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Chapter Text

Do you know those situations where you think that your life is currently semi-stable and on an upwards path and then, everything goes to shit? That was exactly what was happening to Percy right now. He had turned 18, which was a pretty big milestone in a demigod’s life (honestly, every birthday was), without dying. He was going to study marine biology in New Rome. On top of that, he was planning to propose to Annabeth.

But no, then a certain goddess had to show up. A certain Greek goddess of magic, in fact. And now he was standing in the praetors’ office, together with Annabeth, Hazel, Frank, Piper, Jason, Thalia, Nico, as well as Will Solace.

“Greetings, Heroes,” the goddess spoke. “I am relieved to find all of you in good health. Why I am here and have summoned you all, you may ask? I am here to assign a quest.”

“You are here to assign a quest?” Frank asked, incredulously.

“That is what I said, isn’t it? This quest is slightly out of the ordinary, though, compared to the rest of your quests.”

“How do you mean that, my lady?” The suspicion was obvious in Annabeth’s voice. It made her seem dangerous, which served to make her the most amazing girlfriend one could have.

“For one, there will not be a prophecy given by the oracle. Nor is it in the Sybilline Books, for that matter. Furthermore, there are six heroes assigned to this quest, not the customary three.”

“You do remember what happened the last time a quest for more than three was issued? ANd I'm not talking about the 'Quest of the Seven', to make things clear”, Percy asked. He would not let something like that happen again – there wouldn’t be anything like that again, not as long as he lived.

“I’m with Percy here.” Thalia seemed angered, and he hoped she wouldn’t shock him, or anyone for that matter. “Last time, Bianca – “ She caught herself. Nico’s expression had darkened and the air was growing colder.

“Lord Apollo personally assured me that none of those on the quest would be killed. If I may continue uninterrupted now, the ones chosen for this quest are Perseus Jackson, Thalia Grace, Jason Grace, Hazel Levesque, Nico di Angelo, and Piper McLean. I will leave you two days’ time to get your affairs in order. Have a good afternoon. And Hazel?”

“Yes, my Lady?”

“You will be the one to lead the quest.”

And with that she vanished, leaving the demigods behind.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore fancied himself quite the well-read man, but discovering the fact that gods existed and had made wizards was news to him. He had been researching certain… things ever since the whole affair with Quirrel, but he’d had that particular big breakthrough a good two years ago, when the honest-to-Merlin Greek goddess Hecate had showed up. Personally. And claimed him as her grandson.

A good year later, she had told him of Voldemort’s impending rise and of a plan on how to stop it. A plan of sending some of the gods’ mightiest children to help them win and kill Voldemort. Maybe that meant that Harry wouldn’t have to die, but prophecies still were prophecies, weren’t they? But maybe, they could prevent an all-out war or at least finish it quickly.

Hecate had given him a list with six names on it.
- Perseus
- Thalia
- Hazel
- Nico
- Piper
- Jason

And now, they would be sent over soon.

He searched through the papers stacked on his desk until he found it. There it was, the paper and golden ink pristine as ever. Then, he took the letter he had written, explaining things (Only a little, though. An old man needed his fun being cryptic.) Smiling to himself, he went over to where Fawkes was seated.

“Fawkes, if you could do me a small favour and deliver this letter to Sirius Black?”

Fawkes squawked, as if to say “I am not your messenger bird, old man”.

Dumbledore simply looked at the bird and if it could, it would have rolled its eyes. Then it took the letter and flew out of the window, vanishing quickly into the afternoon sun.

In Annabeth’s and Percy’s apartment in New Rome, all was not well.

“Percy, you have to go.”
“Annabeth, I promised you I would never leave you, not again. Not if I can help it.”

“But you can’t, Percy for gods’ sake! If I were given a quest and refused to go, what would you say?”

“As if you would ever put down the opportunity to go on a quest.”

“Percy, you know what I mean. I know this is gonna be hard for us, but please. I don’t want you to be gone, either, and I sure as Hades don’t want you to get harmed while gone! But the gods gave us this quest and it seems to be important, so please do me favour and be the bigger person here!”

“I’m scared, Annabeth. Of how you’re going to be doing and I still can’t sleep properly and neither can you and I’m just scared of what might happen if I lose control and… Annabeth, there’s something important I wanted to ask you.”

“What is it, Percy?”

“Can I ask you a completely wild, nonsensical question?”

“That’s the complete basis of our relationship, isn’t it?”

“Kind of.” He laughed. “Annabeth, I know we’re young and I’m not the most financially well-off guy, but maybe we don’t have a whole lot of time anymore and…” his gaze trailed off. “Annabeth, do you want to marry me?”

“Sorry, but I’m already betrothed.” She cringed internally at that sentence. Of course, that’s what she had to blurt out. Real smooth, Annabeth, real smooth. But well… technically, yes.

A look of utter confusion crossed Percy’s face. “What?” he managed to ask. “To who?”

“To you, of course, you Seaweed Brain.”

He just blinked, to stunned to say a thing.

“You do know that throwing an apple in ancient Greece counted as a marriage proposal?”

“Yeah?”

“And what were we playing hacky sack with on our first quest?”

“How do you even remember stuff like that? Was it an apple?”

“Photographic memory, and yes, exactly.”

Recognition dawned on his face. “Wait, does that mean we’re engaged to Grover, too?”

They both burst out laughing. When she was almost crying from laughter, Annabeth managed to squeeze out “Oh gods, I never even thought about that!”

It took multiple minutes for the laughter to dissipate. Then, when she had calmed down, Annabeth asked Percy, “So? Are you going or…?”

“Yeah, guess so.” There it was again, that sadness that she hated seeing on his face.

“Guess we have to make it work long-distance then. Promise you’ll call me over Iris Message as often as you can, Seaweed Brain.”

“Will do, Wise Girl.”

And then, he moved in to kiss her.

“Dumbledore, what the actual fucking hell”, Sirius Black muttered to himself. He’d just spent the last year proving himself not guilty in front of the Wizengamot and reintegrating into society, but then, Dumbledore had to send him this. “This” being a short letter and a list of names. The letter just said something about the “true origins of our magic” and “foreign help coming to our aid”. What was he even supposed to do with that?

And so it came that the heir of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black was laying with his head in his boyfriend’s lap and complaining about a certain headmaster of Hogwarts.

Chapter Text

Two days had passed since Hecate had first appeared and Hazel was nervous. There had been no further news from the goddess but now, they were set to leave. She had told the senate – they were, of course, dissatisfied with a Praetor, the Pontifex Maximus, and the guy in charge of rebuilding the fleet going away to Europe, out of all places.

There had been an argument about Europe being off-limits and about refusing the gods’ will. In truth, it had been just as mind-numbing as every other Senate meeting she had been to. To be earnest, all of them were so boring that they were draining. She liked being Praetor, but the bureaucracy and politics? No, thank you very much. Truth be told, she had to restrain herself from murdering several senators every meeting. And the meetings were weekly. Her only joy in them was seeing Percy suffer even more than her – brilliant leader and hyper-competent fighter he may be, but politics were too much for his ADHD too handle.

It was the same for her, but she had never actually gotten herself tested for ADHD – it wasn’t really an existing diagnosis back in the thirties and even now, she knew girls had a harder time than boys getting diagnosed. Especially if they didn’t actually legally exist. Hazel had been putting off getting any matters of identification until now, and now she was starting to regret it.

Especially with the flight to Britain. Or maybe they’d go by ship? Hecate could probably teleport them, but was unlikely to do so. Neither ship nor airplane were a method of travel she liked – she always got seasick (thanks, uncle Neptune!) and was a bit to scared of planes because she didn’t know if she’d get knocked clean out of the sky with a bolt of lightning (thanks Uncle Jupiter!). No, what she would have liked was traveling by train. But sadly, trains didn’t generally go all the way across the Atlantic (huh. Was that named after Atlas? That was something she had to look up).

“-azel! Hazel!” A voice jolted her out of her thoughts. She’d recognize that raspy New York accent anywhere – it was Percy, a teal armband clearly visible. So Percy wanted they/them pronouns used for them today. They had explained it to her a few months ago and she still didn’t entirely get it, but she tried her best to be supportive. Times had changed, she was in a different millennium now! If her cousin said that their gender (“No, not the biological one, Hazel. It’s about what I feel like”) changed from time to time, then she would just take that as fact.

“Hazel”, Percy said again, “I’ve been calling your name for like, an hour now!”

“Oh, shit! Do we have any news from the Lady?”

They shook their head. “No. Is it just me or does this quest make you feel on edge?”

“No, I get what you mean. Six demigods on a quest? No prophecy? Barely any information given by the gods? This whole thing just seems like a death trap.”

Then, the door flew open and one of the younger legionaries came bursting in. Hazel thought that his name might have been Flavius, but she wasn’t sure.

“Sirs, the Lady Trivia is there, on the city border! The others are there already, the Lady Piper sent me!” He was breathing quite heavily.

Hazel took a deep breath. “Alright, thank you.” To Percy, she added, “Let’s go.”

Percy grinned. “Race you there!”

Sirius loved everything about his boyfriend – everything except for his driving. Seriously (haha, Sirius), the man couldn’t drive to save his life. In fact, he reckoned, he’d be able to drive better himself, but no, he didn’t have a license. Ugh.

Since he wasn’t allowed to drive, he instead took it upon him to annoy the man next to him.

“When are we there?”, he whined, overdramatically. Sirius did most things dramatically – the one good thing he had inherited from his family, bunch of bigoted, inbred bastards they were.

Remus sighed audibly. Had he not been driving through London, he probably would have slammed his head on the nearest object. Since that was the steering wheel, he refrained from it.

“We are there when we have arrived, Sirius. If you ask that question again, I will stop this car and throw you out myself.”

“Oh really?”, Sirius shot back, “I thought you’d ask someone else to do it.”

“Why do I even put up with you?”

“Because you love me.”

A short time later, Remus stopped the car. Not to throw Sirius out, but because they had arrived at the airport – London Heathrow Airport, to be exact, where the so-called “foreign aid” should be arriving any minute now.

Sirius drew a few stares – most people had seen his face in the reports about him breaking out of Azkaban, even in the muggle news. At least no one had asked him questions. That was one of the things he couldn’t stand. “Are you Sirius Black?” “How did you escape?” He always had to restrain himself from telling them that it wasn’t any of their business and to fuck off.

“Sirius, do we have any idea how they look?” Remus asked.

Sirius shook his head. “Nope. We have a poster saying ‘Hazel Levesque & co’, though.”

“Great”, Remus sighed, “just absolutely perfect.”

Sirius shrugged and removed the folded-up poster from the pocket of his jeans. Unfolding it, he was glad to see the writing hadn’t smudged – of course it hadn’t, he’d enchanted it himself.

“So”, Remus asked, after some slightly awkward silence, “What were their names again?”

“Hazel Levesque, Piper McLean, Thalia Grace, um… Jason Grace, Nico di Angelos, I think – or was it die Angelo? And Percy Jackson, I’m pretty sure about that one.”

Remus just seemed to get more exasperated every second. More annoyed, with him specifically. Get it together, Black, he told himself.

Then, a group of teenagers heading straight towards them caught his attention. None of them seemed very happy to be here.

“Remus, I think that might be them”, he told hid boyfriend with a slight nod in the group’s direction.

Harry was angry again, like he had so often been in the past few months. Angry with Ron, Hermione and Sirius for not writing to him. Angry with himself for letting the Dursleys spot him listening to the news. But right now, he was above all angry with his cousin Dudley.

“Who’s Cedric, Harry? Your boyfriend?

“Shut up, Dudley.”

“Dad! Dad! Help me! He’s going to kill me! Dad!”, he continued, in a mockery of what he probably thought Harry’s voice sounded like. “I thought you knew your mummy and daddy are dead!”

“Shut up, Dudley. I’m warning you”, Harry grit out.

“No! Cedric!” He laughed. He fucking laughed and Harry only saw red.

He pushed Dudley against the wall of the small alleyway, drew his wand and held it at Dudley’s throat.

That excellently served the purpose of shutting him up and making his voice quiver with fear, which was much better than mocking laughter.

But then, cold and a strange fog started to spread throughout the alley.

“What are you doing?”, Dudley shouted in a panicked voice.

“I’m doing nothing, you big bloody idiot!”, Harry shot back, fear creeping through him. These were all signs for a dementor or worse, multiple dementors, coming. But what would dementors be doing here, in what was most probably the most boring suburb in all of Great Britain? That just made no sense.

A slimy, half rotten hand wrapped itself around on corner of the alley. That was most definitvely a dementor.

Shit.

Piper and her friends were being driven through London by two men that had introduced themselves as Sirius and Remus and Piper was relatively sure that at least one of them was a monster. So, she was a little bit on edge.

“Alright. So, this ‘Voldemort’ guy was trying to kill all ‘muggle-borns’ roughly fourteen years ago, but was stopped by a one-year-old.?” Jason seemed perplexed, but Sirius, the guy who wasn’t driving, just nodded. “And then, a couple of months ago, he returned from the dead?”

“Well,” Sirius began, “We’re relatively sure that he wasn’t even actually dead. Only half-dead, or something like that.”

“Great,” Percy sighed, miserable. “So we’re gonna have to deal with people who should be dead but aren’t, again?”

“Again?”, Remus, the driver, asked. If Piper thought about it, he was probably the monster. Percy, Hazel, Nico, and Thalia had also caught on already. Percy had started playing with their silver earring, which actually was a dagger hidden by the mist and had the other hand in their jeans pocket, where Piper was pretty sure Riptide was.

The others were all doing similar things with their respective hidden weapons. Piper was also doing just that, playing around with the sword she had stolen off of one of the Boreads. Of course, it didn’t look like a sword right now – it looked more like a little chain dangling off her belt.

“We’re there soon,” Sirius said.

And, truth be told, they came to a stop not five minutes later.

“Where do we have to go?”, Hazel asked.

“Grimmauld Place Number 12,” Remus mumbled absent-mindedly.

“Uh… I don’t see a Grimmauld Place Number 12 anywhere here,” Percy piped in.

“I know. Watch this.” The cocky grin on Sirius’s face could rival Percy’s taunting-a-enemy-smirk.

And before them, the numbers 11 and 13 started drifting apart, and another house started to appear in the gap.

“Welcome,” said Sirius, “to the headquarter of the Order of the Phoenix!”

Chapter Text

Nico did not like the décor inside the house. Really, it looked like someone had allowed 11-year-old him to be an interior designer for one of the chthonic deities. The fact that everything looked dusty and covered and spiderwebs, as well as the smell of decay permeating every last inch of the house, did nothing to help, either.

The wizard leading them was called Sirius Black. Apparently, this was his family’s house. Apparently, it was being renovated right now.

“So, if you’re going to be staying here, Molly is probably going to have you helping with cleaning up everything. None of you are afraid of small creatures that like to hide in dark corners, right?”

“I am a small creature that likes to hide in dark corners,” Nico deadpanned.

Thalia snorted. “Yup,” she added, “he is.”

The other wizard, the one they suspected of being a monster, pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Do I want to know why?” His tone was long-suffering. He probably put up with a lot of people as annoying as Thalia every day.

“Nope,” chorused Percy, Jason, Hazel, and Piper simultaneously.

*

“Alright,” said Sirius, “You’re going to be staying in some of the rooms on the second floor. You boys over there –” He gestured to a door a flight of stairs above them – “And the girls over there.” This time, he pointed to a door to the left of the other one.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nico noticed Percy squirming uncomfortably. He felt a pang of sympathy for them. He’d felt similarly when everyone had been thinking he had a crush on Annabeth. That dilemma of safety versus being yourself was seriously not good for anyone’s mental health.

“Thank you, sir,” Jason said. “We’ll be putting down our luggage then, or is there something else to do first?”

“No,” Sirius said. “You’re free to do what you like until about five, then we have an order meeting then.

“Percy, how late is it?”, asked Hazel.

Sparing a glance towards their watch, the demigod announced the time as roughly 3:15 PM.

To no-one’s surprise, the guest rooms were also filled with cobwebs and filled with a smell of – who guessed it right? – sickly sweet decay.

“Is everything alright, Percy? You seem a bit troubled.” Classic Jason, always mothering everyone. Not that Nico would complain in earnest, though.

“Why didn’t you correct him, Percy?”, asked Thalia when Sirius and the other guy had left. They were standing in the designated “boys’ room”.

“I didn’t really care about that.”

“That’s complete and utter bullshit and you know it, Percy.”

*

“What’s ‘complete and utter bullshit’?” Suddenly, a mane of red hair was poking out of the door. Nico jumped and suddenly, the world faded into shadows.

Harry was very confused. Not because of the dementors, or Ms Figg apparently being a squib. No, it was the small boy falling out of a dark patch of shadow, all while cursing in what sounded like several languages. And then, Ms Figg stopped ranting about Mundungus Fletcher (what the guy had to do with his situation, he didn’t even know).

“Who are you?”, she asked the boy, suspicion in her voice.

“Uh, I’m part of the foreign aid efforts.” The boy’s voice seemed nervous.

“The order is sending you? Did they catch wind of the attack this quickly? Maybe that scoundrel was keeping watch, after all.”

“Yes, exactly. The order told me to go here, that’s how it happened. ‘That scoundrel’, as you like to call him tipped us of that something was not right.”

“Will you be taking him to the headquarters, then? And what am I supposed to do with the other boy?”

Dudley groaned at the mention of him. Apparently, he was still only semi-conscious. That seemed to be one of the side-effects of almost getting your soul sucked out of you.

“We’ll bring him home first, someone else will sort out things with the ministry.”

So he would have to drag Dudley further. Great, just great.

“Do you need any help with him?”, asked the boy.

Harry made a vaguely affirmative noise. He doubted the boy would be able to carry that much of Dudley’s weight – he seemed even scrawnier than Harry himself. To his surprise, the boy was now lifting much of Dudley’s weight all on his own.

When they had arrived at number four, Privet Drive, the boy dropped Dudley and rang the doorbell. Harry heard steps inside, but the boy was already walking away again. Ms Figg was also gone.

“Hey! Where are you going!” Harry quickly ran after the boy. At the door, he could hear his aunt fussing over Dudley and his uncle calling after him angrily.

“London, your godfather’s house. You coming?”

“What? Yes of course, but how are we getting there? And all my stuff is here and my owl and –”

“Later.”

Then, the boy grabbed his hand. The world seemed to melt into shadows around them. They were going somewhere, faster than human eye could tell. After a moment that seemed as long as a history of magic class, the shadows disappeared. They were standing in front of a dark, ornately decorated door.

“Well then, we’re there,” said the boy with a singular knock on the door. “Ready to meet the order of the phoenix?”

Hermione Granger was glad to have her best friend back. That he was mad at her, she could take. That the one of the Americans, here for the foreign aid program, had brought him here after a dementor attack, was an acceptable fact. That three of the other Americans had simply gone to “get Percy’s stuff” and disapparated into a cloud of darkness was not completely of the table. That Mrs Weasley didn’t want them at the table was normal. That Sirius debated her on that was normal, too.

What wasn’t normal was that Mrs Weasly finally gave in and let her, Harry, Ron and the twins sit in on the meeting. Ginny, who had been sent upstairs, could be heard cursing all the way up.

“Alright. Can we start the meeting now?”, asked Remus.

One of the Americans, a girl around Hermione’s own age with light brown skin, pitch-black hair, and shockingly bright blue eyes, shook her head.

“Nope,” she said, “half of us isn’t accounted for yet, including our leader on this mission.”

A mission? What kind of mission could a group of kids be on? The three Americans sitting around the table all seemed to be at most a year or two older than her. But then again, there was something off about them. They seemed… old, somehow. It wasn’t only their eyes, which seemed to have seen so much, piercing through her and sucking her in (it would probably be for the best not to look into their eyes to long).

No, it was simply something about them, around them. They didn’t seem like they belonged here in this house, even though it was certainly very old. No, they seemed as if they belonged more between a museum’s marble statues and old texts than between a couple of wizards and witches in an old, run-down house.

She could hear the stairs creaking. Then, a head popped through the door.

“Sorry, but where should we put Harry’s stuff?”, asked a very raspy voice with a strong American accent.

“Uh, Mum, Harry’s staying with me, right?”, asked Ron.

Mrs Weasley nodded. “Yes, of course. You don’t have a problem with that, right, Harry?”

“No, Mrs Weasley. I don’t have a problem with it.”

“Okay, could I show them there?” Ron seemed to be eager to get away from the three Americans at the table. It was an urge Hermione could understand very well.

“Yes, that would be very nice of you, Ron.”

When Ron and the other three Americans had settled back at the table, the girl with the blue eyes announced, “Okay, everyone’s there. We can start now.”

“Alright, first question,” drawled Sirius. “Why in the name of Merlin did you kidnap my godson?”

Then, the table broke out in heated discussion.

Chapter Text

If there was a thing Jason didn’t like, it was his baby cousin that he was extremely protective of being accused of kidnapping someone. Well, there were other things he disliked (like ugh, monsters trying to kill you sucked), but still. This was pretty far up on the list of “things I don’t like happening, please make them stay away from me”.

Apparently, Nico had kidnapped a guy who looked like a smaller desi version of Percy, with eyes that were significantly less vivid. Sure, for a mortal, the guy had very nice, bright eyes. But the kid’s eyes were more of an emerald colour, and probably didn’t glow in the dark like something out of an HP Lovecraft novel.

“Alright.” Percy was massaging their temples, a quirk they had probably picked up from Annabeth. “Nico, how did you manage to kidnap a baby wizard on accident?”

“Ask the red-headed girl that spooked me so hard I shadow-travelled to some British suburb!”

“Hold up,” said Ron. “Are you talking about my sister?”

“Probably,” said Nico with a disinterested shrug. “You do look pretty similar.”

“Shadow Travel? What’s that supposed to mean?”, asked one of the red-headed twins. They reminded Jason of the Stoll brothers – gods, he’d miss them while abroad, even though they were probably some of the most annoying people on the earth.

“Listen, I’m pretty sure this is just a misunderstanding”, Piper cut in. Huh. Was she lacing her voice with just the tiniest bit of charm-speak? Gods save him if she ever decided to go evil.

The discussion and Piper’s attempt at diplomacy were cut short by an arrival through the door. A tall man stood there, long white beard and hair flowing over his wine-coloured robe. Half-moon shaped spectacles rested on his crooked nose and his eyes were a bit to vivid for a human, even for a wizard. No, this was the legacy Lady Hecate had spoken of, her grandson, Albus Dumbledore.

Dumbledore walked through the room with a certain type of grace that humans naturally didn’t possess, settling down on a chair at the head of the table.

“Good. Dumbledore, could you please explain what in the name of Merlin’s bloody beard is going on?”, asked Sirius, irritated.

“Alright, I will. Calm down, everyone.” There was a perpetual kind smile on Dumbledore’s face. He looked like a wizened old wizard from a fantasy novel that gives the protagonist half of the information they need and then tragically dies – a bit like Gandalf, actually. Man, he really should reread the Lord of the Rings books sometime soon.

“Roughly two years ago, I made an important discovery. What this discovery was about, you may ask. For many centuries – no, millennia, even – there has been an abundance of stories, of myths, trying to explain where wizards came from. How they first came to be. Why they did so. If they were created, and if yes, by whom? And then, I found what I thought was the final clue. We wizards had been created by the ancient gods of Greece. More specifically, by the goddess Hecate, Lady of Magic.”

Alright, so Dumbledore really liked to hear himself talk. It reminded Jason of many of the senators he had met. Was that just generally a Thing? As you get older, the urge to hear yourself talk increases? But Hazel and Nico seemed to be exempt from it, so it couldn’t be all old people…

He was taken out of his thoughts by Percy tapping him on the leg.

Dumbledore, meanwhile, had continued. “A good year or so ago, the Lady Hecate revealed herself to me a second time. She told me that war would be upon us soon, that we could not do anything.”

Sirius suddenly raised up his voice, “So you knew what was going to happen? You knew what would happen during the tournament? You knew –”

The man with the facial scars (Sirius’s boyfriend? Maybe?) put a hand on Sirius’s. The wizard took a deep breath and went quiet again. But there was an angry expression still on his face. So the guy clearly didn’t like Dumbledore very much.

“As I was saying, she told me about the oncoming war. But she also told me she would send over six of her most powerful and accomplished heroes to our aid. As you might have been thinking, those are the foreign help I have told you about in previous meetings. They are the children of the Greek gods themselves, all incredibly powerful. Their leader on this quest, as they call it, is a young woman named Hazel. Hazel, might you be able to tell us a little bit more about our purpose here.”

Hazel did not like making speeches. It meant loads of preparation and deliberation and trying your best not to murder people who interrupted you. But improvising speeches was even worse – you didn’t even have a script you could fall back on. And now, she had to make a quasi-impromptu speech in front of a group of people whose entire culture she didn’t know, who thought she was someone far greater than she actually was.

Then, she began to talk.

“As Dumbledore already said, I am Hazel, Hazel Levesque. The Lady Hecate made me the leader of the demigods on the quest. Yes, we are actually the children of gods. I am a daughter of Pluto, Roman god of the Underworld and Riches, but I also am a champion of Hecate. My half-brother Nico, the pale one, is the son of Pluto’s Greek form, Hades. Jason and Thalia, the ones with the blue eyes, are children of Zeus, but Jason is also the son of Jupiter, at the same time. Do not ask me how that works, please.”

A few chuckles were heard around the table, but most of them seemed disbelieving, wary, or both.

“Piper, who is, as you might have guessed, the girl with the braids, is a daughter of Aphrodite. And lastly, Percy is the child of Poseidon, but is also called ‘Child of Neptune’ because of what can best described as kidnap hijinks.”

“Kidnap hijinks?”, asked one of the red-headed twins.

Percy simply sighed. “I can tell the story later, but I’d like to let Hazel finish, first,” they said.

“Thank you, cousin. The Lady revealed to us that the ‘magical community’ here in Britain is threatened by war and the rise of a dark wizard. However, the gods do not send us here for purely benevolent, altruistic reasons.”

Hazel could feel her voice growing bitter. She did hold respect for the gods, but she did not like them. Not now, even though she might have had done so some time ago.

“No, they are concerned that this dark wizard is trying to proclaim himself as a new god.”

“Why?”, asked a girl Hazel’s own age, with bushy curls and a frown etched into her face. “Why do they think that? No, what he wants is the extinction of all muggle-born wizards and witches and the subjugation of normal muggles. Maybe they should be concerned about that, instead?”

“Yes, they should. But they are gods, they do not abide by our parameters of interest, of morality. They are more concerned with his apparent claim of immortality. And the title of Lord, and the renaming. That people give him epithets because they do not want to speak his name. You know, something like that is mostly reserved for chthonic gods – gods of the underworld.

“And the war brewing here, it does not truly concern them?”, asked the guy that was probably a monster.

“Of course not,” said Percy, bitterness in their voice. “They are gods. Really, it’s pretty nice of them to send you us. Six well-trained demigods can do a lot to stop a war. If things had gone worse, you’d be sitting here with three newly claimed demigods with barely any experience in fighting and ending wars.”

“Fighting wars?”, asked the round, red-headed woman. “Why would children have experience fighting in wars? Oh Merlin, please tell me it isn’t like I think it is…”

“That’s just what our life is like,” Thalia cut in.

Piper nodded. “Yeah, that’s just part of the job, y’know? Noone likes it, but it’s like an occupational hazard. Ugh, no, that’s not the right word. You know what I mean, though? When you’re a demigod or something like that, you’re probably going to get involved in a war, or two, or three, depending on how long you live.”

“Depending on how long you live?”, echoed Sirius.

“Demigods have a tendency to die young,” his partner (?) said. “To them, getting to twenty or so means being old.”

“But why?”, asked the red-head-that-wasn’t-a-twin, “Why do they die so young?” There was an emotion etched into his face which Hazel could at best describe as horrified with a mixture of disbelief.

“Well, what do think they die of?”, Nico asked sarcastically.

“What could it be? Old age? Nope. Sickness? Probably not, unless it’s a curse. The wars they’ll probably be in? The constant monster attacks that will probably start while they’re still a pre-teen? Golly fucking Gee, you guessed it!”, Thalia snapped. “Would it hurt you to be any less stupid?”

“Thalia, calm down,” Percy hissed.

“Make me.”

“I swear to the gods, you two, if you start a fight now you won’t live to see midnight.” Piper didn’t get fed up often, but when she did, you had to be careful. Hazel knew that very well from past incidents.

“Oh shut it, Beauty Queen! Who cares!”

