place.

He wants to just forget everything going on in his life right now, to pretend he’s just a person whose life is going to plan, who is sitting outside in the rain with his friends on damp grass by a lake, just talking, just being.  No danger.  No nothing.  Just normalcy.  But he can’t.  “We’ll keep meeting,” Hermione decides.  None of them try to argue.  It draws Harry soberingly back to where he really is, back into the world where he is in danger perpetually and working for the millionth time on a way around it.  “We probably need the DA now more than ever.”

A tentacle, thick and dark and threatening, disconcerting, winds its way over the back of Percy’s hand where it hangs barely above the water’s surface and Harry stares at it, expecting Percy to react like anybody else; to panic, to jump back, to move away.  But he stays almost worryingly still, and smiles at the water nearby, presumably at the squid.  Harry looks around his friends and companions for a moment, wondering if any of them have noticed what’s going on there.  Hermione and Ron are talking so they don’t see it, and Nico and Jason just smile fondly and bemusedly.  Harry wants to trust the transfers, understands that they’ve really been nothing but helpful to him, but they’re still weird.  He still can’t understand them.  There’s a stupid cynical part of him that thinks that might be enough to give up on them.  He wishes it didn’t.  He tries to ignore the giant squid and everything else that is weird about Percy Jackson and his cousins but he can’t get past all of it.  He thinks about the detention with Umbridge again, about how she froze and how her office flooded later, and then he thinks about the glinting metal of swords and the shine of scars, and, as always, his mind goes back to flesh burned to black.  The transfers might be trustworthy but there is something wrong with them.

History of Magic is almost impressively boring.  When Percy had been ordered to a wizarding school halfway across the world he had reassured himself that it would free him from the boring, droning voice of his World History teacher who always had food in his grey beard and bags beneath his eyes so dark he looked as though he hadn’t slept in weeks.  But here he is, in almost the exact situation except Mr. Smith’s (and wow, even that man’s name is boring) counterpart is dead and the things he is saying should be inherently interesting.  Really, it’s a skill that he has managed to make magical history so snooze-worthy.

Percy finds himself staring out of the window, at the world outside that’s green turning gradually to the rich jewel tones of autumn.  The glass itself is sort of dirty, dust and smudges gathering around the edges.  It looks as though it’d be cold to the touch.  A crow flies high over a tower he can see through the window.  He’s not ashamed to admit he doesn’t know which part of Hogwarts is which from the outside, and he can still barely walk around inside without getting lost.  Sometimes he just gets distracted and turns to the strange doors and archways, the hallways he has never seen before and the stairs that spin and move and dance and tempt, until he is thoroughly lost.  He almost never actually finds himself in the Slytherin dorm room at lights out but, thus far, nobody has said anything to him about it.

He drums his fingers on the desk and keeps his eyes focused on the crow and just hopes that he isn’t supposed to be writing right now, and if he is that Professor Binns just won’t notice, too absorbed in his drone of words that mush together, collide into one.  His textbook is open in front of him.  That is about all the effort and attention he is willing to contribute to this teacher’s class.

Then, out of nowhere, blocking his view of the dark, distant shape of the crow, appears a snowy owl.  For a second a pang of anxiety lurches in his chest because he is well aware that those birds, patrons of Athena as they are, aren’t fans of his sea-scum self.  The poor bird stops knowingly at the glass though, and raps its talons against the pane in an impressive facsimile of a human knock.  It looks as though it has flown through storms, its once-white feathers bedraggled and stained the red-yellow browns of dirt and greys of rain, its wing held at a strange, uncomfortable angle.  Almost immediately, Harry jumps to his feet, rushing quickly across the classroom, his chair clattering to the floor with a bang that almost sends Percy into a fighting stance.  He’s probably a bit too used to things blowing up.

Percy watches Harry wrench the window open and take the ruffled bird into his arms gently.  He looks to their teacher, his eyes wild and bright and worried behind his glasses, and asks to go see the care of magical creatures teacher.  Binn’s translucent face barely even moves as he utters an affirmative answer then turns right back to the class, letting words fall out of his lips.  Percy wonders if he even thinks about them before they’re hanging in the cold air between them, if he even knows what it is he’s teaching.  He has been doing this for so long he must be on autopilot; there is no other viable explanation for quite how uninteresting he is.

They are let out of the lesson and Percy walks down to the dungeons where the potions classroom is.  He had never been comfortable underground and isn’t sure that he has ever had a good experience beneath the earth, especially post-Tartarus, still wearing those scars and the lingering feeling of burning he feels every now and then in his throat and stomach, and now he is expected to sleep there, to take lessons.  He hates this quest, he really does.

The halls are full of chatter and he passes through it all and knows he doesn’t belong there, doesn’t belong amongst these people.  Lights flicker and he knows that his face in this lighting is one that people look away from because of how the scars and his eyes catch the light and let go of it a little too late.  He is disconcerting.  He understands that.  He isn’t sure there was ever a time when he wasn’t, though.  It’s probably a natural part of being part god, an inevitable consequence of his own inhumanity.  He looks at his hands as he walks, and he can feel in his stomach the way that the blood passes through the vessels underneath the skin, towards his heart and away from it.  That is his own life and he simultaneously has too much and too little control over it.

He sits at his usual table in Snape’s classroom. Right near the back where the stone wall is radiating a dank cold that sinks into his skin and his stupid school uniform which has long since become horrendously tattered along its edges.  He waits for Harry to take the seat opposite him and watches teenagers file in, chatting and talking and waiting in pensive silence for Snape to emerge and shut them all up.  In the corner, Umbridge lingers, bright pink and about as out-of-place as she is unwelcome.  Nico and Jason sit beside each other, as do Hermione and Ron, and Draco Malfoy sneers at Percy even though he is sure he hasn't done anything recently to offend the spoiled brat.  Harry barely gets there before Snape, the owl no longer cradles in his skinny arms, a smudge of dirt from her feathers having transferred onto the white of his school shirt.

Percy smiles at him.  The light is cool and sickly and he knows his teeth are too sharp for it to not look predatory, but he hopes the intention behind the gesture will carry across regardless of its actual appearance.  Harry returns it, but he looks wary, uneasy.  He has the face of somebody that knows something is horribly wrong and isn’t a good enough actor to hide it properly.  That’s a look Percy is well-acquainted with.  He can only hope it is a product of the dilemma with his owl rather than anything Percy has done.

“Everything okay?” Percy asks as he walks around the room, finally used to the organisation, collecting ingredients into his arms.  He isn’t sure eyeballs and other organs suspended in amber liquids will ever not look wrong to him, no matter how many times he sees them.

Harry makes a face before he nods his head.  It’s a contradictory sort of expression.  He sighs.  “Sure,”

Percy smiles uncomfortably back and softly drops the things he is holding against his chest onto the table between them.  He knows he can keep speaking, and that Snape won’t stop him because he is both very good at potions and in Slytherin.  It’s a nice little reprieve, he supposes, but it does contribute to his dislike of the man.  Percy isn’t fond of many authority figures.  “I hope your owl is alright,” He hopes it sounds genuine even though owls creep him out, and tips water into the pewter cauldron.  He hasn’t measured it, but he doesn’t need to.  The fire beneath the cauldron isn’t as hot as it probably should be so he clenches his fist in the pocket of his robe and lets the warm feeling in his gut he gets when using his powers grow hotter.  The water begins to bubble.  He remembers a time when the power inside him felt restrained, controlled, not as though it were about to consume him at any moment.  Sometimes he feels more god than human and it makes him want to claw at his skin until he is able to prove he still bleeds red even though he worries every time he gets cut up in a fight that this is the time he will see gold.

“Grubbly-Plank sounded sure she would be,” Harry says back.  He is trying to cut a bug, but his knife keeps glancing off its shining carapace.  Wordlessly, Percy leans over and gestures for Harry to keep his knife away.  He crushes it with the side of his fist and Harry goes back to cutting it without so much as questioning his approach.  He is almost sure Snape is raising his eyebrows behind him but he isn’t sure he cares.  Snape could want him dead and he still probably wouldn’t mind too much; that man occupies very little space in his mind.  He’s glad Harry has grown to accept his intervention, no matter how mundane.

The longer he stands in the dungeon chopping and crushing and slicing and tipping things into the water he is having to keep the correct temperature manually because Snape has set them up for failure, the more he wishes he was somewhere else.  Really, it seems somewhat negligent that Hogwarts wouldn’t have them doing potions in a well-ventilated room with at least one window because the smell in the air is thick and heavy and hot and noxious.  He knows from the sweet, inoffensive smell coming off of their cauldron that it shouldn’t be.

“I still can’t get used to the owls,” Percy admits, “Like, that you use them as a wizarding USPS,”

Harry makes a face at him, like he’s trying to deconstruct and puzzle back together Percy’s sentence, but it drops after a moment.  “Do you not use them in the States?”
Percy shakes his head.  The isolation of these wizards is disconcerting in some ways and relieving in others, because Percy can make up whatever he likes about the American wizarding world and nobody will know that he’s bullshitting his way through everything.  “We just send things by mail,” he says, “Like muggles,” He isn’t sure why he keeps demystifying his fake version of the US wizarding world when his actual life is so strange and he once sent the head of Medusa through Hermes mail, but it’s almost easier to keep up with, to avoid accidentally letting too much about who and what he really is out.  Harry nods along.  Percy isn’t sure how much it matters if he really believes him.

They continue working in silence for a while until Harry looks nervously over Percy’s shoulder.  “I really hate her,” he says venomously.  Percy doesn’t need to look to understand who Harry is talking about.

“Who doesn’t?”  His hands are stained herb green again.  He wonders what his eyes must look like--he’s sure their appearance is at least a little horrifying.

“Do you think she knows how dangerous she is?”

“I think that’s the point of her,” he shrugs, “There is something seriously wrong with your Ministry,” and Percy has known for a while that the Ministry of Magic is a corrupt ruling power, but he is so sick of those.  He is sick of the Ministry of Magic and the US government, and the Greek and Roman Gods.  He can’t help but feel that no matter where he is or whose life he is living, everything, at its rotten core, is the same.  Everything horrible that has happened to him is just happening again and again and again and he will be stuck in it until he dies and some other poor, unfortunate soul will take his place.  He is under no allusions that his life won’t eventually kill him.

He looks over his shoulder, at his cousins sitting too close to Umbridge, speaking Greek just to piss her off, smiling and laughing and being the family none of them ever really thought they’d be able to have.  Part of him hopes he dies first, so he doesn’t have to see anyone else he loves die in a horrible way.  He has burned too many shrouds: he doesn’t think it’s unreasonable to want his own to be next.

Harry nods pensively.  “But why?”

“Power corrupts, I guess,” Percy almost lets the potion boil too hot but stops himself as he realises what he is doing.  Part of him hates that he is barely thinking about what he is doing, that he doesn’t need to anymore.  “But I have a feeling that’s not all of it,”

“You know,” he sighs, slumps forwards against the table where everything slimy and disgusting and unnatural sits, “Something like this happens every year and every year I hope this time will be different,” Percy just hums and nods.  He doesn’t respond but he gets it.  In fact, it hits him straight in the gut.  Harry Potter is basically his own counterpart, and Percy has a bad feeling that means the fates do not have a happy ending planned for him.  The only thing he can think to say is sorry but he knows that would only conjure questions he isn’t prepared to answer.

Chapter Text

Harry wants nothing more than to be asleep right now, keeping his eyes wide open and focused on the amber flames in the fireplace, their light making his eyes sting.  Every time he closes them in a painful blink he can feel the urge to collapse backwards into his chair and keep them closed.  His arms and his legs ache terribly, sword-fighting practice whiping him out more than he feels like it should.  Ron is the only person who ever seems quite so exhausted by it as he is, and Ron unfailingly stays back, keeps swinging and fighting and sparring with the Americans, usually Percy.  Harry only feels a little guilty that he doesn’t know how long Ron stays there for, how good he is getting now, what he and the Americans talk about as they swing their swords, if they talk at all.  What he does know is that Ron’s distrust has dissipated, that he laughs with the Americans, talks to them and asks them for help when they are able to give it, even occasionally invites them back to the Gryffindor common room.  Not tonight, though.

It isn’t that Harry doesn’t trust them because he knows, intellectually, that he must, but they set his teeth on edge and Sirius appearing in the fireplace to talk to them feels like it is too much to share.  Still, he thinks about when it had happened before, you said he was framed, a shrug, belief.  Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing, but it is not going to happen now.  In fact, nothing is happening now as he waits for the common room to clear, for the flames to twist into a familiar face, for it to all be done and for his bed to welcome him.

He is getting antsy, waiting for too long.  But they need privacy and Sirius knows better than to appear too soon, into a common room full of teenagers who know his face and not his alibi.  So Harry waits.  And he waits.  And his eyes flutter closed.

Hermione is shaking his shoulder and the world is fuzzy as he pulls his eyelids apart as though they have been velcroed shut.  His hearing sounds distant and he has slumped against his arm, a trail of drool connecting the corner of his mouth to the crook of his elbow he has been using to cushion himself.  He has pushed his glasses upwards in his sleep so they cover his eyebrows rather than his eyes, but, even without them, he can see something suspiciously non-flame-like sputtering in the fireplace.  He yanks them down with haste and jumps to life, running his tongue over his teeth behind his lips.  They feel rough; he should brush them.  “Sirius!” 

The face in the flame smiles and it strikes Harry that the way his face holds mischief and spite is not unique to him.  Sirius Black grins like Percy Jackson.  “I know about your little group,” he says plainly, no hint of condescension attached to that diminutive.  Harry thinks there might actually be some pride there, or at least approval.  “Molly doesn’t exactly approve though, she’s on duty, couldn’t be here to tell you, but insisted I let you know,” he rolls his eyes fondly.

Harry nods his understanding as Ron blanches a little at so directly and knowingly having to disobey his mother.  He loves the woman but, God, does she scare him sometimes.  “We’re worried Umbridge knows, though,” Harry admits to the fire.

“Well,” Sirius looks to be deep in thought.  “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I would keep it up if I were you.  I think I’d rather be expelled than unprepared-” he looks like he wants to say more but he can’t.

Harry, Ron and Hermione, the lone figures in the common room, jump back from the fireplace as a small hand reaches up from the empty space beneath Sirius’ head, grasping blindly for the stringy strands of his hair hanging down from his face.  It’s an ugly little hand, with pristine nails and swollen knuckles, stubby fingers and wrinkles that make the skin seem like it is almost too big for the appendage.  Sirius curses and disappears and, for just a moment, the hand continues to grasp at the flames where he had been.  None of them stick around long enough to see quite how or when it retreats.

Harry practically races Ron back to their dormitory even though he isn’t quite sure why he is running. What he is running from.  He doesn’t know if that hand can leave the fire, if it can hurt him, but he absolutely knows whose it is.  What worries him most is the thought that Umbridge knows for certain, that she knows not only that there was an intruder but that the intruder was Sirius Black, that she knows who he had intruded to talk to, that she knows why.

He practically pushes Ron through the door to their room, wondering distantly if he has always been faster than Harry on foot or if this is a new development.  He falls into his bed and snaps his curtains closed, constructing the image of a student who has been asleep, exactly where he should be, for at least an hour or two, in case anyone feels like checking in on him.  His heart is hammering inside his chest as he burrows the side of his face into his pillow and tries to force his breathing to slow.

In his rush he doesn’t notice that one bed is conspicuously empty.

The Fat Lady in the portrait is snoring loudly.  Jason feels a little bad at having to wake her to get in but, truthfully, he has much bigger problems right now.  Namely, the pounding in his head, the menacing whisper of the wind, the way the feeling of dust on his hands makes him want to tear his skin off, how the aforementioned portrait appears in vivid, disorienting technicolour.  And, above all of that, how there is no way that Umbridge isn’t at least a little bit aware of what they are doing.  He snaps his fingers to wake the portrait and it makes a sound like thunder.  With how quickly she lurches awake he assumes that maybe that feeling wasn’t one exclusive to his head.  He mutters the password, holding his head, and stumbles into one of the comfortable chairs by the now dead fireplace.  He really needs to get used to controlling Hecate’s blessing a little more finely.  He isn’t like Nico and Percy, thrives on discipline to an extent, but Hecate had warned them that none of them would be immune to this.

Her wizards are able to channel magic that exists in the air around them but he is not a wizard, not built to tap into that.  She had said they had another power source they could draw from though, an internal one, a potent one.  Percy had winced and Nico hadn’t looked all too pleased but Jason had foolishly thought he could be the exception, able to channel it without excess.  No such luck.  His senses burn, his skin screams, and he cannot escape that he is a big three demigod, that there are myriad reasons he isn’t really allowed to exist, that one of those is that he is too powerful, too much of a threat.

The Everything fades to a somewhat more manageable level and he breathes deeply, tries to think about anything but the feeling of the skin around his legion brand and how it is far too tight.  He wonders what the magic feels like for Percy and Nico, who he knows are much more dangerous, much less constrained, than he is.  For the most part, the use of magic feels good but, at the same time, it brings Jason a sense of unease, like something in the core of his power is changing, growing, with each spell he casts.  The real problem is when he turns his magic on himself.  He can only imagine how it feels to someone who is just expecting regular magic, can picture Hermione’s shock when they had disarmed her.

He gathers himself enough to dispel the supersensory charm and feels something inside of him unravel slightly.

Now that Hermione has had enough time to think it through, she’s pretty sure she can put together most of what is happening, most of what Umbridge knows.

“She’s reading your post,” she whispers to Harry as they sit in charms with animals on their desks, chirping and calling.  A few people mutter the silencing charm but people almost never manage to get a brand new charm right on their very first try.  Some pause after a fail, consider their wand movements or their annunciation or how they draw their magic through their bodies, others just try again immediately, hoping for the change to occur naturally, as if on instinct.  Sometimes that approach works.

Harry nods, face impassive, blank and pained.  So, is Umbridge what had put Hedwig into such a state of disarray before she had reached him with Sirius’ letter?  Shivers race up his vertebrae.  “So what do we do?”  Hermione lapses into a thoughtful silence, the room so loud it is hard to think.

“ Silencio ,” says a voice from somewhere else in the room.  Hermione is too focused on other things to register where in the room it has come from, whose voice it is.  She knows it’s familiar but that doesn’t mean much in a classroom filled with people she has known, at least peripherally, for a very long time.  It’s masculine, which leaves about half of the class.  She isn’t too concerned, otherwise.  She suddenly finds herself much more able to think, as though she has been conspicuously energised, a bright and somewhat sharp feeling filling her head like electricity, in a now silent room.

She opens her mouth to answer Harry but no words come out.  She furrows her eyebrows and tries again but it still doesn’t work.  Has someone just cast the charm on her to shut her up?  She moves her head quickly, looking around the room for potential culprits even though she knows she can’t recall what the voice that had casted the spell sounded like.  She hadn’t been able to get an accent from the single word that had been spoken, not even in English.  As she looks around she realises that she is not the only person that can’t speak, that other students are opening and closing their mouths like befuddled fish, no hint of sound coming out.

There is still a thrum of chatter in the room, a muttered conversation in a language Hermione’s bones recognise but her brain does not, that her ears are not attuned to and her mouth does not know how to speak.  She makes a face at the Americans who are looking around the room with wide eyes, taking note of people without voices, of mouths opened in silent shouts.  She remembers casting spells against Percy and Jason, how it had been so much harder than it should have been to disarm them, how they naturally just seemed to resist the effects of magic more than any other wizard she had met.  She supposes it makes sense, then, that they still have their voices, but she doesn’t know why that is.

She thinks about the feeling of the silencing magic again, how it had been odd but not unpleasant, nothing like being drowned on dry land.  She knows for certain it wasn’t Percy who casted it then.  But Jason?  She isn’t sure. It hadn’t felt the same but it hadn’t been overly dissimilar, especially because it wasn’t the same spell and she wasn’t its sole target--perhaps not even an intended target at all, she amended.

She watches the Americans as Flitwick wordlessly tries to bring order back to an eerily quiet classroom, broken only by mumbled words none of them can understand.  She keeps herself calm and looks at the Americans as they survey the room, making sense of it.  Percy makes a face, says something, and Nico nods, saying something else.  Jason looks down at the floor and Percy pats his back.  Interesting: a crack in Jason’s seemingly perfect composure.

Flitwick seems to notice that they have managed to retain their speech and gestures wildly until he manages to catch their attention.  Percy and Nico look down at him with furrowed brows and Jason keeps his vision focused somewhere left of Flitwick’s face.  Flitwick mouths something at them but they clearly don’t understand it.  Percy cocks his head.  “Huh?” He shouts.  Hermione wonders why he doesn’t just move closer to Flitwick but she seems to be the only person that thought has occurred to.  She sighs, feels her breath leave her body without even a hint of a sound.  Flitwick sighs and tries to mutter to himself, hopping down from his stack of books and walking over to the big blackboard in the room, a worn-down stub of chalk gripped securely between his fingers.

He writes the counter charm in large, looping letters and Hermione is filled with hope until she looks back and sees uncomprehending squints appear as though synchronised across the American’s faces.  Of course; they are all dyslexic.  They keep squinting, looking lost and guilty.  Hermione hops to her feet and walks briskly to where they are sitting.

She grabs Percy’s quill, a somewhat battered blue feather of an origin she doesn’t know, and dips it into his deep blue inkwell.  She writes the letters from the board in the clearest, blockiest writing she is able to and hopes it will help.  Then she steps back and lets Percy slowly read it.  She looks over their desk as she waits to get her voice back, at their wands laid on the table top, a row of frightening things she can’t help but think of as being more like weapons than wands

Oh .  One of the Americans is going to cast the counter charm, which means the awful feeling of their strange magic is going to fall over the class.  She braces herself and waits as they crowd over Percy’s parchment.  They look up, look between themselves, and talk in their language.  She feels like she is being intentionally shut out.  Jason almost immediately raises his hands and leans back.  Percy and Nico nod then have what sounds like a short argument which neither of them really seem to be winning.

Percy must lose it eventually because he sighs and mutters “Okay,” to himself, standing and picking up his wand.  He scans his eyes over the class then looks straight at Hermione, thanks her with an uneasy smile, then apologises pre-emptively.

And then Hermione is drowning.  It isn’t like the slight spark that had settled in her stomach when her voice had been stolen and is, instead, almost exactly like the last time Percy had cast a spell at her.  Her nose feels clogged, her chest heavy and her head store, and there is something thoroughly undeniable in her head that insists she should not breathe in, so she doesn’t.

She doesn’t know how long the sensation lasts, but she does know that there is one moment where she can’t breathe or move or speak, and then another where she can gasp and hear the sound of the air rushing violently into her lungs.  The room feels much louder than it had been before the silencing spell, the sounds of frogs and crows suddenly unbearable, students shouting and panicking, trying to figure out what happened, what they are feeling, Flitwick shrilly calling for order despite evidently being just as affected as his students.  She’s hardly surprised that he lets them out of the lesson early.

Angelina had excitedly told them that their quidditch team had been granted permission to continue practising during lunch but, walking down to the pitch through thick, grey fog, Ron can’t help but wish she was willing to wait maybe just one more day before they got back to practising.  No such luck, he supposes.

He is walking with Harry and Jason but they are all looking at their feet, not speaking.  There is something unspoken in the air between them, something is wrong and things are moving and they have reached that point in the year where it all starts to culminate inescapably.  Jason has been strangely quiet all day, especially since the disaster of a charms lesson they had, but so had Harry and Ron after the Sirius ordeal last night.  The only difference between them really was that he and Harry had lost all sense of volume control since Percy had dispelled the silencing charm.  He hoped that would wear off soon, because they got up to far too much in secret to afford to be able to shout everything like they had been for most of the day.

Ron’s skin still felt cold, clammy, and his chest still hurt.  He was sure the counter spell wasn’t supposed to feel like he was literally dying a slow and painful death, but he hadn’t had the chance to inquire about it with Flitwick, so he couldn’t be completely assured of it.  He wants to ask Jason about that lesson but hesitates to break the non communicative coexistence between them and, by the time he has steeled himself to ask, they are already at the quidditch pitch, being corralled into the changing rooms.  Fred and George jump over to him before he has the chance to talk to Jason who walks over to a bench as though in a trance.

There is a discussion about using Fred and George’s Skiving Snackboxes to get out of a dreary, waterlogged practice that is quickly shot down with the disclosure of a side effect of some inopportune boils.  Ron winces as he listens and resigns himself to getting ready to play.

It’s a useless practice, the sky so grey and thick with rain that they can barely see anything at all.  He keeps colliding with chasers who are slightly misjudging where the goal hoops are, and Harry is sitting achingly still above them, unable to see their movements clearly, let alone that of the snitch.  Percy and Nico are the only people who are sitting in the stands, suffering the weather in order to be able to watch.  Percy is wearing an unzipped hoodie, deep purple, with a strange logo on the left breast, the hood pulled up and thoroughly waterlogged.  He appears unbothered by it.  Nico, on the other hand, is scowling, holding a large umbrella over his head as though he has made the conscious decision that he won’t be sharing it with Percy.  Ron chuckles at the thought and is promptly almost knocked from his broom by a rogue bludger.

They give up eventually, and the team begins to disperse, a number of them not bothering to change before leaving, the thought of having to change from one soaked set of clothes into another thoroughly unappealing.  Ron is one of them.  He just sits on a bench and waits for Harry to gather his things, Jason and his cousins joining him.  Nico’s umbrella is dripping steadily onto the floor and the sound is kind of making Ron feel like he is losing his mind somehow.

He is talking to the Americans when Harry hisses, an unnaturally loud sound cutting through their conversation.  He clutches at his head.  “Harry?”  Ron tries cautiously.  “Are you okay?”

Harry nods but his teeth are bared.  “My scar burns,” he mutters.  “I think-” he looks intensely at the Americans before deciding that he actually wants to do this, that he wants to let them in on what is happening.  He has a feeling, deep down, that no matter how odd the Americans are, perhaps because of how odd they are, he has to trust them.  “I think Voldemort is angry about something.”

Chapter Text

Nico can’t quite stop himself watching Jason closely now.  He hates it, but he can’t help but notice that there is something wrong with Jason, like there is some part of him which is snapping, breaking, falling apart and leaving its contents to spill, to consume.  It’s something Nico knows well, that he knows Percy must too, because they are both too far gone, too consumed by power to be fully, properly human anymore.

Jason, though, is supposed to be different.  He is supposed to be better, able to hold onto his humanity with all the discipline that has been drilled into him, that he relies on, clings to.  Nico doesn’t know how it is for other demigods, but for him there had once been something in his stomach that had sat heavily, burned bright white when he used his powers, until he had snapped the first time and he had felt it start to pull apart at least a little.  That was when he had learned about Bianca.  Since it has fallen into more pieces, the power it had held had changed fundamentally.  It is no longer within him, no longer part of him, but it has become him, easier to tap into but harder to hold back.  He can only imagine the same is true for Percy; he sure fights like the desperate beast Nico feels like.

There is something about his magic that feels like it exacerbates it, like every time he draws from his powers he stretches it at the edges, changes its shape.  He feels like there must be something more in that, like it must be shaping his capacities in some way or another.  Part of him is nervous to test that but another part of him itches to try it.  There’s a third voice in his head that insists it won’t be worth it, a fourth telling him it will only hurt him.  Percy’s and Will’s.  He decides those are the ones he will listen to.

But he can’t imagine what that’s like for Jason, what that might feel like if the thing that the magic is trying to shape is so well-contained.  The only outcome he can think of is that the container will have to break, that slowly, gently, this blessing of Hecate’s will be what makes Jason snap, what pushes him to a point of inhumanity he can’t come back from.  Jason isn’t supposed to break like that.  It puts Nico on edge.

He sits in the library with his cousins, tapping his toes against the ground and looking between the almost entirely blank parchment he has spread out in front of him, nothing written on it aside from the title, and Jason.  He wonders if Jason and Percy are as acutely aware of what is happening as he is.  He knows with certainty that they are all aware of it though, even if they do not quite have the same words.  He has a feeling Jason will be finding it the hardest to wrap his head around, after all Nico and Percy have always been loose cannons whereas Jason had once been a praetor, someone stoic and polite and well-conducted.  Nico hopes he holds out long enough that they can complete the quest and he can rest his powers before he is too far gone.  He hopes that is how it works.

He sighs and stands up.  Percy watches him curiously but not cautiously--he appreciates Will’s worry about him because it is affectionate, because it is so much who Will is, but he can’t stand the only way people ever look at him being like he is about to destroy either himself or someone else.  Perhaps it is just because he and Percy are alike in a way that is specific to them.  Jason need not join them.  Nico nods at Percy and packs up his things silently, now used to the hissing silencing of the librarian whose name he has forgotten, resting his hand on Jason’s shoulder for a moment before leaving.

He has spent a lot of time underground in his short life and it has left him with something of a constant need for fresh air that hovers at the back of his mind.  He walks out of the castle even though the weather is still miserable.  At least it has stopped raining, though the air still hangs thick and heavy and waterlogged.  The sun is just able to break through the clouds.  He supposes he may as well take advantage of that.

He walks unflinchingly towards the Forbidden Forest, finding himself a spot along its edge that hides him from plain view without completely isolating him from the final remaining glints of the sunlight.  He sits on the wet grass.  It isn’t pleasant but it doesn’t come anywhere close to ranking amongst the worst things he has felt, he also doesn’t much care about the wet mud that is definitely now caked on the seat of his school uniform trousers.  He pulls something small and glassy out of one pocket, a drachma out of the other, and holds the prism up to the light, trying hard to catch it.  After a moment, it works.  He has had practice at this now but he remembers the first time he had tried, how fumbling and young and alone he had been, how long it had taken to make a rainbow and how nervous he had been to make the call.

“Oh Fleecy, do me a solid,” he says softly, smiling to himself as he rubs his thumb over the rough face of the drachma.  “Show me Will Solace at Camp Half Blood, Long Island Sound,”  He flicks the coin into the rainbow and watches with a satisfied smile as reality ripples and a window opens up.

Will is in the infirmary because of course he is, and Nico realises that he actually has no idea what time it is back home.  That word, as he thinks it, makes his face warm: Home.  Will looks over at him, surprised and excited and then, seeing Nico bright pink, teasing.

“Neeks!”

“Shut up,” he’s scowling but he knows it’s unconvincing.  Even if it was convincing, Will has this ability to see straight through him.  They talk, and Nico pretends that he doesn’t miss his boyfriend even though it really is just a bit.  Every time Will says something sappy he simply bites back with an “Ew.” and they try their hardest to update each other on what has been going on in their lives whilst they have been separated.  It’s quite the task because, of course, both of their lives are kind of a mess, always moving, moving.  A demigod gets no rest; this is an established fact.

“Without you and Percy here I at least think I’ll make it to twenty before I go grey,” Will says with a laugh.  It makes Nico stop and think, trying to imagine twenty.  He’s almost shocked that he can imagine surviving that long but he is powerful, he has earned his place, and he likes to imagine he has learned at least a little lenience from his father, even if he spends much less time in his realm these days.

“You’ve never even had to reattach either of our arms!”

A roll of the eyes.  “I’m not convinced either of you would actually tell me if you needed me to,” and maybe he’s a little insulted, but Nico chuckles.  He hasn’t had the most time since he has been in the UK so he will relish this call, enjoy talking to Will for as long as he can until there’s some sort of medical emergency he has to go deal with, or the sun drops completely from the sky and Nico has to leave for a DA meeting.

He’s stupid, really, because he is too focused on his conversation to realise Neville Longbottom is walking between a greenhouse and the castle to get to that same meeting, and he really should know better than to let himself be snuck up on.  He doesn’t have time to cut the call before Neville sees it and he panics, jumps, startles and tries to cover his back, before he catches his breath and reminds himself that Neville Longbottom means no harm to him.

“Hello!” Neville waves to him, walking over, and Nico worries it might look suspicious if he waves through the call, so he just lets Will stay and watch Neville stroll his way.  They aren’t close or anything, but somehow repeatedly knocking a sword from Neville’s hand until his palms were red and screaming, yet to develop the necessary callouses, has made him trust Nico more than he had before.  He doesn’t mind it so much as he finds himself confused by it.  People aren’t supposed to trust him, and somehow that doesn’t mean anything anymore.  Neville looks away from Nico to focus on Will who is smiling convincingly and waving even though Nico knows he’s probably kind of concerned, kind of worried, scared that Nico might have inadvertently just revealed something he shouldn’t have.

But Neville is a wizard.  Will’s face floating in the air isn’t really world-breaking.  He waves back at Will and examines the fizzled-out edges of the Iris Message.  “This is a really cool communication spell!”

Will looks relieved and Nico decides that he is going to play along.  “Haven’t you seen it before?”  He says it like he can’t believe Neville hasn’t; maybe this is how American wizards communicate most of the time.  Neville shakes his head with enough intensity to remind Nico that he has been scared of Nico for a long time, that he probably is not completely over it.  “Huh,” Nico acts like he’s thinking.  “Maybe they aren’t a thing here,” he pulls another drachma from his pocket and flips it over in his hand.  Neville looks at it intently.  “Oh shit!  We need to go, don’t we?” Neville and Will both know what he is talking about without him outright saying it.  Neville continues to nod as though he is trying to give himself a headache.

Will smiles.  “See ya Sunshine,” he says with a wave and a glint in his eye that Nico finds mildly infuriating.  He rolls his eyes.

“Ciao,” Nico swipes through the message and Will’s image quickly dissipates.  Nico is kind of glad he hadn’t ended up calling during one of those limb reattachments he had mentioned.

“Who was that?” Neville asks as they walk back to the castle together.

“His name is Will,”

“Friend from home?”

Nico finds himself smiling to himself as he shrugs.  “Something like that,”

Harry turns the Galleon over in his hand.  It is still warm from the little terry cloth bag Hermione had pulled them from but something about its presence makes his blood feel like it is running ice cold.  He shivers and looks up, finding Nico’s eyes focused on him a bit too intensely amongst a crowd of people who are looking his way, expecting something from him.  Really, Nico might not even be doing anything strange, but there’s just something about the terrible darkness of his eyes that makes them seem soulless, inhuman.  He likes Nico well enough but he doesn’t like how intently he’s looking at him.  He decides to focus a little to the left of Nico’s bony shoulder instead, almost surprised to see Neville Longbottom, the very personification of a flinch, sitting there, his soft face painted with the barest hint of a smile, something alike to content.

Harry gets it.  There’s part of the quiet rebellion of the DA that creates this kind of levitating sense of elation in his stomach, makes him feel like everything we’ll be okay, that he is doing what he needs to and he might actually be enjoying it for once.  But there is also the part of him that can’t help but feel every chill in the room, the presence of all those eyes, and the coin that sits in his hand a little bit too heavily.  If he really focuses on it it’s almost as though he can feel the magic in it, something restless and reckless and buzzing, even though he knows that just isn’t how it works.  The more he stares at it the more he realises what the problem is: these coins sitting heavy in everyone’s pockets are just a bit too reminiscent of dark marks for his liking.

He diverts his attention from the coin and looks back at the other students who are crowded in the room around him, their backsides reflected in a wall lined with mirrors and weapons that glint sharp and deadly in flickering artificial light.  Standing tall towards the back like guards, he can’t help but catch sight of Percy and Jason.  In his mind that image of the dark mark shifts into something different, something which he isn’t convinced he doesn’t like less.  Skin, charred into shape, a brand.  He has this urge to ask about them, to ask who put them there and why and if they are magic or just marked cruelty.  Instead he bites his tongue and lets Hermione guide them into the magic part of the day’s learning, filing away his concerns to discuss with her later.

Students stand around him in pairs, watching as he talks then raises his wand, gesturing it towards Hermione.  She sidesteps deftly and raises her own wand.  They are demonstrating a quick duel, a test to see what the kids can do, how quickly they can think.  Something like mischief glimmers in Ginny Weasley’s eyes and he can tell without a doubt that they are all pretty excited for this lesson.  They go for a while until Hermione shouts a decisive “Expelliarmus!” and he makes no attempt to stop his wand from clattering to the hard tiles they are duelling on.

As everyone is gestured to begin, he can’t help but watch the Americans standing in their impractical trio.  They usually seem so inhumanly capable but there is something about Jason recently that has felt wrong, a little less like the put-together person they first met and a little more like the simmering destructiveness he knows lives in Nico and Percy.  Besides, a three-way duel seems impractical.  He considers stepping in and offering to duel with one of them, but he is stopped by the visceral memory of that disastrous charms lesson and the white-hot, icy sting in his airways, that feeling like he couldn’t breathe and his skull was about to cave in, the clamminess and the ache in his chest that had lasted too long afterwards.  He can only imagine that is what drowning feels like, and if that is what it feels like to have Percy Jackson cast a spell on him it is not a sensation he will choose to subject himself to.  He watches Jason take a step back from his cousins and wanders in their direction just because he wants to watch, rather than because he has any intentions of stepping in and helping.

