Chapter Text
Harry was waiting for Dumbledore to pick him up from Privet Drive. That didn’t happen though. He fell asleep clutching a copy of the Daily Prophet and woke up at the wheel of a flashy luxury car.
He reacted appropriately.
“AAAARGHHHHH!”
The car veered off the empty road and crashed into a tall, sturdy tree. The airbag slammed into Harry’s face. His glasses broke and pain burst into his senses, shockingly sharp and he was soundly knocked out.
Annabeth was waiting for Percy to reach camp. It was their first week anniversary, an incredibly important date to remember. Percy had promised her he’d be there by lunch, but it was now past 3 pm with no sign of her boyfriend.
She reacted appropriately.
“CHIRON! WE NEED TO ISSUE A QUEST!”
Chiron winced, looking up from his hand of cards. He was losing this time at Pinochle and Mr. D’s smug face would not allow him to leave the table.
“Annabeth, dear,” Chiron told her, from the porch of the Big House. “Percy’s probably taking the bus here if his stepfather is busy.”
“But he usually calls if he’s late,” Annabeth argued. “I phoned Sally just now, she said he’d left at 11!”
“Perhaps he ran into a monster. We know Percy can handle himself,” Chiron told her gently. “I’m sure he’s close enough. Let’s wait another hour before setting loose the cavalry.”
“For the best,” Mr. D grunted. “Unless you want a repeat of the funeral Perry Johannson gate-crashed. His own funeral.”
Percy had been on his way to Camp. But he’d found himself flying through the window of the car and scorpioning on the forest floor beside the road.
He reacted inappropriately.
“Ouchy.”
Thankful for the Achilles’s Curse, he stumbled to his feet and touched his aching face. Nothing was cut or broken, but his head flashed a neon red Check Engine sign. He tasted blood in his mouth.
Brain reeling from the impact, Percy waddled off into the forest, swaying with every fumbling step. He had a date with Annabeth.
Drew sounded the alarm horn. Peleus the dragon curled protectively around Thalia’s pine tree as the campers assembled in haste, rushing to the border.
“There’s a fire there!” Drew yelled, pointing at the horizon. “And I heard something explode.”
Indeed, there was a column of smoke rising to the sky.
Annabeth steeled herself. “Cabin 6 and 11 to me! Cabin 5, take up rear guard. It could be a new camper or monsters. Stay alert!”
They rushed out in an unpredictable fashion. All the better to confuse anyone watching them. Annabeth and her siblings approached from the north while the Hermes cabin and Ares kids pincered around the blast zone.
A car had been wrapped around a tree and exploded. It was currently on fire and the dryads around it were shrieking and trying to put out the flames.
“Douse the fire!” Annabeth barked at Cabin 11. “Malcolm, check the road! Clarisse, how close can you get to the car?”
“Just a few feet,” Clarisse growled, and her brothers agreed. “It’s too hot. Gas leak.”
“There’s someone here!” Connor yelled.
“New camper?” Annabeth asked, marching toward him. She saw the extent of the scene.
Connor’s siblings managed to kill the fire and peel the car away from the partially burned tree. Glass and metal had burst on the ground, somewhat melted on the grass around the tree.
The most visible part of it all was that a boy covered in glass cuts had crawled away from the exploded car. From a cursory examination of his head wounds, Annabeth figured he’d been hit by an airbag.
“Probably mortal,” Connor was saying. “Can’t see any bags or supplies around him.”
“Unless they burned up in the car,” Travis reminded him.
“Clarisse?” Annabeth called. “Anything useful in the car?”
Cabin 5’s head shook her head. “I can see two bags in the rear seat. But they’re properly melted.”
Malcolm walked down from the highway. “Car veered off the road. I’m guessing he was going at 150 miles per hour, maybe more. He could have seen a deer or something.”
“No!” a dryad snapped. She was the tree that had been hit by the car. Her sister spirits helped her stand as the charred bark of her skin painfully healed.
Annabeth could sense the Golden Fleece’s magic in the air, healing the dryad.
“Did you see what happened?” Annabeth asked her.
“I was sleeping without a bother in the world!” the young pine spirit complained. “It was all quiet, there was nothing moving around me. Then the car just rammed into my trunk and burst into flames. It was loud! He got thrown out the window, too!"
Annabeth frowned. So the mortal boy just lost control of the car? And was thrown through the front…
“He’s totally out!” Connor called. “He’s got a bunch of cuts from the glass. You won’t believe it, but one of these look like a lightning bolt!”
The campers whispered intrigued. The dryads muttered unhappily. They’d been on the receiving end of human carelessness for millennia. They wouldn’t like it if camp allowed this human that crashed into a tree past its borders.
“Call Will!” Annabeth decided, sending one of her siblings. “See if he can treat the guy out here. We’ll get him back to the city so no one thinks to look around camp.”
“Jeez, he’s got those blood quill words on his hand too!” Connor announced, examining the unconscious boy’s knuckles.
“The what?” Clarisse asked, exasperated.
“Come on, La Rue. You watched Order of the Phoenix, right?!” Connor yelled.
Annabeth approached the boy. He had dark black hair messy in the back and wayward from surviving a car crash. He was prone on his stomach as though he’d tried to crawl out from the burning car but collapsed a few feet from it.
“I guess Long Island’s got some serious role players,” Annabeth said, shaking her head. She’d never fully understand mortals and their fascination for the otherworldly while ignoring the truth in front of them.
“Hardcore,” Connor agreed. “I found round glasses beside his head.”
Annabeth heard the others start giggling around them.
“Great,” Annabeth sighed. “Does he have a fancy stick to go with the ensemble?”
Her siblings snorted and so did half of Cabin 11. She was about to turn back to the car when Connor laughed, “Yeah, he does! This dude’s the best Harry Potter impersonator I’ve seen!”