“Thalia, I said SHUT UP!”

The charmspeak lacing Piper’s voice did its intended job, Hazel observed.

“Alright,” Sirius said, “what the fuck was that?”

In Remus’s professional opinion, the order meeting had gone well enough. Everyone had been horrified about the reality of the demigods’ life, the prophecy had been debated in uncertain terms, Dumbledore had been cryptic, Sirius had to be held back from yelling at Snape and/or Dumbledore.

“So you’re telling me that one of them can basically perform the Imperius Curse just by talking?”, Sirius asked incredulously.

“I’m pretty sure she has to do it on purpose, but yeah, basically. Listen, I’ve heard… stuff from a few other werewolves.”

“The ones you’d been spying on?”

“Exactly those. For example, the girl with the blue eyes Thalia. She’s a professional monster hunter. Her hunters mostly hunt whatever is the biggest, baddest evil out there. And they’re pretty deadly.”

“If you’ve heard so much about them, how can they be that deadly?”

“Well, mostly it’s word of mouth, the few things passed on from one survivor to another monster to another, until it reaches me. And most monsters return, remember? From what I’ve heard, Nico di Angelo, along with a Satyr and another demigod managed to defeat and outrun a gigantic pack of werewolves headed by a giant born of the Lady Earth herself in San Juan a year ago. Thalia Grace and her Hunters, as well as a group called the Amazons were there as well. In the attack, they were decimated, but they fought back and managed to get their numbers up again. They’ve pretty much regenerated in the time of a year.”

“That does sound impressive, but in a weird way? And with weird, I mean slightly terrifying.”

“Hmm.” Remus settled down in the bed next to Sirius. “It gets better. Or worse, depending on how you want to look at it.”

“What do you mean, Moony?”

“Well, the only one who’s not been described as absolutely terrifying is Piper McLean, but we’ve seen what she can do first hand, now.

“Jason Grace is a perfectly trained and disciplined fighter, he was in the legion for twelve years and now is Pontifex Maximus, which kind of means something like ‘high priest’. He is less powerful than the others, but should probably be considered more level-headed and open to new ideas.

“Thalia is very powerful, very deadly, very incalculable. She’s someone we should be careful around, I think.

“Nico di Angelo, he’s also called the Ghost King. I’ve heard that he can turn you into a ghost with his touch alone, that he can summon gigantic legions of skeletons to fight for him, that his sword reaps souls. And I’ve heard he’s very good at holding grudges. Also, he crossed through the dark pits of Tartarus, which is basically the Greek version of hell, on his own.

*

“Perseus Jackson is most well known for his undying loyalty and devotion to those he loves, but those aren’t a lot. If you get in his way, well you won’t live to tell the story. He held the sky on his shoulders, and crossed through Tartarus. There are reasons he’s called Defeater of Gods, after all, reasons why some are too afraid to speak his name. His powers are seemingly like a bottomless abyss, pure power just waiting to be tapped into.”

*

“Perseus,” Sirius mumbled, “doesn’t that mean something like Avenger? Or Destroyer?”

“Yeah, I think it does.”

“But why is the youngest of them supposed to be the leader, why?”

“Hazel Levesque is technically the oldest of them. But she died when she was thirteen. She had almost risen the Lady Earth and one of her sons, but then she buried them again, seeing clear. Several decades later, she escaped from the underworld, when the doors of death stood open. She's stood face to face with death, and even then, he didn't come to collect her soul. She advanced from recruit to co-leader of the New Roman Legion in less than a year. Lady Magic herself is impressed with her magical prowess.”

“Impressive. Or really scary, depending on how you view it."

For a while, the two lovers simply laid in the bead, their eyes closed, Sirius’s nimble fingers brushing through Remus’s thick waves of hair.

“Are you going to like them more than me, then?”, asked Sirius. Remus could hear the smile on his lips.

“What?”

“You said, that I, as a distant legacy of Hades, smelled better to you than normal mortals. So if they’re powerful demigods, wouldn’t they smell even better to you?”

“Merlin, you’re impossible,” Remus groaned. “Im-pos-si-ble.”

“You know you love it, Moony.”

“Guess I do, Padfoot. Guess I do.”

Chapter Text

When Piper woke up in a room she didn’t know, with two empty beds inside it, she was confused. But then it all came crashing back to her: she was in Britain, where a gigantic magical community existed. She would go to a magic school here. She would probably fight a war here. That put her in a sour enough mood.

Piper pushed the blankets off of her and hissed as her bare feet came in contact with the cold wooden floor. It was a good thing that she had remembered to bring slippers with her. When she opened the door, the smell of coffee immediately found its way to her nose.

She tiptoed down the creaky staircases, trying to remember the way she had taken to the kitchen they had had the meeting in yesterday. Of course, the smell of coffee came from there. If she concentrated, she could hear Percy and Nico having an argument about “proper coffee” – they both had capital O Opinions about the beverage.

“Morning Pipes,” Percy’s gravelly voice called out to her. They stepped out the kitchen door – wait, today seemed to be a he/him day, judging by armband colour. He stepped out of the kitchen door holding a cup of coffee and handed it to her. “I got you some coffee.”

The kitchen had changed, the chairs and the long table pushed off to the side as to leave more room for the multiple people there. If Piper counted them correctly, they were 12 if she was counted with them.

“What are you guys talking about?” She took a sip of her coffee. Still warm, but the cream had cooled it down significantly. “I mean, you’re enough for a full Olympian council.”

She could see Jason doing the maths in his head. “You’re right! Huh, hadn’t thought of that.”

“I’m always right. That’s why you used to date me.”

Sirius’s face contorted first into an expression of confusion, then stunned disbelief, then mild disgust, and finally exhausted acceptance.

“Aren’t you all related or something like that?”

“Honestly,” said Remus, “none of you, except for Hermione, are allowed to complain about that.”

Alrighty then, so inbreeding was apparently either a problem or a Thing in the magical world. Jury was still out on that one.

“Can we get back on track?”, Thalia asked. “We were actually pretty close to figuring out what kind of monster our dear Mister Lupin here is.”

“So you’ve already confirmed that he is one?”, Piper asked, interest obvious in her voice.

The wizards’ faces closed off immediately. Alright, sore subject there.

“Why is that even so important?” Hazel seemed tired. “Can we please discuss how your leader is a master manipulator and a very questionable person? And the fact that a prophecy does, in fact, exist? And all this other stuff that’s going on?”

Thalia seemed to want to protest, but a combined glare by Hazel, Percy, and Piper shut her down.

“Stop talking shit about Dumbledore!”, Harry protested. “What has he even done wrong?”

“Do you want a list?”, Nico asked. “What do you say, should we go in chronological, alphabetic, or random order?”

“Let’s go with random,” Percy cut in. “Several of us are dyslexic, and time is a terrible concept because it’s my terrible grandfather’s thing.”

“Alright, so random order. Left you, Harry, with the Dursley’s, who were not qualified at all to take in any sort of child – much less a magical one. Let Sirius, who he knew to be innocent, rot in Azkaban for twelve years for no reason whatsoever. Had a possible affair with the dark lord before Voldemort.”

Several cries of “What?!” were heard in the kitchen.

“Dumbledore? With Grindelwald? No, that makes sense, I guess, carry on.” Sirius seemed more in the know about this than she was.

Nico continued. “As I was saying, that affair with Grindelwald. His tendency to forgive everyone and let them continue on their merry way, regardless of how many people suffer because of it. Withholding the truth and telling other people to do so, too, because it’s “for the best”. Anything else I missed?”

“I think that’s the more important things,” Hazel said. “I’m sure if we wanted to list everything he’s done wrong, we’d be still here for hours. And I think we don’t want this list to be longer than Percy’s haircare routine.”

“Tch, you’re just jealous of my luscious locks. But I agree.”

“Can we please get back on track?”, Jason plead. “We need a strategy if we want to make it out alive. And I’d prefer to not die. Again.”

“Say what?”, Ron (Piper thought that was his name) asked, dumbfounded.

“Resuscitation.” Thankfully, Thalia had an answer that would not go into too much explaining.

“Alright, what were you guys originally discussing?”, Piper asked.

“So, you know that the original plan was to send all six of us to Hogwarts?” Hazel took charge. “Well, there is a bit of a problem with it. Percy here –” she elbowed him in the side “– is about a year to old to go to Hogwarts.”

“Well, what are we going to do about it?” If there wasn’t one, Piper was feeling very screwed over by this entire quest. No, wait – they were already very screwed over by this quest.

“Sirius and I have some information about Voldemort’s method of gaining immortality. We need more, and we need access. I was thinking that Percy could help Sirius and I with the investigations.” Remus was obviously smart. And a monster that had proposed for Percy to go on a quest with him without another demigod to watch over it.

“And we others continue with our plan as normal?”, Piper inquired.

“Yup,” Nico stated. “That’s the plan: We five protect Harry and friends at Hogwarts, learn some magic, while Percy goes on a deadly quest with two people who are basically strangers.”

“Gee, I’m really feeling the love here.” Percy’s voice was dripping with sarcasm.

“Can we discuss the prophecy?”, Thalia asked, annoyed.

“Harry’s not supposed to know,” Ron chimed in.

 “Exhibit A for withholding information,” Nico deadpanned.

“I don’t know the full prophecy anymore – thanks, Dementor Dementia – but it basically says that a child would be born in circumstances that matched Harry’s and that that kid would then end up killing Voldemort unless Voldemort kills the child instead.”

Dementor Dementia? Alright, so Piper was even less in the know than she thought she was.

Harry looked furious. Ginny, Ron, and Hermione seemed shocked. Remus and Sirius’ faces had assumed a look somewhere between regret and resignation. The other demigods were somewhere between curious and resigned.

“Classic case of trying to avoid fate, then?” Percy’s delivery sounded ever so slightly heartless. Scratch that, it sounded pretty heartless.

“Classic?!” Ron’s astonishment did not come as a surprise to her.

“So, he killed my parents just because of some prophecy? Just because he decided that I fit some description given by some random seer? Just because he was afraid of a literal fucking baby?” Harry’s hands were clenched at his sides. They trembled with anger.

“Yes.”

“Can you stop treating this like it’s just some normal thing?” Hermione seemed to have exploded with rage. “Do you have to be so utterly heartless?”

“Whoa, guys, calm down!” Jason’s plea was soon silenced by voices raised in argument.

Piper was a bit hesitant to use her powers so much – especially after the stir they had created at the meeting yesterday. Apparently, they were very similar to a forbidden curse. Yeah, she had a feeling that most of the wizards here would not be so keen on that.

She caught Thalia’s eyes. Smirking, the girl snapped her fingers.

A boom of thunder filled the room.

“1,2,3, eyes on me,” Thalia sing-songed. Yes, she was aware that it made her sound like an elementary school teacher. But people had a habit of being very respectful (read: scared shitless) of people that could summon lightning at the tip of their fingers. And sue her, it was funny.

The room’s eyes were, of course, on her. Most of them seemed startled and in fear and/or awe of her. Except for Percy, of course. He just seemed to be unimpressed.

Well, you couldn’t have it all, she supposed.

Hazel cleared her throat.

“Thank you, Thalia. Back to the conversation?”

“If everyone can keep it civil,” Jason said.

“Says the guy quite literally raised by wolves.” What was Nico actually doing here except for providing unnecessary sarcasm? Precisely nothing.

“No,” Percy cut in. “Mrs Weasley is coming down the stairs.”

Wow. Percy was actually right – what a surprise. Listening closely, there were definitely footsteps coming down the steps.

“What’s going here?” The woman was wearing a robe over her sleep clothes and sounded as if she hadn’t slept much, but had her wand drawn.

“Oh, it’s nothing, Molly,” Remus quickly hurried for an explanation. “Just a bit of a breakfast with coffee and tea instead of breakfast.”

“Insomniacs’ club,” Nico added.

“Well, I heard some weird sounds down here and wanted to look if everything was alright.”

“We were just talking and then Remus had the audacity to argue that coffee was better than tea.” Alright, Sirius wasn’t stupid.

“Exactly, and then, Thalia got a bit … overexcited, and you know, with lightning powers and all that …”

“Why is this my fault?”

“Because you summoned lightning, Thalia.” Percy sounded exasperated.

“How do you know it was me and not Jason?”

Good. Banter to dissolve Mrs Weasleys suspiciousness – that seemed to be a good idea.

“Because your eyes are still slightly glow-y, Thals.” Damn – no, dam – betrayed by her own brother, her flesh and blood.

“Yup, it was you Thalia, clear as day. What else were we supposed to expect?” Alright, Percy was clearly trying to get a rise out of her. So this would probably end in a not-so-faux-fight – good. Thalia never had anything against a good old-fashioned fight against Percy.

“I’m sorry Percy, what are you trying to imply there?”

“That you’ve inevitably lost your cool at some point every time I’ve seen you?” Okay, that hit a little close to home – she had honestly gotten better at controlling her temper. But it was easy to go back into old patterns.

“Oh, you want to go at it?”

“I certainly wouldn’t have anything against seeing you lose against me, Thalia.”

“Calm down, both of you, that’s an order.” Hazel seemed to be somehow magnifying her voice. Huh. Could the mist do auditory hallucinations as well? It could do visual stuff just fine, but were there any examples of it she could think of? Wait – cyclopes could mimic voices very well (something she had personal, unpleasant experience with) – was that also influenced by the mist somehow or was that a different thing?

Mrs Weasley seemed a bit alarmed at her and Percy’s little kerfuffle. Didn’t the woman have seven kids? She should be used to things like that.

“Alright, if so many of us are already up, I could just start making breakfast already.”

“How many people are eating with us?”, Percy asked.

“All in all, we’ll be seventeen – Tonks is joining us, too.”

“I and some of the others – the ones that can actually cook, which doesn’t leave a lot – could already start preparing the breakfast, we demigods could already make the sacrifices to the gods so we don’t disturb the rest of you guys.”

“Oh, that’s very sweet of you. Alright, anybody who won’t be cooking can help with cleaning the living room – just wiping the dust on top of things, we don’t need any magical emergencies before 9 AM.”

And with that, Thalia was shooed out of the kitchen by Percy and given a mop to wipe dust with in the living room. To be honest, it would have been better to cook. And Thalia wasn’t even that bad of a cook – she could cook just fine over an open fire with the rest of her hunters. But no, now she had to wipe dust that probably was more cursed than the Hecate cabin at 3 AM, just by favour of having been in this house for over an hour.

Great.

But the faces of her companions in their shared misery was consolation enough. And the admittedly delicious breakfast Percy and co had made for them helped, too.

Chapter Text

Time at Sirius’s family’s house went by faster than Ron had anticipated. What he also hadn’t anticipated was some of the demigods getting on with the twins like a house on fire. Quite literally – Thalia, trying to cook, had almost burned down the kitchen. Percy had luckily managed to extinguish the fire very quickly.

But most of the time, he only saw half of the demigods most of the time. Namely, the trio compromised of Piper, Nico, and Thalia (but sometimes, Nico was absent as well). The other three seemed to be embroiled in mysterious and very tense negotiations with the order. Sometimes, he thought he heard yelling from one of the old drawing rooms.

Thalia, who struck a great balance between funny and scary, often moped about the others not being there and being kept out of the loop. Ron felt the same way – he had been allowed at the Order Meeting the night Harry arrived, hadn’t he? He had been there in the kitchen when Thalia and Percy had started an argument to distract his mum. Why wasn’t he allowed to know now? Why didn’t they trust her?

That was the reason why he, Hermione, Harry, and Ginny had started pressing the demigods and the adults for information. So far, it hadn’t gone very well.

“Alright, we should summarise what we know about the whole situation with the Americans.” Hermione’s voice, brilliant as the girl herself, cut through the boys’ room.

“Roughly nothing,” Harry shot back. These days, he was more sarcastic than ever.

“Well, I found out that Percy is genderfluid and uses those bracelets to communicate to others what pronouns they use,” Ginny contributed.

Ron just blinked. “How did you find out?” he asked.

“Well, they told me that they knew about us ‘conspiring’ and told me that we could at least not misgender them while we are ‘conspiring’. If I remember correctly, blue is for he/him, turquoise for they/them, and green for she/her, and if we’re currently not aware, we should use they/them.”

Alright, so Percy was onto them, and with that, the rest of the demigods.

“And how does this help us?” Harry seemed to have almost completely burnt through his patience. Not that his friend had ever had much of that to begin with, but still. Ron majorly sympathised with the guy – they were all stuck here together, the truth dangling just out of their reach.

“We won’t accidently misgender him anymore?”

“Yes, great, Ginny. That is, of course, better. I meant my opening statement more along the lines of what we know about the ‘mission’, though.”

“Sirius, Remus and Percy are going on a solo trip to search for something related to Voldemort and his bid for immortality. The other demigods are staying at Hogwarts, with us.” As Harry finished speaking, he took off his glasses, wiping them on his t-shirt. Ron appreciated how Harry’s eyes looked, for a moment – bright emerald green made even more prominent by his natural brown skin colour.

Those were completely normal thoughts to have about your friend, right? Right?

“We knew that,” Ginny declared. “Ron, any contributions?”

“The demigods are on pretty bad terms with Dumbledore and Snape. They seem to want to be able to do more than they are able or allowed to now.”

“That’s not really anything new, is it?”, Harry snapped.

Hermione fixed their best friend with a disapproving glare.

“What do you know, then, that we others don’t?”

“Well, goods news for you, ‘mione, they support SPEW. Maybe they’ll buy some of your pins? They are also pissed of at magical society in general – they view it as systematically flawed, and seem to want us wizards to fix things. Also, they’re very unwilling to help us out here.”

“That’s not much new either, Harry,” Ginny said quietly after some deliberation.

“Alright, so we only know that we don’t know jack shit,” Ron summarised, miserable.

“Yup,” agreed Harry.

The girls nodded.

Great, this whole ‘resistance against Voldemort without the resources that the Order has’ was turning out to be much harder than they thought.

Percy was not happy with how things were turning out. He was going to go on a quest to find pieces of a soul together with a wizard whose mental stability was roughly on the same level as theirs (read: shitty on a good day) and a werewolf (Nico still had the scars. He shouldn’t have given the kid that task, gods, what kind of terrible person was he?).

The wizarding world, which they were supposed to help, was also incredibly flawed. Systemic, institutional racism (speciesism?) and ableism? Check. Racial slavery? Check. Literal torture prison? Check. And this was the government which they were trying to return to the status quo, because the radical magic Nazis, or magic KKK (same difference, in Percy’s opinion), were trying to do even worse things, including literal genocide against humans.

That was the best example for “there is never a good side, just a bad one and one that’s even worse” that Percy could think of. (Some others were “Titans vs. Olympians”, “Giants vs. Olympians”, or “Roman immortal immoral emperors vs. normal Romans and Greeks”.) Truth be told, Percy didn’t really want to help the wizards out. Call them selfish, but they’d had enough of fighting, of always having his life on the line. It was exhausting. His body ached with the pains of over five years of constant fighting; their mind was seemingly trying to kill them some days. But he also couldn’t sit there and just watch atrocities being committed, of an unjust system being furthered.

Right now, he was almost all alone in the townhouse. The other demigods, as well as the kids, were out shopping for school supplies, most of the adults were away on Order business or accompanying them. The only people left in the house were him, the House-Elf Kreacher (and his relatives’ heads mounted on the walls), and the werewolf, Remus Lupin.

What a funny name, really. His parents could have simply named the guy Wolfy McWolfface and gotten the point across. As much as Percy loved a good pun, that was a bit on-the-nose.

Said werewolf had now come into the living room (at last free of any critters), carrying two cups of coffee.

“May I sit down?”, he asked, very politely.

“Of course.” They scooted over a bit on the large sofa, leaving enough space for the wizard.

He set the cups (without saucers, how un-British!) down on the coffee table.

“You’re afraid, aren’t you?” Lupin asked bluntly.

“I – yes. Wanna know why?”

“Entertain me.” There was an angry caution in Lupin’s voice. Percy remembered how multiple discussion had ended with drawn swords and wands.

“I don’t know how much you heard from your buddies, but my cousin Nico? My baby cousin? He almost got mauled to death by a horde of werewolves in Puerto Rico. He still has the scars – if he had been a bit less quick, he would not have survived. And you know, twice now in four years, campers never returned back home – went down facing a pack, were mauled to death. Technically, one of them is still ‘missing’ – we never found more of her remains than a singular eyeball, some cracked, chewed clean bones, and a few strands of hair. I think it may be perfectly reasonable for me to fear going on a fucking camping trip with a werewolf.”

Remus took a sip of his coffee, inhaled slowly, and then exhaled again. Then, he closed his eyes, opened them.

“I’m sorry –”

“Don’t. I hate pity like that.”

“I’m sorry that that happened, but it is not my fault, and I refuse to be judged by actions other members of my kind have taken. Weren’t some of the worst people in history demigods? Shall I judge you based on their deeds?”

“No, and that’s not what I’m doing, either.”

“Sounds suspiciously like it, though.”

“Look, I’m just … tired. I want to go home, see my girlfriend again. The Fates keeps trying to separate us, and they’ve succeeded again. I don’t want her to go through that pain of losing me. Not again. I don’t want to bring that pain on my mother, and on my friends. I don’t want to die, far from home, because of something that could have been avoided.”

“There’s a potion, you know? One that stops me from being violent while in wolf form.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Logically, you wouldn’t have anything to fear.”

“What if it doesn’t work? What if I somehow manage to override it? And even if it works, it doesn’t change anything. Fear isn’t exactly logical, as much as people would like it to be.”

“I know. Come on, drink your coffee before it gets cold.”

Percy looked into the man’s face. Like their own, it was scarred and aged beyond its true years. In his eyes swam long years of sorrow and suffering. For a moment, Percy felt that they could truly understand each other.

“Why are you doing this, then, if you don’t actually want to?

“What other choice do I have? The gods command me, I follow their orders, because there isn’t anybody else that would be better than them. We – I and the gods – have a kind of truce. They have my loved ones’ lives in their hands, but if they hurt them, they know I will tear them to the ground.

“And anyway, it is quite literally intrinsic to my very being to defend humans. Those are the people most endangered by this whole situation.”

“What about the wizards?”

“Most of them are still compliant to a flawed, unjust system, following blindly. I can’t truly blame them as much as the higher-ups, but still.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, please. I know how non-pureblood wizards and non-wizards are treated – second class citizens, at best. Or they’re quite literally slaves, like the house-elves. Your boyfriend quite literally is a slave owner, Lupin.”

“That’s an impressive overuse of ‘quite literally’, Jackson.”

“You’re already turning around the conversation.”

“Go talk to him, then. You know, you can’t change an entire system on your own.”

“But you can convince the people in the system that the system is wrong, that they should rise up. If I help this world, I won’t just return it to the status quo before Voldy’s return. No, if the Order wants me to cooperate, they need to start inspiring real change.”

“You place a lot of trust in people who blindly follow the system, as you yourself put it.”

“I know how the whole revolution business works. If you can so easily bring people to be violent and hateful, you can also bring them to being better.”

“That sounds quite optimistic of you.”

“No. I’m being realistic.”

Remus seemed to mull over Percy’s words, which the demigod took as a success. Then, Percy heard the door creaking open and voices flooding into the corridor.

He stood up, taking the half-drunken cup of coffee with him.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Sirius was uncertain whether his and Remus’ companion on their little mission was planning to kill the two of them in their sleep. On one hand, the man shot the two of them murderous glances every now and then, and murmured in Greek under his breath. On the other hand, Percy seemed almost … scared of them. That didn’t make much sense – if anyone had something to fear, it was Remus. The demigod was known to be incredibly ruthless, if need be – getting parts of his own army killed to achieve his goals, killing everything and everyone in his path in battle, being able to manipulate and almost kill literal deities.

Currently, they were camped out outside of a little village in Yorkshire called Little Hangleton, to investigate the location of one of the Horcrux – some kind of trinket that had originally belonged to Salazar Slytherin (yikes).

“Alright.” Sirius almost jumped up from his seat at Percy’s sudden return to the tent. Previously, he had been somewhere outside – Sirius didn’t know where. “What is the strategy?”

Sirius merely blinked. Truth was, they didn’t exactly have a strategy to get the Horcrux from the man.

“I imagine asking him won’t exactly work,” Percy continued, “I mean – he just returned from maximum security torture prison, he’s gotta be a bit paranoid. And from the anecdotes good ol’ Dumbly told us, he wasn’t exactly the nicest person even before.”

“Maximum security torture prison? Do you mean Azkaban?” Sirius’ boyfriend seemed incredulous.

“Yeah, that. I only remembered that the name was something vaguely like ‘Alcatraz’, but different. But from what I’ve read, my description fits very well.”

“As someone imprisoned there once”, Sirius cut in, “I am with you on that one.”

Percy gave his usual crooked grin, showing off teeth vaguely too sharp.

“You know, Nico once called dementors ‘depression bastards’. I’m inclined to agree.”

“He’s right about that.”

“Yeah. Most people around me are actually pretty smart. It’s a good trick, surrounding yourself with smart people, especially when you’re not particularly smart yourself.”

“Actually”, Remus said, “I’ve heard you’re pretty darn brilliant when you want to. Especially in battle.”

“What have you heard about me then, pray tell?”

“Do you want me to go chronologically?”

“Doesn’t sound so bad – I can sort through those things pretty well if I have a framework to reference as to what actually happened.”

“How do you mean that?” Damn it, but Sirius was getting very interested in this conversation. Maybe he’d actually be able to judge the danger that the other posed towards him and his boyfriend.

“Alright. Just interrupt me if you want to correct me, alright? You defeated a Fury at age twelve with a borrowed sword and no training. You killed the Minotaur a good month later with your bare hands. You fought Echidna on top of the Gateway arch and survived. You tortured you half-brother Procrustes to death.”

“I was repaying him a favour”, Percy interrupted, a dark tone in his rough voice, “he was trying to do the same to my friends. It was in self-defence.”

“But exceedingly cruel. He was your brother.” Sirius lets Remus’ words sink in – as much as he and Regulus fought, he could never have done something like that.

“He has the same father as I do. I never met him outside that one occasion, when he was trying to torture my friends and I to death, probably to eat us afterward. Besides, it was much quicker than you make it seem.”

“Can I continue?” As there was no objection, Remus continued on. “You fought Ares, the literal God of War, and beat him.”

“He forfeited. I tricked him”

Hold up – a twelve-year-old had made the literal God of War forfeit? That was actually insane. Alright, Percy was scary now, at age 18, and probably had been for some time. But scaring away a literal god, tricking him, at that age? When Sirius was twelve, he had been pranking Slytherins (badly) together with James, a slightly reluctant Moony, and a very reluctant Peter. (God, even thinking his name brought up memories – nope, he was not going there right now.

“You sailed the sea of monsters, tricked Scylla and Charybdis. Managed to get away from the sirens. Raided Circe’s Island, freed the pirates imprisoned there – something that looks remarkably like a war crime.”

“I didn’t raid the island.”

“You just provided the means for the pirates to do so?”

“Unfortunately, yes, I did. I was only looking out for Annabeth and myself, I’ll admit that. I regret what I did then to this day.”

See, Sirius could understand that. During the first war, he had had to morally compromise. He’d been forced to by the situation. Remus knew that too, had been forced to the same. (A high-speed broomstick chase; stunning spells on his side, as a naïve 18-year-old; a body of someone he’d once known plummeting down the night sky; no body ever found. Hearing the news of his cousin helping kill the Prewett brothers; burning down the mansion; learning of the two servants (and five elves) trapped inside.) The list of his regrets is much longer than the one of his achievements.

“You tricked Luke Castellan into giving away his plans, led an army to him. You fought him and escaped. You snuck on a quest to search for the Goddess of the Hunt, to search for your girlfriend instead – someone who had been supposed to go had been given a poisoned shirt that almost killed her, coincidentally.”

“That was not me. Aphrodite did – she was very invested in the whole ‘Annabeth-and-Percy’ thing. Accusing me of that is completely false.” There was actual anger now, trembling in his voice. Sirius wasn’t keen on continuing this line of questioning – the man clearly hated to be wrongly accused. He very well knew that feeling.

“You ordered Bianca di Angelo to go through with your plan to take down Talos in the Junkyard of the Gods – a very smart plan, to be entirely honest. Sadly, one that ended with the loss of a twelve-year-old’s life.”

“No.” Sirius had the feeling that his blood was freezing in his very veins. Percy’s anger seemed to be growing. But there was more to it, Sirius was sure of it – desperation, grief, hurt, regret. The demigod’s voice trembled as he continued. “Please, believe me when I tell you that I did not order her to do that. I told her my plan; she went through with it. It was supposed to be me. It was supposed to be me; sometimes I still think it should have been.”