Even from Harry’s distance he can see the intensity of how Nico and Percy stare each other down, their terrifying animalistic eyes glinting in the light, their reflections ones of emptiness, an abyss, the Marianas Trench.  He could swear Percy’ eyes aren’t usually this dark but, then again, he says the same to himself every potions lesson when they just seem to shift into something that is somehow more inhuman-looking.  Harry's side-on view lets him see them smile, as genuine as it is taunting.  Percy’s teeth are too sharp, too menacing, like a shark’s--he can imagine them painted in claret--but Nico’s smile is too soft, something like a promise, as though he is inevitable, ready to deliver an unavoidable end.  The hairs on Harry’s arms stand on end but he doesn’t want to walk away, can’t find it in himself to.

They cast spells quickly, competently, their expressions as joyous as they are sinister.  Harry feels like he is watching a car crash and a play at the same time; he can’t look away from either.  He is close enough that he can feel the disturbance in the air, a cold foreboding warning him not to take a step closer, then a rush like a stream begging him to dip his toes in.  It’s incredible to watch but, if he still held any doubt, it would make the Americans’ strangeness absolutely impossible to ignore or attempt to explain away.

Whereas a standard duel is a typically stationary ordeal, with wizards standing opposite each other, keeping their distance and moving only slightly, an event officially held on a narrow stage, Nico and Percy move like they are attempting to evade each other, or else find their ways into each other’s weak points.  Their feet move fast, unpredictable trails over the tiles, and yet they seem to not only be aware of where the other duelling pairs are in the room, avoiding bumping into them, but also to be able to keep up with each other, to follow fast movements and potent spells that seem to roll off their tongues as though at random.  They duel as though their wands are their swords and it’s almost mystifying but that’s almost undermined by how terrifying it is.  They are his peers, ones he is almost tempted to consider friends, but in this moment they are animals--monsters, even.

He feels no desire to step in and stop them.  They are blatantly disregarding the rules of the duel but it doesn’t matter: the point of DA is real practice, is practicality.  Death Eaters do not follow rules of etiquette in fights, so neither should they.  Besides, Harry thinks any attempt to step in would be just like stepping over a pier wearing cement boots.  He barely even notices as a crowd builds up beside him, other duels either dropped or completed, joining him in his slack-jawed observation.  He supposes these other students are even less familiar and more bewildered by the Americans and their power and everything else about them that doesn’t sit quite right, so they must be even more enraptured with wands he almost expects to be sharp and footwork that seems more like levitation.

Nico waves his wand, casting an almost startlingly powerful aguamenti into the air in front of him, and then he immediately drops it, his face overcome with the look of somebody who knows they have already lost.  There is a split second where Harry is confused by it, unsure how he can be so sure that a very well-casted spell will spell his loss, but then it ends.  He has braced himself for the impact of the water like an impenetrable wall but not even a lone drop of it falls his way.

He refocuses and sees Percy pointing his wand at the plume of water with a triumphant grin on his face.  “Merda!” Nico swears shortly, before the wall of water falls unforgivingly on him and his wand is wiped from his hand.

“ Accio wand,” Percy spells shortly, holding up both wands in his hands in a clear, well-natured demonstration of his win.  Across from him, Nico is standing with his hands hanging loosely by his sides, hair plastered to his face and neck, dripping arrhythmically whilst looking rather sorry for himself in the style of a sodden rat.

Students start to cheer but Harry has a feeling in his gut like a curled fist.  He is remembering that detention, remembering Percy’s face and Umbridge’s stillness.  He is pretty sure Percy Jackson never spoke a spell that would allow him to manipulate that water like that.

He is forced to snap himself out of it as Percy Jackson steps in front of everyone with a charming smile and his sword spinning lazily in his hand.  “We’re gonna keep up with the duel thing,” He decides, and Harry steps with both reluctance and relief from the role of teacher into that of a student.

He may as well be eleven again, he feels, as Ron wields his sword with wavering competency and Harry wields his, still, as though it is the first time he has ever held it.  It takes him no time at all to lose their duel.

Chapter Text

If Harry were to have it his way he wouldn’t have to keep up with schoolwork and intense quidditch practises and the DA all at once.  Unfortunately for him, Percy and Nico aren’t so concerned with the fast-approaching quidditch tournament and are very much adamant that they have to keep running DA sessions as normal.  “If someone wants to attack you, they won’t hold off for a while just because you have other things to do,” Percy tells him when he asks and Harry knows, of course, that he’s right, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.  He aches all over, from rushing clandestinely around the castle, from swinging a sword he is still half convinced he’s going to kill himself with, from quidditch, and he isn’t sure that he’s gotten more than five hours of sleep a night for the past month or so.

He kind of envies Ron.  It might just be that he seems to have resigned himself to complete academic mediocrity--as close to failure as he can get without it actually becoming an issue--but he is somehow engaging in quidditch practices like it is an obsession, taking part in the DA with the same commitment as always, and even staying back for his extra sword fighting lessons with Percy and/or Nico without failure.  Harry can’t imagine quite how much his muscles must be screaming at him, but he hardly has the chance to ask because any time Harry spends not working in some way or another, he is asleep.  He is tempted to lapse into Ron’s academic underwhelm, because Ron seems to be dealing at least pretty well.  No matter how much he complains (and he really does complain, a lot), he always seems to have the energy to talk a million miles a minute, to throw himself around in front of the goal posts.  He has stopped being paired with Harry in swordfighting too, instead getting paired off with whichever one of the Americans isn’t involved in the demonstrations--usually Jason.

“My arms feel like they’re about to fall off!” Ron declares as he walks into the common room.  It is late and the room is empty aside from Harry and Hermione who are diligently doing their homework, scribbling on parchment, in front of the lit fireplace.  Harry looks up at Ron, but Hermione puts her quill down and settles back in her seat as if to have a conversation with him.  Harry spares her essay a glance, it looks like it is either finished or is maybe ten minutes at most away from it.  Jason left with them but he had slumped immediately to bed with nothing but a mumbled goodnight.

“Nico or Percy?” Hermione asks, crossing one leg over the other and folding her hands in her lap.

Ron groans.  “Percy,” Hermione winces sympathetically and without pause, as though it is an impulse.  “But Nico was there, he just sort of sat and watched and told me what I was doing wrong and what I needed to do better whilst I was trying not to get my head cut off,”

“Percy wouldn’t cut your head off,”

“You say that ‘Mione, but I’m not really convinced you believe it,”

She snorts.  “You’re the only one that really gets to spar them for very long.  How are they?”

“Terrifying?”

“No, I mean, like, as fighters,”

“Well they’re very good,”

She shakes her head.  “A bit more specific,” she prompts.

“Uhh, they go easy on me so I don’t know what they’re like when they fight properly.  I think Percy is the best, but that’s just because he always wins their spars.  Oh!  Uh, Jason kinda fights differently?  I don’t really know how to explain it, he’s kind of more stabby than slashy?”

She nods contemplatively and they lapse into brief silence before she speaks up again.  “How has Jason seemed recently to you?”

Ron looks like he is thinking for a moment, but another voice pipes up with an answer before he has the chance to voice one.  “Withdrawn,” Their heads all snap, panicked, in the direction of the staircase leading down from the dorms.  Hermione is able to catch her breath when she realises it is just Neville, standing in the shadows, his face cast in lowlight which does very little to make its round shapes appear menacing.  “Sorry,” he steps into the warm firelit room, wincing.  “I just wanted to ask Ron something and I heard him come in.  I really didn’t mean to eavesdrop.  But now that you mention it, I am pretty worried about Jason too,”

Hermione nods.  Harry’s hand stills against his parchment, his quill leaving a bead of ink that he knows he can’t touch if he doesn’t want a dark smear obscuring the entire paragraph he is labouring his way through.  He’s tired and his focus is a fleeting thing, now, against his will and better judgement, concerned with the conversation rather than his work.

“I don’t know what’s happening with him,” she says, “But we should try to help him right?  I mean, we are his friends and I do care about his well being,”

“Nico and Percy are probably already doing that,” Harry points out, putting down his quill, a gesture of defeat.

Hermione shrugs.  “I like them all well enough, but they are strange.  I wonder if asking might prompt them to clear at least a bit of that up,” And, just like that, Harry is suddenly on board.  He is suspicious by nature, has learned from recent years that it pays to be, and even when that suspicion has all but crumbled that nagging sense of curiosity is not willing to leave him be.  Harry wants to know what is going on much more than he wants to pass his OWLs with flying colours, or win the upcoming quidditch tournament.

“We ask him tomorrow then?  At breakfast?” Ron checks, yawning into the crook of his elbow.  Hermione nods decisively and he stands to retire to bed but Neville stops him.

“Before you go to bed,” he says, “I know you stay back after DA sessions and I was wondering, uh, how you managed to arrange that,” He looks down at his hands, tangling his fingers together nervously, as though he hasn’t known Ron for years now.  “It’s just… I know I’m not a great wizard and I hate feeling defenceless and maybe this could help,” his face is bright red by the time he finishes.

Ron shrugs.  “Just ask, mate,” he says simply, “They’re happy to help and they’re already staying back to help me.  I doubt it’ll bother them,”

Neville nods jerkily.  “Which one do I ask?”

Another shrug.  “You can probably take your pick,”

Jason looks at the floor as he walks down the hallway, listening to Percy and Nico’s conversation and occasionally contributing a short comment or a laugh.  He is starting to feel better, to adjust more readily to the feeling of undoing in his stomach, but it does just feel like one bad feeling is being replaced by another.  He recognises that he doesn’t have it as bad as other members of the team, because he is new and he traverses the halls with two Slytherins everyone is too intimidated by to risk openly provoking, but the Slytherin quidditch team has taken to attempting to hex the Gryffindor players whenever they think they can get away with it.  Jason can’t quite imagine caring that intensely about a school sport.

The unravelling feeling in his stomach has stopped for now, or maybe just slowed so much he can’t notice it, but a rogue hex--one of the few that has dared to fly in his direction--has reignited this sort of twisting pain in his gut and he had let his guard down, hadn’t noticed in time to dodge.  It’s a simple hex, a basic one he thinks probably isn’t worth it for the idiots casting them because it’s hardly noticeable to anyone but him, can’t be all that funny, but then again it’s covertness amounts to deniability, especially with a head of house as prone to negligence and favouritism as theirs.  They will get away with all of this, Jason knows that much without doubt.  He grits his teeth and balls his fists by his sides, trying his best not to let on that he feels anything at all.

He has seen the badges too--Weasley is our King.  It’s cruel and Ron is clearly already terrified about that fast-approaching and all-important match, but Jason knows as well as everyone else that Ron has been through things much worse than a few taunts from smarmy, snot-nosed students who, Jason can’t help but think, are going to watch their world crumble around them before too long, will have to wither scramble with it or fight the rubble to stay standing.  Ron may be shaking, stumbling over words if he can so much as find the courage to try to speak them, but Jason thinks he might be able to talk to him, if not help him to completely overcome his anxiety then at least to help him work through it.

He spells away the hex, his stomach tightening on itself a final and especially excruciating time before going back to normal.  Jason knows war, knows pain and loss and struggle, even if his memory has never quite managed to straighten itself all the way out, and, hard as it may be, he can push through it all, live in spite of it.  A low-level hex is nothing, at least not to him.  He sits with Harry, Ron and Hermione in the great hall, the breakfast spread in front of him steaming aromatically despite the fact that it must have all been laid out at least an hour prior, and watches Percy and Nico walk over to the Slytherin table, the dark crows of their heads watched forensically by Umbridge from the front of the hall, seated high rough above them to imbue her with a sense of security strong enough to allow her to quietly gloat.  It’s naive of her, really, and it is clear, when Nico and Percy sit, isolated from the rest of their house and woefully out of place, that they notice the look on her face.  The grins they shoot her are subtle but sufficiently menacing and her own self-satisfied smile melts quickly off of her face.

“I hope you know you shouldn’t listen to them,” Jason says calmly as he reaches over the pitcher of pumpkin juice for the butter.  The juice is one of many wizarding foods he had at first been apprehensive of but has since grown to appreciate, its taste sweet and spiced, its texture thick and cool.  Their governance may be a self-destructive clusterfuck but they seem to have their shit together culinarily.  It’s probably not much of a comfort to anyone but him, but he has been in a bit of a slump recently, glad for the chance to fill his stomach after having failed to eat properly in recent days.  

“Huh?” Ron says intelligently after a stretched-out period of silence during which he seemingly fails to realise he is being talked to at all. 

“The Slytherins,” Jason nods in the direction of the green table and Ron’s gaze follows.  He smiles weakly at Percy and Nico who return it, Percy’s shark-toothed grin accompanied eagerly with two thumbs up.  Ron sighs and turns back, looking at a stain, pumpkin-coloured, on the tablecloth instead of at Jason.  “They’re only trying to get you you,”

“Well,” Ron says slowly, the start of his first full sentence of the day.  “It’s working,”

Jason takes a bite out of his buttered toast and chews slowly, swallowing before he speaks.  “They wouldn’t be trying to get to our team if they were confident they could win without underhanded tactics,” he explains.  “They’re trying to convince you that you’re terrible because they don’t want you to play at full capacity,”

“Huh,” Ron says again, though pensively this time around.

Clearly Harry and Hermione have picked up on Jason’s efforts because they look quickly between each other, then Jason, then finally Ron, before they start to nod erratically and enthusiastically.

“Show them that you’re better than they are,” Harry tells him, “They won’t keep messing with you if they know it doesn’t work,”

Hermione agrees.  “You can win by paying fair even when they aren’t,”

Ron sighs, elbows propped on the table and his face cupped in his hands.  “Thanks, but they are getting to me,”

They haven’t exactly gotten him all the way through his slump but Jason still feels accomplished; he is already seeing a marked difference.

The time for the match comes around, perhaps a bit too quickly.  He is still playing on a school broom, the best that Angelina, broom expert she is, could find in the broom store after hours on end of searching, and the wood is somewhat splintery beneath his fingers.  He has tough leather gloves over his palms but the exposed skin of his fingers and forearms is sore and sensitive with the nip of the cold and the roughness of the broom handle stings.  He is standing on the pitch, the sky above them a blue so bright it feels almost foreboding, the Slytherin team across from them all wearing Weasley is our king badges and self-assured, condescending smiles.  As subtly as he can, he spares Ron a glance: he’s clearly uncomfortable but his hands aren’t shaking and, even as he chews apprehensively on his lower lip, his eyes shine bright with defiance that reassures Jason about how this will go.

The match begins with a whistle and they are all up in the chilled air battling the wind and each other for the quaffle, dodging past bludgers.  He spots Harry and Draco up above, looking down in a constant search for the snitch, but has to look away quickly, diving down to grab the quaffle as it begins to fall from a bludger-struck Slytherin Chaser who is spinning as he is forced backwards.  There is a chant from the Slytherin crowd starting, the taunting words from the badges repeated loudly into the air.  He can tell, even as he focuses his attention with near exclusivity to the game, that there is at least one teacher--most likely McGonagall--attempting to break through the noise, force it to stop.  She seems to be having only minimal amounts of success and the taunting continues.  It isn’t enough to affect Jason.

He ducks underneath a bludger, perhaps subconsciously pulling the wind with him to allow him to fall with a bit more elegance and stability than the warped wood of his cheap, well-loved broom would typically allow.  Were he a less talented flyer he would then be at near immediate risk of flying into Slytherin Chasers whether he had flown over or under the bludger--an admittedly well-coordinated move on the part of his opposition--but the sky is Jason’s territory; if he really wanted to he could have the entirety of the Slytherin team falling out of it in a moment.  He leans left and the other chasers follow suit but, as they move rapidly in that direction, his broom moves against the movement, takes him to the right and lets him pass them.  He is too far ahead by the time they have turned around for them to really have much of a chance of catching up, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.  He’d never expect them to.  They stay in pursuit as he zips to the hoops, left hand dedicated to holding the quaffle against his body, right gripping the broom handle.  He is almost there when, unexpectedly, Draco Malfoy drops from his seekers’ vantage point to take a precise swipe at the ball.  It’s a good move and he has the element of surprise, but Jason has battle practice: if this were a normal quest he’d be risking a sword or an arrow to the side and he is much too attached to his life to let that happen.  Draco swipes and Jason transfers the ball to the other side of his body, clasping the broom between his knees and swinging himself so he is flying upside down, quaffle held tightly with both hands.  He is slower like this so he doesn’t keep it up for long, just long enough to get away, but unlike just about everyone else he has next to no fear of falling.  Getting the quaffle past the keeper is just about the easiest thing he has done all game.

He gets a couple of goals in before the Slytherin team manage to hold onto the quaffle for any amount of time.  It had calmed for a while but the chanting from the spectators started up with a reinvigorated venom and Jason watched Ron flinch in the Gryffindor goal with a wince.  The raucous didn’t last long, cut off quickly by a familiar voice shouting “SHUT UP!” as loudly as it could.

“Thank you, Mr. Jackson,” McGonagall responded, just loud enough for Jason to hear it if he strained his ears and really focused.  He could imagine Percy nodding, suddenly his normal, troublemaking self and not the authority figure who had just silenced a large group of ill-wishers with two simple but decisive words.  Jason had vague memories of himself like that, the leader of a camp who would all listen to him without pause, but he didn’t know how well that old skill would hold up with how rusty it had become.  He hasn’t commanded an army in a while and would give absolutely anything to never have to do it again.

Ron’s face, flushed red by the cold whipping of the wind and, no doubt, some amount of apprehension and embarrassment, becomes no less crimson but does settle into an expression that is at least somewhat more reassured.  He is focused again, watching the movement of the ball across the sky and leaning slightly in the direction in which it moves whenever it is passed between players.  Jason is chasing and Angelina is trying her best to get in their way, but he is too far behind to catch up without a significant amount of demigodliness and her broom is simply not as good as the ones the Slytherins are flying on.  They are pushing their Nimbuses to their absolute limits and, for as uncatchably fast as that makes them, it means sacrificing some of their control.  One of them makes a throw at the goal and continues flying forwards, the momentum built up from their hurried flight having to go somewhere.  The ball doesn’t fly nicely through the air, nor does it fly particularly quickly, and Ron catches it, a dull thud as it hits his leather-clad palms.  The Gryffindor stand begins to chant, repeating “Weasley is our king,” with a genuine excitement that makes it celebratory rather than mocking.  Ron looks around, smiles up at Harry then across at Jason, then down at Hermione once he is eventually able to find her.  He is still looking down, looking for someone else on the other side of the stands.  He mouths what Jason supposes must be a “thank you” and Jason follows his line of sight to Percy and Nico grinning up at them.

They’ve built up a good momentum.  They hang onto it.  It’s hardly the most difficult game ever and they win without too much difficulty.  Jason had been aiming to secure their victory regardless of who the snitch went to but Harry dived just a little bit too early for him to complete his goal.  At the end of the game they ended up 290 points ahead of the other team and Jason was kind of giddy.  As surreal as much of this quest was for him, the quidditch and the schooling and the new friendships made him feel like he was a bit more human than he ever had been, served to remind him that there was much more to life than the fate and the doom and the conflict that had always chased him, even if only for a little while.

Chapter Text

When they were in their first year the invisibility cloak was much easier for them all to fit over, but now Harry finds himself with Ron stooped awkwardly over his back, Hermione behind him, all of their knees bent and steps faltering slightly in an effort not to trip on the cloak or conspicuously flash their ankles.  They would have offered Jason the chance to come with them, determined to check in on him even if they aren’t sure quite what it is they need to ask him, but they all know attempting to cluster an additional person under the cloak would really never work.  Hagrid is finally back and the smoke-choked air streaming up from his hut’s chimney makes something that might be optimism flutter in Harry’s stomach, like a sign that there is at least one thing that has fixed itself, gone back to normal, that the wizarding world isn’t completely falling apart.  He knows it’s naive and myopic but he doesn’t really want to stamp it out just yet.

Hagrid’s face does that for him when he pulls open the weathered wooden door and he stand there in its frame, taking up all of the space wrapped in rags and furs, his beard more unruly than ever and his ruddy face beaten to black and blue, a cut across his cheek clearly just beginning to scab.  It looks weepy, like it would be soft to the touch.  He welcomes them warmly none the less but it’s undeniably evident that not even Hagrid’s return is truly good news.  All is not well.

He sighs and falls back into one of the overstuffed chairs by his fireplace.  The comfortable-looking pile of blankets across the upholstery releases a puff of dust into the air like an exhale when he sits, a reminder that it has been a while since anyone was in here just in case they needed one.  He wipes his hand across his forehead, their backs as blue as his face and the palms an awful red-raw.  “I was in the mountains,” he explains, “Tryin’ to recruit the giants.” He holds up his hands, examining their state, and shakes his head softly.  “It didn’t go all that well.  I ain’t used to feelin’ small like that,”  His speech is stilted, choppy.  Harry’s home has fallen out of his stomach as though there is a hole in it and now he just feels kind of sick.  He wants to press more but Hagrid doesn’t seem like he wants to tell them more so he asks them how things have been at Hogwarts since he left.

“It’s been a weird year,” Ron says, scratching the side of his nose.  He talks about the Americans and quidditch, giving Hagrid the highlights before Harry brings down the mood by talking about Umbridge and the ministry and Hermione levels them out a little with talk of the D.A.  She doesn’t get the chance to say much before she is interrupted by the strike of knuckles against the door.  Harry really resents that he knows from the knock alone who is there.

He grabs the cloak from where he dropped it over the back of his chair and flings it hurriedly over himself, Hermione and Ron.  They rush to the corner, pushing themselves as flush as they can against the wall like they are trying to disappear entirely.  Hermione looks down then sinks herself to the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees to hold them close to her chest.  Harry doesn't need to ask her why before he decides to follow suit, Ron doing the same barely a blink after him.

Umbridge pushes her way in and, though Harry can’t see her very well from his angle or past Hagrid’s much larger body, he can practically sense the grimace on her face as she glances around the room, taking in the dust and the cobwebs and the patchwork and the torn upholstery.  Harry can see her feet as she steps wearily over Fang and knows without a doubt that he’s right that she hates this place and wants to be out of it.  She talks in the same way as she always does: an excess of words and a dearth of meaning.  It’s clear she wants Hagrid out of Hogwarts but it is even clearer that Hagrid wants her out of his house and he is making no half-assed attempts at subtlety.  She leaves without learning anything but Harry knows with almost no doubt at all that, should Umbridge hold onto her power over Hogwarts for too much longer, she’s only going to continue to destroy it, to make a generation of wizards powerless.

Hagrid teaches their next Care of Magical Creatures lesson and Harry is still happy to see him resuming his rightful place in the faculty, facing his class with a genuine smile and even more honest interest in his subject.  He’s clearly excited to tell them all about whatever it is that he is leading them to, just within the border of the forest, where the trees start and the dewy grass gives way to something much more sparse and muddy, less nourished by the sun.  Harry sees most of their class looking around, confused as Hagrid stops in a clearing.  He only pays them the barest bit of attention, though, more distracted by the macabre forms of horse-like creatures that have a distinct look of emaciation and decay, something about them suspended uncomfortably between life and death in a way that stops them from belonging properly to either.  Harry’s eyes wander against his will to a certain someone standing small and frail at the corner of the crowd, the shadows from the crevices and bends of the trees looking as though they are reaching out to embrace him.

Hagrid takes in all of their reactions, observing how they look around the space, expressions spanning from intrigue to complete and utter bewilderment.  “Who sees ‘em?” he asks and, gradually, all the heads turn to face him.  The strange Americans raise their hands with a shrug of their shoulders, all three of them looking around as though surprised that nobody else is answering quite so quickly.  Harry’s hand creeps up next, then a boy in Slytherin the, finally after a pensive pause, Neville Longbottom’s.  His eyes move around the raised hands alongside Hagrid's, taking in how few of them are seeing the creatures before them with surprise and smiling somewhat tensely at the transfers as he scans over them.  They all return it.

“These are thestrals,” Hagrid explains.  Harry looks between him and the creatures and Nico Di Angelo.  His skin is crawling and his fingertips are buzzing with what may be an urge to reach out and touch them or an instinctual sort of repulsion.  He hears Hagrid’s words but does not process them and, next time his vision darts in Nico’s direction, it is clear he hasn’t even managed that much.  He has walked towards the thestrals, one hand outstretched, and the smallest and scrawniest of the beats who look to be made of bat-like skin suctioned to their sharp rib cages has pressed its muzzle into his palm.  Nico smiles at it and, though Hagrid had told them to be careful, he shares in that expression, clearly content with how Nico has chosen to approach.  Harry watches uncomfortably as Percy, too, takes unflinching steps towards the creature, not slowing as Hagrid explains that they are only visible to those who have seen death first hand.  He presses a hand gently to the creature’s bony flank, stroking it softly.  To Harry’s shock, the creature not only relaxes against him but whinnies.  Percy mutters something to it conversationally that Harry doesn’t hear and he entertains, just for a vanishing moment, that there might be something like Parseltongue for other creatures as it neighs softly back.

Harry’s attention is now fully on the Americans, Hagrid’s words very much audible but equally nonsensical, nothing but background noise as he tries to decipher what it is that Percy is saying even though he is talking quietly.  He watches the thestrals divide themselves almost perfectly evenly between Nico and Percy.  There’s something about Nico that seems almost excited, like he has found something meaningful, something perspective-altering.  Percy just seems to be at peace with the death that emanates from the creatures like radio waves, muttering to them and petting them and riling them up even though Hagrid warned them to be careful.  And still there is nothing aggressive about their behaviour, no violence intended in the snapping of their beaked jaws or the stamping of their feet; they play around Percy and he encourages them, laughs and chatters like he is having a conversation with playful children.  Jason is different though.  He doesn’t seem so perturbed by the death of it all as Harry but he is making no effort to step closer, seems to feel no need to embrace death as it frolics in front of him.  This death is a lot friendlier-seeming than Harry had thought that it could ever be, and still he is not comfortable with it and still Jason, though he doesn’t seem uncomfortable, is hanging back, staying away and out of reach.

Harry tears his eyes away and looks back at Hagrid, tries to focus on his words and ignore the hum in his fingertips.  One of the thestrals breaks away from Nico and saunters its way over to Jason who tentatively touches his fingers to where its velvety skin gives way to the hardness of its beak.

Neville has grown to enjoy DA sessions.  He really hadn’t been expecting to when he joined them, had known that they were a necessity when the wizarding world was in perpetual and close-pressing turmoil and had signed up out of both a sense of obligation and a somewhat frustratingly persistent attachment to his life.

He’s no quite sure when they changed from just a thing that he did to a thing that he looks forward to doing but he’s glad for it, glad that, for once in his wizarding life, his wand doesn’t feel like it’s trying to jump from his hand to find a more competent owner, feels like it’s working with him.  It’s not strictly his wand, but it had belonged to his father back when he had the presence and capacity to wield his power with a mastery Neville has never even approached having, and before then had been Neville’s grandfather’s.  He isn’t sure how long it has been in his family but it’s made of this unruly flexible wood that feels like it is throwing him off balance, and it contains the heartstring of a dragon that must have been as crotchety and stubborn in its lifetime as it is after death.

He still isn’t a good wizard, still feels like he is watching his class progress in front of him in every lesson aside from herbology, but he feels a bit more self-assured, like he has finally realised his body can hold up to climbing towards power he knows he has somewhere inside of him.  He still needs to do better, wants some extra time and an extra trick or two in his admittedly limited arsenal, but he is making progress that isn’t achingly slow.  Despite how clandestine the whole operation is and his persistent fear of being caught out and ruining his life, the one thing Neville regrets about Dumbledore’s Army is that he had decided to hide his sword in the form of a remembrall: he always has to carry both the real one and the disguise because he can never remember which is which.

He practises spells with Hermione that day, and, at long last, gets the sense that she is putting even a little bit of effort into fighting back when he tries to duel her.  He doesn’t need to be the best wizard, but he would like to be both alive and useful if he can manage that, and here Hermione is, quietly proving to him that he is worth fighting back against, that he isn’t about to destroy himself with incompetence anymore.  But his remembralls still sit heavy in his trouser pocket, his robe thrown with little care into a corner of the room that had been quietly designated for whatever it was their members felt the need to discard.

“I’m going to ask Nico,” he decides between deep sips of water.  He has learned to bring it with him wherever he goes after a couple of times of feeling as though he was on death’s doorstep after a sword fighting session left him gasping like a fish out of water.  Hermione looks over at him, using a brief five minute break they have been granted whilst the Americans set up to sit and breathe.

“About sword fighting, I mean,” he clarifies.  She nods.

“You should,” she encourages, “I know Ron likes staying back and it’s been paying off for him,”  She pulls her brooch out of her pocket just to stare at it for a moment, not releasing at the blade just simply observing the absence where it could appear at any moment were she to activate it.  Neville follows suit, holding both marble-sized remembralls in his palm and regretting his past decisions for what is absolutely not the first time.  One’s interior becomes filled with delicate wisps of what appears to be coloured smoke.  What he has forgotten, of course, is which remembrall is which.  He shoves the real one back into his pocket and holds the charmed one tight in his fist.  Ron’s rodent carving has changed into his blade already and, despite how much extra time he spends practising with it, he holds it with a sense of excitement, quietly practising a defensive move with Jason in a corner in lieu of taking the quick break the rest of them have opted for.  He’s moved on past the curriculum the rest of them are crawling clumsily through, his swings nowhere near as precise as his teachers but his movements determined and controlled and practised.  Neville will never be a fantastic wizard, he has accepted that, and he needs what Ron has right now.

He stays with Hermione for the rest of the session, trying not to let his attention wander to watching Ron and Jason quietly laughing when Ron makes an especially egregious mistake in their corner should his moment of distraction result in his decapitation.  He and Hermione have similarly shaped swords but his has a more ornate hilt, adorned with floral motifs and embossing that are exactly what drew him to it in the first place.  It has started to feel somewhat comfortable in his hand but it still doesn’t really feel like his and he needs to change that.

Jason calls the end of the lesson and drops his sword, shaking Ron’s hand.  Neville moves closer to the middle as everybody else starts to move away, weapons receding back into their trinkets.  “I can’t stay today,” Jason says to Ron, “Angelina wants me to help her teach some of the first years who are struggling how to fly a bit better,”  Not for the first time, Neville wishes he was a little more like Jason Grace who has this almost frustrating capacity to be good at just about anything he sets his mind to.  Neville’s hands shake ever so slightly with an env he almost wouldn’t have noticed were it not for the slight jumping of the blade he hasn’t yet retracted.

He gulps, turns away from Jason and finds himself facing Nico.  he has to remind himself that this is exactly where he wanted to be before he can convince himself to approach.  “Hi,” he says.  He had wanted to say more but tripped over forming the sentence and hadn’t had enough time to fix it.

Nico at least looks vaguely bemused.  “Hi?” he parrots back.

“This might be a stupid question,” Neville disclaims, “But do you think it’s be okay if I were to stay back like Ron does?”  There’s this nerve-wracking moment where Nico appears to be silently processing what Neville has said and he gets this urge to try to retract it before Nico can spit any sort of rejection at him.

“Sure,” Nico shrugs, “But don’t think we’ll go easy on you.  You’re with me,”

Neville nods along as Nico tells him what they’re going to do and Ron turns to look at him with betrayal as he gets designated Percy as a partner for his own exercises.

“I’ll never forgive you for this,” Ron tells him sincerely as he looks at Percy’s leaf-shaped blade with apprehension.  Percy just looks kind of confused.

“What did I do?”

“Really?” Nico raises an eyebrow and wings his sword in a casual gesture that makes Neville’s heart feel like it’s about to stope.  Maybe the fact that he’s still pretty terrified of his weapon is a serious part of his problem.  “Do you not remember all the kids back home being terrified of you with a sword too?” 

Percy scrunches his face.  “No?” he says.  Nico sighs and turns his back on his cousin like he has given up, facing Neville with a soft smile that is weak and unsupported at the corners but no less genuine for it and Neville’s first extra lesson begins even though his arms already hurt and his palms sting with the promise of blisters.

He is beyond exhausted when he and Ron return to their dorm, speaking to each other with a quiet sort of excitement and shared complaints about how Percy and Nico are a little bit evil as teachers in spite of how good they are in the role.  They can’t express anything too directly in the halls, of course, and Neville doesn’t really need the extra stress of trying to figure out how to both discuss the secret and keep it, but it is the position he finds himself in regardless of how he feels about it.

He stumbles into his pyjamas, all of his meagre coordination for the day spent swinging a sword and hoping not to sever an artery, and practically falls into bed.  His head hits the pillow and his vision swims for a moment before it vanishes entirely and he sleeps so deeply it feels like a free trial of death.

He feels a bit guilty because when he is woken up by a strange, hissing scream he feels annoyance for maybe half a second before the concern can settle into place.

Chapter Text

Harry can barely think.  He must still be screaming but he can’t register the sound or the feeling over the searing burn of his forehead and the crawling of his skin.  He feels sick, terrified and dirty.  The pain doesn’t subside but he wakes up properly, registers that he is screaming, that his voice has become hoarse with the exertion and is crackling around his attempts to make a sound.  He closes his mouth then opens it again in a gasp for breath.  He has balled his sheets in his shaking hands and his knuckles ache because of their tightness in a way that makes relaxing them feel impossible.  He’s peripherally aware of all the eyes in the room focused on him but he is more focused on the twisting feeling in his gut and the mind-numbing pain from his scar.

He is Harry Potter.  It feels as though he has done nothing for as long as he has been able besides fighting Voldemort and his death eaters, trying to protect the people and things he loves, trying to do good with all that he has.  And now he is sitting, sweating, in his bed, not convinced he hasn’t just killed his best friend’s father.

The pain starts to fade, mellowing out gradually but by no means disappearing, and he almost wishes it would come back in full force because he has this horrible metallic twinge in his mouth.  His mind’s eye is a traitorous thing because it supplies him once again with the feelings and sights of moving across the floor, too close to it for the body to be his, then striking.  His teeth feel like fangs, sharp and wicked and bloodied, and his body feels horribly like it could never belong to anyone else.

Neville returns to the dorm.  At no point has Harry had the presence of mind to notice that he had left.  He has McGonagall by his side, looking aptly concerned.  She tries to speak to Harry but he isn’t sure that she’s actually saying words because the sounds are slow and thickened and garbled.  There is a feeling of movement by his hand, like the sheets are moving slightly.  He looks at the disturbance, follows the pale hand that is so scarred he might even call it mangled up to Jason Grace’s face.  He is speaking too but Harry still can’t understand him.  He seems to understand that because he starts counting on his fingers, breathing exaggeratedly so Harry can know to copy him.  He does.  He isn’t sure how long it takes but the words around him start to sound like words again and the shaking of his hands calms somewhat.  He is able to unclasp his sheets and McGonagall leads him from their dorm to Dumbledore’s office, still in his pyjamas, back drenched in sweat.

He tells Dumbledore everything except for the feeling of responsibility that claws at his throat as if desperate to make its way out.  Maybe if he swallows it down enough times it will join the awful curling feeling in his stomach.  McGonagall leaves the office.  Harry knows she is running to contact the ministry and gather the Weasley children who still go to Hogwarts.  He sighs and slumps onto Dumbledore’s desk as soon as she is gone, his arms crossed on the table and his head placed in the crook of his elbow.

It’s the end of the term, mere weeks before Christmas.  Dumbledore sits and waits for news about Arthur Weasley which is eventually delivered by the old portraits of the headmasters and mistresses who left before McGonagall.  They return with what is ultimately good news: Mr. Weasley is alive and at St. Mungos, Harry’s vision has saved his life.  It doesn’t really help because he still feels guilty.  He still doesn’t tell Dumbledore that.

“Ron and his siblings will return to Grimmauld place by Portkey.  You will return with them,”

The rage that fills Harry is exhilaratingly and wholly his own.  He wants to yell, to scream, to storm around the office pulling ancient tomes from shelves and tearing out their dusty pages.  He wants to smash all those precious, fragile artefacts and trinkets, slash the copious old photo frames and leave the old headmasters with no semblance of a home to return to, show them how blindingly angry and out of place he feels.  He stays almost perfectly still, stamping crescent moons into his palms with his nails, trying to ground himself with the way it stings.  It doesn’t really work but he keeps trying.

He tries to breathe as Jason guided him earlier.  “That’s it?” He needs something, advice or help, anything other than being sent away, back to a dusty old house with flickering bulbs and suspicious stains and a history that belongs to him and the rest of the wizarding world but really shouldn’t belong to anyone at all.  Dumbledore nods slowly and solemnly and it doesn’t change a single thing.

This time the wave of anger that grips him couldn’t be less his own.  Forget tearing the room to pieces, forget making a scene and shouting himself too hoarse to make a single sound come out.  This anger is violent and insistent.  His hands twitch.  He wants to hurt Dumbledore.  He wants to do worse.  He’d be better off without the useless old bastard, someone more affectual could take his place and Harry wouldn’t miss his riddles or his inaction or how he leaves everything to students who were never properly equipped for the task.

McGonagall knocks to announce her presence then lets herself in to take Harry to the portkey.  He follows her but ire still churns in his gut and now there is nowhere for it to go.  He still doesn’t know whose it is.

He doesn’t talk to anyone.  They get to Grimmauld place and put their things away and the Weasleys go straight to St. Mungos.  They ask if he wants to come and a large part of him does but the guilt holds him tight by the wrist like a petulant child, makes him say no.

The house isn’t empty, it never is, but it feels like it must be.  Kreacher is moving about somewhere and Sirius is downstairs but Harry has promised to talk to him later, asking to be alone for now.  He sits on the bed that has been assigned to him.  He knows it isn’t actually his.  He’s profoundly tired but he can’t sleep, scared of what he might see if he does, scared of what he might do, scared of himself and the rage that both is his and is not.  He looks at his hands as though the lines across his palms hold answers he might be able to divine but sees nothing more than darkened crescents, one bisecting what he is pretty sure must be his lifeline, cutting it almost perfectly in half.  They are his hands and this is his body and this is his damaged skin and his unbroken guilt.  He is Harry Potter and this is how that fact feels.

It didn’t used to.  Back when he was eleven and the wizarding world was new and fresh and exciting, a promised escape, his name and notoriety had felt unreal, terrifying in a special, amazing way.  He misses that, isn’t sure when he lost it.  People don’t look at him the same now.  He gets it.  He is Harry Potter and he isn’t sure if that’s his fault.

He must fall asleep at some point because he wakes up.  The curtains are drawn and Ron is sleeping fitfully on the other side of the room.  His snoring is quieter than usual but still present and a few pale shapes of light manage to fight through the moth-eaten curtains to make dusty, kaleidoscopic patterns on the water-damaged floor.  He doesn’t know what time it is exactly but would guess it is early morning and he doesn’t want to go to sleep again, just in case.  He gets up.  His body is heavy and sluggish and his hands and head hurt with a slow sort of ferocity that catches up on him after about five minutes.  He sighs and stands under the shower head.  This is an old building with bad plumbing.  The pipes creak and cry a melancholy chorus and the water that rains over him is lukewarm at best aside from an occasional burst that is so hot it hurts.

He stands at the top of the stairs with wet hair trying to decide whether or not to go down.  It seems like the decision has been made for him when there is a knock at the door and, on impulse, he ducks behind the banister so he can’t be seen from downstairs unless someone is seriously trying to spot him.

Molly Weasley walks to the door and Harry can only imagine what she is feeling, left to keep looking after the house and her family even though she must feel as though it is all being town apart.  She opens it tentatively, cautious of company she isn’t expecting, especially after what has happened to her husband, but simultaneously aware that the house is difficult to access without invitation and somebody who wants to hurt them is unlikely to knock.  Harry can’t see who is on the other side of it but he gets the sense that, whoever it is, Molly doesn’t know them.

“Hello?” she says.  Her voice is uncharacteristically nasal, like she is holding back tears.  Harry is honestly impressed that she is able to keep them in.

“Hi,” A voice says.  It is familiar, a neutral American accent tells Harry exactly who it is even though he can’t actually hear it very well and the strangeness of the building seems to warp it and make it echo until it doesn’t sound like anyone in particular.

“We don’t mean to intrude but Dumbledore told us we should come here for Christmas,” New York accent.  There is a pause after it speaks.  Harry watches Mrs. Weasley take a note from one of the visitors and assumes it must be a signed note from the man proving this statement to be true.  At the sound of that name anger curls in his gut like a clenched fist and he feels a counterintuitive whisper of relief because it is his.

He figures he may as well stand up and walk downstairs, reassured that he is allowed to be here, that these guests are just fine for him to see.  Sure enough, when he reaches the bottom of the stairs Molly turns to face him.  “Harry,” she says, pleasantly surprised in a way he wishes she wouldn’t be.  “Do you know our guests?” so she has a guard up.  He understands why.

“Sure,” he says.  “They go to Hogwarts.  They’re alright,”  It’s short and clipped but he isn't in the mood for small talk and just keeps walking.  He can hear Sirius bustling about the kitchen and is eager to talk to just about the only person he really considers family even if he doesn’t have anything positive to share.

With Harry’s reassurance Molly looks back at their guests, taking in their appearances like a mother rather than a guard dog.  She doesn’t like what she sees.  Scars and hunger pangs, sallow cheeks and bony wrists are not what she likes to see in kids.  There are three of them, hunched together familiarly as though for warmth, dressed more for autumn than the depths of winter.  She is getting cold standing in warm pyjamas and wrapped in her dressing gown by the open door and she can only imagine how badly they are freezing standing outside in the direct, bitter cold.  She wastes no more time in ushering them inside.  It isn’t a warm building, the heating turned on but doing its job very poorly, but it is still out of the wind and the moisture of the air.  They thank her and she nods, for some reason finding herself, for the first time in her life, completely unable to look a single one of them in the eye.

They introduce themselves and she insists she makes them breakfast, fattens them up until she is convinced the two with dark hair will not waste away.  She feels somewhat empty, she knows she is just searching for a way to feel useful, to have some kind of purpose even if only for a moment, to feel like she is doing somebody some good.  She fries eggs, bacon, sausages and black pudding and cooks beans and makes toast.  Magic helps her do it all quickly, all at once.  The guests look at her and the tall one with the dark hair, Percy, smiles at her with an edge of familiarity.

It’s what makes her ask “So, why aren’t you spending Christmas with your families?”

“They’re in the states,” Jason tells her, “It’s a while away and Dumbledore thinks we’ll be safer here,”  She nods but she can’t believe Dumbledore would really believe that.  Nothing is safe here, nobody.  They are a sort of vigilante group gearing up for war and there is no safety in that.  She nods along anyway, sure that Dumbelore knows what he is doing even if nobody else does.

“That’s a shame.  You must miss them,”  They all nod.

“Yeah,” Nico says.

“We’ve got each other, at least,” Jason adds.  It strikes Molly in the chest and she almost burns the black pudding.  They have each other as Molly has the Order but doesn’t have the ministry and is currently lacking her husband.  They have each other and it will suffice whilst necessary but not a moment longer.  They have each other and it isn’t really enough but they have to pretend it is or the longing for something more will consume them.

She serves the breakfast she has cooked alongside cold glasses of pumpkin juice but does not eat any herself.  Her stomach feels like it is already full of grief she feels she shouldn’t be allowed to have.  She makes idle conversation.  She isn’t sure how to be Molly Weasley right now but she can act in the role of mother without dedicating much thought.

Percy hates this place.  As soon as he walks in he is sure of it.  It’s nothing against the pleasant red-headed woman who greets them and cooks for them and talks like she is trying to fill a hole.  It’s the atmosphere more than it is the dampness in the air or the drabness of the decorations or even the creepy house elf that hisses at them like a caged animal.  He wonders if it is because he doesn’t think any of them should be there, or if he has something specific against the demigods but, ultimately, doesn’t want to ask.

This building has the air of a monster’s den, feels like a lair or a trap.  It is wrapped in mist and Percy feels like he is choking on it.  This should be a human dwelling but he can’t quite believe it, regardless of the fact that life, no matter how subdued at the moment, is filling it.

The Weasleys and Harry and a man Jason tells him is called Mad Eye all leave and they are alone with the house elf and Sirius Black.  It isn’t his preferred company but he also isn’t a stranger to being blamed for horrible things he hasn’t done.  Nico and Jason are unpacking but he is intrigued by Sirius Black and, uninvited, decides to join him on the ratty sofa he is sitting on, cradling a cup of coffee in his hands.  They are bony, almost skeletal, and it is clear from the pallor of his skin he does not see enough sun.  His facial hair is overgrown and under groomed and the same can be said of his hair which is dishevelled, messy in a way which Percy is more than familiar with.  He gets a feeling that he is glimpsing into Nico’s future if he does not get any better.  He doubts it will be the case but still the thought disquiets him.  His clothes are ratty and he smells like cigarette smoke.  It could just be the house but his fingertips are tinged yellow.

“You smell like Marlboros,” Percy tells him.  It was Gabe’s brand, the sort of odour he will never forget.

Sirius sighs.  “Not my favourite,” he admits, “But that’s what you get when you ask a non-smoker to buy them for you.  You smoke?”  Percy entertains the thought that he’s testing him but the look on his face doesn’t quite communicate that.

He shakes his head.  “No,” he says decisively.  Sirius turns to look at him properly, to study him.  Percy wonders when the last time he met somebody new was.

“Huh,” Percy wonders how much he has inferred from that answer.  “Has anyone ever told you that your eyes are kind of creepy?”

Percy laughs.  “Did the time in Azkaban make you forget your manners or is this just how you are?”

“Slightly hypocritical,” Percy decides quickly that he likes Sirius Black.  “What happened there?” He points at his own face where a scar cuts up from Percy’s jaw.  It wasn’t from a particularly bad or memorable fight but it makes his stomach churn because it makes him look a little bit more like Luke Castellan than he would like to.

He shrugs to Sirius regardless.  “You should’ve seen the other guy,” Sirius grins and, true to his name, his canines are strangely pointed, like fangs.  It’s almost on impulse that Percy smiles back, his own teeth even sharper.  “Do you wanna see a cooler scar?” Sirius answers quickly so Percy shrugs off his hoodie and pulls up his t-shirt sleeve so Sirius can see the Lichtenberg figure crawling over his shoulder and down to his elbow.  It travels down his side too, a remnant of Thalia’s lightning.  Sirius raises his eyebrows.

“I’m sure you’ve got a lot of stories,”  He isn’t wrong; Percy has more than he needs, and would like to stop creating new ones.  And yet here he is.  “So, what exactly are you yanks doing here?”

“We go to school here,”

“I mean Grimmauld Place,”

“Dumbledore told us to come.  Home is too far to travel when everything is so unstable,”

Sirius snorts.  “Bollocks.  You and I both know that’s not how the old man works.  I’ll bet he told you to tell me that knowing I wouldn’t believe it,”

“So, what?  You think he wanted to test my ability to lie on my feet?”

“I think he wanted to see if you’d trust me enough to tell me the truth.  So tell me,”

“You’re gonna get me in trouble with Nico and Jason,”

“Sounds like fun.  Tell me,”

Percy sighs.  “Fine,” maybe he should have tried to hold out longer but he has already decided that he enjoys talking to Sirius and he knows the man will just keep pushing.  Besides, all the lying is getting boring and this quest is taking far too long.  “Call it damage control.”

Chapter Text

Harry burns with guilt as he looks down on Mr. Weasley as he lays in a hospital bed, the room cold and impersonal, his body wrapped tight in bandages.  He seems to be in good spirits in spite of his circumstances but it doesn’t reassure Harry.  His mouth tastes metallic and he feels sick.  Perhaps because of the outside risk that when he opens his mouth all that will come out is a stream of blood that isn’t his or a string of apologies that are so his they would make his guilt undeniable, he doesn’t say anything the whole time they’re there.  Ron talks to his dad like he is trying to pretend that nothing is wrong but his voice shakes and he keeps finding new ways to ask “Does it hurt?”

Harry feels a guilty stab of relief when they are ushered out so Moody and Tonks can go in and talk to him.  Molly excuses herself to the restroom as she sniffles and dabs at her eyes ferociously with a handkerchief.  With her gone for the time being, Fred and George turn to Harry and Ron with sly, plotting grins on their identical faces.  “What?” Ron says and Fred pulls out a pair of extendable ears from his pocket.  As an item, they do look a little bit gruesome, as though they could have been cut straight from the sides of someone’s head.  He passes one side to the door, trying his best to ease it underneath the crack beneath the door, and places the other end on the floor in the centre of their group.

Harry’s heart has been in his stomach since he had that dream.  The moment he hears Moody suggest that he may be possessed by Voldemort it drops all the way to the floor.

Sirius Black likes company and, with his life in the awful state it is through no fault of his own, he will take what he can get.  Percy Jackson is like a gift from the universe, maybe just because he is positively crazy and Sirius Black is chronically bored.  He offers Percy a tour of the house because he isn’t exactly rife with interesting anecdotes or conversations with his recent life experience limited to four walls, his only real, constant company Kreacher the house elf.  He wants to keep talking and Grimmauld place is about all he has to talk about.  He’s sure Percy can pick up the slack based on the ten intensely interesting minutes they have spent talking to each other.

“This place is a real shithole,” Sirius says as they round a corner into yet another dusty room, laden with trinkets and memories and a few more sinister talismans that he knows exist despite being entirely impossible to differentiate from the rest of the décor with sight alone.  The curtains are emerald green and heavy, drawn tightly closed to keep the light out and the house dark, isolated.  It isn’t like anybody would be able to see in but it feels right to separate the world and 12 Grimmauld Place from each other as much as he is able.

“What a family tree,” Percy scoffs.  He walks up to the wall and traces his hands over the lines that connect Sirius’ family with just about every other dark wizard he knows about but never actually touches the wall.  “My name is literally Perseus so I’m not in a position to say this very often, but your names all suck,”

Sirius nods.  “Quite the family, right?”

“I do think I could give you a run for your money,”

“There’s no way you could say that and have it be a good thing,,”

“Yeah.  My mum’s side is basically non-existent but my dad’s is gigantic and basically split between people I love and people who want to kill me,”

“Optimistic to think it’s split down the middle?”

Percy sighs.  “Right on the money,”

“Am I right to think your cousins are on the good side?”

“Yep.  We can go bug them if you want,”

Percy walks into the room they are sharing with a bedraggled looking man trailing behind him, his spine permanently stooped and head bent to face the ground.  Nico looks up at him and understands that this must be the Sirius Black he has heard so much about, the infamous convict who never committed the crime that ruined his life.

“Why do you not use truth potion to make sure you don’t send innocent people to Azkaban forever?” Nico asks instead of saying hello.

“Uhh,” Sirius scratches at the hair on his chin.  “I think they think it’s invasive,”

“But they think it’s completely morally okay to ruin your life over a crime you didn’t commit?” Jason asks.

“Hmmm,” Sirius hums.  “You three don’t seem to have a problem questioning authority.  Good.  Hang onto that.  Reminds me a bit of me before- well, you know.  That’s objectively a very good thing,”

“Oh buddy,” Percy pats him on the back, “You have no idea how much I hate being told what to do,” He, Nico and Jason know that isn’t even half of it but any elaboration would lead to more questions than they’re allowed to answer.

Sirius gets a glint in his eyes and turns silently to look Percy in the eye.  The smile he wears is sly and shaky; it is clear it has been a while since he last used it, at least with any kind of frequency.  Even still, it strikes a familiar key of anxiety in Jason’s stomach that is only multiplied when Percy returns it in kind. There is no world in which this ends well.

“Please don’t burn down the house,”

“We’ll leave at least half of it liveable,” Percy promises.  It doesn’t make Jason feel less anxious, after all Percy Jackson has never been particularly good at holding himself back.

Harry gets back to Grimmauld Place and immediately wants to leave just as much as he doesn’t want to have to move.  He sits on his bed with his head in his hands and doesn’t move.  Molly calls them all to dinner and he doesn’t even move.  He feels empty, like the pit in his stomach is consuming him and no amount of food, no matter how much he loves Molly’s cooking, could ever get even close to satiating it.

He falls asleep where he is eventually, before Ron gets back to the room, then wakes up again a little while later in the middle of the night.  He stares at the ceiling, at the damp and the mould and the warping of the wood overhead.    He doesn’t know who he is anymore, if he is Harry Potter who is always trying to do the right thing even when he isn’t so sure what it is, or if he is a puppet for Voldemort, a conduit who, try as he might, can never do anything but make everything terrible all the time.  He holds his hands up and tries to decide whether or not they’re still his, if they ever have been.  He sighs and lets them fall back down and keeps wallowing.

The sun rises and he falls back asleep only to be woken up rudely by the door slamming shut and a voice saying his name bitterly.

“Harry,” Hermione’s voice says.  Harry doesn’t so much as open his eyes to look at her, just groans a vague acknowledgement that he has heard her.  He turns over to face the wall.  “Oh for God’s sake, get over yourself!” He can’t see her but he can absolutely picture her hands on her hips, elbows out to the sides.  “Sulking gets us nowhere, Harry,”

“Harry,” Ginny’s voice tries much more softly.  “Listen, I know what it’s like,” she gulps and he actually turns his head and looks at her, focusing on her hands as she winds her fingers together and not her face and the amber doe eyes he doesn’t doubt are staring him intently down.  “I’m the only one who was actually possessed,” Harry thinks back to their second year, to Ginny mindlessly doing exactly as instructed, to her standing in the chambers to blood on the walls she put there, to the best terrorising their halls that she had unknowingly let out.  “And I really don’t think that’s what is happening to you,”

Harry manages to drag himself out of bed and to the shower with water that runs mostly lukewarm with spontaneous bursts of water so hot it sears his skin bright red.  At least it wakes him up.  He dries himself off and goes downstairs to help himself to some toast and a cup of tea and is surprised to find the kitchen already full of life.

Sirius Black is sitting talking to the Americans and Harry’s first reaction is a flare of defensiveness.  He knows, of course, that they are aware Sirius was framed, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t worry about Sirius’ reputation preceding him, nor how long it has been since he has had new company.  He can see many ways this ends badly.

It doesn’t seem to be, though.  Percy and Sirius talk like they have known each other forever and Sirius Black, still stuck in Grimmauld Place with no chance of getting out, is laughing.  Sirius is Harry’s family and, against his better judgement, the remainder of his misery begins to dissipate.  There’s a not insignificant part of him that wants to hang onto it but he understands he has a tendency towards self-sacrifice and getting in his own way so he tries to ignore it, tries to let it go.

He sips his tea as soon as he has made it and finds himself scalding his tongue immediately.  He curses quietly and walks over to join SIrius and Percy at the table.

“what‘s happening here?” he asks.

“I’ve made a friend,” Sirius responds simply, inflection like that of a small-child, completely unabashed and perhaps excessively proud.  Only, in his case, Harry supposes there is no excess because Sirius has been deprived of company so intently that a new friend really is big news.

Harry looks between them and, especially with their earnest grins revealing sets of sharp teeth that reflect the light like it is a threat, a shiver races its way up his spine.  “This isn’t going to end well, is it?”

Percy shrugs and it is the diametric opposite of reassuring to Harry.  “It’ll end well for us,”

Christmas comes around quickly and the festivities only build and build as Grimmauld place finds itself full almost to bursting with life and merriment after months of both being almost entirely absent.  Arthur is released from St. Mungo’s and brought home but commanded sternly to rest and avoid stress to the best of his abilities and Molly busies herself cooking feasts that everyone insists she doesn’t need to spend almost all of her free time making them.  Percy refuses to let her make them alone and, though she insists she doesn’t need help, he stays by her side and chops vegetables and cracks jokes until she is laughing because in spite of everything that has happened and where they have found themselves, it is still Christmas and this is still her family though it grows ever weirder and harder to keep reigned in.

She can’t help but love all of the young people running around even though it does mean she feels this urge to take them all under her wing.  She knows Hermione does have her own family but she isn’t with them because the wizarding world is a dangerous place right now and she has to be kept tucked away to be safe.  It’s a thought that makes Molly feel guilty even though she knows none of it is her fault.  Harry doesn’t have a family, though, and she soon finds that neither Nico nor Jason do either.  Like Hermione, Percy misses his own family and Molly wants to do the most she can to help fill that hole at least for the time being.  There is absolutely nothing she can do about the fact that these kids who are under her de facto roof must become her de facto family.  She quietly puts down a double serving of every meal she makes in front of half of the kids because they’re just too skinny and she has an inkling that Nico would never ask for seconds of his own accord.  She sees Jason and Percy urging him to finish his plate a couple of times and, to his credit, he always does.  Within the week he stops needing the extra encouragement.

She decorates as best she can with the drabness that is built into Grimmauld Place and Jason offers to help her.  He says it’s because he is tall and she is struggling to reach the high places in the house but she likes to think that it’s actually just because he wants to.  He smiles as he does and quietly, head bowed so he is looking at the stained carpets instead of her face, admits “I haven’t exactly celebrated Christmas in a while,”  She had committed herself to making Christmas as good as she could in an attempt to compensate for the doom and gloom that is all but impossible to remove from the old building and her husband’s injuries, but it is that moment that cements her determination in her mind.

She thinks it must be working, though it might have a bit more to do with the children than it does her efforts.  Even Sirius is grinning now, smiling and laughing and in much better spirits than he has been since he escaped from Azkaban.  She remembers a different version of him, when she was young and so was she and the world was okay, at least for a while.  What she sees now is closer to that Sirius.

She insists they all spend Christmas Eve together, packed tightly into the living room that they all know isn’t made for half as many people as they have.  “This must be the most time I’ve spent in this room,” Sirius says, the implications clear.  The Black family was never a close one, their lounge more an extended entryway than a communal space to unwind.  His parent slicked to stay tightly wound and he liked to spend as little time as he could around them.  Really, he’d probably be a little less miserable day to day were he in any other house at all.

He and Percy talk circles around even Fred or George, picking topics significant enough to spark discussion and then statements that are both meaningful and meaningless enough to start a conversation which keeps on moving but never actually gets anywhere.  They talk and laugh and shout and curse each other out and if Molly couldn’t see the lines etched into Sirius Black’s face she would be tempted to believe he was still seventeen and happy, not unburdened but also not squashed under the weight of someone else’s crime.  Molly is starting to think that some of the inexplicable leaks and minor explosions she has been blaming on Fred and George recently might not actually be their faults.

Percy, Nico and Jason go back to their room as midnight passes and Christmas begins.  Nico and Jason are content to change into their pyjamas and bury down into their duvets to shield themselves from the piercing cold of the winter and the chilling draughts that pass beneath the doors but Percy sits on his bed looking at his hands.  They can both read him well enough that they know to wait a moment to let him find the words he needs.  There is no way this isn’t of at least mild importance so sleep can wait for a while.

“I might have fucked up,” Percy admits eventually.  With the time he was given he feels he probably should have find a more eloquent way to phrase it, or at least one with some degree of explanation built in.  But, try as he might, those words just aren’t there.

“What do you mean?” Jason asks.  He has tucked his lower body beneath his sheets and folded his glasses on his bedside table, but he is still listening intently.

“Sirius didn’t believe me when I told him why we were here,” Percy bites the bullet.

Nico looks at him, scowling.  “So you told him?”

Percy looks at their door before he answers, stretching his powers in a way he hates doing before he answers just to make sure there is nobody out there, full of flowing blood and eavesdropping.  The coast is clear.  If it wasn’t he would just switch languages.  “I told him we were here for damage control,” he explains.  “I didn’t elaborate at all, he’s none the wiser about almost anything,”

“Except he knows we have a purpose here,” Jason comments.

“Still,” Percy says weakly, not actually offering up a defence.

“That might be worse,” Jason grimaces.  “He knows that there’s something to find out and he might start looking.  He could make right conclusions or wrong ones.  Either way, it screws with us a bit,”

Nico cocks his head.  “I’m sick of this quest,” he admits.  “What does it actually matter if they know why we’re here?”

“If they know what we are and that we’re here for a reason then they know we’ve been deceiving them.  We worked hard to get them to trust us and that would ruin it immediately.  Besides, it was a direct request from Hecate that we intervene whilst avoiding making a scene,”

Percy groans.  “I know that, but it’s not like she knows any better than we do what’s going on right now.  I doubt she’s paying us that much attention anyway,”

Jason makes a face.  “She might be,” he muses, “Afterall, it’s exceedingly strange that we’d be sent on a quest without a prophecy,”

“There is a prophecy,” Nico reminds him.  “We just don’t know what it is,”

“And we’re supposed to make sure it ends up with the right people,” Jason groans.

Percy joins him.  “Do you ever feel like you’ve been set up to fail?” he asks.  They all nod emphatically, like there is no question that they have been knowingly put, time and time again, into situations they probably won’t make it out of.

Chapter Text

Hermione stands outside the heavy door suddenly chilled through, the hair on her arms standing on end as her skin prickles and her ears burn.  She shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t have heard this.  She just wanted to fetch herself a glass of water before she slept and the transfers’ room just so happened to be on her way.  It really was an accident and she really had only caught the end of it--an unknown prophecy, a greater purpose, the right people.  She hopes she is the right people before she begins to wonder about the bigger picture here, about why her friends know about a prophecy.  She realises with a stab that feels like betrayal that, though she does consider them her friends, she really knows nothing about them.  She feels they should have told her that they were at Hogwarts for a reason a long time ago but then again, upon reflection, there is a hell of a lot she should know but doesn't have even the barest inkling of.

She abandons all thoughts of a cold glass of water and turns on her heel and walks straight back to the room she is sharing with Ginny, her slippers soft and silent on the warped hardwood and the rugs worn thin with time and tread.  In this lighting--the corridor devoid of windows and the only light to see by the weak white glow of a whispered lumos-- there is no real way to tell what colour the walls are, only that they are dark and uneven and there is something about the velvet dark of them that feels as though it is closing in on her, attempting to swallow her meagre light and drown her in nothing but impermeable pitch black.

She can’t prevent the noise of her door creaking but only Ginny is there to hear it.  She lifts her head from her stack of two flat pillows and fixes her eyes blearily on Hermione.  “That was quick.  Did you get your water?”

Hermione shakes her head.  “This house in the dark freaks me out,” she says.  It isn’t strictly a lie.

Hermione tries to put the dread of prophecy away in an attempt to not ruin Christmas for everyone but she is a bad actor and her mind is not something easily controlled.  She sits on the sofa, tucked into the corner with her elbows propped on the arms of the chair and her knees folded beneath her body.  She watches the wrapping paper being torn with a certain veracity away from small boxes or folded clothes but doesn’t think to reach for any of the parcels gifted to her.  The Americans sit to the side too, looking as though they feel they are intruding as they watch a family Christmas and assume they have no part in it.

She tries to examine them, to psychically dissect them.  There is a prophecy they know about and a right and wrong people and a reason for their presence they have not told her.  But there is also Jason who sits up in the common room and talks to her and makes her think and high fives Ron so hard it hurts whenever be manages to block a goal when they play quidditch together, and there is Percy who is fiercely protective and wickedly funny, Nico who he works alongside to teach them an advantage nobody would expect them to have, who wants them to be safe and happy.

She lets go of any thoughts she has of taking the issue straight to the chronically suspicious Harry Potter and, instead, resolves to take her questions and concerns straight to the people they concern.  Tomorrow.

Sirius comes over to Percy, his hands behind his back.  “You know we have presents for you too, right?” and presents him with two parcels, one neatly wrapped and the other haphazardly encircled with brown paper and frayed twine.

“Oh,” Percy says simply and, eyes wide and almost in place amongst Molly’s garish attempts to brighten up the dreariness of Grimmauld place with bright white, blue and green baubles and faux icicles that glimmer cool blue even in the hot orange of candlelight.  They do not have a tree but rather a gaudy monument of spiralled tinsel and flashing fairy lights.  It does the job just fine.  Molly scrambles to her feet and finds two more neatly wrapped gifts amongst the scraps of ripped paper and flips the tag to double check the names before pressing them eagerly into Jason and Nico’s hands.

They each stare down at them as though they are foreign objects and Hermione screws up her nose.  She isn’t sure what to think of them but her instinct is a pity she knows they won’t appreciate.  She isn’t sure if it should be.

She watches them tear at the paper, Nico pulling it to either side so it opens like a wound in skin, Jason peeling carefully in neat lines where the paper is adhered to itself.  He looks at Molly and smiles brightly, his eyes by far the most saturated of all the vibrant blues bringing the room to life.  His lip crumples around the scar cutting through it and his cheeks dimple handsomely.  “Thank you Mrs. Weasley!” he says, “You must be able to knit so quickly,”

Boxing day starts out calm and lazy as she had hoped it would.  The house still has little light but the darkness feels more sleepy than menacing, perhaps simply by merit of the number of people crammed into the living room, legs all thrown over each other, mismatched blankets covering them.  She looks around the room as Fred and George tell a joke and Sirius laughs boisterously, something both sinister and jovial playing across his face.  Percy snickers and Hermione wonders just how she is going to split the Americans from the group to ask them about what she overheard.

She finds her answer in the unexpected arrival of Dumbledore, Snape standing tall and crooked over his shoulder, greasy hair hanging in front of his face like some bizarre perversion of a wedding veil--married to his own misery, perhaps.  Harry is summoned away without public explanation and their good cheer is broken and the group begins to disperse.  The Americans look at each other and communicate without words in a way that makes her feel somewhat isolated as the Weasley siblings tease and shove each other.  With Harry gone this room is full of families and she fits in neither.  She sighs and turns to the Americans, breaking through their quiet communication.

“Umm,” she says, like she had never become comfortable speaking to them.  “Can I speak to you three?”  They nod so she tacks on “In another room,” and hopes Fred and George didn’t hear.

“What’s up?” Percy says.  He is sitting on the edge of his bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his head cocked to the side.  She looks around their room, the same size as the one she shares with Ginny and completely lacking the meagre personalisation that Ginny has placed around theirs, the layout of the room altered somewhat to account for the third bed.  Their trunks are pushed half under the foot ends of the beds, closed but unlatched, and the single dresser which they don’t appear to have unpacked any clothes into has only the gift Sirius had given to Percy earlier placed upon it, still wrapped.

“I overheard you talking the other day,” she admits quickly, as if getting the words out quickly would take the burden off of her in an instant and keep it away.  She doesn't look at Percy but instead to the room’s one window, the grid separating the panes and the dust sitting thickly on its surface.

“Oh,” Percy says and then he goes quiet for a moment.

“What do you want to talk about?” Jason says, acting as though he doesn’t see the obvious problem here.

“The prophecy,” she says decisively, her confidence facing a steady but slow ascent.

“We don’t know anything about the prophecy,” Nico says.

“I heard you talking about it,”

“We were,” Jason admits, “But we really don’t know anything about it.  Our director heard rumours about a talented diviner and if anything that bad happens here we will feel it back home too.  He just wanted us to see if there was any credibility to the rumour and, if there is, to lend a helping hand,”

She scrunches her nose.  Jason is very good at sounding honest unlike Nico and Percy who always seem to sound like they are lying--she supposes that, sometimes, those might be the same things--and she doesn’t think he’s lying, but she isn’t convinced she’s getting the whole truth from him.  She wants to press why they would be chosen but she understands without having to ask and thumbs the shape of her songbird talisman sitting heavy in her dressing gown’s pocket.  She isn’t quite sure when she grew to find comfort in it.

Harry sits at the dining table in Grimmauld place, missing the day before when they had pulled up extra chairs to accommodate for all of their company before piling the table high with steaming food and glass goblets of wine and pumpkin juice.  Dumbledore has sat himself primly in the chair at the head of the table with Harry on one side and Snape on the other, neither particularly keen on the thought of looking at the other.

“Harry,” Dumbledore says.  The chairs they are sitting on are ornately carved yet decidedly solid lumps of wood, hard, unforgiving and uncomfortable, and Harry finds himself shifting constantly, the ache of his tailbone almost immediate.  Neither Dumbledore nor Snape shuffle even once.  “I am of the belief that Professor Snape could be the solution to Voldemort’s interference with your dreams,”
Harry is tempted to reject the offer outright, thoroughly put off at the thought of having to spend a single moment more than is required of him with Snape who never tries to hide his dislike.  He must admit, however, that the offer is tempting and he’s desperate for restful sleep.

“How?” he looks probingly at Snape but the man does not move except to reposition his hands so they are folded together beneath the sharp point of his chin.  This close up Harry can see his stubble growing, the spot slightly beneath his mouth on either side notably bald whilst the rest of his facial hair grows in dark and blunt.

“I will leave you to this,” Dumbledore decides.  If he were anyone else Harry would reach for his bony wrist as he tries to leave and drag him straight back into his uncomfortable chair so he isn’t left alone in the sparsely decorated dining room with Severus Snape of all people.  He leaves and Harry watches his back--his hair a long, thin trail down his spine, his robes swishing with his steps.  He looks around the room once Dumbledore has left, finding in strange corners even stranger mementos and trinkets.  Blood purists apparently have a weird thing for grotesque body parts amputated from only the ugliest of creatures.  There’s a strange hoof on a small pedestal somehow serving as décor.

“I have been brought here to inform you about lessons we will have in Occlumency when we return to Hogwarts,”

Harry looks at the folded steeple of Snape’s long fingers, his nails slightly overgrown but filed to neat shapes that are comparable across each nail.  “What-?”

Snape sighs abrasively, a clear wordless insult against Harry's intelligence.  He’s offended on principle but he also has absolutely no clue what Snape is talking about.  “Occlumency,” he repeats as though Harry is likely to get something more out of it upon a second listen.  He doesn’t.  “I will be teaching you to protect your mind from outside influence,”

The holidays end too quickly, the merriment they had somehow managed to inject int Grimmauld place leaving with them as they step through the front door with their trunks in hand, trying hard not to wake the screeching portrait.  Sirius is left inside, standing in a dark hallway that cannot seem to suck up any of the light from the bright white sun just outside.  He looks at them with envy as they take all the joy that could hope to exist in Grimmauld place with them.  He steps forward but does not step outside so Harry walks to the door to meet him.

“Here,” he says simply, passing a hastily wrapped bundle into Harry’s arms.  “Only for when you need me,”  His face is dark and shadowed when he steps back, like the house is swallowing him, and still he smiles weakly, waves at Harry and then everyone else.  “I expect letters, Jackson!” he says before they close the door and he is left inside like a caged animal.  Harry wonders if his miraculous escape always feels like it was worth it.

They make their way to Kings Cross and walk calmly through a solid brick wall as they have time and time again.  They are a few minutes early so just stand around as they wait for the great steam engine to appear, chugging into place and stilling suddenly, as if by magic, before departing at top speed.  He looks around at throngs of wizards gathered together, some students already in their robes, most others in muggle clothes or clumsy approximation thereof, ready to change during the journey, most with their parents but a few alone, their trunks large and hulking to their sides.  There are a few muggle parents observing the platform in awe, looking back at the brick they passed through and the people passing through it, at the robes worn by wizards and the bright colours that paint the platform.

The train pulls up in a short burst of noise and smoke and his group bustle in through a door and fall into one of the compartments after passing their bags off to be loaded into the luggage carriages.  The Americans sit across from him and he is reminded of the first time he met them, of taking in their appearances and not knowing what to make of them as they sat and talked as though nothing was amiss.  He still isn’t sure he knows quite what to think of them.

They have a free weekend before lessons start but Harry’s sessions with SNape begin almost immediately, scheduled for the late evening when the first students in the great old building will be falling asleep.  He leaves his friends as they sit and laugh, huddled in front of the common room’s fireplace in the coveted plush armchairs.  He is Harry Potter which means he is weird by nature, that he fits in better here than anywhere else but still is like a bent, stripped screw.

The hallways are cool and calm and his arms bristle beneath his knitted jumper and the echo of his footsteps of firm stone announce his presence to anyone who may be listening;  He is allowed to be there so is unconcerned with getting caught by anyone aside from Umbridge who seems to have little respect or concern for rules that are not of her own conceit.  He walks down into the belly of the castle where the cold conglomerates like a sharp-toothed beast nipping determinedly at his ankles.  He hates it down here.

He hates Snape’s office even more.  The heavy door does little to keep out the damp cold and instead seems to trap it in.  The walls are lined high with shelves stacked with glass jars of potions ingredients that seem to have been selected for their grotesque, shocking appearances and little else.  Harry blinks at a small eye--blue and clear and bloodshot--suspended in a jar of yellowish fluid and half expects that it will blink back even though it doesn't have an eyelid.

There is a desk in the middle of the room, a large chair behind it upholstered in dark leather.  Snape sits in it and gestures at a small, wooden chair that has been shoved unceremoniously as close to the wall as it can get with the shelving jutting out.  Harry drags it across the floor, feeling a sense of satisfaction as Snape winces at the squealing sound it makes.  He draws it out, moves slowly and take his time deciding where he will put the chair even though there really isn’t much choice that makes sense.  He sits down, his chair in front of and to the left of the desk, and waits for Snape to clear his throat as if to begin speaking before standing up and moving his chair to the right.  Snape’s eye twitches.

He explains Voldemort’s talent with Legilimency and explains that Harry’s thoughts, feelings, and memories are at risk of manipulation by the dark lord.  He stares at the desk’s unstained surface and tries to banish the thought of his recurring nightmare of slithering across the floor, of striking like a beast, of the ministry’s grandiose arched doors and twisting halls.  He nods without looking up, wanting the image gone.

Snape stands from his chair and moves to what looks like a bird bath in the corner of the room--Harry thinks he has seen it in Dumbledore's office before but does not know what it is--tapping the end of his wand confidently against his temple then slowly drawing it away, moving it to the birdbath, between his temple and the birdbath a trailing light like spider silk.

“You have to be prepared to shut me out,” he says plainly, waiting for Harry to pull his wand from his belt.  He holds it firmly but has absolutely no idea what he should be using it to do.  Still, Snape nods once, barely a movement at all, and his dark eyes turn to Harry like an animal after prey and Harry’s head all but explodes with something bright and sharp that might be pain but isn’t quite familiar enough to be.

Snape is in his mind and Harry wants him out.  He could force him out but he can’t think.  An image flashes in front of his mind’s eye, green eye just like his own smiling, a young woman’s smooth features and silky red hair.  The image moves.  A chess piece shifts and a sword cleaves it in twain.  Ron collapses with it, sliced by the rubble.  It moves.  A door closes and he is shut up in a tight space besides a skinny mattress and flat pillows.  Moves.  He is holding Cedric Diggory’s body and he is not moving.  Moves.  Skin scorched black, guilt in the pit of his stomach a filter of green.

Harry screams.  He slides from his chair and falls to his knees on the polished floor, looking down at his hands and trying his hardest to make sure that they are actually his.  He breathes deeply but cannot make his body feel as though it is under his control.  Snape wants him to do it all again and Harry wants to sob.  He gets back into his chair and tightens his hand around his wand as tightly as he can without fear of snapping it.