That was worrying, to say the least. Sirius knew what that feeling was, something deep and ugly inside you that nested itself inside your brain, telling you that others would be better off, would be alive, if you had been hurt, if you had died, instead. Survivor’s Guilt, Remus had called it.

Moony also seemed shocked, but continued on. “You shot the giant Geryon through all three of his torsos with one arrow, even though you were a guest at his house.”

“He had broken laws of hospitality first, I think, with all the capturing, binding, and gagging my friends thing he had going on.”

“You killed the telekhines with no regard as to who they were, civilian, or soldier. War crime, again.”

“I didn’t. I threatened them, but they captured me. Annabeth says what happened afterwards is torture, although I’m not exactly inclined to agree.”

Sirius wanted to know why, but the two seemed to want to continue their “discussion”.

“You blew up Mount Saint Helens afterwards, too, didn’t you? I think about half a million people had to be evacuated, but that’s not everything, is it? Typhon was unleashed thanks to the explosion, causing countless deaths. What was that, a ‘teenage idiosyncrasy’?”

Remus had told him about that – he had been in the US for some time at that point, had even made a friend in America. Apparently, that friend had lost her life through the catastrophes caused be Typhon – and indirectly, Percy, apparently. He could understand why Remus was this angry – if he had been in his boyfriend’s position, he probably’d have reacted much worse.

“No, a mistake that I hope never happens again. I never used my powers like that since. I was just in so much pain, I couldn’t take it anymore.” Damn, the demigod sounded like he was almost crying.

“You killed your brother Antaeus in a gladiator-style fight in his arena.”

“He wanted to sacrifice me and my friends to Poseidon, hang our skulls up as decoration. I was not into that, and I think I communicated that well.” His tone was getting lighter, more joking, Sirius realized.

“You then proceeded to lead Camp Half-Blood through the second Titanomachy, very well, apparently, but also very ruthlessly. I have never heard of anyone returning after getting taking prisoner.”

Percy’s face steeled. “We did not exactly… take prisoners.”

“You simply killed them.”

A deep breath. “Yes.”

“Mercy a la Percy Jackson?”

“A la Olympus.”

Sirius did not know what to make off that. How old had the kid been – fourteen, fifteen? There did seem to be regret there, buried deep within. Sirius saw the ruthless commander his Remus did, but he knew: a child surviving in a ruthless world will become ruthless, themselves.

“Then, you, along with two of your cousins, fought the Titan Iapetos. Then, you threw him into the river Lethe, erasing his memory – you made him fight for you, told him you were his friend, made up a new identity for him. You brainwashed him, in a very literal sense. Afterwards, you made him a servant in Hades’ palace.”

“I won’t deny that. I was acting in self-defence, but yes. What I did was messed up, even by my standards.”

“You blew up the Princess Andromeda, killing demigods, monsters, and humans – no discrimination. You also got half your team killed doing that.”

“We were only two. The trigger for the explosion didn’t work, so Beckendorf – the other guy – chose to do it manually. He died in the process, yes, I’ll give you that. I couldn’t save him; I was unconscious as the ship blew up.”

God, Sirius just wanted this conversation to stop. This was clearly not good for both of them, confronting each other like this. Remus was confrontational and angry – that meant he was scared. He had good reason to be. But Percy? The demigod clearly seemed to have some issues (from the described things), that were clearly getting brought back up by this.

“You then asked the river gods to sink any enemy boats approaching on the rivers. Quite clever of you. Also, you commanded to have the bridges and tunnels leading into Manhattan destroyed or guarded – a good tactic.”

“I came up with the battle plans as we went along. There wasn’t much ‘clever thinking’ involved. Also, I fucked up pretty spectacularly actually going through with it.”

“That’s what I was getting to. Didn’t you destroy a bridge while your head healer and leader of the Apollo Cabin was still on it, killing him in the process?”

“Yes. That was the Williamsburg Bridge. He was still standing on the suspension cables when the bridge was destroyed … when I destroyed the bridge. Technically, he is only ‘missing, presumed dead’.”

“But you’re sure that he is, in fact, dead?” Sirius thought he had maybe heard about the Williamsburg Bridge collapsing, quite soon after he got out of Azkaban.

“Pretty much. Or he is still alive and simply went off on his own and didn’t contact any of us – if that’s the case, good for him.”

“You tore through Kronos’ army with the Curse of Achilles – total invulnerability, except for one tiny spot. They say the streets were covered in dust and blood.”

Sirius was surprised Percy didn’t protest.

“You then either, depending on who tells the story, figured out Luke-Castellan-slash-Kronos’ weak spot and killed him.”

“The other version of the story is?”

“That you made him commit suicide, with the very knife he had given to your beloved almost nine years prior.”

“He did of his free will. Luke realized there wasn’t a way for him to contain Kronos, and so he drove the knife, the cursed blade, into his own flesh, killing Kronos but destroying his own body in the process, too.”

“Afterwards, you trained with Lupa and joined Camp Jupiter – New Rome. You were sent on a quest immediately after you joined. On said quest, you tricked the blind seer Phineas into drinking deadly poison, getting away with your life.”

“I entered the bet with Phineas to free a harpy named Ella. I genuinely wanted to help her out. When I realized that I had the poison blood, I prayed to Gaea.”

“Weren’t you fighting a war against her?” Sirius, to be entirely serious (ha-ha), wanted to know how that was supposed to work.

“I knew I was much more instrumental to her plans than that seer. I made a gamble, it payed off.”

“So the competition wasn’t won with honesty?” the sharp tone in Remus’ voice had returned. He was judging a threat, Sirius could see that. If you back a dog into a corner, it starts biting. Same thing applied to wizards, werewolves, demigods. They were all dogs backed into a corner, here, Sirius realized.

Percy merely shook his head. Remus continued. “In Alaska, you took on an entire legion of undead warriors, with only a sword – no invulnerability, no memories.”

“My memories had started to return ever after Phineas.”

“Still. You managed to summon a hurricane –”

“And a massive tidal wave, but please, continue.”

“And topple the glacier you were on into the water. Then, you returned to Rome and immediately got declared Praetor.”

“What exactly is a Praetor?” Sirius asked.

“It’s the highest military officer New Rome currently has, there are two of them, to keep each other in check. Tyrants weren’t very popular in the Roman Republic, so they’re not very popular there, either. New Rome is less based on the Roman Empire, and more on the Roman Republic – did you know that the Republic actually lasted longer than whatever the Empire with its pseudo-kings had going on? Way less political murders, too. And I mean, yeah, okay, the Byzantine Empire still existed for about a thousand years after the western Empire collapsed, but I mean, that was just one giant dumpster fire, slowly collapsing in on itself. And it wasn’t even pagan anymore, or even really Roman – they didn’t have any provinces in the region of actual Rome, and spoke Greek and – wait, I’m rambling again. Sorry, it’s just really interesting, you know? Go on, Remus.”

Too be honest, Percy’s rambling was adorable in Sirius’ eyes. In a minute, he’d gone from pissed-off, jaded commander to overexcited teen. (Probably because the demigod was both.)

Remus also seemed to be supressing a smile. But quickly, his tone returned to graveness. “In the Mediterranean Sea, you sunk Chryasor’s ship with a trick – with him still on it.”

“No, he quite literally jumped ship first. He’s probably still there somewhere, just waiting for his chance to strike.”

“In Rome, you fell into Tartarus.”

Sirius recognized the faraway look in Percy’s eyes. (He was similar when the conversation fell towards Azkaban).

No protest came from the demigod.

“There, you slew Arachne. You then met Iapetos again, convinced him of your friendship, made him your guide. You also welcomed the Giant Damasen’s hospitality, am I correct?”

“So far, yes. We had had a run-in with the Arai, and I was… badly hurt. He nursed me back to health – well, as much as there is health in Tartarus.”

“You then convinced Iapetos to kill his own brother, because of your ‘friendship’.”

“I am sorry that I did that, but I would do it again. There are some people in this world that I will protect over anyone else, whose well-being I will always put over everything else. Annabeth, my mother, my sister Estelle. I’d destroy the world for them and rebuild it anew as their paradise if they asked me to.”

Sirius knew that feeling of loyalty. He saw similar mannerisms in himself – he would defend those he loved to his dying breaths and beyond. Harry, Remus, (James). He’d die in a heartbeat to protect them. A look towards Remus showed him: his boyfriend understood. But he was still scared and hid that under his anger.

“You tricked Nyx and almost killed Akhlys. People say you wielded her own poison and blood and tears against her.”

Okay, that was genuinely terrifying. Sirius wasn’t stupid, he knew the human body was mostly made out of liquid. What if Percy actually got angry at them, just … stopped their hearts from pumping blood? The earth was mostly made out of water as well – could Percy make the earth stop spinning if he wanted to? He was already capable of great destruction; Mount Saint Helens came to Sirius’ mind.

(Percy could simply destroy the entire country with one bad temper-tantrum; could kill millions with one pissed-off act of vengeance. But he could also simply go up to Voldemort, boil the man alive from the inside out, win the war, simple as that. But he could do the same to Remus, who was sitting here, an arm’s length away, and asking questions that were pissing him off. Sirius was suddenly very aware of that.)

Remus continued, as if he was not threatening his own life by doing so. “You led the Greek armies in the battle against Gaea, slaying all monsters in your path.”

“There was blood and dust everywhere,” Percy says, toneless.

“A massacre.” Sirius silently tried to communicate to Remus to stop, please, before he gets pissed off. It didn’t work.

“They were planning on doing the same to us. You cannot condemn me for that, we were at war, fighting for our lives. I was protecting my people, nothing more, nothing less. Would you have done any different, in my stead? I didn’t trick them, it was a head-on confrontation between armies, casualties will occur – we took heavy losses as well. Thanks to Gaea, we had to free so many corpses from the earth – partially buried alive, partially not. We still didn’t find all of them. The entire field stunk of decaying bodies for months afterwards.

“You’re almost finished with this, aren’t you? There’s only a year left, really, before I had to go to Britain.”

“Yes. We’re almost done. You refused the God Apollo help when he showed up at your doorstep.”

“He had been made mortal; and I only refused at first.”

“You only marginally helped him and his companion. Why?”

“Because I was tired. Tired of fighting wars for people that don’t even recognize me as a true human being – you know what Athena, my future mother-in-law, refers to me as? A weapon. Not a person, not a soldier, a weapon. I’ve done my service to Olympus, fought their wars. I wanted rest, I wanted not to get hurt again. My body feels so much older than it is – my joints ache in the cold, my sight has been muddled ever since I returned from the pit, my hair is going grey already. People don’t believe me when I state my age, the young demigods I met consider me old. To them, I am. I’m eighteen, I wanted to start college this year – marine biology, y’know?”

“Isn’t that cheating? Since you’re the son of the Sea God, and all?” Marine Biology sounded like an interesting subject. Even more, Sirius understood what Percy was saying. He knew the feeling of your youth being taken from you – he’d been 21 when he’d gone to Azkaban, barely out of his teenage years and stupidity. Sure, the war had left its marks, but prison had taken his best years from him – he didn’t have a grasp on how society worked, never made those stupid experiences you’re supposed to have in your twenties. Remus had to know as well – his condition had aged him beyond his years, too – the man was 35, but he looked a decade older.

“I want to help the sea animals. And I want to be able to talk about things like the oceans, how climate change affects it, and all the trash that’s just getting dumped in the ocean, killing marine life – it just makes me angry. I want to be able to talk about it, and do something, and be taken seriously!”

“I always take things seriously,” Sirius punned. To his surprise, Percy actually laughed at the joke, bad as it was.

“Why do I have the feeling he says that joke way too often?” the demigod asked.

“Because he does,” Remus answered, exasperated.

“Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?” Ah, so that thread of conversation had not been forgotten. “That me not helping was what got Jason killed? That it was the reason Frank had to burn himself alive to stop Caligula? That I didn’t help when CHB stormed Nero’s tower? Believe me, those are all valid criticisms.”

“Wait a second,” Sirius interrupted, “isn’t Jason still alive?”

The demigod said something in Greek under his breath. Sirius was pretty sure it had, in fact, been a swear.

“I’m not explaining that,” he stated, after some deliberation. “If we see the others again, you can ask him about it. I don’t think it’s my place to tell. If you could excuse me, I think that there’s some kind of animal outside, something vaguely horse-shaped. I’m checking that out, okay?”

Well, that was a shoddy excuse if Sirius had ever heard one.

After the man had exited the tent, Sirius sat down closer to Remus. The air was still tense.

“Alright, Moony, what the fuck was that? Were you trying to get us killed? You saw how angry he got. Those stories you told; they seem to be true in most parts. He could have boiled your blood in your veins.”

“He wasn’t that angry,” Remus merely stated, “He was scared.”

“And I’m scared for you! We can’t risk pissing him off!”

“I’m scared, too! But I needed to see how he’d react to being confronted.”

“Did you see the look on his face? He’s just a kid, Moony.”

“A kid that’s killed hundreds, that’s killed people like me. That’s just … messed up.”

“We’re all pretty messed up,” Sirius whispered.

“Yeah,” Remus sighed. “We are.”

“Can I kiss you?”, Sirius asked.

Remus, his wonderful, smart Remus, nodded.

They pulled each other close. They were long past that butterflies-in-your-stomach phase – no, kissing Remus was like going home. Home in the sense of the people you loved and cared about, regardless of where.

“Be careful,” Sirius whispered as they pulled apart again.

“I always am.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes I am.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Before they knew it, they were bickering like children.

Chapter Text

Ginny was awoken in the middle of the night by screaming. Not her own, luckily. After what had happened in her first year at Hogwarts, she didn’t sleep very well for some time. But no, the screaming was courtesy of her newest roommate, Hazel Levesque.

Well, at first it had just been one piercing, startled scream – like she imagined someone getting dragged under water would sound like. Then, the girl was screaming her lungs out. She sounded so incredibly scared.

Ginny, being her usual hands-on self, made a decision: she tried to wake up Hazel. Her roommates, also now woken up, helped. But Hazel wouldn’t wake. Her screaming had now turned into sobbing.

“Come on”, one of her roommates told her, “Make her wake up or something!”

“HOW?”, another demanded, panicked.

“I don’t know, maybe slap her?”

“What kind of idea is that? Ginny, don’t listen to her!”

Ginny decided to do the exact opposite.

Hazel blinked, once, twice. The other girl’s eyes were trained on her, wide and fearful. They were a strange, golden colour, almost glowing in the dark.

She tried to alleviate the tension in the room a bit.

“Well, at least you don’t teleport away when you’re startled, like your brother does.”

Hazel just blinked at her in confusion. Ginny moved away from her, motioning the other girls to give her a bit of space.

Ginny saw the other twisting herself up into a sitting position, pushing her nestled blankets off, and straightening up.

“Why did you wake me up?” she demanded. There was nothing scared remaining in her voice. She was perfectly calm and collected. There was something frightening about that, how she could go from “scared mess” right to “not out of place as a military officer”. Hadn’t something been said about the girl commanding an army? Well, Ginny had no doubts that she could.

“You were, uh, screaming – I think you were having a nightmare?” Emmy sounded frightened.

“Yeah, we tried waking you up, but you wouldn’t, and you kept on screaming, and then Ginny slapped you, even though I told her not to, but you woke up so –”

Hazel cut the girl off with one quick motion of her hand.

“I suppose I should … thank you for that, Ginny. I’m sorry that I woke you up, I hope it won’t happen again.” Hazel sounded so much older than she was. And also just ... tired. Exhausted.

“Did you have a nightmare?”, Ginny asked. Sue her, but she was a bit curious. Also, she didn’t want things like this to happen again – seeing the other girl, usually so well-composed, like that? No thank you. (She did her best not to think about how heartrending the other’s screams had been, tearing at her very soul.)

“Yes.” There it was again, that precise curtness.

“Do you want to tell us anything? Maybe we could, uh, help?” Bless Emmy’s heart, always willing to help – she would have made a good Hufflepuff.

“No. You can go back to bed; I’m getting myself a glass of water.”

“Suit yourself.” Ginny shrugged. “We’re here if you want to talk about it, though.”

“Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. I’m fine.”

Hazel gave a tight smile and opened the door. It creaked as she opened it, stepped out, and then closed it again.

The tight smile didn’t leave Ginny’s mind, even as her roommates slipped back into sleep. The whole “I’m fine” thing sounded too much like what she had said, what she had behaved like, when he had been at the back of her head. And how she had brushed everyone’s concerns off, even as she struggled. Luckily, she'd managed to oped up to the people she cared about, to people who cared about her. She had gotten better, even if it hadn't gone away and might never do so.

Ginny didn’t get any more sleep that night. She simply watched the sky turn from midnight blue to black, from black to grey, from grey to pink, from pink to sky-blue as the hours ticked by. Hazel didn’t come back.

Today, Percy realized, was a vaguely feminine day, gender-wise. Definitely somewhere closer to a feminine gender identity of some sort than a masculine one. A nice contrast to the last few days almost purely masculine feeling. Demigirl, maybe? Yeah, that sounded about right. Green bracelet, it was, then. Turquoise too, maybe? Did they/them sound right? Nope, not really. Eh, she/her it was for the next bit of time.

Today, the three of them had decided, they’d go into town for some supplies, and to maybe get some information on the creepy snake guy with the probably cursed ring. Confronting him was not a good idea, even Percy knew that. Well, they could just show up there and force them to give him the ring, or coerce him. But Percy did not want to confirm Remus’ biases against her – not that they were unfounded, but Percy knew the importance of being a team on a quest. Constant infighting was what got people killed, after all.

(She was doing her best not to remember the leadup to the Battle of Manhattan, with the fight between the Ares and Apollo cabins. How many deaths could be blamed on that, she wondered.)

Percy took an apple from the bag sitting on the table. Even after almost a week of living in this tent, the whole ‘bigger on the inside’ thing managed to astound her. Well, less the fact that it was bigger, and more the fact how much bigger it was.

As quietly as she could, she pushed her way out of the tent’s entrance and sat down on the ground, in the grass.

Above her, the sky was grey, turning into an ashy red-pink colour. How late was it? Five AM? Six AM? Percy had slept as well as she could – not as long as she should, but that was practically impossible. She hadn’t slept well in over a year, not since Tartarus. Even this night, the first without nightmares ever since coming to Britain, she’d simply laid still in bed, trying to sleep, to not spiral downwards.

She twirled Riptide between her fingers, a motion she’d perfected years ago. Dancing at the sword’s edge in an almost literal sense. Toying with danger like that satisfied a deep, dark part of her brain. Also, it was something nice for her hands to be doing.

The grass was still dewy, she recognized absent-mindedly. If she had been anyone else, the bottom of her pants (comfortable, worn-out sweatpants) would now be considerably wet. Luckily, she wasn’t anyone else. But the dew in the grass was a nice feeling. ‘Feeling’ wasn’t really an accurate term for the way she sensed the water around her, but it came closer than anything else.

Seeing was out of the question, since closing her eyes didn’t make her any more aware of it. It wasn’t something one could visually experience.

Hearing was wrong, too – yes, she could hear streams rushing, and if she got very close, hearts beating, but still. No, it wasn’t hearing either.

Tasting was completely out of the question, no explanation needed there.

Smelling was also just plain wrong.

Feeling suggested that she needed to touch something to sense it.

The best word she could use in conversations about it was ‘sensing’. The word was too vague for what she experienced, but still. It didn’t already have any other connotations, so ‘sensing’ it was.

For example, inside the tent, she could feel Remus’ and Sirius’ hearts beating steadily, pumping blood from the chest to the head and to the toes. An unchanging rhythm.  

A year after she had discovered – no, made – her abilities in the realm of manipulating non-water fluids, it didn’t creep her out as much. She didn’t use them in a manner that was harmful to others, but it was a good substitute and crutch for her other senses. Simply sensing the blood in people could give you an advantage in fights – sensing where your opponent was, even if they were using the mist to conceal themselves, finding out who was a hidden monster.

Blood being largely water also helped with healing injuries. Why bother with going to the hospital or eating some of her small supply of Ambrosia when she could simply concentrate on the wound and watch it heal itself, only at the expense of a bit of exhaustion?

Somewhere far off, birds sang. Too far off and too small for Percy to sense, but enough for her to be able to hear them quite clearly. It was serene and peaceful.

Suddenly, Percy realized the creeping feeling of discomfort that always ensued in situations like this.

Demigods weren’t made for peace. At least, Percy wasn’t. It made her uneasy to be still, in one place. Not fighting, not running, not moving. Not dying, not surviving, just existing.

Demigods weren’t made for living. Sure, that sounded cruel. But the more Percy thought about it, the more she was sure about the fact. They were meant to defend both Olympus and the mortal world. They lived fast, and died young. They were the stuff for heroic ballads, not quiet anonymity. They were like stars, in a sense – they burnt bright, but incredibly short. Mortals, usually at least, burnt longer, but they were not as bright.

Sometimes Percy wished she had been born mortal.

Sometimes, she wished she had joined Luke, back when she had just turned thirteen, at that creek in the forest just past Camp Half-Blood.

Sometimes, she wanted to make her own rebellion, tear Olympus down. But she didn’t know what she would do afterwards. And there were still people whose existence was bound to Olympus. People she loved. And Percy would rather go through Tartarus another 100 times before hurting the people she loved.

There was no use dwelling on ‘could’ and ‘would’ and ‘had’. She had a quest, a mission. A prophecy whose text she didn’t know. Two companions that could pose a threat to her. She stilled Riptide’s motion on her fingers and rose to her feet.

In one fluid motion, she popped the cap off the pen and fell into the first stance of her usual exercises.

She and Riptide became one entity, dancing across the grace with well-practised ease. If she closed her eyes, she could almost see Annabeth, joining her in that deadly waltz. He could hear Luke guiding him through the motions like he had done a good six years ago.

Gods, she wanted to go back to the middle of the summer of 2006. She had been so happy back then. It hadn’t been perfect, she’d already killed people at that time, and she hadn’t known if she could have gone back home to New York, but still. But there had been something so simple about those days.

The autumn of 2009 had been beautiful, too. Even with the rising threat of Gaia and the Giants (wow, that sounded like a shitty band name), and the gods closing off Olympus. She’d had Annabeth, and there’d been peace.

Some time after she’d started, the sun had risen.

Some time after she’d started, she had sensed both Sirius and Remus rising from sleep.

Some time after she'd started, she sensed and saw and heard Sirius come out of the tent.

Some time after she'd started, Sirius called out to her.

“Hey Percy! Can you come inside, please? I and Remus have something we want to discuss with you.”

At breakfast, Harry realized that the demigods were not eating with the rest of the school. Or well, they were there, in the Great Hall, at their respective houses’ tables. But they weren’t eating. He remembered that they always had to sacrifice parts of their meals to the gods – weird, but apparently very important. They couldn’t just not eat the whole time at Hogwarts, could they?

While staying at Grimmauld Place, Nico had said that demigods needed to eat and sleep less than normal humans. Then again, Nico usually had eyebags the size of Russia and was worryingly thin.

“Harry, mate, have you seen Ginny anywhere?” Ron startled him from his thoughts.

“No, I don’t think I did. But Hazel is her new roommate, isn’t she? Maybe she’s got a clue.”

“You two talking about me?” The demigod had suddenly appeared behind them at the mention of her name.

“Yeah, have you seen my sister?”

“Last I saw her, we were in the 4^th year Gryffindor Girls’ dorm, before I left.”

“And when did you leave?” Harry got a bad feeling. He remembered what had happened in his second year.

“Don’t know. It was still dark outside, though.”

“You do know you’re supposed to be in bed at night, don’t you?”

“Harry, since when do you care for the rules?”

“Aren’t you, as prefect, supposed to do that?” Hermione cut into the conversation.

“Do what?” Ron gave Hermione a shit-eating grin. Alright, that should have been illegal. The way it made Ron’s freckled face light up and his hazel eyes twinkle –

Nope, that was decidedly to much obsessing about his best friend’s smile. But still in the realm of normal, definitely. Nothing gay about it – not that Harry had a problem with that, but nope. He did not have a crush on Ron.

The glare Hermione shot Ron was enough to kill an entire platoon of well-trained aurors.

Ginny chose that moment to run into the Great Hall and skid over to the Gryffindor table.

“Hazel, there you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

“Sorry, Ginny.” The demigod looked genuinely sorry.

“And there you are”, Ron said, “we were already guessing about where you were.”

“Searching for Hazel, idiot.”

“Yes, you just told me that.”

Harry’s mind drifted off as the siblings bickered. Or, well, his eyes did. There was nothing wrong with platonically admiring you close friends, alright? Nothing. Hermione was just incredibly smart and pretty and dedicated. Ron was just incredibly loyal and funny and protective. That was just a fact, okay? His friends were genuinely great people, even if they were annoying at times.

But school was still a thing that existed, sadly, and so they couldn’t simply stay in the great Hall and do nothing all day. Harry was looking forward to school this year – nothing could be quite as terrible as last one.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Remus didn’t really like being in the tent with Percy. Even though it was big enough to house at least six people without issue, he didn’t exactly feel safe with one of the most renowned monster-killers of this century in the same room as him. He was, after all, still a werewolf. (“Well, what else are you supposed to be?” Sirius had asked, once. “An aardvark?”)

But still, he simply sat at the table as Sirius came back into the tent, followed by Percy with a sword in his hand. Right, that wasn’t scary at all.  Nope, nothing to fear there.

Remus cut right to the chase. “All right, Percy, Sirius and I have some concerns about our plan.”

“What concerns?” Percy asked.

“We don’t exactly have a concrete one.”

“Over the years, I’ve discovered that plans almost never actually work. I usually just make something basic up and improvise off of that.”

Remus fought the urge to facepalm. He decided on sighing instead. This unorganized kid was what he was afraid of? Yes, apparently. Because said kid was standing in the doorway, sword still in hand.

“That is not what we’re going to do. And put that sword away, for Merlin’s sake!”

“Alright, calm down.” Well, at the very least the sword was gone now.

“We also don’t know what to do with the horcrux if we actually get our hands on it. We need to make up a plan. This quest is dragging itself out by an incredible amount of time, and we have even more of these things to find. 

“Now, you are an intelligent young person, and you’re very good at strategizing, as far as I know. Do you have any ideas as to what we should do now?”

“Man, I just told you I usually just make stuff up as I go along. But if you want an actual plan, you have to talk to Annabeth.”

“Who’s Annabeth?” Sirius asked.

Percy’s eyes visibly lit up. Remus was pretty sure that eyes weren’t supposed to do that.

“She’s my fiancée, and probably the most intelligent demigod ever – maybe barring people like Daedalus, but he had years of experience on her. She’s one of the Seven and the Architect of Olympus. Also, she’s the brains behind a lot of the stuff that I do – for example, most of the strategy for the battle of Manhattan was hers. She found a way to activate all the statues there to fight for us, for example. And I should also mention her fooling the cult of Mithras, and –”

“Okay, that sounds convincing enough,” Remus said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Can you contact her here?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Percy said, a wide grin spreading across her face.

Harry’s hand throbbed with pain after the detention session with Umbridge. What was he going to do now? He still had detention for the rest of the week – for literally just telling the truth – and if he didn’t go, he’d just have more. But on the other hand, he did not want to do this again.

“Hey!” someone called out. Who else was still in the corridors at this hour?

Hazel Levesque, demigod and American exchange student, apparently.

“You just had detention at Umbridge’s, right?” she asked.

He nodded mutely.

“Come with me,” she ordered, seizing him by the arm.

The world melted into shadows for what simultaneously felt like the fraction of a second and an eternity. The experience was just as overwhelming as the first time around with Nico. Maybe even more so.

They were spit out into a dark, cluttered-up room. As his eyes adjusted to the absence of the light, he recognized the room. They were in Hagrid’s Hut, not far from the Forbidden Forest. With him and Hazel, there were Ron, Hermione, and the other demigods.

In a way that he hoped was both discreet and quick, he pulled his sleeve so far over his wrist that his fresh cuts from Umbridge’s blood quill weren’t visible.

“Why are we here?” Harry managed. This looked like it could be something big. Was it something to do with Voldemort, or Sirius’ mission? Had something happened to him?

“We’re here because Umbridge is a racist, ableist, and generally just bigoted, terrible excuse for a human being.

“Yes Hazel, thank you for bringing this to the point. I’d have used a different phrasing, but that is generally the issue at hand.” Jason always seemed slightly exasperated by his other friends – they were all much more chaotic than him.