Chapter Text

Ron is so incredibly aware of the weight of his charmed weapon as it sits heavy and inconspicuous in his pocket, a secret he can fall back on.  His arms ache, though for once not with exertion but rather a flare of longing, of wanting to swing the blade, slice at a dummy or tear some sort of dummy to shreds.  There are too many fragile, volatile things in Grimmauld place and too little room (and too many worrying mothers) to be swinging a sword around and he feels a little as though he has been neglecting the practice.  He isn’t sure when he grew to depend upon it like that but he thumbs the rough edge of the carving the blade hides in and feels the thrum of restless energy in his arms and legs as he looks about the near-empty common room.  Neville is there and Jason is upstairs in their dorm reading a book in a language Ron doesn’t understand and that feels as though that’s sufficient--someone to spar and someone to supervise so they don’t accidentally kill themselves or each other.  There is at least a week before they start DA sessions again and Ron doesn’t want to wait that long.

He all but jumps to his feet, brushing his palms against each other as if to tear some of the restlessness out, and walks briskly to Neville on the other side of the room as he sits alone with an almost empty roll of parchment and a particularly crumpled-looking quill.  Ron grasps Neville’s shoulder and proposes the idea as subtly as he is able and Neville is quick to agree to fetching Jason and heading to either the room of requirement or the Forbidden Forest depending on what they can get away with.  Neville pales slightly at the mention of the forest and the implication of everything that lurks within it but continues to go along with what Ron suggests.  It’s telling that Neville is just as desperate for the practice as he is, though he isn’t sure what is driving him to be.

With some luck and a little feigned nonchalance they manage to make their way into the room of requirement without getting caught.  It is smaller than usual, one wall occupied solely by a mirror, unobstructed by the weapon racks that would typically be lined against the wall.  The floor is slightly soft underfoot, vaguely spongey, like it will have some cushion when one of them inevitably falls on their arse, and there are training dummies pushed into one corner of the room.  The walls are empty, nothing but raw brick with nothing hung up on them that they might be at risk of knocking off.  There are three chairs pushed against the wall where the door is positioned, hard wood and without cushions, completely unadorned but fit for purpose.

“Is there anything in particular you wanna do?” Jason asks, standing in the middle of the open area of floor in the centre of the room, nonchalantly flipping a coin into the air and catching it without any particular effort by the grip as it falls, now a sword that glimmers gold and threatening in the orange of candlelight.  Ron watches the ease he holds his weapon with and wonders when he will have it, how often he would have to use his sword for it to feel like an extension of him like the Americans’ swords look to be, if it’s a comfort that can be gained through practice alone or if it has to be earned and fought for with desperation and danger.  Ron has a bad feeling that he’s going to find out sometime soon.

“Not really,” Ron admits.  He just wants to move.  He grabs the little craving from his pocket and runs his nails over the rough surfaces of the wood so that they disappear, replaced by the wrapped hilt of his sword.  The weight has gone from overwhelming to familiar and he can hold it with confidence if not hard-earned elegance now.  His elbows no longer shake with the effort of holding the blade aloft.  He looks over at Neville and sees him much like Ron used to be, his grip uncertain and his hands never quite still but his face set, determined.

“Fair enough,” Jason says.  “We’ll run some warm-ups then we’ll spar two at a time so we can take breaks,”

Neville looks to be deep in thought for a moment as Ron and Jason set up.  “Would it not make sense,” he speaks with little conviction but he is saying turn words all the same.  “If we sparred as a group?  It’s just, uhh, if we were actually fighting--and that is why we do this--we wouldn’t necessarily be evenly matched,”

Jason thinks for a moment.  “Good call,” he says, “you two both try to disarm me first, then we’ll pair up against one of you,”

“Go easy on us,” Ron suggests warily.

Jason hums.  “Not too easy,” he says “That’s no fun for me.”

Jason isn’t so bad as Nico and nowhere near what Percy is like when Ron spars him, but he also doesn’t pretend not to be very good at what he does even as they take novice swings at him.  He just returns their blows with less pressure and when he swings Ron never feels as though his elbows are about to break under the weight of the offence.  Ron gets the sense he learned to fight very differently from how Iico and Percy did, because Jason lets him keep his grip on his sword and stands his ground like he is expecting to be fighting as part of a formation rather than running around with nothing but his own quick-thinking for company.

He is sweating profusely, the collar of his t-shirt clinging to his neck as he moves, his palms sore and his arms tired but still perfectly usable.  Besides him Neville is slowing down and Jason is probably more aware of their state than they are.  He takes mercy on them and twists the blade from Neville’s hand before turning to Ron and thrusting the sharp end of his blade so it is almost pressed to Ron’s sternum.  He lets go of his sword and holds his hands in surrender.  Jason smiles, his pale cheeks tinged pink and his forehead slightly shiny but otherwise completely without signs of exertion.  Ron slightly resents him for that.

They fall into the chairs, barely even aware of how uncomfortable the hard wood is on their tailbones as Ron and Neville slump and Jason sits upright, tapping his fingers against his knee and maintaining perfect posture.  He looks at Ron.  “You fight with Nico most, right?”

Ron nods and wonders how he knows that.  He hangs around after DA sessions sometimes, but it’s normally Nico and Percy that stay back and keep him fighting until his arms feel like they’re about to fall off.  Nico lets him stop there but Percy always makes sure he goes that little bit further.

“I fight both of them a lot,” he explains without Ron needing to ask how he knows.  “I’m sure there’s some sort of formula to how Percy fights but he’s so impossible because he is the only person who knows what he’s going to do next--and sometimes even he isn’t sure,”

“Can’t predict the actions of a madman,” Ron says under his breath, but Jason definitely hears.

 “Yeah,” he says, laughing good-naturedly.  “You’re far from the only person who would call him that.  But it works; you can’t really learn how to win against Percy in a swordfight,”

Ron hums and takes a deep gulp from his water bottle.  “Do you have to fight a lot?”  He doesn’t know much about wizarding America.  There are absolutely international wizarding news sources but he isn’t well clued into them.  Still, he would expect to have heard of anything particularly big.

Jason sighs.  “Yeah,” he acquiesces, “we’ve had a bit of a rough few years.  Means we know what we’re doing though,”

“And you think the element of surprise is a good thing to have?” Neville pipes up.

“Having seen what Percy can do, yes I do.  But I think you’d be better off talking to him and Nico rather than me about that,”

They move into their next spar but it sticks in Ron’s head, because really most of the fights he has had have stuck to a formula.  He has watched Harry lean on one spell for years and is starting to think it might severely be to his own detriment.

Hermione scowls at her newspaper as she nurses her tea and Jason is starting to suspect she is subscribed to the Daily Prophet for the express purpose of making herself angry because that is all she ever seems to be when she reads it.

“Mass breakout of death eaters from Azkaban,” she scoffs.  “Unbelievable that there’s anyone that doesn’t believe he-who-shall-not-be-named is coming back,”  Jason nods his agreement and pushes his eggs from one side of his plate to the other with the back of his fork.  He catches Harry looking suspiciously at the off-white paper wrinkling in Hermione’s anger-tightened grip as though he has realised something.  He doesn’t share with the group and Jason is as tired of this quest--though much less outspoken about it--as his cousins so he decides that this is a moment in which he is allowed to pry.

He cocks his head at Harry.  Once upon a time his hair had been cropped close to his head and cut back down the moment it threatened to grow out but now he wears it as he likes and at this moment it is growing out a little too far, the shirt sides long enough to tickle the sides of his face.  He scratches at it discontentedly, looking forward to being able to go back home and shrug off the robes and drop the wand that makes him feel, in more ways than one, as though he is turning slowly into someone else.  He is finally in a position where he is learning who Jason Grace is separate from the Roman Legion and he positively itches to go back home and keep learning.

“You’re thinking about something,” he observes plainly.  Harry blinks back at him owlishly, his eyes wide and round behind their circular lenses.  They are not the eyes of a demigod, especially not one who has been through Lupa’s initiation.  They do simmer with the remnants of anger and exhaustion but behind it all they are soft and youthful and quietly optimistic, hopeful.  His fight will end if he can outlast Voldemort and Jason has learned from the Greeks that without New Rome and all of its protections demigods do not live into their twenties and certainly not past them.  His fight will not be over until it kills him and then it will simply become someone else’s.

“Oh,” Harry says, “Uh yeah.  I just got a weird feeling yesterday and now I think I know what it was,”

He makes it sound finite but he hasn’t told Jason anything.  “Well, what was it?”

Harry sighs.  “Voldemort was happy,” he says, making it evident, if it wasn’t already, that Voldemort’s hand was involved in the Azkaban breakout.

Hermione turns the page.  “For God’s sake,” she clicks her tongue, “this damn newspaper,”

“What now?” Ron asks.  His spoon shakes slightly in his hand but his exhaustion is his own fault and Jason is just about the nicest demigod sword trainer he knows about so he doesn’t feel bad for it.

“Someone who works in the Ministry--a man named Bode--was killed at St. Mungos by a plant,”

“A plant?” Jason repeats.

She nods.  “It’s strange,” she comments, “a hospital sounds like it’s about the last place you would want to keep devil’s snare,”

Jason hums.  “That means you think it wasn’t an accident,”

She laughs without humour.  “I don’t think many things are these days.  Someone must have intentionally given him the devil’s snare,”

“You said his name was Bode?” Ron checks.  He has screwed up his features as though thinking and has put down his cutlery to stare at his palms as though trying to remember something.

Hermione nods.  “Broderick Bode,”

“My dad’s definitely mentioned him,” he says, “But I think it’s been a while--he’s been in St. Mungo’s for a while.  Uh, dad said he was always a bit weird, like hard to look at--Just like the other unspeakables!” He has a revelation part way through his sentence.

“Unspeakables?” Jason repeats slowly.  He doesn't much like the sound of it.

“They work in the department of mysteries,” Ron explains.  “Nobody knows what they do,”

“Department of mysteries?” Harry parrots.  He picks at his cuticles and looks probingly at Ron.  Ron nods and Harry sighs.  “I saw the hallway leading towards it,”

“In a vision from he-who-shall-not-be-named?” Ron checks.

Harry nods.  “I tried to ask Snape about the department but he didn’t tell me anything,”

“Great,” Hermione sighs, “I think we might have to figure out what the department of mysteries is, see if it means anything to use,”

“That’s easier said than done, I think,” Jason says, pinching his nose bridge, but still his eyes glint with careful thought.

The breakfast food spread in front of them is steaming, kept magically piping hot, and the aroma is as appetising as ever but Harry sincerely does not feel like eating any of it.  He looks down at his plate, at the slice of toast with apricot jam he has eaten half of and the berries, Greek yoghurt and honey he has yet to touch, and cannot fathom eating another bite of it.  He stands up from the table.  “I’ve not finished my essay for McGonagall,” he says.

“Oh crap me neither,” Ron rockets up from the table so quickly that he slams his knees hard into the top of the long bench.  The top rattles and he almost falls on his face as he jogs out of the hall.

“He hasn’t started it, has he?” Jason watches him leave with  a chuckle.  Hermione laughs.

“If he has I’ll eat a hat,”  She looks around as the hall fills up, at the faces lit in brightly, flickering flame and the dark robes brushing the floor.  A tiny first year almost trips on his as he moves too quickly between tables and his too-long uniform gets tangled beneath his feet.  Almost none of them have a clue about what’s going on as they all revel in the persistent joy left over from the holidays and she its and stews in a pit of dread, something quiet but pungent and constant, something that doesn’t stop her from being able to go about her day and study hard but that tightens its grip around her throat when she is trying to sleep or relax, reminding her constantly that she isn’t safe, that her world and every bit of it she loves is so far from safe.  “There’s a while before our first class starts and I want some fresh air.  Do you want to come sit by the lake?”

He nods.  “Sure,” he says, “Can we head to the dungeons and get Percy and Nico on the way?”

She nods and they leave the table, their meals half-eaten and forgotten and that terrible tabloid rolled up and tucked into a deep pocket inside Hermione’s robe.  The halls are full of life just like the hall, even though only minimal light creeps in from outside and the sky painted across the hall’s enchanted ceiling was dim and drab.  The paintings on the walls move and talk just like the students, a little girl wearing a yellow dress walks between frames to keep up with a group of third year Hufflepuff girls who are talking to her as though she really is right there with them, not separated by levels of reality and the fact that the paintings stop as soon as they enter the hall and she will be forced to turn back, find other company.  Hermione thinks it must be a sad life, to be able to talk to people outside the paintings who are free to go wherever they would like whilst you are trapped in oil paint.  She isn’t quite sure how these moving paintings are made, but if she is able she is almost tempted to paint the girl a small friend who is right there next to her, where she can touch her and won’t lose her when she leaves the room.

She is distracted from the bustle of the corridors as she spots a bulletin posted on the wall alongside a series of others.  They are getting to be so plentiful she almost can’t tell when a new one has been made but this one is low enough on the wall that she can read it without effort as she walks past and can see the day’s date written in looping, exaggerated cursive.  She stops Jason so that she might read the whole thing, speaking the words aloud for his benefit.

“Educational decree number twenty-six:” she says in her best approximation of Umbridge’s saccharine, grating voice, an attempt at humour to soften the blow.  “Teachers are hereby banned from giving students any information that is not strictly related to the subjects they are paid to teach,”

Jason blinks at her.  “You’re kidding,” he says, knowing full well she is not.  She shakes her head and pulls at a section of her hair that has become tangled.  Her face is hot with anger and her hands are tightly balled into fists, her knuckles sore and aching.

“That’s absolute crap!”  If she wasn’t so convinced she would immediately be caught and she wasn’t almost certain the decree was magically adhered to the wall she would tear it down and destroy it.

“I’ll bet she just doesn’t want us to be able to ask about the Azkaban escape!  And all because the ministry doesn’t want to admit it’s wrong?” She huffs.  “Pathetic!”

“More than that,” Jason leans into the decree and squints as though slowly but determinedly reading it for himself.  “It’s dangerous.”

They don’t end up going to sit outside and instead stand by the decree, fuming and glaring at Umbridge as she walks past.  Through a wondrous combination of their alliance with Percy Jackson and the fact that Jason, too, has the hard-steel glare down, she steers well-clear.  They discuss what the consequences and meaning for it are and a small crowd of first years walks past and looks up at them, their expressions unreadable but their fear undisguisable.  This is their world too, and the ministry is doing much more than annoying Harry Potter or getting back at Albus Dumbledore: if nobody stops them then kids like these will suffer and even die and it will be decidedly their fault.  A spiteful part of Hermione almost wishes that Umbridge will have to live with that but a more reasonable part of her isn't quite convinced the sadistic toad would really care.

She thinks about the decree all day.  Sitting in transfiguration, she hands in her essay and half pays attention to what McGonagall is saying, spending the rest of the lesson scrawling angry circles in one corner of her page and writing down disaster after disaster that might happen at the ministry’s corrupt little hands.  She tries to speak to McGonagall about it afterwards but even notoriously steadfast Minerva McGonagall looks worriedly down the hallway that stretches to either side before looking back at Hermione and lowering her voice to plainly say “I can’t say I approve but I also can’t say anything more,”.  Hermione spends the entire day wishing she could stand up from her seat and scream and swear and shout, even if just so at least one teacher would have to talk to her about more than their subject.  It’s an asinine rule and no teacher is even allowed to discuss fixing it with her.

She thinks about it all night too.  She pushes her food around her plate and eats no more than three mouthfuls of it, her stomach an angry, swilling pit it feels almost like a disservice to fill.  She sits in the common room staring at the wall as people talk around her and wonders how there is a single person in the school who can even feign contentment at the state of their school and everything Umbridge is putting them through.  She sits awake in bed and imagines the ceiling falling on her, the castle crumbling, Umbridge getting stuck in all the rubble.  She knows, of course, that the problem is much larger than just her but it would be satisfying nonetheless.

She gets tired eventually though, and her eyes begin to burn.  She closes them and the warm arms of sleep embrace her slowly.  It is as she is drifting off that she is able to think again about the department of mysteries, about what might be within it and why that would matter.  She thinks about Jason’s face as he pondered the same question at breakfast, about the glint in his electric blue eyes, and, moments before she falls entirely asleep, can’t help but wonder if it might have something to do with that prophecy.

Chapter Text

Hermione is walking outside to clear her mind, walking a loose, leisurely lap of the lake even though the air is cold and there are thin bits of ice gathering on its dark surface.  She shivers and pulls her hair further down so that it almost covers her brow, drawing the sides of her robe close together to try to block the chill of the air out.  There isn’t a pair of tights in the world thick enough to stop the skin of her legs bristling with goose flesh but she has bigger concerns right now than a little bit of discomfort.  What she needs is to think and there is something about the warmth of Hogwarts that feels as though it is attempting intentionally to disarm her, to prevent her from being able to figure out what her next steps should be.

She is thinking intently about the nature of planning rather than any particular plan when she trips and falls promptly to the floor, her hands flying out to catch her and making the icy grass crunch.  “Woah!” a familiar voice says and she looks down, her heart hammering in her chest and her hands--gloved but now soaked through--freezing.  She springs to her feet.

“Oh my God, Percy, I am so sorry,”  She tears the sodden fabric from her hands and shoves the gloves dismissively into her robe pocket but he is just laying on the floor, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that the ground is hard and unforgiving with all the cold it has absorbed.  His hair is splayed out to either side of his head, covering his wrists as he has his arms crossed behind his head, his outer layer--the school robe--balled up and shoved beneath them.  He is wearing a white button-up beneath a thin school jumper, the accents an emerald green not dissimilar to that of the grass, and school-standard slacks.  If he is not freezing then he cannot be human.

He waves her off.  “Don’t worry about it,” he says, turning his head away from her and looking out at the surface of the lake that is almost preternaturally still, like a sheet of black velvet laid out across the ground.  As always, she isn’t fully aware of how disconcerting his gaze is until it has moved away.  “I hate that woman,”  She wonders if he intends it to function as a sort of cryptic explanation for why he is outside in the freezing cold, just laying still and not even trying to move around to retain some warmth.  She doesn’t press him about it, instead opting to sit beside him, smoothing her robe as she does so in order to make extra sure that there are as many layers between herself and the cold, wet ground as there can be.  Her knees are cold where she fell and she hugs them against her chest in a half-baked attempt to warm them up. 

“I can’t say I disagree,” she admits, removing one hand from her knees to start picking absently at the grass, one blade at a time.  “Jason made a good point about how dangerous this decree was and I would really like to find a way around it,”

Percy hums, looking up at the pale blue of the sky with his eyes half closed.  “There are definitely ways around it,” he decides.

She sighs.  “Like what?”

“Vandalism,” she is almost unperturbed by his nonchalance.

She raises her eyebrows.  “Vandalism?”

He does the best approximation of a shrug he can without sitting up or moving his hands from behind his head.  “We know Voldemort is back,” she has noticed that the Americans all call him by his moniker like Harry or Dumbledore.  She isn’t sure if it’s an intentional bit of defiance, refusing to fall victim to the propaganda of fear, or if it’s just a social thing.  In America they are further removed from he-who-shall-not-be-named and all that he has done, but here just about every wizard and witch has found themselves affected in some way, some more direct than others, by the malicious wizard.  “And we know that his creeps broke out of prison.  Teachers can’t talk about anything but Umbridge can’t touch me,”

“I was thinking of trying to get an article in the quibbler,” she admits.  He turns his gaze to her just to squint then returns it back to the dull screen of the sky rolling slowly overhead.  “Right.  It’s this magazine.  I don’t know if you remember Luna, but her dad is the editor.  It has a bit of a reputation for eccentricity,”

“It could work,” he muses, “But how many of these kids actually read it?  Besides, Toady can ban a magazine, it’d be a bit harder to ban students from the building, and it’s not like vandalism was ever allowed anyway,” Hermione is close enough that she can see how the scar on his jaw pulls slightly tight when he smiles, really more of a malignant grin but it almost suits his face more, its surface somewhat shiny.  She can’t help but wonder, not for the first time, how long he has had all his scars, whether they appeared all at once or if they happened bit by bit, how long it has been since he last got one.  She should be clued into American wizarding politics but recently has been very drawn into the absolute mess of her own world.

“I have access to an invisibility cloak,” she frames it like agreement and his eyes open properly to look at her, glittering with mischief.  She gulps but doesn’t rescind her statement.  “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t mind getting caught.  I think Umbridge is the only person who likes Umbridge and she wouldn’t dream of getting in my way,”

“You’re sure?”

“Completely,” It isn’t that she is in anyway unconvinced by his answer but she does get the feeling that part of him feels almost guilty about how he got to this point  It is intuition alone, but she doesn’t believe for a second that it is directed towards Umbridge herself.

She sits in silence for a moment, looking out across the lake and wondering what it must be like to be one of the many creatures living in it when it gets cold like this and begins to freeze over.  She thinks again of the paintings, about how they are connected yet separated from the real world, and imagines it might be a little bit like that.  She thinks she must start shivering--or perhaps just start shivering more violently--because Percy sits up and cracks his knuckles so loudly she has to fight the impulse to cover her ears, shaking out his robe and casting it around her shoulders so that the wet side doesn’t touch her.

“Are you not cold?” she asks but does not shrug off the offer of extra warmth.  It may just be that he has been outside, but his cloak smells fresh and clean whereas she is sure hers is clinging to the smells of cooking and spices and heat from the great hall.  He shakes his head and his hand brushes hers as he draws it back.  He isn’t lying, he feels almost feverish, in fact.  She’s half shocked the lake directly beside him hasn’t completely thawed.

He stays sitting, looking in the same direction as she is but not looking at her.  “Can I ask you something?” She says eventually, the question bubbling intently in her chest for at least five minutes before she plucks up even a modicum of the courage she needs to ask it.

“Shoot,”

“What happened to you?”

“Huh?” She pauses to gather words and he just stares at her with his eyebrows knitted together and his eyes so dark she is half convinced she could fall into them and drown.  She is reminded against both her will and her better judgement how it had felt to have him cast a spell on her, how it felt like she was moments from death, submerged in the ice cold deep and unable to breathe at all.

“What happened?” she finds herself repeating.  “I thought Wizarding America had relative calm and then you, Jason and Nico show up and you look like you have had to sword fight for your lives.  So what happened?”

He sighs.  “You know how your ministry doesn’t want anyone to know what is actually going on?”  He doesn’t elaborate further.  Hermione wishes he would but she doesn't necessarily need him to.

“How did that turn out?” This time he doesn’t answer at all, just hangs his head, and she wants nothing more than to scream at the top of her lungs until everything that is wrong with the world falls into its rightful place and she no longer has to worry at all.  “Your prophecy-”

“It’s not mine,” he corrects.

“Right.  The prophecy: do you think there’s a chance that might be what’s in the department of mysteries?” She doesn’t think keeping that theory to herself is serving her at all.

“It could be,” she doesn’t get the sense that he is hiding anything from her, just that he really isn’t sure.  Her stomach aches.

“You had your own, right?” she doesn’t look over to see him nod and just assumes that is what he will do.  “And you think Dumbledore knows and isn’t telling Harry on purpose?  But why?”

He exhales so deeply Hermione isn’t sure he is ever going to stop as the air in front of his parted lips fills with steam like a dragon’s breath.  He watches the surface of the lake as it barely ripples in the wake of a gust of wind.  “I’ve had a prophecy hidden from me,” he reveals then gulps, creating a pause that is so silent and still that her heart hammering violently in her chest feels like it shouldn’t be allowed to be there.  “That was because everyone was sure it was going to kill me,”

Harry’s hands are not his.  Neither is his voice.  It is high and thin and reedy, whistling and creaking, croaking.  His hands are not so much pale as they are white, long and slender, all bulging knuckles pushing at the edges of paper-thin skin.  The nails are sharp, long, almost like claws or even misplaced fangs.

Harry wants to gulp or scream or shout but the throat is not his either.  He is stuck.  The skull moves, taking his vision with it.

The man who is neither him nor pretending to be is not one he recognises.  It isn’t quite clear how old he is, just that he has been through hard times.  The skin of his face is gnarled and pulled, his hair rusty red but his beard growing grey beneath the thin line of his lower lip which is marked distinctly with the horizontal lines of his uneven front teeth.  His heavy brow casts his eyes into shadow which, combined with the darkness of the room, renders them completely unreadable, almost like hollow pits in his face, tunnels into his skull and perhaps all the way through it.

The mouth that is not Harry’s uses the voice that is even less his to discuss the escape, the Unspeakables, the death, but it fails to reveal to him much more pertinent information than that which he already knows.  If he was in his own body his stomach would curl but this gut is calm and still, inhuman in its composure.

He wakes up screaming, though not quite convinced he knows exactly what about, his scar burning and his vision still stamped with those shapes of where eyes simply didn’t seem to be.  Before he has time to think, Ron, Jason, and Neville are all gathering around him, making sure he is okay and checking whether or not he wants to go speak to Dumbledore.  He appreciates their concern but wishes sincerely he wasn’t the type of person they would have to be worried about.

He tells his friends about it over breakfast.  The Dursleys would no doubt insist he is spoiling the food but they aren’t here and there are far more pressing issues.  Hermione looks at Jason and they hum contemplatively in what is almost a harmony.

Jason spears a sausage with his fork and Hermione keeps her lower lip pressed against her goblet of pumpkin juice as she thinks.  “Curse?” Jason echoes.  There is something almost personal about how he says it, like it is tinged with a fear that has been learned through bitter experience.

“Curse,” Hermione repeated, mumbling the word to herself contemplatively.  She looks at Harry.  “You don’t know who the man was?”

“Was he hard to look at?” Ron asks, almost joking.

“Definitely,” Harry answers resolutely and without hesitation.

Hermione looks at Ron, her eyes alight with curiosity and questions and answers: it is a Hermione expression if Harry has ever seen one.  “That could be it,” she says.  “He could be--or could have been-- another unspeakable.  Then he’d know Bode and have a way in.  What if the curse is the Imperius?”

Jason cocks his head.  “He had to end up in St Mungo’s somehow…”

Hermione nods.  “An Imperius curse gone wrong could account for the insanity.  But for them to Imperius him they would have to have some sort of a goal,”

“Well that’ll be bloody hard to find out.” Ron complains.  “They’re called Unspeakables for a reason,”

Something Harry doesn’t understand passes over Hermione’s face.  “We might be part way there,” she says.

Ron struggles to keep up with Nico as he darts through a few narrow hallways, choked with the commotion of other students heading in the same direction.  Ron is in better shape than he was a few months ago but Nico is still much more practised than he is, almost scarily nimble and small enough that he can duck between small gaps and under elbows and other obstacles that Ron finds himself either having to clumsily push past or accidentally completely colliding with.

He rubs a sore spot on the back of his head and reaches semi-mindlessly for the shoulder of Nico’s cloak to join him where he stands at the front of the crowd that is moving and pushing and shrieking so loudly he almost can’t hear the commotion they have all gathered to witness over the chaos and clamour.  Nico sends him a look that prompts him to quickly move his hand as soon as he is actually next to him but does not make any efforts to shrug or push off Ron’s hand himself.

“Please!” Trelawney is screaming and crying, pleading with all the desperation of a person who has nowhere else to go.  “Hogwarts is my home, you cannot take that away from me!”

Umbridge smiles her horrible little smile and Ron wills all of her teeth to fall out.  “Oh but deary, I can,”

“ Densaugeo ,” Nico raises his wand and whispers.  Close enough.  Fear registers across her face before the effects of the hex can even start and it strikes Ron as strange but not strange enough to distract him from the sight.  As she finishes her sentence and tries to close her painted pout it remains suspended open by the shape of her teeth as they grow out into yellowing planks almost like tusks.  She stumbles over sounds but cannot make intelligible words and her eyes, small and beady, grow wide and terrified.  She hides her face in her small hands but the teeth are too long and keep growing.

The crowd of students is cackling with a genuine cruelty that Umbridge has more than earned and Ron looks at Nico and cocks an eyebrow.  “Bloody brilliant,” he says appreciatively.  Nico grins.

“I don’t really like her,” he shrugs and they turn their attention back to what is quickly turning to carnage as Dumbledore comes rushing into the centre of the commotion where what was once an argument has devolved into nothing but garbled sobbing on either side, almost drowned out by the whooping of students, several of whom seem to have been dared to try to touch Umbridge's grotesque teeth.  Ron isn’t quite sure, but they look as though they might still be slowly growing.  His robe, heavy and garishly coloured, swishes across the floor as he runs.  There is a part of Ron that almost reads his appearance as a bit of a kick to the gut.  After all, they have been occupied being pelted with and digging through dense, obtuse information they didn’t ask for and he has not once offered them help.  But here Trelawney is, and all she has to do is blubber.

He helps her to her feet and mutters to her quietly enough that Ron can’t hear him.  That is until he brings her their way on their route back into the castle.  He doesn’t hear everything but it’s enough for him to get the gist that she can stay at the castle but not work at Hogwarts.  It doesn’t escape his notice that Umbridge has been left alone in the centre of the paved courtyard, her teeth scraping the floor.

“Is no one going to cast a hex breaker?”

Nico looks up at Ron like he is an idiot.  “Would you?”

They turn to leave before long but many students stay to continue to revel in Umbridge’s suffering.  Someone is going to undo it eventually, and she is going to be angry and reactive but there is no action she could take that would convince Nico it wasn’t worth it.

“You aren’t worried she’ll figure out it was you?”

Nico doesn’t look back at Ron to reply.  “How?  It’s not like she figured it out last time,”

They are walking back to the Gryffindor common room where Nico is a welcome guest in spite of sticking out like a sore thumb, an obvious Slytherin where very few people who are not in Gryffindor spend any amount of time.  The corridors aren’t without life, but a large amount of the student body remains gathered around Umbridge so they are quiet.  He only hopes she is humiliated when she gets fixed by someone else.  “I hope we can all agree,” Nico’s voice bounces off the cold stone of the walls.  “That this would never have happened to her had she actually had the practical skill and awareness to defend herself against a simple hex,”

Ron cackles until his ribs hurt then stops dead in his tracks.  A few steps ahead, Nico keeps walking.  “Wait,” Ron says and Nico turns on his heel.  His leather uniform shoes are worn, their soles thin and their surfaces scuffed and ragged, dirty and unpolished in the few places where the leather remains even slightly intact.  Ron isn’t even sure how he has managed that so quickly.  “If Trelawney’s been sacked then we don’t actually have to go finish our dream journals for her,”

Nico hums.  “So what happens to our divination lesson tomorrow?”

Chapter Text

There is something strange about the way that Nico looks at the centaur who is taking up too much space in the classroom.  It isn’t Trelawney’s room, both because that is hers and the new teacher clearly does not want to take over it, and because that attic room is only accessible by a ladder which he cannot climb.  It’s lacking all of the whimsy, the plush furnishings and the crushed velvet upholstery, the warmth and the smell of incense burning and herbs and tea leaves boiling.  It is a larger room with proper chairs around proper tables rather than cushions and round tables that are just a little bit too small and close to the floor.

Harry has seen this centaur before but still observes him with the same awe as most of their class.  He is huge, his coat shiny and well-kept, his human torso strong but narrow.  He has dressed it well, in a darkly-coloured button-up with neatly pressed sleeves and a firmly starched collar.  His skin is clearly that of a person who has spent a lot of time in the sun, not that much lighter than his coat, and his hair is so blonde that when the light hits it just right it appears to have no pigment at all.  He has pulled it up into a neat ponytail at the back of his head.  His eyes might be weirder than the horse body but they have all grown used to looking at Jason and his eyes that nearly glow in the dark.  They're about the same colour.

The students aren’t exactly attempting to be subtle about their glancing and gossiping but Nico is almost entirely alone in not participating.  His expression is comfortable, not even surprised, as though this centaur standing in this room with the doorframe he had to duck though is somehow a familiar sight to him.  The centaur catches Nico’s eyes and smiles.  Nico smiles back.

He teaches very differently to how Trelawney does.  There is much more structure to his classes, much more explanation, much less of that crypticism and dread.  He makes them keep up the dream diaries though, so Harry keeps lying in his.  He spins some tale or another about laying outside under the sun in the long grass surrounded by his friends, about how it should be pleasant but nobody is moving, as though they are catatonic, and they are in a beautiful, serene setting but still something is deeply wrong.  He is Harry Potter after all, the boy who lived and keeps on living and keeps on having to fight for it.  It would make no sense if he was happy all the way through.  It’s a lie though, of course, because he doesn’t have dreams anymore, not really.  They’re just taunts and muddled messages so indecipherable that they feel like they must be important but may as well be nothing at all.  Firenze looks at him as he tells his story though, squinting, like he doesn’t believe Harry one iota.  What he doesn't do is press.

Harry thinks he might be about to when he asks Harry to hang back but all he has is a message to relay.  “Tell Hagrid to abandon his attempt.  It isn’t working,” he says cryptically.  Harry doesn’t know what that could possibly mean and Hagrid has told them to stop coming to his hut for the time being, so the chance he gets to convey the message is short, not nearly long enough for him to start digging.  He is sick and tired of people trying to hide things from him.  They all catch up to him anyway and he’d appreciate the advance notice.  He’d also like everyone to stop treating him like a kid and then expecting him to save the day at a moment’s notice like some stupid superhero and not a kid piecing disparate pieces together and running into the fray desperate and half blind.

Hermione’s heart is hammering in her chest.  It’s stupid, because she breaks rules all the time, but she normally has different company and more direct goals.  She’s half-convinced that Percy only suggested scrawling on the school walls because he thought it might be fun.  Still, she has asked Harry for the invisibility cloak because she doesn’t want to risk getting caught and has sourced paint off of Parvati who is a part of the DA and willing to help.  So she slips out of the common room long after most students are asleep, throwing the invisibility cloak over her head as she passes the fat lady’s portrait.  Percy is waiting for her not far away, tucked behind a pillar and seemingly just trusting that he won’t be caught.

“You really aren’t the least bit worried,” she accuses, pulling him under the cloak as he jokingly protests.

He shrugs.  “I’ve had some practice,”  He bends both of his knees as he walks so the cloak can cover their ankles.  “You got the paints?”

“Of course,” she rattles the pocket of her robe just to prove to both of them that they’re there.  “What exactly is the plan?”

“We’re gonna write some relatively short messages on the walls in high-traffic parts of the school,” he explains.  “If we write enough of them, Umbridge is going to have a pretty hard time getting them all off before people read them.  And you know how gossip spreads around schools,”

Hermione looks over at him and scrunches her brow.  “We could cast a sealing charm on them,” she suggests, “Just to make them extra difficult to wash away,”  he’s walking a little ahead of her so she can’t see his face but she gets the sense he is grinning, can hear it in his voice.

“I like how you think,” he says.

She likes how she thinks too.  It has done her an awful lot of good, after all.  She knows that there is a younger version of herself who would hate the thought that she not only willingly associates with delinquents but also encourages them, that she is in many ways exactly like them.  That was a long time ago, though, and there are plenty of rules in her life that are not there for her own good nor anyone else’s, and she absolutely won’t follow them blindly.  Not anymore.  She knows better now.

Percy stops them as they pass out of the thin corridor they are walking through and into a wider space filled with stairwells.  They aren’t moving right now, almost like they are also asleep, and there is no light flickering on the candles attached to the walls.  Hermione is half scared that she will trip and fall down the stairs in the darkness.  She pulls out a pot of poster paint from her pocket.  She doesn’t have any brushes but Percy clearly doesn’t care.  He sticks his index finger into the paint and slowly starts writing out a message.

“I’ve literally never cared about the spelling on vandalism before,” he laughs.  Right now it is of utmost importance that they are clearly understood, that there is no chance of being misconstrued.  Hermione laughs right back and then steals the cloak from his shoulders so she can cross the space to a far wall that leads in the direction of the Ravenclaw rooms.  They can add some different details over here, leave parts of their message disseminated all around the school and hope that eventually everybody will share them amongst themselves.  The paint is cold and gross under her fingernail but there are worse things and she has felt her fair share of them.  The wall is rough under her finger, and by the time she has spelled out her warning on the wall her fingertip is completely numb.

She re-joins Percy after wiping her hand on a tissue she has tucked into her pocket.  She hands it to him and eyes the letters on the wall.

Warning: Voldemort is back and dangerous

She nods at it.  There aren’t many people who actually call him Voldemort, but it hardly matters if Umbridge figures out that Percy is the one responsible for writing it.  She’ll probably already know.  She throws the cloak back over him and they move down the stairs.

She writes right by the entrance to the great hall next and she isn’t sure why, maybe because she is feeling brave or maybe just because she is feeling frustrated, tired, completely fed up.

Cedric Diggory was murdered by Voldemort

She wants to write more but has to pull her arms quickly beneath the cloak and cut Percy off part way through his own graffiti.  She hears shuffling footsteps and Filch is just about the only person she would expect to be walking around at this time that she isn’t willing to risk them getting caught.  They rush to duck into a part of the wall that is slightly pushed back and hope that the crotchety caretaker won’t accidentally or on purpose make any contact with them that would give them away.