“Hazel, can you make sure nobody sees us?” Piper asked.

“On it,” the girl replied. Her face scrunched up as some sort of white-ish misty substance pulled itself from thin air. It settled all over the windows and the door and disappeared back into the nothingness it came from.

“What was that?” Hermione asked.

“You can see it? You can see the mist? The only people I know who can do that are me and Thalia if she concentrates very hard! Harry, Ron, can you see it as well?”

Harry nodded. Behind him, Ron gave a vague noise that should probably have been interpreted as ‘yeah’. Classic Ron.

“Wow! Maybe it has something to do with you being wizards – well, witches, in Hermione’s case. Wait, where was I?”

“Umbridge being a terrible person,” Thalia offered.

“And completely unfit to teach,” Piper chimed in.

Nico turned around from his place at the window. Harry shrank back from his gaze – the other boy’s eyes were like black holes, sucking into them even the little bit of light left in the room. The air seemed to grow frigid to match with his glower.

“I proposed killing her,” he growled, “but that got classified as an ‘unethical method of dealing with problems’. Stupid statement, in my opinion, but still.”

Hazel, honest to Merlin, snickered at that, as if her half-brother hadn’t literally proposed to murder a teacher. He wasn’t Hermione, but still. That was a bit too far.

“Murder isn’t socially acceptable,” Jason lectured. It sounded like they’d already had that conversation multiple times. Was that a bit worrisome? Yes, of course it was, in Harry’s not-so-humble opinion at least.

“So… what do you want to do?”, asked Harry tentatively.

“Scare the living daylights out of her,” said Nico. “I’ve been told I’m good at it.”

“And we are going to convince her to reconsider some of her teaching methods.” Thalia put the sort of emphasis on the word that made it clear that they were very clearly not going to “convince” her with good arguments over a nice cup of tea. His idea of what was going to happen most definitively included Piper using her powers.

“Why do you need us here, then?”, asked Harry after a good minute or so of silence. Ron and Hermione had clearly also realized that the convincing was not entirely going to be within the realms of usual morality. But Umbridge deserved it, didn’t she?

“She has a special vendetta against you,” said Hazel, “that much is clear. And I have a very worrying notion about what may have happened during the detention you just served, Harry.” That last part was spoken in a sort of hushed tone. But there was anger within her words, too. At him?

“Harry, I hope more than anything else that I am wrong about this,” the girl continued on, “but would you please show us your right arm and wrist?”

No. How did she know? Nobody had needed to know.

Harry was paralyzed. Standing amidst these demigods, he suddenly saw them. They were forces of nature; passion and pain stuffed into approximately human-shaped vessels. More natural than any human or wizard or human could ever claim to be, yet their very existence went against nature itself.

He slowly edged away, towards his friends. The idea of Ron and Hermione seemed like home right now.

“Harry, what is that supposed to mean?”, Hermione asked. There was the sort of terror in her voice that comes with not-knowing and simultaneously wanting and not wanting to actually do so. Hermione not knowing always meant something much, much bigger and worse than whatever they’d previously had seen.

Ron also looked confused. Still, he seemed to reassure Harry with only his gaze. You’ve got this, mate, his eyes seemed to spell out.

Harry took a deep breath and rolled up his sleeve, wincing slightly as dried blood was pulled away from the wound.

“Lumos,” Hazel said as the tip of her wand lit up. She held it close to his arm so that everyone could see what was written there in Harry’s scratchy handwriting.

“I must not tell lies.”

Chapter Text

New Rome was quite a nice place, Annabeth supposed. There was just one problem, and that was her fiancé currently being away on a at least year-long quest to Britain. They’d wanted to study here together, but the gods had taken that away from them, like they had so many other things as well in the past.

Still, she had to do her architecture homework. At least her classmates weren’t going to dump the entire work on her – she was a Hero of Olympus, as well as its architect, after all. But still, group projects were a menace to society; just like Annabeth was when she was woken up before 8 AM without coffee.

“Hey, Annabeth,” a familiar voice greeted. Annabeth nearly jumped to the ceiling. Sadly, Percy wasn’t actually in the room with her. But still, he was calling her with an Iris Message, just as he’d promised. He was actually calling her; he hadn’t simply left her alone. Logically, she knew that. But the non-logical part of her brain still felt small and terrified and like nobody would ever truly stay with her.

“Hey,” she squeezed out, looking up at the fine mist in which Percy’s face had appeared, together with that of two others. One with light brown hair, and facial scars, slightly scruffy looking, and the other with almost shoulder-length dark waves of hair and a tattoo peeking out under the collar of his shirt. Both had a look in their eyes that Annabeth never really saw on mortals’ faces – that familiar mixture of tiredness and simultaneous hyperawareness that Annabeth was so used to in herself.

“Nice to see you again,” they said. “Sorry for only calling you now, I had a lot of things on my plate”

“It’s okay, really.”

“I know you don’t like being left in the dark,” they said. Under exaggeration of the century.

“Like I said, it’s alright. You’re on a quest, after all; I can’t exactly expect to send me a text every evening. Off-topic question, which pronouns should I use?”

“She/her, current gender identity is demigirl.” With a glance towards his companions, he explained, “It’s a nonbinary gender identity; close to female, but not actually that. I’m okay with gender-neutral and feminine terms right now, if you need to know.”

“Thank you, Seaweed Brain. Why are you calling together with these guys, who are they? What are you currently doing, if you can tell me that?”

“I think this is going to take a bit longer,” the man with the longer hair chirped in.

“That’s okay, I can listen if you just give me a sec –”

She quickly grabbed her notepad and opened up a new page. In Greek, she wrote “Percy’s Quest” on the top. Some time ago, Annabeth had realized that taking notes helped with her ADHD – keeping things organized, and also finding something to occupy her hands with.

“Okay. So, these are Remus and Sirius, they’re both wizards. We’re on a quest together to find seven magical items – the current one is an ancient ring. They’re all, however, possessed by a part of the soul of a megalomaniac supervillain wizard that calls himself a ‘dark lord’.”

“Have you finally started reading Lord of the Rings?” Annabeth asked. What Percy was telling her sounded like it was right out of a fantasy novel.

Percy snorted. “No. You’re a nerd, Wise Girl.”

“Something wrong with that?”

“Nope, nope, nothing wrong with that. Anyways, back to the task at hand. The ‘dark Lord’ Tom Riddle-slash-Lord Voldemort kind of split up his soul into about seven pieces. He stored those in objects known as ‘horcruxes’. They’re all relevant to his life before he started his career.”

“His career … as a ‘dark Lord’?”

“Yes, of course. What else? I mean, we think he worked in retail for some time, but …”

“Only you, Percy.”

“Only me.” She looked very proud at that. “See, the problem is that we know their approximate location, and who they’re with. But actually getting them is troublesome.”

“So you need a strategy?” Annabeth asked sarcastically. Leave it to Percy to get in over her head.

“Actually,” said Percy with a grin, “calling you is my strategy.”

Anabeth just sighed. “Do you have any further ideas?” As much as Percy could be incredibly smart when she needed to, she was also impulsive and oftentimes went into things with only part of a plan. Somewhere between 12 and 55 precent, as a good median estimate.

For examples, see the battle of Manhattan, the battle of the Labyrinth- alright, almost every battle they’d ever been in. Yes, this could be a strength – more adaptability was good, as well as strategy’s not being found out so easily. But it was also was incredibly nerve-wrecking if you had to deal with it over a period of years.

“I have an idea, but it’s not entirely moral and I think you’ll disapprove of it.”

“Percy, you can make your own decisions,” she said out loud. Please don’t let it be what I think it is, she thought to herself.

“I can see that look on your face,” her fiancée said. “We both know what I’m talking about, don’t we?”

“Yes, but for clarifications: do you mean what happened with Akhlys?” That was one of the nicer ways to put it, certainly. It was a good euphemism for “that time Percy almost tortured a goddess to death”. She didn’t want to say that out loud, as if it made the deed any less real. Any less repulsive.

And yet, if Annabeth had been in Percy’s place with her powers, she thought she might have done the same, even if for a different reason. Percy had not only been afraid for her own life, but also for hers. And Annabeth knew her life was much more important in Percy’s eyes.

But still, the incident made her truly fear. Not with fear for herself, mind you – Percy would rather kill herself than ever hurt her. The fear was of what Percy would become was much more terrible. And she knew, at least in her own eyes and mind, she’d carry the guilt if that happened. She had the power to prevent it, after all, with just a few words.

“What actually happened?” asked Sirius. “With Akhlys, I mean? Okay, I know what you did, but not exactly why. What could drive someone to do that?”

“Very nearly torture a goddess to death?” Percy asked, voice entirely devoid of any tone. “Make Misery feel every bit of the pain she ever dealt out? I already told you, didn’t I? There are some people I’d do anything to protect. Annabeth’s one of them.”

“But why?” the other man, Remus, asked.

“Because in that moment, I wanted to see Akhlys suffer. Make Misery choke on the very thing she’s made out of. Poetic justice, I suppose. At least, that’s what I felt like at that very moment.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry, so pushed to the brink, ever before. And never again.”

“To the brink of what?” asked Sirius.

“Take your pick. Death, monsterhood, exhaustion, any emotion a human may be capable of. Mix of all of those, probably. I can’t actually recall what I exactly felt. I know what I felt on a logical level, but on an emotional level, feeling that again? It’s impossible. And I hope it stays that way.”

Annabeth bit down hard on her lip and pressed her tongue to the roof of her mind. Don’t cry, don’t cry, she reminded herself. She evaded Percy’s gaze, the broken look in her eyes.

“Percy, as much as I disapprove of you using your powers like that, I cannot prevent that. And it’s not exactly fair of you to put your tough moral decisions on me. So please, do what you feel you need to.”

“Okay, you’re right. It isn’t fair of me to expect me to be your moral compass. But I can’t exactly see another way in this situation without getting my two companions here into some serious trouble with the law.”

“I always have Sirius trouble with the law,” Sirius butted in. This was merely met by groans from everyone else present. “No really,” the wizard said. “I got out of jail – I was falsely accused, by the way – only about two years ago. I am certain they’re still monitoring me.”

“I have an idea,” Remus said. He hadn’t really spoken until now, Annabeth realized. “What if you only use your power for just as long it needs for Morfin to realize that he’s going to have a problem very soon, and then stop?”

“And once he’s had a taste of that, he’ll comply?” Sirius came to the logical conclusion of the idea.

“For as much as you like to dangle your superior sense of morals in my face all the godsdamned time, that suggestion is surprisingly close to psychological torture.” Percy had her smug I’ve just won an argument look plastered all over her face.

Remus looked significantly more uncomfortable now.

“I think that’s playing hopscotch on the knife’s edge between psychological torture and manipulation,” Annabeth said then with a shrug. “When you think about it, torture is just a more extreme version of manipulation.” Well, that sure didn’t sound like something a normal person who had never in her life committed a warcrime would say!

“Not helping,” Percy mumbled.

“It’s a good enough plan,” Remus stated. “Even though, yes, I take some issue with it on moral grounds, it will help us. Probably.”

“What do you think, Percy?” Annabeth then asked. “You’re the one that is going to act out most of our plan, no?”

Percy pressed her lips together. “I’ll do it. What is a power good for if you can’t use it?” A smile stretched its way across her face.

She was making light of a dark situation again. And Annabeth knew Percy well enough to also know her coping mechanisms, questionable as they could be. A deep dread settled in Annabeth’s stomach and curled itself up like a cat.

The person she loved – what would she make herself into to survive?

“Percy,” she said then. I need to discuss something with your companions.”

“Without me?”

“Without you.”

Her fiancée sighed and got up. With slow steps, she crept out of the tent, as if she was checking if she was about to be called back inside.

“Remus, Sirius,” she said, her tongue feeling heavy. “I know you know some things about Percy and what she’s done. But you must know that you probably have a skewed perspective of what happened.”

“We have it from her as well,” Remus said bitterly. He seemed not to like Percy much in general. And there had been that comment about Remus dangling his “moral superiority” in Percy’s face. Annabeth worried.

Please don’t let my fiancée make to many enemies, she prayed to the forces out there. The gods, or the fates, of whatever she could delude herself into believing in.

“Where else do you have it from?” she asked instead, quirking an eyebrow.

The two didn’t answer. Did Annabeth want to know? Yes, but not doing so was probably better for her mental health. And really, that she should actually look out for.

“Especially if you have Percy’s perspective on things,” she continued, “your view on thing might be skewed. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she can be pretty…” She struggled to find a word. “Self-deprecating.” That was also slightly euphemistic – Annabeth knew of Percy’s view of herself. Self-deprecating was a very light word for that.

“To me, it seemed more like a manipulation tactic,” Remus stated.

“Sometimes it is. She knows the advantages of being underestimated, but most of that is genuine.” She paused to let it sink in and continued onwards. “If you have a story of Percy, please consider that she was a teenager. Still is. And to be honest? Most of those stories are just about surviving against the odds.”

“And what kind of things you have to do for that,” Reus said. What had Percy done for the man to hold such a grudge against her?

“Yes. But most of the time she – we – were just scared kids doing their best. Percy holds herself to a moral standard, but in some situations, that can’t accurately be applied. Sometimes, being nice and good is not an option. That was taken away from us demigods from the moment of our birth. Our kind is made for pain, to both take it and deal it out. We’re not human, and it is unfair to judge us by human standards.

“Please, give Percy a chance. Gods know she doesn’t.

“Look, you don’t have to take my advice, but please consider it. I am a daughter of wisdom, the daughter of wisdom. You two? You’re two mortals who are about to be in way over their heads.”

She gave her most menacing smile. “Understood?” Then, she waved her hand through the projection, cutting it off without the two wizards’ answers. Annabeth sighed and scrubbed her hand over her face.

These were going to be some long months.

Chapter Text

Dolores Jane Umbridge prided herself on only a few things. One, she was incredibly loyal to justice – well, the ministry, which didn’t really make any difference. And two, she managed to turn even the worst delinquents around with her teaching methods. That was something positive, considering she had only started teaching about a week ago.

So she didn’t understand why the young Mr Grace – the exchange student from America – had approached her in the manner he had yesterday.

“Professor Umbridge, I’m sorry but I think I need to warn you.” At her decidedly not puzzled, but questioning glare, he had said, “There are some people who are dissatisfied with your methods. And I’ve been tasked to tell you, that you will regret continuing like you currently are very deeply, very soon.”

She had brushed him aside – preposterous, what he was saying! Students didn’t get to decide how they were taught. Where would something like that lead? Total anarchy! And what could students even do to her? They did not even know how to properly use their wands yet.

A knocking on the door jerked her out of her thoughts. It was already late in the evening, so who could it be? Potter, maybe? But he was much too late. Oh, she would give him a week more of detention if he continued to disobey your rules.

Again, something – no, someone, why had she thought that? – knocked at the door.

“Come in,” she called in her sweetest voice. “The door is open.”

It was not Potter who stepped in, or Hazel – the girl still had to serve her detention, and had failed to show up in her classes since the spectacle in her first lesson. Neither was it one of her colleagues. No, it was a skeleton.

By Merlin’s beard! A skeleton – no, multiple skeletons, even! And all wore armour, and carried long spears with black tips.

She wanted to move, to run, but she couldn’t. She remained frozen in her seat. The first skeleton grabbed her, yanked her up from her seat and started dragging her out of the room. The rest of them held her at spear-point.

She dug her heels into the floor.

A second skeleton came to aid. The rest of the skeletons surrounded her and their brethren – to stop her from running away.

The skeletons dragged her through the castle by the wrists. Nobody was there, nobody could help her.

Suddenly, it dawned on her.

These skeletons were dragging her away to some dark sorcerer, but for what? She would die! But Dolores was quite attached to life, so she began screaming.

“Help me! Please anybody help me!”

But no one could hear.

They were now at the moving staircase.

She screamed and screamed, but nobody seemed to hear her, or even see her. Where were her colleagues, the students out at night, or even the ghosts? Why was there nobody in this castle?

Her self-preservation instinct set in once more. This time, she tried kicking at the skeletons’ shins. But they ignored her.

They dragged her, and yanked her around, and she had to stumble along, lest she’d fall victim to her kidnappers’ spears.

The indignity was the worst part, along with the cold that came as they finally had her outside of the gates of the school.

Now, some more skeletons grabbed her and lifted her up, so that she was lying on top of them. She could feel the hotness of her face from the anger at being treated like this. They carried her on their bony hands, towards the Shrieking Shack in the distance.

Dolores squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t know what would happen, or why. She had never made any enemies. She had kept her mouth shut during the Wizarding War. She had never made a grab for power unless she was sure she could win. Who could despise her enough to kill her?

She was going to die.

She was barely in her forties, and she was going to die.

The dread was mind-numbing, and spread quickly throughout her body.

Sometime later, the skeletons stopped their mindless march.

Sometime later, they through her unceremoniously onto the grass.

Sometime later, she looked up.

Sometime later, a bolt of lightning lit up everything, and thunder clapped.

Before her stood the five American exchange students.

The fear left her all at once. Were they responsible for this? Please, most of them couldn’t even read properly!

Then, it swung over to anger. How dare they treat her like this?

“What is the meaning of this!” she demanded.

“Shut up,” said Piper.

Her mouth clamped shut. Of course, what sense would talking make?

Hazel’s eyes were glowing golden as she stepped towards her. Cold bands of metal shot out from the ground, enveloping her ankles and pulling her wrists to the ground. They snaked themselves around them, cutting off the blood flow. With a metallic clicking noise, they locked in place. She couldn’t move her body; only her head.

“Look at us,” Piper commanded her. She obeyed. Piper’s word was something you couldn’t just not obey. She couldn’t resist.

“Is she secured?” a voice asked, sounding disinterested. Quiet and raspy – Nico di Angelo?

Hazel nodded.

“Good.” There was an unnatural quality to his voice and demeanour.

And then: “Polemistes, epithesi.”

The skeletons aimed their spears at her and edged closer.

Closer.

Closer.

She was about to die.

Her own students were trying to kill her.

A small part urged her to say something, but that didn’t make any sense. She had been commanded to be silent. Why should she speak?

But still, a scared sound broke past her lips.

Di Angelo smiled.

“Stamata,” he commanded.

The skeletons halted their approach.

“Do you have something to say?” asked the Grace girl, her eyes unnaturally glowing in the dark.

Rain started to pour, and thunder rolled in the distance.

Dolores tried her best to nod, against every rational thought in her head.

But Grace seemed to be able to interpret it. Then she groaned.

“Piper, you overdid it,” she called.

Piper stepped near and said, “You may speak” with a roll of her eyes.

“What are you doing to me?” Dolores asked, an edge of panic in her voice. She felt small and pathetic and scared.

“Nothing much,” said the girl. “It’s not much different from you just using your wand to help you with things that are too annoying without magic.”

“But why?”

“Like I said, professor, some people – we – happen to vehemently disagree with your teaching methods.” That was Jason, dangerously calm.

She was at a lack for words.

“I am your teacher! Do you know how much trouble you five are in! I’ll have you serving detention for the rest of your lives! I’ll talking to Dumbledore! I –”

Nico cut her off. “Nobody will believe you, Dolores.”

“This isn’t only about your teaching methods,” said Hazel, her voice cold with anger, words dripping like poison. The girl fixed her with her golden stare. “This is not just about you being ableist and racist and a general bigot towards your students. This is about you forcing your students to mutilate themselves for speaking the truth.”

“He was lying,” Dolores protested.

“No,” the girl responded, keeping eye contact the whole time.

“I wanted to kill you,” said di Angelo, fixing her with his dark stare as well. His accent was stronger than usual. “But I am not allowed to.” He shrugged. “So, I’ll settle for this.”

His grin stretched across his cheeks far too wide, showing off every tooth he had, but it didn’t reach his eyes. The rains and thunder stopped. The air became deathly cold. Frost crept its way up her metal shackles, biting into her skin.

“If you insult my little sister again, or hurt my friends, or any other students currently under your supervision, I will banish your soul to the fields of Asphodel, I will have the skeletons desecrate your corpse, and let the hellhounds have the remains. Are we clear?”

Dolores was unable to speak – she could merely look up in horror at the student – that thing she had believed to be her student – in horror.

“He asked you if you understood him,” sneered the Grace girl.

She nodded.

“Good.” Di Angelo’s face was cold and cruel.

The rain picked up again, drenching her already cold body to the bone.

With only a snap of her fingers, Hazel undid the restraints.

“You will tell no one,” said Piper decisively. Of course, she wouldn’t; how preposterous!

The five of them were enveloped in darkness and vanished, leaving her there all alone.

Dolores stumbled to her feet. She rubbed her wrists to bring back the blood flow to her hands. She turned her gaze back to the castle, she had to get back fast.

But how could she go back, having been so utterly humiliated?

Then, a thought crossed her mind: she would resign, so she would never have to deal with these terrible students again. She wouldn’t have to deal with these … creatures again.

The thought calmed her on the way back, even as the rain continued to beat down on her.

Thunder rolled in the distance.

Chapter Text

Morfin Gaunt was not content with living out what remained of his life in his old home. At least it was quiet – not many wanted to deal with a man who’d been to Azkaban. But still, he itched for a fight. Smashing old items and furniture when they pissed him off brought about shards that he stepped on and the money to replace them wasn’t there.

So when there was a knock at his door, he grinned to himself. He may have been an old man, but he was still strong and intimidating.

Again, there was a knock. Slow, and deliberate. Taunting him.

He growled, stomped over to the door, and yanked it open.

In front of him stood three people. The one in front of him was tall, bronze skinned, dark haired, green eyed. Either one of those stupid effeminate boys that ran around everywhere these days, or a girl who didn’t know her place.

The other two were male and a good bit older than the other one (a girl, Morfin decided). One had ashy hair and facial scars, the other one was dark-haired and looked somewhat familiar to him.

“Morfin Gaunt,” spoke the girl in a deep, raspy voice. Actually a boy, then? “Displeasure to meet you.”

He squinted at the green-eyed intruder. Who was that, daring to treat him like this in his own home? Oh, he’d give that little freak a good beating.

“You have something I want,” he – she? – said then. The person gave him a lopsided grin that showed of sharp white teeth. Too sharp. That was when Morfin realized the bright glow of her – his? – eyes, the smell of sea air. The thing’s companions stood silently by the side.

The will to fight left him. His pose deflated. Every bone, every muscle in his body screamed to run. But he was paralyzed by that bright green gaze, like a hare stunned by a wolf.

“Who are you?” he asked, voice quivering with fear.

“Perseus Jackson,” it said, still grinning.

No.

Brother of Monsters.

Titans’ Bane.

Defeater of Gods.

Sword of Olympus.

A god made mortal flesh stood before him.

Tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump, went his heart.

“See, I’m going to give you a choice,” said the being. “Either we do this the easy way – you give us what we’re after. Or we do this the hard way.” No need to elaborate. Rumours of Perseus’ deeds were far-spread.

But something in him, that old spirit of his house refused. He would stand his ground, and if he died, he’d die a hero.

“No,” he said.

The word hung in the air.

“Fine, then.” Perseus shrugged. “Have it your way.”

Something grabbed his feet. Not from outside, but from within. His very lifeblood was seized by an invisible much greater power.

The feeling creeped up his legs, slowly, bit by bit.

He set his jaw.

The power had reached his hips now, still crawling agonizingly slow.

His hands were seized as well, and the feeling crept up over his arms.

There was no halting it.

The feeling had now immobilized him completely – he could only move his head.

“Do you want to reconsider?” asked the demigod lightly.

“No,” he grit out. Damnit – he wouldn’t succumb so easily.

Then, he felt something wrapping itself around something in his chest cavity.

“What I am currently holding is your heart,” said the Sword of Olympus. “Believe me, I could kill you in many ways. More than your puny mind could comprehend. But I’ve decided on just making your heart go still. It’ll look natural, after someone discovers your corpse after it’s been rotting here for some days. Heart failure, something to expect in your age. Strange that you hadn’t already died of it in Azkaban, they’ll say. Again, you can reconsider.”

Morfin only shook his head.

“Never.”

“Your choice.”

Then, the Titans’ Bane started to squeeze Morfin’s heart, stretching out a hand and closing it slowly.

He felt the pressure in him tightening.

He didn’t want to die.

His mind grappled with itself for a second, until his self-preservation overrode his pride.

“Please, I’ll do anything, just let me go! Let me go! Please, I promise I’ll give you whatever you want, please –” He trailed off into incoherent babbling.

Perseus loosened the hand and laughed. “Really? You turned my offer of mercy down, and I didn’t offer again. Consider yourself lucky that I am merciful, even to the worst of the scum that walks this earth.”

He nodded frantically. “Please my Lord, what is it you want, I will give it!”

“Oh, just a small trinket. Nothing big. A small ring with a peculiar seal on it.”

Oh no.

The good news? Umbridge had resigned. The bad news? They didn’t have a teacher for Defence Against the Dark Arts now. The good news, again? They had Harry. The bad news, once again? Harry was more stubborn than an ox.

Hermione and Ron had been trying to convince their friend for almost an hour now that he was qualified to lead what was basically an all-student DADA class.

“Harry, I’m telling you,” said Ron once again, his red hair haloed by the fireplace, “you have more experience when it actually comes to fighting and, you know, defending yourself against the dark arts, than any other student at this school.”

“We should just wait for the next teacher,” Harry argued weakly. A tiredness was visible in his usually so vibrant emerald eyes. There were deep bags under them too. Had he been sleeping right?

“You’re not wrong, Harry,” said Hermione. “But Dumbledore is always struggling to find a teacher for DADA, and the next teacher might be just as terrible, or even worse.”

“Why don’t you ask the d – the Americans – if you’re looking for experience, then,” Harry said venomously. “They’ve all fought their wars and not had their friends die because they were too stupid to prevent it!” His voice crescendo-ed.

“Oh, Harry,” she whispered. She stood up from her seat and went to hug him, but Harry jerked back.

“Don’t,” he said tiredly. “Just… don’t, okay?”

An uneasy silence filled the room and Hermione retreated back to her armchair.

“It wasn’t your fault, mate,” said Ron after some time. “You couldn’t have done anything, form what you told us.”

“But maybe, maybe I could have saved him, or at least called out to him!”

“How? Harry, it was a killing curse. You can’t save anyone from it and Cedric probably couldn’t have dodged it either.” Hermione just desperately hoped that what she was saying was getting through to Harry.

“But if I had stopped him form touching the portkey –”

“You didn’t know it was a portkey,” said Ron decisively. “You were trying to be nice to Cedric!”

“Yeah, and pretty much killed him in the process.”

“No, you didn’t Harry,” said Hermione. “I understand that you feel guilty, but it wasn’t your fault.”

“No, you don’t understand!” Harry snapped. He jumped out of his seat. “You don’t understand what it felt like to see the light fade from his eyes, what it was like to drag his lifeless body back towards the school, to have nightmares that plague you every night! You don’t understand shit, Hermione. And neither do you, Ron.”

“No, you’re right,” said Ron. How was he going to turn this situation around? Clever chess moves didn’t always apply to real life. “We don’t understand, and I am glad for that. Listen, I’ve seen what that did to you, and I hope I’ll never have to understand what that’s like. But I see it, and Hermione sees it too, I think. You’re not okay right now, Harry.”

Harry pressed together his lips into a thin line. His brown skin seemed an unhealthy, greyish shade, even in the warm glow of the fireplace.

“Let us help you,” Ron continued. “We’re your friends, Harry. We care about you. We want to help you.”

There was something about the way he’d said friends that made Hermione’s stomach feel weird. Not bad, but different. A good different.

“Why do you want me to run your little club, then?” Harry asked after some deliberation. “Why not the Americans, as I said?”

“Because they have no real experience with our kind of magic,” said Hermione.

“And because we think it would be good for you,” added Ron. Something about being spoken about as an us felt good. Us, Ron and Harry and her. Inseparable. “You can help them so they can learn how to help others and themselves.”

Harry returned to his seat. “Give me some time to think about it. Just until tomorrow night, nothing wrong. I just … have to think.”

“Alright,” said Hermione.

“Good night, guys,” said Harry in a soft voice and went towards the boys’ dorms.

“Good night,” Ron called after him.

“So…” Hermione trailed off. “That went better than I expected.”

“Huh. What did you expect?”

“A lot more yelling. And I always forget how smart you can be if you want to.”

“If I want to. History of Magic is a different thing.”

Hermione giggled. Giggled, like a small girl. Ron smiled, too. It filled her with a soft feeling, like fuzzy socks and marshmallows. What was up with her these days? Get a grip, girl, she told herself.