Filch rounds the corner, seemingly sneering at what he has no real reason to believe is anything more than dead, empty air.  His cat walks by his feet, brushing her small grey-striped body against his bony ankles as he shuffles straight to their graffiti.  He looks at Hermione’s message and scoffs, swiping angrily at it with his palm.  The paint is fast-drying but there are bits of it that are still wet and smudge when he drags his palm through them, though certainly not to the point of illegibility or anything close.  He keeps scrubbing at the wall but the paint isn’t moving.  Hermione and Percy turn around and move as far away as they can without making any incriminating noise as he keeps trying.

Based on all the commotion outside the great hall when she goes to get her breakfast the next morning he didn’t have any success. As she walks past she clandestinely casts the sealing charm she hadn’t gotten the chance to the day before.

It’s a big day in the D.A.  Ron has been waiting for a long time for it.  He has met dementors up close, been thoroughly terrified by them, been chilled all the way through and thankful every time in a way that makes him feel guilty that he has been accompanied by people like Harry Potter who are more miserable and therefore more interesting.  Still, he should probably know how to fight back.

Most wizards don’t.  The Patronus charm is a very powerful one, the only one Ron knows of which is able to defend against dementors.  It’s a pretty specialised application, because most wizards should not be expecting to come into contact with dementors, especially not in uncontrolled settings, but their placements are dictated by the Ministry and Ron knows better than to trust them right now.  The Patronus charm is probably the last one they would have the students learning and that is saying something when it is pretty clear they don’t want them to have any defensive or offensive weapon at all.  If the Ministry had their way all Hogwarts would teach is cantrips.

It’s a hard spell.  Unless you have any particular expectations of rogue dementors then there are simpler ways to defend yourself.  It can be used to communicate but it’s really not anybody’s first choice for relaying a message.  The Patronus charm is really a sign of power, an exclamation of a wizard calling for recognition for their ability, their value or their threat.  A wizard who can produce a fully-fledged Patronus can do a lot more, a lot worse.

He’s basically buzzing with excitement at the thought of finally learning.  Harry has all the attention in the room focused on him and Ron really wonders how many of them never imagined that they’d have this kind of spell at their disposal.  Next to him Neville looks a little terrified, is weighing his remembrall-sword in his hand as though to comfort himself, like knowing he holds a deadly weapon in his hand somehow relaxes him.  Weirdly Ron gets it.

Harry finishes his explanation and steps back and they form small groups as they have been instructed.  Ron isn’t quite sure how it is he ends up with the Americans but he thinks it might be that his best friends are supervising and he is one of very few people who are not entirely disquieted by them.  Neville stands beside him, fumbling his wand and pocketing the remembrall.  Neville nudges Ron slightly forwards and it seems like he has just been volunteered to try first.  So he does.  He stands in the middle of their little circle and closes his eyes to the light and the disconcerting eyes all focused on him though all smiling.  He holds his wand out in front of him before he has thought of the happy memory he needs.  He takes a deep breath and stops to think.

He thinks about his family first.  About his loving father, his doting mother, his siblings who are loving and hilarious (except for Percy who is a prick but also still his brother), their ramshackle family home with its overstuffed chairs and patchwork everything.  “ Expecto Patronum,” he chants.  There is a sort of fluttering feeling in his chest and he eases his eyes open to see a stream of silver-white mist twisting its way out of his wand.  It is far from a complete Patronus but it is still a potent little bit of magic and he can feel the air tingle and thrum with the power of multiple half-formed Patronus attempts.  He looks around as his charm dissipates and sees that, at least as far as he can tell, nobody else has managed to make their Patronus take its true form yet.  He breathes out and drops his wand back to his side, still feeling the remnants of that shimmering power racing through his blood vessels, moving from his fingertips and up through his arm.  He wants to do it again immediately.

Instead he says “Who’s next?”

Percy steps into the middle of the circle as Ron steps back out.  He is at something of an advantage compared to the actual wizards in the room because his powers work differently.  It’s a self-contained thing, drawn from his internal power source rather than the magic in the air around him, and he knows his power much more intensively than he has any real desire to.  He thinks he might have a happiest memory too.

He draws his wand and thinks about Annabeth.  He thinks about a time pre-Gigantomachy, pre-Tartarus, pre-Juno but post-Battle of Manhattan.  It wasn’t technically their first kiss but it’s the first one he counts.  He remembers the elation of their victory palpably, even as its edges were dulled by all of their losses in the war.  He remembers the smell of the strawberry fields by camp in summer that make the whole place smell bright and fresh and sweet.  He remembers Annabeth’s hair and Annabeth’s smile and being thrown into the lake.  He remembers the cheering and he remembers making the air bubble, how it was the only use of his powers for a long time that had felt fun and free and not like he was more of a weapon than a person, and he remembers her lips.  “ Expecto Patronum,”

He opens his eyes and steps back from what is forming on the other side of his wand.  “Woah,” he says.  He is aware that pretty much every eye in the room is focused on him but he is okay with that, used to it, much more focused on more important things.  The silver mist doesn’t stop growing, doesn’t stop twisting and turning over itself and travelling upwards into the empty air over their heads as though fighting to find the space.  He keeps his wand steady and tips his head back to look at its underbelly as it begins to take shape.

The creature must be about 18 metres long and he briefly wonders if the room might have changed its shape to accommodate it.  It moves overhead with grace then turns itself and swims down through the air, its wide mouth almost smiling.  Ron looks at Percy, eyes wide.  “What is that?” he says mystified.  Percy blinks a couple of times because he’s kind of surprised Ron wouldn’t already know.  Maybe wizards’ understanding of the world is somehow worse than he had previously thought.

He raises his eyebrow at his Patronus that is taking up the whole room and pretends like he doesn’t notice that everybody else in the room has ceased their attempts to watch in awe.  “That’s a whale shark,” he says.

Nico is next, once everyone has calmed down a bit.  He almost can’t help but to roll his eyes because of course Percy’s Patronus would be some sort of sea giant.  And still it is a peaceful one.  Nico can only hope for such luck.

The happiest memory thing is hard for him.  He wants it to be something involving Bianca, maybe even his mother, his life before he had been removed from it and then taken to re-join the world decades later when nearly everything he used to hold dear had been forgotten.  He doesn’t regret the displacement for so many reasons but there are a lot of things he can’t help but miss occasionally.

So he thinks about his eighth birthday.  His mother was there and so was his sister and he was too young to really understand that the world was in as much of a state as it was and he was never quite made to fit into it.  He was small and happy and bright and he misses that feeling and he misses his family but he would never trade his life in the 21st century to go back there.  “ Expecto Patronum,” he casts but he knows before he looks that it won’t have worked.  Sure enough, mist sputters from his wand and then just becomes part of the air and his skin crawls.  He really wants Bianca to be a part of his happiest memory but he knows that she can’t be, that every memory he has of her has been tainted by her loss and everything else surrounding it and that dread he always sort of feel about what might have become of him had he stayed in his own time.

Neville goes next.  He sends Jason a look as he watches him take a step back and gesture Neville to the middle, as though he doesn’t want to take his turn.  He hopes he’s okay.

Neville has the memory ready, one of his grandmother at her nicest and most agreeable, but his magic has a bit of a habit of going rogue.  Sure enough, he gets a thin stream of mist but no form and is thoroughly delighted to be able to do even that.

And now Jason can’t avoid it anymore.  It’s that bothersome little happiest memory thing that is getting to him.  He still doesn’t have a lot of his memories.  He is lacking specific moments from before the switch.  He remembers the people he knew but he doesn’t remember meeting them or getting to know them or almost any of their conversations.  He doesn’t have a happiest memory.  He has a big blank spot and he an ex-girlfriend who maybe could have liked him but couldn’t get over that it was never real because Juno had cobbled them together for convenience, and a dead best friend who he was also just thrust upon by a goddess with no concern for either of them.

“ Expecto Patronum,” he says but he has precisely zero expectation it will do anything at all because he doesn’t have a memory in mind.  Sure enough, nothing happens.

After Ron has his next go and gets a stronger stream of silver but still no real shape Nico tries again.  He swaps out the memory for a more recent one.  It is of Will and Camp and the closest thing he has to a family these days and he feels guilty that it works.  His Patronus is a bit more understated than the giant shark but it takes the sure shape of a coyote.  Figures it would be a scavenger.

Jason waves his wand with little conviction.  He still doesn’t have a convincing memory in mind and his wand barely splutters silver.  He can’t have this.  He needs to keep thinking, searching for something.  It isn’t fair and it isn’t his fault that his past was stolen from him and never given back.  His fingers are numb and he feels like a fraction of a person.

Chapter Text

They should have more time.  Ron is eager for sword practice, so much so that he is starting to wonder quite why, what it is about sword fighting that keeps on drawing him back even though he is always pretty miserable the next morning.  He thinks it’s a combination of the catharsis of the fight as well as the knowing that here is a thing that he is (relatively) good at and that Harry and Hermione are not, here is a thing that just might justify why he is there, reassure him and everyone he cannot help but bother that he is an asset and not just an annoyance.

Dobby appears in front of him before he can even release his sword from its charm.  The house elf is disgruntled and concerned, shaking his head and his hands in an attempt to refocus attention.  He has a message, a simple, urgent one.

Umbridge is on her way.  Disperse disperse disperse.

Ron ends up being amongst the people who essentially sacrifice themselves to let everybody else rush out and back through the halls in the other direction, to get out of there.  There is no chance his name isn’t in the first few that Umbridge would learn anyway.  This is the sort of thing he has become semi-regrettably known for.  Nico sticks close to his side, scowls at the empty space of the corridor in front of them whilst they wait and the panicked footsteps behind them eventually retreat and fall away.  Ron almost asks him which hex it will be this time but doesn’t get the chance.

Umbridge clears her throat as she rounds the corner.  It is too high pitched to ever be a natural sound.  It’s confounding really, because he can’t believe a human would ever actively choose to do just about anything that Umbridge does.  And yet here she is.  She is flanked by people Ron hates like Malfoy and his crew and it only makes her look more ridiculous, as though she is being guarded on either side by teenagers.  Ones she refuses to teach to defend themselves.

She smiles sweetly momentarily.  Then it falls away for a second.  Then she brings it back, a shaky approximation at what it was.

They end up in her office.  It’s awful.

The decorations are kitschy in a very eccentric nan kind of way but there is something about knowing that a person as sapped of affection, personability, or empathy as Umbridge put them there that turns them from ugly but endearing to just plain ugly.  Painted cats tumble over each other, mew and purr.  They are trapped in decorative plates mounted to the walls and surrounded by so much pink it makes Ron honestly nauseous.  Her chair is overstuffed and almost neon and the chairs she has for them are not only far too few in number but seem to have been selected precisely because of how uncomfortable they look.  Ron’s tailbone starts hurting as soon as he sits down and he can almost feel the chair bend as Nico clasps a hand on either side of the back of it and tightens until his already white knuckles seem almost transparent.

He doesn’t even know the name of the girl Umbridge brings in just to have her stand to the side whilst Umbridge gloats about finding them out.  She would sound a lot more smug but she is being stared down by people who are oddly effective at antagonising her.  “It’s nice to see your teeth back to usual,” Ron remarks insincerely before thinking because he is an idiot and her eyes darken.  There are boils on the girl’s face.  That must be Hermione’s doing.  She holds her hands in front of them but she can only hide so much.  Ron isn’t listening.

They get moved from her office to Dumbledore’s.  Ron doesn’t pay attention as to why.  “Dumbledore’s army!” she declares triumphantly the very moment Dumbeldore’s door opens.  There is a sound like a growl behind Ron.  He whips his head around expecting to find a dog but instead meets Percy’s eyes then Jason’s that are darker than he has ever seen them.  Umbridge’s hands meet and then she can’t take them apart.  They tighten against each other, squeezing, squeezing, and her expression completely changes.  The smugness dies and the worry takes over.  Her hands keep tightening and Ron hears a sickly crack and they all fall silent.  A tear falls over her cheek and she hisses “The ministry will be hearing about this and you will be facing consequences,” a pop. She turns and stomps away.  Crunch.  As if just for good measure Nico whips out his wand and casts entemorphis.  There is no chance DUmbeldore doesn’t see him do it but does not stop him and, as Umbridge scuttles away, he turns as looks at them.  He looks disappointed.  Ron’s not having it.  If he didn’t want them to do this then he should have come up with a solution himself.

“I will assume responsibility,” he reassures, and then he turns them away.  Just like that.  More than ever Ron needs that sword fighting but they can’t go to the room of requirement now.  His hands shake and his stomach is tight and angry.  This isn’t a feeling he experiences very often.

He looks at Nico as they skulk away.  “Is there any chance,” he says, “that we can practise elsewhere?”  He doesn't like how Nico smiles at him.  He doesn’t like how Percy and Jason join in.  He doesn't like the walk in the dark to a clearing in the Forbidden Forest.  He does like the feeling of hitting and yelling and fighting fighting fighting until he thinks that he will drop.

Dumbledore disappears.  Nobody knows quite when it happens but as soon as it does Umbridge appoints herself head mistress and assigns a group of the most bigoted, arsehole-ish students she can find to take on the role of patrolling the halls, looking for people to punish for the slightest infractions.  Hermione isn’t sure how she does it.  If she faced even a fraction of the humiliation Umbridge does at the hands of the students she would have run away long ago; there is no way she would be attempting to elevate her position in the school like that.

Somebody fills the great hall with firecrackers.  She doesn’t know for sure but she’s fairly confident it is Fred and George’s doing.  Umbridge tries and fails to neutralise them and there is not one member of faculty that even pretends they are helping.  Not even Snape.  It’s nice to know that they literally cannot be paid to pretend they care.  It doesn’t necessarily help but it feels good.

Harry can’t take much more.  He keeps waking up in a cold sweat, dreaming about the department of mysteries and its dust-laden shelves, the dim orbs that feel like they are pulsating, beating like human hearts, beating and calling and screeching with the want to be taken away, taken out, put to good use.  And he can’t touch them.  He gets close, feels the way the energy thrums through his nerves, and his blood burns the closer his fingertips get.  He can;t quite brush the surface though.  He can imagine touching it, imagine how it will be neither cold nor warm against his fingertips, how it will make him feel like he is seeing past himself, into himself, how it will be neither cold nor warm and yet it will burn him alive.  But the moment he gets close he wakes up.

He has Occlumency again.  He still can’t do it.  He sits across from Snape and tries to block off the most important things, trying to minimise the way it hurts.  He is glad for the interruption even if it is delivered by Draco Malfory on behalf of Delores Umbridge.  He stands in the doorway of Snape’s office looking snidely at Harry as though he is there because he wants to be and it is somehow a good thing, and in return Harry tries his hardest to psychically murder him.  It would be the perfect crime, one untraceable to him, if only Harry could make it work.  No luck.  Snape tells him to stay still and wait and follows Malfoy out of the dungeons.

Harry of course does not stay still and instead uses the opportunity to snoop.  Snape’s office is full of weird jars and viscera suspended in some sort of translucent liquid but that is by far not the most interesting part of it.  The walls are stone and cold to the touch and there is no natural light, only a candle that flickers as though with effort, like it is fighting to keep the space from being plunged into total darkness.  There is little of personal value but there is one thing that Harry keeps getting drawn back to.  The pensieve.  It is a big thing, made of what must be white marble, that sits in the corner and sticks out like a sore thumb.  Harry stands up and trails his hand over the outside rim.  It is like a large birdbath but there is something more to it that he can’t quite explain outside of it simply being magic.  In it a few tablespoons worth of pearlescent liquid shimmer.  He steps up onto the step built into the bottom of it, finds that there are grooves worn slightly wider than his own feet, and stares down at the liquid.  He doesn’t think about it anymore.  He bends over and sinks in.

His hope had been that there might be something about the department of mysteries in there but there is not.  He is standing in a classroom in front of a sixteen-year-old boy with limp, greasy hair, bad skin, and dark circles like he doesn’t even remember how to sleep.  He is writing, probably doing an exam, and he is Severus Snape decades younger and absolutely no happier.  He sticks his tongue out of the side of his mouth as he thinks and writes with such ferocity that he keeps forgetting he needs to dip his quill back into his ink until the nib starts scratching the page.  Harry can do nothing but watch him until Severus yawns and, just like when Snape was rifling through Harry’s memories, he is moved swiftly along.

He is standing right by the edge of the black lake and the Hogwarts grounds are bustling.  They are never quite like this now, as though Harry’s Hogwarts has only half the students it is supposed to.  He hasn’t noticed a feeling of absence like this before but now that he sees another option he gets the sense he will know it intimately from this point forward.

He sees Snape again first.  He walks hunched over like an old man but he is young and his face is sallow like he hasn’t been eating and the sunlight is cruel on his features.  Then he sees other people, people just as achingly family yet further removed from how Harry knows them to be today.

First is Sirius.  He looks healthy.  There is something sad about him still, but it is far removed from what he has grown and been moulded into.  Then a man who can only be a young Remus Lupin.  There is something nervous about him, something self-conscious, but the scars on his face are still there all these years later.  He is still the same man.  Peter Pettigrew next.  Harry struggles to look away from him because he appears so normal.  He is a bit timid, somewhat nerdy, almost like he can;t quite believe he belongs where he is.  He has proven by now that he didn’t.  Harry wishes he could hit him but moves on to the man who can only be his father.  Harry sees the resemblance.  This young James Potter is almost a mirror image of him but taller and sans the glasses.  He holds himself differently too, like there is something that is constantly holding him up in place of the thing that is always trying to force Harry down.  He can’t look away from his dad’s profile, the hint of the amber of his eyes he can see from this angle, his nose that is the same shape as Harry’s, his smile that dimples but only when it stretches far enough.  Harry is mesmerised.

Until he is disillusioned.                                       

“Oi, Snivellus!” Sirius calls and, exactly as Severus does, Harry tenses up.  He watches his father, his god-father, the best teacher he has ever had--his idols--become cruel and jeering.  He watches them become mean for no reason.  He watch shis mother run forward.  He wants to sob.  Her hair is bright red and her skin is so white it takes on the warm colour of the sunlight.  She looks like she is glowing.

“Stop!” she cries.  Harry can’t move, can only watch.

“Stop it,” Severus says.  He is not looking at Harry’s father but rather at Lilly Evans who is standing between them like a spindly wall.  “Leave me alone, Mudblood,” he spits.  He stops being Severus, becomes Snape, and Harry’s blood runs cold.

He is moved from the scene, pulled roughly and uncaringly out of it.  He is gasping for air and Snape is standing  behind him, his hand tight on Harry’s shoulder.  It only gets tighter as Harry turns around,  Snape’s face is tighter than his grip and he looks down at Harry as though he is something stuck to the bottom of his shoe.  “Get out!” he says, practically shaking with rage.  It is the most emotion Harry has ever seen Snape display and he complies without argument because he has bigger things on his mind than being a thorn in Snape’s side.

Betrayal.  It rattles through his body like a bullet through a rifle.  His dad was supposed to be an unequivocally good man, his god-father is supposed to be completely guiltless, Lupin is supposed to be nothing but caring.  Where was all of that?  What were they doing?  Sure it was Snape, but if it wasn;t Snaoe then it would have been someone else.  Just like Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle, maybe even worse.  They were cruel.  They were trying to hurt him.  They were supposed to be better.  And they never even mentioned it, as though they didn’t feel the slightest bit of shame about it.

People have been telling him his whole life that he is James Potter in miniature and Harry has been leaning his hardest into it, trying to become more and more like James by the day, subconsciously aiming to bring him indirectly back to life.  He isn’t so sure he wants it anymore.  He knew, of course, that he had never gotten the chance to know his father.  But now he can’t see past it.  James Potter is a stranger.  Harry carries his face and his name and he wonders if maybe he has been buying into that too much.  Harry Potter is James Potter’s son, his DNA.  He doesn;t have to be any more of him than that if he doesn;t want to be and he suddenly doubts that James Potter is the admirable thing to grow into.

He skulls off back to bed and wills everything to go back to normal.  He feels worse when he realises he doesn’t have a single clue what normal even is.

He has a career meeting with McGonagall.  He goes.  McGonagall bolsters him up and Umbridge, who has decided it is her place to sit in, tells him he is wrong, shooting too high, barking up the completely wrong tree.  He wants to be an Auror and the Ministry would never hire Harry Potter for even the most amenable of jobs.  True enough.

“Your Ministry won’t be in place long enough for that to matter to me,” he says matter-of-factly.  He doesn’t care how she responds.  He has decided to take a new approach where he just ignores her and everything she does.  It is probably working.

He leaves and goes to lunch in the Great Hall.  Nico, Percy and Jason are all standing just outside of it, talking amongst themselves.  “-I don’t even feel bad about it anymore,” he overhears Percy say.  He sounds conflicted.  They cut off their conversation and join Harry as he walks in and he is far too preoccupied with his internal debate about whether or not to call Sirius and interrogate him about everything he has ever done wrong and whether or not he feels bad about it, to mind that there is blatantly something they don’t feel like discussing with him.  Even if he did want to get in contact with Sirius he isn’t sure how he could do it.  He can’t be sure Umbridge won’t intercept letters and they know now the fireplaces are too high risk.  He wants to scream and shout and he has no way to reach the one person alive he needs to listen to it.

Chapter Text

Percy and Nico join Hermione in the Gryffindor stands.  The last quidditch match of the year feels somehow both incredibly inconsequential and also like it might be the last moment of relaxation she is going to have for a while.  This isn’t even close to what she thought her life might look like when she was eleven and an tawny owl showed up at her window with two letter rolled together attached to one of its legs: one about her acceptance, the other specific to muggle-borns who needed all the guidance they could get about a strange, magical world they had never set foot into, and everything had slotted into place, started to make sense.  She was excited back then and now, more often than not, she’s terrified.

She almost can’t believe that Harry, Ron and Jason are even allowed to play after Umbridge found out about the DA.  Perhaps it is just that she didn’t want to have to face Percy and Nico again, whatever it was that they did to her, whatever it was that stopped her fighting back.  Hermione really doesn’t know what it is that Percy does because it is as though he casts spells silently and without a wand and they are vaguely horrific even if she is not well-informed as to what the mechanism for suffering actually is.  With Nico, though, they are just jinxes and hexes, a magical middle finger that makes her miserable.  They are fightable and provable and punishable.  Hermione looks over at Nico’s head.  Percy sits between them but she can still see the side of his face, the harsh angles of his profile and the point at which it is cut off by a curtain of hair that is almost too dark.  See how he smiles down at the pitch, presumably meeting Jason’s eyes.

Then she remembers.  Remembers feeling like the pain in her arm would never end, never give her body back, remembers feeling like she couldn’t breathe, like she was going to drown in the middle of the Room of Requirement.  She had backed out of having Nico cast a spell on her, to this day hasn’t experienced it, because she feared what the gloomiest of the strange transfers, who have since become good friends but are certainly no less strange, might inflict upon her as a side effect of the spell.  She is sure that, by now, Umbridge knows whatever that feeling is intimately.  It can’t be good.

Ron waves at her from the pitch so she waves back and he puts on his helmet and the teams gather on opposite sides of the pitch and she watches over them even though there is no action to see and she is too far away and the people between them are too loud for her to hear what they are saying.  She is almost excited about this match and she doesn’t even like Quidditch.

But then there is a hand on her shoulder.  It is too big, too warm, too rough.  She turns around in her seat and squints up at Hagrid.  He looks sheepish, embarrassed, worried.  She knows well enough that isn’t a good combination of emotions on anyone’s face, and as far as Hagrid is concerned it is downright catastrophic.  She jumps to her feet and he tries to lead her away but she looks at Nico and Percy who are looking at her.  The way they squint and grimace and lines appear between their eyebrows is basically identical.  They share a family resemblance that Jason seems to have been more or less left out of.  She waves them along and Hagrid doesn’t stop her so they stand and follow.  Harry, Ron and Jason will understand why they had to leave.  If they win (they will, Hermione has seen them play and Jason is a little more than a weapon on the Quidditch pitch), they won’t be mad, just a little bitter that they missed them doing it.  Whatever it is Hagrid needs them for seems important so she decides that she’s okay with that.

Hagrid leads them out of the stands and down onto the grass.  The weather is warming and the sun is bright overhead but the heat is far from oppressive and the grass is a healthy green rather than a dried-out, heatwave yellow.  He makes them promise not to be mad at him, to give him a chance to explain himself.  He doesn’t tell them what about and it makes Hermione nervous.  Her stomach is turning but she nods because it is Hagrid and she has her expectations set at well-intentioned but stupid and dangerous and there are plenty of much worse things in her life than that.

The giant in the Forbidden Forest might be pushing it a little bit though.

There is a moment when she is too distracted by the hulking form of a humanoid who is just shaped a little bit wrong sitting on the forest floor, flattening magical foliage, and pulling up trees with hands that could squeeze all the life out of her with little effort, almost babbling to himself like an infant, to notice how Percy and Nico look at each other when they see him, how their eyes harden.  When she notices it send another shock of fear through her.  These are her friends and she should be at ease but Percy’s pen is in his hand and Nico’s ring, secretly his own sword, is clasped tight in his palm and they don’t even have weapons drawn and they look positively dangerous.  There is something about it that isn’t right at all, something about it that says danger, that says I am fighting for my life.  Now she sees it so clearly, so undisguised, she has this awful feeling in her chest that some semblance of that expression is always there, just under the surface.  She thinks of them laughing, smiling, and wonders if she is imagining that glint underneath it all, the silent scream: I am fighting for my life.

“This is Grawp,” Hagrid says.  Hermione is still staring at her friends and they are still staring at the giant.  They do not trust him and Hermione, despite that flickering flame of fear that she doesn’t remember how to put out, that they keep making climb, trusts them.  She doesn’t get near the giant, touches her palm flat to her pockets just to be sure she knows where her brooch and her wand are.  “He’s my half-brother,”

It doesn’t move completely away from battle-ready, but Percy’s expression softens somewhat, and he looks forensically between Hagrid and Grawp almost like he is seeking out a resemblance.  He breathes out and the pen stays in his hand but his grip relaxes and he allows it to fall to his side.  The look on Nico’s face is almost fond as he follows suit, like he understands exactly what is going on.  There is something about the expression and the way that Nico wears it that makes him look years younger, like someone who has had a different life.  She isn’t entirely convinced that if that moment were isolated into a still-frame muggle photo she would actually recognise it as him at all.

She agrees with Hagrid that she will help because she doesn’t know what else she can do, and then they go back to the quidditch pitch because they don’t know what else they can do.  They are slowed by centaurs with threats and complaints that are directed at Hagrid but reflect onto her but they do not escalate to violence so they keep moving through the trees and the undergrowth.  They return to cries of “Weasley is our king!” and “Amazing Grace!” and she bristles for just a moment before she realises what they really mean.  "They’ve won!"  She missed it.

Ron’s friends must have a collective death wish.  This isn’t strictly a new discovery but he is shocked anew by how deep it runs every time it rears its ugly head.

“To reiterate,” his eyes are open as wide as they can physically go.  He is sure of this because he has tried to open them wider and they just won’t go.  It is starting to hurt. “You want me to go out into the Forbidden Forest--which, by the way, notoriously not safe--to meet a giant?” He can’t believe it is a sentence is saying but his friends are nodding along as though it is a completely reasonable request.  At least Harry looks to be at least a bit hesitant, but he has been a bit despondent for a while and he will not talk about why.  He doesn’t go to lessons with Snape anymore.  That could be part of it.  Ron decides that Harry must be on his side because he hasn’t said he is not and looks to Jason for extra backup.  “Come on,” he says, “You’re smart, you’re sensible.  This is a terrible idea, right?”

Jason shrugs.  “I don’t know,”

“Traitor,” Ron mumbles under his breath.  Everybody hears it clearly.

“Well, you trust Hagrid, right?  And he asked us to do this for a reason.”

The reason is obviously that Hagrid has lost it.  Maybe all of his friends have too because they are entertaining it.  It is like Jason is trying on recklessness and seeing how it fits, like a pair of trousers belted tightly at the wait so they don’t fall down.  Ron wants to tell him as much but bites his tongue.  He is outnumbered.  He huffs about it but admits it all the same.  “Fine!  I don’t want to let Hagrid down.  I’ll meet the giant,” he’s terrified.  He always is.  He is more scared by the fact that he can’t help but think most of the time that he is the only one who feels it.  He clasps his carving.  His subconscious is more drawn to the weapon he has had for months than the wand he has trained to use for years.  It’s like it is trying to tell him something.

His life goes from bad to worse.  From giants with stunted growth that really doesn’t seem that stunted at all to exams that are future-defining and completely terrifying.  The actual percentage of his time at Hogwarts that Ron has spent studying is almost shamefully low, but he feels comforted by the defence that most of that is not actually his fault, even if there is nobody overlooking their exams who would be interested in that excuse.

The academic pressure rising does nothing to subdue the other pressures of his life.  He gets out of a herbology exam, studies the soil under his nails and the ink stains on his fingertips and palms, and decides to wander the grounds a bit.  The weather is finally kind and there is something about the moment of calm that calms him to embrace it.

As it turns out, his walk is far from calming but it feels pretty necessary.  Without his mind registering it, his feet have marched him in the direction of Hagrid’s hut.  He knows he isn’t supposed to be there, shouldn’t be knocking on Hagrid’s door, but that doesn’t mean he can’t hope to at least bump into him.  The smoke curling out of the chimney makes the air smell warm and dry, harshens the smell of flowers and greenery, and he wanders almost aimlessly closer and closer to it.

Until he sees the people crowded outside Hagrid’s front door.  Ron looks around.  He is far enough away that they haven’t seen him, seemingly more focused on discussing amongst themselves in a way that suggests they might be planning an ambush.  He could turn around and walk away, but if he does that then he will miss what has happened and he has decided that when he is in the position where he can do something useful or turn and run away, he should commit himself to the useful option every time.  He doesn’t give it much thought, turns and ducks behind trees in the Forbidden Forest and moves surreptitiously closer.  He peeks through the branches, around the trunk, and strains himself to hear if the strangers are saying anything rather than focusing in on the screeches and snaps and calls of the forest.  He could swear he couldn’t hear them before he ducked behind the tree.  Maybe he couldn’t.  There is something about the forest that makes him cold in spite of the warmth of the day.  It could be that he fears it, but it could also be that something about that forest swallows life and light and comfort like a dementor, or perhaps more mundanely, that the thicket and the criss-cross of branches and trunks and vines and foliage blocked the sun and the warmth out.

For a beat nothing happens at all, and then everything happens faster than Ron can react to it.  Hagrid’s door is kicked in, six wands are waved in time, six bolts of coloured light are unleashed in unison, six spells are deflected back in different directions all at once.  Hagrid roars and McGonagall comes running to help him but the strangers turn on their heels and something about how they move makes Ron’s skin crawl.  It is like they are all one being, like they are organs rather than people.  He shakes himself off, just in case there really is a bug or a hundred crawling all over him and contemplates unleashing his sword, sprinting in and helping.  The strangers cast spells and McGonagall goes down and the blood rushes in Ron’s ears.  He really could do it, but if he goes out with a sword no and Umbridge catches word of it she will confiscate everything he owns if she does not find the sword anywhere and then he really will be useless.  He watches her fall, watches Hagrid slip away, watches the strangers disperse.

He helps McGonagall to her feet and bears most of her weight on his back as he helps her hobble to the infirmary.  It is like the building is helping them because all the stairs and hallways are exactly where Ron needs them and he does not have to wait for them to change.

Madame Pomfrey tells him to go, nicer to him than he thinks she has ever been in all of his five years here, so he does.  He sprints to the common room, finds Nico and Percy there as well as Harry and Hermione and Jason, all hunched over parchments and open books.  She is reading aloud and if Ron was a bit less urgent he might hesitate before interrupting her.  As it stands, he cuts her off, a word dies on her tongue, and he tells them it all, relays every detail he remembers with all the specificity he can.

Harry doesn’t sleep.  He can’t.  It’s like Ron’s words are running laps around his head and knowing that he has no protection against Voldemort getting straight back into his head terrifies him.  He has an exam tomorrow.  He knows it, wills himself asleep and closes his eyes to the darkness, but his mind keeps moving, doesn’t stop.  He stays awake.

His history of magic O.W.L was always one he wasn’t going to enjoy.  Not that he enjoys any exams, but this one is especially bad.  It is not helped by the fact he has been awake for 27 hours straight and his head feels like it has been stuffed full of cotton wool.  Something about his vision isn’t quite right, keeps going black.  Every time it does his neck snaps back and he shakes his head and wills himself to stay awake for just two hours more.  He drops his quill and a streak of ink moves meaninglessly across his page.  He looks at it in contempt and tries to remember what the question is.  He cradles his head in his hands in his frustration and, against his will, his eyes fall shut.

He is in the department of mysteries again.  His body hums with energy and his heart hammers in his chest and his eyes race to take in every detail.  The orbs pulse like they have life of their own and a voice crawls out of his mouth like something half dead.  The voice is thin and reedy, hissing and sinister.  It is not his.  “Get it,” he commands with words and a tongue that are Voldemort’s.  He looks down at his hands: they are thin and slender like they have been sanded down to the bone and they have done terrible, terrible things.  “Bring it down from the shelf,”

A shape on the floor moves.  It is dark and amorphous for a moment, but it is also defiant.  “I won’t,” strikingly familiar.  If the heart hammering in his chest were actually Harry’s it would feel as though it stops.  “I will die before I help you,” a weak voice.  Weak like when he had first escaped, when every sentence was punctuated by shuddering coughs, when he had to relearn how to really speak because he had spent years with nobody to talk to.  Harry feels a twinge of the betrayal, still fresh and bright, but it is drowned in the worry.  Sirius is still his godfather and he is still hunched on the floor in the ministry, clearly in pain, Voldemort looming over him.  He doesn’t need to think about young Sirius now, can’t let his mind wander like that.  There is a Sirius in this moment right now who is hunched on the floor and experiencing misery like no other, but this is the same Sirius that went through Azkaban and not only escaped but did so with more of his sanity intact than not.

If there is anyone who can make it through this it is Sirius Black.  Harry believes it because he has to.  They are out of time.  This is obvious what Voldemort wants him to think but that doesn’t make it any less earth-shakingly true.  There is little comfort for him now, at Hogwarts or anywhere else.  He is not letting hi godfather go like that, even if he is playing right in Voldemort’s hands.  He chose this tactic because he knew it would work.  It is working.

Harry wakes up.  There are ten minutes of his exam left and he spends them scrawling mindlessly in a half-crazed scramble for a few extra points.  He will probably be forgiven his failings once things are fixed up but he needs to fix them for that to happen.  The moment the exam ends he runs out of it, grabs his friends and takes them up to the infirmary to talk to McGonagall, to plan.  They still don’t have much to work with but if it isn’t enough then it will be too late by the time they can use it.  They are stopped by the door.  Madame Pomfrey looks the worse he has ever seen her, her eyes droopy and her skin almost papery in its thinness, her hair a mess and her nails chewed to the quick.  She shakes her head.  There is something unbalanced about the movement.  “Professor McGonagall has been moved to St. Mungo’s.  I’m sorry,”

That seals the deal.  They are acting now.  If they are not ready then they never will be.

Chapter Text

Hermione has it in her head that Harry should make sure that Sirius actually isn’t where he is supposed to be before he rushes headfirst into danger, and it is hardly like she is wrong but he has this desperate want, bordering almost on a need, for her to be.  If Sirius is in danger then the delay the checking will cause could make all the difference.  And still, because she is Hermione and she looks at him in this way that tells him she will only cooperate if he first does the bare minimum of checking in at Grimmauld Place, he does it.

He has to wait to do it.

Only for a couple of hours, but he would rather not waste them, until Umbridge retires for the night and they have even half a chance of getting into her office and using her fireplace to check in.  The door squeaks like a trap but this is the only room in the school with a fireplace he can use and an ornate porcelain pot of floo powder sitting on the mantle as though it is literally asking him to reach in and take it.  He reasons with himself that if Umbridge really didn’t want people breaking in she would charm the door so they can’t just Alohomora it open.  Then again, he doesn’t particularly care what Umbridge wants.

He takes a handful of the powder, allows most of it to fall back through the gaps between his fingers and into the dish, and then throws it into the flame that sputters safely, like it too is under Umbridge’s control.  The smell is acrid and unpleasant but not unfamiliar.  He doesn’t step in but rather leans so his head passes through the flames but his body stays rooted firmly where it is and he is only half aware of Ron and Hermione hovering behind him like they are guarding his body whilst most of his senses travel across the UK, to Grimmauld Place’s grimy fireplace.  It is a dizzying feeling, like a watered down Portkey, and as he twists through it, a momentary thing, he realises there might be nobody there to hear him.

He never thought he would consider the sight of Kreacher of all things lucky, but the house elf’s snarl at his disembodied head dancing in green flame is exactly what he hopes to see.  “Kreacher!  Is Sirius here?”

“Master Black is at the Department of-”

Harry is rudely removed from the flame and he is half convinced he is going to lose his head as it is pulled through the twisting without really being carried along in it.  It is okay because he can fill in the gap without issue--Sirius is in the Department of Mysteries, which means he needs Harry’s help, which means Voldemort very well may be luring him but Harry can’t afford not to take the bait even though he is well aware of that fact.

It is not okay because the hands on his shoulders are small and have given up any pretence of care.  Their grip is brutal, too-long nails pressed into skin through his uniform in a way that blunts them, turns semi-precise points into a broader press, bruising.  He spins on his heel and looks down at Umbridge who snarls up at him like she believes she is twenty feet tall and he is a bug under her shoe.  She has no more time to pretend she cares about his well being.  His blood is red, which is almost pink.  He might make a fine decoration if she pulls him apart into small enough pieces.

His head swims, spins over itself like it is still being wrenched through the floo network, and he understands he cannot let Umbridge stop him here.  He doesn’t care what that actually means, just that he is able to push past her.

Hermione and Ron stand behind her, some of her student bodyguards--Slytherins, tall, broad, nameless for all the care Harry can afford to give to them--have their arms pinned behind their backs, their shoulder tight in vice grips, their wands discarded on the Toad’s desk where not even Ron’s lanky arms can retrieve them from where they stand.

Umbridge’s snarl turns into a smile, the kind that does not pretend to be sincere but instead leers.  She looks like she is convinced she has already won and Harry, because his wand sits beside his friends’ on the table--clearly removed from his pocket when his head was out of the room--and her biting grip has moved from his shoulders to his wrists, scraping her nails the entire way down, spits at her feet to tell her he isn’t giving up nearly that easily.  She is surprisingly strong but it doesn’t change anything.

“Mr. Potter,” she says.  Another of her teenage cronies takes his arms and she steps back to really look him in the eye so he turns his head.  “You understand I wasn’t expecting to see you at Hogwarts this year?  You have certainly made my job-- ehem-- interesting.  I sent those dementors your way for a reason, you understand?”

She is trying to bait Harry into talking, speaking, wasting time he doesn't have the luxury of so much as holding.  He glowers at her and does not tell her a single thing.  He opens his mouth so wide his jaw hurts and in the vague hope that somebody sympathetic might hear, he screams so intensely the sound hurts his throat the very moment it rips through it.  And still he sustains it until he coughs and splutters and the sound dies in his throat.

Umbridge blinks at him.  “That’s enough of that I think,” she draws her wand, her lips part, and Harry bows his head expecting something awful to be shot his way when he cannot defend himself against it.

The door opens.  Metallic swishing, screaming. Something is knocked over and Harry lifts his head as the grip on his arms tightens then relinquishes.

Neville Longbottom.

Harry has never been happier to see him than right now, standing in Umbridge’s horrible office in front of her lackeys, his hand tight and sure around the hilt of a bronze blade about the length of his arm.  He swings it in a wide arc and the movement is clumsy--Harry has been paying enough attention in their sword fighting lessons to know that much--but that doesn’t matter, because Umbridge and her bodyguards do not know how to fight it.

Harry takes the opportunity given by the surprise to act.  He lunges towards the desk and clutches the wands in his hand without allowing his attention to rest a moment longer than is actually necessary, ducks past Neville and out of the door after Hermione and Ron who are closer and just as set on getting out.  His arm goes back as he runs and he hooks a knuckle into the collar of Neville’s pyjama shirt as he passes, dragging Neville right alongside him, Hermione and Ron as they run.  Their lives depend on it.

Harry keeps shouting as they move.  They jump from staircase to staircase as they spin erratically, fling themselves over ornate banisters and try not to let the wind get knocked out of them or the impact on their knees knock them over.  They will have time to feel the injuries and fatigue later, but for now all that exists is the chase, the escape, the three wands in Harry’s hand, the shining blade in Neville’s, and the ground beneath their feet.  They need to keep the ground beneath their feet.  Harry flings himself over another empty space, flies through the air for just a moment too long, then sinks back to the ground and keeps running.  It will hurt when he stops but for now his feet are on the ground and propelling him forward which means they are working precisely as they should.

They have attracted attention from just about everywhere in the castle even though it is after lights out and nobody should be lingering around at all.  It is a good thing.  Harry barely notices what is happening behind him but does hear people--Ginny and Luna--exclaim “Got them!” so takes the briefest of moments to look.

There are members of Dumbledore’s army everywhere, holding back members of Umbridge’s.  A girl wearing a nightgown and slippers has SNEAK written across her face in boils and Draco Malfoy by the neck.  That is everyone but Umbridge herself dealt with.  If Harry can’t do this he can’t save Sirius.

He slows--does not stop--and sees Snape standing at the side, observing, helping nobody.  “He’s got Padfoot at the place where it’s hidden!” He yells.  His voice is still hoarse from the earlier scream but it is amongst the least of his concern.  It is a call for help, backup: if Snape has to be there he can at least be useful.

Jason runs down from the Gryffindor dorms, dressed in sweats and a t-shirt.  He has taken time out to put a pair of trainers on and Umbridge has a very significant head start over him.  He launches himself at the banister, slides down so fast there is no chance he has control over it but betrays no fear of falling as he plummets.  The banister ends, the empty space begins, he keeps falling and his expression does not change.  He lands on a stair--narrow, hazardous--much too lightly and just keeps running.  He doesn’t even stumble.  He reaches them about the same time as Nico and Percy, heading up then across from the dungeons, do.

The door yields quickly and without additional effort under the combined force of all of them running into it as though they are willing to pass through it if that will be faster.  The night beyond it is brisk, the air warm but the wind cold and determined.  They run straight into it, continuing their mad dash forwards without pause.  The Forbidden Forest lies just beyond the grounds.  It is even less safe at night.  Harry knows this because he has survived it so many times before.

Umbridge must still be following them but he can’t hear her.  They pass the first of the trees, a branch like a beckoning hand grazes Harry’s shoulder and sends a shiver down his spine, something that is either a tentacle or a vine snags briefly around his ankle.

He stops.  Breathes deeply.  Looks up at the canopy like a shelter overhead and hopes to see stars through it.  He cannot tell where the darkness of the forest ends and that of the night begins.  His ankle smarts but the chances of Umbridge catching up to them here, so long as they don’t spend too long catching their breath, are slim and he has time to register it.  He has fought through worse, files it away mentally in the later folder that is becoming worryingly full.

He takes in his friends as well as he can in the dark.  Hermione and Ron are still in their uniforms and still without their wands so he passes them over.  They are breathing just like he is; as though they have almost forgotten what air in their lungs feels like and they are fighting to remember.  Jason, Nico and Percy are much physically fitter and have been running a lot less.  They look like they might be discussing strategy over by the side of an oak with a trunk as wide as three of Harry but the blood is rushing in Harry's ears and he can’t hear them well enough to even decipher whether the language they are using is English or not, if this is a discussion he would be welcome in.

And Neville.  Now that they have been given a chance to stop Harry can appreciate quite how ridiculous he actually looks.  His hair is in his eyes and he is in his pyjamas--marigold yellow, a matching set--with bare feet and a sword, wickedly sharp, clearly heavy in his grip, hanging to his side.

He returns it to his Remembrall and smiles weakly at Harry.  He has no idea what he is in for and has decided to risk helping Harry anyway.  If they had time he might cry but they do not.

They keep moving forwards, following Percy and Nico who look like they are being guided through the labyrinth of trees and foliage by some sort of spirit which Harry is not able to see.

Nico knows many things, like the Forest they are in is not nearly so dangerous as the wizards have been convinced so long as you know how to navigate it and have an understanding that, just like everywhere else in the world, things have an outside chance of going wrong in varyingly catastrophic ways; like he wants to go home to Will and his friends and his own bed; like he never thought that would be something that he could have; like there is Death crowding a clearing up ahead and he is heading straight towards it.  It is the fastest way out and Percy completely agrees.

The shadows are so dense that Nico could sink into any one of them at any moment, he could be anywhere.  But he is right here because here is where he is useful even if it isn’t where he wants to be.  The life of a hero tends to involve giving up his own happiness--sometimes in a temporary capacity sometimes ( if everybody has returned where is Bianca?  Why can he not see her?  Why why why why why?) not--for the good of other people.  It is noble, it is proper, it is a miserable farce.  He, just like everybody else, has been hero-ing since he was a child (he still is one, won’t admit it, if he does it is like nothing has changed.  He still has his Mythomagic cards, keeps them in his sock drawer), if it were noble it would be a job taken up by gods who have grown insensitive over millennia to anything outside of themselves.  If it were noble he would be proud and it wouldn’t feel like it is costing him his humanity.

He looks at Percy.  There is an understanding there: too far gone.  And then Jason.  He and Percy have an understanding there too: if this ends soon he just might get away with his humanity intact in all the places it matters.  In the darkness his eyes almost look like they are glowing,  Nico decides not to remember whether or not they used to do that.

They step out of the trees and into a clearing.  He keeps walking, his cousins stay beside him.  The wizards are still catching their breath.  It doesn’t fill him with the most confidence.

“Thestrals,” Neville breathes.  Nico turns and looks at him as Percy approaches the creatures, says things out loud like “hey,” and “How would you feel about flying us somewhere?” that sound kind of inane but Nico knows they are genuine.  He spots a thestral in his periphery extending a wing like an invitation, another presses its muzzle into Percy’s inviting palm.  Nico cocks his head at Neville and, even in the dark, his flush is obvious.  “I think you need to catch me up on the plan a little bit,” Nico snorts.  There are enough thestrals for them to have one each.  Ron and Hermione can’t see them but that doesn’t mean they can’t fly them.  He hopes.

“We’re on our way to the ministry,” a thestral chooses Nico, nudges his side until he absentmindedly scratches between its leathery ears.  “We’ll have plenty of time to talk strategy,”

Neville looks at him, gulps like he is trying to swallow something solid.  “I don’t usually end up this involved in these things,”

Percy walks over, cuffs him on the back.  Demigods are sturdy and Percy is forgetful so he kind of stumbles under the force of Percy’s goodwill but does not react negatively to it.  Nico rolls his eyes.  “You have your sword and your wand, right?”

“Yes,” Neville practically squeaks.  Nico can’t believe they are the same age.  Sometimes, because he spends his time surrounded by either demigods or people who are already dead (too often both), it can be hard to forget life doesn’t just end at seventeen.  They are still children, they are just better at being soldiers than anything else by now.

Percy nods sagely.  It clues Nico into the fact that he is going to say something profoundly unhelpful.  “I had less than half that in my first big fight,” another pat on the back, this one a little more calibrated “You’ll be just fine,”

Nico resists the urge to facepalm and mounts his thestral.  This might be bad--it is, after all, a flying horse and the pegasi at camp have this really fun hobby where they spit on him whenever he gets within three feet of them and only escalate if he dares get any closer--but it could also be really good--it is a flying death horse, almost like a truce.

They lift off the ground in their own time.  For Nico, Percy and Jason it is almost no time at all because they are all, after all, in their element in some way or another, for Harry it is after a moment of hesitation that can do little to quell the spark of desperation flickering behind the lenses of his glasses.  It is a look that Nico knows intimately; he’d like to say it is not one that often ends well but, in his experience, there is not much that necessarily does.  Ron is in the air next.  It must be strange to look down and see nothing holding him up, but he is doing it.  He knows how to be scared, to know better and do things in spite.  It is a trait much needed in heroes.  Right now it is a good thing.  If this really as important of a day as Harry is convinced it is, they will wake up in a few weeks and it will have ceased to be, for the time being at least.  Hermione watches him rise and she is next, and then there is just Neville.

Nico is above him, peering down over the side of his thestral as he rises slowly into the night, testing just how high he can get before he gets smitten before he starts to feel too comfortable.  He rises higher and higher and there is no threatening crackle of ozone and it feels like Permission.  There is a ball in Neville’s hand--Nico can’t tell if it is his sword or the real Remembrall--and he stares into it for a moment too long.  It could be either.  He pockets it and looks up.

“Someone has to catch me if I fall,”

He joins them.

The higher they get the cooler the air is.  Nico is used to the cold, Jason and high altitudes go hand in hand, and Percy runs so feverishly hot that he probably can’t feel much of a difference.  The wizards, though, start to shiver.  It is one of many reminders that they don’t have time to hesitate.  Every blow is a killing blow, everything he and his cousins (especially the three of them together) have ever been recruited for is a killing war.  Hesitation is the difference between making it out alive and being lucky if your allies find you body to give you a proper send off.  It isn’t that death is always this horrible, immutably negative thing, it is just that that is the form it chooses to take where Nico’s family is concerned.

They begin to move.  They follow the train tracks because otherwise they would certainly get lost and Jason leads the pack like he doesn’t realise he is doing it.  The atmosphere is tense and charged but there is still something about Jason perched atop his thestral with wind in his hair, eyes alight and face splitting with a smile whenever he thinks nobody is looking, that reminds Nico that it is pretty hard for things to all be terrible at the same time.  The day he lost his sister will be remembered by somebody else as the happiest in their life.  He has grown to the point where that thought is a comforting one.

“What about Umbridge?” Neville says eventually.  There is nothing up here with them but the wind is loud and it combats his voice so he raises it to a shout almost as soon as he starts speaking.

“There are lots of things in those woods that would be happy to find her,” somehow Hermione makes her shouting sound beatific, “If the centaurs or the giants get to her…”

Nico smiles to himself.  That is one loss it seems will be difficult for anybody to grieve, and if there is anybody who does not give the forest the respect it demands, does not know how to defend themselves alone when things go wrong, it is Delores Umbridge.  No matter what happens tonight he is certain he will not be seeing her again.

It is hard to hold a conversation up here but he tries his best.  He digs in his heels--softly, more of an encouragement than a command--and his thestral swoops down and to the left where Neville is flying.  Nico is close enough he is optimistic that his voice, never the loudest, will carry with enough clarity to get his point across.  They will be in the air for a while.  That gives him the chance to explain everything in as much detail as he cares to.  Neville is terrified and yet is right there alongside him (the mark of a child soldier, like every twelve-year-old he has ever seen--or been--with a weapon and ill-fitting armour, the only promise they know being that if they make it through this fight they will be more likely to survive the next one), so Nico decides that he will spend his time explaining things in detail.  It might help calm Neville down and it will prepare him for what is to come as well as anything else Nico can offer.  One of the only things he doesn’t explain is what he and his cousins are, why they are there.  He says plenty about their shit luck though, and in a way that is almost the same thing.

They fly for long enough, over cities and towns of what look like worry dolls moving between houses, along streets, past cars like matchbooks on wheels, that, at long last, the main Ministry building crests the horizon.  He looks back at Neville.  “You ready?”

Neville gulps.  It is not a no.  No part of Nico had expected it to be.  “Any last words of advice?”

Nico looks him in the eye, tries to ignore the softness of his face or how his hands are trembling ever so slightly against his thestral's neck.  This speech is normally up to someone like Jason or Percy to give.  It is not that Percy does it with any more tact or that his disposition is that much more welcoming to the new kids who haven’t had the time to learn this sort of lesson naturally (It used to be though.  Gods, it really used to be), it is just that hearing about death from the mouth of the child of the Underworld disconcerts people a little more than it does from the mouth of anyone else.  But Neville is looking to Nico for this so he gives the speech, as short and direct as he can.  It is the proper form for this speech, the kind that can only be given at the last minute then pondered properly long after the fact.

“You’ll feel horrible if you end up killing anyone.  That doesn’t mean you won’t need to do it,”

Neville stares at him and the wind whips tears into his eyes and Nico contemplates an apology even though there isn’t one in any language that he knows of that can do the peculiarities and nuances of this situation justice.  He doesn’t have to.  Jason begins swooping down in front.  “Let’s fight stuff!” he says, just like Percy, just like a Greek, Graecus.  Nico might be more well-acquainted with the differences than just about anyone: the Romans are the legion, it means they get to live but it costs them identity; the Greeks have a summer camp that is happy and free if you get the timing right, but they haven’t really had to tackle the question of what comes next.

He doesn't know what it means to change from Roman to Greek but the thought of finding out makes him feel sick.

They touch down, dismount, and pile into an elevator.  There is something big ahead, nothing good.

Chapter Text

The lift goes up and Neville’s heart feels like it is stuttering.  And yet everybody he is with, though blatantly apprehensive, seems to be somehow at ease with this scenario, as though they have done this all time and time again.  He knows Harry, Ron and Hermione have, that to some extent or another their year always seems to culminate in everything going wrong, in them having to fix it, in them never getting out quite unscathed; the thought that much the same is true of the Americans is hardly a revelation at all.

Nico’s words still ring in his ears.  That doesn’t mean you won’t need to do it.

Maybe he was stupid not to realise it sooner, not to think about the fact that the weapon they were training him to use was decisively deadly without any of the harmless cantrip capacity of their magic.  Magic can easily be deadly but it doesn’t have to be, it doesn’t even have to hurt.  There is a sort of cleanliness to the killing curse, something about it that is distant and cold.  The sword, though, should he actually need to use it, will be anything but clean, instead messy, personal.  In a way the thought is easier to stomach: if he has to be a murderer then he would prefer to be one that is stuck with his actions rather than one who gets to turn away with nothing but two plain words lingering on his tongue to prove they were his in the first place.  That is how he gets to be a murderer without completely losing himself.

He shakes his head.  That really doesn’t matter because it won’t be coming to that.  It can’t.  His eyes meet Nico’s.  They are wide and apologetic, accompanied with the berets hint of a smile that is so clearly for Neville’s sake that it makes his stomach ache.  Nico is sorry.  He shouldn’t be.  Neville practically volunteered himself to be in this mess.  He gets the feeling the others don’t have quite so much of a choice.

The door opens with a hiss and his friends all slip out, stay close to the walls like they know how to navigate spaces they aren’t supposed to be in, know how to get through them as safely as possible.  Neville doesn’t know that, doesn’t know much.  He gulps and looks down.  His coordination has never been particularly amazing (and what a way to undersell his clumsiness that is) and he is going to trip and fall on his face and ruin this for everybody.  He should just turn around and walk away and not get in the way like he is bound to. He closes his eyes, wishes he was back in his dorm, back in his bed, asleep and oblivious to absolutely everything.  He can turn around, ride the lift back down, and wait it out.  He can go back to being useless old Neville Longbottom.  He looks at his bare feet and his pyjama trousers. He shouldn’t be here.  He should turn around and leave them to it and stay the same useless, blubbering, embarrassing child he has been his whole life.

A hand catches his sleeve, pulls him forwards ever so slightly.  The doors close behind him and, though he could easily open them back up, it feels like a barricade, like he is being told that it is too late to turn back.

When he looks up Nico di Angelo is right there, still wearing his apology.  Neville can’t begin to understand why they are not only allowing him to help but also encouraging him when he has ruined everything he has ever touched.  “What are the odds of this ending well?” he whispers.

“I’m sorry,” Nico says at the same time.

“You shouldn’t be,” Neville responds.  Nico’s quiet refusal to answer his question is answer enough.

Harry knows exactly where he is going.  He has been to the ministry, can pad over darkly tiled floors and keep spiralling downwards on the shadows of that sort of memory until he can’t, and then he has memory which is not his own to guide him.  From all of his dreams he knows that if he keeps going down then the walls will not be painted but rather raw, rough stone.  He knows there will be a water stain shaped like a cupped palm on a stone wall and they will turn left at the sight of it, they will walk straight until they can really tell that the ground is beginning to slope and then they will turn, not quite back the way they came.  There will be a door there.  They will go through it.  The ministry is labyrinthine beneath the surface: there is plenty hidden within it that should not be stumbled upon by accident.  The Department of Mysteries is not supposed to be stumbled upon at all.

The hallway is correct but it twists and turns like a writhing serpent, so awfully alive.  Harry just needs to not look at it, let his fingers skim the roughness of the wall, needs to listen.  Voices call--too many all at once, overlapping.  They are distant and therefore impossible to make out, but they are speaking and there is a thrumming all throughout Harry’s body like a frenetic baseline, like over-eager percussion, like the bottled feeling of fighting for his life.

He is going in the right direction so he keeps going.

There is another door.  This is it.  Harry breathes deeply and looks over his shoulder, sees that his friends are all still there with him, that they all have their wands and their swords and they are ready to encounter a fight just like he is ready to save Sirius.

Three, two, one.

He flings the door open.  The voices and the energy persist but otherwise all is quiet like it is empty.  He gulps but this is not over; the room is dark and dingy and smells like mildew and the weak lamps do not come to life until they are in the room and the door is closed behind them.  His skin is cold but his insides feel like they are melting.  He pokes and prods at his arms just to make sure they are still solid.

He knows this room from his dreams, from Voldemort standing over Sirius’ body.  Orbs line shelves, names written beneath.  He can’t figure out how they are organised.  In his dreams he could never get quite close enough to touch the orbs but now they are right there and he can just reach out and touch.  But he doesn’t.  He has a bad feeling, a sense of dread in the pit of his stomach that threatens to swallow him when his fingertips get anywhere close to the orb that is closest on his left side.  He keeps moving, looking for Sirius, calling his name and not caring for the silence and the mystique he knows he is breaking through like a selfish child.

He touches his own orb before he sees that it is his, equally Tom Riddle’s.  Neither warm nor cold, solid and unyielding yet distinctly delicate.  He shifts his hand, moves from fingertips to the flat of his palm.  It is not clouded glass all the way through.  He feels this sort of rattling, like there is something held inside that is not quite alive though it certainly is active, insistent, frantic, trapped.  He doesn’t know what he is doing when he lifts his other arm overhead and wraps it around the other side of the orb.  It shakes in his hands as he brings it down, cradles it to his chest like an infant, like he might soothe it if he slows his breathing enough.  It keeps pulsing like a heart driving itself towards collapse.  He knows as he holds it that if he drops it the glass will shatter and that will be it, gone.  He calls again.  Sirius does not answer because he is not there.

“Harry Potter,” a voice like fine silk presses itself too close to his ear.  He whips around, threatens to drop the orb but holds tightly onto it.  “I implore you to hand that over,” Lucius Malfoy’s face is only inches from his and his breath is hot and unpleasant on Harry's cheek and Sirius isn’t here but Malfoy senior is.  Voldemort has tricked him.  Of course he has.

Dumbledore had wanted him to learn Occlumency for a reason.  This is it.  This is the reason.  (He might be more inclined to do the right thing if ever anybody took the time to explain why they were right.)  He was never simply looking through Voldemort’s eyes--that is not how anything works, he knows that now, knows better (too late)--that was what Voldemort wanted him to think.  It worked.  And now Harry has put all of his friends in danger for what purpose?  The guilt makes his heart race, the orb’s own beating tries to race it and win without space for argument.  Harry wants to turn around and leave, pretend like he was never there at all, but there Lucius Malfoy is, right in front of him, right in his face, blocking the exit.  If he can’t leave his friends should at least go.  They  won’t.

“Give it to me,” The elder Malfoy commands again, his voice like ice.  Harry stomps on his foot as hard as he can and darts between shelves and Percy and Jason growl like wild beasts who have been starved and poked and prodded until there is nothing left of the but fight fight fight.  Harry wishes his friends would leave.  They won’t.  He rounds a shelf, almost like a wall stretching from floor to ceiling--there are death eaters there, with their hoods up and their wands at the ready and their snarls twisted and sinister beneath the shadow cast by the overhang of the hood.  Harry wishes his friends would leave.  They can’t.

He doesn’t know what to do so he just stands with his back to the shelf and wishes he left himself space to retreat to as the death eaters close in on him.  It is gradual, slow, like they are giving him the chance to get away, or otherwise like they are toying with him.  They are merely playing with his food and he is protecting the orb like it is a swaddled baby.  He doesn’t know what it really is or why he needs to protect it, plainly that the death eaters want it which means he may, under no circumstances, allow them to have it.  His friends round the shelves and join him and perhaps the company is some sort of distant comfort but it is far, far, from enough.  The threat continues to close in, he keeps his orb tight and safe against his body.

“I’ll smash it!” he declares.  He has a feeling he shouldn’t, but he would much rather nobody had it than Voldemort did.  As though pre-planned, shadowed snarls merge to grins in a synchronised move that makes Harry’s desperate heart’s rhythm quicken until he is dizzy just standing there.  Nothing about it is friendly, welcoming; less of a smile and more bared teeth, a promise to devour, to not leave any scraps.  There isn’t a dark wizard in the world who would not like a taste of the decimation of the Boy who Lived.  Lived.  Past tense.  At first the moniker had almost felt like an assurance of safety, a promise he would get out, now it is history.  Harry has little faith in any promise, let alone one he has fabricated from a word.  The Boy who Lived: a fact.  The Boy who Lives: remains to be seen.

“Hand it over,” he doesn’t know this voice.  He understands the words though, understands the business end of the wand aimed at his chest, understands that if he dies here plenty more people will die soon.  He cradles his orb with one protective arm and reaches for his wand with the other.

Perhaps he is going down.  Perhaps it is his own stupid fault.  But if he doesn’t put up a fight then he will never forgive himself.

Jason isn’t quite sure how he is supposed to approach this fight.  He has his sword and he has his powers but he also has magic--perhaps his, perhaps not--and he understands he is expected to get through this entire quest whilst keeping their real identities under wraps.  From the look of things, they are very close to succeeding.  Jason isn’t about to be the person who puts that in jeopardy.  He understands and respects expectations in a way Nico sometimes doesn’t and Percy seems to intentionally ignore and, though he isn’t sure he wants to, he does not have the time to ponder that internal quandary.  That can come later, when they have won and he is safe.  That is how these fights work.  He has been in enough of them to know that.  He needs to be stoic and efficient now, emotions are a luxury he will earn his right to return to (a Roman attitude certainly, the kind that has kept him alive then kept him living then kept him alive again).

None of that makes it easy.  He favours his gladius, is used to the reach it gives him and how he can throw his body weight into the swings and feel them cleave through danger like a hot knife through butter, how wonderfully worn out he feels when all is said and done yet how painstakingly alive in the moment.  But that reach is not enough when his opponents have wands and the near-infinite arsenal that they afford them.  The power to inflict instant death is one Jason cannot help but fear: it is the power of a god, it is a power that will ruin a man.

His muscle memory wants for his blade but his good sense draws his wand.  He has little concern for the Wizarding World’s laws but if he is going to kill he is going to do it like a man and not something bigger, something crueller, something uncaring, worse.  He does not reach for the killing curse, opts instead for utilitarian spells like expelliarmus and stupefy that allow for neutralisation of the enemy without causing their deaths.  They are outnumbered, encircled by grown adults with years more practice.  A spiteful part of his brain (how un-Roman, puerile, ridiculous) thinks that if the Dark Lord (an egoistic self-ascribed alias if ever he has heard one) had any real trust in his lackeys he wouldn’t need to send them at a ratio of at least 2:1 to fight school children.

Stupefy.  A grown man collapses to the floor.  Expelliarmus.  A wand clatters and rolls beneath a shelf.  Stupefy.  Hermione hits the ground, does not get up.

They can’t continue like this.

Percy and Nico fight as they always do, on instinct, unpredictably, rabidly.  They fight like monsters, supplies one half of Jason’s brain.  They fight like machines, supplies the other.  He doesn’t like either, disregards them both.  It does little to change the reality that they seem to have a backlog of spells to work from, that they fight creatively in a way that is unique to them.  Here fighting on their own, that is an invaluable quality.  In the Legion of New Rome that is pure selfishness.

It is pure selfishness that Jason needs to learn on the spot because it is evident their hooded assailants are quickly learning how to dodge his attacks which simply will not do.  But what will?

Beams of light shoot past his head.  A red bolt darts quickly through the air, directly on target to strike him on the sternum and knock him back, incapacitating him.  He ducks quickly underneath it, glad not for the first time for his agility and the way his body knows how to react before his mind even needs to catch up.  His training is drilled securely into him.  He hates that it has to be but loves that it has kept him so alive for so long.

Hermione is still on the floor, still stunned.  She will get back to her feet eventually, rejoin the fight, but for now she is vulnerable and in danger and Jason has this fear that the wizards, never the most elegant on their feet, will trample her.  He doesn’t know what to do about that.

More light darts past him.  He leans back, watches it pass over his chest, only narrowly not touching him.  He needs to keep thinking and keep moving because he cannot fight in that same desperate, mindless, clawing and hopelessly effective way that his cousins do.

Their formation--not much of a formation at all--is not working.  He needs to break out of it.  “Disperse!” he commands, voice too loud for the narrow space, echoing.  His head aches.  When he dodges beneath the next spell he skims across the floor on his knees, registers the dull, extended pain and then keeps running forwards at high speeds the unathletic wizards have difficulty keeping up with.

He stuns two more death eaters and they are like a Hydra--for every one that he takes out two more appear in their stead.  It proves even further that Voldemort has little trust in or love for loyal servants.  It proves he is right to.  Jason has always enjoyed being a threat, enjoyed the challenge of fighting when he is outnumbered, enjoyed knowing that he was respected (feared?  What’s the difference again?), but now he is surrounded by kids who are at real risk here, who should not be here.  Who he does not know how to rescue.  What is the point of any of his training and experience if, by the end of it, he still cannot save children dragged into someone else’s war?

A shelf full of orbs comes crashing down.  He doesn’t know who has pushed it over but the sound is deafening and he forces himself to keep fighting through it in spite of the urge he has to cover his ears with his hands to block out the clatter, the shatter, the vaguely inhuman screeching that rises from the orbs as they shatter.  He is half convinced he catches a brief glimpse of his own name as the shelf collapses almost on top of him.

It startles the death eaters who are not expecting it, gives his side the chance to strike big.  How can Jason strike big?  If everyone else is on this scrabbling offensive then they need a defence, especially for the sake of Hermione who still cannot get to her feet or move out of the line of fire.

There is a defence spell he can think of which is objectively the best he knows.  He doesn’t know how to cast it.  He has maybe twenty seconds to figure it out.

Happiest memory.  A real challenge for a person who is missing most of their memories all together.  What if his happiest memory is somewhere in the blank and he will never be able to do it?  Do they even count as his memories any more?

He doesn’t have time to ponder those questions.  His questions are eating at his opportunity.  Think, Jason.  Think.

A happy memory.  Less bliss and more relief perhaps, but his mind drifts to their time on the Argo, to a time when they had just gotten Percy and Annabeth back and they were much, much worse for wear but they were alive which was more than a miracle.  They weren’t yet safe but it almost didn’t matter.  In the moment it was basically impossible to see past the way his mind had shut down, his only thoughts a stream of thank the gods thank the gods thank the gods that he had honestly meant in spite of everything.  In spite of all of it.

He screams at the top of his lungs.  “Expecto Patronum!”

A silver wolf howls.

Chapter Text

There isn’t time to dwell on the silver beast loping around the space, ears flat, low ceilings almost like a cage to a creature very clearly resistant to them, lips twitching in a sharp-toothed snarl.  She snaps her mystical maw at any death eater who gets too close and, like startled children, it is enough to make them fall back.  Because they know better.  The Patronus charm is a defensive spell and here is Jason’s Patronus, all predator, all growling and gnashing and no mercy, not now.

The hesitance of their attackers is what they need right now, what they need to take advantage of.  Hermione is still down, the slightest twitches beginning in her fingertips, so they will need to split for a while, just until she is back on her feet and fighting.  They need to give everyone the best chance they can have.  “Go!” Percy shouts, gestures to Jason and whoever will move alongside him.  There are blocks between them and the door they first entered through, not to mention the destruction of fallen shelves and shattered prophecies, but there are other doors and a low, ominous chatter coming from somewhere outside of the long, low room.  There is something here aside from the prophecies pulsing in their enclosures, names attached to each and every one.  That isn’t fair, not fair at all.  But it is also not his to mess with.  Jason nods once, stiffly like a soldier showing his acquiescence without wasting time or energy, and practically drags Harry, Ron and Neville after him, running through one of the doors seemingly at random.  The wolf--just like Lupa: a guard to those deemed worthy, a threat to those not--follows and, upon her departure, the Death Eaters turn back to them, smiling stiffly beneath the shadow of their hoods as though they were not so simply reduced to scared children.

Hermione is still down, able to move her hands now but little more, so he and Nico are the only ones there to fight the seemingly never-ending crowd of fully-trained wizards crowding them.  They must like their odds.  Percy smirks right back.  He likes his own much better.

Perhaps they are so concerned about the Patronus because it is a being born from nothing but goodness and they, themselves, are so opposed to good that there isn’t enough cognitive dissonance in the world to convince them that is not the case.  Perhaps the Patronus is simply a danger to whoever it is cast against.  Either way, he is eager to see how these men who jumped back from the threat of snapping teeth will fare when the room is full of nothing but silver mist.  In a way, his Patronus might just be a souped up shield with a mouth big enough to fall into and a killer tail that, in a room this small, the Death Eaters are going to have a hard time dodging.  In that case he can hold his wand in his left hand and his sword in his right.  He really likes his odds.

The shark is smaller this time, like it knows there is not enough space for its full size, but it is still gargantuan.  It is just right of the sea, that even in its more normal, mortal aspects it would still be teeming with all sorts of giant, monstrous things.  It sucks in air like water and their opponents flee from the gape of its mouth to avoid being sucked in.  Percy looks over his shoulder as they run behind him and meets Nico’s eyes for just a moment--the barest trace of a grin, the roll of his eyes.  Incredibly outnumbered and beyond a little eccentric: this is precisely how the Greeks fight best.

It is strange, to be swinging his sword at mortal men who are trying their best to find distance where it doesn’t exist in an enclosed space caught between Percy’s Patronus and Percy himself.   The moment he gets in too close they can do nothing but flail and push and resist with all the strength their weak frames grant them as he swings sharp metal, cuts air and then flesh, and then stops as soon as they are on the ground.  The strike of their bodies is deeper than he intends because his more human opponents typically understand the merits of a partial dodge and it’s strange, because as Riptide slides into flesh and through subcutaneous fat and perhaps more into muscle than he intends it to, it feels much more like slaying monsters than he has ever imagine sit could.

A man crumples in front of him, side leaking blood into his robes and then the unclean floor as he sits, eyes glazed and unfocused, hood falling back.  He has pale skin and dark hair and a crooked nose like it has been broken and not set to heal properly, and suddenly he is human.  He is not a faceless bipedal monster and he is trying to look up at Percy but cannot hold his focus and Percy feels somewhat sick.  He sighs and swallows that back down as soon as it can rise up.  This is far from the worst thing he has ever done (Beckendorf alone on the Princess Andromeda, died gruesomely with monstrous company; Akhlys, the poison and the acid in the air that did something to him but did not add anything that was not already there; Michael Yew, a bright spark, an unwavering ally, good until the end, his feet still rooted on the Williamsburg Bridge--he said he would get off and Percy hadn’t checked.  Far, far from it), but that doesn’t mean he has to feel good about it.

He steps back for a moment, breathes in the stale air like it is the sulphur-scented miasma of Tartarus’ atmosphere, and makes a cursory observation of their battleground.  Hermione is sitting now, her legs still not working but her arms allowing her to shakily casts spells that keep Death eaters at a distance.  Nico is leaning on his magic rather than his sword too, has sequestered himself into a corner where nobody will be able to sneak up on him but the walls keep him too closed in to properly swing at any attackers who get close enough.  The wand, though, can be used with a bit more subtlety.  And use it he does.  Percy sees the look in a Death Eater’s eyes as she crumples and her hood slips to reveal her parted lips and dilated pupils, like she is somewhere else.  She pales and does not move until she suddenly gasps and pitches forwards.  Percy winces not quite sympathetically.  He knows what Nico’s magic feels like even if he imagines he is much more resistant to it than the wizards: like being buried alive and completely unable to drown the flames of his panic for long enough to even contemplate preserving what little air he has left.

He looks away from her and focuses back on his own fight.  He has no interest in killing the man in front of him, none at all.  He is human and out of commission and that’s enough.  It doesn’t escape Percy’s notice that there is nobody rushing to help him, nobody rushing to help any of the Death Eaters splayed across the floor.  He feels pity in spite of himself.  For the Greeks it is the sense of community, for the Romans it is the sense of duty.  For either of them it would be shameful to sit back and let an ally bleed out.  Maybe that’s it--maybe they aren’t allies at all.  They are fighting for the same cause, sure, grouped together under the watch and whim of a leader.  Their loyalties are to him, anything-- anyone-- else is disposable, a means to an end.

Percy shakes his head.  He has no intention to be cruel but he also does not want to drop his Patronus and leave his own allies vulnerable to help somebody who wouldn’t hesitate in quite the same way he is.  The cut isn’t so deep that it will kill him with any haste.  If anybody cares enough to let him, he’ll live.  He’ll suffer for a while, but that much Percy can live with.  He turns his back on the man with the crooked nose and jumps back into the fray, pushing in close and quick and dangerous and making sure nobody knows how to deal with him without the space to wave their wands.  Riptide is bloody and the next wizard watches its arc with a resigned sort of fear, an acceptance.  “Kill me in the name of the Dark Lord and I will have died with purpose,” he all but hisses so Percy simply doesn’t do that.  The sword is distraction enough for him to slacken his grip and allow Percy the chance to kick the sword from his grip and stamp it when it hits the ground until the wood splinters and sticks sharply, sorely, through the worn soles of his shoes.

He is upholding a powerful spell whilst trying to fight and it is costing him energy and focus in equal measure.  He is fighting far from his best but it doesn’t matter: these people do not know the difference.  The thought sends a shiver down his spine.  These people are fighting a war but it is a strange one, strangely impersonal.  There may be deaths aplenty but no bloodshed--quick and clean and efficient; far from enough to discourage the victors from doing it again and again and again.