She stared up, towards the ceiling. She couldn’t bear looking into Ron’s soft hazel eyes.

“I was surprised at your little speech,” she said, then.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know.” Ron squirmed in his seat. “In retrospective it sounds a little bit weird, you get what I mean?”

“What do you mean?”

“I think it sounded like, I’m badly concealing a crush on him, or something like that.”

Oh. Wait.

“Do you? I mean, have a crush on Harry?”

“I don’t know,” he said earnestly. “I mean, every time I look at him, I get this warm, fuzzy feeling –”

“Like fluffy socks and marshmallows,” Hermione finished. She didn’t phrase it as a question. Did she have a crush on Ron? But he seemed to fancy Harry, and she kind of felt like that about Harry, too! Had she died and ended up in a bad YA novel love triangle?

Hermione had always hated that trope, just as much as the whole “boy and girl are friends, and then they have to fall in love” thing. It didn’t work like that, and she’d considered herself proof of that. See, her best friends were both boys, and she wasn’t in love with either of them!

“So, you feel like that about Harry, too?” Ron asked tentatively. “Or about someone else?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Who’s the other one? Tell me the name of the lucky guy – or gal, sorry. Or wait, what’s the gender-neutral form of that?”

Again, she giggled, for the second time this evening.

“Stop laughing at me!” demanded Ron, but he was close to cracking up, as well.

Then, a wave of something came over her. If it was bravery or stupidity, she didn’t know.

“It’s you,” she said, very quietly, and very softly. Ron had heard her, anyway.

He just blinked.

“Wow,” he said. “Okay. Uh, that’s kind of funny, because I kind of feel the same but I also kind of didn’t tell you about it because I didn’t want to ruin our friendship.”

“I didn’t tell you because I only realized it right now.”

“Oh. Uh, congratulations?”

Hermione snorted at that. Better than a giggle, at least.

“If that makes it any better,” Ron said, “I only realized on the Hogwarts express.”

“And what are we going to tell Harry? You know him, the chance of him actually liking us both back and acknowledging it to himself, and to us, is pretty low.”

“Not zero, though.”

Hermione made a small noise of agreement.

They fell silent again.

What would they do now? What did people in books do after they’d confessed to each other? They kissed.

As she glanced over to Ron, she saw how red his face was. Luckily, her complexion was dark enough to hide blushing, but she could fell the heat of her face, as well. Had Ron thought the same thing as her? What were they now?

“Uh, good night,” Hermione stammered then, rising quickly and hurrying towards the girls’ dorms.

“Good night,” Ron called after her.

Chapter Text

“Okay,” Harry told his friends after class the day after the argument. “I’ll try teaching the rest of the students how to defend themselves from dark magic. But I can stop at any time if I change my mind, alright?”

“Of course,” said Hermione. “Your wellbeing is important, too. And if something is bad for you, you can tell us that. We’ll find another way. Right, Ron?”

Ron was just looking at Hermione, a slight blush on his cheeks.

“Right, Ron,” she said again.

“Oh, uh yeah, of course. It’s important that you can feel safe too.”

 What was going on between the two of them? They’d stayed in the common room for some time, and something had clearly happened between them.

Maybe they got together, whispered a voice, somewhere in his head. Maybe they’ll get sick of you and leave you alone. Like everyone else does.

A burning feeling of jealousy spread through his body. What was so different? What had happened? Did he have to worry? Or maybe the two of them were planning to betray him. What if they were spying on him? Dear Merlin, what would happen? Hermione and Ron were some of the few people he could trust, and now they were conspiring against him, or trying to get rid of him because of something else, and oh God, what had he done wrong? When had he fucked up this badly? How could he repair this?

“When’s our first meeting?” Ron asked, interrupting his train of thought. Well, it was more of a rollercoaster, but still. “I mean, we need people that actually want too be there, and a meeting place and times for it.”

That was typical of Ron – thinking strategically and being the reasonable one far more often than one would expect.

“I’ve been getting word out to some of the other Gryffindor students,” said Hermione. “We can just invite a certain number of people and then they can bring along one other person if they want to. And for meeting places, I’d have the Hog’s Head – yes Harry, students are allowed there, I’ve already checked. And the next Hogsmeade weekend is in a week, so we have enough time to spread the message.”

“So, you thought all that up just now?” Harry asked, suspicion evident in his voice. He had to get behind whatever was going on between the two.

“No,” said Ron, “we’d already started planning before we asked you.”

“When was that?” demanded Harry. Didn’t he deserve to know? Why wasn’t he privy to his friends’ plans regarding him?

“Harry, I don’t know what’s up with you right now, but it’s clear you’re not okay,” said Hermione gently. “We wanted to have a full plan before we asked you, that’s all.”

“You didn’t answer my question!” Harry said angrily.

“Why does it matter that much?” asked Ron. Was his friend trying to provoke him?

“I SAID: WHEN DID YOU PLAN IT?” he yelled, disregarding the gazes of everyone else in the common room. “WHAT ELSE ARE YOU PLANNING BEHIND MY BACK?”

“We weren’t planning behind your back,” Hermione argued back.

“YES, YOU WERE! YOU TWO ARE ALWAYS SNEAKING AROUND AND THINK I DON’T NOTICE YOU TWO! I’M SICK OF IT!”

“Harry, calm down, please,” Hermione pleaded. “We can explain everything, but you need help! You can’t continue on like this!” Her voice started to get louder as well. “You’re paranoid as all get-out, and you’re always angry. Harry, just let us help, please!”

“No,” he said, voice cold. He stormed out of the common room.

He just walked and walked without even considering where. After some time, he was already at the gates of the great hall, then outside, then near Hagrid’s hut.

Hagrid. The half-giant was on some sort of secret mission somewhere on the continent. Merlin, how he missed the man. The new professor was nowhere near as good as he had been and everything was just going to shit.

It doesn’t have to be like this, says that voice in his head. You don’t have to be weak, don’t have to rely on those people that don’t even trust you. The voice sounded a bit like Tom Riddle. But that was impossible, right? Voldemort wasn’t in his brain.

But maybe he was, and maybe he was possessing him. Oh Merlin, Voldemort was possessing him.

Had Ron and Hermione noticed? Was that why they’d been so strange these past few weeks?

He’d fucked up. Big time.

He squeezed his eyes shut, but thick tears slid down his cheeks anyways. There was no holding them back. Harry hugged his knees to his chest and sobbed, taking ragged breaths whenever he could. He could feel the snot dripping from his nose, and the knees of his jeans were already stained wet with teardrops.

Somehow, he could almost hear his uncle berating him, “Boys don’t cry”.

But still, he couldn’t stop.

After some time, his tears had subsided. He wiped at his eyes and nose with the back of his hand, but that he’d been crying would have been obvious to anyone with eyes. His eyes were surely puffy and red-rimmed. There were probably tear tracks on his cheeks.

Harry uncurled himself from his seated position. As he tried to stand up, his knees buckled under him, and he had to lean against the wall of the hut so that he didn’t collapse.

How long had he been here, crying his eyes out?

His head throbbed.

Was it his scar?

Was it Voldemort who had finally decided to simply take control of him and kill him?

Crack. A sound echoed from somewhere – the forbidden forest! Was Riddle there? Was he here to kill Harry?

He could see movement now, in the forest, and light. Light from a wand?

He drew his wand from his pocket.

He aimed towards the shape that had now emerged from the forest.

No. They were shapes, plural. Three people. The ones on the sides had their wands drawn, but the one in the middle stumbled along and seemed to clutch something to their chest.

Wait. There was something familiar about these people. Harry squinted through his glasses, straining his eyes to see who it was.

Then, his heart leaped with joy.

There was Sirius on the left, and Lupin on the right. Which meant that the tall, shape in the middle had to be Percy.

“Sirius!” he called. “Lupin! I’m here!”

“Harry!” shouted Sirius. “What are you doing here?” He broke into a fast jog, and Lupin followed suit. Percy tried to match their pace, but stumbled and almost fell. Harry could only wait there as Lupin steadied the demigod with a firm grip on their arm that wasn’t clutched to their chest.

Harry started sprinting towards them.

“What happened?” he asked as he came to a stop next to the three of them.

“We had a small problem,” Percy grit out. Their face was pulled into a pained grimace. Strange, Percy seemed to be very resilient when it came to pain while they were staying at Sirius’ house. This was bad.

“What kind of problem?” asked Harry. Then his gaze fell onto Percy’s hand that they’d clutched to their chest. It looked sick and burned and twisted.

“We have to get to the Hospital Wing immediately,” said Lupin urgently. What had happened?

Percy began walking faster and faster, until he fell into a jog and then a run.

“Shit,” cursed Sirius and began sprinting after the demigod.

Lupin nodded towards Harry and also began running. Harry followed suit, but he was slower.

The next quarter an hour or so passed in a blur. Only later did Harry realize how strange it must have looked: a complete stranger sprinting through Hogwarts, followed by Sirius Black, Britain’s most prolific not-mass-murderer, then a former Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor, and finally Harry Potter, the “boy who lied”, if you believed the ministry.

The four of them barged into the almost completely deserted Hospital wing. Strange how Percy had been able to find the place without ever having been here. But that was a thought for later.

Madame Pomfrey bust out of her office door, looking ready to chastise them for intruding so rudely and disturbing her patients’ rest. But then, she saw the situation. She immediately started ordering everybody around – Remus to fetch the headmaster, Sirius to fetch Professor McGonagall, and Harry to fetch Snape.

That was what he did, running through the corridors and staircases until he arrived in the dungeons, where Snape’s office was. He didn’t even bother with knocking on the door, he just went right in.

“Potter!” Snape hissed. “What is the meaning of this?”

“There – there’s an emergency, sir, in the Hospital Wing, I think it has something to do with the order, you’re supposed to come there immediately –”

“Yes Potter, thank you.” He grit that last part out as if it had physically hurt him.

He rose from his chair in a swift motion, long black robes flowing behind him. He looked like a large bat as he strode up the hallways, followed by Harry.

He saw Nico and Hazel on his way back up again. They stared at him as if they’d seen a ghost, but that was for later.

As he finally reached the Hospital Wing, he almost collapsed on the ground. Instead, he settled for bending over and gasping for air.

In the last few hours, Percy’s existence had been reduced to pain, which was always welcome. This hurt like when they’d been taken captive under Mount St Helens, and the whole thing with the telekhines there. Fitting, as it also seemed to be a bad burn.

At least it wasn’t as bad as the pit scorpion sting.

Well, maybe being unconscious was better in terms of pain level. But on the other hand, they could sense was going on when they were conscious. Right now, it was way too much. The nurse was yelling something, and Dumbledore, and several other voices.

And so they took a deep breath and bellowed, “Silence!”

The room was quiet all of a sudden.

“Get me a bowl of water,” demanded Percy. They were too tired and in too much pain to even think about being polite. “Preferably salt water if you have it. And for the love of Poseidon, send for my cousins and Piper McLean. Especially Hazel Levesque.”

“Mister…” began the nurse.

“Jackson, and it’s not Mister right now. Try Mx.”

“Mx Jackson, I think it would be better if I could first assess the injury, as I am a trained professional.”

“No offense, Ma’am, but I know what helps me heal better than anyone else here. And this isn’t just a simple injury, but one inflicted by a magical artifact. That’s what I need Hazel for.”

“We’re already here,” said a voice they knew well. Hazel.

She hurried over to him, closely followed by the others.

“Hades,” said Thalia. “What happened to your hand?

“That’s not m’ name,” said Percy, collapsing back into the cot.

Painpainpainpain was the only thing they felt in the hand.

Hazel sucked in air. “Holy Pluto. Percy, can you open your hand?”

Percy shook their head. It must have looked pitiful, but they didn’t have the strength left.

“Get me a bowl of water,” she demanded. She wasn’t talking to anyone particular. “And all of you, give me whatever ambrosia and nectar you have.”

“Doesn’t work,” Percy managed to say.

“We already tried,” said Sirius’ voice from somewhere else. “It didn’t work in any acceptable dose, so that’s off the list for ideas.

Apparently, someone had brought a bowl of water and Hazel now held it out. They had to awkwardly manoeuvre the charred dark hand into the bowl. Normal water, not salt water. Alright, that was at least something.

The pain didn’t stop, but it got better. They groaned as the familiar glow arose from the water.

“Percy,” Hazel said. “Can you try to open your hand now?”

Percy nodded weekly and obliged. They uncurled their charred fingers, one by one, slowly and painfully. They felt the ring slip from their palm and sink to the bottom of the bowl.

“Alright,” said Hazel. “Lift your hand out of the bowl again while I remove the ring – I don’t want any further damage to your hand.”

“At least I’m not lefthanded,” they joked. This was, however, not met with laughter.

“You got lucky,” said the man that looked like an oversized bat, or maybe an older and much less attractive version of Nico. Batman, but with a lowercase b.

Another bowl filled with water was placed so they could put their hand in it. The pain was still bad, but it was manageable.

Percy groaned again. “That was a joke,” they said. “It’s supposed to be funny.”

“Well sorry,” said Jason, “but I don’t think you lying here half-dead is particularly funny.”

“I’m not half-dead.” Percy snorted. “Jason, you’ve seen me half-dead. I’m just a bit injured.”

“Yeah, by a dark magical artifact,” said Thalia. “You might die because of this, Percy.”

“Don’t worry.” Percy waved around their right hand, the one that had been stung by the pit scorpion all those years ago. Gods-damnit. Now they’d have two bad hands.

“Miss Grace is right,” said batman. “This is a horcrux cursed by the Dark Lord himself. This was a curse meant to kill, slowly and brutally, I am sure.”

“Do you have first-hand experience with that?” Percy asked batman. Bat-professor. Batfessor.

The man sighed, long and long-suffering.

“Yes,” he said then.

Alright! That wasn’t worrying at all, nope sir!

“From what I can sense, Professor Snape is right,” Hazel told them. So Batfessor had a name. “Or, at least, very close to the truth.”

Percy was decidedly not thinking about what that could mean for them. Wasn’t it ironic, they asked themselves, that they’d already once survived a prophecy that seemed to be about their impending death, and now they were given this situation.

Maybe they’d offended the gods one time to many. Maybe, the entirety of Olympus watched them right now and laughed. LOL, noob.

Jason inhaled deeply. “I’ll pray for you Percy,” he said quietly.

Thalia nodded sadly. “Me, too.”

“Why are you pretending I’m already on my deathbed?” Percy demanded now. Their anger gave them renewed strength. They almost knocked the bowl over, but steadied it with their mind in the last moment.

All of them just gave Percy pitiful glances. Gods, how they hated pity, this renúncia.

They breathed out. “Alright. But please, no matter what, don’t tell Annabeth about this.”

The others stayed silent.

“Please,” they begged.

“Alright,” said Nico. The others nodded as well.

“Swear it,” Percy said. He didn’t need an oath upon the river Styx, just their word that they’d spare her that pain.

The five demigods exchanged glances.

“I, Nico di Angelo swear alongside Hazel Levesque, Jason Grace, Lieutenant Thalia, and Piper McLean, that we will not tell Annabeth Chase about this. We swear on our honour.”

“Better than nothing, I suppose,” muttered Percy under his breath.

Then the nurse came again, holding a bottle containing some kind of liquid.

“A dreamless sleep potion,” she said as Percy raised an eyebrow. “Better to drink all of it.”

Percy sighed as she placed the bottle in their free hand. They uncorked it and made a bit of a show out of sniffing it, although it didn’t really smell like anything. Then, they drained the bottle swiftly.

Then, they knew no more.

Chapter Text

Everything about those days blurred together in Remus’ mind. Percy was slowly wasting away, but still tried to joke about their situation.

He knew the demigods were praying, more than Percy had ever done. But Percy seemed to be a bit of an outlier amongst them.

He knew Dumbledore and Snape and Levesque were talking, looking for solutions.

He knew that Thalia and Jason had gotten permission to hunt and sacrifice an animal to Apollo and Hecate – the gods of healing and magic, respectively. Thalia to hunt, and Jason to sacrifice.

But he saw that it wasn’t doing anything.

He saw that Percy’s face was pulled into a pained grimace, and all the healing equipment they had could only marginally help.

He saw that the three magic experts didn’t have a clue as to how to break the curse and were spending most of the time arguing.

He saw the demigods already preparing for the funeral.

“How was I so afraid of you?” he asked when visiting Percy. The other’s eyes were closed, so Remus assumed they were sleeping. Their skin was covered in a this sheen of sweat, and their curls hung limply over

“Dunno,” sassed Percy.

Remus almost jumped. Almost.

“You’re awake.”

“Mmh. Go on, you can … monologue about how you’re so sorry that you treated me like that, and how you want to set back time so that you can do it again but be kinder this time.”

“That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“Sure.”

Remus took a chair from somewhere near and sat down at his companion’s bedside. Their face was screwed up in pain, and they looked older than ever. To be honest, it looked like they were doing their best not to cry.

He just sat there for a while. He had been wrong about Percy – the kid had put themselves in harm’s way to protect him and Sirius, even though they – no, he – had not exactly shown kindness to them.

“Cousin,” called a voice. Not one that Remus recognized. And the only children of the big three currently alive were those that he’d already met. Remus looked up to see a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a pronounced beard shadow wearing a tracksuit.

Percy opened their eyes, and then rolled them. The probability they’d just opened them to express their displeasure was very high, knowing Percy.

“Lord Hermes,” said Percy. “Normally, I’d bow, but … anyways, to what do I owe this honour?” They suddenly seemed more alert and stronger, as well.

The actual god standing in the room (why didn’t that faze him more) snorted. “You wouldn’t.” Percy pulled their mouth into something that might have been supposed to be a smile.

“Have you come to collect my soul?”

“That’s Thanatos’ job. No, I am asking you if you want to see your family and your betrothed.”

Betrothed? He must have been talking about Annabeth – right, Percy had referred to her as their fiancée. This was a “last words” type of business, apparently.

“I’m not dying, Hermes.” Percy’s protest seemed weak. Did they seriously not realize how hopeless their condition was?

“Yes, you are, I’m afraid.” There was a deep sadness in his old gaze.

Percy sighed. It was probably a sigh. It may have been a moan of pain, but Remus chose to interpret it as a sigh. “Fine. Bring them here. My mother and Annabeth and Paul and Estelle and Tyson and Ella. And the rest of the seven as well.”

“Anyone else?” asked the god.

Percy weakly shook their head. Hermes nodded and was gone in a flash of… something.

They were alone in the room again, just the two of them.

Percy visibly deflated. “Great,” they said.

“Can I help you with anything?” asked Remus, for lack of anything better.

Percy shook their head. “Nah. Or wait – can you get my friends here?”

“Are you saying goodbye?”

“Not by a long shot.”

“Percy, you’re not getting better, and I think it’s only a matter of time, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not. I am going to get married to the woman I love. I am going to become older than Luke Castellan. I am going to see my younger sister grow up. I am going to see what true peace looks like. I am going to teach new generations of demigods not only what they need to survive, but also what more they can do. I will see the things I have done for them, the justice I am trying to achieve come to fruition. I am going to die a boring death, long after having faded into the oblivion of time and myth. I am going to live, because there is enough that makes life worth living. Because there are people, my people, that make it all worth it.”

Percy’s stubborn words sounded like a sacred oath. Now he saw why people were ready to follow Percy into battle, towards their deaths. Remus was almost convinced. “Almost” being the key word.

He just sighed. Once again, he looked at Percy’s lithe frame, their gaunt cheeks, the charred hand. Something stirred in him. Percy was always strong, always moving, threatening. But right now, Remus wanted to protect them. They seemed so small.

“What solution do you have, then?” he asked.

“A hand can be amputated.”

“Yes, but the curse can’t!”

“So you think, Remus. They haven’t tried yet.”

“And if it doesn’t work and you lose both your hand and your life?”

“I won’t die, Remus, as I’ve told everyone multiple times. I am just … in pain. That doesn’t mean anything. And go get the others, okay?”

“Fine,” Remus huffed.

He left the door open on his way out. The corridors were empty – most students were in class right now. Great, now he had to find the demigods. Who were also all in class. And in different houses.

Wonderful. This was his life now.

Sally had just finished putting Estelle to bed for the fourth time that night. It was 4 AM. Why exactly had she wanted another child? No, of course she loved both of her children, but it was incredibly tiring sometimes, being a mother.

Then, the god arrived.

Was this another Apollo-slash-Lester situation?

“Hello, my Lord,” she greeted politely. Better to not risk anything, what with her child across the Atlantic, trying to prevent a war. “Hermes, is it?”

“Yes, exactly. This is about your child, Perseus.”

“Percy.”

“Yes, like I said.”

“Are they hurt?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

Her polite smile vanished. Her child was hurt.

“Paul?” she called, voice shaking. “Come here, quickly.”

Her husband emerged from the door of their bedroom. “What is it, honey – oh, hello, Lord Hermes.”

“Hello to you, too. Your stepchild is hurt. I am here because they asked me to get you, and the others they consider their family.”

But why would Percy do that? Percy made a habit of never showing their pain, no matter how bad it was. If you asked Percy how they were, they’d probably answer “fine” 90% of the time. This wasn’t a good habit, but this meant one thing: This was big.

“Did they really?” asked Paul, suspicion in his voice.

“Yes. Come with me, quickly, and take your daughter.”

“Why that?” asked Sally.

“He wants to see all of you.”

Paul quickly went off and got Estelle, but Sally was almost sick with worry. Percy wouldn’t have asked for them if this wasn’t incredibly serious. Even when they had been betrayed by Luke and stung by that scorpion, it had taken them a long time to admit it. They had almost died, then. What if they were dying, now?

A thought crossed her mind. I’ll have to do the trip to Hawaii on my own. She and Percy had planned to go there after “everything was over”, as her child had put it. Her father had been Hawaiian and her mother Brazilian, but after they’d died, she’d been raised by her uncle – her mother’s brother. He hadn’t known much about her mother’s culture – and hers as well, because of that. For most of her life, she hadn’t known much about that half of herself. But now, that her future was secured, she’d wanted to go on a trip to where her mother had grown up together with her child. She wanted to reconnect, maybe even learn the language, even though it was dying out.

Maybe she’d never have a chance to.

“Good,” said Hermes as Paul came back with Estelle, snapping her out of her thoughts. The girl was still sleeping.

The four of them were whisked away in the fraction of a second and stood in some sort of medical wing just as quick. Estelle hadn’t woken up yet, thank … someone. Not Hypnos certainly, because that guy was just all around terrible, even though he’d been granted Amnesty after the Second Titan War.

Percy lay there, in a hospital bed in the empty hospital wing, somewhere in Britain, and seemed more vulnerable than ever. Their face was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, their hair hanging limply down their forehead and their eyes screwed shut. Her child looked more vulnerable in that moment than she’d seen them in years.

Next to the small cot stood a small table. On it were Riptide in its pen form, that earring that was actually a dagger, and his shield-watch. How many of those had her child gone through already? There was a bowl of water as well, but she didn’t know for what that was.

“Hey mom,” croaked Percy suddenly, voice sounding strained and raspy. “I’m awake.”

She rushed over to their bed. “What happened?” she asked, voice slightly panicked. Percy was hurt. Her child had been hurt by someone here, or something, and all because of this quest.

“It’s just one last quest, one last mission,” Percy had assured her over an Iris Message about a month ago. And now, they were lying in a hospital bed somewhere in Scotland.

“Touching cursed magical objects isn’t a good idea,” Percy replied absent-mindedly. “And, by the way, don’t listen to anything they tell you. I’m not dying and I don’t intend to.”

“Dying?” asked Paul, aghast. “Why – dying?”

“Because of a cursed magical object, Paul. I’m kind of working on stopping Voldemort’s – think wizarding Hitler – whole immortality deal, but I messed up while trying to retrieve a small little ring that was also, incidentally, cursed. It’s just a consequence of being stupid again, no need to worry that much.” But their voice was strained, and their face was much more stoic than usual. Percy looked like their father, to be honest.

“You don’t look okay,” said Sally. She was restraining her anger very well, she thought. But she would harm those that had hurt her child.

“I know. Look, my situation isn’t ideal, but I’d like for everybody to stop behaving like I’m on my deathbed.” And then, they added, “I’d also like to have Estelle, please?”

Paul nodded. “Can you sit up?” he asked.

“Alright,” said Percy. They then proceeded to shift themselves into a position that you maybe, with some imagination, could call seated. The movement seemed painful, and Sally could see her child grit their teeth.

Then, they stretched out their arms and gently accepted the baby into them. Sally watched worriedly – hopefully Estelle wouldn’t wake up and start screaming.

But, to her relief, her baby daughter stayed quiet.

Rain drizzled outside the windows,

Hazel was tired.

Where even was she? No place in Hogwarts she recognized, that was for sure. But she was relatively sure she was still within Hogwarts – she still felt the magic of the place running alongside her. If she had to visualize her sense for magic – she usually went for a river analogy. It wasn’t that she had an extra sense for magic, like a child of Hecate would. Just like she didn’t have some kind of sixth sense for water. But she could still perceive it, along the periphery of her other senses. It sang to her with infinite voices in a nigh-incomprehensible melody, and danced in colours she couldn’t quite describe. She could feel it enveloping her, like Frank’s hugs did (oh how she missed that boy), or running down her spine like a chill. She could smell and taste the change in the air when there was more magic around her.

Different kinds of magic felt completely different from each other – something that other people, for some reason, had a hard time grasping. The magic she used felt similar to that of children of Hecate – or Trivia, of course. A bit different, yes, because Hecate was only her patron and not her mother.

Norse Rune Magic was something she had only encountered once, and she hadn’t liked it. It just felt loose and to strict at the same time, with the limited runes that could be made to become s many other things. Maybe her dislike of it was also based on how fundamentally different it was from her magic.

She’d never encountered Egyptian Magic, so it probably wasn’t right to make up her opinions about it. But still, from what Annabeth had told her, it was fascinating, and was also good for “combined” spells. Apparently, an Egyptian Magician had once used a spell written in Ancient Greek by Annabeth in the same way the Magician would have used an Egyptian one.

To be honest, she wanted to experiment with it. Maybe she could mix together Greek, Roman, and Egyptian magic and get something completely unique. The three cultures and pantheons had a long, and admittedly bloody, history between them. But maybe, there could be diplomatic relations between them.

A new age was coming, Hazel felt it in her bones. One marked by cooperation and peace even in the face of adversity, not war. An age where she could maybe grow old with the people she loved, and not have to worry so much about dying before the age of twenty.

But anyways, if you mixed up magic of all the four pantheons Hazel knew of (there were probably more, but she digressed) you would probably get something akin to the British Wizarding World. The creation by a Greek Goddess, the system of spells reminiscent of the ones the Per Ankh used, the contact with the Romans and Norse through conquest.

All that to say, Hogwarts had a very specific type of magic, and a very concentrated one. The horcrux (she wanted to shudder at that very concept, the rites which were necessary for its creation, but found she couldn’t) had brought its own presence into the mix, dark and bloody.

And now, it was destroyed. She’d been the one to wield the sword of Gryffindor to destroy it. The ancient blade had been sullied by basilisk venom once, apparently. Because it was goblin silver, though, it hadn’t been corroded by the poison, but been strengthened by it.

But there was something dark that still lingered here. It wasn’t the curse on the ring – they would be able to contain it, but it would probably cost Percy their hand. But knowing them, they would just strap their shield to their arm and use water for all the tasks that required a hand.

The search for that dark thing had seen her wandering into a corridor close to the kitchens (run through slave labour, because the Wizarding World was a nightmare) and tickling a pear. A painted pear.

Gods give her the strength to survive this adventure.

But yes, there was something dark here – no, something Dark.

She exhaled gently and tried her best not to think, which was hard with her ADHD.

There was something singing out a discordant melody, she realized. It sounded like the ring had, twisted and wrong. That was Dark magic. What she practised could maybe be called “dark magic”, but with a lowercase d. That was the difference. This magic was discordant and jagged and bleeding and twisted and wrong.

A bit like Pasiphae’s magic, to be honest, all made from pain to inflict more of it. She shook away that thought, knowing the memories that would come with it.

“Are you looking for something, Lady?” asked a voice that was not quite there. It was airy, and felt right in a strange sense. A ghost’s voice. There were so many here, and Hazel dislike their presence. She wanted peace and ghosts were not those who were going to give it.

“I’m not a lady,” she muttered instead. “What are you doing here?”

“I believe I know what you are searching for,” said the voice again. Now, Hazel saw the source of it: a female ghost, thin and lithe. She was grey, and her dress was torn. The Ravenclaw House ghost, she realized.

“And what is that, pray tell?” asked Hazel. She didn’t have the time to suffer the council of fools – she had to do enough of that back home.

“My mother’s diadem. It is a horcrux, is it not? It brims with dark magic, and you should have sensed it by now.”

“And you know that because?”

“Because I was here when it was made into what it is today, young one.”

Hazel thought she might have liked “Lady” more.

The ghost spun a long tale of love and blood, betrayal and grief. And then, one of envy and hate and love that could not be there.

“Is it cursed as well?” she asked when the ghost had finished her sorry tale.

“No more than you, I’d imagine,” said Helena Ravenclaw.

Hazel withheld the urge to punch the ghost in her not actually existing solar plexus.

“Where is it?” she asked then.

“Right across from you,” said Helena and vanished into thin air, leaving only dust behind.

The ghost had been right, of course, much to Hazel’s chagrin. Right across from her sat a beautiful diadem.

It sang its promises of wisdom and power, but Hazel’s magic sang stronger.

“Take me”, the diadem sang to her, “and thou shalt have all that thou desirest. Thy wisdom shall be unmatched, thy power unbreakable.”

Hazel was glad that her hamartia was not pride or power-hunger.

“No,” her own magic sang back. “You cannot give me anything I want for. You cannot truly erase my wounds, you cannot truly protect my friends, nor my people. You are a trap laced with honey to draw in its prey. I shall not fall for your cheap tricks.”

She grasped the artifact and gasped. Its power ran through her, and it burned when it touched her hand. She hissed in pain, and with the memories that tried to flood her brain. Of caves and burning pain that boiled away her lungs and her mother’s arms.

She screwed her eyes shut and wiped away her tears. She had more important business. Dwelling on her past was not going to help in in the here and now.

As Hazel hurried towards Dumbledore’s office, she almost ran into Remus.

He called something after her, but she didn’t listen. She had to get the Sword of Gryffindor and destroy this horcrux as well. These things should not be left unharmed.

The great marble steps grinded into the best possible path for her as she ran up them, much to the students’ dismay.

Several of them cursed at her but she ignored them as well.

She was panting as she reached Dumbledore’s office and gasped out the password.

The sword was sitting in a vitrine and Dumbledore was nowhere to be seen.

She threw the diadem down onto the desk, disregarding the many strange objects – made of glass and swirling with magic.

She stretched a hand out and called for the sword to come to her. Glass shattered with its tell-tale sound, and the weight of the ancient blade came to rest in her palm. It was still aching, but the wound would be fine.

She wrapped her other hand around it.

It was not much different from swinging her spatha seated on Arion’s back, slaughtering her enemies with the deadly precision that life had taught her.

With a deep breath, she began hacking at the horcrux.

With only her first strike, the abominable thing shattered.

“HA!” she yelled.

And then, she hacked at it again. And again. And again, and again, and again.

This thing was an affront to her father, and to her patron, and something just like it was now harming someone she considered a sibling.

After an indeterminate amount of time, someone shook her out of her trance.

“Hazel! What are you doing?”

She swivelled around, holding out the blade before her. The one at the other end of it was Remus.

He swallowed audibly. “Are you done hacking the headmaster’s furniture to pieces?”

“What?” asked Hazel disbelievingly. Then, she took a look around. Dumbledore’s furniture was hacked to pieces. In her defence, there had been a horcrux. And the furniture had been ugly, anyways.

“So, do you want to explain that to me, or an you just come with me to visit Percy? They asked for you.”

Hazel blinked. “They did?”

“Yes. I think I finally get why so many people would follow them to their ends, now.”

“They’ve followed me, too,” she said. Remus was afraid of Percy, wasn’t he?

“I guess so.” Remus sighed. “But they just seem so small like this. Like something you’d need to protect.”

Those statements seemed contradictory, but Hazel knew what he meant. Maybe he did care for Percy, deep down.

“Alright, I’m coming,” said Hazel. “And tell Dumbledore that his furniture was ugly as anything, so really he should be grateful.”

Chapter Text

Percy was finally on the path to recovery. As far as they knew, her hand wouldn’t have to be cut off – at least not now. They’d probably have lingering chronic pain though, which was, of course, great.

This was fine. He wasn’t dying, their hand wasn’t getting cut off. It was just pain. She could take pain. Had been doing that for all of his life.

And alright, maybe his hand would have to be amputated in the future, but did that even really matter? The here and now should be more important to them.

So why did they feel so terrible about this?

She groaned as she pushed herself up from the hospital bed that had seemingly become his home in the past week or so.

“Percy?” called a familiar voice. Remus. Great. More of that.

“Are you alright?” the wizard asked.

“Yes.” Please, she prayed, make him go away quickly. They didn’t want to have to interact with them more than they needed to.

“You don’t look alright.”

“But I am.”

“No. Look, you just got told that you will probably have to deal with chronic pain for the rest of your life. Things like that are allowed to negatively impact you, you know?”

“Funny. A week ago, you seemed to hate me.”

“I was scared of you.”

“What changed your mind? That I’m weak, now?”

“You’re not weak. If anything, you’re strong. You managed to survive an encounter with a Dark magical artifact – people far more experienced with magic than you wouldn’t have. Haven’t.”

“Thanks. Why the change of mind? Because I put my life on the line for someone who hated me? Because I almost fucking died for you after how you treated me, and now you feel bad?”

“You did that on purpose?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes. Maybe. Look, I’m sorry. We were both terrible to each other, but I evidently had you all wrong.”

What the actual Hades?

“I’m sorry, we were terrible to each other? You invalidated each and every one of my legitimate fears and concerns! You thought that just confronting my about and forcing me to justify some of the most traumatic events of my entire life – in front of your boyfriend, I may add – was okay! You treated me like shit, Remus. You didn’t even give me some basic respect and decency! Like I was less than a person! You out of all people should know how fucking terrible that can be.”

Remus blinked. Maybe he’d learn now that his actions did, in fact, have consequences.

“You’re right,” he whispered after a pause. “I’m sorry that I treated you like that, and I’ll do better in the future.”

“Okay. I don’t forgive you.”

“I just apologized. Can you at least accept that?”

Oh, no way. Regardless of whether Remus was doing this consciously or not, there was no way Percy was falling for this.

“I do accept your apology, Remus. I just don’t forgive you. I do hope that we can have a better relationship in the future, but I don’t forgive you.”

Silence grew in the room.

“I – alright. But could you please answer my question now?”

“If I let the Horcrux hurt me on purpose?”

“Yes, that.”

“Oh, you think that I “obviously don’t value my own life” and want to know if I am “at risk” for “self-harming or at least self-endangering behaviour patterns”? Are you scared that I’ll suddenly start hurting myself because that’s just a logical conclusion of my “previous patterns of behaviour”? That I’ll go and get myself killed one of these days, because I have a “tendency to endanger myself”? Is it that? Jason already basically tried to put me on some sort of suicide watch after the Second Giant War, and that was wildly unnecessary.”

“But surely, he had a reason for that?”

“He thought he did.”

“Percy, I don’t want to be rude or bring up touchy subjects – “

“You’ve already done that.”

“Let me finish. You apparently did that to guard my boyfriend and me form serious harm, even though I, according to your own phrasing, “treated you like shit”. I’m sorry, but your behaviours do track with that view.”

This wasn’t great. Percy honestly hated opening up to anyone regarding his feelings. This was nothing new, of course – that had started some time while Gabe, that asshole, was still around. Was the whole thing a direct consequence of living in an abusive environment? Probably. But still, most people did not want to hear about things like this.

“Alright,” Percy managed. “Maybe I’m not fine. Maybe I do have issues. Maybe I should see a therapist. Like multiple people have already told me. But maybe, that’s my business. Maybe, I don’t want you of all people poking around in that.”

“I get that. Percy, look. It’s okay not to be okay in a situation like this. Being told that you’ll probably have to live with a permanent disability is not an easy experience. I mean – I have lycanthropy. It was hard to adjust to that, it’s hard to live with it. This is allowed to affect you.”

“It’s just pain. I can deal with that, in case you hadn’t realized. I have dealt with that for years. You know, Luke Castellan once tried to kill me with a deadly pit scorpion. That hand still hurts when I put too much pressure on the scar. I could adjust to that. I can adjust to this, as well.”

Ah yes, Luke Castellan. His first crush. Their role model. One of the only people she’d managed to scrunch up actual hate for. A very complicated person that he had very complicated feeling toward.

“You need to stop trivializing your pain. Did you ever see some kind of medical specialist regarding it?”

“No. there were… more pressing concerns, at the time.”

Percy wasn’t sure what to think of Remus’ newfound kindness towards him. The man sounded like their mother, to be honest. Or Annabeth. Or like someone who cared about him, in general.

“That’s not good. Listen. The next Horcrux we find, you’re not putting yourself in harm’s way. There’s no way I’m allowing that.”

“So, me putting other people in harm’s way is okay now?”

“That’s not what I’m trying to say.”

“What are you trying to say, then?”

“That we can maybe think of a way were nobody gets put in harm’s way? That you don’t always need to put your life on the line?”

That was so optimistic it was laughable. In Percy’s personal experience, there was always someone who got hurt. Getting yourself hurt was the selfless option. That meant it was the good option. The only option.

She couldn’t let the people she was supposed to be helping and protecting get hurt. Never again.

Never again a Bianca, a Beckendorf, a Jason.

“Can you go?” Percy asked after some silence between the two of them “I’m tired. I want to sleep.”

Remus smiled. If Percy squinted, he could almost call it soft. But they didn’t.

“Alright.”

There was no goodbye. There was no “sleep tight” or” get some rest”.

There was a newfound understanding, though, and something Percy couldn’t quite name.

Sirius isn’t one for lucid dreaming. No, usually his dreams are blurry, hazed nightmares that have him waking up in a cold sweat with a scream at the back of his throat. Usually, he wakes with Remus at his side, rubbing soothing circles onto his back, letting him cry into his shoulders if it’s a particularly bad one.

So this is new for him.

He is dreaming, he knows that. He stands in a large hall. He can only make out the floor – spotless obsidian. The ceiling is too far above him to make it out. The walls are too far. But everything else seems black. The only light comes from torches on the wall, casting sickly green light, but neither shadows nor smoke.

He could make out something in the distance, some kind of figure moving towards him.

But somehow, Sirius knows that he should not run from this. Somehow, he needs to see this, needs to talk to the god that is quickly coming towards him.

He doesn’t know how he knows that it is a he, and a god. He just does.

“Greetings,” speaks the god. His voice is deep and flows as smooth as dark oil. His face is still shrouded in darkness, as well as the rest of his body. The light of the torches seems not to reach him. But Sirius knows who he is, somehow.

“Lord Hades,” he says, and drops into a kneeling position.

The god chuckles quietly – a disconcerting sound. “You’re a smart one, Sirius Black.”

“You know me.” Sirius feels no need to phrase that as a question.

“I know all my children, and their children, and theirs as well. I have observed your family for six generations now – strange, how long it took me to get to notice you. But until then, my Roman side was much too strong, I suppose. Or another god of the many Underworlds there are. But that doesn’t matter. Yes, I know you. I come here because you should know the truth.”

“About what?”

“About two people who should be dead.”

“Who?”

“The first is Jason Grace. He died, but my son and his sister pleaded with me for him to come back. But there is a price to pay for his survival – one that my Roman counterpart’s daughter was ready to pay. For a short while they have been thinking that it was Jackson. Fools. None of them will die on this quest. They were told that, but no.”

“What is the price, then?”

“Another soul.”

“Whose?”

“Your brother’s.”

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sirius demands angrily. “My brother’s been dead for over a decade now. He died like a coward, because he got cold feet.” It hurts to say that, but it has to be the truth. The one thing where the Deatheaters didn’t lie.

“Not exactly. Your brother was a better man than you think, Sirius. Rise, my son.”

“Not your son.”

The god sighed. “Sirius, what matters is that your brother is dead. But his soul is trapped, and withering. If you do not act quickly, it will be lost forever.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“You find him. You take his body, and give it the correct rites. And one you die, you may reunite with him, here in the underworld. Forever part of my court, never to experience hunger and pain and all those things which plague mortals again.”

What kind of deal is that? Getting his brother’s body from somewhere he didn’t know and be reunited with him when he died? But what if the deal could be reversed? What if he could bring back his brother? A brand-new start, a new life, after Voldemort would finally die.

“No, Sirius, you cannot reverse the deal. Believe me, I know that.”

“What is the second soul, then?”

“Harry Potter.”

Sirius feels his heart skip a beat. No. James’ son is not dying. He won’t let everything that’s left of his best friend, the man that was like family to him, die. He’s willing to pay any price for that. Even his own life.

“I’m afraid you don’t properly understand,” Hades continues. “Harry is a Horcrux. Voldemort’s Horcrux.”

No.

There is no way that can possibly be true.

Harry does not have a piece of the man – the thing – that killed his parents in him.

“I’m afraid it is true.” There was no grief in Hades’ voice. No empathy. Sirus can see why some would hate the gods. “The only way for Voldemort to die is for Harry to die as well.”

“But Harry will be the one to kill Voldemort!”

“Yes, but someone will have to kill him, as well.”

“This is just what you want, isn’t it? More dead people, more people for you to rule over. You want me to kill the only thing that’s left of my best friend!”

“You are allowing your feelings to cloud your judgement,” Hades said sternly. “Wake now, Sirius Black.”

Remus sat next to Sirius on the small bed someone had crammed into Umbridge’s old office. It was still painted pink, with carpet to match, but most traces of that horrid woman were gone now.

Sirius was curled into himself, looking pale and gaunt.

He’d woken up Remus in the middle of the night, babbling something about Jason Grace, and Regulus, and Harry, and Voldemort, and the Greek god Hades.

“Alright,” he told his boyfriend softly. “Tell me again, from the top.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Albus considered himself a patient man.

Yet still, he had no patience for young witches without any real training whatsoever who smashed half of the furniture in his office. Not that he was particularly attached to those damaged items. And it had also been just over a week ago, but still.

It was a blatant show of disrespect towards his authority.

But it was a destroyed Horcrux, nonetheless.

Speaking of destroyed Horcruxes – the stone in the ring had to be the Stone of Resurrection. And he needed it. One last time to see his sister, to make everything alright.

He loathed to admit it, but she was what he saw in the Mirror of Erised, she was the spectre that haunted his darkest dreams.

It hadn’t been his fault; he logically knew that. His spell had a one in three chance of being the one that had killed his sister. He had not been aiming at her. He fired a few milliseconds after Gellert – if Arianna hadn’t died, he would have. Or Aberforth would have – something he would not have wanted either, despite the animosity between the two of them.

And the stone itself could not be cursed; they knew that.

So why had di Angelo taken it?

The demigods were here to help him, to aid him, because his grandmother had commanded them to. They should be obeying him, not the other way around.

Unless Hecate had tricked him.

Which was impossible. Hecate was not a goddess who relied on cheap tricks. She was not in this for her own gain. She wanted to see her children continue to flourish.

Right?

That gnawing feeling of wrongness came racketing back like a boomerang.

Albus heard a knock on his office’s door, impatient and hard.

“Let us in,” demanded a loud, raspy voice. Jackson, then.

“Let yourself in,” he called back in his kindest voice.

The door flew open. In stepped Percy Jackson, followed by Nico, Hazel, Piper, Jason, and finally Thalia.

Percy wasted no time in crossing the room and sitting down right at his desk. Then, they tipped back with the chair and but their feet on the table.

At least they seemed to have largely recovered. Their hand was still wrapped, but if they were in pain, they weren’t showing it.

“Excuse me?” he asked incredulously.

“You’re excused.” Percy somehow managed to make their voice sound like they were shrugging. “Please, have a seat, Brian.”

The rest of the demigods snickered among themselves.

Years of having to deal with Fudge were the only thing preventing him from having an aneurysm right then and there.

Percy stared at him with a half-lidded gaze, but it was Levesque who started speaking.

“We need more information about the Deathly Hallows. We need access to some of your more confidential intel sources. We need more leads on the Horcruxes. And most importantly, we need to talk about Harry.”

Merlin.

“I do not know what you are talking about,” he said, in a matter he thought thoroughly placating and earnest-sounding.

Thalia snorted. “Yeah, sure. Listen. Either, we break into your ex-boyfriend’s prison to get his memories” – and his heart did backflip at that, how did they know – “and forcibly extract your memories, as well.” That was a thoroughly unpleasant option.

“Or?” he prompted. He had to remain in control of the situation.

A glance at Percy revealed that this was not the case. They were trying to balance Anaklusmos (in pen form, but still) on their nose – and succeeding! – all while sitting in his chair. Meanwhile, he sat there like an unruly schoolboy receiving a stern talking to by the headmaster again.

“Or you willingly cooperate,” said Jason. He was doing just as good of a job as Albus at seeming cordial and friendly, at least. But he still managed to convey the threat. His smile was a little too wide, the air smelling a little too much like ozone, his eyes glowing in a way a human’s didn’t.

Albus was not entirely human, himself, but demigods were quite literally a different breed.

“You finally give us access to information we don’t have to press out of our classmates, or have to gather form folktales. And you tell us what Harry’s deal is.”

“What should be the deal about it?” Albus asked, after a pause, trying to keep steady eye contact with at least one of the demigods at all times.

He felt a small bead of sweat roll its way down his forehead, over his eyebrow, into his eye. He blinked.

And broke eye contact.

He could almost hear his façade breaking.

“Let’s start with Harry,” said di Angelo. “And then your little obsession with this little thing.” And at that, he pulled out the Stone of Resurrection.

“You have no right!” Albus hissed. “You are here to help me; on a goddess’ orders no less. You will obey me! You are not the ones calling the shots, I am! I will not be undermined by some teens with authority issues!”

“That was quick,” Percy drawled lazily. Their eyes were closed, and they were spinning around in the chair now, knees drawn to their chest so that they could go faster. They seemed fine physically. At least they could be of use again now.

Di Angelo grumbled and handed a small, golden coin over to Thalia.

He saw Albus’ gaze and explained, “We had a bet. If we can make you lose your temper in less than five minutes, she gets a drachma. My bet was ten minutes.”

(*)

“I think you forgot something,” said Levesque. “We are not here out of the goodness of our hearts. We are not here because we want to help you, or want to be kind. I speak for all of us when I say that I am, frankly, disgusted by your “Wizarding World”. You are the textbook equivalent of an unjust, oppressive system. We are helping you because we were ordered to. But, if I play my cards right, your “Wizarding World” won’t exist much longer. You see, helping you sort out your little civil war is not the only purpose we are here.”

“How do you mean that?”

“My father,” Thalia said, voice laced with disgust, “is very capable of being cruel. If he sees that your kind is going out of control, he will order your end.”

Jason still smiled. He was a politician through and through, Albus realized now. “Now, this might either mean your complete annihilation as a species, a decimation of sorts, or stripping you of any and all power you might possess.”

(*)

“So, we would much appreciate your compliance,” concluded Levesque.

Albus wanted to scream. He was proud, yes, and he didn’t deserve this. But still, he did not want a genocide of his people.

“Alright,” he said, closing his eyes tiredly. “I will play your game.”

Piper was glad that Dumbledore had not managed to call out their bluff.

She knew that threatening genocide was Not Nice, with two capital n. But a threat of that scale was one of the only things that they could think of to manipulate the master manipulator.

It had been her idea, she was going to admit that.

Just like it had been her idea to frighten Umbridge – she hadn’t intended to frighten her out of her job, but she’d take those results.

And now, Dumbledore had realized the pit he had dug himself into.

She remembered that one quote from some kids’ show she had watched some years ago: “Don’t flatter yourself. You were never even a player.”

What show had that been again? She definitely needed to rewatch it.

Anyways, her recent tactics had been paying off better than she imagined. She was getting good at this manipulation thing. And while she didn’t necessarily like that, it was getting good results.

Except for that one thing: Harry was a Horcrux. Not only was Dumbledore raising the boy to die, but he had also kept that secret. It would shatter Harry’s entire world. That came on top of Harry’s apparent connection to the “dark lord” and increasing general… unstable-ness.

And think of the devil! There was Harry, in all of his scrawny glory.

“Uh… do you have some time?” he asked sheepishly. What was this going to be about?

“Pretty sure, yeah. Why?”

“I kind of need some… relationship advice.” He said that last part very quietly.

Piper’s eyebrows almost went all the way up to her hairline at that. She was a daughter of Aphrodite, yes, but she didn’t consider herself a relationship expert. Well, she’d helped plenty of others with their relationships, but hers seemed to always fail.

“Relationship advice?”

He nodded.

“Sit down,” Piper said with a sigh. The younger boy sat down stiffly opposite to her.

Was she really about to give out relationship advice to the chosen one while sitting in the library while she actually supposed to do her homework?

Yes.

“What is it?” she asked when his shifting around had finally calmed down.

He shifted again. “So, I think that I could maybe have a little bit of a crush on my best friends? I mean, I’m not really sure about it, like, at all, but…”

“Okay. You have a crush on your best friends. Ron and Hermione, right?”

“Yes?”

“And what’s the problem? That they’re your friends, that Ron’s a guy, that Hermione’s not a guy?” She had no idea as to what Harry identified as, so keeping flexible would be better.

“Not really? I don’t think that’s the problem, anyway.”

“Oh! Is it that they’re two people?”

“Kind of? But I think that it has more to do with them being very clearly into each other. And I’m pretty sure that they started dating.”

“Ah. Have you maybe considered that they might be into you, too? That they fancy you, as you Brits would say?”

Harry squirmed around uncomfortably.

“I think that you don’t really understand that other people don’t always necessarily comply to the cisheteronormative and monogamous worldview you were raised with. And while you, personally, may have grown past that, you still expect other people to act based on it.”

Harry blinked.

“I think I understood that?” he said uncertainly. “Are you telling me to just approach them about it and not let my expectations get in the way? Because those expectations are what society has conditioned me to believe life is like?”

“Exactly! And if it doesn’t go over well, you’re allowed to blame me. Completely. Listen, I know stuff like this can be… hard, to say the least. I was incredibly scared when I first asked out my now ex-girlfriend Shel.”

“Ex-girlfriend?”

“Well yes, I identify as pansexual – means I am attracted to people regardless of gender. And no, it isn’t genetic because my mother is the goddess of love.”

“That wasn’t actually what I was asking,” Harry apologized. “I mean, asking someone’s sexuality can be pretty intrusive. And coming out can be pretty hard.”

“Sounds like you have personal experience. Can I ask what happened?”

“I’d rather not tell. Can I ask what happened with you and your ex-girlfriend, instead?”

“Yeah, alright. No pressure.” She sighed. “Well, me and Shel broke up because neither of us wanted a long-distance relationship – especially not one where I could barely contact her. That tends to complicate things. And besides, Shel’s mortal.” Again, she sighed. “I don’t think she could have standed staying with me for much longer anyway. In case you haven’t noticed, most of us could probably called “pretty messed up”.” She put that last part in scare quotes, but it did feel real, in a way. Most mortals couldn’t really handle staying with demigods for too long. There was always the danger of the demigod dying prematurely, endangering mortals around them without wanting to, and a multitude of other things.

“Sound rough.”

“Yeah, it was. I mean, my relationships generally fail after some amount of time. Well, I don’t know if my first “boyfriend” really counts – we were both ten. But anyway, we “dated” for a month and then broke up because I caught him flirting with Cathy at lunch once. Then, I started dating Jason when we were both fifteen. That was my first serious relationship, but I broke up with him, because his stepmom had pretty much orchestrated our entire relationship, to say the least. And finally, there was Shel – we started dating in Spring, but we broke up when I was sent on this quest, like I said. And well, three’s a pattern, isn’t it?”

“That sounds tough. I’m sorry, but isn’t your mother the goddess of love?”

“Yeah, she is. But let me give you some advice: love is just a feeling. It’s not enough to maintain a whole relationship on. It’s a good starting point, sure. But having a genuine emotional connection is even more important, I think. That goes for any type of relationship, really. If you just leave love to stagnate, it wilts and dies. I mean, that’s how most relationships end, I think. Not with a huge crash and bang, but with a subtle silent whimper that you don’t even really notice. That’s how Jason and I ended.”

“Thanks for the advice. But I also have another thing, I guess.”

“Well, don’t keep me waiting!”

“Me and my friend kind of were talking about basically starting a DADA club, since Umbridge is gone now and there’s no replacement to be found, except for Snape, of course.”

Ah yes, Umbridge leaving. Something she sure didn’t have anything to do with! Piper just hoped that her face did not betray her that easily.

“And we were kind of hoping that some of you guys could help us a bit, since you know a lot about self-defence. And could you maybe also spread the word? Our reach is kind of limited, to be honest.”

“That sound reasonable,” said Piper. “Who do you want us to tell? What should we tell them?”

“To maybe show up at the Hog’s Head the next Hogsmeade weekend on 10 AM sharp if they’re interested in actual DADA. And just tell anyone that you think won’t snitch on us and is interested on actually doing something like this.”

“Okay, I’ll help you out with your little secret club. Got a name yet?”

“No?”

“Shame. If I got to vote, it would be “Dumbledore’s Secret Army To Take Down The Ministry.”

Harry shuddered. “No,” he simply said, shaking his head. “Better “The Harry Potter Fanclub” than that.”

Chapter Text

“Alright, watch what Hermione does,” called Harry over the mass of student that had shown up their first actual DADA club session. Well, that wasn’t the real name, but nobody had had any good ideas. “The Harry Potter Fanclub”, “Harry Potter Fans Official”, “Dumbledore’s Army”, “Dumbledore’s Secret Army To Take Down The Ministry”, “League Against Darkness”, “The League Against the Dark”, and “Slytherins suck ” – yes, really, all of those had been name suggestions, most of which Harry suspected of being from Fred and George – had all been vetoed, for a variety of reasons.

More people had shown up than Harry had ever expected. There were almost forty students from all years – well, barring the second-years, of all people. None of them had shown up, for whatever reason. Anyways, there were Gryffindors, Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs, and even some Slytherins. Well, Malfoy – without his bodyguards, for once! – two random first-years, and Piper McLean. But still, it conveyed a sense of unity that had been sorely lacking before.

Thinking of unity, Harry felt his face heating up as he caught Hermione’s gaze across the room and she smiled. Chandelier light reflected off of her dark brown skin and her curly hair bounced over her shoulders as she cast an Accio spell, demonstrating it to the other students who were watching intently. His girlfriend was awesome.

If Hermione was his moon – beautiful, ever changing, the muse of poets – then Ron was surely his sun. Steady and warm, sure to come back even if he drifted out of sight.

As if he had read Harry’s thoughts, his boyfriend drifted over to him on his long legs.

“And, Harry?” he asked, “Do you think this was a good idea, after all? Thinking about becoming a teacher?”

Harry rolled his eyes. Yes, he had somewhat opposed this plan. Well, the three of them had had multiple arguments, and he one very public meltdown after which most of Hogwarts had doubted his sanity even more than they already did, really. Creative differences. Besides, things were better now. Who would have guessed that open and healthy communication would help that much? Because Harry sure hadn’t.

“Yes,” Harry simply replied. “Maybe I should become a teacher instead of an Auror,” he added sarcastically. But even as he said it, the thought nestled into his mind. Maybe becoming a teacher was the better career option. For example, he was relatively sure that teachers had a lesser risk of death and/or permanent mutilation than Aurors. If he looked at people who had dedicated themselves to fighting dark forces, most of them had a big collection of scars and traumas – if they even managed to survive. What had Nico told him the survival rate of Greek demigods under 16 had been before 2009? 50 precent, or even less. And while Harry thought that Aurors tended to be longer-lived than demigods, people like Mad-Eye Moody demonstrated the many things which could go wrong. And besides, the magical government was corrupt and broken, he could see that now. Becoming a teacher seemed much more stable, at least.

“Hey, earth to Harry. Are you even paying attention?” He was startled out of his thoughts by Ron.

“Yeah, I just zoned out for a bit there.”

“Everything alright?” asked Ron, concern in his voice. “Are you tired? Is it the nightmares again?”

“Yes Ron, you don’t need to worry about me so much. I’m fine.”

“If you say so.” Ron smiled, smile making the corners of his eyes wrinkle ever so slightly. “What are your orders, sir?”

Harry didn’t exactly snort, but it was close. “Professor, if anything.”

“Well then, professor, what’s the task for the rest of the lesson?”