They only have to stay in this room for long enough for Hermione to regain her footing enough to run.  And then they can run to where everybody else has already gone and they can reunite with their allies and they can talk about how to end a war before it starts, how to strike through all of the Hydra’s heads at once.  They won’t stop it tonight, but they will put into motion the next steps and it will be enough, it will work.  It has to.  They were sent here for a reason and now it is right here in front of him and Percy Jackson has yet to be on the losing side of a war.

The sounds from beyond the door bring Ron no comfort.  His friends are still out there, surrounded from all angles and fighting.  One of them can’t even move.  His stomach churns at the thought of Hermione laid out on the floor like a body, like she is already lost.  Hermione Granger is never helpless, she will fight back to consciousness faster than any wizard has the right to simply because she is Hermione and she is as stubborn as a mule and as tough as nails and as annoying as Peeves.  She has to.

He doesn’t have time for the distraction though.  The sheer numbers of assailants makes it inevitable that at least a handful would be able to slip through in pursuit of them as they cross through the door and into the next room.

He somehow likes this one even less.

Even without Voldemort’s lackeys following them, the room is creepy in a way that makes the potions store feel like a toyshop.  Just as in the last room, the space is narrow and the ceilings are low and it makes Ron feel like he is already on the inside of a coffin, desperate and pleading to be let out.  The space is laid out almost like a classroom, with wooden desks and chairs laid out around a large glass tank in the middle of the room.  There are more chairs than he had though there would be, as though there are many more Unspeakables than the ministry has ever let on, even to its own employees.  The tank itself is what actually unsettles him, a big, square thing made of glass that must be at least an inch thick.  It is big enough that Ron could lie down flat in it, though he certainly would never choose to.  The room is dimly lit by old fashioned candles that hold sad, limp flames inside of them as though somebody has been tasked with refilling the oil and has simply never gotten around to doing it.  Glazed in the sickly yellow of the light they are able to produce, it is hard to tell quite what colour the liquid filling the tank is.  What is easy to know, however, is how the liquid, whatever it is, smells; sweet, earthy and acrid all at once like dirt and vinegar and rot.  And in it sits the real focus of Ron’s disgust: brains wriggle and writhe like living things, almost surely human.  His skin crawls.

There is a large part of him that wonders how they got here, why they are here, what purpose they serve.  There are a few sets of shelves pushed back against the walls, full of notebooks.  So they’ve been studying them, but what for?  What actually goes on in the Ministry of Magic?

It is soon suffocated though, by the panic he feels as the Death Eaters rush in like a small fleet and he remains just Ron Weasley, standing in a freaky room underground with his wand in his hand and his sword in his pocket and his heart in his throat and his stomach at his feet.  Oh God, what will his mum say if he dies here?

He shakes his head.  Not the time.  He can think about that when he isn’t staring down the wand of a man so cast in shadow he may as well have no face at all, who probably has far too few qualms about using the killing curse.  Hopefully the threat of the law only a few floors up will stop him as it seems to have done to the Death Eaters so far but Ron isn’t willing to bet his life on something as flimsy as that, especially because he has seen first hand what sort of sorry state wizarding law seems to be in.  Oh.  If the ministry won’t fight back then that means they will have to, alone.

Get it together, Weasley!  He hits himself hard in the side of his head with a flat palm and he imagines the wizard across from him dropping his sneer and replacing it with a flicker of confusion even though he cannot actually see it.  He readies his wand and pretends he has had composure the whole time.  He doesn’t need to see his opponents face to know he is doing a piss-poor job at it.

It feels like there is an eternity, a moment stretched out into something unrecognisable, before the first spell is cast, Jason’s Patronus still running around, snapping at the Death Eater’s heels, holding them back.  But the moment the spells start, they do not stop.

It is like constant light, brightly coloured, flying past him and he ducks beneath it and runs away like a coward who is in the best shape of his life.  The shouting is disorienting: voices, some familiar, others not, all casting spells at rapid pace.  The sounds overlap each other until he can’t pull them apart and he is so overwhelmed.  He isn’t used to fighting this many people at once and he doesn’t know where to focus.  Maybe there is no right place.  Maybe he just needs to pick somewhere.

“ Petrificus Totalus!” He casts the first potentially useful spell he can think of at the Death Eater that had been staring him down and watches his limbs snap to his body like a board of wood.  From that moment he does not stop firing, joining the clamour of shouts and spells and people attempting to dodge and ending up clattering into furniture and the schwing of the sword Neville reached straight for instead of his wand even though it is definitely wearing him out much faster.  He does not stop firing until someone casts expelliarmus behind him and he takes just a moment too long to register that they might be casting it at his back.  His wand flies from his grip and rolls over the floor, disappearing beneath one of the shelves before he can chase after it.  He swears.  He doesn’t have time to find it.  In the moment he takes to panic an enemy takes advantage of his hesitation and sends a slicing spell his way.  He dodges to the side so it doesn’t slice straight through his jugular but it till catches him on the side of the face.  Stings, burns.  It’ll probably leave a scar; he and Bill can trade stories.

He draws his sword and immediately panics because now he can fight up close but the Death Eaters can attack him from anywhere in the room they want to.  He drops back and joins Neville where he stands, guarded by Jason’s wolf though she seems to be fizzling.  Jason can’t hold the spell for much longer.  That means they have to think, and quickly.  He watches Neville watch a spell come their way and lift the flat of his blade to deflect it and mirrors the move himself next time he needs it.  He is close enough to Neville to see the subtle shake of his arms that is only going to get worse as they keep fighting.  For everyone’s sake, this can’t keep going much longer.  The wolf falls away and Jason doesn’t take even a moment to recoup, readying his sword but casting a couple of stunning spells before he actually draws it, seemingly more magically drained than actually exhausted.  His hands tremble but they aren’t like Neville’s--it’s not like he is struggling to hold the sword but it is something else.

He springs himself at a Death Eater and Ron steals himself before approaching another.  He has only ever used his sword to practise and this definitely isn’t that.  He doesn’t have time to hesitate, though.  He makes a hasty, somewhat clumsy swing at the knees of the Death Eater in front of him and they collapse with the pain of it and the sudden swipe at their balance.  Ron sees the blood quickly, soaking into their robes and onto the floor and dribbling down the sharp edge of his sword, and it makes him a bit lightheaded to see just how readily it runs, like water.  It hadn’t felt like that deep of a swing but the wound bleeds in earnest and his vision swims.

Until he can’t see anything at all.  There is a bright white-blue flash and it feels like his body is on fire, like everything beneath his skin is trying to tear its way through it, like his hair is standing on end and his jaw is tightly clenched.  The air smells like smoke and ozone and heat.  He peels his eyes back open after a moment and the light is all gone but the smell in the air is still there, strong, electric.  He thinks about a storm and cannot place why.

The tank has shattered.  Jason is panting, wielding his sword with a grim determination in spite of it.  The room is almost silent now, and suddenly that ominous chatter that has been running through the department feels almost eerily loud, as though it has snuck up on them.  Tentacles spring up from the brains like the monster in Hogwarts’ black lake the moment anybody steps too close and Ron watches Harry notice the opportunity and seize it.  He rushes into the next room and they all follow.

Harry’s adrenaline is pulsing through his body like all of his blood has been replaced.  The muttering grows louder and the door handles gives under his hand without him having to apply almost any force.  He could keep running forever, never stopping.

Until he stops.  It’s like he has been frozen and Ron collides into his back with a winded oof that Harry barely notices at all.  This whole thing has been a trap, of course, but this room that is so full of overlapping voices that the air feels thick, hard to breathe, is clearly where they have been led.

Bellatrix Lestrange is here.  She is making no attempts at anonymity such as that of the other earth Eaters and instead wears a long, loose dress in place of their robes.  She has no hood, her skin pale like she hasn’t seen the sun in a very long time--perhaps because she hasn’t.  One doesn’t spend much time outside in Azkaban--her face alight, her hair dark and wild and tangled.  She looks terrifying, crazed.  Harry feels the phantom legs of a thousand tiny bugs marching in unison up his spine.  He doesn’t know much at all about this woman but every nerve in his body cries danger danger as though ignoring it will be a fatal mistake.  Her smile widens and his grip on the orb tightens.

This room is nothing like the others.  It is not long and low and narrow, but instead wide, expansive, ice cold and bright white.  The ceiling is still low and in a space so large it gives Harry a feeling like it is caving in despite the fact that it clearly is not.  It is almost completely empty, just blank space like nobody ever dares set foot in here.  There is a dais, long and low, on the far side of the room, and an arch in the centre, the only part of the room itself which is not white being the black curtain draped over it, like it is hiding it.

There is little preamble with Lestrange.  “Cuties,” she coos condescendingly, and then the next word out of her mouth as they are all trying to gauge the situation and decide what move to make next  is “ Crucio!” and Neville starts convulsing.

“No!” Harry darts to Neville’s side and doesn’t even register the orb slipping from his grip until it shatters into shards that find their homes in his flesh.  His heart sinks but his friend is on the floor in the kind of agony that can drive grown men made in minutes and he needs it to stop.  He doesn’t know how to make it stop.

And then it just does.  Neville is still on the floor, far more pale than any living person should ever be, clammy and shaking and breathing hard like he is failing at staving off rapid jabs of panic.  But he is alive and it has stopped and Harry pulls his upper body carefully into his lap to check that he really is okay.  He can’t be down here for long, but Bellatrix must have stopped for a reason and, the longer Harry goes without being blinded by horrible pain, the less he suspects that the reason isn’t to lure him close enough to curse them both at once.

He looks up.

Sirius is right there on the dais, his face dark with open worry but no less okay than when Harry had last seen him.  He could sob.  There are people next to Sirius too--Tonks, Moody, Lupin--which means that Snape did it.  He told the Order where Harry was going and he might have just saved Harry’s life.

“Cousin,” Bellatrix smiles too widely and the word feels like treacle, too sticky, too sweet, all wrong.  Sirius returns her exaggerated glee with a scowl.  “Both of us,” she says “out of Azkaban,” her laugh is piercing, awful.  It’s as though she has flooded the room with ice cold water and she is the only one who can still breathe.  “ That is the power of old magic-- Pure magic,”

“I recall breaking myself out,” Sirius says coldly, “But you needed help.  Some old magic you’ve got there, Bella,” there is no affection in the nickname, rather something sad and still, like something that has died.

She doesn’t have a chance to respond before Dumbledore joins them on the dais, his disposition too sunny but his wand already drawn.  He holds the other Death Eaters back, makes it clear that this is Bellatrix’s fight, not theirs, and looks down at Harry through his half-moon spectacle and smiles knowingly.  Harry doesn’t return it.  If he wanted to, he could make this his fight, keep his students safe.  He sure has done a poor job of that thus far.

Bellatrix grins at him, her red-painted lips making it look as though she has been drinking blood, like a vampire.  Harry finds it hard to believe she might ever die.  “Is that a challenge, Sirius?”  She gives him no chance to respond, however, before she is dragging him into a duel that the look of anger and resignation on his face makes it clear he has next to no interest being part of.

Harry just stands and watches in horrified awe as they dance around the room, strangely in sync, sending spells each other’s way but not so quickly the other can’t find it in themself to duck or dodge or shield against it.  The light is bright but not like the flash earlier that he had been forced to shield his eyes from; in this moment there is next to nothing that would make him look away.  His wand is loose in his grip.  It isn’t smart but he doesn’t know what else to do with himself besides watch as Lestrange all but runs across the white tile, ducking and dodging and laughing and shrieking like a child as a playground whilst Sirius ducks and grunts and tries his best to conserve energy.  It seems, somehow, that Azkaban took a much worse toll on him, perhaps because after he escaped there was nothing for him but house arrest in a home he hates.  Harry hates it.  It should be the other way around.  Sirius deserves much better, from his life and his family and everything else.  That is, however, far from a promise that he might have that.

Neville is barely conscious, his eyes unfocused and his body unable to hold itself up.  Moody has rushed to his side, sparing Jason a suspicious look on the way, and is now holding him up somewhat, making him drink what Harry hopes is water.  It is strange to see Mad Eye Moody in this caring position, with Neville cradled like a child in his arms.  Mad Eye is a fearsome Auror, but that also means he has devoted his life to helping others.  It makes sense, then, but that doesn’t make the image in front of Harry any less strange.

Jason and Ron are in much better shape, standing on guard with their swords in hand, smeared with blood that they seem to have wiped away rather hastily to only partial success.  It is a strange sight, not one Harry is used to.  Fights amongst wizards are typically clean, almost eerily so, bloodless.  They have reinvented violence in such a way that they might be able to claim that it is anything but.  And now there are Death Eaters down and bleeding.

Harry wrestles with the urge to step in, squinting at Sirius and Bellatrix’s deadly dance around the space in search of any sort of opening he might be able to exploit to find his way in or strike Lestrange down.  He doesn’t find one and, for just a moment, Dumbledore's focus on the other Death Eaters seems to have faltered, just enough to allow a few to slip into the room.

As though he is just as tightly wound as Harry in that moment, Jason springs into action, rushing their way before they can register what he is doing, his sword drawn.  He shows some mercy, confident that he will be able to, striking them hard but only in areas he can be confident he can afford to.  After he slices at the first the next looks at him, disgust, confusion, panic all evident even beneath the hood.  Jason barely takes the time to register it before he is hitting the Death Eater in the head with the butt of his sword and the enemy crumples, unconscious.

Harry doesn’t know where he should be looking.  He hasn’t seen any of the Americans really forced to fight before and there is something about it that is captivating, something about the twitch of Jason’s lips that reads much more as enjoyment than irritation, his footwork light and efficient, no waste energy in how he wields his blade like it is just another part of him.  It takes Harry a moment to tear his attention away and focus it back onto Sirius.

The duel continues for a moment with Bellatrix slowly gaining an upper hand that puts a tangled knot into Harry’s stomach, and then everything goes to Hell in a lone moment.

It is as though the world is moving in slow motion, like time itself is trying to stop but can’t quite do it.  Like something more powerful than any wizard is trying hard to intervene but fate has already been written.

Sirius’ back is to the curtained arch and his expression is tight, pained, tired, but he has far from given up.  Harry almost can’t hear anything over the rushing of blood in his ears and the mutter of voices that are coming from nowhere that seem to be becoming more and more excited.  “ Stupefy!” Bellatrix shouts loud enough to pierce through all of Harry’s worry and the word rings in his ears like a bell being attacked with a mallet over and over and over again.

And Jason, seeing what is happening, runs in faster than human legs should be able to carry him, dropping his sword to move faster.  He gets there in time, gets in front of Sirius and shoves him roughly, gets him well out of the way, and takes the hit,

“ Arresto Momentum!” Hermione calls from the doorway just a moment too late.

The light strikes Jason squarely in the chest and he falls back, stiff as a board.  He falls beyond the veil.

Hermione is held up in the doorway between Nico and Percy’s shoulders and they are all covered in blood and none of them are bleeding and Jason fell into one side of the arch and did not fall out of the other side of it.  Nico and Percy drop Hermione and stand shocked and still.

“ No! ” a voice cries out and Harry doesn’t know whose it is--it could be his own or everybody’s at once and he wouldn’t know, will never know.

The ground starts to shake.

Chapter Text

Nico can’t see much of anything at all.  His vision is nothing but darkness and the curtained arch right in the middle of it.  He sees Jason falling over and over and over again, sees him running and jumping and thinking no further ahead than save Sirius save Sirius save Sirius.  And now Sirius is still there and the woman with the wild hair and the wilder eyes is cackling inhumanly and she is still there with her wand in her vice grip and Jason is not because he stumbled into the arch and never stumbled out of it.

He has to know.  He has to.

He takes steps forward, small, shuffling things, and feels like he is floating, like the rocking and writhing of the floor like a beast in distress is somewhere else entirely, like he can just pass right over it.  By some miracle, he can.  The woman cackles and he can hear her but cannot think about her as he gets close enough to the arch to pinch the curtain between his fingers, a pit heavy and gaping and cruel in his stomach.  He pulls it back.

His ears have not stopped ringing and he knows all too well what that means but there is something wrong, something inside of him that is screaming at something silent, something silent inside him that does not respond to the screaming.  His heart is in his throat and it almost feels like Jason is right there but it does not feel like Jason is still alive.

The veil is a sheen of mist that rushes downwards like a waterfall of vapour, unbound by sense and physics, unlike anything else.  Unlike any entrance to the Underworld Nico knows of.  There is nothing beyond it, no space, no people, no Shades, and still it calls and cries and whispers and begs and he knows in his gut that Jason is not there.  That this is not death as his father and Thanatos ordain it.  That this is not death as he knows it.

He screams himself hoarse and the witch keeps cackling but the room is collapsing and he can make enough sense of the world to see the fear flickering like a guttering flame in her eyes.  He drops to his knees, palms flat to the ground, and despairs.

Harry watches the space where his friend once was, now empty, and allows himself to feel a guilty sort of relief when he sees his godfather, shaken and ashen and begging in words that are swallowed by the sound of everything crumbling to be somewhere else a few minutes earlier, to never be in the line of danger, to never let Jason fall for him, just a few paces to the side.

Harry Potter does not have family in the way people like the Weasleys make him understand he is supposed to.  Instead he has a group of friends who are the closest he can get, who for all he knows are the exact same thing.  And Jason just fell into nothing for Sirius and it took so long for Harry to trust him and it took Jason no time at all to keep trying and Jason is-- was --a friend, which is to say family, which is to say gone.  The guilt swallows the relief.

It’s his fault they are even there, it’s his fault for not listening, for being so susceptible, for playing right into Voldemort’s hands.  It is his fault that Jason is dead and it is his fault that every single one of them is going to have to live with it.  It is his fault that the ministry is falling, that there is some fort of distant siren squeal, and it is his fault that Sirius is going to resent the fact that he lived today for as long as he continues to.

Hermione can’t make sense of any of it, she doesn’t even have the presence of mind to really try.  Jason is gone, no blood, no killing curse, just gone and Nico and Percy are on their knees and the room is falling apart as though they are the ones doing it but that isn’t right.  It can’t be. There are wizards who can cast spells without wands and other wizards who can cast spells without words but this is not that.  This is so far from that.  This is the sick feeling in her stomach and the stress in her knees as she gives up on her attempts to remain upright, it is even Lestange shutting her mouth and dropping to the floor to grapple for purchase.  This is all fear and anger and the low groan of the earth splitting and the stone breaking and then a heat like everything in the air is burning.

There were more death eaters behind them, not all of them incapacitated, their numbers too great to manage so easily, and now they are trying to enter the room but hesitating at the entrance as the walls shudder and the floor quakes and a fracture winds its way up beside the door frame, like it is threatening to fall apart too, to drag them into the room with the arch whether or not they want to be there.  She knows, of course, that there is almost no way that this inexplicable destruction can be happening only in this room, but she also knows that there is no way that all this destruction can be happening at all.  No explanation exists and she feels like her head is full of radio static, all fuzz and nothing much else.  It is her job, her role, to know what is going on and now she doesn’t even have a theory.

She feels like she should look away from Percy, his back turned to her, a hunched shape that is shaking at a rhythm that feels almost like it is guiding the way the rock floor undulates like waves in a storm--but that’s impossible which means there is something else --but she can’t look away, like a car crash or perhaps an eclipse.  She gets a feeling like she has launched herself into the direct path of danger but that doesn’t mean she can move out of it.

She tries to crawl towards the arch where it stands and shudders, a film of mist, a dusty curtain, Nico on his hands and knees with his teeth bared and his eyes so dark she is half sure she can’t see the whites of them at all.  It doesn’t work.  The ground resists, its tremors force her back, she falls on her face and wonders if it is supposed to hurt because she is still Hermione Granger but she can’t think or even really feel.

She contemplates crawling towards the door but a part of her that she might hate insists that it is better to be there, even if she is useless, than it is to run away.  It might be pride, or just another form of cowardice.  Either way it probably won’t end well for her.

So, because she can’t do anything else, she keeps watching in petrified horror and stubborn defiance and she neither helps nor runs.

Like an awful mouth full of teeth and hot breath and hunger, yearning, the very middle of the room wrenches itself open with a roar.  She feels her body lurching to the side, everything inside of her that is geared towards survival screaming that she needs to get out, and everything inside of her that is proud, stubborn and stupid screaming that she can’t just leave, not like this.  She keeps on staying put, keeps on watching and hopes that the ground will sew itself shut and the room will stop shaking and Jason will stumble straight back out of that arch and she will finally catch Nico and Percy’s eyes head-on and they will look just as confused and concerned as everyone else in the room and not like they are on a mission in a room that has grinded to a screeching halt aside from the fact that it is completely falling apart.

Percy gets to his feet, the ground beneath him no stiller than anywhere else and yet willing to support his stance, his hands out to the sides and his knees bent, back still to Hermione.  She can’t help but squint at him, wondering what he is doing and how.  Before she gets the chance to find out, it is like Nico has taken a cue.  He, too, is on his feet and the ground is allowing him to balance.  He assumes a similar posture, but instead of waiting with his arms out he folds his hands together, looks down, and then throws them out to either side and for the briefest of moments nothing at all happens, and then in the next it is like black fog crawling in, like the shadow is swallowing the light.  Hermione’s stomach drops because there is no chance at all that Nico and Percy aren’t responsible for at least some of all the inexplicable things happening.

They’re her friends-- of course they are --but they are also new and unpredictable and evidently untenably dangerous, and they are so hurt.  She feels for them, feels for herself, feels for everyone who can feel the absence in the room even through the ever-darkening carnage, but none of that changes the fact that hurt can do things to people, make them act irrationally, myopically.  Her friends are dangerous, hurt people and she still cannot run away.

Before the darkness consumes enough of the room to completely steal her vision she sees something in the pit, something hard and off white and much too big crawling out of the ravine.

In the darkness there is an explosion, and then there is water rushing like a flood and it is hard to breathe and she cannot see anything at all and all she feels is cold and scared and all she hears is destruction, damage, a shrill scream that can’t be anything other than human, and she still knows nothing at all.  And now she can’t run if she wants to; she decides she really wants to.

The light does not come back and the shadow does not recede and the rushing sound of water does not stop but it does leave Hermione alone and the floor keeps shaking and the walls keep cracking and everything keeps being just as wrong as it has been.  Jason stays dead and the floor stays wide and open, a groaning sound indicating it is opening ever wider.  Hermione’s eyes adjust just enough to see shapes, to see Percy and Nico on their feet and furious and so incredibly responsible for everything impossible happening--they are fighting, fighting back, seeking vengeance because it is all they have left.  And they do not fight like machines; they fight like anything but.  She sees hunched figures on the floor that might be her friends or might be the walls and the ceilings caving in, that might be Bellatrix Lestrange or Sirius Black or Severus Snape, that might be shaking with their own fear or just the tremors of the ground.  She sees the arch where it loom tall and strong and mocking, the centre of the room, unaffected even after swallowing Jason, swallowing Jason and never letting him back out.

She sees a figure moving, hears creaks and clacks and feels the way it brushes past her hands as they are braced on the ground, its surface porous like bone and in no shape she recognises.  She doesn’t know what it is but it is massive and inhuman and skeletal and it wants nothing to do with her.  Its focus is on a figure just barely keeping hold of the floor, so close to where the pit in the middle of the room is threatening to swallow them and never let them back out.  It must be Bellatrix, it must, and Hermione has no drive to try and save her.  She has no drive to do anything but watch and wish she had either ran or helped when she had the chance.

She sees the arch as it falls to pieces, as it stops being able to resist the rocking of the room, as its pieces fall at the figure that must be Bellatrix.  She sees when the figure of bone pushes in, unperturbed by the crash and crack of stone on stone, of the threat of being crushed, she sees how Bellatrix’s shape moves away from the threats, how the ground seems to let her, how she pushes herself right into the pit and then the floor seals itself shut as though crushing her before she has the chance to fall.  Hermione doesn’t hear her scream, not over the clamour and the desperation and the fact that Bellatrix is gone too and that cannot bring Jason back.  It doesn’t fix anything and so the room keeps crumbling and she still cannot get out of it.

The shadow starts to fade, a slow sort of transition like it is not leaving because it wants to but rather because the effort to keep it there is not one that its creator (Nico?  Percy?) can keep up for much longer.  There is a scar on the floor, a dark, jagged line that contains Bellatrix Lestrange with a sense of finality.  She is never getting out of there, Hermione, mind fogged over and hands shaking on the ground which is stilling slowly as the ceiling caves completely inwards, knows that much.  It is all she knows.  She hangs onto it.

There are figures on their fronts, some of their backs scored with bloodied lines like giant claws--dragon’s?--some more sandwiched beneath the weight of falling ceilings or the broken arch, others with their hair wet and limp, no sign of anything being wrong besides the fact that they are not moving one bit.  Hermione feels sick.  The bones clatter to the floor and the floor stays still but the walls are still breaking and the room is still breaking and everything is still just as broken as it was.  The shape of the arch is still there in the form of the misty film but its edges are flickering and fluttering, fading away.  With nothing to contain it, it will either spread or disappear, something will change, Jason will not come back.

Everything stops and Jason does not come back.  He isn’t coming back.

Ron watches as the lights come back and the floor stills and all the destruction manages to spare him in a way that cannot be natural.  He watches as Neville clambers unsurely to his feet, dodges out of the way of a falling section of the ceiling.  He knows they don’t have much time, that they need to get in before they are killed in the crush, they don’t have time to make sense of everything, they just need to be somewhere else.

His knees shake as he tries to straighten them and he curses his own cowardice not for the first time, wonders guiltily what might have become of him had he sat with anybody other than Harry Potter on the train that day, what his life might have looked like had he let somebody else do all the work and just never gotten involved.

Neville is close enough that they could touch were they to reach out to each other at the same time, Nico a few metres from him, Percy all the way across the room, near where Hermione and Harry are huddled.  Sirius is where the arch was, moving away from the film as it seeps into the air, shaking with every step, his face black like his body is moving itself without his mind being engaged at all.

Nico and Percy are just barely on their feet, doubled over and breathing deeply, shakily, like the world has stopped shaking but they have not.  He can see Nico’s face, all screwed up and paler than it ever has been, smeared in dirt and tears and what is probably blood.  He looks like the remainder if the veil does around the edges, like he is disappearing into the dimmed air around him, like he is about to fade away too, like he is less than solid.

A shrill cackles calls his attention across the room, pulls his feet across the debris-laden ground, towards the door, towards where escape is blocked by a man with skin like old paper and a face like a serpent’s, with humanity that has either been torn asunder or never existed in the first place.  His sword is still in his hand somehow, but his wand disappeared a long time ago and there is no chance he could get close enough to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to do anything about the fact that he is there and unwelcome.

“Incredible,” his voice is whispery, like everything he says is not supposed to leave the room, like he really is part snake.  He sounds amused.  Ron wishes he could kill him.  “But not enough.  Harry Potter, you and your friends will never be able to do enough,”

“His soul…” says a voice, thin and crackling and clearly so exhausted it can’t finish the thought, behind Ron.  He looks over his shoulder, sees Nico’s eyes fall shut and his lips part as his wavering body finally collapses on itself, as his fall to the floor is disrupted by Neville catching him, face bright red, eyes so wide they look like they are about to pop out of his head.  This is quite the deep end he has fallen into.  The cackling resumes but it sounds perturbed perhaps, a bit more doubtful.

Bolstered by his Dark Lord’s presence, a Death Eater, nothing more than a hooded presence, faceless, nameless, masquerading as inhuman, eases himself to his feet, draws his wand, gestures with intent and parts his lip and Ron, with no time to think about what he is doing or who the spell is aimed at, dives towards him, arm raised, blade high and heavy.  He doesn’t think about it as he brings it down, not until it stops moving, not until his vision is blurry and his mind is blurry and his ears are buzzing and there is something hot and wet spraying against him and the sword drops from his hand as the Death Eater crumples and his wand clatters to the wrecked ground, pulsating with energy, sick, vibrant green, trapped with nowhere to go but into a shard of shattered stone.  His hood falls as he does and suddenly he is human and suddenly Ron's vision is painted red on his right side and the room feels like it is closing in as Dumbledore appears right in front of him and his face is contorted with a horror that is foreign to his features.  It all makes Ron sick.

Chapter Text

The blood is hot and viscous against Ron’s skin, stuck in his hair and his eyelashes.  Everything he is wearing is ruined and the death eater is still bleeding, the once strong pulsing stream becoming a sluggish leak.  That can’t be a good sign.  He’d have killed someone if Ron hadn’t intervened.  He tries to remind himself even as he heaves, drops the sword at his feet finally and tries to bring what’s left of this room back into focus.  This has been a messy fight but they’ve won it.  They’ve done what they had to and they’ve lost Jason and Dumbledore of all people is looking at Ron with his clear eyes wide and his jaw slack like he is in the wrong just because he made a mess doing the same thing as anybody else would have.  Ron kind of wants to spit in his face because he was barely here and barely helping and that means he has lost all right to any opinion.

“Do it yourself next time,” Ron tells him flatly, his mouth stinging with the taste of vomit and his skin slick and warm with sweat and blood.  He’s sure he looks a state.  He considers kicking the sword at his feet at Dumbledore for a moment but his stomach contracts and he itches to have it back in his hands, to be able to continue to protect himself if any other death eaters decide to do anything.  That’s his sword, his weapon and his lifeline, and his wand is still missing and Dumbledore can disapprove all he wants because Ron can just look away.

He kind of wants somebody to tell him well done, to reassure him, to make him feel better about the whole thing.  Someone to say that it was impressive, that he’s good at something, that he’s more than just Harry Potter’s less useful companion for once.  But Jason is gone an Nico and Percy are out cold and the room is in pieces and it’s all so much more real than it usually is.

It’s like his brain is working again because he picks up his sword and runs from where Dumbledore is still standing like he is frozen and instead to where Neville sits cradling Nico’s head in his lap to keep it off the floor and Percy is splayed like he is completely lifeless.  They need him.  Dumbledore can handle the rest of this on his own.

“Are they okay?” he asks Neville.  He thinks what he means is are they still breathing but he can’t stomach the thought of the answer to that being no.

Neville nods tentatively, taking too little stock of the blood Ron is practically bathed in before he looks right back down at Nico in his lap breathing shallowly but definitely still breathing.  “They’re alive,” he says instead of yes, “but something’s really weird,”

“What?”

“Look,” Neville urges.  So Ron does.  And then he sees it.  That Nico is not just shadowy because it is dark and all the lights have been knocked out.  It’s like he’s melting around the edges, like he is fading out of existence too, like if they wait too long he won’t last either, like he too will be here one moment and lost the next.  Neville keeps having to readjust his grip and the nausea resurfaces in Ron’s gut.  And to think he’d eschewed all the fear today, shoved it down in place for more useful things like curiosity and instinct and desperation.

He runs over to Percy before Neville can even ask him too and falls to his knees.  The floor hurts as he slides ever so slightly across it, all sharp edges and dramatic angles and worn stone broken into more pieces than he can count.  His trousers are destroyed anyway, it won’t matter too much if he rips them now.  He tries to pull Percy up a little by the shoulders but his grip slides and he looks properly to see if he has missed a whole lot of blood somehow.  But his hands are wet and clean and there is very little blood on Percy right now, only scratches and scrapes from the falling ceiling and the fall.  It’s not that.  It’s that he’s dissolving, it’s that his entire body is coming apart, that the only thing on Ron’s hands now is salty water that has washed all the blood off.

Crap, he thinks.  “We need to get them out!” he shouts around a sob.  He doesn’t know what has happened.  It confirms to him if he still needed such a thing that somehow all of this destruction was their doing but they can’t answer him right now and if they never tell him what they did all he wants right now is to see them live, to hug them even though that is not a thing they do because he almost lost them and, he sobs out loud before he can finish the thought.  Everything is wrong now.  They are here and Jason is not and they have done so much to help him and everyone else, seemingly for nothing in return and frankly Ron doesn’t care what their secrets are.

It’s enough to motivate Hermione and Ginny into action, to come running over to him and Neville to help them get their friends out no matter how difficult they are to hold onto.  Ron is not letting go now, not until there is nothing at all left.  Dumbledore and Voldemort are still talking, both of their faces stricken, ready to make their retreats.  Ron doesn’t think he cares about that anymore.

Hermione’s hand lands on Ron’s back as she joins him where he is kneeling up by Percy’s head and Sirius takes the space at his feet.  She doesn’t have words to comfort him and the hand isn’t enough but he’ll take what he can get.

“I knew there was something going on with them,” Sirius says, words burnt with guilt and face turned to the rubble on the floor rather than anybody he could be talking to.

“Me too,” Hermione says, tightening her grip as Sirius starts to count so they can all lift at the same time.  “I didn’t think it would be this,” she sighs, “not that I know what this is.”

Manning the infirmary as she does, Madame Pomfrey is trusted with a lot, with lives and comfort and information.  She knows a lot more than what anybody assumes she does and she knows better than to pass judgement because she only ever gets half of the story but, by Merlin, does she get fractions of a lot of stories nobody else even hears word of.

Dumbledore and a hoard of beat-up dishevelled students and Sirius Black because why not at this point, apparate into her infirmary in spite of the wards and promptly deposit the two unconscious transfers into beds before collapsing on top of themselves.  She doesn’t see the third anywhere.  She tries not to think about that until she has dealt with everything else that is actually in front of her.

The youngest Weasley boy is absolutely soaked in blood and the first thing she does is panic because he can’t be doing too well like that and she tries to make him at least sit down but he balls his hands by his sides and shakes his head and-- oh.  Okay.  This is going to be one of those days, where nobody is going to tell her the story and she is going to have to put together the hideous diorama all by herself.  Weasley boy covered in blood that isn’t his, rubble and debris, minor wounds and major exhaustion.  Whatever is happening to the transfers that have actually been delivered to her, something strange which she has never seen before and does not know to fix.  What a picture it is shaping up to be.

She patches and cleans scrapes and grazes and little cuts and sends the kids to bed and takes enough pity on Weasley to let him use the infirmary’s shower because his only other option is to track blood all over the school.  She hears the water turn on and suspects he will be in there for a while so gets him some clothes ready, nothing special just a t-shirt and pyjama trousers pulled from the lost and found she suspects might fit, and then she turns to look at Dumbeldore with her hands on her hips and her eyes narrow.

He should know better by now than to let these things keep happening.  It’s not her place to say such a thing so directly but she can imply it all she likes.  “What happened to these boys?” and why did he let it?

Dumbledore shakes his head, for once dumbfounded.  He usually seems as though he is orchestrating almost everything behind the scenes, like he is on top of all of it.  Not now.  “I have to make a call,” he says and does not answer.

“You will be making it right here,” she tells him because she cannot tell him no.

He nods.  “Yes,” he agrees, “quite.  You should listen, they may be able to help,”  And instead of doing something normal like sending a patronus or taking out a muggle telephone he pulls out his wand and casts aguamenti beneath one of her lights without concern for her floor and pulls out an old, dented coin the likes of which she has never seen before and throws it into the faint rainbow he has created.  “Oh Iris, goddess of the rainbow, show me Chiron at Camp Half Blood,” she squints at him then at the water as the rainbow shimmers and a centaur appears in the air.

“Albus!” he says before he takes in Dumbledore’s face and lowers his tone appropriately.  “Oh dear,” he sighs like he is just going through the motions, like there is nothing to do which he hasn’t already done, no horrible thing which could possibly be new to him. “Bad news, I take it?”

“Terrible, I’m afraid.  I will catch you up, Chiron, but at present we require assistance,”

“Of which sort?”

Pomfrey takes that as her queue.  “Medical,” she says.  “It’s as though they’re fading,” The centaur, Chiron, closes his eyes and looks up at the sky.

“Fading?” She nods.  “How many of them?”

“Nicodemus and Perseus,” Dumbledore says.

“They’ve pushed themselves much too far then,” he shakes his head then looks at her.  “I’ll fetch Will.  He’ll help you figure out what you need to do for them.  What of Jason?”  Dumbledore just shakes his head.  “Oh.”  Chiron’s voice sounds different now, laden with a quiet sort of grief but a real one nonetheless.  “I understand.”  He sounds angry in spite of his supposed understanding.  She supposes she would too.

Madam Pomfrey expects this Will to be someone like her, a man hired by the camp the centaur is walking through to take care of the children there.  She isn't expecting the boy with the wild hair and the bright eyes he keeps forgetting to blink and the hands that do not still but keep moving like maybe anything will get done faster that way.  He is an anxious teenager, the kind who should be being cared for, not doing the caring.  She listens to him anyway.

They’ll have some strange magic substance in amongst their belongings somewhere that she is to have found for her that she is, under no circumstances, allowed to eat but that she must feed to them sparingly and carefully.  It will look just like a baked good and she is not to be deceived by its unassuming appearance because it is dangerous to her.  She doesn’t ask why or how.  These are problems for later.  Otherwise she just has to let them both rest, keep their wounds clean and dressed and keep the short one, Nico, in the light so he can’t just recede into shadow.  He doesn’t know what to do for Percy besides make sure he is as okay as she can.

“This has never happened to him before,” he says.  He seems scared of that thought almost, intimidated perhaps, and she continues to have no real idea what this is.  She doesn’t ask but begins to clean the cuts and the scrapes and get the boys set up in a secluded corner of the infirmary and finally the shower turns off.

Weasley walks out a while later in the clothes she laid out for him, clutching a crude carving to his chest like a lifeline.  He takes one look at the moving image suspended in the air and says hollowly and humourlessly, “Okay, why not?” and that part of her that drew her to this job in the first place rings bitterly and sorely with so much pity she can’t help but think again about that third transfer who didn’t make it back.  He makes to leave but Will stops him.

“You’re their friend, right?” His eyes are wet just like Weasley’s and it stops Ron in his tracks.

“I am,” he nods and he starts crying properly, probably not for the first time tonight.

“You saw what they did?”

Ron nods again.  “Jason-” he says, chokes up, and does not continue.  Will nods shakily anyway and she feels an awful lot like she is eavesdropping but there is nowhere else she can go so she just doesn’t look and hopes they’ll take it to mean that she isn’t trying to listen either.  “And then everything went crazy.  They-” deep, laboured breathing, “they tore the room apart.  I didn’t know what was happening, just that the whole thing was shaking and falling apart and the floor opened up and,” she wants to hug him but he looks like a touch will be enough to topple him right now, “it was horrible.  Tell me they’re going to be okay,” not a question, just a plea.

“They should be,” it’s not quite the yes Ron wants but it is the next best thing.  “I’m sure they’ll have a lot of explaining to do when they’re better,”

“That can wait til they’re better,” Ron says before she gets the chance.

She doesn’t really expect to get answers herself so she lets the things go unexplained.  She lets the strange boy tell her what to do and she feeds the boys the baked goods they aren’t really conscious enough to eat on their own and she doesn’t question why the blood she cleans from their skin shimmers gold when it catches the light.

“It was as though Voldemort was scared,” Dumbledore tells Chiron, “he was putting up a front, certainly, but they rattled even him.  I know I asked for the best help you could send; I suppose I must assume the onus for my own underestimations but I truly didn’t expect this.  All that remains of the Department of Mysteries is ruins.  He stayed only long enough to try to goad me into killing Harry Potter myself.  The matter of his soul is a rather confounding one but I cannot and will not, and upon my refusal the Dark Lord himself ran from the desperate handiwork of your students.  I must be as impressed as I am terrified.”
She does her best not to think about any of it, about what any of it means, about who these boys really are and why they were recruited to help, what is wrong with Harry Potter’s soul.  She tries not to picture the Ministry torn to pieces, tries not to imagine what may have happened to Jason Grace who she can only assume she will never see again, tries not to imagine whose blood it is on the clothes Weasley has left on her floor, or how it got there.  She’ll forgive him for the act just this once.  Going around the room and straightening sheets and potions and medicines and picking up the clothes and disposing of them then the soiled gloves that touched them then washing her hands until they are red and sore gives her something unobtrusive to do.  She continues until the call has ended and suddenly the room is too quiet.

“You can’t do this again,” she tells Dumbledore, “if there is ever anything at all you can do to keep your students safe you owe it to them to do it,”  she’s confident she won’t be replaced on his staff which empowers her to say it even though he is her boss but she likes to think she’d do the same even without that reassurance.

Dumbledore runs a hand over his face.  “I always have a plan,” he tries to reassure her.

“I’d suggest some revisions,” she is being short with him because Cedric Diggory died this time last year and now they have lost another student and there are two more in her infirmary who look to be fading away more literally than anyone else she has ever seen.  Were it not for the strange call with the centaur and the boy she would have had them sent straight to St. Mungo’s but, as it stands, she understands that they will know no more than she does.

“I promise you it is carefully coordinated,” he sounds shaky, not like himself.

“Would you like me to send an owl to Mr. Diggory reassuring him of that fact? Remind these boys when they wake up and their cousin is nowhere to be found?  Fix it.”  Maybe she’s bossy but she’s angry.  Dead children tend to rile her up.  Even if they weren’t at the school it still feels like it might have been her responsibility to help.  If she is going to assume blame that might not even be hers she is going to ensure he knows how much of it is actually his to shoulder, which is to say most of it.

She looks again at strange glittery blood on the rags and wipes she has disposed of.  “I don’t need answers,” she tells him more quietly, getting the distinct sense she already knows much too much, “I just need none of this to ever happen again,” she had thought the same thing after Cedric Diggory then bitten her tongue.  Unlike some people she does not tend to repeat her mistakes.

Chapter Text

Harry looks around Dumbledore’s office, trying to focus on anything but the man himself where he sits opposite Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Sirius and even Severus Snape.  There are four hands on Harry’s back, clutching his nightshirt at the shoulders and between his scapula, like they are afraid to let go.  He can guess whose they are, guess that they are supposed to be comforting or else grounding even though they aren’t helping him feel any less like he is about to vibrate out of his skin.

He usually likes this room, the stone and the gold and the marble and the collections of books, paintings and curios, and all the grandiosity.  Not right now.  Now all he can think about is getting out, running to the dorms or the infirmary or the forbidden forest or even all the way back to the Dursleys’.  He imagines the lights going out, the darkness creeping in like a storm cloud, the room shaking and cracks appearing across that which had once seemed unbreakable, the floor opening like a mouth, like something living and hungry and desperate.  He imagines something deep and dark and inhuman swallowing him whole, dying like Bellatrix Lestrange, before he thinks about dying like ceasing to be, dying by falling and never hitting the floor like Jason, not so much a death as it is an end.  He thinks he might be crying, thinks the candles might be flickering, thinks the sun outside the window he has fixed his vision on might never rise again, thinks the air is too cold or too hot, thinks all his anger is turning to sadness somewhere inside of him.

“I apologise,” Dumbledore says in a stilted way divorced from the usual careful fluidity of his speech, “for how things transpired today,”  Sirius scoffs beside Harry’s ear.  “It has been made clear to me that my methods, despite my best intentions, do not hold up to the reality…” he trails off and lets the silence hang heavy overhead like smog.  Harry glances over to him, catches him flitting his clear blue eyes guiltily between the ceiling and the floor between his own feet.  He might be crying too, or at least trying very hard not to.  Harry doesn’t feel sorry for him, after all it took two dead students to get here, for him to own up and take responsibility for all that happens in his school or at least begins here.

“The reality of war,” Hermione says icily, her eyes narrow and her hands balled tightly into fists.  Harry thinks again about how they chose to call themselves an army, how this was a reality they knew was coming even if Dumbledore was insistent in his refusal to.  He may be sorry but he should have done better.  He should have been doing better for a long time, maybe since the beginning.  Good intentions don’t mean much when all that comes of them is bad outcomes.

Dumbledore hangs his head.  “Yes,” he acquiesces.  “Today we have seen just a fraction of the reality of war and naively I had hoped we wouldn't reach this point.  Now that we’re here I’m afraid we must discuss what come next and what came before,”

“What about Jason?” Sirius asks and Harry can see the guilt in his face like it is a physical scar, like from this moment onwards it will never leave again.

“Another loss I will never forgive myself for,” Dumbledore sighs.  “I will explain our transfers’ presence somewhat but I believe it best if you ask Percy and Nico themselves when they are fit for visitors and up to talking,”

“So they’ll be okay?” Neville’s voice shakes.  He’s been uncharacteristically steadfast today, like he has earned the wobble.

“Madame Pomfrey is the best,” Dumbledore nods, “and your friends are strong, as I’m sure you know.  Their teacher assured me on that fact before assigning them to help,”

“So they were sent here to help us with our war?” Hermione asks.

“Yes.  As I said it is best we allow them to explain the specifics but essentially they experience a world different but adjacent to our own.  They are in the wake of a couple of wars of their own and were specifically selected for their ability to aid us,”

“And you sent for them, yes?” Snape’s voice is like ice, cold and smooth and hard with what might be an anger of his own but that is not and never will be enough to redeem him to Harry.

“That was rather above my head,” Dumbledore admits, “if I am honest I’m not sure I entirely understand it myself,”

“But Percy and Nico do?” Ron asks.

“Yes,” It’s about the only thing Dumbledore has sounded sure about.  Harry is sure for a moment he is about to say something else but his lips remain shut behind the stark white of his beard. A little of the anger is able to flare up through the slog of sadness he has found himself floundering in.

“That's it?” he might be shouting.  Even if he isn’t it is the first thing he has said in hours and he feels the hands on his back tighten their grip and leans back into their touch because he doesn’t want to let go either, not again.  He needs family to stay something more than a memory, something more than a blank spot which constantly threatens to swallow him into its grief and misery.  “You’re sorry and you’re offering us a fraction of an explanation in exchange for Jason’s life?”  His hands shake by his sides and he digs his nails into his palms in the hopes the subtle sting might make them stop.  “You didn't save Cedric and you didn’t save Jason and you were happy to let Nico and Percy do all the heavy lifting today just like you were happy to let me do it last year and the year before and the year before that-” his voice cracks with a sob and he closes his eyes and tries to collect himself enough to spit “What’s even the point of you?”  He decides the silence is more telling than it is shocked.

“What did Nico mean,” Hermione asks long after the silence has become charged and awkward, “about… Voldemort’s soul?” She hesitates before she says it but she says it anyway.  Voldemort wants them too scared to even say his name and it has done them absolutely no good giving that man--because, fundamentally, that is what he is; a human man who is no god despite what his followers might laud him as--what he wants.

Dumbledore sighs again. He has always been old but he has never seemed quite so aged and haggard as he does now, so tired and so out of his depth.  He shakes his head and does not tell them and Harry wonders why he would even bother apologising if he just intends to go on the same way as he has been anyway.

“I’ll ask Nico then,” Hermione says in such a way as to leave no room for argument.  Nico who is more or less fresh out of a war of his own, who knows something Dumbledore doesn’t want them to know and who will tell them as soon as they ask.  Nico who is creepy and strange and Harry’s friend even though it took a while to get there, even though he is also something else, something stranger and creepier and more dangerous and harder to comprehend than he had ever thought.  He will help and Dumbledore, despite his apologies and his growing number of second chances, will not.  He hangs onto that and stands up, not caring if Dumbledore intends to keep going because he isn’t all too concerned with anything he might have to say.

He is not alone as he leaves, flanked by his friends and his godfather and offered a small semblance of a smile from Snape as he leaves, the kind that is unsure and uncomfortable but genuine anyway.  The kind Harry doesn’t know what to do with.

Their dorm room feels strange now: Dean and Seamus asleep as though nothing is amiss; Harry staring at the Christmas gift from Sirius still wrapped, sitting beneath a discarded book on his bedside; Ron barely looking up from his own hands, like he can still feel the blood on them even though it has all been thoroughly washed away; Neville always looking somewhere between the two of them and Jason’s empty bed like he is waiting for the moment they run away or Jason runs back, fine and whole and alive.  Harry tries not to look at Jason’s things but the book he has to move to get to the still-wrapped gift has Jason grace scrawled on the inside of the front cover because it’s a potions book and Harry had lost his own copy a few weeks ago.  He turns the gift over in his hands and watches the way a single tear falls onto the paper with a subtle splat in the near silent room before he remembers he is supposed to open it.  It’s a gift from Sirius after all, a gift from Sirius who is only alive now because Jason saved him and sacrificed himself.  He could have cast a spell, Harry thinks to himself as he tears the paper carefully, he could have done anything but charged at the problem, except he was panicking and Harry didn’t have time to think either.  Jason acted without thinking because he didn’t have time to do both.

The paper falls away and Harry finds himself staring at his own reflection and a note.  A two-way mirror.  A way he could have contacted Sirius directly.  He could have asked him directly if he was safe, he could have spoken to him without using the fireplace Umbridge could intercept, he could have double-checked before he plunged his friends right into danger, before one of them gave up his chance at ever making it back out.  A tear falls onto the mirror, then another, and another, and he can’t quite make out the shapes of his own face anymore because the tears welling in his eyes before they drop are making everything blurry.  His hands are shaking now, and he is sobbing properly, and Ron and Neville are next to him, hugging him, holding him in reality like he might fall out of it too.  The mirror falls from his lap to the floor and breaks into three large pieces and a bunch of little shards that make it seem like the mirror might be crying too.

Poppy Pomfrey watches the transfers for two whole days before they so much as crack an eye open.  Will calls her five times in that same period, increasingly worried and brainstorming cures she doesn’t quite understand but she is willing to try anything if there is even a chance it will work.

“The lights over Nico are still on, right?” he will ask worriedly, seemingly doing his level best to remind her that, no matter how capable, he is just another teenager caught up in something awful that is much larger than him, who has a world on his shoulders.  “He’s still breathing?  He isn’t fading more than he already has?  Have water ready for when he wakes up, and chocolate, he likes that,” then he will pause and say something like, “Water might be good for Percy too, or it might be bad.  I just don’t know.  It usually heals him but if he’s dissolving I don’t want to risk putting him in water hoping it might help and then end up making everything worse.  You know what Annabeth would do to me if I hurt him?”

She doesn’t know who Annabeth is and her understanding of what is going on is generally pretty vague but she nods along anyway and she takes all of his advice and she puts a wet cloth on Percy’s head to test the theory in as low stakes of a way as she can think of, and then Nico wakes up.

He’s bleary and he’s blurry and she knows as soon as she sees his too-dark eyes open, heavy-lidded and already threatening to close again, that it won’t last long, but it is long enough for her to feed him ice chips and a single square of dark chocolate.  Long enough for her to notice that the veins visible under the pale skin on his arms are a strange sort of colour beneath all the lights and the blood vessels in his eyes aren’t quite red, long enough to reassure her that he is alive, that she’s doing the right thing, long enough for her to call Will with the strange method Dumbledore taught to her, long enough for him to smile softly and say “Hi, Sunshine,”, long enough for Nico to smile back and roll his eyes before they fall closed again.

She dutifully wets towels and lights lanterns and straightens sheets and tries not to think about what is actually going on behind these scenes because she is sure she doesn’t want to know.  They wake up in moments and increments and their fuzzy edges start to solidify until they are just edges, definite points where one thing stops and another begins and she calls Will and she meets Annabeth and she lets them talk to their boyfriends until her patients can just barely stay awake but the only privacy she can offer is a curtain and she hates that she feels as though she is always eavesdropping.

She hears Nico and Percy talking to each other too, when they are starting to spend enough time awake that their hours overlap.  Those conversations are the ones she feels worst about overhearing.  One of them will say something about losing their humanity or having war on their hands or something in their veins they wish they could just drain out, and one of them will sob and the other will not say anything to comfort him and it is like the right thing simply doesn’t exist and she does her level best to never think about who is who, who thinks and says what.

She hears the phrase “it should’ve been me” often enough that she has stopped wearing mascara because she has started crying it off every day.

“It should’ve been me,” they’ll say.

“No, not you.  Me,”

“No.  Me,”

“It shouldn’t have been Jason,”

“No, it shouldn’t have.”

“It should’ve been me instead,”

“It was always going to be one of us, wasn’t it?” and silence in response.

They talk about testing their mortality, about the things they are becoming and how desperately they hope they are not there yet.  They talk about how difficult it would be to know and how one day they are going to find out.  They talk about how there is something wrong with the way they lost their cousin and the fear that they have that he isn’t in the right place now, that he isn’t getting his paradise and is instead being subjected to a nothing so immense they don’t even have a name for it.  They say they will check and they don’t sound optimistic.  They say they’ll be home soon, say they will be somewhere else haunted by the vestiges of war that will not leave them alone no matter how many times they have won, say they will go back to staring at the spaces dead friends once occupied, and leave her to wonder how they could even call that going home at all.

Percy and Nico have always looked tired but now, even though they have been doing little but sleeping for a while now, the only word Hermione can think of to describe them is exhausted and she doesn’t think it’s doing the bags under their eyes justice.  She feels somewhat guilty about asking them now, about telling her half-awake friends who are deep in mourning that they have to spill their guts now, lay out all their secrets in front of them so that she can pick through them, but they need an explanation and Dumbledore has made it evident that there is only one place they will be getting one.

She is sitting next to Harry at the foot of the beds, bumping shoulders like they are seeking comfort even though the only thing in front of them are their friends because their friends are terrifying and, in some way she can’t quite name, they look a little unlike themselves, even now when they are not wavering around the edges.  Ron is sitting by the side of Percy’s bed, hand tight around what Hermione knows to be his weasel carving, his wand long-lost by now and his final defence feeling more than a little bit like a lifeline to cling to, and Neville has his knees pulled up to his chest next to Nico’s bed, his feet on the chair.  She’s sure they make quite the sight, all of them more than a little out of sorts since the incident which has come to be the only name she can use to refer to that night without thinking too hard about what happened and breaking down again.  The thought of going home is intimidating suddenly, like there is something about the Muggle mundanity of home that should be reliving if not comforting but that will not be because she knows too much and has seen too much to ever take it at face value again.  Her parents are dentists and she is staring down a magical war.

And now she knows that she is about to learn something that will place a further wall between her and her parents, another layer of magic in the world that separates her life from theirs.  She felt a bit like this last year, after Cedric died, like perhaps the only thing she was really bringing home to them over the summer was danger they’d never have to face were she born just like them rather than this magical black sheep.

“Bear with me,” Percy says around a wince, his voice scratchy and his eyes the brightest they have ever been against all the shadow beneath them.  He has always been hard to look in the eye but now she is fighting the urge to look away, something deep and primal and afraid inside of her that is telling her to run, to get away.

“That doesn’t bode well,” Ron says, earning himself a watery smile.

“No,” Percy agrees, “it doesn’t.  How much did Dumbles tell you?”  The nickname makes Dumbledore sound incompetent.  She has recently begun toying with the thought that he may be.

“Not much,” she sighs, “just that you were sent here for a reason by somebody above his station,”

Nico manages a fraction of a laugh at that.  “That’s not inaccurate ,” he supposes.

“Which means what, exactly?” Harry asks.

“Ripping the band-aid off,” Percy says like a warning, “we were sent by Hecate,”

“Who’s Hecate?” Ron says in the time Hermione uses to search through her mind for the reason why that name sounds familiar.

“Like the goddess?” she’s perhaps more confused now than she was before they started this.

“Not like the goddess,” Nico says nervously, and it is as though, in a moment, the world has collapsed around her like a dying star, like she is still there cowering in the department of mysteries as the whole thing is reduced into rubble and suddenly her most basic understanding of everything is rendered incomplete, like it is more hole than fabric.

Neville laughs nervously.  “You mean…” he doesn’t finish the thought, starts pinching the skin on the backs of his hands between his fingers as though trying to wake himself up.

Percy nods.  “We have an initiation video,” he says and it is like he is speaking in fragments and the onus is on Hermione to put disparate pieces together, “I never saw it.  This is all going to sound really weird but probably not that unbelievable, right?  You’re all adjusted to magic already and I’m sure you know something’s off…”

Nico cuts in.  “Have you never done this before?” he rolls his eyes as he says it, fond even through all the awfulness sitting on top of it.

“Not really,” Percy says, “video, remember?”

“Yes,” Nico says instead, like he has maybe given up on letting Percy puzzle his way through to an explanation, “I mean the goddess Hecate sent us to help you,”
Ron raises his hand like he’s in a classroom.  “I say again, who is that?”  he sounds a little far away, like he is speaking through a wall.  The wall between Hermione and everything she once knew to be true before she learned it wasn’t, the wall she feels the need to build between herself and her nice, normal parents, the wall Percy and Nico are building slowly, brick by brick, right in front of her.  The room feels like it’s spinning.  A goddess, like she is real and not just a story.  Magic is one thing but the thought of gods is a larger one than that of people who are occasionally deceived into thinking they might be.

“The goddess of magic in Greek mythology,” Percy says, “she’s pretty much your patron goddess,”

Hermione blinks.  “Because we’re witches and wizards,” a statement and not a question, finally something she can easily piece together all by herself.  Nico nods.  “But you aren’t?”

Nico shakes his head.  “She gave us her blessing so you wouldn’t notice that we aren’t wizards,” he says, as though it is typical to speak to gods, to be enlisted by gods to fight in some war across the globe, to be a god’s first choice of soldier, the person they want to recruit for their side.

“So what are you?” Harry asks, bristling like a cat.

It is Harry’s question but Nico ends up making eye contact with Neville when he answers it.  “Demigods,” he says simply, plainly.  Her friends are half god and this is a given thing she is just supposed to accept because she is apparently one of many recipients of one goddess’ widespread blessing.  But she has seen what they can do, things no wizard should be capable of, and she has known from the start that there is something about them that doesn’t quite sit right, and she knows she overheard them talking about the prophecy before she knew one even existed, that they had some kind of purpose here.

“Is that why your magic feels so weird?” she asks Percy before she really thinks it through and then pretends not to be embarrassed as he bares his sharp teeth at her in something halfway between a grimace and the awkwardest smile she has ever seen.

“Sorry about that,” he is looking at her hands and not her as he says it and, as much as she likes him, she is glad not to have his eyes on her for a moment, to feel like there is nothing strange and other worldly holding her in place.  She’s pretty sure that’s a new feeling but, then again, she can’t be sure right now what is actually real and what she is just making up because her friends are not even human in the same almost-but-not-exactly way that she is.  “You harness magic from the world around you, we’re basically wellsprings,” 

“So your magic is more concentrated than ours?  That’s why it feels so overwhelming?”

“Amongst other things,” Nico says and she blushes as she realises she is derailing this conversation, seeking answers and intricacies before she has allowed them to paint the bigger picture.  She’s hardly surprised that she’s doing it, after all this has always been who she is.

“So… you’re half god?” Neville sounds small but he is leaning towards Nico’s bed rather than away from it even with his glassy eyes and his shaky hands.  He’s almost like a reminder that Nico and Percy have proved themselves trustworthy and helpful even if the gods have necessitated that they be dishonest.  She might not really know them but they have done nothing but good for her.  She should keep trusting them.  They want what she wants enough that Jason was willing to die for it.  Her cheek feels wet and she swipes at it with the back of her hand.  “Which half?”

“Dad’s,” Percy says, “all of us,” then pauses like he is leaving a space in the conversation for Jason’s absence to fill, seeing as his voice cannot, “My father is Poseidon, god of the sea, storm bringer, earth shaker, et cetera et cetera,” his voice sounds heavy, like he is finding it hard to get the words out.  She wants to hug him so she stands up from her chair and does exactly that.  Despite everything he is still her friend, her friend who has just lost a member of his family, something he will never get back even if most of his relatives are immortal and incomprehensible and eternal.  Knowing there are gods isn’t really helping her see the bigger picture like she thought it might, it’s just making her feel small and insignificant, making the war ahead of her seem larger than life or death somehow, making the whole thing harder.

“Hades,” Nico says, “God of the Underworld.  Jason’s was Jupiter, Roman god of the sky and thunder and all of that,”

“So there are more like you?” Harry inquires.

“Yes and no,” Percy scrunches his nose, “technically none of us are actually allowed to exist.  It’s complicated, there’s a whole thing to do with a prophecy, but other than that the gods basically decided that our fathers’ demigod children were too powerful and too destructive.  Nico and Jason both have sisters but there is almost nobody who is just like we are,”

“There’s nobody just like you are,” Nico mutters quietly.  Percy either doesn’t hear it or chooses to ignore it.

“But there are other demigods.  We have a summer camp and the Romans have a city.  There aren’t that many of us left,” he pauses to take a deep, stabilising breath, “but there are plenty of Roman demigods and people descended from them.

Hermione has so many more questions that she couldn’t think about anything else if she tried.  Still, they look exhausted and she thinks she might sleep for a year as soon as her head hits her pillow herself and she didn’t almost fizzle out of existence a week and a half ago, so she decides she can ask them another day.  For now there is just one more thing she has to ask before she leaves and lets them sleep.  “What happens next?”

“Technically our job here is done,” Nico says, then adds bitterly, “which means you’ll probably be seeing more of us.  We’ll show you how to IM so you can call us, and you’ll be welcome at Camp Half Blood and New Rome if you ever want to visit.  You haven't seen the last of us,”

“I can’t say I’m happy to be involved in another war,” Percy says ruefully, “but we’re already neck deep in it and we won’t just walk away like that.  If you need help we’ll be there to offer it,”

Hermione is (relatively) happy to nod and call it a day and inquire more tomorrow and the day after and every other chance she gets but as she shifts to leave Harry asks “What about Voldemort’s soul?”

Nico hangs his head and inhales deeply.  “I knew you’d ask.  I have a sense of souls because of my father.  I noticed there was something weird about yours when we first met but I couldn’t quite place what it was.  Until we met Voldemort.  Your souls match,”

Harry blinks owlishly and Ron’s eyes go wide.  “Like they’re related?” he says, bemused and disbelieving.

“No,” Nico shakes his head.  “His soul isn’t whole, like he’s broken it into pieces and he’s storing most of them outside of himself,” he looks right at Harry, black meeting green, “One of them is inside of you,”

“So we can’t die unless Harry does?” Hermione feels like her blood is running ice cold.

“He can’t die unless all the hidden pieces of his soul have been destroyed,” Nico corrects.

“We’re very good at thinking of bullshit work-arounds,” Percy says then looks right at Harry, “find the other pieces of his soul and we will have all of Camp Half Blood brainstorming ways to kill his soul without killing yours,”

Harry exhales, rubbing his hands against his upper arms like he has to remind himself that his body is really his even if part of Voldemort resides within it.  "This is really it, isn't it?  The only thing we can do now is end it, win the war?"  The question goes unanswered, which is an answer in and of itself.

Chapter Text

Camp Half Blood is a very different place when it is not in mourning, when the sky is blue and the sun shines and the smoke filling the night is from the campfire and not the shroud being burnt to honour a body that is simply nowhere now.  Harry supposes it has had some time to recover now too, some time to return damaged cabins to their former glory instead of just a state of functional-enough to give the campers somewhere to sleep.  Still, they pass the barrier and the world changes with the power of a magic that is not their own and yet, for once, seems so incredibly close to it, and even though they never knew him here, like this, he knows they are all feeling Jason’s absence, the space he is supposed to occupy and that nobody is prepared or fit to fill.  The great big cabin that used to be his has remained empty, holding nothing but bittersweet memory, and there is a lot of space in this place that feels more like a temple than anything Harry could even consider calling a home.

And yet, even as what was once there--what Harry never saw but has been told about like it is important to the demigods that somebody outside of their circle knows what they once were, what they once had, what war has done to them too many times now, like he will be able to hold onto their memory if someday soon that is all that is left of them--can never be properly fixed nor replaced, children play on scorched grass, shoot arrows and targets and laugh at the worst misses, sing songs off-key and pretend there aren’t more voices missing than there are present.

Percy and Nico’s home is in a state of constant recovery, still not back to the glory they promise him it once possessed but immeasurably better than what it was last time Harry saw it.  He hopes it will keep improving, that he’ll come back next summer and it will just keep better, keep recovering.  His own home is in ruins, not as bad as it could have been had they not had the demigods’ help, but the casualties and consequences are still very real and he feels them every day, even as he stands here on the grass between Ron and Hermione, Neville to her other side, Fred and George right behind them and Sirius hanging a little ways back, still shadowed in his guilt like a shroud of his own.  No more Dumbledore, a strange, empty feeling in his chest where part of a soul simply no longer exists, Hogwarts, the only home he has ever really known, a shell of its former self, its ancient walls crumbling and a few too many beds empty.  He has gotten to know a few too many things about ghosts recently, about how winning a war feels a little more like losing a war than he’d expected it would.

“Wizards!” Lou Elen calls, running up to them before Nico and Percy can get there at their much more reasonable pace.  She’s an anomaly to them in the same way that they are a novelty to her, he’s sure.  After all she’s a bit like them but more primal, closer to the root of their powers that they hadn’t even known existed before Nico and Percy clued them in, running on her own power and a frightening sort of instinct seemingly common amongst demigods.  There’s a strangeness to them all, like the god in them is fighting the human, but none so much as Nico and Percy, especially not since that day, when the world fell apart around them and they tore what was left of it down.  Even Nico and Jason’s sisters, who Harry met on the day of his funeral, despite presumably possessing the same sort of raw power as their brothers even if Harry has yet to see it, don’t feel charged in quite the same way, like their fragile, mortal skin is struggling to hold all of the god in.

Lou Ellen pulls him into a hug before he can really register that she’s doing it, spinning him so she can catch Hermione in the grip of her other arm.  They stumble a little before they fall onto the soft grass and he laughs in spite of himself, in spite of all the destruction he is leaving behind, and all the covered-over destruction that lays ahead, in this home which will never be the same again but still is much better than what it once was.  The past is a thing which is always behind you, he is learning, and nothing can ever recur exactly as it was.  He’ll be missing what he is missing for as long as he lives but they have the chance now to build something in its place, something that might even be better in spite of the shaky foundations upon which it is built.

“I’m going to kick your ass this time,” Ron promises, looking Lou Ellen right in the eye as she scrambles to her feet with little grace.  She grins right back at him.

“You better have been practising,” she warns and, as Percy and Nico finally approach, Annabeth holding Percy’s elbow and Will holding Nico’s hand, she pulls Percy close to her side, “I’ve been getting lessons from the best teacher you’ve ever had,”

“Also the scariest,” Ron says by way of greeting and Harry steps back to really take his friends in.

It’s been a while.  Before the war became quite so intense they called as often as they could, but as they became overwhelmed with the fighting and the searching and the part of Harry that was the very person that wanted him dead, IMing (as the demigods call it) became less and less of a priority.  Their hair is a little longer and there is a new scar cutting prominently across Nico’s cheek like the claws of some great and horrific beast that got much too close for comfort, but they look just the same beneath it, like they haven’t aged a day in the same amount of time as it took Harry to feel a hundred years older.  Their eyes are brighter, not just because there is still something strange and inhuman shimmering beneath their skin, and the hunger pangs are all but gone, and they have been recovering from a war whilst Harry and his people have been experiencing the worst of their own.  He won’t hold it against them, he can’t and he doesn’t have to: they’ve done enough good and faced enough hardship.

“You look like crap,” Nico says bluntly, leaning against Will’s side, “well done on your big win,” the scar warps with his smile but it still looks right on his face in a way Harry doesn’t think it ever has before.  He supposes that might be reassuring.

“Thanks,” Hermione says, “You guys are looking better.  How’s it going over here?”

“Some days are better than others,” Percy admits.  “I think you might have caught us on a good one.  We’re playing capture the flag later if you wanna join, cabin 20 could use more people,”  from what Harry has heard, almost all of their cabins could do with more people, to make up for the numbers they lost fighting their wars.  They didn’t face those same losses in their own war, after all Voldemort was always a man and never a god or something even worse.

“You know you aren’t allowed to play anymore,” Will points at Percy then turns to look at Harry over his shoulder, rolling his eyes.  “Annabeth never won’t pick him and his team always wins.  The younger kids won’t even try to fight him.  It just stopped being a competition,” he looks back at Percy.  “Join me and Nico on the sidelines,”

“Funsies,” Percy waves his hands in the air but looks a little forlorn as he does it, like there is something larger here than the game which is going unsaid.  “I get to third wheel while everyone else gets to play,”

Annabeth kisses him on the cheek.  “I’ll win on your behalf,” she promises.

“Well duh,”

“You have healing powers too,” Will points out, “we could try them out on the other campers,”

Percy makes a face.  “I don’t really like doing new things with my powers,” he offers sheepishly.

“There are still new things you can do with your powers?” Nico asks quickly, swiftly cutting the discussion off because they all know they are probing at a sore spot and nobody really wants to consider the answers.

They gather at the arena to watch Ron and Lou Ellen swordfight before Percy starts his lesson for the younger campers and they all join in even though Harry hasn’t picked up a sword in almost a year and Neville and Ron who have kept up the habit are a little too advanced for the class.  Camp Half Blood is lacking the fighters it once had and Harry knows that because he is not allowed to forget it, but Ron and Neville never struggle to find competition here anyway.  They attract a lot of attention here, people who are new and strange and never blamed for Jason’s death even though sometimes when Harry looks at the perimeter around Jason’s old cabin where nobody will even stand, his once-best friend who was thought dead for just long enough to miss the chance to really say goodbye and now spends a little too much time tucked away in the forge in the heat most of the campers can’t even stand, every memory of a hero that is now just the absence of one, he feels sick with guilt.  He lived and Jason didn’t and even if that isn’t strictly his fault it still feels like it may be.  He thinks he might understand Sirius a little better every time he comes here.  He hates that feeling in a way he would never have predicted he could.

For a long time the fight between Ron and Lou Ellen seems to have reached a stalemate, and then he gets lucky enough to lunge forward, strike her sword with the flat of his, and twist so her grip falters.

“That’s Percy’s move!” Lou Ellen says, looking at her sword where it lays by her feet as Ron swipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

“Actually, it’s Luke’s,” Percy says quietly to Harry’s right and Annabeth leans over to murmur quietly in his ear and he nods along for a moment before standing up from his seat.

“I’d beat you in a magical duel,” Lou Ellen says as she bends down to pick up the sword, her cheeks shockingly red.

Ron laughs, “And the sky is blue,”

Dinner feels somewhat more sombre than the rest of the day, as everybody is pulled together and separated out by their parentage except for Nico and Percy who sit with Will and Annabeth respectively and aren’t questioned even though even an outsider like Harry knows they are in blatant disregard of the rules.  He and all the wizards sit with the Hecate kids, blessed and shaped by her even though they are not her children.  She is who they dedicate the food they sacrifice to the fire too, though Harry can’t help himself but to send off a prayer for Zeus/Jupiter too (he is still kind of struggling to understand the not-quite distinction between the two so kind of mostly ignores it), on Jason’s behalf.  Nico won’t say much about what has happened to his soul or if it is really anywhere at all, a kind of silence that doesn’t give Harry or anybody else who witnesses it much confidence that all is right in his afterlife, so he doesn’t think it’s doing much but he thinks he has learned a thing or two about hope in the past year or so.  It’s more important than anger or despair, after all it is the only one of the three that really presents a path forward instead of just another winding road back to where he has already been and has no real want to revisit.

Jason’s table is empty.  Nobody uses it anymore and, as far as he understands, nobody is ever supposed to sit there again.  Nico, Percy, Jason, Thalia and Hazel are supposed to be the last of their kind, most of them weren’t even supposed to exist at all.  Part of the reason for that is a prophecy but the other half is how powerful they are, the threat they could represent should they turn their back on the gods.  As much as he hates to say it, Harry understands it because he has seen precisely how scary Nico and Percy can be and exactly how hard their godhood is fighting their humanity.  Secretly, in a way he would never even consider telling Nico or Percy, he’s more than a little bit concerned that it may have already won.

The food is delicious and there aren’t even any house elves behind it.  It must have been just as good last time but everything was solemn and grey and horrible and it hadn’t tasted of much at all.  It’s still warm despite the breeze and he is able to eat outside without bugs buzzing over his food and his best friends are all here and it should be perfect but people are dead and knowing that they ended up in the special, fantastic afterlife reserved for the very best people can only bring so much comfort (and Nico’s refusal to say that Jason is right there among them is all but confirmation that he is not).

“It’s nice here,” Sirius says.  “I don’t think I realised that last time,”

“Yeah,” Harry agrees mechanically, feeling the words slip past his lips without passing through his brain, “me neither,”

His team loses Capture the Flag.  He didn’t think he was all that competitive but it does nothing good for his bad move.

The campfire does wonders for his spirits though, a bright beacon the exact blue of Jason’s eyes instead of the drab, colourless shape it had been when he was here last, for the funeral.  The light is bright and cool on everyone’s face and the black of Nico’s eyes reflect its shape perfectly.  He smiles at Harry from the other side of the fire, leaning into Will’s side and talking to Neville and failing to eat a s’more without leaving sticky splotches of marshmallow on his chin.  He belongs here as much as he can belong anywhere, like Harry at Hogwarts where all number of terrible things have happened and structure has been reduced to rubble though neither doomed nor destined to stay that way.

“You just study magic?” Annabeth is sitting next to Percy but leaning away from him, gesturing enthusiastically in Hermione’s direction.  None of them made for particularly good conversation last time, but now the two of them are getting on like a house on fire, talking rapidly and enthusiastically as Percy alternates between listening and smiling, and continuing his own conversation about Ron.  Harry rolls his eyes as he fails to hear a single word that isn’t about swords.  “Like, just magic?  No mortal history or anything?”

Hermione shakes her head.  “I suppose we don’t really get the chance to opt out of a life in the wizarding world,” she squints as she considers that fact.

Annabeth smiles ruefully.  “I know that feeling,” and Harry really is content to listen along, to consider rebuilding and what comes next, what his life might be like as Harry Potter rather than the Boy Who Lived now that there is no more use for him.

“What comes next?” he ends up asking Percy after the campfire is out and they are supposed to be asleep but Percy apparently doesn’t have it in him anymore to fear the harpies or any other consequence Camp Half Blood has on offer.  He wonders if Percy fears much at all anymore even though he thinks he understands him well enough by now to know the answer to that.

The docks are nice at night, the water they dangle their feet in temperate and the light of the moon reflecting across the ripples of the waves.  “Beats me,” Percy says honestly. “What do you want to come next?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says.  As glad as he is that all of this is over he doesn’t know who he is without it, what life is like without the looming threat of war or prophecy or expectations that are all but impossible to live up to.  “Is it bad if I say nothing?  I don’t want to have to save the wizarding world again,”

“I swear you’re reading my mind.”