“Tell them to split up into pairs of two to watch each other while they practise those spells. We’re doing the Disarming Charm after they can manage Summoning Charms.”

This club wasn’t just for fun. No, even though Umbridge was gone and a new teacher had been found, the state of DADA classes at Hogwarts wasn’t the greatest right now, if you wanted to put it politely. If you didn’t want to put it politely, Snape was almost as bad at properly teaching Defence as he was at teaching Potions, which was to say: he knew what he was doing, yes, but didn’t see it as necessary to actually share it with the students in a way they could understand easily, or at least well enough to pass class. Also, he was as biased against Harry and his friends as always.

And that made it necessary to do this independently.

And Harry didn’t trust Dumbledore anymore, either, not since he’d had the approximate contents of the prophecy revealed to him. And some of the other stuff Dumbledore had done. It was … hard, to reconcile those things (An affair with a previous Dark Lord! Who would even come up with that? Not even Rita Skeeter had made that claim yet, as far as he knew.) with his previous image of the kindly old wizard. But Dumbledore was ignoring him, anyways, these days.

The rest of the lesson passed in a bit of a blur, Harry, Ron, and Hermione making their rounds to the room that Hazel had picked out for them, watching the other students. But really, who would have thought that a room which literally became whatever you needed was hidden just behind a painting by the kitchens? Again, Harry sure hadn’t.

At least everyone was working hard, which came as a welcome surprise. Even the demigods had fully thrown themselves into the practice, instead of goofing off as usual. But then again, fighting was in their blood, wasn’t it? Harry was glad he didn’t know what that felt like.

When the clock that had been put – was that the right word? – in the perfect position to tell the time finally struck six PM, Harry felt relieved. Yes, doing this was nice and all, but also exhausting. Now that his OWLs were fast approaching this year, at least according to his teachers, he had to throw himself into his work completely. Well, he was at least supposed to. These last two weeks, the time he’d spent with Ron and Hermione “studying” had been taken up with more making out and flirtatious banter than actual schoolwork.

As a Hufflepuff third-year passed him, they cheekily asked, “Any homework for today, Professor?”

“No,” he shot back with a roll of his eyes. “Just show up on time next week.”

The Hufflepuff was startled at that, but laughed. They had come to late that day, and Harry was proud of himself for remembering that.

At five past six, nobody except for Harry, Hermione and Ron remained in the room. And Malfoy, because of course. Of course, Draco Malfoy was there, probably to make his day worse. And this had even been a good day, without any nightmares while sleeping. Harry had liked today.

“Potter,” said Malfoy, although not as coldly as usual.

“What do you want, Malfoy?” Ron asked protectively.

Hermione merely raised an eyebrow. Harry still remembered her slapping Malfoy – that had looked like it had hurt. Probably, the Slytherin wouldn’t try and risk that.

“You are trying to fight the Dark Lord, aren’t you?” Malfoy asked.

Okay. How did he know that?

Malfoy gave him a disgusting pitiful glance. “I know that because it’s completely obvious. You’re not good at hiding things. Also, you could do better than the blood-traitor and the –”

“You really want to say that?” Ron asked.

“He’s ours, Malfoy,” Hermione said calmly. “If you want a piece of him, you have to get better at being a decent person.”

Harry had to fight back a snicker at that. Malfoy, being into him? Laughable.

Malfoy seemed to think the same thing, at least.

“That’s not why I’m here. I have information about the Dark Lord, information that could be valuable to you.”

“What do you want in exchange for it?” Harry asked. Malfoy wasn’t doing this out of the goodness of his heart. Harry was actually relatively sure that didn’t actually exist. Well, the goodness part. The heart probably had to be there to pump blood.

“Give me your word that you’ll actually defeat him. I know that your friends from America aren’t human, and they’re working against him as well. I also know that they somehow know how to defeat Voldemort, that they hold the key to it. And that my mother’s dead cousin has something to do with all this. But they can’t know what he’s really like, where he is hiding, his plans –”

“And you do?” Harry asked, suspicion in his voice.

“Yes! I’m pretty sure I do, since he’s hiding in my house and all that!”

“He’s what?” exclaimed the trio in sync with eachother.

“Hiding in my parents’ house, Potter. Like I just said.”

“And you’re actually willing to help? And you’re not tricking us?” Hermione asked. Alright, she had every right to be suspicious of Malfoy, after all the trouble the boy had caused her.

Malfoy breathed audibly and swallowed.

“I swear it on the River Styx,” he said, soft and quiet but Harry had no time to think about that. And then, he stuck out a hand for Harry to shake.

He accepted.

Chapter Text

There was a sort of twisted irony to the situation Percy was in. Pain burned through every part, every nerve, every cell of his body. His insides felt like he had drunk from the Phlegeton again. The poison in the cave had probably been made for the express purpose of torturing people, as well, but to still keep them alive. That was a similarity he just felt like pointing out. He had to distract himself from the pain somehow, didn’t he?

Through a haze of agony, he saw Remus standing over him. Saying something, some litany of soothing words, while nearby Sirius was sobbing uncontrollably over the long-dead corpse of his brother. Stones form the cliff they were on dug uncomfortably into Percy’s back, and the cloak Remus had put under Percy’s head wasn’t of much help, either.

Ugh. Pain sucked.

Percy felt his mouth being opened and some sort of liquid being poured down his throat. “Percy! Percy, can you hear me?” asked Remus, only slightly panicked. Percy could give him credit for that.

He tried to say yes, or something similar, but all that came out was a pained noise from somewhere in the back of his throat. Remus seemed to take it as a yes, though.

Whatever it was that Remus had given him, it worked. The burning, searing, all-consuming pain faded into an ache, his head became somewhat less fuzzy.

When he tried to sit up, groaning, Remus held him back.

“Lie down,” said the older man. And then he added, “Percy. We talked about this.”

“No we didn’t. There’s no precedent for evil murder caves.”

“Evil murder caves – Percy, why?”

“Because I’m hilarious.”

“Please start taking things more seriously. You hurt yourself, again.”

“Yeah, to protect you.”

“You sliced open your arm with a dagger.”

“I had one on me, and I heal when I come in contact with water.”

“Twice.”

“That applies for both times.”

“You drank something we were sure would be deadly poison!

“But it wasn’t.”

“You nearly died again, for us!”

“Really? I did? I thought I almost died for the Glory of Rome.”

Percy saw Remus pinching the bridge of his nose.

“We have the locket, don’t we?” said Percy. “Mission successful. Bee-tee-dubs, what did you give me just now?” He’d found out that this was how some people pronounced “btw”, and that it annoyed Remus to Hades and back. That meant he had first taken it into his vocabulary ironically, and then it had become unironic.

“Salt water. I saw it heal you multiple times now, and I guessed it would help.”

“You guessed correctly. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“Can you even move?”

“Well, I don’t know that. Let me up, then I’ll tell you.”

“You’re impossible, Jackson.”

Despite everything that had just happened, Percy flashed Remus a sharp-toothed grin. “Thanks!”

But still. Remus let him get up – and gods, that hurt, but Percy simply gritted his teeth and pushed on through the pain. Slowly, he made his way over to Sirius.

And his brother.

Percy had no idea as to how Regulus Arcturus Black had looked while in life, but now he looked like, well, a corpse. A drowned, somewhat mangeled corpse. There was no need to think about it further than that. He had seen some corpses in his time, but none that had drowned. For some reason, he was fascinated. And disgusted. Really, it was a surprise that Sirius had not thrown up his guts already.

“I’ll take him,” Percy told Sirius softly. He was the strongest out of them – thank you, divine “genes”.

The wizard shook his head.

“No.” His voice seemed small and broken. “I have to do this myself.”

Alright then.

Remus came over to them and spared a glance to Regulus. He quickly turned away his gaze again, then. Understandable.

“Come on,” he told the two of them quietly. He took Percy by one hand and grasped Sirius’ shoulder with the other. “Let’s get somewhere … warmer, at least.”

A good idea. It was already cold here, and dark. It felt more like winter than mid-October.

Sirius staggered to his feet, holding his brother in a bridal carry. The sight made Percy feel something. He didn’t know what. Grief, maybe, and empathy.

The journey to Grimmauld Place Number 12 was a short one, thanks to side-by-side apparating. Because of that, it was also an extremely nausea-inducing one. Gods, Percy hated this way of travel. Shadow-travelling was so much better, and that was seriously spooky. But no, wizards always had to choose the stupidest methods of getting form place to place, didn’t they?

But that didn’t matter as the three of them arrived on the doorstep of the old London townhouse. Once they had gotten inside, Sirius set down his brother on the long table in the kitchen. Percy hoped that the table would be cleaned before any of them ate at it again – he didn’t think that dead people made for good seasoning, even though some of his relatives may have had different thoughts on it. And then he mentally kicked himself for making jokes about it.

While yes, his sense of tact wasn’t the best, he knew better than to make jokes about eating corpses to the guy that was a hair’s breadth away from breaking down over the corpse of his brother. That was just plain insensitive.

What were they going to do now? What burial rites did pureblood wizards follow? Would they have to burn him like a Greek Hero? The man (boy, really, he couldn’t have been much older than Percy now and wasn’t that a funny thought?) was a legacy of Hades, albeit a distant one. Did he need to be buried, or burned or whatever, with an obol so that he could properly cross over into Hades?

Probably yes, now that he thought about it. And he had one on him – Nico had pressed it into his hand when he’d left Hogwarts and told him that he was probably going to need it soon. So he went up to Sirius who was still standing there, simply staring at his brother’s body.

“Hey,” Percy said. “I think that if we give him a proper funeral, he’s going to need a coin for Charon’s ferry.” And at that, he held out the single silver coin.

Sirius turned his head and looked at Percy.

“So that his soul can pass into the underworld,” Percy hurried to explain. Maybe Sirius simply didn’t know.

“Why are you even helping us?” the wizard burst out. Percy startled back, stumbled backwards into a chair, and went down with it. He could feel the chair breaking under him.

The fall lit up his nerves again with agony and knocked the air out of his lungs. He gasped for breath and groaned. Of course.

“I want to help you,” he told Sirius while trying to pick himself off of the floor.

“Quit your bullshit, Jackson,” the other man growled. “Why are you even doing this? You clearly don’t care for us. What are you even still doing here?”

“I’m trying to help you.”

“But why? So you can keep your cousin alive while my brother stays dead?”

Percy laughed. Bad decision, he knew, but still. This was just absurd. Two grown men arguing while a dead corpse watched, one of them towering over the other one lying on the floor on top of a broken dining chair.

This, of course only served to enrage Sirius further.

“You want to exchange Jason’s soul for your brother’s, don’t you?” Percy realized.

“Isn’t that just what you’re doing?” Sirius shot back snidely.

“The other way around,” Percy admitted. But Sirius was right, wasn’t he? The man was as loyal as a dog, and his brother’s death had naturally shaken him. Of course he would want his baby brother back.

Sirius shot him a death glare but Percy wasn’t about to be intimidated by that.

“Listen, dude.” Percy tried to calm Sirius down. “I know you’re upset about your brother’s death. I get that.”

“Do you, now?”

“Yes! Do you know how many people I care about have died? How often I wanted to desperately bring them back? I get your pain Sirius, I really do. The world isn’t fair, we’ve both experienced that first-hand.”

“But why does Jason get to go back? Why not my brother?”

“The world isn’t fair, alright? Look, if I could, I would bring your brother back in a heartbeat.”

“But you can’t.”

“No, and I won’t sacrifice someone I care about for one half-baked idea of yours.”

“It’s not fair,” Sirius whispered. “It’s not fair.”

Percy squeezed his eyes shut. He knew this feeling, this “it can’t be true because the world should be fair and this isn’t”. But the world didn’t work that way. People didn’t, the gods didn’t, the fates didn’t.

But realizing that took some time. A long time. And it hurt.

“No,” Percy mumbled. “It isn’t.”

Sirius’ face twisted. “Just get out of here, Percy. Please.”

Percy nodded, got up and walked away quietly.

But Sirius had at least kept the coin.

As he stepped of the kitchen, the smell of corpse probably clinging to every part of his body, Percy breathed in a deep lungful of musty-smelling air. Really, after everything that had happened today, it was a wonder he wasn’t falling asleep on his feet. But no, adrenaline was still being pumped through his – veins? How were hormones like adrenaline transported, anyways? Did they cover that in some biology class Percy missed or had forgotten?

But those thoughts vanished from his mind as he saw a small shape scurrying down the hallway. Kreacher.

Percy had … conflicted feelings about the house-elf. On one hand, he was literally a slave being treated extremely unkindly by the people who literally owned him. Yeah, Percy thought it was extremely messed up to own another sentient creature. And that shouldn’t be a controversial opinion, now should it? You were supposed to be able to say “Slavery is bad” without someone coming in with a “but”.

But despite his sympathy for the elf, the guy did repeat racist (was that the right word for this stuff?) sentiments to his heart’s content and would start working for the group of people supporting ethnic cleansings. And he also insulted Percy’s friends, which was seriously uncool.

Percy concentrated. Kreacher was holding … something. Small, and maybe about as big as the horcrux they’d just recovered. But something in his gut screamed at some wrongness with that little thing Kreacher was carrying. And there was something off about Kreacher as well, his posture, his everything.

“Kreacher,” he called, trying his best to sound polite. “Could you show me what you have here.”

The elf swivelled around, but didn’t seem surprised. “Not here,” he hissed. “Follow me.” But there was something in his voice that Percy had never heard in him before. Some sort of genuine emotion that wasn’t disdain or straight-up hatred.

“Alright.” Percy followed Kreacher up several flights of stairs, and past Sirius’ bedroom – no, he hadn’t ever been in there, and he wondered what else there was up here.

Regulus’ old bedroom, apparently. Decorated in Slytherin colours and some old photos. What were they doing here? What did Kreacher want?

So that was what he concentrated on. “Kreacher, what are we doing here?”

“Master Sirius, and his lover,” he sneered at that, “and young master Jackson went to the Lord’s cave today?”

“Uh, yeah? Is it about that?”

Probably, but Percy wanted to be sure. Wouldn’t have been the first time he misinterpreted maybe important information.

“Yes. They took the locket there, did they not?”

“How do you know that?”

“That is not for young master Jackson to know, filthy muggle that he is.”

That was refreshing, actually. Percy really didn’t like the treatment some wizards aware of the mythological world gave him, as if he were somehow better than them. Yes, he played into it sometimes, like he’d done with Morfin Gaunt. But he didn’t like it, throwing his weight around like that.

And besides, Kreacher muttered insults about everyone all the time. This wasn’t personal, not really.

“But you do have something to tell me, don’t you?” Percy did his best to keep his growing tiredness out of his voice.

“Yes, of course.” Kreacher rolled his eyes. “Kreacher does not like Master Sirius, but he brought Master Regulus back.” There was an affection to how he’d said “Master Regulus”, Percy noticed. Somehow, the idea of the house-elf having had some sort of positive relationship with the Black family hadn’t occurred to Percy. Probably some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, if you looked at it more closely.

“Yeah. We wanted for his soul to finally rest where it belongs. And Sirius wants to know how he really died. Because people don’t end up as zombies in a place where Tom Riddle keeps a piece of his soul without good reason to do so.”

Kreacher’s old, bloodshot eyes widened significantly.

And then he began wailing uncontrollably, sobbing something that sounded like “my fault, my fault, my fault” over and over. Shit. Had he unknowingly exposed Kreacher to some sort of trigger? This was Bad, capital b and all.

Something came crashing up the stairs. As Percy turned around on his heel, prepared to draw Riptide, the door already swung open, revealing Remus.

“Percy, what in the name of Merlin is going on here?”

Kreacher hissed and drew back from the wizard.

“I think Kreacher has some information on Regulus and the locket,” Percy tried to his best to explain. “And I think he wanted to tell me something about that? But I just said something about how we found Regulus and he started freaking out, and…” He trailed off.

Remus’ face hardened. “I think he does. Look at what he’s holding, Percy.”

And lo and behold, the thing Kreacher was holding was a medallion just like the one the three of them had recovered just an hour or so ago. In fact, it was almost identical to the one that hung around Remus’ neck.

“What is the meaning of this, Kreacher?” Remus asked sternly.

“I’m not telling the filthy werewolf!” Kreacher shrieked.

Well, that wasn’t a surprise.

“Will you tell me?” Percy asked. “We can make a deal, if you want.”

Kreacher eyed him suspiciously. “Yes, if Master Remus, mangy werewolf that he is, swears not to listen.”

Percy nodded at Remus, a “I can do this” type of nod. Remus merely raised his eyebrows, but slipped the horcrux off his neck and put the chain into Percy’s hand. And then he left.

“Alright Kreacher. What is up with these two medallions?”

“Only one of them is real. Master Regulus took the real one from the cave and put a decoy there, to defeat the Dark Lord.”

“Wait, what? That medallion you have, that’s the real one? I didn’t have to drink that potion?”

Kreacher’s eyes narrowed. “Young master Jackson drank from the potion?” And then, he asked, “Did it hurt?”

What a weird question.

“Yes,” Percy whispered. “It hurt so bad, and I wanted to claw my throat open and stop but I couldn’t because we had to get the medallion out of there and one of us had to, and I didn’t want it to be any of them.” He fell silent. Why was he talking to Kreacher of all people about this?

Kreacher gave him a look of … pity? Percy couldn’t recall ever seeing an emotion like that from the elf.

“Kreacher knew what was in the cave… the Dark Lord had brought him there, once, when he put the medallion there… He was brought there, and he was forced to drink… Kreacher drank, and as he drank, he saw terrible things... Kreacher's insides burned... Kreacher cried for Master Regulus to save him, he cried for his Mistress Black, but the Dark Lord only laughed... He made Kreacher drink all the potion... He dropped a locket into the empty basin... He filled it with more potion...”

Percy didn’t want to hear anything more. He could feel his head and throat starting to ache again, and he was almost nauseous from Kreacher’s tale alone. That wizards could treat people, sentient people, like this – it made him sick.

"I’m sorry,” Percy said, for lack of anything better. “Nobody should have to go through something like that – doesn’t matter who or what they are. Except for Voldemort himself. He deserves a taste of his own medicine – well, his own poison in this case.”

Kreacher made a sound that Percy chose to interpret as some kind of laugh.

“Later,” continued the house-elf, “Master Regulus asked Kreacher about it, and Kreacher told him the truth. And he acquired another medallion, one that looked just like it. And Master Regulus, he drank the poison… and he gave Kreacher the Medallion and told him to exchange them… and Kreacher did! And Master Regulus told him to destroy it… but Kreacher couldn’t, and he tried and tried and tried and he’s punished himself for it… but nothing worked…”

And then Regulus died, was the forgone conclusion.

“The one you had is real, then?” Percy asked. Kreacher nodded vigorously. “Give it to me please, Kreacher. Please, we’ll honour your… Master Regulus’ honour and sacrifice if you give it to us. We can destroy it, once and for all, and end Voldemort.”

Kreacher shook his head. “Kreacher is not tricked so easily… Master Jackson offered him a deal, and he wants to make good on it.”

That was true.

Most people who’d made a deal with Percy had probably come to regret it – the gods, Phineas, Antaeus, even Nekhbet to an extent. Percy hoped that Kreacher wouldn’t. “What do you want then?”

“Kreacher wants to be able to serve whoever he wants to…”

“I can’t just let you run off with all the knowledge you have, Kreacher. I know you’d be loyal to Bellatrix Lestrange if you could, and I’m not risking that.”

“Then, Kreacher wants to be able to stay here… Have those blood traitors and mudbloods all leave here forever.”

Oof. Was Percy willing to give up the headquarters of this order in exchange for an actual horcrux and closure for one person? But then again, Sirius did not like this house. There had to be more unused old mansions that could be used to run a secret society, couldn’t they?

And if they kept this house, Kreacher would run off to Bellatrix Lestrange and her friends – which meant Voldemort getting to know the secrets of the Order. He could try to make Kreacher swear an oath to not tell anyone, but that would also be a betrayal of trust, wouldn’t it? And besides, did oaths on the Styx even apply to house-elf and other magical creatures? Did the wizarding world have an equivalent of it? But Percy had to do this now, didn’t have time to go through old texts and grovel at the feet of some centenarian wizard for necessary, lifesaving information.

And besides, he could feel the pain from the cave coming back. He had to act, and fast.

“You get the house, Kreacher,” Percy said tiredly. “The Order will be gone, and you’ll be free to do whatever you please here.”

Kreacher nodded. “Good,” said the small house-elf. Then, he tossed both medallions to Percy. Without another word, he left Percy sitting there on a dead boy’s bed. Alright. He opened the first medallion, the one that wasn’t a horcrux. Inside, there was nothing, except for a small note, written in a neat, cursive script.

It took some time for Percy to decipher the message – thank you, dyslexia – but eventually, he had it figured out.

"To the Dark Lord
I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match you will be mortal once more.
R.A.B.”

Well. None of this was completely surprising, but it put things into perspective. Regulus hadn’t been a coward, but a hero – that didn’t mean he’d been a good person, though. Percy knew of and had even met his fair share of heroes who had been anything but good people. After all, Regulus had seemingly joined the Death Eaters out of his own free will. Percy hoped he’d done this because he’d seen the error of his ways, but maybe he’d just disliked Voldemort. That didn’t mean he had to actually oppose the man’s ideology.

But still, Sirius deserved to see this, deserved to see what remained of the true story. And so, Percy began his slow descent downstairs into the kitchen.

Chapter Text

Jason liked Hogwarts. Really, he did! Of course, it had its flaws, but every institution did. But Hogwarts had already started to feel like a sort of second – well, third, really – home to him. The common rooms, the people, the food had all become dear to him.

And now, Percy was back!

Jason had gotten his own broom before going to Hogwarts. He hadn’t made it in the Hufflepuff Quidditch try-outs, because he didn’t have much experience with flying on a broom and even less with the game itself. Well, he was in the reserve team, which meant he was supposed to stand in for the proper players when one of them got sick.

But still, he had a broom and a cousin to find.

Jason was glad that he wore glasses. First of all, he could actually see where he was going properly, which was a big improvement to before. After the war, when they’d been able to rest, Chiron had theorized that his short-sightedness had come from all his head injuries, and not some genetic factor. Sadly, that made a lot of sense. But secondly, it kept flies from getting in his eyes, which he definitely did not want.

Circling above the grounds, he could make out a small spot quickly making their way to the castle proper. That had to be Percy – yes, he could make out their AHS swim team hoodie, their scuffed blue sneakers.

“Percy!” Jason called down as he went into a steep dive, wind tearing at his jumper and short hair.

Percy startled, of course, but seemed relatively at ease as Jason swung the broom up before he could hit the ground. Not exactly as graceful as say, Victor Krum, but he was getting pretty good.

“What brings you here this fine October morning?” Jason asked his cousin.

They sighed and retrieved a sealed opaque Tupperware container out of their front pocket with something in it. He could see their armbands – blue and green, he/him and she/her.

“Horcrux,” she said glumly. “Remus is mad at me getting myself hurt again, of course, and we probably will have to find another headquarter for the Order.”

“Good gods, Percy, what happened?”

“Sirius’ dead brother. And we’ll have to arrange a proper funeral, so I’ll be stealing Nico for a while.”

“A funeral? Who died?”

“Sirius’ brother, of course. Come on, let’s get going. I don’t want to be here longer than needed. And also, I have to get myself checked out for curses. Again.”

Alright, Jason was going to be dealing with that one by one. “You touched a horcrux again, didn’t you?”

Percy shot him a look that Jason’s brain refused to interpret. “Yes, but that wasn’t what happened. It’s more about how we got our hands on it.”

“Do you want to talk about it, Percy?”

“I… later, maybe. Not right now, and not here.”

“We can do a cousin get-together again.”

“Plus Piper, right? If we leave her out, I’ll be quite cross, as the British would say.” At the “quite cross”, he shifted his voice into a mockery of a British accent, a good octave higher than usual. It sounded funny, Jason had to admit.

“Alright. Hazel has been wanting to talk to us about something, anyways, but I don’t know what it is.”

Percy made a small noise. “Well, I have a horcrux for her to destroy, at least. Maybe that’ll put her in a good mood.”

Jason shook his head. “If she doesn’t wreck the headmaster’s office again.”

“Oh come on, bro, that was funny.”

“Yeah, for everyone else. I don’t think she’s doing fine, right now.”

A dark look crossed Percy’s face. Her forehead scrunched up in the way it did when he was concerned. “Most of us aren’t, I think.”

Yeah, Percy was right. Hazel was stressed and carrying burdens that would have brought people much older than her to the ground. Nico was anxious and some of his older issues were acting up again. Piper was still heartbroken about having to break up with Shel. Thalia was having trouble conforming to authority and “not being able to do anything”. Percy was Percy, risking her life again for others. And even Jason himself was having issues – dying was bad, yes, but coming back to life was so much harder. Especially if terms and conditions applied. If they didn’t act fast enough, Jason’s time in this world would come to an end again, and that was soon.

Lord Pluto had given him a year to live again and pay his debt to the Underworld. He'd come back in early July, just managing to adjust back to life. Luckily, he’d only missed some months. Not like Thalia, who’d missed literal years, or Hazel, having missed almost seven decades. Now, it was late October – almost three months had passed. He needed to help here; he couldn’t die. And Lord Pluto had told him that there would be more consequences the longer he stayed without paying his debt.

But Jason didn’t know how to.

The two cousins had made their way to the castle’s entrance. The doors were open, welcoming the students to enter, but Jason saw Percy glancing at them suspiciously. Jason saw some of his classmates standing around, chatting with each other, or going somewhere that didn’t matter. For them, it was just another Saturday. A few students stared after Jason and Percy, who seemed to be uncomfortable. Understandable – the last time his cousin had been here, it had been for a life-threatening curse.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Percy asked as Jason navigated the Great Staircase, with its ever-moving stairs. He heard Percy yelp behind him as she had to jump to get onto the right flight of stairs.

He turned around to see his cousin shaking his head. “You live like this, bro?”

Jason shot her a smile. “It’s not that bad once you get used to it.”

“Hey, Jason!” It was Julian, one of Jason’s classmates. “Who’s the hot guy?”

Jason could see Percy’s eyebrows wander to her hairline.

“That’s my cousin, Percy,” Jason explained. “He’s visiting right now.”

Julian whistled. “Straight from America?”

Percy gave the Hufflepuff a lazy smile. “Not straight, but yes. I’m taken, though.”

“Shame. Hit me up anytime if you want to,” Julian flirted, before disappearing into the crowd.

“What was that?” Percy asked.

“Julian, he’s one of my dormmates. He gets like that with everyone. Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s funny. Again, where are we going?”

“Gryffindor common room – get off here, Perce – we’re getting Hazel.”

They came to a halt before the portrait of the Fat Lady – a mean-spirited nickname, Jason thought, but if she’d ever been called something else, nobody knew it.

“Password?” asked the painting. Percy gawked at her openly. “Have you never seen a moving picture before, child?” she said with an acerbic tone.

“Apologies for my cousin,” Jason said. “She lives in the muggle world, usually, and moving paintings are kind of a rarity there.”

“Well, you still need the password. I won’t let you through, otherwise.”

That was the most annoying thing about Hogwarts – the passwords. He had a hard enough time remembering the Hufflepuff password (it was currently “Helga”, after the founder of their House).

But before Jason had to submit to the embarrassment of admitting that he didn’t know, the portrait swung to the side and revealed the hidden entrance to the common room, and Ginny Weasley climbed out, followed by Hazel.

The daughter of Pluto straightened up as soon as she saw Percy and hugged him.

“Rude,” Jason huffed. “Don’t I get a hug? Hello, Ginny, by the way.”

“No you don’t,” Hazel said, a wide grin across her face. “You get enough from Nico and Thalia. What brings you here, Percy?”

“Can a guy not spend some time with her cousins without having to make up big explanations?” Percy asked sarcastically. “Business, of course. Can we talk somewhere private?”

“Sure.” Hazel nodded. “The room of requirement should be free. Ginny, I’m sorry, but can we do this later?”

Hazel had come to like the room of requirement in all its forms. Right now, it had taken on the shape of a slightly old-fashioned living room, with a coffee table, several armchairs and one bigger loveseat. That had, of course, been taken by Percy who was sitting in such a way that nobody else would have enough space there.

“Another horcrux, then?” she asked tiredly, sipping a cup of hot tea provided by the room.

Percy nodded and opened up the Tupperware box. It was a golden locket, and it definitely reverberated with the same Dark energy as the diadem and the ring. Hazel sighed.

“Very well, then. I’ll ask Nico to get the sword of Gryffindor, and then we can get Piper and Thalia in here, too. They deserve to know what’s going on.”

“Why does that sword work on horcruxes, actually?” Jason asked.

“Yeah,” Percy chimed in, “Riptide seems to be powerless against it. What makes some ancient wizard’s sword so much better.”

“Basilisk venom, guys. Harry slew the basilisk, Slytherin’s monster, with it, and since it’s made from Goblin Silver, it didn’t corrode, but instead got strengthened by it, as far as I understand it.”

“That makes sense, and I don’t know enough about supernatural metals to dispute it,” said Percy.

“Stop misquoting memes,” Hazel reminded her cousin, “Frank is going to murder you if you do.”

“You know what a meme is?” Percy shot back.

“I am Praetor of Rome, Jackson. Of course I know what a meme is.”

Percy laughed at that, but it lacked genuine happiness.

“Is everything alright?” Hazel asked her cousin. “Did something happen when you were getting the horcrux?” She already knew the answer would probably be “yes”, but she wanted to revel in her ignorance for a few seconds longer.

Percy sighed tiredly. “I drank poison. Not deadly, but harmful. Hurt like a bitch.”

“Language,” Jason reminded her absent-mindedly.

“Anyways,” Percy continued, “the effects are pretty much gone by now. I drank some salt water afterwards, ate some ambrosia – I think I’m good to go.”

That wasn’t good. Yes, Percy was fine right now, by his own measure – but he couldn’t keep this up for much longer. (Hazel couldn’t, either.)

“Let’s get the others here,” Jason suggested. “With the sword.”

A good hour or so later, the six demigods were assembled in the room of requirement, which had now grown more furniture to fit all of them. The medallion of Slytherin lay there on the wooden coffee table and Hazel was prepared to take the sword to it.

She shifted into a battle-ready stance, readied herself, and swung.

The blade bounced right off.

“Weird,” commented Piper. Did this happen with any of the other ones?”

Hazel shook her head. “No. Both the ring and the diadem went down pretty easily.”

“Maybe we need to open it?” Nico suggested.

“You can’t open it with magic, or by force,” Percy said. “Believe me, we’ve tried.”

“Maybe we’re using the wrong magic?”

“What do you mean by that, Thalia?” asked Jason.

“I mean, it was probably wizard magic. House-elves have their own sort of magic, I know that much – they can actually apparate inside of Hogwarts. Maybe a house-elf could get it open.”

“Nah,” said Percy. “We got it from a house-elf, who had sworn to his master that he’d open it. He’s been trying for over a decade, now.”

“What do you mean, you ‘got it from a house-elf`?” Piper asked curiously. “I thought you had to go to what you referred to as an ‘evil murder cave’ for it.”

“The thing in there was fake. Sirius’ dead brother Regulus – you know, the Death Eater? – took the real one and had Kreacher, the rude house-elf, swear to flee and open and destroy it. Then he died in the cave.”

“That sounds anticlimactic,” Thalia added unnecessarily.

“But it’s important,” Percy said with a weird glint in his eyes. “He’s the key to paying Jason’s debt.”

Some of the others broke out in surprised shouts, but Hazel stayed silent. Finally, one less problem to solve. Hopefully. They still had the horcrux to deal with.

“How?” she asked.

“Fair warning, incoming rant,” Percy told them. “So, the Black family is descended from Hades, or Pluto. I don’t know the exact story, but some Black family ancestor in the eighteenth century or so had a nice fling with uncle dearest, and you saw the results for yourself.

“Now, Regulus’ corpse was trapped in this cave for about 15 years or so. But since Voldy had put a weird spell on the cave, all the people dragged into the lake by the zombies there that he made become zombies, too. So, his soul was kind of trapped? In some sort of limbo thing, neither really in the living world, but also not in the Underworld.”

“And Father wants his descendants by his side,” Nico concluded.

Percy nodded. “Yeah. We want to give him a proper hero’s funeral, since he died trying to put a stop to Voldy’s immortality.”

“But he was still a Death Eater, wasn’t he?” Thalia asked.

“We gave Luke a hero’s honours, too, Thalia.”

A look of anger crossed Thalia’s face, but she said nothing. Luke must still have been a sore spot for her. Hazel didn’t know much about the guy, but her opinion of him wasn’t very positive.

“I don’t know what sort of person he was,” Percy continued. “Not in life, and not when he died. But I want Jason to live, and damn it, Sirius needs closure, too.”

“So, you’re on first name and ‘he needs closure’ basis with wolfstar now?” Piper asked.

Percy just groaned. Hazel was pretty sure that “wolfstar” was some kind of “ship name”, whatever that meant.

“Can we do something more fun?” Thalia asked. “Like truth or dare. Pretty sure that Percy has to be gone by tomorrow again.”

“Will you miss me?” asked Percy in what was probably the most annoying tone he could muster.

“No,” deadpanned Thalia.

“Truth or dare then?” Nico asked. “Everyone familiar with the rules?”

Everybody made vogue noises of assent, or nodded.

“I go first,” Thalia announced. “Hazel, truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Coward! Okay, is something going on between you and Ginny?”

“What? No, of course not! Why would you even think that?”

“Because she looks at you like you hung the stars,” Piper said dryly. “That girl has a crush on you, Hazel.”

“Wait, are you even into girls?” Nico asked.

“I don’t know,” complained Hazel. “I mean, girls are very pretty, but I’m also in love with Frank? I mean, I know being bi or pan or things like that aren’t off the table, but I just never really thought about it.”

“Take your time,” Piper advised.

“And besides,” Hazel said, “I’m still in a relationship with Frank, and I don’t see myself as being in a poly relationship. I mean, I don’t have any issues with that, but I guess it’s just not for me? And I don’t want to lead Ginny on, because I feel like that would be cheating, if you get that? And it would be awful to her as well, of course.”

Sincere nods from all around her.

“Alright,” she said, trying to bring some more levity into the conversation. “Jason, truth or dare?”

With a glance towards Percy, Jason said, “Dare. I’m not a coward.”

“Alright then, Bluejay. I dare you to help me research on the founders and the ancient magic at work inside this school in the library.”

“Why me?” Jason complained.

“Probably because you don’t have dyslexia, dude,” said Percy.

“Yeah, asking any of us would be seriously ableist,” said Thalia with mock-sincerity in her voice. “Gods Jason, check your privilege.”

Percy burst out laughing, and with satisfaction Hazel saw that Nico was also suppressing laughter behind his hand.

“Okay,” said Jason, “I’ll do it. Percy, truth or dare?”

“Dare,” Percy said smugly.

“Uh……”

“I’m waiting.”

“I dare you to do, uh, go shirtless for a round.”

“My, my, Jason. Quite forward, are we?”

“Nah,” said Thalia. “Just horny.”

Oh gods no. Listen, Hazel was not homophobic in any sense. But she did not want to see Percy and Jason do anything… inappropriate, alright? It would be the same if one of them were a girl. Well, Percy was a girl sometimes. Still, it would have been like walking in on your older siblings! (Hazel had once walked in on Nico and Will making out. She was scarred for life.)

Percy laughed, but actually took of his hoodie and the shirt he was wearing underneath, revealing lean muscles covered in scar tissue. She looked… uncomfortably thin. Hazel could see his ribs from here. She had no doubt that if he turned around, she would be able to see the single joints of his spine.

Percy squirmed a bit under the others’ gazes. “I’ve been eating enough,” she said defensively. “It’s just hard to put weight back on. I don’t want to talk about it.”

As worried as Hazel was, she would respect her cousin’s boundaries. If she didn’t want her prying, then Hazel would oblige.

“Thalia, truth or dare,” Percy said.

“Dare.”

“I dare you to kiss Piper.”

“Are you even allowed to do that?” Nico asked confusedly. “I mean, you’re a hunter of Artemis and all.”

“It’s just a kiss,” Thalia said. “I’m fine with it.” She crossed over to where Piper was sitting.

“May I?” the huntress asked Piper.

“You may,” said Piper in a tone reminding Hazel of a romance heroine a la Jane Austen.

Hazel clapped politely as Thalia pressed a quick peck to Piper’s cheek. Nico cheered as well. Piper collapsed into a giggling fit.

“Alright. Piper, truth or dare?” Thalia asked.

“Truth.”

“Who was the first girl you ever had a crush on?”

“The first I consciously remember? Annabeth Chase. No, I’m not taking any more questions.”

“Called it!” Percy shouted triumphantly. “Pay up, Nico.”

Grumbling, Hazel’s brother tossed Percy a drachma.

“Excuse me?” asked Piper. “You had a bet on if I’d had a crush on your girlfriend?”

“Not my girlfriend,” said Nico, putting up his hands. “I’m gay.”

Variations of “Yes Nico, we know” chorused throughout the room.

“In my defence,” said Percy, not the slightest bit apologetic, “It was pretty obvious.”

“I can’t – why am I even friends with any of you? Nico, truth or dare.”

“Truth.”

“Ever had a crush on Jason?”

Nico sputtered. “I – yes – well –”

“Please, who didn’t?” Percy said with a grin.

Hazel raised her hand, together with Thalia, of course, and Jason himself. Yes, Hazel had admired Jason, but only in a platonic, older-brother-and-younger-sister way. And that had also stopped once he’d said that they should leave Nico. Hazel wasn’t mad at him for that, anymore, but still. She was only slowly rebuilding her trust in him.

“Percy, what in the name of Hades? We were trying to kill each other, and you had a crush on me?”

Percy raised her hands in a mockery of the “don’t shoot the messenger” pose.

“Alright,” said Nico. “We’ve had everyone, right?”

“Yup,” Percy said. “Can you please ask me? I want to put my shirt back on.”

Hazel’s brother shook his head. “Nope. Thalia, truth or dare?

On a whim, the six demigods had decided to camp out there, in the room of requirement, for the night. Of course, being themselves, none of them were actually sleeping. Considering that it was already one AM, this was a bit of a problem. Considering that tomorrow – today, really – was Sunday, it was less of a problem.

“Anyone still awake?” Hazel asked sleepily. A bit unnecessary, if you asked Nico.

“Yes.” That was Piper.

“No,” said Percy. It wasn’t as funny as she probably thought it was.

“Yes, but I was just falling asleep,” mumbled Jason tiredly.

“Of course,” said Thalia.

“What did you think, Hazel,” Nico asked.

“That at least one of us would be sleeping, probably.”

“What is it, Hazel?” Jason asked, ever caring. It was nice of him to think about her like this. And he would help any of them like this, too, Nico thought. No. He knew.

“I… There are some thoughts that have been keeping me awake,” Nico’s sister said, pushing herself into a seated position. Soft light from what nearly was a full moon fell in through the window, illuminating a gold-coloured bonnet the room had somehow procured to protect her hair.

“What thoughts?” Nico asked. Not good ones, probably. Good thoughts rarely kept people awake.

“Are we good people?” Hazel asked bluntly.

“What do you mean?” There was concern in Piper’s voice.

“Depends,” Thalia offered. “I don’t think I’m a particularly good person, to be honest. I’ve done some shit in my time.”

“Don’t swear Thals,” Jason reminded his sister.

“I’m with Thalia,” said Jackson. “I’ve done some seriously messed up stuff, but I think you’re a good person, Hazel.”

“I’m not just talking about me,” Hazel said, anguished. “I mean, are we really doing what’s just and good here?”

“We’re helping take down an evil wannabe dictator, Hazel,” Nico reminded his sister. “Sometimes, you have to make sacrifices for the greater good.” He knew it sounded harsh, alright? Life wasn’t fair. And you couldn’t always afford to be fair and nice.

Hazel shook her head. “We threatened someone with genocide, Nico. We pretty much psychologically tortured Umbridge.”

“She deserved it,” he said bitterly. “She was a terrible person.”

“We can’t just decide that! Once we start saying ‘oh, that one deserved it’, what is stopping us from furthering that definition of who deserved it? What is stopping us from going from threatening someone with genocide to actually going through with it? Why don’t we actually help the house-elves instead of just going ‘oh, poor them! They deserve so much better’, but never do anything? Are we even still using our powers for good?”

Gods, Nico just wanted to hold her tight to him, apologize for everything she’d been through. None of them had been handed an easy lot in life, but Hazel had been dealt a particularly unfair hand.

Wait a second, he could do that. He crawled over to her and hugged her tight against him. She smelled of earth and incense, her typical aura. His sister froze, and then she simply started sobbing wordlessly.

There was an immeasurable grief in her tears, in her agonized wailing.

“Oh Hazel,” Nico whispered. “You’re so strong, the best person I know. You always try to do what’s right.”

“I don’t know what’s right anymore,” she hiccupped in between sobs. “I don’t know what I’m even doing. I’m just a silly little girl and –” She cut herself off and simply started sobbing again.

“We all had to grow up way too fast,” Percy said. He’d also climbed over to the two siblings. “And it’s so unfair, and it breaks my heart. I’m sorry, Hazel. You’re so strong, but you never should have had to be.”

“For what it’s worth, I also don’t know what I’m doing,” Percy said. “I just stumble along.”

“We can try to be nicer,” Piper offered. “You’re right, Hazel. We’re being pretty terrible right now, to be honest, throwing our weight around, and…”

“I don’t think any of us are good people,” Nico said bitterly. “I don’t think anyone we deal with here is a good person. Nobody can be good and pure all the time. People are messy, and broken. We can only do our best.”

“Isn’t that what makes someone a good person?” Piper asked. “Doing your best? People can’t always be perfect, Nico is right. But trying your best, doing what you can even if it’s hard, that’s what makes you good.”

“People make mistakes, some people more than others.” Jason said, voice so unfathomably tired. Nico sometimes forgot that Jason had also been a sort of general. Well, not the direct terminology, but he’d also had so many expectations, so many lives put on his shoulders. “But we can come back from them, learn from them. That’s what makes us stronger.”

Nico wanted to agree. It was a nice perspective to have on the world, to be able to still call himself good after everything he’d done. But it made him feel guilty, so he stopped trying.

“Group hug, guys,” Thalia announced from somewhere behind them.

Well, a group hug wasn’t going to help all their problems and heal their traumas. This would have to end eventually – Percy would have to leave come morning, and the rest of them were supposed to be in their own, separate dormitories. But it was proof that the others were there for them – that they weren’t alone.

Nico ended up sandwiched between Jason and Hazel, who had finally stopped crying.

At some point, they’d managed to collapse into a sort of cuddle pile.

At some point, Nico had started to hear Percy’s snoring.

At some point, he also decided to stop fighting to keep his eyes open.

At some point, Nico di Angelo, Ghost King, Son of Hades, a good person not by his own definition but at least that of some of his friends, fell asleep.

Chapter Text

Sirius had never thought that making a shroud by hand would be hard work. Of course, he had been wrong. It felt like a betrayal to weave his brother’s shroud through magic and not using his own two hands. This felt wrong, plain and simple. But he’d never learned to weave and time was not a plentiful resource, because when had that ever been the case? Azkaban, probably -twelve years of waiting and wasting away. But he didn’t care to dwell on that.

He didn’t know where Percy and Remus had gotten the loom from, although he thought that it had something to do with Percy’s fiancée Annabeth. Something about her mother being the deity or inventor or something of weaving? Anyways, this meant that she was, in her own words, “quite adept” at weaving.

Of course, the shroud would later have to be embroidered – Sirius was thinking … geometrical slightly Greek-ish patterns?

Alright, Sirius had no idea what his brother would have liked. It wasn’t like he could just…

… ask him.

“Hey Reg,” Sirius called over to his baby brother. “Reg!”

“What is it?” His younger brother, only a few days short of being ten, didn’t even raise his head from the book he was reading. Nerd.

“I overheard Mother and Father talking about having your room redone. Changing the walls’ colour, a new bed, everything!”

Regulus snapped his book shut with a loud crack. That would have been the spine, probably. “And why are you telling me this? Don’t you think this would be a birthday surprise?”

“Because I wanted to know what colour you’d like!”

“Green, probably. I’ll be a Slytherin next year, anyway, so it’ll be fitting.”

“You don’t even know that yet, Reg! C’mon, don’t be so boring!”

Reg shrugged. “Every Black in the last five centuries was also a Slytherin. Come September, you’ll be there, too. And the year after that, I’ll be there with you. No use in fantasizing about anything else. And at least green isn’t as boring as black.”

The Slytherin thing was true. In September, Sirius would be attending Hogwarts, in the most noble of houses. Slytherin. The only house for people like them.

“Come on Siri.” Reg got up. “Let’s have the elves make us some sandwiches. I’m starving.”

Groaning, Sirius got up from the chair he’d been sitting in to supervise the weaving process. It was finished now, the shroud: a plain black thing, still lacking any decoration whatsoever. Sirius didn’t want the Black house crest on it, that would feel wrong. Same with the Slytherin one. Percy had suggested the symbol of Hades/Pluto, because that would have been standard procedure at Camp. There, they would have made a personalized shroud, a summary of the person they’d been before they’d reached their untimely end.

A knock on the door startled him out of his thoughts.

“Come on in,” he called, trying his best to sound at least somewhat upbeat. He did not.

In stepped Nico di Angelo, looking as small and tired as always. Well, maybe a bit more tired. He had bags under his eyes and his cheeks were hollow, as if he were the victim of some famine.

“Have you thought about decorating the shroud?” the boy asked.

“I have no idea what kind of person my brother was, at the end.” After a pause, he admitted, “maybe I never did in the first place.”

Great, he could already feel tears gathering in his eyes, pricking at them. He tried to blink them back, but just like any other time, it just made them roll down the cheeks.

“Gods,” said di Angelo. “Everything okay – well, obviously not, but…”

“No,” muttered Sirius. “But it’s not that important. I just feel like a terrible brother and – ugh.” He could barely force the words out.

“I get it,” Nico mumbled. “You know, when my sister – Bianca, that is – died, they never found her body. When they held her funeral, they only had a shroud to burn. I don’t even know what it looked like. I, uh, wasn’t there.” He rubbed his neck. “Percy told me about Bianca’s death after they she got back – they’d been on a quest to rescue Artemis – I, well, I ran. I ran into the woods, into the labyrinth and never wanted to come back.”

“But you did?”

“Yes. That was after the quest with the labyrinth and claiming the title of Ghost King, and so forth. But I still missed the funeral of the person I loved most in the entire world. There’s a lot to be said about Bianca, and I’m afraid I can’t really do it justice right now.”

Sirius… honestly didn’t know what to say, what to think, what to feel about that.

So the two simply sat there in silence.

“Percy wants you downstairs,” the boy said after what seemed like an eternity. “She says you should take a break, and say goodbye to him for the – well, not last time, but still.”

Without a word, Sirius stood up and left the room. He didn’t bother closing the door.

Downstairs, Percy was waiting for him, as Nico had said.

“Listen, Percy, if you want to talk about the shroud, just… no.”

The demigod shrugged. “Alright. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, anyways. There’s news on the Horcrux front.”

“That’s something, certainly.”

Jackson snorted. “Sure is. You know Voldemort’s gigantic snake? Naga-something?” A short pause. “Anyways, she’s a Horcrux. And we’ll just have to kill her. It’s an easy one – better than that gods-damned amulet.”

“You still haven’t managed to destroy it?”

“No. But Piper and Thalia found about the other Horcrux we were still missing. We already know it’s location, too – your cousin Bellatrix’ Gringotts vault.

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

No, but that was good. One of the first things he’d done after getting acquitted was seizing most of Bellatrix’ assets. Not a nice move, but she’d tortured two of his classmates into insanity and killed some more of his colleagues.

Jackson snorted. “Well. I’ll leave you to it.” She patted him on the shoulder.

Did she truly feel so little about this?

Sirius breathed. In and out, in and out. What was he going to do?

And then, he saw Kreacher lurking in the doorway. He wanted to scream at that damned elf to …

“GET OUT!” Kreacher glared at Sirius in a manner that could have probably killed a grown man. But Sirius simply cradled his still aching right arm in his left one.

He drew his wand and aimed it, hand trembling, at his injured arm. As far as he knew, nothing was broken, which was a silver lining.

He muttered a healing charm, so quietly that the spell was more thought than spoken word. The charm, of course, didn’t actually stop the pain from the bruises which were just now forming. But at least it helps.

And Kreacher was back at the doorway, positively brimming with delight at something new, another offense from the eldest son, to bring to his Mistress.

“Not a word of this to my mother,” Sirius hissed. “Or I’ll mount your head onto the fucking wall.” Wait, wrong move. He’d probably like that.

Again, Kreacher glared at him, an intense hatred in his eyes. “If the young master so wishes,” the wretched elf hissed. Then, with a loud pop he disapparated.

And again, Sirius was alone, but again, not for long.

“You shouldn’t be so rude to him,” Regulus scolded. But still, he sounded much kinder than his mother or father ever would. Ever could, probably.

His little brother was quickly growing up into a teenager. He was 14 now, but it seemed like it had been just yesterday that they’d been nine and ten respectively; only the two of them against the world. Now that had made way to house rivalries and warring ideologies (something that was quickly becoming much too literal).

“Not that he isn’t terrible to me as well,” Sirius muttered then.

“Yes, Sirius, but you have power over him. He doesn’t.”

“Sure. Like he couldn’t rat me out to our mother and have me Crucio’d to the brink of insanity.”

“Well then, maybe you shouldn’t go out of your way to disobey our parents at any opportunity you get.”

“You don’t understand what it’s like, do you? To watch them be some of the worst fucking people to ever exist, having them always insult you and your friends and everything you ever do; to have them take their anger out on you every. Fucking. Time.”

“Well, what are you going to do? The only way you’ll survive is to change course, get back into their good graces.

Sirius’ face hardened. “No,” he said. “I’m going to leave.”

“You won’t.”

“Yes. I will.”

“I – when?”

“Don’t know. Soon, though.

Regulus shook his head. “It’s not going to work.”

“Get out of my room.”

Regulus did.

Sirius had been crying for… a long time now.

“Shh,” whispered a familiar voice. Remus’ voice. Sirius’ boyfriend knelt down at his chair and wrapped his arms around him. “Shh… Come on, Sirius. I’ve got you. You’re with me, and you’ll never have to go back here, soon.”

Sirius just kept on crying. Why did everything have to go wrong? Why?

Remus kept on whispering comforting words, stroking Sirius’ arm. After a while, his tears had run dry. With shaking legs, he got up, Remus following after.

“Are you alright, Sirius?” he asked, concern evident in his voice and face.

“Clearly not,” Sirius said sardonically, voice still choked by tears. “I feel like I don’t even know who he really was, and I can’t bring him back, and Percy and Nico always go on about how I’m going to see him again in the Underworld, but I – I don’t want him to be there and dead, and I don’t want to be either, I don’t want to die…”

“That’s a good thing, Sirius,” Remus whispered. “Not wanting to die.”

“It… yes. I just don’t want to be with my brother in some distant afterlife, I want him to be here now.”

So that he could apologize, so that he could make it right, so that they could have all that was denied to them back then.

Remus pressed their bodies together in a tight embrace.

“Come on,” his boyfriend said. “Let’s go to bed. You need to…

Sleep had eluded Sirius for the past months. The war was going on in full swing – each day, there were more deaths and disappearances; another friend, enemy, classmate gone forever. But there was a way forwards, as there always was, and Sirius saw it.

Or at least, Sirius saw a gleaming bright future, surrounded by those he called his family (though they weren’t necessarily by blood, but that was overrated). That was the life after victory and justice. And he knew what that victory was, what that justice was. And he’d figured out a path.

Sadly, that path was growing elusive, closed by an ever-darkening fog. Sirius didn’t even know who to trust anymore – what with Remus probably being the secret spy (and wasn’t that fucking hilarious), James and Lily now in hiding, awaiting the birth of their child, Peter being a coward, as always, and Regulus being… right fucking there!

A Death Eater and an Order member walk into the same shitty muggle pub in Scotland, Sirius thought, that would make a great joke. What would be the punchline? “And then they proceed to commit a double fratricide?”

His younger brother’s eyes looked bloodshot. There was a nervous energy to him, in general.

And then, their eyes – same signature shade of grey, as always – locked.

It was Regulus who got up first, of course, crossing over the dingy, poorly-lit room to him. This was the first time in… a long time that Sirius had seen him, he realized.

“What are you doing here?” he asked his younger brother sharply. “Here to kill me?”

“I… no. Well, to put it in your words: ‘I’m going to leave’”

Sirius snorted. “Have fun dying, then.” Nobody simply left the Death Eaters. That was like thinking you could just leave the Mafia.

“I will,” Regulus responded, voice devoid of any tone. “Don’t worry.” And Sirius hoped he was joking.

It felt like something was stuck in his throat.

“Goodbye,” Sirius said flatly, and left the pub without even ordering anything to drink. Bother.

When Sirius woke up the day of his brother’s funeral, Percy brought him and Remus breakfast. Well, it was McDonalds.

“It was Nico’s idea,” the demigod simply offered up, which wasn’t actually an apology.

The coffee was mediocre, and the food seemed to taste like ash. It was probably his nerves. Holding your younger brother’s funeral was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing. Okay, it didn’t have to be if you had more than one younger brother that died before you did. Then again, Sirius had only had the one.

“Everything alright?” Percy asked him. What a stupid question.

“No. Ever had to bury your younger brother?

“First of all,” Percy said, holding one finger up, “we’re not burying him, exactly.”

“We’re cremating him,” Nico added, through a mouthful of McDonalds chips. Or fries, as Percy insisted on calling them. Americans.

“Second,” and at that Percy held up a second finger, “I don’t know any younger brothers of mine who are dead. And three, even though I have dead older brothers, I never made a habit of giving the appropriate funerary rites to somebody I’ve killed.

A silence settled over the room.

Percy fidgeted uncomfortably with his Camp necklace.

Sirius started tapping out a rhythm on his thigh, as quietly as he could.

Nico shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

Remus warily took a sip of coffee. Like Sirius’, it was probably cold by now.

“So…” Nico said.

“So,” Percy repeated.

They fell silent again.

Sirius looked over to Remus for guidance. With a start, he realized how pale the other man was. Of course – the full moon was in only a day’s time. Sirius wanted to slap himself. How had he managed to be this caught up in his own bullshit? Why hadn’t he realized how badly his boyfriend was doing?

“Any last-minute changes to the shroud?” Nico asked.

“His initials in Slytherin green. Merlin, he signed everything like that, even when we were still kids. It was obnoxious.” Well, Sirius initials were S.O.B. That didn’t look as refined as his brothers, now did it?

“Sounds good,” Nico said. “Take care of that and bring it down when you’re finished, okay?”

Sirius simply nodded and went.

The last preparations for the funeral blurred together in Sirius’ mind. He knew what had happened, but something in his head just wasn’t working right.

Sirius did the last details on the shroud.

He brought it to Nico.

They wrapped Regulus’ corpse.

He put the obol under his brother’s tongue.

Nico shadow-travelled to the site of the funeral.

He and Remus apparated and took Percy along with them.

The pyre was assembled.

The corpse was lain on the pyre.

They stood there.

Kreacher apparated there. Bastard.

Nico asked if anybody wanted to speak.

My brother was a good man. He was a complicated man. He was a boy, really. It wasn’t his fault, except for all the ways and times it was. I loved him. I did so much to protect him. We did nothing but fight. When I last saw him, I wished him fun dying, and he told me he would. I didn’t know him at the end. I never knew him at all. I was the only person that actually knew him. We were inseparable. I ran away because I could not bear living with my family any longer. He was the best, kindest person I knew. He was a Death Eater. I want to put him into words. I can’t.

Nobody could.

The pyre was lit. It burned brightly. The stench of rotten flesh burning. The sight of smoke. The sensation of heat. The sound of wood cracking under the heat. The taste of blood. He’d bitten through his lip. Huh.

There was no feeling.

Weren’t funerals for the living? He felt as if he’d died, long ago.

The fire had burned through.

Someone pushed a jar of something into his hands. Someone was Nico. Something was his brother’s ashes.

Where was he going to put them, he wondered. He didn’t have a house anymore.

He supposed he should feel happy about it, or sad. Or angry. Conflicted. Something.

Merlin, how he’d hoped this funeral would do something for him. Even simply the fact that he was helping his brother pass on into the Underworld, and hopefully Elysium, should make him feel something.

Nico and Kreacher were gone. Different places, probably.

Remus was standing next to him.

“Where are we going to go know?” Remus asked, as if he was afraid to interrupt Regulus’ rest. This would have been difficult, considering that he was pretty solidly dead, burnt, and now awaiting trial in the Underworld.

“I don’t know,” Sirius admitted wearily.